But womanlike, it was Sheila Aiken who, obeying the Pandora impulse, stepped forward into the open cubicle. Darkness swallowed her like an engulfing maw. Dr. Aiken cried out in swift alarm, "Sheila! Be careful!"
Her voice came back, excited but unfearful, "I'm all right, Daddy. And—Barrett was right! There is a ladder in here. But it goes up instead of down! Come and bring the torch! This is the strangest room!"
Syd had already torn the flambeau from its bracket. Now he and the others crowded forward eagerly into the metal chamber. But if they had hoped a view of its interior would solve their questions, they were doomed to disillusionment. For the mystery of the cube was heightened, rather than decreased, by that which the flickering torch revealed.
An interior fashioned and equipped like a small room; for all the world, Ramey thought confusedly, like one of those efficiently compact cabins on ocean liners. A metal bench or working table. Two wooden chair frames, now seatless. In one corner a stiff pallet. Everywhere mouldering dust that fumed upward as their feet scuffed the floor; dust that must be, Ramey realized suddenly, the detritus of ages. The wheezy puff they had heard as the door swung open was proof that the cubicle was nearly airtight. That which eddied about them now, tickling their nostrils, must be the dust of less permanent materials than metal and wood, disintegrated by slow years. Those whorls beneath the seatless chairs might once have been rush or tapestry; the thick, powdery fluff on the pallet be the residue of vanished bedsilks.
But it was foolish to conjecture on things vanished when so many tangible wonders greeted the eye. For as Sheila had said, a ladder climbed the near wall to the ceiling; on the wall before one of the chairs was a panel, and on this panel—
Ramey's eyes bulged.
"Doctor!" he cried. "Those dials! Those levers!"
Dr. Aiken was staring at the panel like one who sees a lifetime of reason and learning collapse before him. "I—I can't understand it!" he stammered weakly. "Machinery? But the ancients had no knowledge—"
Ramey, moving forward, kicked something. He bent and picked it up. It was as incomprehensible as the panel. It was a metal arch about three feet long, supported by a cross-brace upon which was mounted a sealed cylinder, also of metal. The instrument was equipped with a rest carven to fit the shoulder. Its semi-circular portion was pierced on the outer rim at one-eighth inch intervals with tiny holes, and where the hoop joined the cylinder there were what seemed to be two handgrips equipped with finger-studs.