The room filled with the massive roar of a giant river dropping four hundred feet. Woodard clutched the arm of his chair, rejecting the nightmare fantasy of himself taking the falls in a canoe. Nodus too was seated now. Looking impassively straight ahead, like a ceremonial figure on a public stage, he was talking from the side of his mouth to Russ. He played with a pair of horn-rimmed glasses which Woodard had never seen him wear. The girl sat raptly beating a time of her own devising.
It was said—where did one hear these things? Why did one remember them?—that years ago the girl and Mr. Nodus had been in love. That the new era in electronics had alienated Mr. Nodus' affections. Auxiliary priestess now to the monster that had dethroned her, the girl tapped her left wrist with the fingers of her right hand and smiled remotely....
"Four and one-half minutes, as advertised," Nodus said, raising the player arm. "And now, the foreground of mosquitoes. Amplified by—well, no need to be technical. Let's just enjoy it. Two and one-half minutes will do."
Quite so. Higher than coloratura, a whirring, a hum. As if all insect life brought out on the lake by the evening damp had swarmed into that room. And back of the keening shrillness, unending in its behemoth anguish was the muffled roar of the falls. Woodard squirmed. But he wouldn't pay Nodus the homage of warding off the insects. Forcing himself rigid, he watched the clock. His thoughts wandered to the lake, dark and deep outside—and to Mr. Ward, imprisoned by cold in the darkest depth.
Two and one-half minutes exactly.
"Amazing," Woodard said. Antagonized by Nodus' pontifical assurance, he added spitefully, "Of course, nothing sounds like that."
Nodus shrugged aside the irrelevancy. "Hi-fi does," he said, extracting a second record from its case. "We have many requests for that number. Many. And now—an old-fashioned steam train. If you think it's coming toward you—and jump—please try not to displace your chair." About to laugh, Woodard caught himself. The man was not joking. "We don't," Nodus explained, "want to fasten it to the floor till we're perfectly certain that...." He looked for confirmation to Russ and the girl. Both nodded. "We've timed this one at three and one-half—more precisely," he announced, "three minutes and twenty-eight seconds."
It was stupendous, terrifying. Woodard himself vibrated as the colossus approached. But not for anything would he have stirred....