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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.
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.
A simple question, really: What is above the rain mist? God could have told her. Every day he answered technical questions that were far more difficult. Instead, he repeated the familiar taboo about avoiding the Old Village because of the Sickness. And consequently Mryna, being female, went to the Old Village. There was nothing really unusual about that.
And why shouldn't it be the Earth-god? As her first step toward escape, Mryna volunteered for duty in the answer house. For as long as she could remember, the answer house had stood on a knoll some distance beyond the new settlement. It was a square, one-room building, housing a speaking box, a glass screen and a console of transmission machinery.
And now it didn't matter. There was nothing she could do. Her ship was a poisoned arrow aimed directly at the heart of man's civilization. Mryna had slept twice when the auto-pickup lurched out of the time drive and she was able to see the stars again. Directly ahead of her she saw an emerald planet, bright in the sun. And she knew instinctively that it was Earth.
She could not except as a last resort let them kill her until they knew why the isolation of Rythar had failed. It was thirteen minutes before landing when Mryna finally heard an older, more dignified voice on the speaker. By then the green globe of Earth filled the sky; Mryna could make out the shapes of the continents turning below her.
Mryna Brill intended to ride the god-car above the rain mist. For a long time she had not believed in the taboos or the Earth-god. She no longer believed she lived on Earth. This paradise of green-floored forests and running brooks was something called Rythar. Six years ago, when Mryna was fourteen, she first discovered the truth. She asked a question and the Earth-god ignored it.
Above the lounge a mica viewplate gave her a broad view of the sky. Mryna remembered that the man in the supply room had said he was waiting for an auto-pickup; he was on his way back to Earth. Mryna had taken his ship instead of her own. In panic she tried to open the door again, but she found no way to do it. Machinery beneath her feet began to hum.
An alarm bell began to clang, and the sound vibrated against the metal walls. An armed man sprang from a side room and fired his weapon at Mryna. The discharge burned a deep groove in the wall. So they would even kill her these men who pretended to be gods! Before the man could fire again, Mryna swung down a side corridor, and at once the sensation of weightlessness overtook her.
She saw a woman standing there another hard-faced Earthwoman, with a starched, white cap perched on her graying hair. "I must have come to the wrong room," Mryna said in a small voice. "Indeed! Everyone knows this is command headquarters. Who are you?" The woman put her hand on Mryna's arm, and the fingers bit through the uniform into Mryna's flesh.
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