*   *   *

It was big. Also empty.

More deep ruts in the flooring showed where the big weight had come from. They followed, eyes constantly moving.

In the middle of a huge, high-ceiling foyer stood stonework on a pedestal. It was the size of a big man and rotated slowly on a magnetic suspension. All surrounding light seemed to radiate out from it, sparkling as rich facets shifted up and down the color spectrum.

Cliff moved his head, and fresh detonations of blue and yellow lanced out. The stone did not seem to have a fixed shape. As facets shifted across its surface, the very boundaries of the thing seemed to alter. “It’s hypnotic,” Aybe said.

Its light came from within yet played on what light fell on it—brilliant, soothing, stunning in its sense of eternal hard beauty.

Irma took out her laser and down-tuned it to flashlight level. She played it over the stonework, fetching forth bright, coruscating waterfalls of spectral glows. “What an artwork,” she said admiringly.

So it was, Cliff thought, but—“Turn your laser off. Maybe it’s an alarm.”

Irma blinked and backed away. The stonework subsided, its splintered light dimming. Plainly it fed on incoming light. “Let’s move,” she said.

They backed away from the stonework and followed the ruts toward a high arched entrance. Inside the next large cavern, they saw a huge door divided in two. “Looks like an elevator, all right,” Terry said.

“No button on the side to summon it,” Irma noted.

“Over millions of kilometers?” Aybe shook his head. “It’ll have to work like a train to—”

Faint sounds from behind them. A rustling, then a clang. Cliff looked around. “There, lower left on the far wall. Could be a door.”

They scrambled for it. On close approach at a full run, Cliff saw it was much bigger than a human door and had a lumpy embedded ornament—maybe a lock?—in the middle.

As Cliff skidded to a halt, Aybe said, “Why run? Let’s take them on.”

“For what?” Irma spat out.

Cliff ignored them. The door didn’t respond to a simple shove and it didn’t look as though their lasers could quickly cut through the heavy metal around it—brass? Iron? He couldn’t think. The thumping noises from behind them were louder now. The ornament had a complicated opening at its center. And now he heard clumping footsteps and rumblings of something heavier.

He fumbled with the collar around the center and then Irma said, “Let me.” She took a tool kit out and tried several long slender instruments. It seemed incredible to Cliff that this could be an analog lock. He started to brush her aside but then thought, What would last here? Not digital nets, whose elements decay. No—simple hard metal.

Irma struggled and tried another tool. A third. A fourth. The sounds behind got stronger and now Cliff could hear some muffled jabber making sounds like words, but he was too frazzed out to think about them. Irma twisted hard—she had two levers in the complicated slot—and it gave.

The door was heavy and it squeaked as Irma and Terry shoved it open. Beyond lay darkness. They all stepped through and carefully tugged the door back. Irma turned her laser to illumination mode and they saw the rugged lock apparatus on the door’s center. Terry shoved one of Irma’s tools through the stay to stop it from locking them in, and they all pushed the door into its frame. No click.

“Is that smart?” Cliff whispered. “They can just push and know someone’s come in through it.”

Irma frowned. “Maybe so. They came so fast, as if they’re answering that alarm—must be from nearby.”

Aybe said, “If they’re caretakers, they’ll conduct a search. Maybe they can extract images from that stonework and know what we look like.”

“Let’s lock it behind us,” Cliff said. “Now.”

They did, releasing the rod and watching a big clamp take hold. “Now what?” Terry said.

They turned to peer through the gloom. Big machinery ran along one wall, secured with chains. Dust tickled his nostrils and coated his lips. It felt fine and acidic, the grime of millennia. Somehow this felt luxurious, as if he could fall into its soft domain. He had not realized how the silky texture of the restful dark felt like home.

“Cliff, come on,” Terry called, and he went to explore.

They were in a framing room that apparently wrapped around the “railroad” and held repair equipment. Large transparent walls showed them the railroad itself. There were indeed two sets of rails in the middle of the large corridor, running flat on the ground and tapering away into blurred distance. A blue radiance showed collars lining the rail tunnel, pale frames with luminescent inner rims of white.

“Big rail cars, must be,” Aybe said.

Cliff said, “Boxcars the size of a house.”

“That white light is getting stronger,” Irma pointed out.

“I feel a breeze,” Terry said. Howard was coughing in the dust that swarmed up from the floor.

Cliff could see four of the collars brighten, and the breeze got stronger and suddenly the white collars flared. In the hard flash, a crackling came sharp as something shot by and a muffled whump!—with a quick flicker—told them the thing had passed at high velocity. The window rattled—

Then the true surge wrapped through the side rooms, and the heft of it knocked them down. It was quick and delayed just enough so that Cliff knew what had happened only when he found himself flat on his back, blinking up into the dimly lit dark. He got up, rubbing his head where it had hit the dusty floor. He sneezed.

The others were up and wandering. Irma stood, legs spread and head down, gasping in the low oxygen. Howard rubbed his head, cursing. Terry got to his feet and leaned on the wall beside the big window and breathed in and out in a systematic way, eyes ahead.

Aybe got unsteadily to his feet, slipped, caught himself. His eyes wandered and he shook his head, gasped. “See those?” he asked, pointing at slim, shiny fibers, electrical ribbons attached at all four sides. “They’re dischargers. That flash—even through this thick window, my hair stood on end. This must be an electrodynamic system.”

Cliff remembered e-lifts Earthside that worked by charging elevators and then handing the weight off to a steady wave of electrodynamic fields. This might be similar.

“Did you feel that tremor as it passed?” Aybe said. “It didn’t just shake—the floor, it sank a bit. That ‘train’ is heavy.”

Terry said, “How do we get on one?”

“Find out how to stop one, first,” Cliff said.

Terry smiled. “Then—where do we go?”

The big question. “Away from here,” Cliff said. “That’s what we’ve been doing all this time—move, dodge, try to learn.”

“What about finding Beth’s team?” Irma asked.

Cliff paused and felt their eyes on him. “I’d like to, sure. As far as we know, they’re in the hands of the Bird Folk. But where?”

“Maybe near the mirror zone?” Aybe asked.

“Because they sent that image from there?” Irma shook her head. “Could be just suckering us in.”

Cliff held his tongue. He hadn’t known when it happened how to discuss with the others the Beth image. He still didn’t.

“Y’know,” Terry said, “we’re going way out on a limb here.”

“Out on a limb,” Irma said, “is where the fruit is.”

Aybe said impatiently, “We need to get away! Why not take the first one we can get?”

They all looked at one another, as if realizing how little they knew and how few options they had—and nodded.

Cliff sensed a slight breeze. “Another one coming.”

They braced themselves. But this time there was no gale, just an amiable breeze carrying a whooooosh that ebbed away. A long series of blocky cars passed, slowing, slowing—

That distracted them from seeing the black carapace of a machine that stood on three legs beside a side wall. Its slender arms manipulated controls on a panel. It made a final move and the train stopped.