The great column of fire was marching over the sun's edge, like a thunderstorm passing beyond the horizon. The scurrying flecks of light no longer moved across the redly glowing starscape still thousands of miles below. Inside his bola, defended from an environment that could destroy him in milliseconds, Maisam Dhala awaited whatever had been prepared for him.494Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7oFmGayx2F
The White Dwarf was shrinking fast as it hurtled along its orbit; presently it touched the horizon, set it afire, and vanished. A false twilight fell upon the inferno beneath, and in the sudden change of illumination Dhala became aware that something was happening in the space surrounding him.
The world of the red sun seemed to ripple, as though he were looking at it through running water. Was this some kind of refractive effect caused by the passage of an unusually violent shockwave through the tortured atmosphere in which he was immersed.
The light was fading; it appeared that a second twilight was about to fall. Involuntarily, Dhala looked upward, then checked himself sheepishly, as he remembered that here the main light source was not the sky, but the blazing planet below.
It seemed like walls of some material like smoked glass were thickening around him, cutting out the red glow and obscuring the view. It became darker and darker; the faint roar of the celestial hurricanes also faded away. The bola was floating in silence and night.
Bump!
The bola had now settled on some hard surface and come to rest.
To rest on what? Dhala asked himself incredulously. Then light returned; and incredulity gave way to a gut-wrenching despair---for as he saw what lay around him, he knew that he must have gone mad.
He was ready, or so he thought, for any wonder. The only thing he had never expected was the utterly commonplace.
The bola was resting on the polished floor of an opulent, anonymous hotel suite that might have been in any big city on Earth. He was staring into a living room with a coffee table, a divan, twelve chairs, a writing desk, various lamps, a half-filled bookcase with some magazines lying on it, and even a vase of flowers. Van Gogh's Bridge at Arles was hanging on one wall--Wyeth Christina's World on another. He felt confident that when he pulled open the drawer of that desk, he would find a Gideon Bible in it....
If he was indeed crazy, his delusions were prettily organized. All was real, perfectly real; nothing vanished when he turned his back. The only incongruous element in the scene--and that surely a major one---was the bola itself.
For many minutes, Dhala did not move from his seat. He half expected the vision around him to fade away, but it stayed as solid as anything he had ever seen in his adult life.
Was it real? Or was it really a phantom of the senses so expertly contrived that there was no way of telling it apart from reality? Was it some kind of test? If so, would not only his fate but that of the human race depend upon what he did, or failed to do, in the next few minutes?
Yes, he could sit here and wait for something to happen, or he could open the bola and step outside to change the reality of the scene around him. The floor seemed to be solid---it was, at least, bearing the weight of the bola. He was unlikely to fall through it---whatever "it" was.
But there was still the question of air; for all that he could tell, this room might be in vacuum, or might possess a poisonous atmosphere. He thought it highly unlikely---nobody would go to all this trouble without attending to such a vital detail--but he didn't want to take unnecessary chances. In any case, his years of training made him wary of contamination; he was reluctant to expose himself to an unknown environment until he knew that he had no choice. This place looked like a hotel room somewhere in Brazil. That did not alter the fact that in reality he must be hundreds of light-years from the Solar System.
He closed the helmet of his suit, sealing himself in, and actuated the hatch of the bola. There was a brief hiss of pressure equalization; then he stepped out into the room.
As far as he could tell, he was in a perfectly normal gravity field. He raised one arm, then let it fall freely. It flopped to his side in less than one second.
This made everything seem doubly unreal. Here he was wearing a spacesuit, standing---when he should have been floating---outside a vehicle which could only function correctly in a zero-gravity environment. All his normal astronauta's reflexes were upset; he had to think before he made every movement.
Like a man in a fugue state he walked slowly from his bare, unfurnished half of the room toward the hotel suite. It did not, as he had almost expected, vanish as he approached, but stayed perfectly real---and apparently perfectly solid.
He halted beside the coffee table. On it sat a conventional Telefónica Brasil vision-phone, complete with the local directory. He bent down and picked up the volume with his clumsy, gloved hands.
It bore, in the familiar type he had seen thousands of times, the name: BRASILIA. Then he looked more closely, and for the first time, he had objective proof that, although all this might be real, he was not on Earth.
He could read only the world Brasilia; the rest of the painting was a blur, as if had been copied from a newspaper photograph. He opened the book at random and riffled through the pages. They were all blank sheets of crisp white material which was surely not paper, though it looked very much like it.
He lifted the telephone receiver and pressed it against the plastic of his helmet. If there had been a dial tone he could have heard it through the conducting material. But, as he had expected, there was only silence.
So---it was all a fake, though a fantastically careful one. And it was clearly not intended to deceive but rather (he hoped) reassure. That was a very comforting thought; nevertheless he would not take off his suit until he had completed his voyage of exploration. All the furniture seemed sound and solid enough; he tried the chairs, and they all supported his weight. But the drawers in the desk refused to open; they were fakes.
As were the books and the magazines, as was the telephone directory, only the titles were readable. They formed an odd selection---mostly rather trashy best sellers, a few sensational works of nonfiction, and some well-publicized autobiographies. There was nothing less than 3 years old, and little of any intellectual content. Not that it mattered, as the books could not even be taken down from the shelves.
There were two doors that opened readily enough. The first one took him into a small but comfortable bedroom, fitted with a bed, bureau, two chairs, light switches that actually worked (!), and a clothes closet. He opened this, and found himself looking at 4 suits, a dressing gown, twelve white shirts, and several sets of underwear, all neatly draped from hangers.
He took down one of the suits, and inspected it carefully. As far as his gloved hands could judge, it was made of material that was more like fur than wool. It was also a little out of style; on Earth, no one had been wearing single-breasted suits for at least one hundred years.
Next to the bedroom was a bathroom, complete with fittings that, he was relieved to note, were not fakes, but worked in a perfectly normal manner. And after that was a kitchenette, with electric cooker, refrigerator, storage cupboards, crockery and cutlery, sink, table, and chairs. Dhala started to explore this not only with curiosity, but with mounting hunger.
He opened the refrigerator and a wave of cold mist rolled out. The shelves were well stocked with packages and cans, all of them looking perfectly familiar from a distance, though close up their proprietary labels were blurred and illegible. However, there was a notable absence of eggs, milk, butter, meat, fruit, or any unprocessed food; the refrigerator held only items that had already been packaged in various ways.
Dhala picked up a box of a familiar breakfast cereal, thinking as he did so that it was odd to keep this frozen. The moment he lifted the package, he knew that it surely did not contain cornflakes; it was much too heavy.
He ripped off the lid to examine the contents.
The box contained a slightly moist blue substance, of about the weight and texture of bread pudding. Aside from its strange color, it looked quite appetizing.
But this is ridiculous, Dhala told himself. I'm almost surely being watched, and I must look like an ass wearing this suit. If this is some kind of I.Q. test, I've likely flunked already. Without further ado, he walked back into the bedroom and began to undo the clamp of his helmet. When it was loose, he lifted the helmet a fraction of one inch, cracked the seal, then took one cautious sniff. As far as he knew, he was breathing absolutely normal air.
He dropped the helmet on the bed, and began thankfully, if not stiffly, to divest himself of his suit. When he had finished, he stretched, took a few deep breaths, and carefully hung the spacesuit up among the more conventional articles of clothing in the closet. It looked rather strange there, but the compulsive tidiness that Dhala shared with all astronautas would never have permitted him to leave it anywhere else.
Then he walked briskly back into the kitchen and started to inspect the "cereal" box at closer quarters.
The blue break pudding had a faint, spicy smell, something like a macaroon. Dhala weighed it in his hand, then broke off a piece and cautiously sniffed at it. Though he felt sure now that there would be no deliberate attempt to poison him, there was always the chance of mistakes---especially in a matter so complex as biochemistry.494Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXrsImndNfi
He nibbled at a few crumbs, then chewed and swallowed the food fragment; it was good, though the flavor was so mysterious as to be beyond description. If he closed his eyes, he could pretend it was meat, or wholegrain bread, or even dried fruit. Unless there were unexpected aftereffects, he had no reason to fear starvation. When he had eaten just a few mouthfuls of the substance, and already felt quite satisfied, he looked for something to drink. There were half a dozen cans of beer--again of a famous Brazilian brand--at the back of the refrigerator, and he pressed the tab on one of them to open it.
The prestressed metal lid popped off along its strain lines, just like usual. But the can didn't contain beer; to Dhala's surprised disappointment, it held more of the blue food.494Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMmHV9ExdpD
In a few seconds he had opened six of the other packages and cans.
Whatever their labels, their contents were the same; it seemed that his diet was going to be a little monotonous, and that he would have nothing but water to drink.
He filled a glass from the kitchen faucet and sipped at it carefully.
He spat out the first few drops at once; it tasted horrible. Then, rather ashamed of his instinctive reaction, he forced himself to drink the rest.
That first sip had been sufficient to identify the liquid. It tasted horrible because it had no taste at all; the faucet was supplying pure, distilled water. His unknown hosts were clearly taking no risks with his health.
Feeling much refreshed, he then took a quick shower. There was no soap, which was another minor inconvenience, but there was a very efficient hot-air drier in which he luxuriated for a while before trying on undergarments, vest, and dressing gown from the clothes closet. After that, he lay down on the bed, stared up at the ceiling, and tried to make sense of this bizarre situation.494Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpqmVgQw3zv
He had made little progress when he was distracted by another line of thought. Immediately above the bed was the usual hotel-type ceiling TV screen; he had assumed that, like the telephone and books, it was a fake.
Yet the control unit on its swinging bedside arm looked so realistic that he could not resist fiddling with it; and as his fingers touched the EM sensor disk, the screen lit up. Feverishly, he began to tap out channel selector codes at random---and almost at once he got his first picture.494Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVPrH94XydB
It was a well-known African news commentator, discussing the attempts being made to preserve what remained of his continent's wildlife. Dhala listened for a few seconds, so captivated by the sound of a human voice that he didn't in the least care what it was talking about. Then he changed channels.
In the next five minutes, he got a symphony orchestra playing Walton's Violin Concerto, a discussion on the sad state of the legitimate theater, an American western, a demonstration of a new headache cure, a panel game in Japanese, a psychodrama, three news commentaries, a soccer match, a lecture on solid geometry (in Russian), and several tuning signals and data transmissions. It was, in fact, a perfectly normal selectin from the world's TV programs, and apart from the psychological uplift it gave him, it confirmed one suspicion that had already been forming in his mind.
All of the programs were about two years old. That was around the time AMT-1 had been found, and it was hard to believe that this was a pure coincidence.
Something had been monitoring the radio waves; that solid gold had been busier than men had thought.
He went on wandering across the spectrum, and suddenly he recognized a familiar scene. Here was this very suite, now occupied by a celebrated actor who was furiously denouncing a disloyal mistress. Dhala looked with a shock of recognition upon the living room he had just left---and when the camera followed the indignant couple toward the bedroom, he involuntarily looked toward the door to see if someone was entering.
So that was how this reception room had been readied for him; his hosts had based their ideas of terrestrial living upon TV programs. His feeling that he was inside a movie set was almost literally true.
He had learned all that he wished for the moment, and switched off the set. What do I do now? he asked himself, locking his fingers behind his head and staring up at the blank screen.
He was physically and emotionally exhausted, yet it seemed impossible that anyone could sleep in such bizarre surroundings, and farther from Earth than any human in history had ever been. But the comfortable bed, and the instinctive wisdom of the human body, conspired together against his will.
He fumbled for the light switch, and the room was instantly plunged into darkness. Within seconds, he had passed beyond the reach of mortal dreams.
Thus, for the final time, Maisam Dhala slept.494Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNaa4NLuLWO
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