eyes. "You would, yes.But you will have contact with no one but me. Perhaps with theMasters--if I can take you to them. They may help us, but they arestrange, unpredictable. Remember, I promise nothing and you come at yourown risk. But your disease will harm no one--I'm inoculated, and theMasters are immune. If you overstay the limit and cannot return, youwill be decontaminated just as we must be when we return to our ownpeople.
"Here, in this room, is the place where the people of our colony onVenus were decontaminated before they could be allowed to enter theplace of refuge the Masters had prepared for them. It is a cruel andharrowing experience. I know. There may be a way to get you safely back,without that. But your mind could never stand the shock. Understandthat, before you choose."
"If it won't harm you, I'll go along," Newlin decided. "Almost any worldwould be an improvement on this."
"Don't be too sure," she warned. "At worst, the terror here is familiar.Come, then. Hold my hand, stay close, and try not to be frightened. Itwill be bad enough. And try not to change too much, or I will havedifficulty returning you alive."
The portal swallowed her, and Newlin felt himself drawn into theforce-vortex, still clinging to her hand.
* * * * *
Transition was mild enough, less shock than he had expected.
A moment of chill detachment, as if something indescribably coldshattered his body into component atoms and readjusted them to newpatterns. He gasped, his body making the same thermal changes as if hestood under a cold shower. He shivered.
Then it was like coming out of the blanketing fog of horror into thesunlight of sanity; like rebirth, painlessly, into an eeryother-dimension.
There was light and sound about him, a stir of cool air. Songeen hadbecome separated from him in that moment of strange passage. She stoodapart, watching him with laughter in her eyes. Laughter as cool and calmand soothing as the soft wind that riffled her hair. She had strippedoff the bulky armor, shed her plastic helmet. Now she was all womanagain, and somehow, oddly, a symbol of all women.
Other senses than his five sprang into life within him. Weird_awareness_ through new perceptions which were nameless to his mind orto his memory.
At first there was no terror, no surprise. Merely an overwhelming_difference_.
Overhead was starless night, but not darkness. It was a vaulted,infinite sky, like an inverted ocean of tinted crystal, transparent, butsoftly colored, deepening imperceptibly to a heart of emerald, a-glowwith faintest witchlights. All around him was a maze of shimmeringcrystal in odd forms, grotesque, clear but echoing the witchlights ofthat haunted sky.
Wind-borne, came the faint, sweet chiming of distinct porcelain bells.The place was alive with movement, sensed but incompletely seen. Eventhe wind flowed in almost visible currents, thickened as if the air hadbecome dense, molten glass. All forms in the maze of crystal variedconstantly. Light flared and died in odd rhythms, and the almost visiblewinds played icy arpeggios upon strings of spun glass, like Aeolianharps. Showering notes like those of Chinese windbells hung in clustersin the eddies of great wind rivers, and both sound and light flowedtogether and wove strange patterns and infinite variations.
It was not quite pleasant, vaguely nerve-tightening, but highlystimulating. Sound was muted at first, as was the light. Images blurredand outlines were unsteady, baffling. Everything fused and flowedtogether like half molten shards of broken glass. Wavelengths oftroubled sound formed trembling notes that hung in the air, almostvisible, crystalline and somehow painfully dissonant.
Like Songeen, her world or the pathway to it was strange, alien, butpoignantly beautiful.
It was stranger than he thought.
He realized almost at once that his mind was making adjustments. It waslying to him, translating unfamiliar concepts into terms known tomemory. It was diluting and enfeebling his sensations. But dread grew inhim.
When his mind tired, stopped lying to him, what would it really be like?Could he stand the factual perception?
They trod the forest aisles of crystalline forms. There was light, ofodd, gray, glary kind. A twilight, silvery, unreal as the trans-Lunardreams of drugged poets. Songeen moved ahead slowly, making no effort toregain her clasp of his hand. Almost she seemed to avoid him, waitinguntil he almost overtook her, then skimming lightly away from him. Herslim, pale witchery was both taunt and challenge. She appeared to floatrather than walk.
One by one she dropped her clinging robes. She became part of the madforest, part of its dreamy gray enchantments.
Light grew steadily, and with it came more color, more magic, and moreconfusion of senses. The forest-forms assumed strange geometries. Theystretched about him in endless vistas, blurring and transmuting as hewatched. The dream-like cloudiness was fading from his perceptions. Hecaught dreadful hints now and then of new, unheard-of forms and colors,of unstable geometries as far beyond Einstein's as his were beyondEuclid's. Nothing was tangible or definite, and perhaps that was thesecret. Nothing ever is. Fear wove a crystalline web about Newlin'sthroat, strangling.
He halted and took stock. Ahead, Songeen waited, watching him, herfigure a pale, elfin flame form against the shadowy mass of coloredcrystals. It was a forest of gemfires, and she was the purest jewel ofthe forest. Naked, alien, but--
* * * * *
Why had he come here? His mind balked at backtracking. There was nogoing back. Perhaps he had already come too far. Was Songeen a vampireluring him into the hideous depths of this unknown place? He had beenhere before. It was like that awful illusion in the tower, but muted.How much did he perceive? How much was sheerest self-deception? Was hemad in the midst of awful sanity, or sane in the ultimate horror oflunacy?
Her voice floated back to him, its sound the chiming crash ofsplintering glass.
"Try not to change too much," she warned.
"Change?" Even the word sounded strange to him, as she said it. He felta swift surge of anger. There was no change in him--_none_!
The tinkling bell-tones matched the swirl of his emotion and rose tojangling, tormented heights. It was shrill, maniacal tumult, that rangedupward and upward into octaves beyond sound. It was a rollicking,tortured insanity. Windbells chiming, jangled; tinkling, shimmering,exploding inside his brain. Windbells shattering in a hurricane of soundand ecstasy.
With his fists, Newlin pounded at his bursting skull. Pain deadenedperception, gave him a moment's relief.
He was not changing, he shouted in loud defense. He was not!
Songeen poised, watching. Her body-outlines swirled and altered in swiftmutations before his eyes. She was not woman now. Not even human. Shedanced and flickered and gibbered at him. She was jeweled movement.Change. She was as crystalline as the forest, as molten emerald as thesky. Points of fire inside her caught and flared and burned inside hiseyes. She was not Songeen!
Newlin screamed. He looked down at his hands. He screamed again, louder.His hands were transparent as glass, and as fluid as water. Outlineswavered, changed.
"Try not to change too much," Songeen pleaded. But her voice joined theclattering crystalline tumult which raged about him. He was cracking. Hecould feel the seams in his mind giving way.
Like a great, floundering beast, he charged toward her. Forms of brittlecrystal shattered at his touch. Shattered into sound and pain. Theforest-forms changed color, echoing his violence. New vortices ofmovement converged upon him. Perceptions expanded and radiance showeredabout him, through him.
The hovering, dancing crystal notes were now visible. Beads of light,dripping from a sky of light. They were sound a color, bright, burstingbubbles of sound. Their rhythmic tempos increased, murmur swelled intoinsistent roaring and the jangling of insane dissonance. Vitreousgrotesques shimmered like a forest of aspens quivering in wind andsunlight. Glassy fragments of splintered sound poured in floods from skyand ground. Trampled grass gave way under his feet in brittle crunching,and the brush shivered at his touch, dissolving into chill slivers ofsl
ashing sound.
Blood was dripping. The forest changed color, as if crimson stain spreadthrough it. Hellish glare was a roaring torrent of musical color. Redstains spread swiftly, dying the crystal columns, the glassy sward,seeping into the reeling brain.
There was blood. The taste of it in his mouth, the hot, salt smell, thesound of its dripping. He swam in seas of ruby light, crashing andplunging wildly, sinking into its crimson depths. Red light thickenedaround him, deepened, smothering.
The darkness was red, fire-shot, roaring....
Then pain and timeless darkness.
Newlin awakened slowly, to ugly tension in his mind. Shadows likebeating wings disturbed his memory.
The churning light and sound were gone. He drifted idly, body and mindcoming softly to rest upon a bank of soft grass.
Someone knelt beside him. Someone cried softly, to the same murmurousrhythms of the crystalline forest. Without opening his eyes he sensedthis, and knew also that he was still within the eery precincts