The stairway was wide and carved into the stone beneath the palace. The veined marble continued for a little while until it gave way to some black stone that reflected little light. The stairway was angular rather than curved, and on the landings where the stairway turned, Leela found glowing spherical lanterns. The light was contained with coloured glass, or perhaps the same veined marble as above, it was difficult to tell.

Tycho had still not moved or made a sound since he had collapsed at the side of the pit. Only her continued connection to the Light gave her any assurance that her partner hadn't passed away.

She turned what must have been the tenth landing when the walls fell away around her. The stairway continued into a vast abyss, a lightless pit so deep that Leela could see the glowing lanterns fading away far below her. The sheer scale of it intimidated Leela, but she could not go back now. With how the tunnel had disappeared, she wondered if the top of the stairway even existed anymore. Whatever had happened to this planetoid was still ongoing. Here the black stone looked to have melted some time in the past and had solidified into wave-like patterns on the walls of the space. The cavern was so enormous that she could not tell if the patterns continued along the entirety.

And so Leela descended the stairway for what seemed an eternity, step by step into the darkness below the palace. Eventually a light pierced the gloom deep below her. At first she thought it was another lantern, but this was far bigger. For a moment she thought she had passed through the planetoid and onto the surface again, but the Sun was much too far from the planetoid to be this big. With every step she took, the light grew larger and larger until she was passing from the gloom towards a sea of blinding white, her helmet maxing out its sun-protection to shield her eyes. Eventually, out of that blinding white, the outline of a platform became visible. Carved out from the wall of the enormous space, the platform itself was enormous, but compared to the glowing sphere it was miniscule. At this point, the warmth too had grown, so much so that Leela was forced to shut off her Solar heat conduits, and even so she was sweating under the heat of the sphere below. It was like a star trapped inside the icy planetoid. Had the Traveller, their W'rkcacnter, left this behind as a parting gift before leaving to find Mankind?

The stairway terminated at the platform, on a broad square decorated with the same murals as the palace-entrance far above. It was perfectly flat, with but a single raised section that led away from the stairway and the square. Leela followed it with her eyes and saw an enormous shape silhouetted against the blinding light from the sphere. The light dimmed for a moment, allowing her to see the multitude of strands coiling around it and reaching out for her. A noise was building, filling the chamber and hurting Leela's ears even through the filters in her helmet. She reached for her firearm, but as she blinked, the strands as well as the growing noise were gone, and the shape resolved enough for her to realise it was not the shapeless stalker she had been sensing since she had descended into the tunnels. It was bulky, enormous and utterly stationary, covered in a white material that resembled plastic. This close, she could hear the machine working, a kind of quiet clicking and humming that set her teeth on edge. She approached it and looked at a display mounted on its surface, but it contained only the same symbols as the carvings above, and so she could make no sense of it. If Tycho was awake, she would know what to do. She glanced at his shell, but he was still unreachable.

She took a step back and examined the machine, covering the glare of the sphere with her hands. It was enormous, twice as tall as her and at least three times as wide. The outer coating felt solid if she knocked on it and she could feel an intense heat from the material, even through her gloves. Symbols had been stenciled and outlined in red on the machine's shell. The material covered the entire machine aside from where the display was mounted, though now that Leela looked at it more closely, she could see faint lines where the outer material had been attached in sections. With a little help from a climbing piton and the butt of her pistol, Leela forced the sections apart, revealing a mass of blinking lights and tubes. She chuckled briefly; this mess of machinery was the most familiar thing she had seen since landing on the surface.

She reached out to touch the machinery with her gloves fingers and an image, a vision, bloomed in Leela's mind.

A Garden. It extends around Her in all directions, Above and Below. Sky and Deep. The ground is dotted with Flowers, arrayed in endless Patterns that shift with every moment. A Gardener and a Winnower sit in the centre of the Flowers, the patterns subservient to their wills. The Sky answers the Gardener's call, while it is the Deep that follows the Winnower. She knows of these, has heard of them.

But behind these two, in the Brush of the Garden that is Beyond their beck and call, She sees Eyes. Eyes without number, glaring with hate and Chaos at the Order of the Garden. The Eyes exist beyond the Order imposed by the Garden and the Gardener and the Winnower. They follow not Sky, for They Exist only for Themselves, and They follow not Deep, for They defy any Final Shape. The Brush is shaken by unseen waves, and a word, a Name, carries on the waves.

W'rkncacnter.

Leela blinks, and she is back in the ice-tunnel. With a start she realises that Tycho is no longer in her hand, her grip loosened with slack fingers. She dives to the ground to pick him up, but the shell rolls gently away from her fingers.

"Leela?" A groggy voice calls out, "What's going on, where are we?"

Leela cries out, no word nor name, but a cry of delight and relief, before crushing Tycho in an embrace.

"Leela!? Now you're really worrying me." Tycho says. His eye moved to look up at her, sluggish and tired.

"You don't get to complain about worrying." Leela replied and held him out before her.

"We were examining the pit above when you collapsed. You were unresponsive for hours." Leela continued. A tear ran down her cheek.

"Sorry," Tycho said after a long moment, then turned around to look around the cavernous space, "Where are we?"

Leela let go and Tycho hovered on his own. "After you collapsed, I tried to return to the surface, but the way was gone. Vanished, without a trace. I know it sounds weird, but it was. So I went to examine the other buildings we saw, and eventually I found a stairway that led down."

She waved around her to indicate the room. "So here we are. I guess the Traveller must have left that glowing sphere here, and the beings built a machine here to do something, I just don't know what."

Tycho turned to look at the machine. The part of the outer shell that Leela had levered away had not closed in yet. "You found it."

Leela nodded and stood up. "I have no idea what it does, but it must have some kind of power." She walked over to the machine, being careful not to touch it.

"Power? What do you mean?" Tycho said. His scanner was playing over the display.

Leela held her hand close to the machine's shell. "When I touched it, I had a vision. I can't say if the machine showed it to me or if some energy inside it triggered the vision in me." She explained the vision as best she could, aware of how vague it sounded when spoken aloud.

"W'rkncacnter," Tycho said when she had finished, "Their name for the Traveller. And the Gardener and the Winnower."

"Remember when we spoke with the Speaker?," Leela said, taking a deliberate step away from the machine, "He spoke of those beings, though he was about as vague as my vision was."

Tycho looked around the space. "This chamber has no Light, nor any Dark. It's like a paracausal void."

Leela looked past the machine to the glowing sphere. "What is that, then?"

"Not Light, that's for sure." Tycho replied.

"Could the machine be tapping or suppressing the Light, somehow?" Leela asked and looked away from the light. Even through the filters in her helmet, it pained her eyes.

"If so, the machine itself has no signs of Light either." Tycho replied and continued to scan.

Leela indicated the red-stenciled letters on the machine's front. "What do these say? Maybe there's a clue there."

Tycho turned from the display to the letters for a long moment. His machine-tone delivered the translation. "In its Chaos We Were Made into Us. In Its Chaos We Will Abide Eternally to Wait for Its Awakening."

"And what does that mean?" Leela said.

"I can't say." Tycho said and returned to examining the machine.

What was the sphere then, if not a figment of Light or Dark? It could not be a star, for the planetoid would have been destroyed millenia ago, melted away by its heat and pulled into its gravity long ago. While Tycho scanned, Leela wandered. Aside from the decorated landing, the machine stood alone on the platform. There were no skeletons or corpses here, no long-dead attendants. But as Leela walked around to the back of the machine, she saw that its bulk had been hiding another stairway. It was broad for her and descended to a second platform bathed in the light from the sphere.

Normally she would have explored it on her own without a second thought, but the planetoid had given her too many scares. "Tycho, could you come over here? There's another platform below."

After a long moment, Tycho hovered to her side and they descended the stairway together. The platform below was unadorned, a rough slab of black stone that had been carved out of the underside of the machine's platform. It was bigger than the one above, but the reason for the scale was readily apparent.

The platform was covered in bodies. They had been crammed into every spare inch, some so close to the edge that the smallest push would send them into oblivion. They were not stacked on top of each other, but rather bent on the ground in poses of supplication, trunk-head to the ground and four arms crossed in front of them. Leela could not be sure if they were alive or dead; none had moved a muscle or twitched an eye to indicate their recognition of her arrival, but they were not skeletons like the other bodies they had found. These beings had their bodies intact, but their glowing eyes were staring into space. The sphere sat before the platform, shining its harsh light onto their frozen faces.

"What is this," Leela whispered, "What happened here?"

Tycho scanned the closest creature. "They're not… dead, not really, but I also sense no vital functions. It's like time has stopped just for them."

Leela turned around slowly to look at the thousands of bodies frozen in the act of worship. This was why they had encountered so few bodies on their way down. They had all come here.

"But what could do that, if not the Traveller or the Darkness?" Leela asked.

"The machine, perhaps." Tycho replied and floated back up the stairway. Despite the light from the sphere, Leela could see his scanning-light starting up again. She took one last look at the remains of the inhabitants before heading back up the stairway.

"Admittedly I haven't seen many other machines that would be able to manipulate time, but I can't see any way for this machine to affect it," Tycho said, "It has no apparent paracausal power. Its function relates to the sphere below."

"Did it create it?" Leela asked. Somehow she hoped it would be as simple as that.

"No, but it can punch a hole in it." Tycho said and looked at her. "It's a barrier, not a sphere."

Goosebumps rose all over Leela's body. She remembered the blasts of light, the roars and the mysterious strands that they had seen and heard all over the planetoid. "A barrier? Does it say what's inside?"

Tycho sent a pulse of light at the display, and the display answered with a single symbol, the one that Leela could recognise.

"W'rkncacnter," Tycho said, "Whatever it is, the barrier contains it."

"The murals, the texts," Leela said and turned to look at the glowing barrier, "They were never about the Traveller."

"Whatever this W'rkncacnter is, these creatures clearly worshipped it." Tycho replied and sent another pulse at the display. The symbol flowed away to be replaced by the screen Leela had seen when she arrived.

"In the vision I had, of the Light and the Darkness, these W'rkcacnter were there." Leela said, realisation dawning.

"If that vision was from the Light, then these beings are ancient, as old as the Traveller if not older." Leela continued.

"We should return to the surface, get in our ship and get back to Earth. This is beyond just the two of us, Leela." Tycho said and turned to her.

"I agree. We'll find a way." She said and strode past the machine, only to stop in her tracks a moment later.

"What is it?" Tycho said.

Leela pointed at the edge of the stone platform ahead of them, her arm shaking. "The stairway up, it's gone."

Where the stairs had been was now just a mural on the floor, an expanse of rock with no way up. Tycho shone his searchlight straight up but the light could not even reach the ceiling, and it found no trace of a stairway. The darkness pressed in around them despite the light from the mysterious barrier. The walls of the cavern were all out of sight, leaving them floating in a black abyss, with only the light from the barrier to keep them company.

Leela slumped to the ground, sitting still while looking ahead and seeing nothing.

"I can't hail the ship nor reach any of the beacons," Tycho said while staring up into the blackness, "Maybe if I float up to the entrance–"

"I'm sorry, Tycho."

Leela had moved, arms and head on her knees. "I'm so sorry, Tycho. I'm the reason we're in this mess."

"What do you mean?" Tycho replied and hovered to her side.

"I was the one that wanted to go here, and I wanted to keep going even after the quake." Leela said, her voice choked up.

Tycho hovered into her line of sight and tried to catch her eye. "Look, we both wanted to come here. This is a joint venture."

He was silent for a moment, then his gaze dropped to the floor. "I picked you, remember? I could have had anyone and I picked you, Leela. I stand by my choice and I always will."

Tycho looked up again and the two looked each other in the eye. "I always will." He said.

Leela grinned. "Thank you, Tycho." Her voice was still groggy, but she stood up and turned back to the machine and the sphere. "So what do we do now? If we're trapped down here, we might as well see all that we can."

"I believe the machine can affect the barrier in less dramatic ways." Tycho replied, following her line of thought and floating over to the display.

"I suspect we would not want this creature to be freed." Leela said and followed him.

"The machine is capable of weakening the barrier temporarily, without reaching a critical value where it could be breached," Tycho said, his scanner going over the display, "According to itself, at least."

Leela drew her pistol. If they had constructed a barrier of this size in order to contain this creature, she doubted that her small pistol would make any difference in a fight, but she felt safer with it in her hand. "Let's see it. Weaken the barrier."

Tycho worked the display for a moment then joined Leela on the edge of the platform, looking out over the glowing barrier. A beam of light stabbed out from the machine and struck the barrier. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the light began to dim and the barrier began to grow grey, then transparent. The darkness pressed in around them as the light faded, leaving a slim outline of the barrier. The space within seemed empty, devoid of the primordial monster Leela realised she had expected. She had only formulated the thought when the barrier's interior was no longer empty. A mass filled it to the brim, clearly available space within. Even as Leela and Tycho watched, every time they registered its appearance, its shape, even vaguely, it would switch. It was not simply impossible to describe; it defied the concept of description. The only shape that Leela felt she could recognise, if even for the briefest moment, was a mass of strands roiling around each other within the confines of the barrier. Eyes of all shapes formed and faded in moments all over its form, glaring at them through the barrier. Leela felt that malice again, stronger than ever. Not just against her, but against the universe, against order. She was sure that, to this creature, Light and Dark might as well be the same. Both were prey.

The transparency began to fade, returning the barrier to a milky white and light to the cave. Leela stumbled to the floor, her shaking legs unable to support her any longer.

"What in the Traveller's name was that?" Tycho exclaimed. He seemed physically unaffected, but she could hear his voice quiver.

"The W'rkncacnter," Leela replied with full surety, "That is their god. It created them, somehow, though I doubt it did so intentionally."

Below them, the barrier was still returning to its full strength when the cavern began to shake. In the blink of an eye it evolved to a full quake. The barrier below them stretched, and the quake intensified, knocking Leela to the floor again and ripping chunks out of the ceiling far above them. One boulder smashed into the machine, ripping out the part of the outer casing that Leela had levered out. The machine sparked but did not give out, but then the stretched part of the barrier cracked. It was like it had turned to glass. An enormous force from within had slammed into it, cracking it, and then the force came again to punch through. A limb burst through and in the blink of an eye it had slammed down on the machine, reducing it to scrap. The limb evaporated and the barrier began to fall away, turning to dust that fell into an abyss below the chamber. Again Leela and Tycho looked to be alone in the chamber, but then a scream overtook them, painfully loud as the W'rkncacnter expanded to fill its new chamber. The darkness around them was gone, replaced by the indefinable mass of the creature. Even the air seemed gone, replaced by the screeching. The last that Leela saw was an infinite mass of eyes glaring at them from every angle.

The first thing that Leela sensed was a light breeze on her skin. For a moment she thought herself back on Earth in some dream, but the ground beneath her was rock, and as she opened her eyes she saw nothing but blackness.

"Leela, Leela, please say something."

That was Tycho. He sounded worried, she realised, but she was so tired. With an effort of will she managed to speak. "I'm here, Tycho, where are we?"

"Oh thank the Light." Tycho exclaimed. She looked down and saw her Ghost lying on her bare chest, his eye the only source of light in the space.

"When the creature escaped it must have attacked us, because you got atomized and drained of your Light. Destroyed all our gear. It drained me too, but somehow it couldn't destroy me, so it left."

Memories began to return to Leela. Their journey through the icy planetoid, the strange noises and the eventual discovery of the ancient creature. The W'rkncacnter.

With effort she pushed herself off the ground and sat up. Her body appeared unhurt, but she was naked, and the cavern was growing colder by the second.

"The creature made a hole in the planetoid when it left, so I called the ship. It should be here any moment."

Leela looked up. In a section of the infinite blackness she could see twinkling lights, and realised they were stars. Within minutes their jumpship floated into the cavern and they transmitted inside, setting a course for Earth as soon as they could. As the ship went through the motions of setting the jump, Leela wondered what they had unleashed.