Astounding Science Fiction (British Edition), August 1944 — page 63: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ENVIRONMENT 61 its passengers. Everything was orderly and neat—more, even in the most excellent con- dition. Nothing written had been left behind, not the slightest scrap of rotting paper. Gaynor whispered. “They did come here, then. And the same thing happened to them that happened to all the rest of the people who landed here. The same thing, I’m sure, that happened to the builders of the city. Why did they leave these ships behind? Where did they go? What could have hap- pened to them?” © Harlan shook his red head somberly. “We'd better not know that. If we stay and try to find out, the same thing will happen to us. That government expedition which discovered this planet encountered the same mystery—but they didn’t try to find out. They returned to Earth. Jon—we’d better get back to the Paragon. We'd better leave while we can.” “And in time more people would come to settle here. And there would be more empty ships.” Gaynor’s lips tightened to a stubborn line. “Wade—I’m not leaving until I crack the mystery of this place. I’m going to find what happened to old Mark and the Purists. We’ve been warned—we'll be on the alert.” Harlan met Gaynor’ s determined gaze, and then he looked away. He moistened his lips. After a long moment he gave a stiff nod. His voice was very low. “Then we’ve got to start at the beginning, Jon. Those pictures—” “Yes, Wade, the pictures. I’m sure they hold the answer to the whole thing. We’ve got to find that beginning. You’ve noticed how the city is strung out. At one end is the beginning, at the other—” “The end!” Harlan said abruptly. “No. Wade. The answer.” They returned first to the Paragon, to satisfy pangs of hunger too intense to be ignored any longer. Then, donning their antigravity flight units once more, they took to the air. They circled several times, set out finally for a point on the horizon where the city thinned out and finally terminated. Their flight ended at a single, slender tower set in the midst of a parklike expanse. That they had reached the end of the city, they knew, for ahead of them no other building was in sight. They floated to the ground, stared silently at the tower. It glowed with a chaste whiteness in the late afternoon light—serene, somewhat aloof, lovely in its simplicity and solitariness. Harlan spoke softly. “The beginning? Or —the end?” ““That’s what we have to find out,” nor responded. “We're going Wade.” The interior of the tower was dark and cool, filled with the solemn hush of a cathedral. It consisted solely of one great room, its ceiling lost in sheerness of height. And except for the ever-present wall paint- ings, it was empty—utterly bare. 7 Gaynor and Harlan gazed at the paintings, and then they looked at each other, and slowly they nodded. Silently they left. “That .. . that wasn’t the beginning,” Harlan stated slowly. ° “No, Wade. That was—the end. The be- ginning lies on the opposite side of the city. But we'll have to postpone our investigation until morning. We wouldn’t reach the other end of the city until dark.” They returned to the Paragon. The sun was setting behind the towers of the city to the east. sinking into a glory of rose and gold. Slowly the paling fingers of its radi- Gay- in ~ there, ance withdrew from the city. Night came in all its starry splendor. Gaynor and Harlan were up with the dawn. Eagerness to be back at their investi- gations fired them. They hurried impatiently through breakfast. Then, attaching kits of emergency ration concentrates to their belts and donning their anti-gravity flight units, they took to the air. As they flew, Gaynor and Harlan had to remind themselves that this was the second day of their visit and not the first, so closely did the new day resemble the one preceding. Nothing had changed. The city beneath them still dreamed on. And far away and high in the blue, glittering clouds of the crystal creatures darted and danced, their chimings and tinklings sounding like echoes of ee from an elfin world. The sun was bright and warm when Gaynor and Harlan reached the end of the city opposite the one which they had in- vestigated the day before. Here they found no slender tower. There was nothing to show that this part of the city was in any way different from the rest. The general plan of tower-encircled courts was the same as everywhere else. The city merely ter- minated—or looking at it the other way, merely began. Gaynor and Harlan glided down into one of the very first of the tower-encircled QO Comuicbooks CO