“You knew them?”
“I knew of them. They were spoken of to me upon my grandfather’s knee and there was other word of them from the sages of my people.”
Boone looked down again at Wolf and Wolf was no longer there. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw Wolf sitting some distance up the road. He had found The Hat and it was hanging limply from his jaws. Wolf didn’t want to go into the chart, and there was no reason to drag him into that misty mess.
“Okay, Wolf,” he said, “you wait right there for me.”
The other two were moving into the chart, Horseface ahead and Enid trailing after. Boone hurried to catch up.
It looked like a space filled with spider webs, but there were no webs. There was not a thing at all. When Boone stepped into it, he could no longer feel ground beneath his feet. It was as if he were walking on nothing or, more likely, that his feet had suddenly gone dead and he could feel nothing when he put them down.
To one side of him burned a large red globe, and he ducked away from it; in doing so, he came face to face with another bright-burning jewel of incandescent blue. Before he could duck the other way, he walked straight into it. There was no sensation, no feel of heat, no indication that the stars were even there. He chuckled nervously. He had ducked a red giant and run smack-dab into a much hotter blue star. Did this chart contain a representation of every star, every wisp of gas, and every drift of dust in the galaxy? On the face of it, this seemed impossible. He seemed to remember having read somewhere at some forgotten time that there were more than a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way. There could not possibly be that many represented in the chart. Given that many, even with the smaller stars no more than the size of motes of dust, the entire area would be packed so solid there would be no walking through it. So much, he thought, for Horseface’s claim of accuracy.
“Watch the white line that we trace,” said Horseface. “It lies at the height of your hips, close to your right side.” Boone glanced down and there it was, a thread of white, a lifeline back to the world of gray where Wolf waited for him with the limp and frazzled Hat hanging from his jaws. There stood the cube and somewhere nearby the robot who might cook another meal for them if they should get back.
I don’t believe it, he told himself. I don’t believe a word of it. I’ll admit to none of this. It simply isn’t happening.
But it was happening. He was walking in a place where he could not feel the ground when he put down a foot, proceeding through an area that was not only illusory, but imaginary, where there were glowing stars and drifts of dust and gas, all of which one could see, but could not touch nor feel. Now there was something else—a sound, a singing. The stars were singing to him—the music of the spheres, the hiss of hydrogen, the ditty of radiation, the carol of time, the canticle of space, the hum of dust, and the chanty of vast emptiness. The horrible part of it was that there was nothing there. This was no reality; it was at best the wizardry of representation, of a construct that was entirely abstract.
He saw that he had fallen behind the other two. Through the haze he could barely make out Enid; Horseface he could not see at all. We’ve been walking for hours, he thought, and that was ridiculous, for this chart in which they walked could not have had a diameter of much more than several hundred feet.
He struggled to catch up, plunging ahead. No longer did he try to duck the stars or the spidery webs of gas, for now he could accept that they weren’t there. But in spite of nothing being there, there seemed to be some sort of substance that tried to hold him back. It was as if he were desperately trying to wade through a rushing torrent.
Ahead of him loomed a drift of thicker-than-ordinary dust. Despite knowing that there was no rift of dust, he tried to lower his head and duck beneath it, but it was deeper than it seemed and it blinded him. The stars had all pinched out, and he plowed into the blackness as if he were butting head-first into a wall, his legs driving him forward, still with the pressure of the unknown torrent pushing back against him.
He burst from the dust cloud and there was light, far more light than there had been before. Its source, he saw, was a brilliant, glowing star to the right of him, all misty around the edges.
Beside him Enid said, “A nova. Maybe even a supernova. So obscured by the dust cloud that it can’t be seen from Earth.”
In the moment that she spoke, he saw the other star that was so close it seemed he could have put out his hand to touch it. It was unspectacular—a faint, tiny yellow star. The thing that made him notice it was that someone—someone?—had painted or drawn a precise X over it, as if that someone had picked up a fine-point pen and marked it, distinguishing it from all the other stars in the galaxy, marking it so that if it be seen again, it would be recognized as a very special star.
“Boone, did you hear me?” asked Enid. “What is the matter with you?”
He did not answer, but stepped forward, circling, so he could see the star from another angle. As he moved, the X moved with him. He changed his position, and the X changed its position, too. Viewed from any angle, the X still showed, centered on the star. That, he thought, was impossible. It must be an illusion …
Enid grasped him by the arm. “Horseface has gotten ahead of us. And, Boone, where is the line? We’ve lost the white line. It’s nowhere to be seen.”
He turned in response to the pressure on his arm and the hint of fear in her voice. She was looking all about, searching everywhere for the vanished whiteness of the line.
“It’s not here,” she said. “In our rush and all the wonder of this place … What do we do now?”
Boone shrugged. “We’ll retrace our steps and look for it. We’ll find it.”
But he had little confidence they would. It was so thin a line, so insignificant, that they might not pick it up.
A short distance away hung a great white star, spinning madly on its axis, while around it swung a much smaller star, white and bright, but its brightness paled by the brittle glory of its larger companion. The small star was spinning so fast that its motion was a blur, rotating in a mad dance about its huge fellow, while between the two of them extended a brilliant ribbon of flaming energy, flowing from the larger body to the smaller one. A B-type star, Boone thought, circled by a white dwarf.
“We can’t go back,” said Enid. “Right now we can’t go back. We have to go on and find Horseface. He’ll help us find the line.”
She hurried ahead and he followed her. They seemed now to be going up a a hill and that was insane, Boone told himself. In this galaxy there weren’t any hills. Swirls of dust curled about their ankles, and the stars, it seemed, were much thicker now and a lot of them were bloated red.
There was no question now that they were climbing a long, steep hill. They labored up the slope and reached the crest. Just beyond the crest they found Horseface. He was standing, gaunt and hunched, staring straight ahead.
They stopped and stood staring with him at the swirling darkness ringed by flashing, sparkling flares of light.
“A whirlpool!” gasped Enid. “It’s spinning. It’s a whirlpool.”
“This is the core of the galaxy,” Horseface said. “This is the very center of everything there is. A huge black hole eating up the galaxy. The end of everything.”
A bitter wind was blowing, although there should not have been a wind. It had the icy chill of emptiness, the black glacial kiss of death. It could be, Boone thought, the black frost of defeated Time fleeing from the annihilation eating at the center.
“You said the end of everything,” Enid objected. “It can’t be the end of everything. Of this galaxy perhaps. But there are other galaxies. There are endless galaxies.”
“There may be those who know,” said Horseface. “I am not among them. Nor were any of my people.”
“How about those who fashioned this thing we’re in? Those who made this chart?”
“Maybe,” Horseface told her. “Maybe not. Perhaps the truth might shrivel up the soul. Or ther
e may be no answer.”
“Then to hell with all of it,” said Boone. “I am going back.”
“We can’t go back,” Enid reminded him. “We lost the line. The thin white line, remember? We lost it.”
Horseface mumbled, startled. “The line? You say we lost it? I had all forgotten it.”
“So had we,” said Enid.
“It can’t be that much of a problem,” Boone said. “This chart we’re in, spread out even as it is, can’t possibly be more than a few miles in diameter, not more than two or three, perhaps. My impression, back on the Highway, was that it covered only a few hundred feet. If we walk in a straight line in any direction, we should soon be out of it.”
Horseface rumbled at him, “There are no straight lines here. There is only twisting convolution, a trickery of the senses.”
“You went straight to the center,” said Boone. “You ran ahead of us, aiming for the center. You got where you wished to go. There were no twisting convolutions …”
“True,” said Horseface. “I went to the center. I had heard legends. The center held great interest, and my intuition took me there. Long ago I had heard of the black nothingness and …”
“That is nothing new,” Boone told him. “The people of my time knew about the center. They knew of the great turbulences in the centers of most galaxies and there were those who said black holes and …”
“This is getting us nowhere,” said Enid. “Our problem is to find the white line.”
“We don’t need to find the line,” said Boone. “We can get out without it. All we need to do is walk a straight line. Doing that, we will find the edge.”
“You did not listen to me,” Horseface said. “I told you that this straight line you speak of cannot exist here. All is twisted, braided about, a meander of great complexity.”
“You’re trying to tell us we can’t get out?”
“Not that. Blunder about enough and we shall get out. But it will be no easy task.”
It was all nonsense, Boone told himself. The problem, despite all this talk of great complexity, was a simple one. Yet when he looked about he could see, in part, what Horseface meant. There were too many landmarks—no one star, no single misty glow, no twisted blackness that he could remember—too many to remember. And there was a twistiness to everything.
As if she sensed what he might be seeing, Enid said, “Certainly there is something that you can remember.”
“There is,” said Boone. “There was a star with an X upon it.”
“An X?”
“Yes, an X. As if someone had painted an X upon it. It was an ordinary star, a very ordinary star. A main sequence star. Yellow. Probably a G star, like our sun.”
“You never mentioned it to me.”
“I forgot it when you said we had lost the white line.”
“You saw no star with an X upon it?” Horseface asked Enid.
“No,” she said. “I didn’t. Who would go around painting an X upon a star?”
Horseface asked Boone, “Anything else that you remember?”
“No, not really,” said Boone.
“Simple, then,” said Horseface. “I have been standing in this place, never moving, staring at the black hole, since I first arrived. So we have a point of reference. When you came upon me, was I standing with my back to you?”
“That is right,” Enid answered. “With your back to us.”
“Elementary, then,” said Horseface. “I will turn one hundred and eighty degrees, and we will go downhill from where we are.”
Boone shrugged. It seemed much too elementary. It took no note of other factors. But he could think of no other way that they could go.
“We might as well try it,” he said.
All three of them turned about and started down the hill. The going was easier. There was no surging current to buck. Boone still could not feel a solid surface when he put his feet down, and the stars still sang, but he paid no attention to any of it. They came down off the hill, and he kept on going. He was hurrying, eager to get out of this maze of illusion.
Behind him, Enid cried out suddenly. “The line,” she called. “Here is the line again!”
Boone turned around and saw the two of them standing still, as if stricken, and staring at the line. He looked to his left and there, also, was the line. He was on one side of it and they were on the other and it seemed to him quite apparent that he had walked through it without any notice of it.
He walked back to where they were standing and all three of them stood there, staring at the line.
“Now,” said Enid, “we can follow it back and come out where we started. How lucky that we found it.”
“It stands to reason that we would find it,” said Boone. “We were walking a straight line.”
Horseface snorted. “A straight line, you say. I told you and I told you …”
Boone did not listen to his tirade. Glancing up the hill, he saw again the flare of the nova, or perhaps the supernova, that Enid and he had seen going up the hill. Off to one side of it was a little yellow star.
He started up the hill again, heading for the yellow star.
“Where are you going?” Enid called to him.
“Come on up,” he said, without glancing back, his eyes steady on the little yellow star. “Come on up, and I’ll show you the star with the X upon it.”
He was feeling foolish even as he said it, for it might not be the star with the X upon it. There were a lot of yellow stars. You saw them everywhere.
But there had been no need to worry. It was the star with the X inscribed upon it.
“Of some importance,” said Horseface, coming up to stand beside him. “Otherwise, why is it marked?”
“It’s just like a million other stars of its class,” said Boone. “That’s why it seems so strange. That’s why I was sure my eyes were playing tricks on me. One of these stars is just like all the others.”
“Perhaps it is not the star that is important,” suggested Horseface. “Perhaps it may have a planet and the planet is important. But we can’t see a planet.”
“Just a minute,” Enid said. “There may be a way …”
She lifted the black box that she carried and aimed it at the star. Immediately as she lifted it, she drew her breath in sharply.
“That was it,” she said. “There is a planet.”
Boone stepped up behind her and stared into the vision plate. As he did so, the planet that was being showed expanded to fill the plate. It went on expanding until they could see only part of the surface—and what was on that surface.
“A city,” Horseface said. “The planet has a city.”
Huge structures speared up at them.
“This is it,” said Horseface, his voice hushed but gleeful. “This is where we go. This is were the line led.”
“And when we get there?” asked Enid.
Horseface answered with another question, “How is one to know?”
And that was right, thought Boone—how was one to know short of going there?
Enid lowered the televisor and the plate went blank.
“Back we gallop,” said Horseface, “tracing close upon the line. Then we get upon the net …”
“Wait a second,” Boone cautioned. “This is something we want to talk about. We should give it thought.”
Horseface, however, did not stay to listen. He was galloping off, following close upon the line.
Boone looked at Enid. “You are right,” she said. “We’ll have to talk it over.”
“Then let’s get out of here,” said Boone.
They went more slowly than Horseface, but, even so, they hurried. Both of them were anxious to win free of the chart.
Ahead of them they made out faintly the grayness of the land they had left behind them. Then they caught the loom of the cube and the tables surrounded by the chairs. And just beyond the tables and the chairs, the outline of Wolf, with the flat-headed robot standing side by side with him.
There was no sign of Horseface, but the trolley, Boone saw, was coming down the tracks; and someone was sitting on the forward seat.
10
Timothy
The door unfolded outward and became a ramp. Horace walked through the door, but stopped with his feet only one step out.
Behind him, Emma shrilled, “Where are we?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Horace. “There is no one here to ask.”
Although, he realized, when might have been the better question.
He should have known better, he scolded himself. Sure, they had been in a crisis situation, but there still would have been time to set the course. There had been no time, of course, to think it through, to give his action the consideration that he would like to have given it. But too hasty a rush to escape the ravening monster that was snapping at their heels was inexcusable.
It was not that he had been frightened, he assured himself. It had been no more than solid good sense to get out of there as quickly as he could. There were many things, Horace told himself, that could be said of him: pompous, probably, for at times he might seem a pompous man; stubborn, but in most cases stubbornness was a virtue, not a fault; and fuddy-duddy, maybe, for he was in all things a very careful man. The one thing that could not be said of him was that he was a coward.
After all, he thought, everything had been fine until the two from the twentieth century had burst upon the scene. More than likely, though, the fault had been Martin’s. Martin should have known what was going on. But it was apparent that he had not known, had no inkling of it until Corcoran had tipped him off by telling him that someone was snooping around in London, asking about a place called Hopkins Acre. And what had he done then? He had bolted, he and Stella. Thinking this, Horace felt better. He had found someone on whom he could fasten all the blame. He, himself, now was entirely innocent of any blame at all.
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