The Search by A. E. van Vogt

Author:A. E. van Vogt [Vogt, A. E. van]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci Fi & Fantasy Novelette
Publisher: Astounding Science Fiction
Published: 1942-01-14T00:00:00+00:00

He was lying on his back on a hard floor. Drake opened his eyes, and for a blank moment stared at a domed ceiling two hundred feet above him. The ceiling was at least three hundred feet wide, and nearly a quarter of it was window, through which a gray-white mist of light showed, as if an invisible sun was trying hard to penetrate a thin but persistent fog.

The wide strip of window ran along the center of the ceiling straight on into the distance. It—

Into the distance!

With a gasp, Drake jerked erect. For a moment then his mind threatened to ooze out of his head.

There was no end to that corridor.

It stretched in either direction until it became a blur of gray marble and gray light. There was a balcony and a gallery and a second gallery, each floor had its own side corridor set off by a railing: and there were countless shining doors and, every little while, a branch corridor, each suggesting other vast reaches of that visibly monstrous building.

Very slowly, the first enormous shock over, Drake climbed to his feet. Memory of the old man—and what had gone before—was a weight in his mind. He thought darkly: “He got me into his car—and drove me here. Only—”

Only, on all the wide surface of the Earth, no such building existed.

A chill percolated up his spine. It cost him a distinct effort to walk toward the nearest of the long line of tall, carved doors, and pull it open.

What he expected, he couldn’t have told. But his first reaction was—disappointment.

It was an office, a large room with plain walls. There were some fine-looking cabinets along one wall. A great desk occupied the corner facing the door. Some chairs and two comfortable-looking settees and another, more ornate door completed the picture.

No one was in the room. The desk looked spic and span, dustless. And lifeless.

The second door was locked, or else the latch was too complicated.

Out in the corridor again, Drake grew conscious of the intense silence. His shoes clicked with an empty sound—and door after door yielded the same office-furnished but uninhabited interior.

An hour passed by his watch. And then another half-hour. And then—he saw the door in the distance.

At first it was only a brightness. It took on glittering contours, became an enormous glass affair set in a framework of multitinted windows.

The door was easily fifty feet in height; and when he peered through its transparent panes, he could see great white steps leading down into a mist that thickened after about twenty feet, so that the lower steps were not visible.

Drake stared uneasily. There was something wrong here. That mist, obscuring everything, persisting for hours, clinging darkly—

He shook himself. Probably, there was water down there at the foot of the steps, warmish water subjected to a constant stream of cold air, and thick fog formed—

For a moment, he pictured that in his mind—a building ten miles long standing beside a lake, and buried forever in gray mists.

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