Against the Fall of Night Read Online Free PDF

short corridor—and then they were standing, overawed by its immensity, in a great circular cavern whose walls came together in a graceful, sweeping curve three hundred feet above their heads. The column against which they were standing seemed too slender to support the hundreds of feet of rock above it. Then Alvin noticed that it did not seem an integral part of the chamber at all, but was clearly of much later construction. Rorden had come to the same conclusion.
    “This column,” he said, “was built simply to house the shaft down which we came. We were right about the moving ways—they all lead into this place.”
    Alvin had noticed, without realizing what they were, the great tunnels that pierced the circumference of the chamber. He could see that they sloped gently upwards, and now he recognized the familiar grey surface of the moving ways. Here, far beneath the heart of the city, converged the wonderful transport system that carried all the traffic of Diaspar. But these were only the severed stumps of the great roadways: the strange material that gave them life was now frozen into immobility.
    Alvin began to walk towards the nearest of the tunnels. He had gone only a few paces when he realized that something was happening to the ground beneath his feet.
It was becoming transparent.
A few more yards, and he seemed to be standing in mid-air without any visible support. He stopped and stared down into the void beneath.
    “Rorden!” he called. “Come and look at this!”
    The other joined him, and together they gazed at the marvel beneath their feet. Faintly visible, at an indefinite depth, lay an enormous map—a great network of lines converging towards a spot beneath the central shaft. At first it seemed a confused maze, but after a while Alvin was able to grasp its main outlines. As usual, he had scarcely begun his own analysis before Rorden finished his.
    “The whole of this floor must have been transparent once,” said the Keeper of the Records. “When this chamber was sealed and the shaft built, the engineers must have done something to make the center opaque. Do you understand what it is, Alvin?”
    “I think so,” replied the boy. “It’s a map of the transport system, and those little circles must be the other cities of Earth. I can just see names beside them, but they’re too faint to read.”
    “There must have been some form of internal illumination once,” said Rorden absently. He was looking towards the walls of the chamber.
    “I thought so!” he exclaimed. “Do you see how all these radiating lines lead towards the small tunnels?”
    Alvin had noticed that besides the great arches of the moving ways there were innumerable smaller tunnels leading out of the chamber—tunnels that sloped downwards instead of up.
    Rorden continued without waiting for a reply.
    “It was a magnificent system. People would come down the moving ways, select the place they wished to visit, and then follow the appropriate line on the map.”
    “And what happens then?” said Alvin.
    As usual, Rorden refused to speculate.
    “I haven’t enough information,” he answered. “I wish we could read the names of those cities!” he complained, changing the subject abruptly.
    Alvin had wandered away and was circumnavigating the central pillar. Presently his voice came to Rorden, slightly muffled and overlaid with echoes from the walls of the chamber.
    “What is it?” called Rorden, not wishing to move as he had nearly deciphered one of the dimly visible groups of characters. But Alvin’s voice was insistent, so he went to join him.
    Far beneath was the other half of the great map, its faint web-work radiating towards the points of the compass. But this time not all of it was too dim to be clearly seen, for one of the lines, and one only, was brilliantly illuminated. It seemed to have no connection with the rest of the system, and pointed like a gleaming arrow to one of the downward-sloping tunnels. Near its end