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CHAPTER 2
Miriam's exclamation so early in the morning reflected both surprise and repulsion. In answer to my repeated knocking signals, the huge, round platform had risen again above the surface of the water and now, in broad daylight, the sight was much more impressive.
The slightly domed platform lay, just as it had yesterday evening, with its edge level with the surface of the water. Its surface was for the most part as smooth as polished stone and dark gray in color with scattered patches of off white which made it appear as though someone had been throwing around bags of flour.
Over this otherwise perfectly smooth surface ran innumerable ragged, charred grooves which ended in a small crater, as though something had exploded there. Nearly all the scratches and grooves ran in one direction and gave the impression that the spaceship had been grazed by enemy fire or that someone had been at work with a blow torch.
All in all, it was an ominous sight, and Miriam's reaction was not very reasoning.
She was right, of course.
There was something wrong about entering this thing, but even the latent fear from last evening and the leaden feeling in my stomach brought on by the sight of this forbidding platform were not enough to hold me back. A few moments later I was sitting on the edge of the platform, drying my feet after wading through the water, I donned my shoes and socks and, armed with sandwiches, thermos and note paper, I began to look for the opening that they had described.
I had hardly taken a couple of steps when a round, safe-like door slowly began to open near the edge and a small quantity of sand and water which had settled in the joint was blown away by a stream of compressed air. I went closer and looked down through a round hole, about three feet in diameter, into a cube-shaped space about eight feet across.
Once again, I heard the voice.
Indeed, the "ladder" was nothing more than a pole with staggered steps on either side formed to place my feet.
I stopped in my descent and waved to Miriam, saying,
Once below, I cast my eyes around the room. Unimaginably complicated equipment lined the walls and the ceiling.
The only things that were
vaguely familiar were huge reels and drums, wound with every
possible size of cable and pipe. In the floors was a metal door that
looked remarkably earthly, with a round knob in the middle over
which I nearly stumbled. In one corner stood a kind of desk with
rows of knobs, and above, a panoramic screen, about five feet long
and three feet high, that glowed with a soft green fluorescent
light. Behind the desk stood a strangely normal-looking chair with a
metal frame and leather upholstery.
I tensed involuntarily, and my heart began to beat faster.
I looked into a huge, round chamber, about forty-five feet across and nine feet high.
From the decompression chamber I could see over the greatest part of the navigation area, with its vast contents of instruments and control panels.
Strangely, all the instruments and panels were mounted on the floor with walkways alongside and separated by vertical metal grills that reached the roof. Everything was dark blue in color, almost black, causing a very strange lighting effect.
The dominating blue-black surfaces acted as an almost invisible background against which all the white or polished metal knobs, handles and instruments stood out in dear relief as though luminous. The encompassing vertical wall of the dome looked as though it was made of glass; the highly polished material reflected strongly and gave a very strange lighting effect from the reflections. On many of the panels diversely colored lights burned, interposed by dark transparent strips on which flashes or darting lines could be seen.
An imposing piece of technology.
I suddenly realized that there was no sign of life whatsoever.
A light came on illuminating an area directly in front of the window. I sprang back!
In spite of my mental preparation, the paralyzing fear had returned quite suddenly and cold shivers ran over my scalp, through my neck and over my shoulders. On the other side of the window, in a half circle as though at a conference table, sat eight strange humanoid beings.
Their faces and forms radiated as much primitive animal power as haughty intelligence superiority.
I felt again the uncertainty of yesterday, a reaction to their obvious superiority and self-assurance. I am convinced that any intelligent man would have felt the same, and that this reaction is a part of our makeup. The same feeling that I did not belong here, that even these steel walls could not protect me from the mental impact made by this intelligent "pressure group" from a much higher level of civilization and development, with their fantastic knowledge, belonging to a strange, distant world.
Their unearthly, somewhat animal, faces, with a dynamic expressive ability, emphasized the difference in our places of origin to such an extent that I am convinced it touches areas that to Us are still taboo, and which have been since time began. When you are unable to draw, how on earth can you expect someone else to draw a face that he has never dreamed existed? How can you create a portrait with words?
My friend, Rudolf Das, who accepted
the task of drawing the pictures of this book, was driven nearly to
distraction by my dubious attempts to produce a good likeness, one
which would demonstrate their superiority. He finally convinced me
that even a photograph would not effectively convey what I had in
mind. The facial expressions must be left, unhappily, to the
imagination of the reader.
Their heads were about the same size as ours, only slightly deeper toward the back; and in the middle of the skull was a bony ridge that changed into a deep groove in the center of the forehead. It gave the impression of a skull divided into two separate compartments. Toward the back of their heads the ridge ended in a semicircular muscle formation that ran down the neck and into the shoulders, making the side view of the neck much heavier looking than ours. The same is true of the whole construction of their bodies.
They were much more solidly
built than we are. Their arms and shoulders, although of much the
same proportions as ours, were much heavier and more muscular and,
combined with the clawlike hands, gave an impression of strength
that would have come a dose second to a bench vise. All this
combined with their broad chests and short stocky legs made them
look as though they would not even step out of the path of a
gorilla!
The top of the head to the back of the neck was covered with short, smooth hair that shone like the coat of a smooth, furry animal. The color of this hair was different with each of them; rust-brown, gold and silver-gray showed either separately or mixed. Their hairless skin had a pale, glasslike sheen to it. Along the edges of the face the skin showed slightly darker gray-brown than in the middle. As they turned their heads, the skin seemed to reflect the light and shade of their surroundings.
This changing color effect was something that caught my attention many times. Their teeth were two seamless white strips, above and below, that closed in a scissor-like fashion. Both their teeth and the yellow-white of their eyes reflected the strange lighting in such a way that their faces looked slightly artificial.
Their movements
were also strange.
They were wearing a kind of uniform in the form of dark-blue, silky overalls, with three-quarter sleeves and a deep V neck. Under this was a white shirt with a rather old fashioned high collar around the back of the neck.
Around their waists was a broad, gold-colored belt, decorated with what seemed to be atom formations, which ran along the edge of the deep V in the neck as well, incorporating, however, still other motifs in its design.
They started the radiation device working with the film.
At first I was not quite sure what was happening. I felt cold and somewhat lightheaded suddenly, a feeling comparable to having had a little too much wine. You believe you can think very dearly but you feel somewhat removed from reality.
The
fantastic film projection was accompanied by a rather childish
description of what was to be seen. Now and then a few words brought
my attention to the size of something-the height, the speed, the
form or the connection between two things, and so on. An endless
stream of words and short sentences formed a slender thread of
explanation. The essence, the real information, reached me
unnoticed, and that was a weird experience. The knowledge that these
beings, through their machine, could feed information directly into
my brain, strengthened my feeling that
The images came in such rapid succession that at first it made me irritable, and only after some considerable time did it become dear what was expected of me. I had only to act as a relaxed spectator, who observes with interest what is happening; they did the rest. It is understandable that this type of information is not suited to the written word and therefore I have attempted to relate everything in the form of a two-sided conversation.
This tends to give the impression that I was a partner
in an animated discussion, but nothing is further from the truth. My
function during this meeting can be compared with that of a tape
recorder. The authenticity of the hologram was so fantastic that it
could no longer be describe as a picture.
My first experience with the radiation took the form of knowing, without further instruction, which of the knobs I had to use to adjust, for example, the focus or the position of the picture on the screen. The test card, a jungle of vertical stripes, vanished and I looked into a great, black hole in the middle of which hung a blinding ball. I recoiled involuntarily, at which the picture blurred, but I quickly got control of myself. The hole was very deep; I was looking into the endlessness of the cosmos.
Against the
black, somewhat violet background, sewn with thousands of stars, a
gigantic, pink-white ball hung in stately beauty. The planet Iarga.
Most remarkable were two gigantic, flat, concentric rings which formed a halo around the planet. They were rather like the rings of our Saturn, except that these consisted of a small inner ring and a much broader outer ring, both casting a sharp band of shadow on the clouds. There was also a large moon to be seen, with the same pockmarked surface as ours. Iarga, the home of these astronauts, is a planet in another solar system, not much more than ten light years away from US. More details of the location of the planet they would not tell me.
The diameter and mass are much greater than the
Earth's; the gravitational force is greater and the atmosphere is
much thicker. The speed of rotation is much slower than that of
Earth, so that the duration of day and night is longer, but the
regular tilting of the rings around the planet change certain days
into nights and certain nights into days, due to the fact that the
rings reflect the sunlight.
The color blue only appears in lighter tints and green is more pronounced there than here, which may account for the fact that they seem to have a preference for blue in their artificial lighting. They describe the Earth as the blue planet with the blinding light, and, in contrast, Iarga as the green planet with the misty light. The living conditions are very different from those on Earth.
Temperature extremes are much less than here, but when you hear that the wind speed can reach three times our maximum, and that ram and snowfall can be as much as ten times greater, and you combine this with the fact that the terminal velocity is much higher, it becomes dear that it would be very unwise for any of Us to be caught in a rainstorm on Iarga!
After
being informed that a fall from a height of six feet was fatal, I
began to understand a little more of the reason for the physical
appearance of these Iargans.
Initially, I saw only clouds: above me, the pink layer of mist that I had seen earlier; then a second, broken cloud layer which was primarily responsible for the strange, diffused light on the planet. We passed through this layer at a height of about twenty miles, and viewed from the underside it was a mixture of yellow-gray, brown and greenish clouds that gave a very somber and threatening impression.
Lastly came a cloud layer
that in height, form and color, closely resembled ours, and after
passing through this, I had an unobstructed view of the surface. We
flew over a bright-green ocean with white wave crests.
Their speed was only slightly less than
that of the spaceship and there were far too many of them for me to
count. The distance between the torpedoes was about ten times their
own length, all spaced exactly alike along an eight4rack system
which was divided into two layers, one above the other. I had little
time to study the trains further, for we moved on.
Areas of green on either side of the railway looked something like prehistoric forests. The longer I studied this landscape, the more I became aware that this was ribbon development in its extreme form. The area between the buildings seemed to be used namely for agriculture, only now and then making way for an industrial complex. The camera sped on.
The landscape
changed and became undulating, split by walls into huge terraces
which compared with the wine fields of Italy. Behind this lay
mountains, and in a great bowl between the peaks a red-brown lake
came into view. The machine tilted its nose steadily lower until I
was able to see vertically below. Around the shores of the lake,
numerous buildings were to be seen, among which were several
gigantic combs.
They had the form of perfect, streamlined discuses.
I did a quick calculation. Each rectangle contained thirty-six rings, so thirty-six times ten thousand is... heavens! Three hundred and sixty thousand! I hadn't expected that. It made each rectangle a complete city!
But, then, it was also a lot of land.
I judged that the width must then be in the region of six kilometers, so that an area was then sixty square kilometers and therefore my solution must be 600 people per square kilometer.
I calculated again and came to the ridiculous total of six thousand.
I began to feel uneasy, that was madness. I knew it.
I should never have started this conversation. It was leading nowhere. I stared with new interest at the picture in front of me and tried to calculate the living space of these people. Strange as it may seem, there were no signs of overpopulation.
On the contrary, there was room enough, round the cylinders, and the roads that ran through the woodland areas were in no way obstructed with people or traffic.
This was roughly the beginning of the explanation of the concept of efficiency, and I absorbed it with some difficulty.
Who would expect the description of a super culture to begin with a lecture on efficiency? Anything but that! And it is almost impossible to relate just how efficient they were. Take, for example, their method of planning. It is simply based on the maximum number of people that a given land-area can accommodate.
The housing
and the roadways take up the smallest possible area-not more than
five percent-in order to leave a maximum of land for farming and
natural beauty. The farming areas produce the maximum in food that
their technique allows, in order to support their huge population.
The woodland areas are necessary to maintain a sufficient quantity
of oxygen in the atmosphere and also serve as recreation areas.
Everything is used to maximum advantage.
Very simple. A fully automatic, robot rail system.
Slim
torpedo trains that move without creating friction, the only
component requiring servicing being the doors, and these are made of
such a high quality that they can last at least one hundred years.
As a well-brought-up Earth man, I didn't give up too easily and
pointed out that our aircraft, so fast and comfortable, were surely
much better than trains that can only reach a speed of about four
hundred kilometers per hour. I got the most surprising answers. An
aircraft is not only inefficient but is downright antisocial!
Yes, I did get that impression.
Well, I was very wrong. I must think in terms of average speed, and the hours that we wasted waiting for connections, delays caused by un-service-ability or bad weather and our wonderfully inefficient traffic jams! Having thought of all this, I was readily prepared to believe them when they said that their average speed of all transport systems together was about five times higher than ours - inclusive aircraft.
Had I mentioned
something about comfort? Yes, I had. Wonderful, because comfort was
also an aspect of efficiency. Trains had proven to be the cheapest
form of transportation, and the only problem that remained was to
get as many people as possible to leave their cars at home and use
the tram. The only way to do this was through comfort, and this
comfort was really something.
Due to their position high above the ground and their large windows, they offered a breathtaking view of the surrounding countryside, and the interior was so luxurious that it left nothing to be desired. They were unaffected by weather conditions and one hundred percent reliable. The frequency was so high that timetables were unnecessary. Did I now know enough?
Absolutely not! It had gradually become dear to me that their understanding of efficiency was totally different from ours. It influenced their very souls. Efficiency had become almost a religion. One of the most imposing visions on the screen was their trans-oceanic rail connections. A wonderful, orange-colored construction, about seventy-five feet above the restless green water, crossing the ocean in a dead straight line.
I
thought at first, perhaps a little naively, that the support towers
stood on the ocean floor, but no-nothing so primitive. The whole
construction floated, supported by huge balls under the towers which
were anchored to the sea bed by adjustable cables.
The train was supported on magnetic shoes over its whole length which ran in a hollow rail. Through the polarity and the strength of the magnetic field, the shoes were held floating in the middle of the rail.
A fantastic piece of construction. The system was controlled from large electronic control centers and was almost fully automatic. Optical signaling was not used, so that the speed was unaffected by even the thickest fog. Their cargo trains intrigued me the most, for they were in fact nothing more or less than self-homing containers.
The route program was plugged into the nose of the unit and the ghost train left on its journey without a living sour on board, finding its own way over the rail network to its destination, silent and vibrationless, and without lighting at night.
Some things were rather amusing.
There seemed to be a rather popular pastime that they called traveling in hotel trains. A group of about twenty-five people would order a unit that was fitted out as a self-service hotel and simply go where the mood took them. Everywhere in the beauty spots were "camping's," where the trains could stay for a couple of days or more, and all you needed to do to travel further was to program the unit for its next destination. Traveling this way, often at night, they could cover enormous distances.
As soon as I asked a question that fell outside the program, I received more of their strange answers.
At my request, they showed me one of their cars.
In front of one of their huge, glass living cylinders stood a highly streamlined vehicle on ridiculously small wheels; nevertheless, it could be classed as a motor car. My enthusiasm for motor cars was suddenly diverted by the sight of two Iargan women who, accompanied by four small children, were to demonstrate the car. I sat staring at those strange exotic beings so intensely that the explanation about the car was for the most part lost on me.
Their faces were smoother and finer than the astronauts' and they were made up with white and purple stripes on their fore heads and around their eyes. It made me think of Indians on the warpath, and this thought was strengthened by the colorful motifs on their clothing. This 'clothing' seemed to be more for decoration than anything else.
It was just a broad piece of cloth with a hole in the middle that fell over the head and was fastened at the waist with a broad belt, leaving the arms and the sides of the body uncovered. Under this garment, they wore a pair of silky trousers which fastened tightly around the ankles. The shoes over the wide naked feet were open sandals. They carried themselves as refined models would, demonstrating the peculiarities of the car with lightening fast movements.
The strangest thing was that their explanation, which I found inaudible, was directed at me, and due to the perfection of the picture I felt as though I was actually present and the center of their attention.
The ladies had, in the mean time, entered the car with their restless offspring, and were demonstrating the maneuverability of the vehicle on its tiny wheels.
These wheels only served the purpose of transporting the car from the cylinders to the rail system where, in contrast to the trains, they hung on magnetic shoes under the rails instead of above. This explained the large glass panel that extended under the feet of the occupants of the front seat, giving the vehicle the appearance of a helicopter from a frontal view.
The interior was luxurious-two wide three-seat benches, and behind, the baggage space. There was only one sliding door on one side, and nowhere could I discover any access to the motor. After this demonstration, the ladies rode away along a broad, ocher- colored road, to where the huge central rail system ran between the house cylinders.
The huge "motorways," which
looked like thin orange lines from the air, were in fact a
three-level road and rail system carrying heavy traffic at
unimaginable speeds. The top level was a six-track rail system which
carried the long torpedoes, the four inside tracks for fast,
long-distance traffic, and the two outer tracks for local traffic.
The camera continued to follow the fantastic journey along the rails and the two ladies who were at the moment playing with their children. The voice called my attention to the house cylinders. The first thing noticeable from dose up is the perfectly smooth exterior, with neither grooves nor joints in evidence. The different floors were visible only as creamy-white bands of about three feet in height, on which rested glass panels about fifteen feet high and sixty feet wide.
The panels were met by anthracite-gray pillars that ran from top to bottom throughout the whole building.
The hologram images crossed a broad river, and I could see thousands of Iargans walking along its banks.
I also saw hundreds of small boats braving the strong winds and stormy water. They were catamaran type constructions, with streamlined cabins supported on legs above the water. The hulls were almost completely submerged, and the strangest thing was that the rough water seemed to have no effect on them.
They were fast and made no bow waves.
The camera allowed me no time for further study.
The landscape changed, the ground became undulating and in the distance high mountains borne in the misty, lazy light of Iarga. The cylinders in their oblong formations continued as far as the eye could see into the foothills and even beyond where the ground was terraced off with long, high walls. As the ground became more mountainous, the buildings stopped, as did the roadway, but the railway continued on through the wild and rocky landscape.
The rest of the journey became real science fiction. Like a giant snake, the railway wended its way around mountain peaks and over deep ravines, across fantastic suspension bridges and along vertical rock walls, now over gaping depths and then over grassy, woody plateaus, and in every suitable spot were the stations and the parking areas for the cars.
This was
one huge recreation area, with its rugged mountains and beautiful
waterfalls.
I began to wonder what the millions of miles of railroad must have cost; it was certainly a triumph of engineering.
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