Time and Again

III

Twenty years had not changed the Orion Arms.

To Sutton, stepping out of the teleport, it looked the same as the day he had walked away. A little shabbier and slightly more on the fuddy-duddy side…but it was home, the quiet whisper of hushed activity, the dowdy furnishings, the finger-to-the-lip, tiptoe atmosphere, the stressed respectability that he had remembered and dreamed about in the long years of alienness.

The life-mural along the wall was the same as ever. A little faded with long running, but the self-same one that Sutton had remembered. The same goatish Pan still chased, after twenty years, the same terror-stricken maiden across the self-same hills and dales. And the same rabbit hopped from behind a bush and watched the chase with all his customary boredom, chewing his everlasting cud of clover.

The self-adjusting furniture, bought at a time when the management had considered throwing the hostelry open to the alien trade, had been out-of-date twenty years ago. But it still was there. It had been repainted, in soft, genteel pastels, its self-adjustment features still confined to human forms.

The spongy floor covering had lost some of its sponginess and the Cetian cactus must have died at last, for a pot of frankly Terrestrial geraniums now occupied its place.

The clerk snapped off the visaphone and turned back to the room.

"Good morning, Mr. Sutton," he said, in his cultured android voice.

Then he added, almost as an afterthought, "We've been wondering when you would show up."

"Twenty years," said Sutton, dryly, "is long-time wondering."

"We've kept your old suite for you," said the clerk. "We knew that you would want it. Mary has kept it cleaned and ready for you ever since you left."

"That was nice of you, Ferdinand."

"You've hardly changed at all," said Ferdinand. "The beard is all. I knew you the second that I turned around and saw you."

"The beard and clothes," said Sutton. "The clothes are pretty bad."

"I don't suppose," said Ferdinand, "you have luggage, Mr. Sutton."

"No luggage."

"Breakfast, then, perhaps. We still are serving breakfast."

Sutton hesitated, suddenly aware that he was hungry. And he wondered for a moment how food would strike his stomach.

"I could find a screen," said Ferdinand.

Sutton shook his head. "No. I better get cleaned up and shaved. Send me up some breakfast and a change of clothes."

"Scrambled eggs, perhaps. You always liked scrambled eggs for breakfast."

"That sounds all right," said Sutton.

He turned slowly from the desk and walked to the elevator. He was about to close the door when a voice called:

"Just a moment, please."

The girl was running across the lobby…rangy and copper-haired. She slid into the elevator, pressed her back against the wall.

"Thanks very much," she said. "Thanks so much for waiting."

Her skin, Sutton saw, was. magnolia-white and her eyes were granite-colored with shadows deep within them.

He closed the door softly.

"I was glad to wait," he said.

Her lips twitched just a little and he said, "I don't like shoes. They cramp one's feet too much."

He pressed the button savagely and the elevator sprang upward. The lights ticked off the floors.

Sutton stopped the cage. "This is my floor," he said.

He had the door open and was halfway out, when she spoke to him.

"Mister."

"Yes, what is it?"

"I didn't mean to laugh. I really-truly didn't."

"You had a right to laugh," said Sutton, and closed the door behind him.

He stood for a moment, fighting down a sudden tenseness that seized him like a mighty fist.

Careful, he told himself. Take it easy, boy. You are home at last. This is the place you dreamed of. Just a few doors down and you are finally home. You will reach out and turn the knob and push in the door and it will all be there…just as you remembered it. The favorite chair, the life-paintings on the wall, the little fountain with the mermaids from Venus…and the windows where you can sit and fill your eyes with Earth.

But you can't get emotional. You can't go soft and sissy.

For that chap back at the spaceport had lied. And hotels don't keep rooms waiting for all of twenty years.

There is something wrong. I don't know what, but something. Something terribly wrong.

He took a slow step…and then another, fighting down the tension, swallowing the dryness of excitement welling in his throat.

One of the paintings, he remembered, was a forest brook, with birds flitting in the trees. And at the most unexpected times one of the birds would sing, usually with the dawn or the going of the sun. And the water babbled with a happy song that held one listening in his chair for hours.

He knew that he was running and he didn't try to stop.

His fingers curled around the doorknob and turned it. The room was there…the favorite chair, the babble of the brook, the splashing of the mermaids…

He caught the whiff of danger as he stepped across the threshold and he tried to turn and run, but he was too late. He felt his body crumpling forward to crash toward the floor.

"Johnny!" he cried and the cry bubbled in his throat. "Johnny!"

Inside his brain a voice whispered back. "It's all right, Ash. We're locked."

Then darkness came.