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Between the vats ran straight, narrow walkways of packed earth. Happy waddled along one of the walkways until he found an empty vat. He lowered himself over its edge and sank happily into the still, cool water, like a hippopotamus submerging. He immersed himself completely, then lay back in the water, with only his face floating barely above the surface.
Here are verbenas, poppies, lavender and marigolds, sweet-william, hollyhocks and columbine, phlox, and larkspur, and meadowsweet, and heart's-ease, just as they were when Thomasine Musgrave, Matocton's first châtelaine, was wont to tend them; and of all floral parvenus the gardens are innocent. Box-hedges mark the walkways.
Wonderfully virginal it all seemed to Ormskirk, that small portion of a world upon the brink of renaissance: a tessellation of clean colors, where the gravelled walkways were snow beneath the sun, and were in shadow transmuted to dim violet tints; and for the rest, green ranging from the sober foliage of yew and box and ilex to the pale glow of young grass In the full sunlight; all green, save where the lake shone, a sapphire green-girdled.
When Shadow turned sidewise, he vanished to the sight. Occasionally, Happy wondered how Shadow happened to be, and why he was here in the caverns, but it was not the sort of thing to bother his mind for very long. Happy moved along the walkways, peering into the vats which appeared to be empty. He assumed Shadow was following him; Shadow always did.
He had never seen a city with streets before, and he doubted if anybody else on the Empire ships had. Long boulevards to give unobstructed passage to low-level air-traffic, of course, and short winding walkways, but not things like these. Pictures, of course, of native cities on planets colonized at the time of the Federation, and even very ancient ones of cities on pre-Atomic Terra.
He slipped open the door, and started for the ramp leading to the Main Concourse. There was an answer, somewhere. He walked on along the steel walkways, trying to clear his mind of the doubts and questions that were plaguing him. At first he just wandered, but presently he realized that he had a destination in mind.
Rather, it was a strange new comprehension of the world. To Melicent the world seemed very lovely. Indeed, the Women's Garden on this morning lacked nothing to delight each sense. Its hedges were of flowering jessamine; its walkways were spread with new sawdust tinged with crocus and vermilion and with mica beaten into a powder; and the place was rich in fruit-bearing trees and welling waters.
This place is in the middle of the Desert of Candor, and no one can live in the Martian desert without oxygen." They came now to one of the walls of the underground cavern, and Old Beard led them suddenly into a fissure that was well concealed from the walkways by a tangled screen of vegetation.
"How do you happen to be here, Old Beard?" asked Dark as they left the recess and resumed their progress down the walkways. "I was captured when the government broke up the experimental groups," answered Old Beard.
They were not grandiose. There were walkways and some temporary buildings obviously thrown hastily together to house a sudden influx of people. And here there were many people. There was bright sunshine, and children played and women watched them. There were some not many men in sight, but most of them were elderly. All the young ones were uniformed and hastily going here or there.
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