Artificially shaped, of course, and
sealed, but it is the substance of the asteroid-no manufactured
flooring. We must be in the deepest part of the complex here. I feel
almost as if we are on the bottom of an ocean."
"Joe! Mark!" called Zip from the front of the procession. The men
stopped walking and the two Starmen joined Zip. "Look at that," said
Zip, with a lift of his chin.
A computer screen about four feet square was set into the side of a
huge, gray fabrication of metal, shaped like a cube at least fifteen
feet on a side and made of thick plates held together with rivets.
Dozens of pipes in a tremendous variety of sizes came into the cube and
extended away, disappearing into the dark distance. Some were the
diameter of soda straws and a few were large enough for a man to crawl
through. Most were as thick as a man's wrist.
Mark stepped up to the screen at once. Below it was a keyboard without
markings. He pressed the button which was located in the same place on
the board as the button he had seen the midnight visitors press to
activate their screen. A few buttons lit up with tiny green lights, but
the screen remained black. He tried a few more buttons, but there was
no response.
"Nothing doing. If you'd like to take a break here, Zip, I'll try a few
more combinations.
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