Science fiction; Space ships -- Fiction; Space warfare -- Fiction
"Looks like it, but they probably know their stuff." He pressed her
hand reassuringly. "Now, Peg, no matter what happens, stick to me as
long as you possibly can!"
As Seaton had noticed, the city toward which they were flying resembled
somewhat an enormous pyramid, whose component units were themselves
mighty buildings, towering one above and behind the other in crenelated
majesty to an awe-inspiring height. In the wall of the foundation tier
of buildings there yawned an enormous opening, spanned by a noble arch
of metaled masonry, and out of this gloriously arched aqueduct there
sprang the stream whose course the airship had been following so long.
Toward that forbidding opening the hypership planed down, and into it
she floated slowly and carefully.
* * * * *
Much to the surprise of the Terrestrials, however, the great tunnel
of the aqueduct was not dark. Walls and arched ceiling alike glowed
with the livid, bluish-violet ultra-light which they had come to
regard as characteristic of all hyperthings, and through that uncanny
glare the airship stole along. Once inside the tunnel its opening
vanished--imperceptible, indistinguishable from its four-dimensional,
black-and-livid-blue background.
Unending that tunnel stretched before and behind them. Walls and watery
surface alike were smooth, featureless, and so uniformly and weirdly
luminous that the eye could not fix upon any point firmly enough to
determine the rate of motion of the vessel--or even to determine
whether it was moving at all. No motion could be perceived or felt and
the time-sense had long since failed. Seaton and Margaret may have
traveled in that gigantic bore for inches or for miles of distance;
for seconds or for weeks of hypertime; they did not then and never did
know. But with a slight jar the hypership came to rest at last upon a
metallic cradle which had in some fashion appeared beneath her keel.
Doors opened and the being holding the tridents, who had not moved a
muscle during the, to the Terrestrials, interminable journey, made it
plain to them that they were to precede him out of the airship. They
did so, quietly and without protest, utterly helpless to move save at
the behest of their unhuman captor-guide.
Through a maze of corridors and passages the long way led. Each was
featureless and blank, each was lighted by the same eerie, bluish
light, each was paved with a material which, although stone-hard to
the hypermen, yielded springily, as yields a soft peat bog, under
the feet of the massive Terrestrials. Seaton, although now restored
to full vigor, held himself rigorously in check. Far from resisting
the controlling impulses of the trident he sought to anticipate those
commands.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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