We
people below, at the telegraph, dynamo, transformers, altimeters,
ventilators, indicators, motor, pumps, tubes.... In the saloon
people sitting over tables and instruments, probably those
commissioned by the Scientific Bureau. Near them the Second Builder
and his two aides. All three had their heads down between their
shoulders like turtles, their faces gray, autumnal, rayless.
"Well?" I asked.
"Well, somewhat uncanny," replied one of them smiling a gray rayless
smile, "Perhaps we shall have to land in some unknown place. And,
generally speaking, nobody knows...."
I hardly could bear to look at them, when in an hour or so I was to
throw them out with my own hands, to cast them out from the cozy
figures of our Tables of Hours, forever to tear them away from
the mother's breast of the United State. They reminded me of the
tragic figures of "The Three Forgiven Ones"--a story known to all
of our school-children. It tells about three Numbers, who by way of
experiment were exempted for a whole month from any work.[3] "Go
wherever you will, do what you will," they were told. The unhappy
three wandered the whole time about the place of their usual work
and gazed within with hungry eyes. They would stop on the plazas
and for hours busy themselves repeating the motions which they were
used to making during certain hours of the day; it became a bodily
necessity for them to do so. They would saw and plane the air; with
unseen sledge-hammers they would bang upon unseen stakes. Finally,
on the tenth day they could bear it no longer; they took one another
by the hand, entered the river, and to the accompaniment of the
March they waded deeper and deeper until the water forever ended
their sufferings.
[3] It happened long ago, in the third century A. T. (After the
Tables).
I repeat, it was hard for me to look at them, and I was anxious to
leave them.
"I just want to take a glance into the engine-room, and then off!" I
said.
They were asking me questions: What voltage should be used for the
initial spark, how much ballast water was needed in the tank aft.
As if a phonograph were somewhere within me, I was giving quick
and precise answers but _I_, my inner self, was busy with its own
thoughts.
In the narrow passage gray unifs were passing, gray faces and for a
second, one face with its hair low over the forehead, eyes gazing
from deep beneath it--it was _that same man_. I understood: _they_
had come and there was no escape from it for me; only minutes
remained, a few dozens of minutes.... An infinitesimal, molecular
quiver of my whole body. This did not cease to the very end,--it was
as if an enormous motor were placed under the very foundation of my
body which was so light that the walls, partitions, cables, beams,
lights--everything was quivering....
I did not yet know whether _she_ was there. But I had no time....
They were calling me: quick! To the commander's bridge; time to go
... where?
Gray, rayless faces. Below in the water--tense blue veins. Heavy,
cast-iron patches of sky. It was so difficult to lift my cast-iron
hand and take up the receiver of the commander's telephone!... "Up!
Forty-five degrees!"
A heavy explosion--a jerk--a rabid greenish-white mountain of water
aft--the deck beneath my feet began to move, soft as rubber; and
everything below, the whole life, forever.... For a second, falling
deeper and deeper into a sort of funnel, becoming more and more
compressed--the icy-blue relief-map of the City, the round bubbles
of cupolas, the lonely leaden finger of the Accumulating Tower....
Then instantaneously a cotton curtain of cloud.... We pierced it,
and there was the sun and the blue sky! Seconds, minutes, miles--the
blue was hardening, fast filling with darkness; like drops of cold
silver sweat appeared the stars....
A sad, unbearably bright, black, starry, sunny night.... As if one
had become deaf, one still saw that the pipes were roaring, but
one only saw, dead silence all about. The sun was mute. It was
natural, of course. One might have expected it; we were beyond the
terrestrial atmosphere. The transition was so quick, so sudden
that everyone became timid and silent. Yet I ... I thought I felt
even easier under that fantastic, mute sun. I had bounded over the
inevitable border, having left my body somewhere there below, and
I was soaring bodiless to a new world, where everything was to be
different, upside down.
"Keep the same course!" I shouted into the engine-room, or perhaps
it was not I but a phonograph in me, and the same machine with a
mechanical, hinge-like movement handed the commander's trumpet to
the Second Builder. All permeated by that most delicate, molecular
quiver known only to me, I ran down the companionway, to seek....
The door of the saloon.... An hour later it was to latch and lock
itself.... At the door stood an unfamiliar Number. He was small,
with a face like a hundred or a thousand others which are usually
lost in a crowd, but his arms were exceptionally long,--they reached
down to the knees as though by mistake they had been taken from
another set of human organs and fastened to his shoulders.
The long arm stretched out and barred the way.
"Where do you want to go?"
It was clear that he was not aware I knew everything. All right!
Perhaps it was necessary that it should be so. From above him, in a
deliberately significant tone I said:
"I am the Builder of the _Integral_ and I am directing the test
flight. Do you understand?"
The arm drew away.
The saloon. Heads covered with bristles, gray iron bristles, and
yellow heads, and bald, ripe heads were bent over the instruments
and maps. Swiftly, with a glance, I gathered them in with my
eyes, off I ran, back along the long passage, then through the
hatch into the engine-room. There it was hot from the red tubes,
overheated by the explosions; a constant roar,--the levers were
dancing their desperate drunken dance, quivering ceaselessly with
a barely noticeable quiver; the arrows on the dials.... There! At
last! Near the tachometer, a notebook in his hand, was that man with
the low forehead.
"Listen," I shouted straight into his ear (because of the roar), "Is
she here? Where is she?"
"She? There at the radio."
I dashed over there. There were three of them, all with receiving
helmets on. And she seemed a head taller than usual, wingy,
sparkling, flying like an ancient walkyrie, and those bluish sparks
from the radio seemed to emanate from her,--from her also that
ethereal, lightning-like odor of ozone.
"Someone--well, you for instance," I said to her, panting from
having run, "I must send a message down to earth, to the docks.
Come, I shall dictate it to you."
Close to the apparatus there was a small box-like cabin. We sat at
the table side by side. I found her hand and pressed it hard.
"Well, what is going to happen?"
"I don't know. Do you realize how wonderful it is? To fly without
knowing where ... no matter where? It will soon be twelve o'clock
and nobody knows what.... And when night.... Where shall you and I
be tonight? Perhaps somewhere on the grass, on dry leaves...."
Blue sparks emanated from her and the odor of lightning, and the
vibration became more and more frequent within me.
"Write down," I said loudly, panting (from having run), "Time:
eleven-twenty; speed 5800...."
"Last night she came to me with your note. I know ... I know
everything; don't talk.... But the child is yours. I sent her over;
she is already beyond the Wall. She will live...."
I was back on the commander's bridge, back in the delirious night
with its black, starry sky and its dazzling sun. The hands of
the clock on the table were slowly moving from minute to minute.
Everything was permeated by a thin, hardly perceptible quivering
(only I noticed it). For some reason a thought passed through
my head: it would be better if all this took place not here but
somewhere below, nearer to earth.
"Stop!" I commanded.
We kept moving by inertia, but more and more slowly. Now the
_Integral_ was caught for a second by an imperceptible little
hair--for a second it hung motionless, then the little hair broke
and the _Integral_ like a stone dashed downward with increasing
speed. That way in silence, minutes, tens of minutes passed. My
pulse was audible; the hand of the clock before my eyes came closer
and closer to twelve. It was clear to me I was a stone; I-330 the
earth; and the stone was under irresistible compulsion to fall
downward, to strike the earth and break into small particles. What
if...? Already the hard blue smoke of the clouds appeared below....
What if...? But the phonograph within me with a hinge-like motion
and precision took the telephone and commanded: "Low speed!" The
stone ceased falling. Only the four lower tubes were growling, two
ahead and two aft, only enough to hold the _Integral_ motionless,
and the _Integral_, only slightly trembling, stopped in the air as
if anchored, about one kilometer from the earth.
Everybody came out on deck, (it was shortly before twelve, before
the sounding of the dinner-gong) and leaned over the glass railing;
hastily, in huge gulps, they swallowed the unknown world which lay
below, beyond the Green Wall. Amber, blue, green, the autumnal
woods, prairies, a lake. At the edge of a little blue saucer, some
lone yellow debris, a threatening, dried-out yellow finger,--it must
have been the tower of an ancient "church" saved by a miracle....
"Look, there! Look! There to the right!"
There (over the green desert) a brown blot was rapidly moving. I
held a telescope in my hands and automatically I brought it to my
eyes: the grass reaching their chests, a herd of brown horses was
galloping, and on their back--_they_, black, white, and dark....
Behind me:
"I assure you, I saw a face!"
"Go away! Tell it to someone else!"
"Well, look for yourself! Here is the telescope."
They had already disappeared. Endless green desert, and in
that desert, dominating it completely and dominating me, and
everybody--the piercing vibrations of the gong; dinner time, one
minute to twelve.
For a second the little world around me became incoherent,
dispersed. Someone's brass badge fell to the floor. It mattered
little. Soon it was under my heel. A voice: "And I tell you, it was
a face!" A black square, the open door of the main saloon. White
teeth pressed together, smiling.... And at that moment, when the
clock began slowly, holding its breath between beats, to strike,
and when the front rows began to move towards the dining saloon,
the rectangle of the door was suddenly crossed by the two familiar,
unnaturally long arms:
"STOP!"
Someone's fingers sank piercing into my palm. It was I-330. She was
beside me.
"Who is it, do you know him?"
"Is he not ... is he not?..."
He was already lifted upon somebody's shoulders. Above a hundred
other faces, his face like hundreds, like thousands of other faces
yet unique among the rest....
"In the name of the Guardians! You, to whom I talk, _they_ hear me,
every one of them hears me,--I talk to you: _we know_! We don't know
your numbers yet but we know everything else. The _Integral_ shall
not be yours! The test flight will be carried out to the end and you
yourselves, you will not dare to make another move! You with your
own hands will help to go on with the test and afterward ... well, I
have finished!"
Silence. The glass plates under my feet seemed soft, cotton-like.
My feet too,--soft, cotton-like. Beside me--she with a dead-white
smile, angry blue sparks. Through her teeth to me:
"Ah! It is your work! You did your 'duty'! Well...." She tore her
hand from mine; the walkyrie helmet with indignant wings was soon to