Special elevator in the rear. It’s marked ‘To the Tower.’ Just take it.”The elevator was of the new sort that ran by gravitic repulsion. Gaalentered and others flowed in behind him. The operator closed a contact. Fora moment, Gaal felt suspended in space as gravity switched to zero, andthen he had weight again in small measure as the elevator acceleratedupward. Deceleration followed and his feet left the floor. He squawkedagainst his will.
The operator called out, “Tuck your feet under the railing. Can’t you readthe sign?”The others had done so. They were smiling at him as he madly and vainlytried to clamber back down the wall. Their shoes pressed upward against thechromium of the railings that stretched across the floor in parallels settwo feet apart. He had noticed those railings on entering and had ignoredthem .
Then a hand reached out and pulled him down.
He gasped his thanks as the elevator came to a halt.
He stepped out upon an open terrace bathed in a white brilliance that hurlhis eyes. The man, whose helping hand he had just now been the recipientof, was immediately behind him.
The man said, kindly, “Plenty of seats.”Gaal closed his mouth; he had been gaping; and said, “It certainly seemsso.” He started for them automatically, then stopped.
He said, “If you don’t mind, I’ll just stop a moment at the railing. I ?Iwant to look a bit.”The man waved him on, good-naturedly, and Gaal leaned out over theshoulder-high railing and bathed himself in all the panorama .
He could not see the ground. It was lost in the ever increasingcomplexities of man-made structures. He could see no horizon other thanthat of metal against sky, stretching out to almost uniform grayness, andhe knew it was so over all the land-surface of the planet. There wasscarcely any motion to be seen ? a few pleasure-craft lazed against thesky-but all the busy traffic of billions of men were going on, he knew,beneath the metal skin of the world.
There was no green to be seen; no green, no soil, no life other than man.
Somewhere on the world, he realized vaguely, , setamid one hundred square miles of natural soil, green with trees, rainbowedwith flowers. It was a small island amid an ocean of steel, but it wasn’tvisible from where he stood. It might be ten thousand miles away. He didnot know.
Before very long, he must have his tour!
He sighed noisily, and realized finally that he was on Trantor at last; onthe planet which was the center of all the Galaxy and the kernel of thehuman race. He saw none of its weaknesses. He saw no ships of food landing .