The Goon rattled off into the darkness, and Lloyd heard it begin to ascend the stairs once more. He felt for, and found, Andra's arm, and drew her to him. "Careful, now," he cautioned her. "The Brain-control chamber is right under us. We have a hundred-foot climb down a steel ladder, now."
"But I can't see—!" Andra said, holding back.
"There's Light-of-Day below," Lloyd said. "As soon as we start into the chamber, we'll be able to see. Ultrablack never goes on in the Brain." He held her hand tightly as he felt for the top rung with his toe. "Okay, now, I'm starting down. Come a little closer, and take your weight off one leg. I'll guide that foot to the top rung."
Andra caught herself nodding in the blackness, and said "All right," aloud. She heard Lloyd's feet clumping onto something that clanged dully, and then his hand was taking her gently by the ankle. She let him place her foot on the rung, then gave him a moment to begin his own descent before she followed after him. Three steps down, and she was in bright Light-of-Day, on a shiny tubular ladder whose base looked impossibly far below her. She shut her eyes and clung tightly to the sides of the ladder, then, taking step by cautious step downwards. The rungs, she'd noted, were just about a foot apart. She'd count to one hundred, and if she hadn't reached the bottom by then, she would scream.
When she was just enumerating ninety-seven, Lloyd's hands took her by the waist, and lifted her to the floor. She opened her eyes, disengaged his hands from her body, and then looked around in awe.
Tier upon tier of lightweight metal scaffolding rose on all sides of a twenty-foot-square area of flooring. Riveted across the angles of the scaffolding were coils and condensors, insulators and sparking forks of synaptic wiring, whirling cams and clattering selectors, banks of glowing lights that danced on random pattern, deepset labyrinthine nests of wire that glowed a brilliant orange, then faded to dull grey, then glowed again, accompanied by a rising and falling hum of urgent power.
As Andra's eyes followed the amazing array from ceiling to floor, she was shocked to see that the flooring was not really the solid thing she had supposed; it was, rather, a taut network of heavy cable, really nothing more than a glorified windowscreen, through the interstices of which she caught a vertiginous glimpse of more areas of bright electrical light, dropping away below her feet to incredible distances.
"How big is the Brain—?" she said to Lloyd, pulling her eyes from the terror of the empty depths between the frameworks beneath the cable-floor.
"A cubic mile," Lloyd said. "It's self-oiling, self-repairing, self-replacing. And in it are stored all the memories of the Hive from the day it was built."