“If we find something here, you’ll think it is a trap,” said Sandra. “You’ll be scared to use it. We can’t use the doors because they may be traps.”
“I’m sure they are,” said the Brigadier. “I don’t want to catch any of you trying to find out.”
“I looked through the peephole,” said Jurgens, “and there was no sign of him.”
“What did you expect to see?” asked the Brigadier. “Him standing there, thumbing his nose at us? As soon as he stepped through the door, he lit a shuck. He got out as fast as he could manage. He didn’t want to take a chance.”
“Maybe it was for the best,” said Mary. “He may be happy there. I remember his face when he first looked through the peephole. He looked happy, the only time I ever saw him happy. There was something in that world that appealed to him. To all of us, perhaps, but especially to him.”
“I remember,” said Lansing. “He was happy. It was the first time I ever saw him without the corners of his mouth pulled down.”
“So what do the two of you want us to do?” asked the Brigadier. “Line up in front of that door and all go marching through?”
“No,” said Mary. “It wouldn’t be right for us. But it was right for the Parson. It was the one way out for him. I hope that he is happy.”
“Happiness should not be our sole goal,” said the Brigadier.
“Nor is a death wish,” said Mary, “and that is what you have. I’m convinced this precious city of yours will kill us one by one. Edward and I are not about to stay and have that happen to us. Come morning, we are leaving.”
Lansing looked across the fire at her and for a moment felt the impulse to walk around the circle and take her in his arms. He did not do so; instead he stayed sitting where he was.
“The party can’t split up,” said the Brigadier, in a desperate tone. “The only strength we have lies in our staying together. You are giving way to panic.”
Sandra screamed, “It is all my fault! If I’d stayed and watched him.”
“It makes no matter,” said Jurgens, trying to comfort her. “He would have waited for his chance. If not today, then another day. He would not have rested until he tried that other world.”
“I think that’s right,” said Lansing. “He was a desperate man, at the end of his tether. I never realized how far gone he was until we talked last night. I honestly don’t think any of us can blame ourselves for what took place.”
“Then what about this leaving business?” asked the Brigadier. “How about it, Lansing?”
“It is my judgment that all of us should get out of here,” said Lansing. “There is something sinister about the city. Certainly you have sensed it. It’s dead, but even dead, there is something watching us. Watching all the time. Every move we make. You can forget it for a time and then you feel the watching once again, between your shoulder blades.”
“And if we stay, if the rest of us stay?”
“Then you stay alone. I’m leaving and Mary’s going with me.” Thinking as he said it that not until Mary had spoken earlier had he known they would be leaving. How had she known? he wondered. What unknown, unconscious communication lay between them?
“A few more days,” pleaded the Brigadier. “A few more days. That is all I’ll ask. If nothing turns up in the next few days, then all of us will leave.”
No one answered.
“Three days,” he said. “Only three days…”
“I’m not one to push a man to his limit in a bargain,” Lansing said. “Mary willing, I’ll make a deal with you and give you the benefit. Two days and that is all. There’ll be no extension.”
The Brigadier threw a puzzled look at Mary. “All right,” she said. “Two days.” Outside, night had fallen. Later the moon would rise, but now, with the sun gone, full night had fallen on the city.
Jurgens rose awkwardly. “I’ll get supper started.” “No, let me,” Sandra said. “It helps if I keep busy.” From far off came a terrible crying. They stiffened where they were, sitting starkly, listening. Again, as had been the case the night before, on a hilltop above the city a lonely creature was sobbing out its anguish.
19
Late in the afternoon of the second day, Mary and Lansing made the discovery.
Between two buildings, at the end of a narrow alley, they saw the gaping hole. Lansing turned the beam of his flashlight into the darkness. The beam revealed a narrow flight of stairs, a more substantial flight than might have been expected leading from an alley.
“You stay here,” he said. “I’ll go down and look. It’ll probably turn out nothing.”
“No,” she said, “I’m going with you. I don’t want to be left alone.”
Carefully he lowered himself into the opening and gingerly descended the steep flight. Behind him clicks and scuffings told him that Mary was very close behind. There was more than one flight of stairs. He came to a landing and a quarter of the way around it another flight plunged down. It was not until he had taken the first few steps down the second flight that he heard the muttering. When he stopped dead in his tracks to listen, Mary bumped into him.
The muttering was soft. Nor was it quite a mutter, which was what he first had thought it was. Rather a throaty singing, as if someone were singing softly to himself. Masculine, not feminine, singing.
“Someone’s singing,” Mary whispered.
“We’ll have to go and see,” he said. He didn’t want to go on. If he had done what he wanted, he would have turned about and fled. For while the singing (if it was singing) sounded human, there still was about the whole experience an eerie alienness that set his teeth on edge.
The second flight ended on yet another landing and as he went down the third flight, the singing gained some strength, while downward and ahead of him he saw softly glowing lights — cat eyes staring at him out of darkness. Reaching the foot of the stairs, he moved out a few steps on a metal walkway and Mary came to stand beside him.
“Machinery,” she said. “Or a machine.”
“It’s hard to tell,” he said. “An installation of some sort.”
“And operating,” she said. “Do you realize this is the first live thing we’ve found.”
The machinery, Lansing saw, was not massive. Not overpowering. The many glowing eyes scattered all through it furnished enough light so that the machinery could be seen — guessed rather than seen, he told himself, for the light from the eyes was faint. The whole assembly was a spindly, spidery mass. It seemed to have no moving parts. And it was singing to itself.
When he trained his light ahead, he saw that the metal walkway on which they stood ran straight ahead, forming a narrow path between two conglomerations of machinery. The path ran a long way, well beyond the strength of the flashlight’s beam, and as far as he could see, the spindly forms flanked it on either side.
Walking slowly and carefully, he started down the walkway, with Mary close beside him. When they reached the beginning of the machinery they halted and he trained the light on the nearest segments of the installation.
The machines were not only spindly; they were delicate. The polished metal, if it was metal, gleamed brightly; there was no dust or grease upon it. It didn’t, in fact, look like any machinery he had ever seen. It looked like a piece of metal sculpture that a slap-happy artist had assembled with a pair of pliers, chortling all the while. But, despite the lack of moving parts, despite any indication of actual operation, it seemed to be brimming with a sense of life and purpose. And all the time it sang, crooning to itself.
“It’s strange,” said Mary. “As an engineer, I should have some inkling as to what this could be. But there’s not a single component that I recognize.”
“No notion what it’s doing?”
“None at all,” she said.
“We’ve been calling it machinery.”
