James Blish

“ The light struck it full, and Andreson gasped and sat bolt upright.
She was winged, no doubt about that. But the bat-like impression those wings had given him seemed to have been only a product of distance. Seen in closeup, the wings were tawny and delicate, and traced with intricate veins, their ribs were close-set, the webbing like the sheerest silk. They rose from the girl's back where her shoulderblades should have been, and at rest curved around her sides and made a backdrop for her legs and feet. ”

“ Honath the Pursemaker was hauled from the nets an hour before the rest of the prisoners, as befitted his role as the arch-doubter of them all. It was not yet dawn, but his captors led him in great bounds through the endless, musky-perfumed orchid gardens, small dark shapes with crooked legs, hunched shoulders, slim hairless tails carried, like his, in concentric spirals wound clockwise. Behind them sprang Honath on the end of a long tether, timing his leaps by theirs, since any slip would hang him summarily. ”

“ Wings battered him, and Atel's club thudded against his ribs.
The levitator could climb faster than the Varan could, and Andreson had a moment's respite. Grimly he kept on going, until a growing sense of pressure and heat warned him that the rock dome was near. Should he try to lose himself among the city towers, or yell to Johnny Kimball for help?
His whole heart turned from the thought. His earthly life had not kept him in very good physical shape, but he'd always fought his own battles. It made no difference that his life was the stake of this one. ”

“ Honath looked at the navigator curiously. Seth's bolt for the sky had distracted him from the realization that the basket, too, was gone, but now that desolate fact hit home. "You actually plan to stay alive in Hell, don't you, Alaskon?"
"Certainly," Alaskon said calmly. "This is no more Hell than—up there—is Heaven. It's the surface of the planet, no more, no less. We can stay alive if we don't panic. Were you just going to sit here until the furies came for you, Honath?" ”

“ There had never been anybody on board SV-1 but Gascoigne, not since he had relieved Grinnell—and Grinnell had flown the station up here in the first place.
Then who had that sergeant been? His name was—It was—
The hammering of the teletype blanked it out. The noise was as loud as a pom-pom in the echoing metal cave. He got up and coasted across the deck to the machine, gliding in the gravity-free cabin with the ease of a man to whom free fall is almost second nature.
The teletype was silent by the time he reached it, and at first the tape looked blank. He wiped the sweat out of his eyes. ”

“ Her sweet, chiming voice drifted back tauntingly.
"Explain to the beasts!"
For a moment Andreson hung motionless in his harness, keenly aware that he was perhaps the loneliest man since Adam. The city looked like a tinsel toy below him, and all around him was darkness and silence; the nearest human being was the only one within millenia of him, and among the Varese he had just one friend—maybe.
Out of the murk a voice called mockingly. "What are you dreaming, Earthman? Or should we say—plotting?"
Andreson recognized the voice for Atel's, but could not place its direction. ”

“ Carson held the under-secretary's eyes grimly. "Now, answer me this question: why is it that, despite all these protections, every single person in an opened city dies?"
"I don't know," Hamelin said, staring at each of them in turn. "By your showing, some of them should recover."
"They should," Carson said. "But nobody does. Why? Because the very nature of disease has changed since we all went underground. There are now abroad in the world a number of mutated bacterial strains which can bypass the immunity mechanisms of the human body altogether. ”

“ He found nothing but a nondescript and unhappy alley-cat which ran at his approach.
Discouraged, Hugh went back the way he had come and set out in search of the public square and an astrologer. As he walked, he gradually became conscious of a growing current of people moving in the same direction, a current which was swelled by additions from every street and byway they passed. There was a predominance of holiday finery, and he remembered the giant's words about a parade. Well, he'd just follow the crowd; it would make finding the square that much easier. ”

“ Atel said succinctly. "The metal, of course, is useless, but the vacuum inside is steel-hard to them. Space crushing into space, and gouts of hard radiation bursting like blood from the contact. That's all we have now, that and a feeble energising process which sometimes seals off the foundations of the city. Walls, and clubs! Our last miserable recourses—and then—
"Then the space-beasts will own the Earth again." ”

“ There was no way to tell how far up into the dusk the way had taken them, but Honath suspected that they were already somewhat above the level of their own vine-web world. The air smelled colder and sharper than it ever had above the jungle.
The final cut in the cliffs through which the stream fell was another chimney. It was steeper and more smooth-walled than the one which had taken them out of the gorge under the waterfall, but narrow enough to be climbed by bracing one's back against one side, and one's hands and feet against the other. ”

“ Joan had been following his career, too, not because she had ever met him, but because for her he was a type study in the evolution of what she called "the extra-legal ego." "With personalities like that, respectability is a disease," she told me. "There's always an almost-open conflict between the desire to be powerful and the desire to be accepted; your ordinary criminal is a moral imbecile, but people like Braun are damned with a conscience, and sooner or later they crack trying to appease it." ”

“ Hugh forced himself back to a semblance of calmness, and had sense enough to say nothing of Evelyn. "Who—what is he?" he gasped. The other looked at him tensely for a moment, then, reassured, let go of him.
"That's Yero. He's called many names, but the most common is The Enemy. Better get used to seeing him. You can't help hating him, but it'll do you no good to fly off the handle like that."
"You mean everybody hates him?"
The townsman frowned. "Why, certainly. He's The Enemy." ”

“ As they stole cautiously closer to the foothills of the Great Range and the ground became firmer, they were able to take to the air for short stretches, but they were no sooner aloft among the willows than the lizard-birds came squalling down on them by the dozens, fighting among each other for the privilege of nipping these plump and incredibly slow-moving monkeys.
No man, no matter how confirmed a free-thinker, could have stood up under such an onslaught by the creatures he had been taught as a child to think of as his ancestors. ”

“ Gascoigne's mouth twisted, but he seemed to be entirely unaware of the grimace. "That's all hogwash," he said. "I never did hold with that psychological claptrap. It's you that's handing out the baloney, not me."
"Then why are you being so vituperative about it? Hogwash, claptrap, baloney—you are working awfully hard to knock it down, for a man who doesn't believe in it." ”

“ Hamelin ground out his fifth cigarette in Mudgett's ashtray and placed the tips of his fingers together thoughtfully. Carson wondered just how much of the concept of recognition-marking the under-secretary had absorbed. It had to be admitted that he was astonishingly quick to take hold of abstract ideas, but the self-marker theory of immunity was—like everything else in immunology—almost impossible to explain to laymen, no matter how intelligent.
"This process," Hamelin said hesitantly. "It takes a long time?"
"About six hours per subject, and we can handle only one man at a time. ”

“ The looping, interwoven network of vines beneath them, each cable as thick through as a man's body, bellied out and down sharply as the leapers reached the edge of the fern-tree forest which surrounded the copse of fan-palms. The whole party stopped before beginning the descent and looked eastward, across the dim bowl. The stars were paling more and more rapidly; only the bright constellation of the Parrot could still be picked out without doubt.
"A fine day," one of the guards said, conversationally. "Better to go below on a sunny day than in the rain, pursemaker." ”

“ Andreson remembered again the picture of the deserted city, and despite the hot sun he felt the same chill.
"This planet you call Earth," Atel said, "has no life on its surface now with enough intelligence to count up to three. But after we had been here fifty-three of its years, we discovered that Earth has a civilization of its own all the same—inside." ”

“ Hugh bounded out hastily.
"Yero establishes himself in the fortress of Dis, which is what that pile of chromium junk is, up on the hill, after you get behind the disguise. Each time he comes, he makes a tour through the town, showing himself to each newcomer in a form which will mean the most to that person. The important thing is that few people take kindly to being corrected in the fundamental kinds of mistakes that bring them here, so that nine times out of ten Yero's appearance to you makes you hate him." ”

“ That was the crucial turn in the criminal policy of these people. A spirit of revolt is not quite enough, but couple it with brains and—ecce homo!"
Honath's head was swimming. "But what does all this mean?" he said. "Are we—not condemned to Hell any more?"
"No, you're still condemned, if you still want to call it that," Jarl Eleven said soberly. "You've learned how to live down there, and you've found out something even more valuable: how to stay alive while cutting down your enemies. Do you know that you killed three demons with your bare hands, you and Mathild and Alaskon?" ”

“ The girl, who had been preceding them, stopped at the top of the stairwell and levelled a dainty finger at Atel. "Why don't you stop tormenting him because he's not a scientist?" she demanded angrily. "It isn't his fault! He's doing his best for us!"
Atel's eyebrows would have shot up, had he had any. "Certainly," he purred, with an ironical gesture. "I'm sure you understand my attitude, Mr. Andreson. As a non-scientist, you are more of a curiosity than a gift, and that is a disappointment to us. We shall try to make your stay here as comfortable—and as short—as possible." ”

“ From here, it was evident that the gorge itself was only the bottom of a far greater cleft, a split in the pink-and-grey cliffs as sharp as though it had been riven in the rock by a bolt of sheet lightning. Beyond the basalt pillars from which the fall issued, however, the stream foamed over a long ladder of rock shelves which seemed to lead straight up into the sky.
"That way?" Mathild said.
"Yes, and as fast as possible," Alaskon said, shading his eyes. "It must be late. I don't think the light will last much longer."
"We'll have to go single file," Honath added. ”

“ A single figure, man-like, but borne aloft on taut, delicate wings which suggested a bat rather than a human, floated over the nearest of the towers. A quick glance revealed that all the paintings but one contained several of these shapes; the one exception was a field of stars with a torpedo streaking across it. ”

“ It had been luck, too, which had forced Honath to skirt the pool in order to reach the falls at all, and thus had taken them all behind the silver curtain at the point where the weight of the falling water was too low to hammer them down for good. And it had been the blindest stroke of all that the demon had charged after them directly into the pool, where the deep, boiling water had slowed its thrashing hind legs enough to halt it before it went under the falls, as it had earlier blundered into the hard wall of the gorge. ”

“ Andreson growled. "How near through are you?"
"Almost. I'm not trying to hit the gallery, though it might be easier that way." Suddenly he became serious. "I'll tell you what, Ken. It's a new life we're going back to—a life where you and I can look back into the past whenever we want, and visit it, too, if we keep quiet about it. And it's a new world we're going back to, a world which is going to be given the levitator. That means free flight—not just flight in machines, but real flight, where one man can fly whenever, wherever he wants, without having to board a plane or pay a fare. ”

“ No one had ever come back from as little as one hundred days in Hell. No one had ever come back from Hell at all.
"Unlash the Elevator. All shall go together."
The basket swayed. The last of the attic world that Honath saw was a circle of faces, not too close to the gap in the vine web, peering down after them. Then the basket fell another few yards to the next turn of the windlass and the faces vanished.
Seth was weeping in the bottom of the Elevator, curled up into a tight ball, the end of his tail wrapped around his nose and eyes. No one else could make a sound, least of Honath. ”

“ Atel was not fighting another winged man. He was fighting an Earthman with a levitator. That scrap between the buildings—had Atel given such a buffeting to a Varan he would have knocked him and that would have been the end of it. But the levitator couldn't be knocked out, no matter what happened to the man operating it. It wouldn't fall unless it was set to fall.
There was something else, too. Birds fly because they're built for it—among other things they have a huge keel-like breastbone to which their flying muscles are anchored. But bats don't, and Andreson bet that the Varans didn't either. ”

“ But we are decadent, and have lost the initiative to be the aggressors. The machines that accomplished the reversal of state for our ancestors have lain idle for a century in the bowels of our city. We no longer understand them. We are dying, first of all, of old age—the space-beasts are the accident that speeds us along the way. Shall I tell you what we use against them now?"
The girl stirred protestingly. Andreson looked at her, but she would not return the glance. Atel went on relentlessly. ”