aguess, McAllen had constructed it as a secure personal retreat in theevent of something like a nuclear holocaust. But, in that case, whyvacate it now for Barney Chard?
Too many questions, he thought. Better just keep looking around.
* * * * *
The blank metal face on the grandfather clock swung back to reveal agroup of four dials, each graduated in a different manner, only one ofthem immediately familiar. Barney studied the other three for someseconds, then their meaning suddenly came clear. The big clock hadjust finished softly talking away the fourth hour of the first day ofthe first month of Year One. There were five figures on the Year Dial.
He stared at it. A five-year period of--something seemed to be the keyto the entire setup.
Barney shook his head. Key it might be, but not one he could readwithout additional data. He snapped the cover disk shut on theunpleasantly suggestive dials, and began to go mentally over McAllen'sletter.
The business that in twenty-four hours--twenty now--the manner ofleaving the cabin would become "apparent" to him--that seemed todispose of the possibility of being buried underground here. McAllenwould hardly have provided him with a personal model of the Tube; hemust be speaking of an ordinary door opening on the immediateenvironment, equipped with a time lock.
In that case, where was the door?
Barney made a second, far more careful search. Three hours later, heconcluded it. He'd still found no trace of an exit. But the panelingin any of the rooms might slide aside to reveal one at the indicatedtime, or a section of the floor might swing back above a trap door.There was no point in attempting to press the search any further.After all, he only had to wait.
On the side, he'd made other discoveries. After opening a number ofcrates in the storage room, and checking contents of the freezer, hecould assume that there was in fact more than enough food here tosustain one man for five years. Assuming the water supply heldout--there was no way of checking on it; the source of the water likethat of the power and the ventilation lay outside the area which wasaccessible to him--but if the water could be depended on, he wouldn'tgo hungry or thirsty. Even tobacco and liquor were present incomparably liberal quantities. The liquor he'd seen was all good;almost at random he had selected a bottle of cognac and brought it anda glass to the main room with him. The thought of food wasn'tattractive at the moment. But he could use a drink.
He half filled the glass, emptied it with a few swallows, refilled itand took it over to one of the armchairs. He began to feel morerelaxed almost at once. But the truth was, he acknowledged, settlingback in the chair, that the situation was threatening to unnerve himcompletely. Everything he'd seen implied McAllen's letter came closeto stating the facts; what wasn't said became more alarming by asuggestion of deliberate vagueness. Until that melodramaticallycamouflaged door was disclosed--seventeen hours from now--he'd bebetter off if he didn't try to ponder the thing out.
And the best way to do that might be to take a solid load on rapidly,and then sleep away as much of the intervening time as possible.
He wasn't ordinarily a hard drinker, but he'd started on the secondbottle before the cabin began to blur on him. Afterwards, he didn'tremember making it over to the bed.
* * * * *
Barney woke up ravenous and without a trace of hangover. Making amental adjustment to his surroundings took no more time than openinghis eyes; he'd been dreaming Dr. McAllen had dropped him into a snakepit and was sadistically dangling a rope twelve feet above his head,inviting him to climb out. To find himself still in the softly litcabin was--for a few seconds, at any rate--a relief.
The relief faded as he sat up and looked at his watch. Still over anhour to go before McAllen's idiotic door became "apparent." Barneyswore and headed for the bathroom to freshen up.
There was an electric shaver there, the end of its cord vanishing intothe wall. Barney used it as meticulously as if he were embarking on aday of normal activities, prepared a breakfast in the kitchen and tookit to the main room. He ate unhurriedly, absorbed in his thoughts, nowand then glancing about the room. After a few minutes he uneasilypushed back the plate and stood up. If McAllen's twenty-four hoursbegan with the moment the big clock in the room had been started, thedoor should be in evidence by now.
Another tour of the place revealed nothing and left him nervous enoughto start biting his nails. He moved about the room, looking overthings he'd already investigated. A music cabinet--he'd thought it wasa radio at first, but it was only an elaborate hi-fi record player;two enclosed racks of records went with it--mainly classical stuffapparently. And a narrow built-in closet with three polished fishingrods and related gear, which would have allowed for speculation on thenature of the cabin's surroundings, except that McAllen might feelcompelled to have a sampling of his toys around him wherever he was.Barney closed the closet door morosely, stood regarding the twocrowded bookcases next to it. Plenty of books--reflecting the McAllentaste again. Technical tomes. Great Literature. Dickens, Melville, theLife of Gandhi.
Barney grunted, and was turning away when another title caught hiseye. He glanced back at it, hauled out the book:
"Fresh Water Game Fish; Tested Methods of Their Pursuit." The author:O. B. McAllen.
Barney was opening the book when the cabin's door also opened.
* * * * *
Bright light--daylight--filled the room with so sudden a gush thatBarney's breath caught in his throat. The book seemed to leap out ofhis hands. With the same glance he saw then the low, wide picturewindow which abruptly had appeared in the opposite wall, occupyingalmost half its space--and, in the other wall on the far left, a bigdoor which was still swinging slowly open into the room. Daylightpoured in through window and door. And beyond them--
For seconds he stared at the scene outside, barely aware of what hewas looking at, while his mind raced on. He had searched every inch ofthe walls. And those thick wooden panels hadn't simply slid aside; thesurfaces of doorframe and window were flush with the adjoining wallsections. So the McAllen Tube was involved in these changes in theroom--and he might have guessed, Barney thought, that McAllen wouldhave found more than one manner of putting the space-twistingproperties of his device to use. And then finally he realized what hewas seeing through the window and beyond the door. He walked slowly upto the window, still breathing unevenly.
The scene was unfamiliar but not at all extraordinary. The cabinappeared to be part way up one side of a heavily forested, rathernarrow valley. It couldn't be more than half a mile to the valley'sfar slope which rose very steeply, almost like a great cresting greenwave, filling the entire window. Coming closer Barney saw the skylineabove it, hazy, summery, brilliantly luminous. This cabin of McAllen'smight be in one of the wilder sections of the Canadian Rockies.
Or--and this was a considerably less happy thought--it probably couldhave been set up just as well in some area like the Himalayas.
But a more immediate question was whether the cabin actually _was_ inthe valley or only appearing to be there. The use of the Tube made itpossible that this room and its seeming surroundings were very farapart in fact. And just what would happen to him then if he decided tostep outside?
There were scattered sounds beyond the open door: bird chirpings andwhistles, and the continuous burring calls of what Barney decidedwould be a wild pigeon. Then a swirl of wind stirred the nearerbranches. He could feel the wash of the breeze in the room.
It looked and sounded--and felt--all right.
Barney scowled undecidedly, clearing his throat, then discovered thata third item had appeared in the room along with the door and thewindow. In the wall just this side of the door at shoulder-height wasa small ivory plate with two black switches on it. Presumably thecontrols for door and window....
Barney went over, gingerly touched the one on the right, watching thewindow; then flicked up the switch. Instantly, the window hadvanished, the wood paneling again covered th
e wall. Barney turned theswitch down. The window was back.
The door refused to disappear until he pushed it shut. Then it obeyedits switch with the same promptness.
He went back across the room, returned with one of McAllen's fishingpoles, and edged its tip tentatively out through the door. He wouldn'thave been surprised if the tip had disintegrated in that instant. Butnothing at all occurred. He dug about with the pole in the loose earthbeyond the doorsill, then drew it back. The breeze was flowing freelypast him; a few grains of soil blew over the sill and into the room.The door seemed to be concealing no grisly tricks and looked to besafe enough.
Barney stepped out on the sill, moved on a few hesitant steps, stoodlooking about. He had a better view of the valley here--and the betterview told him immediately that he was not in the Canadian Rockies. Atleast, Canada, to his knowledge, had no desert. And, on the left, thisvalley came to an end