Take this route to… Oblivion.Expressway to an uncharted sphere."They're about!" the woman whispered, and Crane abruptly saw a strange light shining through the heavy black curtains that shrouded the house. He crossed to the window and before anyone could stop him he drew the curtain back.At first he did not understand what he saw: a round gleaming, color-running orb stared unwinkingly back into his face. It was… an eye. An immense sad eye staring at him through the chink of the curtains, an eye surrounded by a living whorl of flame that he had last seen engulfing poor Barney in the parking lot.At least three others had disappeared into the strange world from which those aliens had come, and a girl had been driven insane by them. And before Crane's quest to unravel the secret of the Map Country was complete, the fate of two worlds would hang in the balance.
Roland crane heard the crash of breaking glass in his study from the hall where he had gone to tap the barometer and curse the windy, overcast, beastly weather. The sound echoed hard on a blast of wind that shook the isolated old house. The carpet rippled the length of the hall like an anaconda. The lamp swung from its chain, chasing shadows like bats across the polished paneling of the walls.
He ran angrily back, almost colliding with the incomplete suit of Florentine armor, in time to see the second maid, young Annie, burst into tears.
Strewn at her feet across the Persian carpet, shards of glass glittered in the table-lamp’s illumination like the aftermath of a battle. Crane looked up.
All along the windowless north wall his map frames hung, some faded, some brightly colored, tattered, dimmed with age, charred, stained, inscribed with loving and painstaking care and the lavish curlicues of writing from the hands of men long dead. That wall dominated the room. Across from it the curtained windows and ceiling-high bookshelves counter-pointed in modern somber book-learning the high brilliance of those maps. They spoke of daring and the great venture across unknown oceans, of beckoning mists of undiscovered lands and the siren call of the sea. The salty tang of romance breathed from them into the close confinement of the somber study. From pigment and parchment beckoned the lure of the unknown.
In the center of the Fifteen Eighty Italian of the Florida Gulf and the westward islands a starshaped outline revealed the brighter color of gold leaf beyond where no glass lay to dull the luster.
“I’m sorry, sir. I just don’t know how it happened.”
Annie’s nose was red and her cheeks shook and her whole scrawny frame trembled. She peeked at him over her hands pressed tightly to her wet face. Her bright bird-like brown eyes were moist and overflowing.
Crane’s anger dissipated. Annie was the daughter of old Annie, who had served him as well as she had his father, and that had been back before the first World War, before Roland Crane was thought of, when Isambard Crane was building up the engineering combine that now kept his son in idle luxury. That idleness was relative, though; because of his dislike of business drearinesses Crane’s energies found other outlets. Men of affairs tended to misjudge him on the basis of bis inherited affluence.
The map was unharmed. He took four quick strides to the frame and checked. An odd bluish tinge stained the glass. It had shattered into the shape almost of a perfect seven-pointed star. He turned on Annie.
“That’s all right, Annie. No real damage done. And stop crying, for goodness sake!”
“I’m sorry, sir—”
“What were you doing here at all this time of night?”
Annie gestured to the coffee table. A tea pot covered with a hand-knitted cosy, a cup and saucer, milk and sugar and a heaping plate of buns, with a dish of butter and a knife and toasting fork reminded Crane he had rung for tea.
“Why didn’t Molly bring it?” Molly was the first maid.
“It’s her night off, sir—”
“Oh.” Crane laughed. “Well, it’s not a very pleasant one. The wind must be gusting past seventy. Probably the blast I heard in the hall twisted the fabric of the house in some way, maybe vibration, and the glass must have been weak never mind now. Just clear the glass away. And be careful don’t spear yourself.”
“Yes, sir.”
The telephone rang.
“Oh, drat it,” said Crane ungraciously and crossed to the wall-table where the phone crouched like a sentient spider, connected to the web of the world.
He did not recognize the voice. The storm must have interfered with the telephone line as well as smashing his map glass; he realized it was a woman, but the squawks and ululations and clicks rendered any further guess impossible.
“Mr. Roland Crane?”
“Speaking.”
“The Mr. Roland Crane who is interested in maps?”
Crane’s mental defenses alerted. Before he could make his usual cautious reply, the woman’s voice went on:
“Interested in buying maps? I have something you might care to see.”
“Oh?”
“Perhaps I could come out to Bushmills—?”
“We-ell—”
“I have a car. I’m in the Royal Garage in town. I could be with you in half an hour.”
Crane thought of the drive out from Market Nelson, with the road winding steadily upwards onto the inhospitable moorlands, with the scraggy trees lying flat in the wind and the road glistening with unshed water, the ditches and gutters miniature raging torrents. No weather for a woman. He thought of the Coup des Dames, and smiled wryly to himself; his notions of woman-kind stemmed from the pages of old books, where knights in shining armor defended shrinking damsels from fire-breathing dragons. Today, the girls twisted the necks of the fire-breathing dragons pretty efficiently themselves.
“All right, Miss—?”
“Harbottle.”
