The floor of the place had become smooth beneath him; the air was cool but pleasant, and free of the odors which had prevailed in the region he had recently departed.
He moved until it was immediately before him. There was nothing but the light. It was a gigantic opening onto something, but all that he could see was the yellow-white blaze; he heard a grinding, clanking and humming, as of many machines.
... Or the Great Machine.
Again, he lay prone. He crawled forward through the opening. He lay upon a ledge, and for a moment his mind could not assimilate all that was below.
It had so many gears that it would have been an interminable task to number them, some turning slowly, some rapidly, big unto small; and there were cams, drive shafts, and pulleys and pendulums-some of the pendulums twenty times his own height and slow, ponderous-and pistons and things that corkscrewed in and out of black metal sockets; and there were condensers, transformers and rectifiers; there were great blue-metal banks containing dials, switches, buttons and little lights of many colors, which constantly blinked on and off; there was the steady noise, a hum, of still further buried generators- or perhaps they were something else, possibly drawing power from the planet itself, its heat, its gravitational field, certain hidden stresses-which buzzed in his ears like a swarm of insects; there was the blue smell of ozone, reaching everywhere. There was the brilliant light coming from all the walls of the enormous cavern which housed the equipment; there was a battery of buckets which moved on guidelines above the entire complex, occasionally pausing in their courses to dump lubricants at various points; there were power cables, like snakes, that wound from one point to another, indicating nothing he could understand; there were tiny, glass-enclosed boxes, connected with the whole by means of thin wires, which contained components so minute that he could not discern their forms from where he lay. There were no fewer than a hundred elevator-type mechanisms, which constantly plunged into the depths or vanished overhead, and which paused at various levels of the machine to extrude mechanical appurtenances into portions of its mechanism; there were wide red bands of light on the farthest wall, and they flicked on and off; and his mind could not encompass all that he saw, felt, smelled and heard-though he knew that he must deal with it somehow-so that he searched for a clue for the best point of impact, seeking within that massive structure for that which would destroy it. He found titanic tools hung upon the walls, tools which could only have been wielded by giants, to service the thing-wrenches; pliers, pry bars, things-that-turned-other-things-and he knew that among them lay the thing that he required, a thing which, if properly employed, could break the Great Machine.
He crept farther forward and continued to stare. It was magnificent; there had never been anything like it before, and there never would be again.
He looked for a way down and saw a metal ladder, far off to his right. He went toward it.
The ledge narrowed, but he managed to reach the topmost rung, and from there he swung himself into position.
He began the long climb down.
Before he had reached the bottom, he heard footsteps. They were barely discernible over the sounds of the machinery, but he distinguished them and backed into a shadow.
Although the shadow did not possess its normal effects, it hid him. He waited there, near to the ladder, next to a generator of sorts, and thought of his next move.
A small, white-haired man limped by. Jack studied him. The man paused, found an oilcan dripped lubricant upon various of the gears.
Jack watched as the man moved about the Machine, finding various slots and openings, squirting oil into them.
"Hello," he said, as the man passed.
"What-Who are you?"
"I am one who has come to see you."
"Why?"
"I came to ask you some questions."
"Well, that is pleasant enough and I am willing to answer you. What do you wish to know?"
"I was curious about the makeup of this Machine."
"It's quite complex," he replied.
"I daresay. Could you give me details?"
"Yes," he answered, dazzling him with the explanation.
Jack nodded his head and felt his hands grow stiff.
"You understand?"
"Yes."
"What is the matter?"
"I believe that you are going to die," he said.
"What-" And Jack hit him in the left temple with the first knuckle of his right hand.
Crossing to a rack of tools near the Machine, he studied the great array of equipment. He selected a heavy bar of metal, whose function he did not understand. Lifting it, he sought a small glass case the old man had indicated. He studied the hundreds of tiny, delicate gears which turned within it, moving at varying rates of speed.
Raising the bar, he smashed the glass, and began to destroy the intricate mechanism. With each blow he struck, a sound of mechanical protest arose from some new portion of the vast Machine. There came an irregular humming, then a series of clanking sounds, as if something large had snapped or been torn loose. This was followed by a shrill whine, a grating sound and the screech of metal against metal. Then came a banging noise, and smoke began to rise from
several segments. One of the more massive gears slowed, hesitated, halted, and began again, moving more slowly than before.
While Jack was smashing the other cases, the lubricant buckets went wild overhead, racing back and forth, emptying their contents, returning to the wall spigots for more. There came the smell of burning insulation and a popping, sizzling sound. The floor began to shake and several pistons tore loose. Now there were flames amid the smoke, and Jack coughed at the acrid fumes.
The Machine quivered, ground to a halt, and began again, wildly. It shook as gears raced and axles snapped. It began tearing itself to pieces. The din grew painful to his ears. Wheeling, he hurled the bar into the Machine and fled in the direction of the ladder. /
When he looked back, there were huge figures, partly hidden by the smoke, racing toward the Machine. Too late, he knew.
He fled up the ladder, reached the ledge, raced into the darkness from which he had come.
Thus began the destruction of the world he had known.
The return journey proved in some ways more dangerous than the downward one had been, for the ground trembled now, stirring the dust and debris of the ages, cracking walls, causing portions of the roof to collapse. Twice, coughing, he had to clear litter from his way
before he could pass. Then, too, the inhabitants of that great tunnel ran in panic, attacking one another with a new ferocity. Jack slew many to pass there.
After emerging, he looked at the black orb, high in the heavens. The coldness still came by it, more perhaps now than when he had begun his mission of sabotage. He studied that sphere and saw that it appeared to have moved slightly from the position it had previously occupied.
Then, hurriedly, to keep a recent promise he had made to himself, he employed the Key to transport him to the Sign of the Burning Pestle, on the coach road by the ocean.
He entered that inn, built of nightwood, repaired a thousand times, and ancient almost beyond his memory. As he descended into the central dining area, the ground shuddered and the walls creaked about him. This caused a silence, followed by a babble of voices, from a group of diners near the fire.
Jack approached them.
"I'm looking for an old woman named Rosalie," he said. "Does she reside here?"
A broad-shouldered man with a blond beard and a livid scar on his forehead, looked up from his meal.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"Jack of Shadow Guard."
The man studied his clothing, his face; his eyes widened, then dropped.
"I know of no Rosalie, sir," he said in a soft tone. "Do any of you others?"