The only other things his scrambling brain could reach were facts of negation. He was some place he had never been before. He did not know how he had gotten there. He did not know how to get back. And the close horizon, the double shadows ... now he realized that this was not Earth (Earth of the Thirty-fifth Century, although he gave it another name, Fifteenth Century G.F.).
But the City.... It was on earth, and he was on earth, and he was—had been—in it. Again the negations: the City was not on a desert, nor could its dead, deserted towers cast double shadows, nor was the transit ribbon broken.
The transit ribbon!
No!
It couldn't be broken. He almost screamed. Don't let it be broken, please....
The entire scene was suddenly jerked from his head. There was nothing left but blue smoke, cool as blown ice, inside him, around him. He was spinning in blue smoke. Sudden lightning seared his eyeballs, and the shivering after-image faded, shifted, became ... a web of silver fire, the red of polished carbuncle, the green of beetles' wings.
CHAPTER I
Silent as a sleeping serpent for sixty years, it spanned from the heart of Telphar to the royal palace of Toromon. From the ashes of the dead city to the island capital, it connected what once had been the two major cities, the only cities of Toromon. Today there was only one.
In Telphar, it soared above ashes and fallen roadways into the night.