“So,” said Eliot James, who first succeeded in speaking, “so they were human! By God, you feel you’d like to know her.”
Tony relaxed his hands, which had clenched. “Where did she live, do you suppose, Eliot? Did she live up behind one of these windows?”
“She had a name,” said Eliot James. “And surely she had lovers. Where are they?”
“Dead,” said Tony. “Dead with her—maybe a million years ago. Let’s go on.”
“Why go on?” demanded Eliot James. “Why? To pick up a scarf on the street? We’ve got to get into one of these buildings somewhere. We can break in somehow—with nobody to stop us. We might as well begin here.”
So together they attacked the door, which, like those they had pushed and pulled at before, showed no lock, yet was secure.
The door, like the walls of the buildings, was of metal and glass. Indeed, it was difficult to distinguish by texture between the glass and the metal. The panes appeared to be transparent metal. Jeremiah Post had spoken conservatively when, after the examination of the wrecked vehicle discovered near camp, he had said that the People of Bronson Beta had far surpassed any people on earth in metallurgy.
This door evidently was designed to lift; it should rise and slip into the metal wall overhanging it; but no pushing or straining at it, no hammering and pounding, could cause it to budge. And the glass in it—the panel of transparent metal—was not to be broken.
Weary and sweating from their straining at it, Tony and Eliot stepped back.
Their own blows, their own thudding and their gasping for breath, had made the only sound in the silent city.
Repeatedly, while they had worked at the door, each of them had spun about for a glance over his shoulder. The metal seemed so new—some one must be about this city standing all in such order.
Tony kept trying his game of looking up quickly, without warning, to catch the heads of the people behind the upper windows who always—so he felt—had jerked back in time.
Now, as the two men from earth stood side by side staring about them, the slightest of sounds reached them; and a door—not the door at which they had pushed and pounded, but a door some twenty steps beyond—began rising.
Tony and Eliot shrank closer together. They pulled out their pistols, which they had reloaded. Up, up steadily, slowly, the metal door was lifted.
“Counterbalanced!” exclaimed Tony to his companion; but his voice was husky. “It was counterbalanced, of course! Our pounding affected some mechanism inside!”
It was the reasonable, rational explanation. For the people of this city could not be alive; it was impossible that they had survived! Yet, here in their city, you could not believe that.
“They’re human, anyway,” whispered Eliot James.
“Yes,” said Tony, his eyes fastened on the aperture under the rising door. “See—anything?”
“Say it, Tony,” returned Eliot James. “Or I will.”
“All right,” said Tony hoarsely. “See—any one?”
“There’s nobody there,” argued Eliot, with himself as much as with his comrade. “They all died—they all died a million years ago.”
“Yes,” agreed Tony. The door was ceasing to rise; it had reached its limit and stopped, leaving the way into the great metal building open. “They all died a million years ago. But where did they go to die?”
“Who cares?” Eliot continued his argument. “Can a ghost live a million years? I don’t believe they can. Come on in, Tony. They can’t even haunt us.”
“A minute,” said Tony.
“Why?”
“I want to look around once more.” He was doing it. “All right now!” They approached the open doorway together; and together, n
either in advance or in the rear of the other, they entered it, pistols in hands. That was wholly irrational; and both knew it; but neither could help himself.
So, side by side, revolvers ready, they entered the door of the Million Years Dead.
The walls of the hall in which they found themselves were vemilion. It did not appear to be paint. Like the colors of the exteriors, the hue was a quality of the metal. Vermilion surrounded Tony and Eliot—vermilion and gray, in vigorous, pronounced patterns.
There was no furniture in the hall; no covering upon the floor. Perhaps there never had been one; the floor was smooth and even and of agreeable texture. It was not wood nor metal, but of some composition. It might have been meant to be a dance-floor or for a meeting-hall. Nothing declared its use. An open doorway invited to an apartment beyond; and side by side, but with their pistols less at alert, Eliot and Tony stepped into this.