He began turning the crank, just as the Sather came up.
There was a slight movement. Then the crank stuck, and there was a
whirring of slipping gears! The fools who had moved the orrery must have
been so careless that they'd sprung the mechanism. He bent down to study
the tiny little jeweled gears. A whole gear train was out of place!
Sather Karf was also inspecting it, and the words he cried didn't sound
like an invocation, though they were strange enough. He straightened,
still cursing. "Fix it!"
"I'll try," Hanson agreed doubtfully. "But you'd better get the man who
made this. He'll know better than I--"
"He was killed in the first cracking of the sky when a piece hit him.
Fix it, Dave Hanson. You claimed to be a repairman for such devices."
Hanson bent to study it again, using a diamond lens one of the warlocks
handed him. It was a useful device, having about a hundred times
magnification without the need for exact focusing. He stared at the
jumble of fine gears, then glanced out through the open front: of the
building toward the sky. There was even less of it showing than he had
remembered. Most of the great dome was empty. And now there were
suggestions of ... shadows ... in the empty spots. He looked away
hastily, shaken.
"I'll need some fine tools," he said.
"They were lost in moving this," Ser Perth told him. "This is the best
we can do.
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