-170-
leaving me in a featureless, tomb-like cylinder,
trapped. I fought a momentary twinge of claustrophobia and waited. Abruptly,
without warning or reason, I was weightless! I shoved against the floor and
immediately
rebounded toward the ceiling. There was no feeling
of motion, but yet I got the eerie impression that I was plunging at great
velocity into the depths of the earth. Where was I going? What or who was doing
this? Just as abruptly as my weight had left me it returned and I fell to the
floor of the cylinder with a thump. Now what?
The wall
glowed again, a burning circle of contained fire formed, and there again was
the "door", opening to a corridor about 20 yards long.
I
cautiously stepped out and instantly the door behind me vanished, leaving no
trace of its former presence. I was trapped again, far below the surface of the
earth in an empty corridor of gleaming metal - or at least it appeared to be
metallic in nature. Then the call came to me again. "WELCOME!" it
said this time, and then, "COME!"
I rushed
to the end of the mysterious hall and as I did so the wall again glowed and
opened.
I was
greeted by the most stunningly beautiful sight I have ever witnessed. I was on
a giant glassed-in balcony, looking out over a vast chamber or cavern dozens of
miles in length and thousands of feet high, filled with a huge utterly
incomprehensible "city". I saw scintillating, translucent towers,
monolithic slab-like buildings glowing with intricate patterns and colors,
strange ribbon-like structures of glistening materials winding and twisting
through the city. I knew at once that this city was never meant for human eyes,
for the intense glare from the gigantic ceiling of this world within a world
was twice as bright as the noon-day sun on the surface!
I slowly
became accustomed to the brightness and overcame my initial fright at seeing
the city. I then