Ticket to Anywhere

III

White light that sealed his eyes with pain, and a vicious torrent of heat. Gasping, Falk groped frantically for the lever.

The afterimage faded slowly. He saw night again, and the stars. That last one, he thought, must have been the planet of a nova. How many of those was he likely to run into?

He stepped to the doorway. A wasteland: not a stick, not a stone.

He went back to the lever. Light again, of bearable intensity, and a riot of color outside.

Falk stepped cautiously to the entrance. Slowly his mind adapted to the unfamiliar shapes and colors. He saw a bright landscape under a tropic sun - gray-violet mountains in the distance, half veiled by mist; nearer, tall stalks that bore heavy leaves and fronds of a startling blue-green; and directly ahead of him, a broad plaza that might have been cut from one monstrous boulder of jade. On either side were low, box-shaped structures of dark vitreous material: blue, brown, green, and red. And in the middle of the plaza stood a group of slender shapes that were unquestionably alive, sentient.

Falk’s heart was pounding. He stepped behind the shelter of the entrance wall and peered out. Curiously, it was not the cluster of live things that drew him, but the buildings on either side.

They were made of the same enduring, clean-edged substance as the Doorway. He had come, by blind chance, at last to the right place.

Now he stared at the creatures grouped in the middle of the plaza. For some reason they were disappointing. They were slender S-shapes, graceful enough in repose: lizard shapes, upright on two legs; pink of belly and umber of back. But in spite of the bandoliers slung from their narrow shoulders, in spite of their quick, patterned gestures as they spoke together, Falk could not convince himself that he had found the people he sought.

They were too manlike. One turned away while two others spoke; came back leaning at a passionate angle, thrust himself between the two, gesturing wildly. Shouted down, he again left and stalked a half circle around the group. He moved as a chicken moves, awkwardly, thrusting his long neck forward at each step.

Of the five others, two argued, two merely stood with drooping, attentive heads and watched; and the last stood a little apart, gazing around him disdainfully.

They were funny, as monkeys are funny - because they resemble men. We laughed at our mirrored selves. Even the races of man laugh at each other when they should weep.

They’re tourists, Falk thought. One wants to go to the Lido, another insists they see the Grand Canal first; the third is furious with both of them for wasting time, the next two are too timid to interfere, and the last one doesn’t care.

He couldn’t imagine what their reaction to him would be. Nothing welcome, at any rate; they might want to take him home as a souvenir. He wanted to get into those buildings, but he’d have to wait until they were out of sight.

While he waited, he got out the atmosphere-testing kit. The pressure gauge showed the merest trifle less than Earth normal; the litmus papers did not react; the match burned cheerfully, just as it would have on Earth. Falk turned off the oxygen, cracked the helmet valve cautiously, and sniffed.

After the stale air of the suit, the breath he inhaled was so good that it brought tears to his eyes. It was fresh, faintly warm, and sweet with flower fragrance. Falk opened the helmet seam, tipped the helmet back, and let the breeze wash over his face and hair.

He peered out, and saw to his dismay that the party was trooping directly toward him. Falk ducked his head back inside, glanced instinctively at the lever, then looked out again.

They were running now; they had seen him. They ran very clumsily, heads darting strenuously forward and back. The one in the lead was opening and shutting his triangular mouth, and Falk heard faint yawps. He leaped out of the cubicle, cut sharply to the right, and ran.

The nearest building with a visible opening, unfortunately, was some distance down the line, between Falk and the lizards. He glanced back when he was halfway there. The lizards were considerably strung out now, but the leader was only a few yards away.

They were faster than they looked. Falk put his head down and tried to make his heavy boots move to a quicker rhythm. Almost to the door, he looked back again. The lizard was one jump away, its grimy, ball-tipped fingers outspread.

Falk turned in desperation and, as the lizard came up, swung a knotted fist to the point of its snout. He heard its steam-whistle screech, saw it collapse, and then he was diving through the open door ahead.

The door closed gently behind him - a sheet of glassy substance, the same blue as the walls, gliding down to seal the opening.

Falk stared at it. Through its transparency he could see the dark shapes of the lizards crowding around, leaning to pry at the bottom of the door, gesticulating at each other. It was plain, at any rate, that the door was not going to open for them.

Whether it would open for him, when he wanted it to, was another matter.

He looked around him. The building was a single huge room, so long and deep that he could barely see the far walls. Scattered over the floor, patternless, were boxes, or chests, racks, shelves, little ambiguous mounds. Nearly all the objects Falk could see were fashioned of the same glass-like material.

There was no dust in the room; but now that Falk thought of it, he realized that there had been none in any of the Doorways, either How that was done he could not conjecture. He moved to the nearest object, a file, or rack formed apparently to take many things of divers shapes and sizes. It was a quarter empty now, and the remaining contents had a jumbled look.

He picked up an orange glass spindle, full of embedded threads, or flaws that looped in a curious pattern from one end to the other. He put it down, took a hollow sphere of opal. It was made in halves and seemed to be empty, but Falk could find no way to take it apart. He replaced it and took a brown object shaped like a double crescent, with a clear fracture plane running diagonally through it…..

Half an hour later he realized that he was not going to find any picture books or engineering manuals or any one thing that would unlock the mystery of the Doorway people for him. If there were any knowledge to be gained here, it would have to come from the building as a whole.

The lizards distracted him. He could see them through the walls of the building, pressing their snouts against the glass, staring with little round eyes, gesturing at him. But he learned things from them.

The group broke up finally, leaving only one to guard the exit; the others dispersed. Falk saw one go into the building directly across the plaza. The door closed behind him. A little later another one approached and pounded on the door; but it did not open until the first lizard came close to it inside. Some automatic mechanism, beyond Falk’s fathoming, evidently responded to the presence or absence of any living thing inside each building. When the last person left, the door stayed open; when another person entered, it shut and would not open for the next unless the first person allowed it.

That added one item to the description of the Doorway people that Falk was building in his mind. They were not property-conscious - not afraid that thieves would enter in their absence, for the doors stood open when they were gone - but they respected each other’s love of privacy.

Falk had previously thought of this building as a vast factory or laboratory or dormitory - a place designed to serve a large number of people, anyhow. Now he revised his opinion. Each building, he thought, was the private domain of one person - or, if they had family groups, only two or three. But how could one person use all this space, all these possessions?

He made the comparison that by now was becoming automatic. He asked himself what a cliff dweller would make of a millionaire’s triplex apartment in New York.

It helped, but not enough. The objects around him were all specialized tools; they would not function for him and so told him nothing about the Doorway builders. There was nothing that he could compare to a bed, to a table, to a shower bath. He could not see the people who had lived here.

With an effort, he forced himself to stop thinking in terms of men. The facts were important, not his prejudices. And then what had been a barrier became a road. There were no beds, tables, showers? Then the Doorway people did not sleep; they did not eat; they did not bathe.

Probably, thought Falk, they did not die.

They were fit to live among the stars…

The riddle of the deserted chamber mocked him. How, having built this city, would they leave it? How would they spread the network of the Doorways across the face of the galaxy, and then leave it unused?

The first question answered itself. Looking at the littered chamber, Falk thought of his comparison of the cliff dweller and the millionaire and humbly acknowledged his presumption. Not a millionaire’s triplex, he told himself… a tent.

Once there had been something of particular interest on this world. No telling what it had been, for that had been some millions of years ago when Mars was a living world. But the Doorway people, a few of them, had come here to observe it. When they were finished, they had gone away, leaving their tents behind, as a man might abandon a crude shelter of sticks and leaves.

And the other things they had left behind them? The cubes, cones, rods, odd shapes, each one beyond price to a man? Empty cans, thought Falk; toothpaste tubes, wrapping paper.

They had abandoned this city and the million things in it because they were of no value.

The sun was redder, nearer the horizon. Falk looked at the chronometer strapped to the wrist of his suit and found to his surprise that it was more than five hours since he had left Wolfert on Mars.

He had not eaten. He took food out of his pack and looked at the labels on the cans. But he was not hungry; he did not even feel tired.

He watched the lizards outside. They were scurrying around the plaza now, bringing armloads of junk from the building, packing them into big red boxes. As Falk watched, a curious construction floated into view down at the far end of the plaza. It was a kind of airboat, an open shell with two lizards riding it, supported by two winglike extensions with streamlined, down-pointing shapes at their ends.

It drifted slowly until it hovered over the pile of boxes the lizards had gathered. Then a hatch opened in its belly, and a hook emerged at the end of three cords. The lizards on the plaza began slinging loops of cord from their boxes to the hook.

Falk watched them idly. The hook began to rise, dragging the boxes after it, and at the last moment one of the lizards tossed another loop over it.

The new box was heavy; the hook stopped when it took up the slack, and the airboat dipped slightly. Then it rose again, and the hook rose too, until the whole load was ten feet off the ground.

Abruptly one of the three cords snapped; Falk saw it whip through the air, saw the load lurch ponderously to one side, and the airboat dip. Simultaneously the pilot sent the boat down to take up the strain on the remaining cords.

The lizards were scattering. The load struck heavily; and a moment later so did the airboat. It bounced, skidded wildly, and came to rest as the pilot shut off the power.

The lizards crowded around again, and the two in the airboat climbed down for an interminable conference. Eventually they got aboard again, and the boat rose a few feet while the lizards beneath disengaged the hook. Then there was another conference. Falk could see that the doors of the boat’s hatch were closed and had a crumpled look. Evidently they were jammed and could not be opened again.

Finally the boat came down once more, and with much argument and gesticulation the boxes were unpacked and some of their contents reloaded into two boxes, these being hoisted with much effort into the airboat’s cockpit. The rest was left strewn around the plaza.

The airboat lifted and went away, and most of the lizards followed it. One straggler came over for a last look at Falk; he peered and gestured through the wall for a while, then gave it up and followed the rest. The plaza was deserted.

Some time passed, and then Falk saw a pillar of white flame that lifted, with a glint of silver at its tip, somewhere beyond the city, and grew until it arched upward to the zenith, dwindled, and vanished.

So they had spaceships, the lizards. They did not dare use the Doorways, either. Not fit, not fit… too much like men.

Falk went out into the plaza and stood, letting the freshening breeze ruffle his hair. The sun was dropping behind the mountains, and the whole sky had turned ruddy, like a great crimson cape streaming out of the west. Falk watched, reluctant to leave, until the colors faded through violet to gray, and the first stars came out.

It was a good world. A man could stay here, probably, and live his life out in comfort and ease. No doubt there were exotic fruits to be had from those trees; certainly there was water; the climate was good; and Falk thought sardonically that there could be no dangerous wild beasts, or those twittering tourists would never have come here.

If all a man wanted was a hiding place, there could be no better world than this. For a moment Falk was strongly tempted. He thought of the cold dead worlds he had seen and wondered if he would ever find a place as fair as this again. Also, he knew now that if the Doorway builders still lived, they must long ago have drawn in their outposts. Perhaps they lived now on only one planet, out of all the billions. Falk would die before he found it.

He looked at the rubble the lizards had left in the middle of the plaza. One box was still filled, but burst open; that was the one that had caused all the trouble. Around it was a child’s litter of baubles - pretty glass toys, red, green, blue, yellow, white.

A lizard, abandoned here by his fellows, would no doubt be happy enough in the end.

With a sigh, Falk turned back to the building. The door opened before him, and he collected his belongings, fastened down his helmet, strapped on his knapsack again.

The sky was dark now, and Falk paused to look up at the familiar sweep of the Milky Way. Then he switched on his helmet light and turned toward the waiting Doorway.

The light fell across the burst box the lizards had left, and Falk saw a hard edge of something thrusting out. It was not the glassy adamant of the Doorway builders; it looked like stone, Falk stooped and tore the box aside.

He saw a slab of rock, roughly smoothed to the shape of a wedge. On its upper face, characters were incised. They were in English.

With blood pounding in his ears, Falk knelt by the stone and read what was written there.

THE DOORWAYS STOP THE AGING PROCESS. I WAS 32 WHEN I LEFT MARS, AM HARDLY OLDER NOW THOUGH I HAVE BEEN TRAVELING FROM STAR TO STAR FOR A TIME I BELIEVE CANNOT BE LESS THAN 20 YRS. BUT YOU MUST KEEP ON. I STOPPED HERE 2 YRS. FOUND MYSELF AGING. —HAVE OBSERVED THAT MILKY WAY LOOKS NEARLY THE SAME FROM ALL PLANETS SO FAR VISITED. THIS CANNOT BE COINCIDENCE. BELIEVE THAT DOORWAY TRAVEL IS RANDOM ONLY WITHIN CONCENTRIC BELTS OF STARS & THAT SOONER OR LATER YOU HIT DOORWAY WHICH GIVES ENTRY TO NEXT INNERMOST BELT. IF I AM RIGHT, FINAL DESTINATION IS CENTER OF GALAXY. I HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE.

JAMES E. TANNER

NATIVE OF EARTH.

Falk stood up, blinded by the glory of the vision that grew in his mind. He thought he understood now why the Doorways were not selective and why their makers no longer used them.

Once - a billion years ago, perhaps - they must have been uncontested owners of the galaxy. But many of their worlds were small planets like Mars - too small to keep their atmospheres and their water forever. Millions of years ago, they must have begun to fall back from these. And meanwhile, Falk thought, on the greater worlds just now cooling, the lesser breeds had arisen: the crawling, brawling things. The lizards. The men. Things not worthy of the stars.

But even a man could learn if he lived long enough, journeyed far enough. James Tanner had signed himself not “TERRAN SPACE CORPS” or “U.S.A.” but “NATIVE OF EARTH.”

So the way was made long, and the way was made hard; and the lesser breeds stayed on their planets. But for a man, or a lizard, who would give up all that he called “life” for knowledge, the way was open.

Falk turned off the beam of his head lamp and looked up at the diamond mist of the galaxy. Where would he be a thousand years from today? Standing on that mote of light, or that, or that… ?

Not dust, at any rate. Not dust, unmourned, unworthy. He would be a voyager with a destination, and perhaps half his journey would be done.

Wolfert would wait in vain for his return, but it would not matter; Wolfert was happy - if you called that happiness. And on Earth, the mountains would rise and fall long after the question of human survival had been forgotten.

Falk, by that time, perhaps, would be home.