The dive itself had been cut into the side of the cliff. The solid rock of the ceiling had not been disguised or masked.
At first glance, Ronson thought his eyes were deceiving him. The solid stone itself seemed to be in motion. A sort of melting, shifting flow seemed to be taking place as if the molecules and perhaps even the atoms themselves were dissolving.
"That's atomic disintegration, or atomic shifting, under control!" Sam Crick gasped.
"It's a mirage," Jennie Ware whispered. "It must be."
"If it's a mirage, everybody in the place is seeing it," Ronson said.
There was not a sound in the huge room. The waiters had come to attention like trained soldiers. The females had abruptly lost all interest in what they were doing. Out of the corner of his eyes, Ronson saw one female make a sudden darting movement across the room. One foot touched the circle on the floor as she ran. She took two more steps and fell, sagging downward as if every muscle in her body had suddenly refused to function. She lay on the floor without moving. Not a head was turned toward her, not a Martian moved to help her. In her action Ronson saw one reason why the Martians avoided the circle on the floor. Something was definitely wrong with that circle. Looking at the roof, he saw the reason.
The flowing, shifting movement there had formed into a circle the same size as the circle on the floor and directly above it. Little flickers of light, like the discharge of high frequency currents, were flowing between the two circles. Swiftly the flickers of light became an opaque cylinder of misty flame extending from the ceiling to the floor.
From the opaque cylinder of light, a Martian stepped.
Without quite knowing how he knew it, Ronson knew that this was Les Ro's Messenger.
The Messenger was old, perhaps as old as the granite mountain above them, if the network of fine wrinkles on his face were an accurate indication of his age. With age, calmness and serenity had come to this Martian. His eyes gave the impression that they had seen everything. What they had not seen, the brain behind them had imagined. Peace was in the eyes and on the face, the deep peace that many human saints had sought and had found.