CHAPTER 10
ATO’S probing instruments still pointed the way to Aldebaran. In a surprisingly short time, the warning signals were flashing and jingling throughout The Nebula. There was that same sick feeling as it moved slower than the speed of light.
And there was a glowing sun with nine planets circling stately about it. Slower The Nebula moved, and slower, until the outermost planet sparkled in the light of its sun below them. They swooped down.
Not a single blast was fired at them. Every man was at his post, while Ato guided them in, and Odin worked the screens.
Once more, Jack was disappointed. He had looked forward to some alien—even exotic—civilization. Here were fields and streams. And there were cities—looking very much like the cities of his world and of Opal.
Those other worlds which he had seen had been blasted. So there was no way of knowing how their cities had looked. But these were too recognizable. He was certain that he had seen several of the taller buildings before.
Was space no more creative than this? Had the worlds dedicated themselves to the same monotonous pattern? He had caught a glimpse of conventional, rocket-shaped spaceships, plying their courses back and forth among the planets. He saw boats and cars and a few long-nosed airplanes, with the merest trace of vestigial wings far back near the empennage, streaking through the sky in high arcs, leaving curling trails of fog and smoke behind them. But there was little here that his world had not already mastered—or at least had on the drawing board.
The Nebula came to rest upon a bare plain not far from the nearest city. As he turned to the scanner upon it, Odin saw that while it looked familiar enough there was one exotic thing about it. Toward the outskirts of the city, in the bend of a wide river, was the Taj Mahal.
He felt nearly as bewildered as he had been when Nea explained her theories of the Time-Space Concept to him.
They had hardly landed before one of Ato’s scientists announced that there was good clean air outside. Oxygen and nitrogen with good old water held as moisture within it.