The whole lay quiet and calm in the starlight. No sign of human movement. Nanette said:
"But, Edward, isn't any one in sight? No people—"
And Alan: "Ed, look! There—back there on the wall—"
It seemed on the distant wall that a dark figure was moving. A guard? A pacing sentry?
And now, other movement. A figure appeared in the tower doorway. The figure of a girl. She came slowly from within and stood at the head of the entrance steps. The glow of an interior light outlined her clearly: a slim, small girl, in a robe faintly sky-blue. Flowing hair, pale as spun gold with the light shining on it like a halo.
She stood a moment, quietly staring out into the night. We could not see her face clearly. She stood like a statue, gazing. And then, quietly, she turned and I caught a glimpse of her face—saw it clearly for an instant, its features imprinted clearly on my mind. A young girl, nearly matured; a face, it seemed, very queerly, singularly beautiful—
She moved back into the tower room. There was a sudden blur over the scene. Like a puff of dissipating vapor, it was gone.
The television screen before us glowed with its uneven illumination. The color-filters whirled and flashed their merging beams. Everything was as it had been a few moments before. The broadcasting studios would not come in. Our apparatus was not working properly. The frequency ranges were indeterminate. It was grounded badly. Or our fundamental calibration was in error. Something wrong. What, we never knew.
But we had seen this vision—flung at us, from somewhere. A vision, shining clear in every detail of form and color and movement. The image of things solid and real. Things existing—somewhere.