Swift as thought their vessel shot down on one of the worlds. The green beam was more intense now; they could see that it emanated from a great structure on the planet. There were lights—dams—cities—great scored lines in the surface of the world that might have been roads.
The beam suddenly became a brake; they descended slowly and in state. A great concrete plain came in view—it was the roof of a building. There were first specks, then figures standing there. As the ship came to rest through the port they could see them as people—human beings—beautiful and stately.
It wasn't Earth, nor even much like it. But it was all that they wanted it to be—a point from which they might continue their wanderings, get rest and food, equipment and knowledge to set them on the right trail for home.
NOVA MIDPLANE
I. The Gaylens
Except for Gaynor's snores, and the rustle of Clair twitching around in the bed, the room was very quiet. It was warm, and dusky, and altogether a pleasant room to sleep in. . . .
Until, coming through the glass walls, light began streaming in, from a rapidly rising sun. Quickly the room got brighter and brighter: then, suddenly, there was a faint click from Gaynor's bed, a buzz, and violently the bed turned over catapulting Gaynor to the floor, where he landed with an awakening yell and a thud. A second later, Clair's bed ejected its occupant as well.
Clair groaned and shoved himself to his feet. "I must be getting used to this, Paul," he said. "It didn't bother me much today."
"You may be getting used to it. There are some things that I'll never get used to," murmured Gaynor drowsily, holding his head in his arms. "The gas they use to put us to sleep every night, for instance. It makes me itch like the devil."
"Me too," said Clair, busily inspecting his teeth in a mirror. "I must be allergic to the stuff to some extent. We'll have to tell Gooper. Otherwise I might begin to break out with big rashes."
"And you wouldn't like that to happen to your screen-idol pan, would you?" sneered Gaynor viciously.
"Why not, bud?" snapped Clair, putting on a pair of socks weft of every color of the rainbow.
"Jocelyn might not like it—that's why not," said his friend, peering at Clair's socks, and then selecting a somewhat gaudier pair for himself.
"And what if it isn't Jocelyn?"
With a start Gaynor straightened up and stared at his companion. "If it isn't Jocelyn," he said wonderingly, "who or what—is it?"
"My business alone."
They weren't about to slug each other as a casual observer might have supposed. Fighting worlds before breakfast were only one of the inexplicable habits that had kept these two together for most of their young lives.
They made a strange pair—physicists both, and in perfect symbiosis. One was a practical engineer, fully qualified to toss around murderous voltages or pack them in little glass tubes of the other's design and inspiration. Perhaps they were drawn together by a mutual love for practical jokes of the lowest sort—like rigging up chairs with high-voltage, low-wattage electrical contacts, or cooking up delicious formal dinners which crumbled into gray powder before the eyes of the horrified guest.
Be that as it may—they were here. Where here was they did not know, nor could they have any way of knowing, so, as was their way, they made the best of whatever happened to them, though their present weird fix was probably the most unexpected incident in two unpredictable careers that moved as one.
"Art," said Gaynor warningly, "Jocelyn wouldn't like for us to be late."
"Good lord!" cried Clair resonantly. "Is she waiting for us?"
"Sure she is. We were supposed to have breakfast with her. Don't you remember?"
"I thought this was screen-test day," said Clair hopelessly. "These Gaylens have the most confused notion of the number of appointments a man can keep at one time."
"We have the screen-tests after breakfast," said Gaynor. "Or that seemed to be the idea." He draped an exceptionally fancy shawl about his shoulders.
"Like it?" he said, capering before his friend.
"All right for here," said Clair grudgingly. "But don't try to get away with that on Broadway. You'd be picked up in a second."
"This isn't Broadway. Come on."
Arm in arm, they strolled down a short stretch of corridor and stepped onto an undulating platform. Gaynor kicked at a protruding stud at his feet, and the thing went into motion, carrying them to the very door of a vaulted concourse of glass. There they dismounted and looked around the immense place.
A tall girl with the pale face of a perfect cameo, save that her eyes and the corners of her mouth were touched with something that the Italian carvers of the middle ages had never dreamed could be in the face of a woman—vivacity and wit—approached them.
"Ah, friends," she said bitterly.
"Sorry we're late," said Gaynor with a soft, foolish look on his face.
"Where do we eat, Jocelyn?" asked Clair practically.
"Right over here," she said as she piloted them to a long table with curiously slung hammocks for seats. "I've ordered."
"I don't see how you pick these things up," sighed Gaynor unhappily. "I've been trying to master their menus for weeks, and still every time I want food I get glue or a keg of nails."
"They must think you're mechanically inclined. Here are the eats." Jocelyn spoke as she saw a little disk set into the table begin slowly to revolve, a signal to take off elbows and hands under pain of being scalded. The top of the table neatly flipped over, and there before them was a breakfast according to the best Gaylen tradition.
Gaynor swore under his breath as he stared with a pale face at the wormy mass before him.
"Highly nutritious, I'm told," commented Jocelyn, plunging into her dish of the same with a utensil that looked like the spawn of a gyroscope and one of the more elaborate surgical instruments.
Gaynor dug in determinedly, thinking of bacon and eggs and toast and orange juice and strong coffee—in fact, of every delicious breakfast he had ever eaten on Earth before setting off on this screwiest of all journeys ever undertaken by man.
He was staring at the empty plate with a sort of morbid fascination when a Gaylen came up to their table.
"Quite finished?" asked the Gaylen.
"Quite," said Gaynor and Clair simultaneously. "Oh, quite."
"Then we shall now go to the recording studio," said the Gaylen. "Our duty to posterity must not be delayed."
"Okay, Gooper," said Clair. "But who does the talking?"
"All of you. Or whomever you want."
They mounted the moving ramp again, this time riding far into the recesses of the building before getting off into a glass-walled room obviously very thoroughly insulated against sound and vibration.
"Address that wall," said Gooper, pointing to a black, plastered partition. He was outside the glass.
"When does it go on?" asked Jocelyn.
"It went on the moment you entered," said the Gaylen with a smile. "Now begin at the beginning." Clair took a deep breath. Since neither of the others seemed anxious to speak, he began. "Well, my partners and I," he said, "are from a planet known as Earth—the third major satellite of a yellow dwarf star which may or may not be in this present universe. We don't know where it is—or where we are."
He stopped, waiting for one of the others to take up the tale.
"Go ahead, Art," said Gaynor. "You're doing fine."
Reluctantly, Clair continued. "Uh—well, we freely acknowledge that we never expected to get here. In fact, we weren't exactly sure that we'd ever get anywhere alive, since we were the first to experiment with a hitherto unknown—or unutilized, at least—force which we called protomagnetism.