Faintly he heard a distant humming, like the after-resonance of a bell,
but it died away almost instantly. The room was large, and empty except
for some sort of machine standing against the farther wall. Dantan was
not a technician. He knew guns and ships; that was enough. But the
smooth, sleek functionalism of this machine gave him an almost sensuous
feeling of pleasure.
How long had it been here? Who had built it? And for what purpose? He
could not even guess. There was a great oval screen on the wall above
what seemed to be a control board, and there were other, more enigmatic
devices.
And the screen was black--dead black, with a darkness that ate up the
light in the room and gave back nothing.