"Smellthat, Smith? Ahh. Green grass. Ever smell anything better? By God, I just like to stand here and smell it."
Invisible chlorophyll blew among the standing men.
"Ahh!"
The footsteps continued.
"Nothing wrong withthat, eh, Smith? Come on!"
The Ear and Nose relaxed a billionth of a fraction. The countermove had succeeded. The pawns were proceeding forward.
Now the cloudy Eyes of the city moved out of fog and mist.
"Captain, the windows!"
"What?"
"Those house windows, there! I saw them move!"
"Ididn't see it."
"They shifted. They changed color. From dark to light."
"Look like ordinary square windows to me."
Blurred objects focused. In the mechanical ravines of the city oiled shafts plunged, balance wheels dipped over into green oil pools. The window frames flexed. The windows gleamed.
Below, in the street, walked two men, a patrol, followed, at a s
afe interval, by seven more. Their uniforms were white, their faces as pink as if they had been slapped; their eyes were blue. They walked upright, upon hind legs, carrying metal weapons. Their feet were booted. They were males, with eyes, ears, mouths, noses.
The windows trembled. The windows thinned. They dilated imperceptibly, like the irises of numberless eyes.
"I tell you, Captain, it's the windows!"
"Get along."
"I'm going back, sir."
"What?"
"I'm going back to the rocket."
"Mr. Smith!"
"I'm not falling into any trap!"
"Afraid of an empty city?"
The others laughed, uneasily.
"Go on, laugh!"
The street was stone-cobbled, each stone three inches wide, six inches long. With a move unrecognizable as such, the street settled. It weighed the invaders.
In a machine cellar a red wand touched a numeral: 178 pounds . . . 210, 154, 201, 198--each man weighed, registered and the record spooled down into a correlative darkness.
Now the city was fully awake!