The incinerator was open. It never closed. There was a wide entrance,
all lighted up with hidden illumination, there was a helicopter landing
table and a beetle drive. The town itself was dying down after another
day of the dynamo. The lights were going dim, and the only quiet,
lighted spot in the town now was the Incinerator. God, what a practical
name, what an unromantic name.
William Lantry entered the wide, well-lighted door. It was an entrance,
really; there were no doors to open or shut. People could go in and
out, summer or winter, the inside was always warm. Warm from the fire
that rushed whispering up the high round flue to where the whirlers,
the propellors, the air-jets pushed the leafy grey ashes on away for a
ten mile ride down the sky.
There was the warmth of the bakery here. The halls were floored with
rubber parquet. You couldn't make a noise if you wanted to. Music
played in hidden throats somewhere. Not music of death at all, but
music of life and the way the sun lived inside the Incinerator; or the
sun's brother, anyway. You could hear the flame floating inside the
heavy brick wall.
William Lantry descended a ramp. Behind him he heard a whisper and
turned in time to see a beetle stop before the entrance way. A bell
rang. The music, as if at a signal, rose to ecstatic heights. There was
joy in it.
From the beetle, which opened from the rear, some attendants stepped
carrying a golden box. It was six feet long and there were sun symbols
on it. From another beetle the relatives of the man in the box stepped
and followed as the attendants took the golden box down a ramp to a
kind of altar. On the side of the altar were the words, "WE THAT WERE
BORN OF THE SUN RETURN TO THE SUN". The golden box was deposited upon
the altar, the music leaped upward, the Guardian of this place spoke
only a few words, then the attendants picked up the golden box, walked
to a transparent wall, a safety lock, also transparent, and opened it.
The box was shoved into the glass slot. A moment later an inner lock
opened, the box was injected into the interior of the Flue and vanished
instantly in quick flame.
The attendants walked away. The relatives without a word turned and
walked out. The music played.
William Lantry approached the glass fire lock. He peered through the
wall at the vast, glowing, never-ceasing heart of the Incinerator. It
burned steadily, without a flicker, singing to itself peacefully. It
was so solid it was like a golden river flowing up out of the earth
toward the sky. Anything you put into the river was borne upward,
vanished.
Lantry felt again his unreasoning hatred of this thing, this monster,
cleansing fire.