The Wizard ofOz.
Roland, however, was not overburdened with imagination, and even though a good many of the overhead fluorescent light strips in this huge, barnlike space had gone out, he wasted no time-or adrenaline-in mistaking the suspended objects for anything but what they actually were: broken robot raiders awaiting repair.
"Come on in," he said, and his words came echoing back to him. Somewhere, high in the shadows, came a flutter of wings.
Swallows, or perhaps barn-rusties that had found their way in from outside. "I think all's well."
They came, and stood looking up with silent awe. Only Jake's four-footed friend was unimpressed. Oy was taking advantage of the break to groom himself, first the left side and then the right. At last Susannah, still sitting on the rolling steel table, said: "Tell you what, I've seen a lot, but I haven't ever seen anything quite like this."
Neither had the others. The huge room was thick with Wolves that seemed suspended in flight. Some wore their green Dr. Doom hoods and capes; others hung naked save for their steel suits. Some were headless, some armless, and a few were missing either one leg or the other. Their gray metal faces seemed to snarl or grin, depending on how the light hit them.
Lying on the floor was a litter of green capes and discarded green gaundets. And about forty yards away (the room itself had to stretch at least two hundred yards from end to end) was a single gray horse, lying on its back with its legs sticking stiffly up into the air. Its head was gone. From its neck there emerged tangles of yellow-, green-, and red-coated wires.
They walked slowly after Oy, who was trotting with brisk unconcern across the room. The sound of the rolling table was loud in here, the returning echo a sinister rumble. Susannah kept looking up. At first-and only because diere was now so little light in what must once have been a place of brilliance-she thought the Wolves were floating, held up by some sort of antigravity device. Then they came to a place where most of the fluorescents were still working, and she saw the guy-wires.
"They must have repaired em in here," she said. "If there was anyone left to do it, that is."
"And I think over there's where they powered em up,"
Eddie said, and pointed. Along the far wall, which they could just now begin to see clearly, was a line of bays. Wolves were standing stiffly in some of them. Other bays were empty, and in these they could see a number of plug-in points.
Jake abruptly burst out laughing.
"What?" Susannah asked. "What is it?"
"Nothing," he said. "It's just that..." His laughter pealed out again, sounding fabulously young in that gloomy chamber.
"It's just that they look like commuters at Penn Station, lined up at the pay telephones to call home or the office."
Eddie and Susannah considered this for a moment, and then they also burst out laughing. So, Roland thought, Jake's seeing must have been true. After all they'd been through, this did not surprise him. What made him glad was to hear the boy's laughter. It was right that Jake should cry for the Pere, who had been his friend, but it was good that he could still laugh.
Very good, indeed.
THREE
The door they wanted was to the left of the utility bays. They all recognized the cloud-and-lightning sigul on it at once from the note "R.F." had left them on the back of a sheet of the Oz Daily Buzz, but the door itself was very different from the ones they had encountered so far; except for the cloud and lightning-bolt, it was strictly utilitarian. Although it had been painted green they could see it was steel, not ironwood or the heavier ghostwood.
Surrounding it was a gray frame, also steel, with thighthick insulated power-cords coming out of each side. These ran into one of the walls. From behind that wall came a rough rumbling sound which Eddie thought he recognized.
"Roland," he said in a low voice. "Do you remember the Portal of the Beam we came to, way back at the start? Even before Jake joined our happy band, this was."
Roland nodded. "Where we shot the Little Guardians.
Shardik's retinue. Those of it that still survived."
Eddie nodded. "I put my ear against that door and listened.
"All is silent in the halls of the dead," I thought. "These are the halls of the dead, where the spiders spin and the great circuits fall quiet,