Read Eden for Free Online Page B

one leg. Under his arm he has an interstellar telecommunicator, or he's telepathic and tells us that he represents a highly developed but deranged civilization that—"
    "Stop that jabbering," said the Captain. He poured some water from his thermos into his mug, which was immediately covered with condensation. "We'd better decide what to do."
    "I think we should go in there," said the Doctor, and he got up as if intending to do just that.
    "Go in where?" the Physicist asked lazily.
    "You must be crazy!" the Cyberneticist exclaimed in a high-pitched voice.
    "Not at all. Of course, we could keep on walking like this, hoping the aliens will toss us something to eat."
    "Let's be serious," said the Engineer.
    "I am serious, and do you know why? Because, quite simply, I've had enough of this." The Doctor turned on his heel.
    "Stop!" shouted the Captain.
    The Doctor walked straight toward the wall and was only a few feet from it when they jumped up and ran after him. Hearing their pursuit, he stretched out his hand and touched the wall. His hand disappeared. The Doctor stood motionless for a second, then stepped forward and was gone. The other five stopped, gasping, and knelt at the spot where his left boot print was still visible. Suddenly the Doctor's head appeared above them, his neck disembodied, as if severed by a knife; tears streamed from his eyes, and he sneezed loudly, repeatedly.
    "It's stifling in here," he said, "and it stings your nose like the devil, but for a few minutes it's bearable. It's a little like tear gas. Come on in. It doesn't hurt—you don't feel anything at all."
    And at the level of his shoulder an arm appeared in midair. "Damn you!" muttered the Engineer with a mixture of fear and admiration, and he clutched the Doctor's hand, which pulled him in, so that the Engineer, too, disappeared from sight. One by one the others entered the undulating wall. The Cyberneticist was the last. He hesitated. Then, his heart pounding like a hammer, he closed his eyes and took a step forward.
    After a moment of darkness, everything brightened. He found himself with the others, inside a vast place full of puffing and throbbing. Diagonally, vertically, and from side to side, enormous tubes moved, crisscrossing. Of varying thicknesses, bulging here and thinning there, they turned and vibrated, and from the depths of this vast, ceaselessly moving forest of glistening bodies a splashing noise could be heard. It accelerated, stopped, was followed by gurgling; then the sequence was repeated.
    From the bitter air they began sneezing, one after another, and their eyes ran. Holding handkerchiefs to their faces, they backed away from the wall, which from the inside looked like a cascade of black syrup.
    "Well, we're home at last—this is a factory, an automated factory!" cried the Engineer between two sneezes.
    Gradually they got used to the smell, and the sneezing ceased. Blinking and watery-eyed, they looked about.
    A dozen or so paces ahead, in the ground, which was as springy as rubber, they came to black wells; glowing objects the size of a man's head shot up out of them so quickly it was impossible to see their shape. As they flew up, one of the tubes sucked them in while continuing to turn. The objects did not completely disappear, because their pinkish glow showed faintly through the tube's quivering walls, as through tinted glass, so that it was possible to watch them travel inside the tube to somewhere farther on.
    "A conveyor belt," the Engineer said through his handkerchief. "Mass production."
    He walked around the wells, stepping carefully. What was the source of the light here? The ceiling was semi-transparent, but its monotonous gray was dissipated in the sea of objects that flowed nimbly by on invisible currents. All this movement appeared to be orchestrated, to have the same tempo. Fountains of hot material gushed into the air, and the same thing was happening high above, where just beneath the ceiling they could