"Rumpelstilsken, repair yourself!"
There was a whirring and scraping inside the mechanism, and Hanson let
out a yell. He got only a hasty glimpse of gears that seemed to be back
on their tracks before Sather Karf was beside him, driving the cranks
with desperate speed.
"We have less than a minute!" the old voice gasped.
The Sather's fingers spun on the controls. Then he straightened, moving
his hands toward the orrery in passes too rapid to be seen. There was a
string of obvious ritual commands in their sacred language. Then a
single word rang out, a string of sounds that should have come from no
human vocal chords.
There was a wrench and twist through every atom of Hanson's body. The
universe seemed to cry out. Over the horizon, a great burning disc rose
and leaped toward the heavens as the sun went back to its place in the
sky. The big bits of sky-stuff around also jerked upwards, revealing
themselves by the wind they whipped up and by the holes they ripped
through the roof of the building. Hanson clutched at the scrap he had
pocketed, but it showed no sign of leaving, and the tiny blob of
sun-stuff remained fixed to the awl.
Through the diamond lens, Hanson could see the model of the world in the
orrery changing. There were clouds apparently painted on it where no
clouds had been. And there was an indication of movement in the green of
the forests and the blue of the oceans, as if trees were whipping in the
wind and waves lapping the shores.
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