The piece was standing in an illuminated recess on one side of the brick fireplace-an abstract form rendered in some kind of silver and gold translucent crystal, about eight inches high and mounted on a solid black base. At least, when she glanced over it casually a few minutes earlier she had thought it to be abstract. But now as she picked it up and turned it slowly over in her hands, she became more convinced than ever that its form couldn’t be simply a coincidence.
Its lowermost part was a composition of surfaces and shapes that could have meant anything, but projecting up from the center to form the main body of the design was a tapering column of finely carved terraces, levels, and intervening buttresses flowing upward in distinctive curves. Could it represent a tower? she wondered. A tower that she had seen not long ago. Three slim spires continued upward from the top of the main column-three spires supporting a circular disk just below their apexes. A platform? The disk had more finely cut details on its surface. She turned the sculpture over. . . and gasped. There were more details, defining
a readily discernible pattern of concentric rings-on the underside of the platform! She was looking at a representation of the central tower of the city of Vranix. It couldn’t possibly be. But it couldn’t be anything else.
Her hand was shaking as she carefully replaced the sculpture in its recess. What the hell had she gotten herself into? she asked herself. Her first urge was to go back to her room, collect her things, and get out fast; but as she forced herself to calm down and her mind to think more clearly, she fought back the feeling. The opportunity to learn more was unique, and it would never present itself again. If there were more, nobody might ever know unless she found it now. She closed her eyes for a second and took a deep breath to summon up her reserves of nervous energy to see it through.
She had to find out more about the office wing, but there seemed no way to get inside. Maybe she could get nearer in some other way. . . under it, perhaps? A house like this would surely have cellars. There would probably be stairs somewhere in the direction of the kitchen. She moved across to the end of the corridor leading that way; voices were stifi audible, but they sounded closed off. Two doors proved to be closets. The third that she tried revealed a ifight of wooden stairs going down. She entered, eased the door shut behind her, and descended.
The cellar that she found herself in looked ordinary, with a bench and some tool racks, a storage space, and lots of pipes and conduits. Machinery of some kind, probably a central air conditioner, was humming behind a louvered door to one side. Two other cellars opened off from this one, one in each direction of the two arms of the house; she moved on into the one leading toward the office wing. It was another storage area, full of boxes and leftover decorating materials. A partition wall with a gap in its center screened off the far end. Lyn crossed the area and peered through the gap. The cellar did not continue on beneath the office wing, but ended at a bare wall on the far side of the small space behind the partition. As Lyn looked around and studied the surroundings, she realized that the part of the cellars she had entered was strangely different from the rest structurally, particularly the blank wall facing her.
The line where the wall and ceiling met was formed by a steel girder that must have measured fifteen inches across the flange at
least, and it was supported by two more, equally massive members running down the corners and terminating in what looked like solid concrete foundations partly visible along the lower part of the walls and going down into the floor. The ceiling, too, was reinforced with girders and cross-ties gusseted at the angles. All was painted white to blend in with the general background of the other cellar rooms, and the casual visitor would probably never have noticed; but to somebody who was looking for the unusual and who had a special interest in that end of the house, the heavy structures stood out unmistakably.