Then he saw movement on the trail a thousand feet below his eyrie. In the Other World a horse-drawn vehicle plodded slowly between giant tree trunks in the space otherwise occupied by Altman’s. There were two human figures in the vehicle, and at first he thought them naked, before he saw loin-cloths about their middles. Behind the vehicle trotted a four-legged creature far too large to be a dog. But the equipage turned beneath over hanging branches and he lost sight of it.
He went uptown to Radio City. Again from a vast height he surveyed endless forests. From here, though, he saw plowed fields which before had been invisible. More, in the middle of a virgin wilderness, he saw the sunlight glinting on acres upon acres of glass. It looked extraordinarily as if hothouses sufficient to supply a small town with foodstuffs were in existence. And he thought, but he was not sure, that he saw horses pulling plows. There were two of them. If men guided them, they were too far away to be seen with the naked eye.
It seemed all peace and serenity there. But Dick, staring from a great height, knew such hatred and horror as made him tremble. This Other World lay beside the earth that men knew, in that greater cosmos men have not yet begun to visualize. And Dick had an idea of the perverted significance that had been given it. Eons since, other men had found a way to pass between the worlds. Men had moved to the Other World, with the power to return to Earth where and when they wished. And man is the most predatory of animals; his favorite prey is other men.
That first discovery had unquestionably taken place far back in the dim dawn of history, when all of civilization lay in Egypt. A scientist or a magician of that time had doubtless made the first crossing between the worlds. Perhaps he told his king and was duly slaughtered for reward, after the king had made the discovery his own. At first, perhaps, the Other World had seemed to the king merely a possible refuge from rebellious nobles or an unruly people. A fugitive king, driven from his throne by his own tyranny, could retire to the Other World and be in safety from all his enemies. He could take his women and his slaves and build a palace in which to live in perfect security. Perhaps some king did do this, fleeing from successful civil war. But in exile he would crave revenge. And what could be more obvious than to make a doorway back to Earth which would open into the bedroom of his former palace, where his successor on the throne lay asleep behind guarded doors?
Then Dick remembered a scrap of history almost lost in the mists of time. He himself had first translated an ancient papyrus which told of such a thing. There had been such a king who had gone into the after world and bided his time, and had come again to rule Egypt in terror and blood when all his enemies died in a single night.
That was unquestionably it. The later kings of the Fifth Dynasty had ruled more ruthlessly than any other kings of Egypt. Magic slew their enemies. Disasters overwhelmed their foes. There was no treasure they could not lay hands upon, nor any human being they could not seize or slaughter. All Earth was at their mercy, when they could walk at will into the most secret, most guarded, most hidden retreat of the normal Earth.
They would be the masters, then, those men of the Other World. They would not need to fight battle for loot, when loot could be taken without hindrance. They need not capture cities for slaves, when slaves could be stolen in absolute safety from any place where men lived.
Dick could only guess at the development of so purely parasitic a society. The robbery of gold would soon cease to have meaning. Gold would have no more value than a clod of earth, when it could be taken as easily. Jewels would have no more value than so much glass. But fine fabrics and soft carpets, and luxuries of food and drink, and horses and strong men for slaves and pretty girls for playthings—those things would have value. And there would be no great nation of the parasitic Other World. It would be absurd for them to rob each other with the Earth to loot, so they would not need to combine in defense against each other. Their society would be anarchic. They would set up villas, as time went on, wherever Earth cities promised easy supplies of luxuries and slaves. The master of one villa would owe no allegience to any other. Yet how would they keep the loyalty of their guards, because guards against the slaves they must have?
There Dick’s imagination failed him, but such faint imaginings as he could contrive were enough to make him half-mad when he got back to Maltby’s place.
Sam Todd came in. He had brought guns. He began to divide with Dick, but Dick said grimly:
“No division, Sam. I’m going through the doorway alone as soon as Maltby has it done. You’ve got to stay behind. I may need some help I can’t anticipate. I need somebody cruising about—watching through the peephole we already have—ready to give me help if it’s needed. And if both of us go through, who’s going to tell the authorities about this business and bring help along?”
Sam laughed without amusement.
“Tell the authorities?” he asked sardonically. “How long would they listen before they’d usher me into a padded cell? Oh, it could be done in time, but I’d need to spend weeks convincing them that I wasn’t crazy and the peephole wasn’t a trick, and then they’d refer to higher authority and they’d need to be convinced, and then they’d decide that the democratic procedure was to send an observer or an ambassador through— We’ll get Nancy back and then talk about such things!”
“But you’ll stay behind to help me when I need it!” snapped Dick. “You know damned well you can do that better than Maltby! And you’ve more reason to do it as well as more money to spend if it’s needed. You stay behind! Look here!”
He spread out his notes on the correspondence of locations. Plowed fields near Seventieth Street, Manhattan. The great villa south of the Navy Yard on the Brooklyn shore. What looked like an enormous stretch of hothouses in the Sixties on the East Side. A road leading past the Empire State Building, curving through Altman’s.
Sam accepted the memorandum. What Dick had said was true enough, but so was what he’d said himself. To wait for action by authority would be sheerest folly. There couldn’t be any more delay. The two of them had to work as private adventurers to try to go to her help. There were plenty of others who needed help too, no doubt. But for speed there would have to be action without hindrance.
Presently Maltby brought in a sheet of copper foil, neatly rolled. He said wearily:
“Here it is. It’s just a doorway. You can’t look through it, but somebody can go through.”
“I’ll go through where Nancy did,” said Dick grimly. “We’ll get a cab and you show me the exact spot, Sam.”
“All right, but we’ve got to arrange a way to communicate-”
“In the taxi,” snapped Dick. “Come on!”
Maltby spoke like a sleepwalker, tonelessly, “We’ll have to hold this thing sideways to the way we’re going.”
“Right! I’ll carry it. Coming?”
Sam Todd picked up his burden of weapons in a bag and gun-case. They went downstairs. The street seemed incredibly normal. Dick carried the rolled-up foil. They got into the cab, and it started downtown.
This was three days after the disappearance of Nancy Holt in the seeming of a pool of quicksilver. Dick Blair knew that if his guesses were right, the disappearances of humans were for their enslavement. Nancy had been a slave for three days. Sam spoke to him, and he nodded, but he hardly heard what Sam was saying.
At Thirtieth Street, Sam opened his bag and began to pass its contents to Dick. Two automatics, with ammunition. A riot-gun—a sawed-off shotgun with shells loaded with buckshot. Two small objects which were tear-gas bombs. Bars of chocolate. A canteen.