Beyond the Stars by Ray Cummings

Twenty days! So full of strange impressions I scarcely know how to recount them. Yet, after such a trip, they were days of almost normality.

Our vehicle beneath that microscope had grown rapidly in size. And with our expanding visual viewpoint, and the nearness of solid, motionless objects, its velocity seemed infinitely small. It barely floated past the microscope, settling to the floor of that huge room; and with a normal proportionate size, the Beta ray shut off, it came to rest.

They crowded around us-old men, loosely robed, and with flowing white hair, seamed, sooth, hairless faces, stern, but kindly, and eyes very bright and intelligent.

They crowded around us, at first timid, then friendly, talking together excitedly in a strange, liquid tongue.

Dr. Weatherby tried to greet them and to shake hands. They understood neither his words, nor the gesture. But in a moment they comprehended. And shook hands, all of them with each of us, very solemnly.

The room had oval openings for windows; light was outside but it seemed rather dim. Presently one of the men tried to herd us along the wall of the room.

"No! " said Dr. Weatherby. "Don't go! We must stay in the vehicle!"

But when we turned toward it the men resisted us with a sudden stubborn force.

"Don't! " I shouted. "Jim, stop that! We'd better go with them. " The old men seemed to have gone into a sudden panic of violence. They were pushing, shoving us. They obviously had little strength, but the commotion would draw others from outside.

We yielded, and they herded us down the long room. A panel slid aside. We crossed a long, narrow viaduct, a metallic bridge with high parapet sides. We seemed to be a hundred feet in the air.

I caught a vista of low-roofed buildings: verdure-giant flowers on the roofs, streets down there, and off in the distance a line of hills.

The air was soft and pleasant. Overhead was a blue sky, with gay white masses of clouds. There seemed to be no sun. The light was stronger than twilight, but flat, shadowless.

At the opposite end of the viaduct the ground seemed rising like a hill. A small mound-shaped building was there: a house with a convex roof which had a leveled platform on one end, a platform banked with vivid flowers.

It seemed a two-storied building, built of smooth, dull-gray blocks. Balconies girdled it. There were windows, and a large, lower doorway, with a broad flight of circular stairs leading up the hill to it.

Our viaduct led us into the second floor of the house. We entered on a large room, an oval, two-storied room so that we found ourselves up on a sort of second-story platform, midway from floor to ceiling.

Low couches were here, a row of them with sliding panels of what might have been paper dividing them. The platform, this second story, was some thirty feet, broadly oval. It had a low, encircling railing; a spiral staircase led downward to the main floor of the apartment.

I saw furniture down there of strange, unnatural design, a metallic floor splashed with vivid mosaic pattern, a large gray frame, ornately carved, with a great number of long strips stretched across it, strings of different length. It seemed not unlike an enormous harp lying horizontal.

Narrow windows, draped with dark gauze, were up near the ceiling. They admitted a dim light. This whole interior was dim, cool and silent. A peace, a restfulness pervaded it. And our captors-if captors they were-seemed more like proud hosts. They were all smiling.

But when they left a moment later, I fancied that they barred the door after them.

"Well," said Jim. "I can't say but that this is very nice. Let's look things over and then go to bed. I'm tired out, I can tell you that. Say, Dolores, it just occurred to me-these fellows can't understand a word we say. But you were thinking thoughts to them a while ago, and you understood each other. Why don't you try that now?"