"Borgara found his pleasure in watching people in torture. The trouble was that the more satisfying kind of torture didn't leave a victim alive too long. So Borgara directed me to devise a means of torture that would be most terrible and yet would not kill too soon. I did—and it is this machine."
"Yet it drove Borgara insane."
"Correct. Permit me to remove a few important parts?"
"To demonstrate without danger?"
"Yes."
Atkins stepped forward and removed two tiny wheels and a glistening sphere. "Now start it," he said. "The danger is gone."
Lindoo snapped the switch again. The myriad of levers began to reciprocate. Tiny flashing wheels started to turn, and pencils of light flickered through the facets of the rotating spheres. It was a fascinating machine, utterly fascinating. It increased in speed, and the flickering, flashing, interwoven motion flowed with a noiseless violence. In and out, through and through in a mad pattern went the parts. And as they watched it, the machine lost its mechanical shape, apparently, and became an almost living thing that breathed and was—shapeless. The individual motions became one master writhing.
And the Loard-vogh stared at the machine with horror on their faces. There was sheer and utter horror there, but they could not move away, nor could they speak. They began to writhe a bit, as something in their mental attitude caused the onset of physical pain, and the writhing grew more violent.