“I thought it looked odd!” His laugh stirred remote echoes in the dusty aisles and corridors between the silent bulks and rebounded from cornices and projections far above.
“This is a cover! All these things are protected. Look, you can lift it and see what is underneath.” He raised a corner of the heavy plastic wrapping, still moving slowly so as to avoid raising any more dust than was necessary. The soft gleam of a metal base, untouched for thousands of years, met their eyes, which by now were accustomed to the dim light.
Excited, the soldier-priest ran to the next great object and then the next. All were covered with thick plastic sheeting, a substance which mocked the centuries, and the metal underneath appeared untouched by any corrosion or other of time’s ravages. Hiero drew his dagger and began to cut pieces of the plastic away, for the huge sheets were far too large to be pulled off by their puny efforts; many of the devices they covered were as high as a two-storey building and half an acre in. extent.
“Hiero,” came the Elevener’s strong voice. “I think we had better be told what we are seeking, don’t you think? I have no wish to pry, but…”
“Of course. I meant to tell you earlier, honestly. There’s been so much on my mind, I simply forgot.”
While they stood about, or leaned on the buttresses of the incredible machines, he gave them a mental, closed-circuit recapitulation of the Abbey mission, describing the lost computers, or at least their purposes, as well as he could and explaining carefully why the Abbeys felt they were so important.
“If what Demero told me is true, and I believe every word,” he concluded, “we need one of these things desperately. The attacks against us are mounting and coordinated. Our defense and any counterattack won’t have a prayer unless they are also completely coordinated.”
Aldo had no more questions. Now that he knew what to look for, he began at once to examine the nearest mechanisms, seeking labels or identity marks of any kind. The others joined in, the bear helping him to lift the plastic covers, the girl aiding her lover in the same task.
An hour later, they paused in their work, looked at one another, and laughed. Sweat and disturbed layers of dust had covered them all with a pale mantle, and even the bear looked a furry ghost of his former self.
“Let’s see,” said Brother Aldo, who had been writing in a small book he had produced. “We have found nothing so far about computers, Hiero.” The priest wiped a grimy forehead with an even dirtier hand and tried to concentrate. Brother Aldo’s knowledge of the ancient languages was vital now, since Hiero himself had been able to memorize only a few simple words and phrases before setting forth.
“We have found ‘engines,’ that is, machines,” Aldo continued, “and we have found other things, controls apparently. What these engines ran on, their power source, by the way, baffles me. Unless,” and he looked very grave, “it is the lost power of the atom itself, which caused most of The Death when misused. But I prefer not even to think about that.” Hiero did not see lit to mention that he felt the Unclean well might have rediscovered that particular power source. It was only a suspicion, but he had never ceased wondering what silent engines drove their dark, sailless ships.
“We have found ‘air-conditioning’ and ‘thermal control,’ ” Lu-chare put in.
“Yes, but these are things, as I said, which occur in other sites I have visited. They mean fresh air and artificial heat, that’s all. We have no idea how they did these things, but we know they are neither weapons nor computers.”
“We’re poking around out on one edge of this place,” Hiero said, after a moment’s thought. “How about heading for the middle? If there is an information storage center, it might be there, logically. I am trying to recall how the place looked from up top, and I think there was a circular space, with things set about on it in some regular pattern.”
This plan was adopted, and they began a circuitous approach toward the center. Time and again they found a pathway or aisle blocked by some rearing hulk or other and had to go around or even retrace their steps. Hiero felt they were all minute creatures trapped in some vast and incomprehensible maze.
Eventually, all coughing and sneezing by now, they emerged from a corridor between two long lines of machinery into the open space which Hiero had glimpsed from far above. For some time they had been moving up a very gentle slope, and it was now apparent that this radial point in the center was set higher than the rest of the cavern. “Probably a system of drains buried under all this dust so they could flush the place down when it needed cleaning,” Hiero said.
They could see things of interest at once. Before them stood a vast, semicircular control board, its function very clear, since of all the things they had seen, it alone was not covered by plastic. Yet it had been, that was evident. For piles of plastic sheeting, minus any dust, lay here and there, as if each section had been ripped from the control board and cast aside at random. The thirty or so seats which were set in the floor in front of the board were not uncovered, however, and still retained their plastic shrouds.
On the board’s center, several small, unwinking lights, three amber and one red, glowed in which was obviously the main panel, since it lay in the center of the great board’s gentle arc. The three humans stared for a moment, only realizing by degrees what was indicated by all this.
“Someone’s been here,” the girl breathed. “Who could it have been? How long ago? Look, those lights must have been turned on.” She spun around suddenly, as if to catch someone or something stealing up behind them. Yet nothing moved, save for themselves. The dusty relics of the most ancient past towered up in forgotten, majesty around them, only the three tiny lights of the board the sole indication that life was not extinct in the relics of a vanished age.
The bear moved slowly forward and began, to sniff. Come here, his mind said. Something has been here and it has left a track. Something we know, was his grim afterthought.
Stepping forward, Hiero looked down and saw what Gorm had found. A broad, grooved mark, its greasy path only slightly tinged by dust, came from off to their left out of yet another aisle in the bulking engines. This trace went along the front of the control board, occasionally broadening into a wide smear where the plastic sheets had been flung aside, and then vanished again, down into the gloom of still another canyon in the forest of silent machines. The message was clear. Something had come, uncovered and examined the board, and then gone away again. Had it turned on the lights somehow? Where was it now and when would it return? Hiero shivered. Whatever had made this strange mark was certainly not human, and even before the bear’s next message, he felt he knew what it was.
That House-thing or one of its creatures has been here, came Gorm’s calm thought. Can’t you smell it yet? In his four-footed friend’s mind, Hiero caught the irritation at his duller senses, but he paid no attention.
Swiftly, now he relayed a warning to the other two. At the same time, he bade Luchare relight the lamp she had extinguished when they had managed to get the cavern lighting system activated. Fire had been their only weapon against the House before, and it might still save them, should the monster reappear, or should it send its servants.
“See here!” Aldo had been examining the portion of the board where the three small lights gleamed. “I can read these signs, or some of them. Some words such as ‘gantry’ and ‘silo’ are new to me, but here are ‘missile launch’ and a long series of numbers. We have found something terrible here, Hiero. This is a place which sent out into the air the flying Death itself, the great machines which traveled over and above the whole world, shedding foul poison and radioactive destruction.” He was shaken to the core as he looked down at the silent board. “Perhaps,” he added in a low voice, “perhaps some of those things are still waiting, waiting to spread more death, even after five thousand years.” No one spoke, even the bear’s mind, perhaps appalled at the thought that they might be able somehow, by mistake, again to loose such a horror on the world.