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"Listen to me for two minutes more before you blast my ship," she asked. "I rode the god-car up from Rythar I am coming now to spread the Sickness on Earth because I wanted to know the truth about something that puzzled me. I had to know what was above the rain mist. In the answer house you would not tell us that. Now I understand why. We were children. You were waiting for us to mature.
The god-car was clamped against the hub, from which eight corridors radiated outward like wheel spokes toward the rim. Far below the gigantic wheel Mryna saw the sphere of Rythar, invisible behind its shroud of glowing mist. She moved along the rim corridor, past the mica wall, until she came to a door that stood open. The room beyond was a sleeping compartment and it was empty.
"From Rythar," one of them was saying. "A woman from Rythar!" "And we've blasted the communication center. We've no way of sending the warning back to Earth " They were gone. Mryna moved back into the spoke corridor. She felt her way silently toward the circular hub room and the god-car.
This was the reality of the charts she had seen in the astronomy text: that knowledge alone saved her sanity. She had believed it when the proof lay hidden above the rain mist; she must believe it now. From where she stood, she was able to see the place where the god-car had brought her like a vast cartwheel spinning in the void.
Tense and tight-lipped Mryna Brill slipped aboard the god-car. She sealed the lock door, which automatically fired the launching tubes. After that there was no turning back. The dark compartment shook in a thunder of sound. The weight of the escape speed tore at her body, pulling her tight against the confining walls. She lost consciousness until the pressure lessened.
Unless the equipment was unusually heavy, the attendant stationed in the house was expected to unload the god-car and pile aboard the sacrifice ores mined on Rythar. God asked two things from the settlement: the pieces of unusually heavy metal which they dug from the hills, and tiny vials of soil.
The god-car had landed against what was either the ceiling or the floor of the circular room. Mryna had no way of making a differentiation. Eight brightly lighted corridors opened into the side walls. Mryna heard footsteps moving toward her down one of the corridors; she pulled herself blindly into another. As she went farther from the circular room, a vague sense of gravity returned.
Sometimes they had to travel miles from the settlement to satisfy that inexplicable whim. For two weeks Mryna patiently ran off the endless films of new books and unloaded the god-car when it came. She examined the interior of the cylinder carefully and she weighed every possible risk. The compartment was very small, but she concluded that she would be safe. And so she made her decision.
Mryna pulled away, drawing her shoulders back proudly. Why should she feel afraid? She stood a head taller than this dried up stranger; she knew the Earthwoman's strength would be no match for hers. "My name is Mryna Brill," she said quietly. "I came up in a god-car from Rythar." "Rythar?" The woman's mouth fell open. She whispered the word as if it were profanity.
The voices moved away. Mryna floated toward the hub room. She found the air lock and pulled herself into the god-car. The metal lock hissed closed and light came on. Then she knew she had made a mistake. This ship was not the one she had used when she came up from Rythar. The tiny cabin was fitted with a sleeping lounge, a food cabinet and a file of reading films.
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