The walls, stretching out of sight almost, were geometric and regular, sharply cut in the shape of a pentagon from the bedrock of the planet. Above a certain height they were unfinished stone, but below that, to a distance of some thirty feet above the floor, they were smoothed and polished. The glint of metal showed where many of them were actually paneled. A wide circular space ran all around the structures in the center, separating them from the walls.
“Look at those things, will you!” Hiero’s voice was low and reverent. The many great, shrouded shapes, standing about the floor, covered with the dust of countless centuries, were vast, almost beyond the comprehension of men of a later day. There was spiritual fear both in his voice and in his mind. These must be the actual devices of the legendary pre-Death era. Perhaps they themselves had helped loose The Death upon the cowering world above! Ingrained in every reasoning human, save for the Unclean, of course, was such a horror of The Death that gazing upon things such as this was very like a glimpse of Hell itself. Brother Aldo’s face was rigidly controlled and might have been carved of jet, but the repulsion in his eyes was clear. Luchare had actually fallen to her knees. At only seventeen, even after all she had been through, an actual glimpse of the titan engines of the legendary and horrific past weakened her legs as perhaps nothing else could.
Hiero bent and helped her up, and as they moved together to the heavy metal rail of the platform for a better look, he kept an arm about her.
As they looked up, they also saw a spider’s maze of slender catwalks and beams, strung from wires and metal cables, but so far off in the upper gloom that many of them looked suspended on nothingness. The hush of many centuries brooded over them. Above them, higher yet, glowed the lights, in turn hiding the ceiling from which they hung.
“You could put a regiment, ten regiments, of Metz Frontier Guards in here and lose them,” was Hiero’s awed comment, half to himself. His mind was staggered by the immensity of the place. And more than that. He knew what he was supposed to be looking for—the computers, if they still existed. But how to find them? Or anything else, in a place so huge and alien? True, he knew certain names, certain symbols in the dead languages, but would they be obvious, would they even be legible? His task, now that he had actually arrived at one of the ancient sites, suddenly seemed impossible.
Luchare had left him, and she and the white-bearded Elevener were now examining something on the far side of their platform, where a metallic, boxlike structure thrust itself out on the floor. As he was about to join them, he felt Gorm’s sudden thought.
The bats have all gone. Where did they go? There is something I don’t like about this place, Hiero. Bad air is entering far off on the other side. I smell, very faintly again, the sort of deadness which yet moves.
Hiero used his far-looker while sweeping the area with his mind as well. There was no real sentience in the ether, but the small minds of a few of the bats were revealed, far away and getting further still. They had left by an invisible ceiling hole, some natural crevice perhaps, and were impossible to read for direction. The far-looker showed not one opening indeed, but several, black tunnel entrances, two, perhaps a half mile off, on the opposite, eastern side of the man-made grotto. As he looked, he saw yet another far off to the left, on the south side of the cavern. And around one of those on the west were things which did not appear artificially constructed. There seemed to be dark stains, perhaps pools of moisture, there, as well as he could see from that distance and in the poor light, the upright objects arranged in clumps. He had been in caves and seen stalagmites and stalactites before, but these appeared different somehow. Was there not a dim glow about them? However, he forgot them as Aldo spoke.
“Hiero, come here,” the old man said. “I think we have a way to get down, if we can still trust the incredible mechanics of a long-dead age. I have seen drawings of things like this. This box-thing goes up or down on this track set against the wall. That is why the stairs, which I imagine were only an emergency exit, go no further. Come and look.”
He explained to the three of them, using his mind, how an elevator worked. He and Luchare had been cleaning off the control switchboard of its accumulation of dust, and the three buttons were now easy to see. He next tested them by reaching around and in, while himself remaining on the platform. With a creak, the ancient thing began to move slowly down. He stopped it quickly.
“I thought so! I know the words. The bottom black button is ‘down,’ the top ‘up.’ The red one I don’t know, but red was often used for danger, so we will ignore it. Let’s get in. Hiero, what are you doing now?”
“Maintaining communication with the surface. Gimp and his crew are still all right. They’re camped now and set up for the night. I wanted a last mind check before we got into that thing.”
Despite the pleased certainty in his voice, Aldo would not have been human if he had not been nervous as they all climbed aboard the elevator. The layers of dust were over six inches thick on its floor, and they had already learned to move slowly to avoid stirring it up any more than was necessary. Fortunately, the dust must have contained much powdered rock, for it both rose slowly and settled quickly.
The elevator ran on two metal tracks set deep in the cavern’s wall, and these had allowed only a little deposit of any kind to adhere. But of course the machine was old, old beyond the concept of even its designers. It creaked and groaned ominously as it started down, and the noises did not decrease as they sank lower. Some long-ruptured circuit made them stop at each level, and it took an almost physical effort on Hiero’s part to push the button and restart the contrivance afresh. There were five similar-appearing platform levels, and even the bear, who had been shielding his thoughts, let out an audible “whoof” of relief as they settled at last to the base of the shaft. They all felt the same. But their relief was to be short-lived.
As they left, farsighted old Aldo, who was the last one out of the metal cage, reached back and touched the “up” button. He had decided to find out if they could return again in a pinch. Now his cry of dismay alerted them all. The elevator would not move. For ten minutes they poked, prodded, and fiddled with the mechanism and tried at least to locate the power source. The latter must have been buried deep under the floor, for they could find nothing. Thus they were five storeys lower now, with no known way back to the surface.
“I would wager we must be at least half a mile down altogether,” Aldo said soberly, putting their common thought into words.
We will have to find another way out, came Gorm’s cool thought. At least we are on our own feet, not in that thing which moves. The alien mechanism had rasped the ursine nerves more than he cared to admit.
Around them now, in the much dimmer light of the cavern floor, loomed the dust-covered shapes of what had to be the great machines and devices of the past. From the platform far above, many of these things had looked to be of modest size. Now it was seen that all were large and many were absolutely monstrous.
Hiero walked over to the nearest, intrigued by something puzzling in its shape. He used the shuffling walk, which they had learned stirred up the least floor dust, and he gently brushed the coating of inches-thick grime away from the surface of the shrouded object, while the others waited.