Chapter IV

The tiny ship sped along, a thousand feet above the great ocean that separated Siykul from its neighboring continent. Only a slight mental effort was needed to imagine themselves back on Earth. Long swells swept across the deep, green surface. No sea-craft were in sight, but occasionally a huge fish would break through the surface and quiver in the air as sunlight glinted on the drops of water it shook from its back.

Miles ahead, land appeared, like low-lying clouds on the horizon. Ten minutes of flying brought them over the shore--a wide beach that stretched back half a mile and ended abruptly in a forest.

The forest seemed endless.

"We must have gone a hundred miles inland," said Myra. "When are we supposed to push that fateful button?"

"Point Q is described as a large prairie. We should reach it any minute now."

"What's that up ahead?"

"That appears to be it," said Steve.

He pushed the button with crossed fingers. The ship immediately went into a long glide. The ground came up rapidly. Just when they thought they would surely crash, the nose came up automatically and the ship skidded to a bumpy halt.

Steve shut off the motor. "Last stop," he said.

Myra looked at him closely.

"Steve," she said. "How do you feel?"

"Fine," he replied. "Why? Scared?"

"No. I mean--aren't we supposed to be ... well, affected, somehow?"

"Oh." Steve looked at her and scratched his head in thought. "Well-l, I do feel a trifle crazy."

"How?" Myra looked concerned.

Steve grinned impishly. "I feel like kissing you."

Myra puffed out her cheeks in mock anger, then smiled.

"You know," she said, "I feel the same way."

They didn't see the two creatures that stood outside the ship, watching them through the transparent door.

Myra's eyes opened. She looked over her husband's shoulder.

"Steve," she whispered.

"Mmmm?" he said dreamily.

"Remember your American history? Apaches, Utes and Algonquins?"

"You mean the good old days, before spaceships and the machine age?"

"Yes. And we're back in it. Look."

Steve turned around.

"Good grief!" he said. "Indians!"

For a long time the two parties stared at each other without moving. Gradually their faces broke into smiles, the natives' of polite interest and the Horns of relief at having found the "spider people" of Peachy's description to be simply human beings like themselves.

Finally the two outside came a little closer. The older one raised his hand, palm outward.

Steve, hoping it meant friendship, did the same. He opened the door of the ship.

The men outside were about six feet tall and burned a deep copper color by the planet's bright sun. They wore breech clouts of soft leather and moccasins of the same material. Their faces were fine and intelligent, with high brows and prominent noses. The elder had a shock of stiff, gray-white hair, while the hair of the younger was black. Their bodies, even in the older man, were muscular and powerful-looking.

Steve and Myra hopped to the ground. Now that the possibility of being captured and enwebbed by giant red spiders had been discarded, Steve's spirits soared. He addressed the younger native jocularly:

"You don't happen to know of a good hotel around here, do you?"

The young man evidently understood the tenor of the question, for his face broke into a smile and he rattled off a string of gutturals in a speech that was reminiscent of something Steve had heard, but no more understandable than the voice of the wind soughing through the trees above them.

The elder of the two had more sense than any of them. Evidently he realized that these one-sided conversations might go on all day. He motioned to the rest to follow him.

Steve, with a look at the ship, hesitated a moment. Then he remembered Peachy and his mechanical mace. He made a grimace of distaste, took Myra's arm and followed.

* * * * *

There were no walls around the village. It began abruptly in a semi-cleared space half a mile from where their ship had landed. Dwarfed by the huge trees that surrounded it, it looked like something a gifted child might have built with a mechanical construction set.

The houses were mostly two and three room affairs, one-storied and square, all made of green steel. From a distance, the village blended perfectly with the surrounding forest, making it invisible from the air.

The houses had been set up in no preconceived pattern and gave a pleasant, haphazard effect to the scene. Nowhere had a tree been felled to make way for a house. Here nature and man shared a sylvan paradise, nature always given preference.

Steve and Myra had been led to one of the larger buildings which consisted of one huge dining room with tables and chairs of the same green steel and here they were given food and drink not unlike what they had known on Earth. Myra's very faint misgivings about the quality of the food were allayed when their two hosts sat down to eat with them.

At the conclusion of the meal, Steve was somewhat astonished when the two accepted the cigarettes he offered and smoked them with apparent enjoyment.

A tour of the village impressed the visitors with the ease and contentment in which these simple people lived. Men and women worked in their gardens, or sat in the doorways of their houses fashioning the soft, leather garments that seemed to be their sole articles of dress. Children played between the trees, and in them, shrieking with young laughter. Many of the people showed curiosity about the visitors, but respectfully kept at a distance.

Their hosts led Steve and Myra to a tiny building that looked like an old subway kiosk. With no thought of being on their guard, they entered, and were taken by surprise when the floor dropped away beneath them.

"My astral aunt!" exclaimed Myra. "An elevator!"

"Why not?" asked Steve. "Any race that can make steel ought to be able to build an elevator."

The car stopped after a long descent, and the party stepped out into a high-ceilinged underground room, filled with hurrying people and, what was more apparent, noise. Sounds of machinery in feverish action crashed upon their eardrums in rhythmic, deafening beats. The giant machines themselves could be seen through great casings of glass-like material. Men sat at lever-studded desks here and there, evidently in control of the metal prometheans.

Their guides led them quickly through the large room and out through a corridor at the far end. They passed many such rooms that branched off from the hall, but none so large as the first.

At length they came to a platform. Beside it there was a strip of slowly moving steel. Next to this was another, moving faster. There were several more, each moving a bit faster than its predecessor, and the last one, on which there were seats, moving at thirty miles per hour.

Carefully they made their way across these strips and sat down in the leather seats. Presently they were whizzing through a dimly illuminated tunnel.

Steve and Myra took part in all these proceedings with interest, while questions mounted in their minds. They made many suppositions to each other, some of them fantastic. On the whole, they were enjoying themselves.

Steve estimated they had gone about five miles when the moving strips rounded a curve and their hosts signed that they were to get off. They made their way over the more slowly moving strips onto another platform and through a door.

Beyond the door was a wide corridor with an arched ceiling. The whole was a faint green, the effect achieved by painting the green steel of which the tunnel was constructed with white paint, which Steve reasoned had a luminous quality, since the light evidently came from the walls themselves.

* * * * *

As the faint rumble of the transportation strips died away behind them, they walked through a silence that was almost reverent. Their guides, who had heretofore carried on a pleasant guttural conversation between themselves, became silent, almost grave. A feeling of inexplicable awe crept over the visitors.

The corridor stretched ahead in a straight line, without a bend to mar its symmetry. Just when they thought it would go on interminably, a great double door appeared at the far end. It took up the whole width and height of the tunnel, and, contrastingly, was of wood, carved over all in intricate designs.

When they came to it, the older man knocked on it with the ball of his palm. The echoes of the sound reverberated throughout the tunnel. Slowly the door swung inward and revealed a dimly-lit room twenty feet high and about fifty square. A dark red carpet covered the floor. Heavy, comfortable-looking armchairs had been placed against the walls, and an immense wooden table occupied the center of the room. What light there was came from an ornate glass chandelier which hung halfway between the floor and ceiling.

Steve and Myra took two involuntary steps into the room and stopped, to stare about them for several minutes without moving. The thing that struck them so forcibly was the extraordinary resemblance between the manner in which the room was furnished and one on Earth.

Finally the spell broke and almost simultaneously they turned around. Their guides were gone. They could see them just within sight at the other end of the long corridor. They were about to go after them, when a voice said, in _English_:

"Won't you come in?"