A Wreath of Stars

Chapter Seven

The news that Ambrose wanted to begin observations that very night did not bother Snook—his own imagination had been fired by what he had heard—but he was irritated by the practical consequences.

Ambrose’s theory confirmed that the ghostly appearances would not start until near dawn, although they would gradually start earlier and finish later each day. The road from Kisumu to the mine was long and difficult, especially for someone who was unfamiliar with it, and Snook had felt obliged to invite Ambrose to stay the night at his bungalow. This was going to involve Snook being in continuous proximity to the other man for the best part of a day and a night, and his nature rebelled against the imposition. The fact that Prudence had invited herself along, clad in a Paris designer’s impression of a safari suit, had not made things any better.

After the friction of their initial meeting she had treated him with impersonal politeness, and he was responding in kind, but all the while he was intensely aware of her presence. It was an odd radar-like, three-dimensional kind of perception which meant that even when he was not looking at Prudence he knew exactly where she was and what she was doing. This invasion of his mind was troublesome and disturbing, and when he found that it extended to minutiae like the design of her jacket buttons and the pattern of stitching in her boots his sense of aggravation increased. He slumped in the spacious darkness of the rear seat of the car Ambrose had rented that afternoon and thought nostalgically about other girls he had known. There had, for instance, been Eva—the German interpreter in Malaq—who understood the principle of sexual quid pro quo. That had been less than three years earlier, but Snook was annoyed to find he could no longer remember Eva’s face.

“…have to give the planet a name,” Ambrose was saying in the front seat. “It has always been, literally, an underworld, but it doesn’t seem right to call it Hades.”

“Gehenna would be worse,” Prudence replied. “And there’s Tartarus, but I think that was even further down than Hades.”

“It hardly fits, under the circumstances. From what Gil says about the levels in the mine, the antineutrino world will have completely emerged from the Earth in about seventy years.” Ambrose swerved to avoid a pothole and roadside trees were momentarily doused with light from the headlamps. “That’s if it continues separating at the same rate, of course. We don’t know for sure that it will.”

“I’ve got it!” Prudence moved closer to Ambrose, and Snook—watchful in his dark isolation—knew she had clutched his arm. “Avernus!”

“Avernus? Never heard of it.”

“All I know is that it was another one of those mythological underworlds, but it’s much more euphonious than Hades. Don’t you think it sounds quite pastoral?”

“Could be,” Ambrose said. “Right! You’ve just christened your first planet.”

“Do I get to break a bottle of champagne over it? I’ve always wanted to do that.”

Ambrose laughed appreciatively and Snook’s gloom deepened. The situation at the mine was tense and dangerous, one in which he felt the need to have the big battalions behind him, and he was heading back into it accompanied by what seemed to be the world’s last example of the squire-scientist and his new girl friend. There was also die possibility of having to listen to their small-talk right through the night, a prospect he found unbearable. Snook began to whistle, quite loudly, choosing an old standard he had always liked for its sadness, Plaisir d’amour. Prudence allowed him to complete only a few bars then leaned forward and switched on the radio. The strains of a heavily orchestrated version of the same song filled the car.

Ambrose half-turned in the driving seat. “How did you do that?” he said over his shoulder.

“Do what?”

“You began to whistle a tune and then we got the same one on the radio.” Ambrose was obviously intrigued. “Do you have an ear set?”

“No. I just started to whistle.” Snook failed to see why the other man should be so interested in a trivial occurrence which, while not common in his own experience, was not exceptionally rare either.

“Have you thought of the odds against that happening?”

“They can’t be too high,” Snook said. “It happens to me every now and again.”

“The odds are pretty fantastic—I know some people in ESP research who would love to get their hands on you.” Ambrose began to sound excited. “Have you ever considered that you might be telepathic?”

“On radio frequencies?” Snook said sourly, wondering if he should revise his estimate of Ambrose’s standing in the scientific world. He had gleaned that the man had a doctorate in nuclear physics and was director of a planetarium -qualifications which, Snook belatedly realised, were strangely incompatible and no guarantee that he was not dealing with a plausible crank.

“Not on radio frequencies—that wouldn’t work,” Ambrose replied. “But if thousands of people all around you were listening to a tune on their radios, you might pick it up directly from their brains.”

“I usually live where there’s nobody around me.” Snook began to have doubts about Ambrose’s whole concept of an antineutrino universe. Back in the hotel, with the gin glowing in his stomach, and in the verbal high tide of Ambrose’s enthusiasm, it had all seemed perfectly logical and natural, but…

“Do you get any other indications?” Ambrose was unabashed. “Premonitions, for example. Do you ever get a feeling that something’s going to happen before it actually does?”

“I…” The question caused upheavals in Snook’s subconscious.

Prudence came in, unexpectedly. “I once read about a man who could hear radio broadcasts because he had metallic fillings in his teeth.”

Snook laughed gratefully. “Some of my back teeth are like steel bollards,” he lied.

“All kinds of effects can crop up if somebody is close to a powerful radio transmitter,” Ambrose persisted, “but that’s got nothing to do with…” He paused as the music on the radio was cut off by the strident chimes of a station announcement.

“We interrupt this programme,” an urgent male voice said, ‘because reports are coming in of a serious incident on the border between Barandi and Kenya, near the main road from Kisumu to Nakuru. It is reported that fighting has flared up between the Barandian Defence Forces and a unit of the Kenyan Army which had crossed into Barandian territory. A communique from the Presidential office states that the intruders have been repulsed with heavy casualties, and there is no danger to Barandian civilians. This is the National Radio Corporation of Barandi serving all its citizens, everywhere.” The chimes sounded again and the music returned.

“What does that mean, Gil?” Ambrose looked out through the side windows as though expecting to see bomb flashes. “Are we going to be mixed up in a war?”

“No. It sounds like another exercise by Freeborn’s Mounted Foot.” Snook went on to tell what he knew about Barandi’s military organisations, ending with a brief character sketch of Colonel Tommy Freeborn.

“Oh well, you know what they say,” Ambrose commented. “Inside every nut there’s a colonel trying to get out.”

“I like that.” Prudence laughed and moved even closer to Ambrose. “This trip is turning out to be more fun than I expected.”

Snook squirming in the rear seat, lit a cigarette and thought dismal thoughts about the difficulties of remaining in control of one’s own life. In this case, he could pinpoint the exact moment at which things had begun to slip from his grasp—it was when he had yielded to moral pressure from George Murphy and agreed to see the hysterical miner. Since then he had become more and more entangled. It was high time for the human neutrino to slip away, to regain his remoteness in a new phase of life in a distant place, but the bonds had grown strong. He had allowed himself to interact with other human particles, and it now seemed likely that he had strayed inside the radius of capture…

When they reached Snook’s bungalow the car lights showed three men sitting on the front steps. Remembering his visit from the soldiers in the morning, Snook got out of the car first. He was relieved to see that one of the men was George Murphy, although the other two were strangers. They were boyish-looking Caucasians, both with sandy moustaches. Murphy came forward, smiling and handsome in his silvercords, and waved a heavily bandaged hand.

“Gil,” he said happly. “I’ll never know how you did it.”

“Did what?”

“Got this scientific commission set up. Alain Carrier called me and said the mine was officially closed until an investigation had been completed. I’ve to cooperate with you and the team.”

“Oh, yes—the team.” Snook glanced at the car in which Ambrose and Prudence were busy gathering up possessions. “We haven’t exactly got a Manhattan Project going here.”

Murphy looked in the same direction. “Is that all there is?”

“That’s all, so far. As far as I can make out there was quite a bit of Press interest in our ghosts, but the way Helig’s story was handled mustn’t have impressed many scientific bodies. Who have you got here?”

“Two kids from the electronics plant—Benny and Des, they call themselves. They’re so keen to see the ghosts that they came out from town on a motorbike this afternoon. It was right after I spoke to Carrier so I told them to hang around until you got back. Do you think they’ll be able to help?”

“That’s something for Doctor Ambrose to decide,” Snook said sombrely, “but, if you ask me, we’re going to need all the help we can get.”

As Snook would have predicted, Prudence Devonald avoided even setting foot in his kitchen, and so he spent the next few hours making coffee on an almost continuous basis. Between times, he watched carefully as Ambrose explained his theory to Murphy, Benny Culver and Des Quig. The young men, it turned out, were New Zealanders with good electronic engineering qualifications. They had been attracted to Barandi by the high salaries offered in the electronics plant which President Ogilvie had set up four years earlier in an attempt to broaden the country’s economy. Snook got the impression that they were clever individuals and he was interested to note that, after a period of free-wheeling discussion, both completely accepted Ambrose’s ideas and became feverishly enthusiastic.

George Murphy was no less convinced, and at Ambrose’s request went off to his office to fetch layout charts of the mine workings. When he returned, Ambrose taped the charts to a wall, questioned Murphy closely about the exact positions of the sightings, and drew two horizontal lines across the sectional view. He measured the distance between the lines, then drew others above them at equal spacings. The eighth line lay just above ground level.

“The bottom line is approximately the level the Avernians rose to on the morning fhe first one was seen by the miner, Harper,” Ambrose said. “The next one up shows roughly the level they reached on the following morning when Gil took his photographs, and the scale of the chart indicates there was an increase of just over five hundred metres. Assuming a constant rate of separation between Avernus and Earth, we can predict levels they will attain on successive days. Two days have passed since the last sighting, which means that around dawn this morning we can expect the Avernians to reach here.” Ambrose touched the fifth line from the bottom, one which ran through an area in which extensive tunnelling was indicated.

“We could wait for them at any of the lower levels, of course, but the geometry involved means that when they reach the highest point there is a period when they almost stop moving vertically with reference to us. I see from the chart that, luckily, there has been a lot of excavation around that level. What we have to do is spread out laterally as much as possible—probably just one person to a tunnel—and look for buildings materialising. We’re not so much interested in the Avernians themselves at this stage, but we do want to find buildings.”

“I seem to have missed something,” Snook said, setting down a pot of coffee. “Why are buildings so important?”

“They represent our best chance of establishing contact with the Avernians, and even then it may not work. The only reason we were able to detect them is that a mine is a pretty dark place, and so the conditions were good for seeing ghosts. In daylight they might never have been noticed.”

“We were able to see Thornton’s Planet in daylight,” Culver said.

Ambrose nodded. “True—but in its own universe. Thornton’s Planet is a very dense assembly of antineutrinos and is emitting neutrinos in four-pi space at a very high rate. The planet Avernus is less dense, in its own universe, and therefore its surface appears to us as the milky luminance which Gil and George described. The inhabitants of Avernus are less dense again—just the way my hand is a lot less solid than a steel bar—so their neutrino flux is even more attenuated, and they are therefore much harder to see. Okay?”

“I think I get it, but does that explain the way the Avernians were seen gradually emerging bit by bit from the floor? If we see them by virtue of their neutrino emission shouldn’t they be more or less visible all the time? Shouldn’t we see them right through the solid rock?”

“No. Not to any important extent anyway. The neutrino flux decreases according to the inverse square law, and if you start off with a weak emitter, like an Avernian being, the flux soon attenuates to below the threshold level at which the Amplites will produce an image. The glasses aren’t a very efficient way of seeing the Avernian universe—at best they leave us desperately short-sighted.”

“But they’re super-efficient in this universe,” Quig put in.

“Even in the dark they would give you a good image of the floor and that could blot out faint images of what was below the floor.”

“Correct.” Ambrose nodded his agreement. “It’s a bit like not being able to see stars in the daytime sky, even though they’re there just the same.”

“And the reason we’re hoping to find structures,” he continued for Snook’s benefit, “is that it might be dark inside an Avernian building, and that would give them a better chance to see us. Don’t forget thati as far as they’re concerned, we are the ghosts. Right now, sitting in this room, we’re sailing along in their atmosphere. The rotation of the two planets means that we’re on a kind of glide path which will intersect with their equivalent of Barandi just before dawn.”

Prudence raised her head. “Is it night time in Avernus?”

“In this hemisphere, yes.”

“Then maybe they know about us. Perhaps they can look up in the sky and see us.”

“No. If you look at the two circles again you’ll notice that the Avernians are under the surface of the Earth, so all they would see, if they see anything, is a general radiance—as happened when Gil and George sank under their surface. The only time we can communicate with them is when the two surfaces are roughly coincident.”

“Hell! I’ve just thought of something which wrecks the whole plan,” Culver put in, slapping his forehead. “We would never have detected the Avernians at all if our miners hadn’t been wearing magniluct glasses. So the Avernians would need special viewing aids to see us, wouldn’t they. And the chances that they’d just happen to be wearing them are bound to be millions to one against.”

“Good point.” Ambrose smiled at Culver, obviously pleased at the question having arisen. “But, fortunately, the relationship between the two universes is not symmetrical, and the advantage is on our side. What it boils down to is that we are better emitters than they are. I’ve done a few sums and it looks to me that if we stand in an intermediate vector boson field it will have the effect of making us glow fairly strongly in their universe.”

“Bosons? That’s a funny kind of radiation, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but it should be the Avernian equivalent to a shower of photons.”

“Will you need a Moncaster machine? Des and I have a friend at the power station who uses one sometimes.”

“A lab model would be too big and heavy. I brought some portable equipment with me from the States—it creates a low-intensity field, but it should be good enough for our purpose. I only had room for one so we’re going to need good communications in the mine. Anybody who finds what he thinks is an Avernian building will signal the others and we’ll get the radiation equipment to him as fast as we can.”

Des Quig put up his hand, like a boy in class. “If we need communicator sets I can rig up something at the plant.”

“Thanks, but we’re too short of time. That’s why I brought as much commercially available equipment as I could get in the few hours I had—pulse code modulation sets and…”

“Hey! It sounds as if you’re planning to talk to the ghosts.”

Ambrose looked surprised. “Of course! It’s technically feasible, isn’t it? If they can see us and we can see them, that means light is being exchanged. All you have to do is modulate it to get sound communication.”

“That’s assuming Avernians use speech among themselves, that they are a technical race at the same level as ourselves or more advanced, and that we can get the idea of light-to-sound conversion over to them. And all that’s on top of assuming we will even manage to make them see us.”

“Correct. I know I’m rushing a lot of fences, and I know that being wrong in any one of the assumptions you mention will wreck the whole scheme, but we’ve got to make the effort—starting tonight.”

Quig burst out laughing. “Where did I get the idea that astronomers were patient, slow-moving types? Why all the hurry?”

“We’re hurrying because it was a stroke of pure luck that the Avernians were seen in a deep mine, and it has given us a few days’ grace in which to try making contact.” Ambrose tapped the sectional chart again.

“Let me remind you of the geometry of the situation. We’re dealing with two kinds of movement. One of them is the separation of the two worlds—Avernus is emerging from the Earth at a speed of just over five hundred metres a day. This creates a problem in itself because they rise that much higher each time we see them. At dawn this morning they’ll get to about fifteen hundred metres from the surface, tomorrow morning it will be a thousand metres from the surface, the morning after five hundred, and the morning after that they’ll be visible on the surface—right out there among the trees and mine buildings, or here in this room.” Ambrose paused and smiled as Prudence gave a theatrical shiver.

“That’s the stage at which the surface of Avernus coincides with the surface of the Earth—from then on the Avernians will start rising into the sky above us, five hundred metres higher every day, as the planets begin to separate. That would be awkward enough, but the daily rotation of the two worlds complicates everything even further because it is translated into vertical movement between corresponding points on the surfaces of the two spheres.”

“That’s the bit I’m having trouble with,” Murphy confessed, shaking his head.

“Well, you’ve seen it for yourself. We’re standing on the surface of a rotating sphere, the Earth. Just below us is another and slightly smaller rotating sphere which has moved off centre until the surfaces are touching at one side. As the spheres turn, corresponding points will move closer together until they meet at the contact zone, but as the rotation continues they have to move apart again. Twelve hours later, half a day, they’ll be at maximum separation, with the inner point far beneath the outer point.

“That’s why the Avernians rise up through the floor and sink back down again. The best time to try making contact is when they’re at the top of the curve and the downward motion hasn’t yet begun. What do you call it when a piston reaches the top of its stroke?”

“Top dead centre,” Snook supplied.

“That’s when we’ve got to try to make the first contact with the Avernians—when they’re at top dead centre—and that’s why there’s no time to waste. Tomorrow morning, and for three mornings after that, top dead centre will occur at fairly convenient positions for us—after that it will take place in the air, higher and higher above the mine.”

“Four chances,” Quig said. “Being strictly realistic about it, Boyce, what can you hope to achieve even if you strike lucky the very first time? Four brief meetings would hardly give the Avernians time to react.”

“Oh, we wouldn’t be limited to four meetings,” Ambrose said airily.

“But you just said…”

“I said I was hoping for first contact while top dead centre is in a convenient location, that is, either below ground or on it. After that, when top dead centre is in the air above the mine, we would be able to have quite long meetings.”

“For God’s sake, how?”

“Think it out for yourself, Des. If you wanted to rise slowly into the air, hover for a while and sink vertically downwards again—what sort of machine would you use?”

Quig’s eyes widened. “A helicopter.”

“Exactly! I provisionally chartered one today.” Ambrose beamed at his audience, like a fond parent surprising his children with an extravagant gift. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s discuss the immediate problems for a while.”

Listening to the conversation, Snook once again began to revise his opinions of Boyce Ambrose. The category he had invented for him, playboy scientist, still seemed appropriate -but Ambrose was playing in earnest, like a man who had a definite goal in mind and was determined that nothing would prevent him from reaching it.

Although all work had stopped at the mine, the perimeter fence was still floodlit and the security patrols were in operation. Snook felt vulnerable and selfconscious as he approached the gate, accompanied by George Murphy and the other four members of the group, under the interested stares of the mine guards. He was carrying six squares of heavy cardboard, placards which Ambrose had insisted on making, and they were proving strangely difficult to handle. The night breezes were slight, but even the gentlest puff of air was enough to make the smooth cards twist and slither in his grasp. He began to swear over Cartier’s ruling that they could not bring a vehicle into the enclosure. .

Murphy, who was well known to the guards, was nevertheless stopped by them and had to produce a letter signed by Cartier before the group were admitted. They straggled through the gate with the various boxes of equipment Ambrose had produced. Prudence remained close to Ambrose, talking quietly to him all the while. This fact produced a fretful resentment in Snook. He explained it to himself by reasoning that she was, if not actually a hindrance, certainly the least useful member of the group and it was therefore inordinate for her to occupy so much of the leader’s time. Another level of his mind, one which was immune to deception, regarded this explanation with contempt.

“I see they’ve taken your advice—too late.” Murphy nudged Snook and pointed at new notices, in red lettering, which stated that all below-ground workers were required to hand in their Amplite glasses pending the installation of improved lighting systems in the mine.

“It helps cover up for the closure,” Snook said, his attention elsewhere. He had just noticed that two army jeeps were parked in the darkness beyond the gatehouse, each of them containing four men of the Leopard Regiment. As soon as the soldiers saw Prudence they began whooping and jeering. The two drivers switched on spotlights and directed them at Prudence’s legs, and one soldier—to the cheers of his comrades—left his vehicle and ran up to her for a close inspection. She walked on calmly, looking straight ahead, holding on to Ambrose’s arm. Ambrose, too, ignored the soldier.

Snook took his Amplites from his breast pocket, put them on and looked towards the jeeps. In the blue pseudo-radiance he saw that a lieutenant, the same one who had been at his house in the morning, was sitting in one of the vehicles with his arms folded, unperturbed by the behaviour of his men.

“What do these bastards think they’re doing?” Murphy whispered fiercely, starting towards the nearby soldier.

Snook restrained him. “It isn’t our problem, George.”

“But that ape needs a kick where it’ll do him the most damage.”

“Boyce brought her here,” Snook said stolidly. “Boyce will have to look after her.”

“What’s the matter with you, Gil?” Murphy stared at Snook, then gave a low chuckle. “I get it. I thought I saw you doing a bit of quiet mooning in that direction, but I wasn’t sure.”

“You saw nothing.”

Murphy remained quiet for a moment as the soldier grew tired of the game and rejoined his comrades. “Was there nothing doing, Gil? Sometimes those aristocratic types go for a bit of rough—just for a change, you know.”

Snook kept his voice steady. “What’s discipline like in the Leopard Regiment? I thought they were kept on a pretty tight rein.”

“They are.” Murphy became thoughtful. “Was there an officer watching the show?”

“Yes.”

“That doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“I know what it doesn’t have to mean.”

They reached the mine head and Snook felt his concern about the behaviour of the soldiers abruptly vanish as it came to him that, in all probability, he was due for another encounter with the silent, translucent beings who walked in the depths of the mine. It was all right for Ambrose, who had never seen the apparitions, to talk knowledgeably about geometries and planetary movements—facing the reality of the blue ghosts was another matter entirely. Snook discovered in himself an intense reluctance to go underground, but he concealed it as the group assembled at the continuous hoist and Murphy set the machinery going. The Avernians’ mouths were what he dreaded seeing most, the inhumanly wide, inhumanly mobile slits which at times seemed to express a sadness beyond his comprehension. It occurred to Snook that Avernus might be an unhappy world, well named after a mythological hell.

“I’ll go down first because I know the level we want,” Murphy announced. “The hoist moves continuously so you’ll have to step off smartly when you see me, but don’t worry -it’s as easy as using an escalator. If you don’t get out in time, stay on until you reach the gallery below, get off there, walk round to the ascending side and come up again. We haven’t lost a visitor yet.”

The others laughed appreciatively, their spirits recovering from the uneasiness which had been inspired by the near-incident at the gate. They stepped into descending cages two by two. Snook going last with his awkward bundle of cards. His ears popped during the patient, rumbling descent. When he reached the circular landing at Level Three he found Ambrose already holding court, assigning people to the various radial tunnels. The radiation generator, which was the size of a small suitcase, was to be left at the hoist and carried to anyone who shouted that he had found an Avernian building.

“I want everybody to take one of the cards that Gil is holding,” Ambrose said. “I know they’re a bit of a long shot, but we’re playing so many long shots that one more won’t make any difference.” He took one of the placards and held it up. The design, heavily drawn in black, consisted of three elements—a close-pitched sine wave, and an arrow which pointed from it to another sine wave of much wider pitch.

“This banner with the strange device symbolises the conversion of light to sound.” He looked at Quig and Culver. “I think its meaning is quite clear, don’t you?”

Quig nodded doubtfully. “Provided the Avernians have eyes and provided they know something about acoustics and provided they have developed a wave theory of light and provided they use electronics and provided…”

“Don’t go on, Des—I’ve already admitted that the chances aren’t good. But there’s so much at stake that I’m prepared to try anything.”

“Okay. I don’t mind carrying a card/ Quig said, “but I’m mainly interested in getting photographs. I think that’s the most we can hope for.” He tapped the camera which was slung round his neck.

“That’s all right—I appreciate any help I can get at this stage.” Ambrose glanced at his watch. “There’s only about a quarter of an hour to go—the Avernians must akeady be in the lower levels of the mine—so let’s take up our stations. Sound carries well in these tunnels, but the acoustics aren’t good, so don’t go more than about a hundred metres from the central shaft. Keep wearing your Amplites, turn off all flashlights ten minutes from now, and don’t forget to holler at the top of your voice if you find what we’re looking for.”

There was another general laugh which filled Snook with a perverse malice—he wondered how many of the group would still be amused when, and if, the Avernians kept their appointment. He started for the south pipe, then noticed that Prudence was walking beside him on her way to an adjoining branch. She was carrying a card and a flashlight, but her slim figure and salon clothing were incongruous against the backdrop of rock surfaces and mine machinery. Snook felt an unwanted pang of concern.

“Are you going in there alone?” he said.

“Don’t you think I should?” Her face was inscrutable behind the blue lenses of her Amplites.

“Frankly, no.”

The curvature of her lips altered. “I didn’t see you showing much concern for my safety when your friends were having their bit of fun at the gate.”

“My friends!” Snook was so taken aback by the unfairness of the remark that he was unable to frame a sentence before Prudence was flitting away along the tunnel. He stared after her, lips moving silently, then went on his separate way, swearing inwardly at his own foolishness for having spoken.

The deposits of diamond-bearing clay had been wide and deep here, and its removal had left the semblance of a natural underground cavern. Parasonic projectors turned rock and clay into dust, without affecting the harder material of diamonds, and they had another advantage in that they did not split or strain the rock structures, which meant that little shoring was required. Snook followed the curvature of the spacious tunnel until he estimated he had gone a hundred metres, then he stopped and lit a cigarette. A very small amount of illumination reached this far from the fluorescent tubes in the main shaft, but his Amplites transformed it into a visible wall of light which he felt might be strong enough to screen out any ghosts which appeared. Accordingly, he turned his back to the light and stood facing the darkest part of the tunnel. Even then, the glow of his cigarette was almost unbearably bright when seen through the magniluct glasses. Snook ground the cigarette out under his foot and stood perfectly still, waiting.

A few minutes went by, like so many hours, then—without warning—a large glowing bird emerged at speed from the wall beside his head, flashed silently across his field of view, and disappeared into the sculpted rock at the far side of the tunnel. Its image had been faint, but he had the impression that he had still been able to see it for a second after it entered the wall, as though the stone itself was becoming lacy and insubstantial.

Snatching for breath, he turned and looked back towards the main shaft. The wall of bluish light was there as before, but now it had several darker rectangles in it. Snook frowned, wondering why he had not noticed the angular patches before, then came the realisation that he was looking at the outline of windows.

“This way!” he shouted, sick with apprehension, yet unable to prevent himself running forward. “South tunnel! There’s something in the south tunnel!”

He headed straight for one of the dim rectangles, hesitated briefly, and plunged through the vertical barrier of radiance. An Avernian was standing before him, cradling an indistinct object in its arms, the complex folds of its robes fluttering slightly in a breeze which did not exist on Earth. Its eyes rotated slowly near the top of the tufted head, and the wide mouth was partially open.

“Hurry up,” Snook bellowed. “I’m in a room with one of them!”

“Hold on, Gil,” came a reassuring, echoing reply from the distance.

The voice contact with another human being eased the churning in Snook’s mind. He made a conscious effort to be observant, and saw that the Avernian seemed taller than the others. He glanced down at its feet and discovered that the horizontal plane of milky blue radiance which was the Avernian’s floor was on a level with his own knees. As he watched, the level crept slowly up his thighs. At the rate of movement the ghostly floor would soon be above Snook’s head. He looked around the room and picked out shapes that were recognisably furniture, a table and chairs of curious proportions. The Avernian swayed slightly, in a nameless dance, unaware that its privacy was being violated by a watcher from another universe.

“Hurry up, for Christ’s sake,” Snook shouted. “Where are you, Boyce?”

“Right here.” The voice came from close at hand, and Snook saw human figures moving. “The machine was heavier than I thought. Stand still—I’m going to try to light you up for him. There! Now hold the card above your head and move it around.”

Snook had forgotten about his placard. The pool of faint luminance had reached his chest, but its rate of climb had decreased. He raised the card above his head, then moved to the side so that he was facing the alien figure.

His eyes looked into the Avernian’s. The Avernian’s eyes looked into his. And nothing happened.

I’m not real, Snook thought. I don’t exist.

“This isn’t working,” he called out to Ambrose. “There’s no reaction.”

“Don’t give up—I’m increasing the field intensity.”

“Okay.” There was a clicking of cameras in the background.

Snook noticed that the floor level of the other room was beginning to sink down his body again, then it dawned on him that the Avernian had not moved for several seconds, that its eyes were still fixed on him. The wide slash of its mouth writhed.

“I think something might be happening,” Snook said.

“Could be.” Ambrose had moved until he was standing beside Snook in the extra-dimensional room.

The alien turned abruptly, the first rapid action Snook had seen any of its kind perform, and strode across the floor. It appeared to sit at the table and there were movements of the oddly jointed arms. The translucent floor level continued to fall until it had merged with the rock floor of the tunnel, then the Avernian’s webbed feet began to sink into it.

“There isn’t much time left,” Ambrose said. “I think we were wrong to expect a reaction.”

Quig joined them, camera held to his eye. “I’m getting as much as I can on film anyway.”

At that moment the Avernian stood up in a slow-flowing movement and turned to face them. Its arms were extended from the pleated robes and in its hands was a faintly visible square of thin material. Due to the translucency of the alien and everything about it, Snook had trouble in discerning that there were marks on the square sheet. He narrowed his eyes and picked out an almost invisible design: tightly-waved lines; an arrow; loosely-waved lines.

“That’s our message,” Ambrose breathed. “We got through to him. And so fast!”

“There’s something else there,” Snook said. Further down on the faint square was another diagram—two slightly irregular circles almost fully superimposed.

“It’s astronomical.” Ambrose was hoarse with excitement. “They know what’s happening!”

Snook kept staring at the second diagram, and deep in his guts there heaved the iciness of premonition. The symbols of the upper diagram were flawlessly drawn—the sine waves exactly regular, the lines of the arrow dead straight, which suggested the Avernian was a good draughtsman. And yet the two overlapping circles of the lower diagram—which Ambrose supposed to represent two well-nigh perfect spheres—had definite irregularities. They also had several internal markings…

The Avernian was now sinking, with its world, below the rock floor of the tunnel.

It came towards Snook, apparently wading knee-deep in stone, and reached upwards with webbed translucent hands, the long trembling fingers circling to enclose Snook’s head.

“No!” Snook backed off from the yearning hands, unable to prevent himself from shouting. “I’m not doing it. Never!”

He turned and ran towards the main shaft.