“Couldn’t the natives have—” Then I shut up because I saw how silly that was. But it’s tough to think your party has discovered a new planet and then have Earth-trademarked bricks on the first street you come to. “But what’s a street doing here at all?” I wanted to know.
“There’s only one way to find out,” said Ma sensibly. “And that’s to follow it. So what are we standing here for?”
So we pushed on, with much better footing now, and on the next rise we saw a building. A two-story red brick with a sign that read “Bon-Ton Restaurant” in Old English script lettering.
I said, “I’ll be a—” But Ma clapped her hand over my mouth before I could finish, which was maybe just as well, for what I’d been going to say had been quite inadequate. There was the building only a hundred yards ahead, facing us at a sharp turn in the street.
I started walking faster and I got there first by a few paces. I opened the door and started to walk in. Then I stopped cold on the doorstep, because there wasn’t any “in” to that building. It was a false front, like a cinema set, and all you could see through the door was more of those rolling greenish hills.
I stepped back and looked up at the “Bon-Ton Restaurant” sign, and the others walked up and looked through the doorway, which I’d left open. We just stood there until Ma got impatient and said, “Well, what are you going to do?”
“What do you want me to do?” I wanted to know. “Go in and order a lobster dinner? With champagne?—Hey, I forgot.”
The champagne bottle was still in my jacket pocket and I took it out and passed it first to Ma and then to Ellen, and then I finished most of what was left; I must have drunk it too fast because the bubbles tickled my nose and made me sneeze.
I felt ready for anything, though, and I took another walk through the doorway of the building that wasn’t there. Maybe, I figured, I could see some indication of how recently it had been put up, or something. There wasn’t any indication that I could see. The inside, or rather the back of the front, was smooth and plain like a sheet of glass. It looked like a synthetic of some sort.
I took a look at the ground back of it, but all I could see was a few holes that looked like insect holes. And that’s what they must have been, because there was a big black cockroach sitting (or maybe standing; how can you tell whether a cockroach is sitting or standing?) by one of them. I took a step closer and he popped down the hole.