At the end of a long flight, they landed on a flange, dizzyingly far above the street (?). Watching Zolotoyan hands on the platform controls, Holbrook found the steering mechanism superbly simple. But then he was urged through an arched doorway and down a dim corridor of polished blue stone. He saw faint grooves worn in the floor. This place was old.
Ekaterina whispered to him, "Eben Petrovitch,"—she had never so called him before—"have you seen even one ornament here? One little picture or calendar or ... anything? I would give a tooth for something humanly small."
"The city is its own ornament," said Grushenko. His words came louder than required.
They reached a dead-end wall. One of the black figures touched a stud, and the wall dilated.
Beyond was a room so large that Holbrook could not make out its ceiling through the sourceless muted radiance. But he saw the machine that waited, tier upon tier where tiny red lights crawled like worms, and he saw a hundred silent green-clad Zolotoyans move through the intricate rituals of servicing it. "A computer," he mumbled. "In ten thousand years we may be able to build a computer like that."
A guard trilled to a technician. The technician waved calmly at some others, who hurried to him. They conferred in a few syllables and turned to the humans with evident purpose.
"Gospodny pomiluie," breathed Ekaterina. "It is a ... a routine! How many like us have come here?"