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up with him near the bottom, he said, “There’s miles of this, west and north of here, much bigger. But this is the one we came to see. Come.”
    He looked to right and left as if to get his bearings, then plunged into the tough and scrubby underbrush that vainly tried to cover those tortured metal bones. She followed as closely as she could, beating at the branches which he carelessly let whip back.
    Just in front of her, he turned the corner of a sharp block of stone, and when she turned it no more than a second later, he was gone.
    She stopped, turned, turned again. Dust, weeds, lonely and sorrowful ruins. No Osser. She shrank back against the stone, her eyes wide.
    The bushes nearby trembled, then lashed. Osser’s head emerged. “What’s the matter? Come on!” he said gruffly.
    She checked an impulse to cry out and run to him, and came silently forward. Osser held the bushes briefly, and beside him she saw a black hole with broken steps leading downward.
    She hesitated, but he moved his head impatiently, and she passed him and led the way downward. When he followed, his wide flat body blocked out the light. The darkness was so heavy, her eyes ached.
    He prodded her in the small of the back. “Go on, go on!”
    The foot of the steps came sooner than she expected and her knees buckled as she took the downward step that was not there. She tripped, almost fell, then somehow got to the side wall and braced herself there, trembling.
    “Wait,” he said, and the irrepressible smile quirked the corners of her mouth. As if she would go anywhere!
    She heard him fumbling about somewhere, and then there was a sudden aching blaze of light that made her cry out and clap her hands over her face.
    “Look,” he said. “I want you to look at this. Hold it.”
    Into her hands he pressed a cylinder about half the length of her forearm. At one end was a lens from which the blue-white light was streaming.
    “See this little thing here,” he said, and touched a stud at the side of the cylinder. The light disappeared, came on again.
    She laughed delightedly, took the cylinder and played its light around, switching it on and off. “It’s wonderful!” she cried. “Oh, wonderful!”
    “You take this one,” he said, pleased. He handed her another torch and took the first from her. “It isn’t as good, but it will help. I’ll go first.”
    She took the second torch and tried it. It worked the same way, but the light was orange and feeble. Osser strode ahead down a slanting passageway. At first there was a great deal of rubble underfoot, but soon the way was clear as they went farther and deeper. Osser walked with confidence, and she knew he had been here before, probably many times.
    “Here,” he said, stopping to wait for her. His voice echoed strangely, vibrant with controlled excitement.
    He turned his torch ahead, swept it back and forth.
    They were at the entrance to a room. It was three times the height of a man, and as big as their village green. She stared around, awed.
    “Come,” Osser said again, and went to the far corner.
    A massive, box-like object stood there. One panel, about eye-level, was of a milky smooth substance, the rest of black metal. Projecting from the floor in front of it was a lever. Osser grasped it confidently and pulled. It yielded sluggishly, and returned to its original position. Osser tugged again. There was a low growling sound from the box. Osser pulled, released, pulled, released, each time a little faster. The sound rose in pitch, higher and higher.
    “Turn off your light,” he said.
    She did so and blackness snapped in around them. As the dazzle faded from her eyes, she detected a flicker of silver light before her, and realized that it came from the milky pane in the box. As Osser pulled at the lever and the whine rose and rose in pitch, the squaregot bright enough for her to see her hands when she looked down at them.
    And then—the pictures.
    Jubilith had never seen pictures like