This world was real. And I―however I had come here―was here.
I examined myself curiously.
Every article of clothing had somehow been stripped from my body. Even my underwear, my socks, the wristwatch on my arm, the ring on my right index finger, given to me when I was a boy by my father on some forgotten birthday―everything I had worn was gone.
Putting my hand to my chest, I discovered that the identification tags which had hung about my neck on a chain were also missing.
Most baffling of alclass="underline" I'd cut my thigh on a tool a day or two ago, and had affixed an adhesive bandage to the cut.
The cut, half-healed, was still there. But the bandage was―gone!
Memories came tumbling back to me now, as if the shock of these discoveries had driven everything else from my mind, making room for the recent past. I remembered the helicopter crash on the Mekong, the trek through the Cambodian jungles, the way I had stumbled by accident upon the lost city, the pillar of throbbing light into which I had fallen
Could it be―
That ancient verse from one of the old epics of Indochina, that reference to Arangkor
Wherein doth stand the Gate Between The Worlds
It was fantastic, incredible―like something out of the wildest, most imaginative piece of science fiction ever written, but―could it be? Was that beam of throbbing radiance that flung up against the cold glitter of the stars some weird means of transportation between worlds―some surviving mechanism of an elder science otherwise lost to the knowledge of man?
Almost instantly my mind came up with a term―transporter beam. I recalled the sensory illusions of speed and flight across dark and frigid immensities at frightful speed―the sensation of being not solid heavy matter, but a dematerialized cloud of electrons.
It was a staggering conception. All I had ever read about the mysterious scientific wizardry of lost and legendary peoples of the Dawn Age came tumbling back to me. Ancient Atlantis, whose glittering cities the green throat of the sea drank down before history began―primal Mu, whispered of in dark surviving myths―Lost Lemuria, whose colossal stone cities are long since submerged beneath the mighty waves of the Pacific, save for the cryptic ruins on Ponape and the huge, enigmatic stone faces that stare forever out to sea from the legend-haunted, lonely hilltops of Easter Island
Did the Ancients possess the secret of transmitting matter across space?
Had I stumbled onto the secret of a lost science forgotten for uncounted aeons?
Was there a network of intangible pathways linking the planets together? Pathways of unknown force down which one could travel at unthinkable velocities to materialize upon the face of another world?
If so, what world was I on? What planet of the solar system had three moons?
I cudgeled my wits, remembering that Mercury and Venus were not known to have any satellites. Mars, I remembered, had two moons called Deimos and Phobus―it was no use: no planet known to me had three great moons to light its golden skies!
After a while I went down that sloping crimson lawn to bathe my face in the rushing stream below.
In a world of weird and terrifying strangeness, it was curiously heartening and gratifying to discover that water was still―water. Cold and pure, the water of this stream, as I drank from cupped hands, tasted no different from the water I had drunk from a score of jungle rivers back on Earth.
I went back up the hill to investigate the black and crimson jungle. It was thick and dark and I did not care to venture within its depths. There was no telling what savage predators might roam those gloomy aisles ―and I had no weapons.
Neither did I care to squeeze through that thick foliage unclothed. The thick, broad leaves were edged with sharp, thorny serrations like a saw blade. My naked body would show the red trace of those razory thorns before I had penetrated a yard―and who could say what unknown venom such leaves might secrete?
Yet I could not stand in this place forever.
And the sky was darkening now. The gold vapor dimmed. The luster of the three immense moons brightened slowly, like goblin lanterns. I resolved to explore the edge of the jungle, and began walking.
I had become aware of two curious facts.
One was that the gravitation of this planet was the same as the gravitation of the world on which I had been born, or very similar. This suggested that the red and black planet must be nearly the same size as Earth ―which seemed impossible. For, unless I had incorrectly read my astronomy text in college, the only planet in the solar system that is anywhere close to the size of our own world is cloud-wrapped, moonless Venus.
And the three moons that lit the darkening skies reduced to zero any chance of this planet being Venus.
The other fact was the air. I had been breathing it now for half an hour. I felt no ill affects there―from; in fact, the air seemed to be the same as Earth's atmosphere―perhaps a bit fresher, perhaps even a bit richer in oxygen.
And my astronomy classes had given me to understand that no other planet in our solar system had an atmosphere breathable by human lungs. Mars, they said, had a cold rarefied atmosphere like that of the crest of Everest; the outer planets were supposedly wrapped in smothering blankets of poisonous methane and ammonia.
But my chest rose and fell calmly, and I breathed this air without discomfort.
It was a mystery, and but one of the myriad that surrounded my experiences thus far. I gave over as fruitless the attempt to puzzle it out, and resolved to wait for further data.
Night had fallen now, and with the advent of darkness came new mysteries―and a marvel beyond comprehension.
Glancing up, I glimpsed a fourth moon ascending above the horizon! It was very small and faint, compared to the three great orbs whose multicolored light illuminated the darkness―but it was visibly a disk, and adrift on the tides of night.
I could think of no planet with four moons. Did this mean the mysterious transporter beam, as I called it, had hurled me beyond the limits of the solar system into the orbit of some unknown planet which revolved about a distant star? .
The answer to this new riddle was very swift and definite!
As I prowled along the margin of the dark jungle, the world about me was suddenly illuminated by a rich red glow that lit the sky like some unthinkably colossal explosion.
I turned to witness this new marvel and cried out in my astonishment.
Above the horizon a titanic arch of brilliance rose into view.
The fifth moon, if moon this was, must be either unthinkably huge or incredibly close to the planet whereon I stood―for the arch of its sphere bisected a considerable span of the dark horizon. If any body so huge were so close, it was difficult to understand why the gravitational forces did not bring the two globes together in a terrible collision.
As I watched, I became aware of an incredible fact. The arch of light was broadening visibly. As it rose steadily in the skies of this jungle world, instead of rounding into a globe, it became ever more obvious that this new fifth moon was even larger than I had at first imagined.
More and more of this luminous globe arose above the horizon. Now it seemed almost to occupy one-quarter of the visible horizon!