For what length of Time or Space I do not know, Bee and I whirled onward through that dark mental chaos—imprisoned, with our captor leading us.
CHAPTER XI
THE UNIVERSE OF THOUGHT
I shall revert now to Will's experience during that attack upon the meeting house as he later described it to me. He had been crouching near Ala. When the hostile shapes burst in, he clung to her. Will was more alert than I to the conditions of this strange existence. He gave no thought to a physical violence; he knew it was the mental struggle which was to be feared; and he kept his mind alert, aggressive to attack.
Ala too, was of help. He heard her murmuring, "Be very careful. Let no evil thought-waves engulf us."
A shape whirled up—a leering man. But Will's thoughts were stronger. The waves clashed with a visible front of conflict; a faint glow of luminous black, in a very palpable heat. The shape cowered, retreated, slunk away.
Everywhere the struggle was proceeding. Upon the center ball Ala's father stood, and with roaring voice and a will more defiant than any within the globe, he strove to quell the invaders. Beat them back. Some retreated; some fell, lying crumpled and inert. Dead? We may call them so. Bodies unharmed. Minds driven into darkness; driven away, to leave an empty shell behind them. Soon the confusion was over. The amphitheatre was strewn with mindless bodies; the dead—never to move again, and others, injured; minds unhinged—irrationally wandering, to return, some of them, to reach again their accustomed abode.
Ala's father—they called him Thone—found his daughter with Will; took Will to his home, where for a nameless time they were together, exchanging friendly thoughts that each might know what manner of world was his friend's. To Will it was the first rationality of this new realm. They reclined within a globe of luxurious fittings which gave a sense of peace, luxury, well-being of the mind, derived by what means Will could not say. He only was aware that Ala was beside him, her father facing them.
He had thought of Bee and of me with fear—had wondered where we were, had wished we were with him. But Thone had told him not to be afraid. It was so easy to wander. We had not come to harm within the meeting house. We would presently come back, or if we did not, he would send out and find us.
The interior of the globe was vaguely luminous. Thone said, "We would perhaps be more comfortable if we could see outside." He murmured words—commands spoken aloud; and a shell of the globe in a patch above them slowly seemed to dissolve—or at least become transparent, so that they saw through it a vista of the city of globes—a city lying then in the vertical plane with the black void of darkness to one side.