"You humor me, O'Hara. I thank you for it. But you must come up to me. No, please don't move--you must learn that of all the great machines, only man's body cannot be replaced. Conserve it always. You see, you are rising now. This is that glorious age when the pressing of a button can achieve all things, except the things that matter." The bottom of the pit was indeed rising, lifting O'Hara and Nedra toward the level upon which stood the reed-thin figure of an aged man, a wisp of a man in robes of shimmering and overlaid transparent cloth, a man with scattered hair no longer white but yellowish as parchment is, the beaked and collapsed face of a prophet, toothless, the pallid mouth moving slowly in the sparse, blanched beard, but the eyes young and large and blazingly bright, their blue made darker by the darkness of their sockets, amazing eyes in a body that was skin-sheathed bone. "I welcome you, O'Hara," said the Father. "You and the woman from the mountains, welcome. But you are weary." "Yes, Father," said O'Hara, and then instantly amended it: "Yes, Stephen Bryce, and if it is permitted, if we may rest--" "This," said the Father, with an indicative gesture, "is called the Dome, a hall useful in that time when many came to me as you have come to me today. The great height of this arched ceiling was designed as you have suspected to be impressive, as if a visitor were standing at the core of the earth--a thousand feet to that ceiling, yet only fifty from wall to wall. A masterpiece of illusion. But through that arch upon your left--that way, O'Hara--you will discover that our architects were not altogether inhuman. Go through into the room beyond. You see? Beds, food and drink, the necessities. You must rest now. You must sleep. In this room you must shed the apprehensions you have felt. Remember, if I had not needed you, you would not have come here to Washington. Yet I trust," he said, "you will forgive a last precaution. Move back--the door!" A panel clanged down from above. O'Hara and Nedra were alone. It was an exquisite room. Hexagonal in shape, its floors were deeply cushioned with a carpeting of woven plastic threads. Its walls were carved intricately in stone so that the semblance of an open window centered each facet and yet there were actually no windows, no exits visible now that the panel had clanged shut. The ceiling was vaulted, fashioned of a glasslike material that shaded from the palest blue toward blue black at its apex. Against the far wall were two immense beds, or divans, side by side, and a refectory table wrought from polished and dark metal, with various bowls and beakers containing the multi-hued liquid foods of the photosynthetrons.