Chapter 10

The room was so large that it seemed almost the entire interior of the building. It was a globular room, a hundred and fifty feet or more in diameter. The inner surface was crowded with people. It was a huge, hollow interior of a ball; and upon its concave surface a throng of the brown-shelled workers were gathered. They sat on low seats at the curved bottom of the room, where we entered, and up the sides and upon the slopes and the top, like flies in a globe, hanging head downward. There was no up or down here; the slight gravity made little difference.

I gazed up amazed to where, a hundred and fifty feet above me, head downward, the crowd of figures were calmly seated. These were clinging, of course; the pound-weight of each of them would drop them down if they let loose. But it required only a slight effort.

Between the tiers, there were narrow open aisles bearing glowlights at intervals. With Molo leading us, we stared up the curving incline of one of these aisles.

“Gregg! Good Lord, it’s weird!” Snap said. “Where are we going to sit? Don’t speak to the girls yet.”

“Have you spoken to them?”

“Yes. A little, on the ship. They’re watching for an opportunity but we have to be cautious. Gregg, I’ve got so much to tell you, but no chance. The brains can just about hear your thoughts.”

We went only a short distance up the incline. There were vacant seats seemingly held ready for us. Our passage created a commotion among the figures. Some leaped up and over us to get a better look. I found that we were clinging to the mound-like convex surface of a small half-globe. It raised us some ten feet above the floor. There were low seats with arms against the side-pull of gravity. I found Anita close beside me. Her hand touched me, but she did not turn her head or speak.

Molo was on my other side. I chanced to see his feet. They were planted firmly on the floor. He wore wide-soled shoes equipped with suction pads, no doubt, which would enable him, like the Wandlites, to walk and stand upon the upper inner surfaces of buildings.

As during the moments when Snap and I stood on the landing esplanade, there was so much here that at first I could not encompass it. But now I began to grasp other details of the strange scene.

Poised in mid-air, almost exactly in the center of the huge globular room, was a metal globe of some thirty feet in diameter. It was held, not by any solid girders, but by four narrow beams of light which mounted to it from widespread points of the convex room.

Upon the entire surface of this thirty-foot globe, a group of masters were seated, in little, cup-like seats upon resilient stems. They swayed and nodded with movement. There seemed to be glowing wires and grids and thread-like beams of light carrying current. Light-threads shot from the mechanisms to the heads of the seated brains. All the devices were evidently in operation; and upon this poised central globe the attention of the audience was directed.

Molo bent over me. “The Great Intelligence soon will see you.”

Snap, from the other side of Molo, whispered: “What are they doing up there?”

The faint hiss and throb of the devices were audible. I stared, trying to understand. Images, and sounds, invisible and inaudible were being received from across the millions of miles of space, and they were being transmuted within the brains themselves. I saw that discs were fastened upon the bulging foreheads of the brains, upon which the tiny light-beams carrying the vibrations impinged.

These brains, receiving “waves” of some unknown variety were, within the mechanism of the brain-cell, transmuting, translating the vibrations into things knowable. They were not seeing, not hearing, but knowing what went on millions of miles across space!

Again Molo bent over me. “They are about to show this audience what is happening on the three worlds.”

Upon the thirty-foot globe I saw now a dozen or so balls of about three-foot diameter. These had been dark and I had not noticed them. Now they began glowing, not from wires carrying the current, but from the little hands of the brains touching them.

I stared at the brain nearest me. His flabby little arm was extended; his hand touched the image-ball; gave it light and color, like a fortune-teller of Earth with a crystal before her.

Even though I was some sixty feet from it, I could see the moving images clearly, and recognized the scene. The Tappan Interplanetary Stage. Ships were rising; two of our spaceships mounting.

And all in an instant the scene blurred, took form again. The red-green spires and minarets of Ferrok-Shahn. The Central Canal extended like a gash across the foreground; the “Mushroom Mountains” were in a line upon the horizon. Three Martian space-flyers slid up while we watched.

And now Grebhar. The silver forest in all its shining beauty, where Venza was born. The sunlight sparkled on the river. A spaceship was rising in the distant sky over the shining forest.

Beyond Anita, I heard Venza murmuring, “Home! If only we were there.”

I could feel Anita move to silence her.

Molo was whispering: “They come. But we will be ready for them.”

Another image: mid-space. The allied ships gathering, waiting for others to arrive. A group here of about ten of our ships from the three worlds: poised, waiting.

I was aware that upon the mound-like protuberance of the room-floor where we were sitting, a door was opening. It slid, or melted away. At our feet was an opening downward into the small interior of the mound.

Molo whispered, “The great Master. Sit quiet! He will talk to us.”

Over us now a barrage came with a hiss, a circular curtain of insulation. The huge globular room faded. We were alone on the mound, Snap, Molo, myself, Anita, Venza and Meka upon the end of our bench. Behind us stood our single Wandlite guard, with a weapon in his shoulder hand.

At our feet an opening yawned into the mound-interior. It was a tiny, lighted room. In a cup-like seat a brain was perched, just below the level of our feet: the great Master Brain of Wandl. He was alone here. Not attended by retinue; no pomp and ceremony to usher us into his presence; no underlings obsequiously bowing to mark him for a great ruler.

We stared down, and the great brain stared up at us, seemingly equally curious. His head was a full four feet in diameter; the little body sat in the cup, with dangling legs. The clothes were ornamented: there was a glowing device on the chest.

He spoke with a measured rumble, in Martian. “You are Molo, of Ferrok-Shahn.”

“Yes,” said Molo.

“You must say, ‘Yes, Great Master.’”

“Yes, Great Master.”

“I know about you. I know that we trust you.”

The huge round eyes next fastened upon me. Then to Snap, and back to me. The words were English this time. “Men of Earth, are you decided, like the Martian, to join with us?”

I tried with sudden vehemence to still my thoughts, or to change them so that they lied. Fear surged upon me. Could this vast mechanism of human mind here at my feet interpret the vibrations of my thoughts? Could this Great Master of Wandl see into my mind?