Limbeck, concentrating on the pictures, ignored it.
He was, he realized, seeing a world. Not his own world, but somebody else’s world. It was an incredibly beautiful place. It reminded him some, but not quite, of the pictures he’d seen in the books of the Welves. The sky was bright blue-not gray-and it was clear and vast, with only a few puffs of white sailing across it. Lush vegetation was everywhere, not just in a pot in the kitchen. He saw magnificent structures of fantastic design, he saw wide streets and boulevards, he saw what might have been Gegs, only they were tall and slender with graceful limbs . . .
Or had he? Limbeck blinked and stared into the light. It was beginning to fragment and break apart! The images were becoming distorted. He longed for the people to come back. Certainly, he’d never seen anyone-not even the Welves-who looked like what he thought he’d glimpsed in that split second before the light winked out, then blinked back on, and shifted to another picture.
Trying to make sense of the flickering images that were beginning to make his eyes burn and ache, Limbeck pulled himself farther over the lip of the hole and saw the light’s source. It was beaming out of an object at the bottom of the hole.
“That was what made the thump,” said Limbeck, shielding his eyes with his hand and staring at the object intently. “It fell from the sky, like I did. Is it part of the Kicksey-Winsey? If so, why did it fall? Why is it showing me these pictures?”
Why, why, why? Limbeck couldn’t stand not knowing. Never thinking of possible danger, he crawled over the edge of the hole and slid down the side. The nearer he drew to the object, the easier it was to see it. The light pouring out of it was diffused upward and was less brilliant and blinding approached from this angle.
The Geg was, at first, disappointed. “Why, it’s nothing but a hunk of coralite,” he said, prodding chunks of it that had broken off. “Certainly the largest hunk of coralite I’ve ever seen-it’s as big as my house-and then, too, I’ve never known coralite to fall out of the sky.”
Slithering closer, displacing small bits of rock that skittered out from under him and went bouncing down the side of the crater, Limbeck drew in his breath. Delighted, awed, and astounded, he immediately squelched the mental prod that was reminding him, “The dig-claws! The dig-claws!” The coralite was just a shell, an outer covering. It had cracked open, probably in the fall, and Limbeck could see inside.
At first he thought it must be part of the Kicksey-Winsey, and then he thought it wasn’t. It was made of metal-like the Kicksey-Winsey-but the metal body of the Kicksey-Winsey was smooth and unblemished. This metal was covered with strange and bizarre symbols, and it was from cracks in the metal that the bright light was streaming. And it was because of the cracks-or so Limbeck reasoned-that he couldn’t see the complete picture.
“If I open the cracks wider, then perhaps I could see more. This is really exciting!” Reaching the bottom of the crater, Limbeck hurried toward the metal object. It was about four times taller than he was and-as he’d first noticed-as big as his house. Gingerly he reached out his hand and made a swift tapping motion with the tips of his fingers on the metal. It wasn’t hot to the touch-something he’d feared due to the bright light pouring from it. The metal was cool, and he was able to rest his hand on it and even trace the symbols engraved there with his fingers.
A strange and ominous creaking noise sounded above him, and that irritating part of his brain was shrieking at him something about dig-claws coming down, but Limbeck ordered it to shut up and quit bothering him. Putting his hand on one of the cracks, he noticed that the cracks ran all around the symbols but never intersected one. Limbeck started to tug at the crack to see if he could widen it.
His hand seemed reluctant to perform its assigned task, however, and Limbeck knew why. He was suddenly and unpleasantly reminded of the fallen Welf ship.