Read "Dread-Flame of M'Tonak" by Henry Hasse online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
He was on a wide balcony. Near at hand was a tele-vise, a control-studded panel, and other complicated machinery. Overhead, seeming so near he could almost touch it, the great laboratory dome stretched out and away in its vast curve. While below. was emptiness. Now for the first time he realized the gigantic proportions of this building. A hundred feet below he saw bare floor. Probably twice that distance away, straight across from him, he could make out the opposite wall. There was nothing more, nothing in all that maw of space.
Peering at the walls, he saw strange instruments protruding. Short and tubular, literally thousands of them reached from the floor to the height of this balcony, stretching away across the walls as far as he could see. Ketrik thought he knew what they were -- but he had to be sure.