Return from the Stars Read Online Free PDF

machines, crowded together; a man came out of a shadow, disappeared behind one of the machines—I did not see him open any door, he simply vanished—and the thing took off with such force that it must have flattened him against his seat. I saw no houses, only the roadway, as smooth as a table and covered with strips of dull metal; at the intersections, hanging overhead, were shuttered lights, orange and red; they looked a little like models of wartime searchlights.
    "Where shall we go?" asked the girl. She still held me by the arm. She slackened her pace. A red stripe passed across her face.
    "Wherever you like."
    "My place, then. It isn't worth taking a gleeder. It's nearby."
    We walked on. Still no houses in sight, and the wind that came rushing out of the darkness, from behind the shrubbery, was the kind you would expect in an open space. Here, around the station, in the Center itself? This seemed odd to me. The wind bore a faint fragrance of flowers, which I inhaled eagerly. Cherry blossom? No, not cherry blossom.
    Next we came to a moving walkway; we stood on it, a strange pair; lights swam by; now and then a vehicle shot along, as if cast from a single block of black metal; these vehicles had no windows, no wheels, not even lights, and careered as though blindly, at tremendous speed. The moving lights blazed out of narrow vertical apertures hanging low above the ground. I could not figure out whether they had something to do with the traffic and its regulation.
    From time to time, a plaintive whistle high above us rent the unseen sky. The girl suddenly stepped off the flowing ribbon, but only to mount another, which darted steeply upward, and I found myself suddenly high up; this aerial ride lasted maybe half a minute and ended at a ledge covered with weakly fragrant flowers, as if we had reached the terrace or balcony of a dark building by a conveyor belt set against the wall. The girl entered this loggia, and I, my eyes now accustomed to the dark, was able to discern, from it, the huge outlines of the surrounding buildings, windowless, black, seemingly lifeless, for they were without more than light—not the slightest sound reached me, apart from the sharp hiss that announced the passage, in the street, of those black machines. I was puzzled by this blackout, no doubt intentional, as well as by the absence of advertising signs, after the orgy of neon at the station, but I had no time for such reflections. "Come on, where are you?" I heard her whisper. I saw only the pale smudge of her face. She put her hand to the door and it opened, but not into an apartment; the floor moved softly along with us—you can't take a step here, I thought, it's a wonder they still have legs—but this irony was a feeble effort; it came from the constant amazement, from the feeling of unreality of everything that had happened to me in the past several hours.
    We were in something like a huge entrance hall or corridor, wide, almost unlit—only the corners of the walls shone, brightened by streaks of luminous paint. In the darkest place the girl again reached out her hand, to place her palm flat against a metal plate on a door, and entered first. I blinked. The hall, brightly lit, was practically empty; she walked to the next door. When I came near the wall, it opened suddenly to reveal an interior filled with small metal bottles of some kind. This happened so suddenly that I froze.
    "Don't set off my wardrobe," she said. She was already in the other room.
    I followed her.
    The furniture—armchairs, a low sofa, small tables—looked as though it had been cast in glass, and inside the semitransparent material swarms of fireflies circulated freely, sometimes dispersed, then joined again into streams, so that a luminous blood seemed to course within the furniture, pale green with pink sparks mixed in.
    "Why don't you sit down?"
    She was standing far back. An armchair unfolded itself to receive me. I hated that. The glass was not glass at