Comstock grabbed Helen's free hand, her other was in the fold of Grundy's arm. Then all of them moved slowly towards the door.
It opened before Comstock could put his hand on the knob.
It swung wide enough for them to see that no one had opened it for them.
From inside the house, a heavy metallic voice said, "Welcome may you be."
CHAPTER 8
Perhaps the single most frightening thing in the big living room to Comstock was the fact that the walls were solid with books. The cases ran from the floor to the ceiling and every available space was stuffed helter skelter with books, books and more books. In all his life it is highly unlikely that Comstock had ever seen more than ten or fifteen books at one time, and then only in what passed for a library in his culture.
Why, he thought, there must be thousands of books here. On what subjects could the authors have written? What was there to write that much about? A small hope persisted for a moment that maybe, for some strange reason, most of the books might be duplicates. But that was eradicated when he looked at the odd, mysterious titles of the volumes. There were no duplicates and seemingly the books were divided up into categories. But some of the categories were so strange to Comstock that they passed his ability to comprehend.
What, he wondered, could sociology be? Or anthropology, or psychology, or these massive volumes full of poems ... not simple enjoyable poems like Father Goose, but queer, abstruse ones, whose words made no sense at all to Comstock's reeling brain.
While he hurried around the room blowing dust off the tops of the books he was looking at, Helen and Grundy were concerned with who had greeted them on their entrance.