Free Across a Billion Years by Robert Silverberg Page B

and his rump knocked my High Ones globe to the floor.
    It bounced. It gave off a sickening ringing sound.
    And it turned on. Mirrik had loosened a jammed control.
    We didn’t know that, at first. We couldn’t imagine what was happening. Mirrik’s immense haunch was suddenly green instead of its usual blue, and figures appeared to be moving on his skin. That made no sense at all; but a moment later I began to see that he was serving as a screen for projected images, and that the images were coming out of the globe.
    Then the field of projection widened to fill the entire lab. Strange, bizarre shapes flowed and coalesced along the walls. Nightmare scenes glistened in the air.
    “Out of here!” Dr. Schein ordered. “Everyone out! Fast!”
    The way he said it, I got the impression that something was going to explode. Mirrik must have thought so too, because he turned and fled at full gallop; the rest of us followed, all but Dr. Schein, Dr. Horkkk, and Pilazinool, who slammed the lab door shut behind us. Outside, we formed a stunned little group and tried to understand what had happened. Even Mirrik was sobered by it. He tottered off and plumped dismally to the ground, shaking his head and tapping his tusks.
    An hour later we were allowed back into the lab.
    “Here he is,” Dr. Schein called out, as I entered. “The discoverer himself!” Then Mirrik came in, looking around a little sheepishly. “And here’s the one who switched it on!”
    So at last I was getting a little credit. And was forgiven, I guess, for the breathless way I got the globe out of the ground. Mirrik, too, had won amnesty for his chimpo behavior. At a time like this, who could hold grudges?
    The globe was sitting on the workbench in the part of the lab where they had stacked up the inscription nodes. It was perfectly round, and looked more like some kind of sculpture than a machine, except for the control dials on one side. In the smooth parts between the raised strips and the buttons and knobs I could see my own reflection, with my face drawn out and narrowed like something in a funhouse mirror.
    Dr. Schein had summoned everybody to the viewing. He had a This-Is-Something-BIG look on his face; fussy little Dr. Horkkk seemed positively aglow. Pilazinool had not only taken himself apart, as he usually did in moments of stress, but had absentmindedly put himself back together the wrong way, with his left hand on his right arm, and so on. It took me a moment to figure out why he looked so strange.
    408b ambled forward at a signal from Dr. Schein. Its eyes were blinking rapidly in groups of three, which meant that things must really have been fissioning inside the Bellatrician’s brain. It nodded jerkily, opened and closed its beak a few times, and finally said, “I have very little to explain, since I understand very little. The device you see before you functions as a projector but has no visible lenses or optical outlets. Nor does it require a screen for reception of its image. We also are unaware of its power source. It is controlled by this lever”—it tapped a little stud—“which we discovered only through accident. Darken the room, please.” 408b picked up a movie camera and used several of its tentacles to focus and start it. “Since we do not know how long the globe will continue to function, nor whether we will be able to induce it to repeat any of the scenes it plays for us, we are making a complete film record each time we use it.”
    It touched the stud.
    Greenish light blossomed from the globe. The zone of light expanded until it became a sphere more than twenty meters in diameter, practically filling our section of the lab. Suddenly we saw figures moving along the surface of the sphere of light.
    High Ones.
    What we were getting was a 360-degree movie, with ourselves inside the projection field. The globe was showing us five or six different sequences, each blurring imperceptibly into its neighbor. As we turned, certain sequences