The rectangle representing the roof of Monstro Multi-Products now filled quite a bit of the screen, and the streets beside it were broad ribbons. Their descent slowed. Dytie maneuvered the dinghy around the department store until Phil spotted, at the base of the building next to it, the tiny slot indicating the cubical pocket of space in which the Akeley house stood, robbed of its air-rights.
As they dropped slowly into the canyon of the street past windowed and windowless walls, Phil felt a witchery in the violet version of the city. He could make out beetles and tinier bugs—cars and people.
Soon they were hovering only ten feet above the violet sidewalk and the unsuspecting pedestrians.
Then Dytie slipped the dinghy between the rail of the sidewalk and the "floor" of the tall building over the Akeley house. The violet picture grew quite dark. They descended a little farther, past the top-level street and the one next below it until they were a couple of feet above the pile of bricks from the fallen chimney. Dytie moved some controls. The screen went blank, the lights went out, and with breath-taking suddenness Phil's body crunched into the soft lining as normal weight returned.
"Got legs down for dinghy to stand on," Dytie told him. "Quiet now, Phil."
A slit of lesser darkness appeared beyond Dytie and widened to a rectangle through which, after a bit, he could make out a section of the Akeley porch. Then the rectangle was obstructed as Dytie climbed out through it. Phil followed her, feet first, moving them around until they found the rungs, and carefully climbed down until he could step off onto the Akeleys' gritty front yard. Then he looked up. As far as he could see there was absolutely nothing above him except the two upper-level streets and the dull black "ceiling" above the house. Not only did light "go around" the dinghy, but it did so without getting shuffled.
"All safe," Dytie assured him. "Nobody climb over rocks, bump in ladder legs. This place, Phil?"
The Akeley house looked more ancient and dangerously dilapidated than ever, canted forward at least a foot after the chimney's collapse. A gaping wound had been left in the two upper stories and nothing had been done to bandage it. However, a little light glowed through the shutters of the living-room windows.
Stepping gingerly, with an eye cocked on the ominously slanting wall, Phil led Dytie up onto the porch and around the corner of it. He hesitated for a moment in front of the old door with the tiny cat door cut in the bottom of it, then lifted his hand to the cat-headed knocker and banged it twice. After a while there were footsteps, the old style peephole was opened, and this time Phil immediately recognized the watery gray eye as Sacheverell's.
"Greetings, Phil," the latter said. "Who's that with you?"