He held his hands above the knobs a second time.

“No, don’t!” Haniman cried. “You’ll be killed!”

Hresh waved him away and seized the knobs.

But nothing happened this time. He might have been holding his own elbows, for all the effect he felt.

He reached around, touching this knob, that one, this one, that one. Nothing. Nothing.

Perhaps the machine had burned itself out in order to allow him that one miraculous glimpse.

Or perhaps, he thought, he was the one who had burned out. It might be that his mind was so numb from the inrush of that force that it could absorb no more.

He stepped back and studied the thing thoughtfully. Maybe it took time to build up its power again after having discharged it. He would wait, he decided, and try it once more a little later.

The sapphire-eyes artificials at the gate had not deceived him, then, when they had told him to search more deeply. They had meant it in the most literal way. Perhaps all the wonders that Vengiboneeza still contained were to be found in hidden caverns like this, beneath the great buildings.

Then Hresh remembered the other thing the sapphire-eyes had told him.

Search with that which can help you find what you seek.

That advice had made little sense at the time. Now, suddenly, it did. He caught his breath sharply as fear and excitement swept through him in equal measure.

The Barak Dayir, did they mean? The Wonderstone?

That magical talisman which the generations of chroniclers kept hidden in the casket that held the books? The instrument that Thaggoran himself had handled with such fear and reverence?

It was worth trying, Hresh thought.

Even if he died in the attempt, the attempt would be worthwhile; for there were great questions to be answered here, and if he had to risk everything in the hope of gaining everything, so be it.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here — if we can.”

“You aren’t going to fool around with it any more?”

“Not now,” said Hresh. “I need to do some research first. I think I know how to make this thing work, but I have to consult the chronicles before I try it.”

“What did you see just now?”

“The Great World,” said Hresh.

“You did?”

“For an instant. Only an instant.”

Haniman stared at him, jaws slackening with amazement.

“What was it like?”

Hresh shrugged. “Grander than you could ever imagine,” he said in a low, weary tone.

“Tell me. Tell me.”

“Another time.”

Haniman was silent. After a moment he said, “Well, what will you do now? What is it you need to know to make the machine work?”

“Never mind that,” Hresh said. “What we need to know just now is how to make that stone block rise and get us out of this place.”

In the heat of his eagerness to explore the cavern he had given that problem no consideration at all. Getting down here had been easy enough; but what were they supposed to do to get out again? He beckoned to Haniman and they jumped on the slab of black stone. But the slab remained where it was on the cavern floor.

Hresh slapped his hand against the stone. No response. He groped along its edges for some lever that might operate it, akin to the wheel that had opened the hatch of the tribal cocoon in the old days. Nothing.

“Maybe there’s some other way up,” Haniman suggested. “A staircase somewhere.”

“And maybe if we flap our arms hard enough, we’ll fly right out of here,” Hresh said sharply. He squinted into the dimness. A lever sticking out of the wall, perhaps — run to it, pull it, run back quickly to the stab—

No lever. What now? Pray to Yissou? Yissou himself might not know the way out of this place. Or care that two inquisitive boys had stranded themselves in it.

“We can’t just sit here all day,” said Haniman. “Let’s get off and see if we can find something that controls it. Or a different way out. How do you know there isn’t a staircase around here somewhere?”

Hresh shrugged. It cost nothing to look. They began to make their way along the cavern floor in the direction opposite from the one they had taken before, peering here and there at the base of the statuary groups in search of a control unit, a hidden doorway, a staircase, anything.

Suddenly there was a groaning sound, as of a heavy vibration in the ground beneath them. They halted and stared at each other in surprise and flight. A dry, dusty odor spread like a stain through the thick stale air.

“Ice-eaters?” Haniman said. “Coming up underneath us, the way they did under the cocoon?”

“Ice-eaters here?” said Hresh. “No, that can’t be. I thought they lived only in mountains. But the ground is shaking, all right. And—”

Then came a sighing sound of a sort that he had heard before, and another deep groan; and Hresh realized what was happening. There were no ice-eaters here. The sounds they heard were those of the unseen machinery that had carried them into these depths.

“The stone!” he yelled. “It’s taking off all by itself!”

Indeed it had begun slowly to rise. Desperately he rushed for it. It was already as high as his knees when he caught it by the edge and pulled himself up. Looking around for Haniman, he saw him lumbering and thundering along in a strange sluggish way, as though running through water. It was the Haniman of old returned, the fat clumsy boy out of whom this Haniman had grown; that fat Haniman might be gone, but evidently even this new improved version was still a slow runner. Hresh leaned over the edge of the slab, furiously gesticulating at him.

“Hurry! It’s going up!”

“I’m — trying—” Haniman grunted, head down, arms flailing.

But the slab was nearly as high as Haniman’s shoulders when he reached it, an eternity later. Hresh reached down to catch him by the wrists. He felt a terrible hot wrenching pain, as though his arms were being yanked out at the sockets; and he thought for a moment that Haniman’s weight would pull him forward and off the slab. Somehow he anchored himself on the smooth glossy stone and heaved. In one terrible burst of exertion Hresh hauled Haniman up until he was able to hook his chin over the edge of the slab, and after that it was easier. The slab rose into the dome of blackness above them. They lay sprawled side by side, both of them gasping, shaking, exhausted. Hresh had never felt such pain as he was feeling all along his arms now, pulsating fiery tremors that went on and on and on; and he suspected that was going to get worse before it healed.

The slab glided up and up. When he dared, Hresh looked over the edge and saw only empty darkness below; the amber light must have gone off once they were in midair. Above was darkness also. But before long they were back in the tower of the metal webwork, and the slab was fixed once more on the tower’s bare dirt floor.

They rose from it in silence. In silence they made their way back to the tribe. Night had come, heavy, starless, mysterious. Hresh could not recall ever feeling so weary in his life, not even during the worst days of the long march. But in his mind there blazed the brilliant images he had seen, in just that single moment, of the Great World alive. He knew he would return to the cavern under the tower soon. Not at once, no, however much he wanted to do that, for there were certain preparations he knew he must make first. But soon.

And this time he would bring the Barak Dayir.

Taniane, studying Hresh and Haniman in the days that followed, sensed that something extraordinary must have happened on their last trip to the heart of the city. They had come back with eyes glowing and faces strange with amazement. Hresh had gone straight to Koshmar, simply brushing aside anyone who tried to speak with him before he found her, as if brimming with urgent things to report. But when Taniane asked him that evening what he had seen, he glared as if she were one of the hjjk-folk and said, almost angrily, “Nothing. Nothing at all.”