As Connely was thinking this, the gravitors whined, and another massive structure of high slit-windowed towers and walls appeared on the screen. This one was made entirely of black stone, and as it enlarged on the screen, it rapidly took on the brooding, foreboding aspect of a vulture perched on a tree limb. A sense of dread gripped Connely. The outlines of the control room seemed to waver and run around him, like a sketch drawn in washable ink and placed under water. Then abruptly the illusion was gone, and the outside viewscreen showed a towering column of dust and debris rolling skyward where the structure had stood. The sense of dread was gone as if it had never been.
MacIntyre said suddenly, “Look at this screen!”
Connely glanced at the auxiliary screen, to see a ragged scarecrow figure dancing and waving its arms by Barnes’ ship.
“That,” said MacIntyre, “looks like Barnes to me.”
* * *
When Connely brought his ship down, the figure was still there, and now they could see that Barnes’ eyes were tightly shut. The wild waving of his arms that they had taken for happiness at the thought of being rescued turned out instead to be a violent shooing motion, as if Barnes were trying to warn them away.
Connely said, “Before we open the hatch, it might be worthwhile to see what this place looks like from the turret.”
“Yes,” growled MacIntyre, studying Barnes’ thin worn face. “Meanwhile, I’ll run out the loudspeaker and pickup and see if he can tell us anything.”
Connely climbed into the turret, ran back the protecting armor, and looked at a scene out of a madman’s nightmare. The rolling grassland, which showed up as an empty stretch of ground on the viewscreen, appeared to be filled with a maze of tall moss-covered stone walls cut with large rectangular holes like window-openings and doorways. In the oversize doorways lay huge snakes, big crabs with oversize claws, and semifluid horrors like giant jellyfish. The window openings were closed by big spider webs, or partially blocked by gray cone-shaped nests of hornets and wasps. A brief glance was enough for Connely, who looked away before the scene etched itself any more sharply in his memory.
From below came MacIntyre’s voice, as he spoke into the loudspeaker.
“Can you hear me all right, Barnes?”
“Go away,” came a rough voice. “Get out of here before they get you, too.”
“Can you get around to our air lock?”
“Are you insane? I can’t go anywhere through this stuff.”
“What’s wrong? Why can’t you get here?”
Connely said, “He can’t, Mac. There’s an illusion of big walls, boa constrictors, giant crabs . . . Open your eyes on that sight, and you’d be afraid to take three steps.”
“It’s more,” came Barnes’ voice. “It’s not just a visual illusion. It’s tactile as well. You can touch it, feel it, smell it. It can grab you, block you, flatten you. Whatever you do, don’t leave your ship or open up the air lock.”
“What’s wrong with your ship?” said MacIntyre. “Can’t you go back inside, and lock up?”
Barnes gave a short laugh. “My ship? Where is my ship? Do you see it?”
MacIntyre hesitated an instant. “It’s right behind you,” he said.
“You see it?”
“Yes, in the viewscreen.”
“Ah, the viewscreen,” said Barnes. Then he added matter-of-factly, “Yes, I suppose the viewscreen picks up the basic physical reality, and doesn’t show the rest. But to me there’s a low hut back here, and that’s all. You say that’s the ship?”
MacIntyre said, his voice somewhat desperate, “The ship’s right behind you.”
“You say so, said Barnes musingly, “but what’s reality, anyway? Only an illusion that fits all the senses. How do I know what’s true for you will be true for me?”
“Truth’s truth,” said MacIntyre sharply.
“It may be so on Earth,” said Barnes. “It isn’t so here. Truth is the image imposed by the stronger mind on unformed matter. Truth changes. It’s changed several times since I’ve been here. Once, while it was in flux, I got up a satellite. At least, I think I did.”
“You did,” said MacIntyre. “Now stop this nonsense about truth and get ready to climb into the ship. I’m going to move over closer to you.”
The ship lifted and moved gradually closer to Barnes. Connely looked warily out the turret, his eyes only partly open, to see the apparently solid stone walls seem to compress and slide around the ship as it moved forward. Barnes came into view, and behind him, a low thatched hut. The ship stopped within several yards of Barnes, and MacIntyre said, “Con, are we close enough?”
“It looks so to me,” said Connely.
“O.K., Barnes,” said MacIntyre. “Climb in.”
Barnes stepped forward with his hands outstretched and his eyes tight shut. He came in under the curve of the ship, out of Connely’s range of vision. Connely heard him say wonderingly, “I feel it.”
A few minutes later, there was the sound of the outer air lock door coming open. Then the sound of it going shut. MacIntyre said, “Can you hear me, Barnes?”
“Yes,” said Barnes. “I hear you.”
“I’m going to douse you with disinfectant. It’s new stuff, and it’s death on germs, but try not to swallow any of it.”
“All right.”
Connely slid the armor back over the turret, and dropped down to the control room. He snapped off the microphone connection to the wall speaker in the air lock.
“Are we sure this is Barnes?” he said. “From what I’ve seen of this planet, I’d hate to take a disguised native on board.”
“You’ve got a point there,” said MacIntyre. “He looks like Barnes. But, how—”
Connely nodded sympathetically as MacIntyre looked perplexed.
“Well,” said MacIntyre, “we don’t have records of fingerprints or retinal patterns handy, but I may be able to find out if that isn’t Barnes.” He snapped on the microphone, and said in an excessively cheerful voice, “You getting a good wash-down in there?”
A gargling sound came back at him. A few moments later, Barnes’ voice said, “Ye gods, what awful stuff!”
“It’s the new disinfectant I was telling you about,” said MacIntyre. He added positively, “It’s much better than what we used before.”
There was a little pause. Then Barnes’ voice said shortly, “Yeah.”
“When we get you back,” said MacIntyre, “I’m going to completely refit your ship. The fact that you couldn’t handle the situation here shows how out-of-date your equipment is.”
There was a considerable silence, then Barnes’ voice said, “Listen, Mac, I appreciate your getting me out of that mess. But before we go through that business about refitting the ship again, would you mind letting me out of this air lock? Your improved disinfectant is eating patches of skin off my feet.”
“I’ll give you another rinse,” said MacIntyre. Then he snapped off the air-lock speaker and glanced at Connely. “I can’t swear that’s no native. But he sounds like a Stellar Scout to me.”
Connely nodded agreement, and went to get a fresh uniform for Barnes.
* * *
About fifteen minutes later, the lanky Barnes was slumped in Connely’s control seat, his arms and legs jutting out of the too-small uniform. Barnes looked worn, thin, and somewhat out of sorts after being snatched up by the IntruGrab and put into the globe with the dead snake.
“Listen,” said MacIntyre pugnaciously, “I spent the first part of the trip in there. If you can’t take a few minutes of it, that’s tough.”
“Go on outside for a few months first,” said Barnes irritatedly. “See how you like it then.”
“If you’d used your equipment properly,” said MacIntyre, “you probably wouldn’t have got into that mess in the first place.”
Barnes glanced at Connely. Connely had never met Barnes before, but in that moment they seemed to be brothers. Connely said sympathetically. “What happened?”
Barnes drew a deep breath. After a moment, he said, “Well, to begin with, I took a rough survey of the planet, and decided it was harmless. I tested the air, ran through all the usual checks, and then I was convinced it was harmless. I should have put a signal satellite in orbit, but I only had the new model, and for some fool reason, it wouldn’t transmit. Still, I wanted a look at the place. So, like a jackass, after I came down I got out of the ship to take a walk around.”
MacIntyre growled, “Unarmed?”
“No, not unarmed. Among other things, I had on your good-for-nothing reflex helmet and clothing. I also had on your worthless M1-X Gazelle Boots, and in addition I had your new Self-Draw Matter-Displacement gun strapped to my waist.”
“Then,” said MacIntyre, looking puzzled, “you were ready for anything.”
“Except the weapons,” said Barnes.
MacIntyre frowned. “What weapons?”
“My own weapons,” said Barnes angrily.
There was a lengthy silence as the two men glared at each other. Connely leaned back, ready to enjoy the spectacle of somebody else fighting with MacIntyre for a change. After a brief glaring contest, Barnes said furiously, “Why don’t you try all these things out first, prove them, and go slow about putting every maniacal contraption that comes along into the ships?”