“—to see my sweetie there
She was lying on a marble sla-a-ab—”
“I see it all,” Gallegher said in a fit of wild frustration. “Somebody asked me to invent a phonograph.”
“Wait,” Narcissus pointed out. “Look at the window.”
“The window. Sure. What about it? Wh—” Gallegher hung over the sill, gasping. His knees felt unhinged and weak. Still, he might have expected something like this.
The group of tubes emerging from the machine were rather incredibly telescopic. They had stretched down to the bottom of the pit, a full thirty feet, and were sweeping around in erratic circles like grazing vacuum cleaners. They moved so fast Gallegher couldn’t see them except as blurs. It was like watching the head of a Medusa who had contracted St. Vitus’ Dance and transmitted the ailment to her snakes.
“Look at them whiz,” Narcissus said contemplatively, leaning heavily on Gallegher. “I guess that’s what made the hole. They eat dirt.”
“Yeah,” the scientist agreed, drawing back. “I wonder why. Dirt—Hm-m-m. Raw material.” He peered at the machine, which was wailing:
“—can search the wide world over
And never find another sweet man like me.”