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The cart groaned as it moved higher. Then a sliding, grating sound began and he raised it faster.
With a sound like the stroke of a cracked bell the cube tumbled onto the bridgeway; it slid forward and to the left. He struck at it with the bar, bearing to the right with all his strength. About half an inch of it caught against the left edge of the oven frame. The gap between the cube and the frame was widest at the bottom.
He inserted the bar and heaved his weight against it--three times.
Then it moved forward and came to rest within the Igniter.
He began to laugh. He laughed until he felt weak. He sat on the broken cart, swinging his legs and chuckling to himself, until the sounds coming from his throat seemed alien and out of place. He stopped abruptly and slammed the door.
The Broadcast Panel had a thousand eyes, but none of them winked back at him. He made the final adjustments for Transmit, then gave the generators their last check-out.
There was still some daylight to spend, so he moved from window to window pressing the "Open" button set below each sill.
He ate the rest of his food then, and drank a whole bottle of water and smoked two cigarettes. Sitting on the stair, he thought of the days when he had worked with Kelly and Murchison and Djinsky, twisting the tails of electrons until they wailed and leapt out over the walls and fled down into the city.
The clock! He remembered it suddenly--set high on the wall, to the left of the doorway, frozen at 9:33 (and forty-eight seconds).
He moved a ladder through the twilight and mounted it to the clock. He wiped the dust away from its greasy face with a sweeping, circular movement. Then he was ready.
He crossed to the Igniter and turned it on. Somewhere the ever-batteries came alive, and he heard a click as a thin, sharp shaft was driven into the wall of the cube. He raced back up the stairs and sped hand-over-hand up to the catwalk. He moved to a window and waited.
"God," he muttered, "don't let them blow! Please don't--"
Across an eternity of darkness the generators began humming. He heard a crackle of static from the Broadcast Panel and he closed his eyes. The sound died.
He opened his eyes as he heard the window slide upward. All around him the hundred high windows opened. A small light came on above the bench in the work area below him, but he did not see it.
He was staring out beyond the wide drop of the acropolis and down into the city. His city.
The lights were not like the stars. They beat the stars all to hell. They were the gay, regularized constellation of a city where men made their homes: even rows of streetlamps, advertisements, lighted windows in the cheesebox-apartments, a random solitaire of bright squares ru
He dashed to another window, feeling the high night breezes comb at his beard. Belts were humming below; he heard their wry monologues rattling through the city's deepest canyons. He pictured the people in their homes, in theaters, in bars--talking to each other, sharing a common amusement, playing clarinets, holding hands, eating an evening snack. Sleeping ro-cars awakened and rushed past each other on the levels above the belts; the background hum of the city told him its story of production, of function, of movement and service to its inhabitants. The sky seemed to wheel overhead, as though the city were its turning hub and the universe its outer rim.
Then the lights dimmed from white to yellow and he hurried, with desperate steps, to another window.
"No! Not so soon! Don't leave me yet!" he sobbed.
The windows closed themselves and the lights went out. He stood on the walk for a long time, staring at the dead embers. A smell of ozone reached his nostrils. He was aware of a blue halo about the dying generators.
He descended and crossed the work area to the ladder he had set against the wall.
Pressing his face against the glass and squinting for a long time he could make out the position of the hands.
"Nine thirty-five, and twenty-one seconds," Carlson read.
"Do you hear that?" he called out, shaking his fist at anything. "Ninety-three seconds! I made you live for ninety-three seconds!"
Then he covered his face against the darkness and was silent.
After a long while he descended the stairway, walked the belt, and moved through the long hallway and out of the Building. As he headed back toward the mountains he promised himself--again--that he would never return.