I abandoned my search and went back to look at the device fixed to the floor. There were parts of it that looked like parts of the machines that the teknoguilders had found in Beforetime ruins, but I had never seen anything as large at Oldhaven. I discovered a set of long narrow levers protruding from near the base of the machine where there was a seat fixed to the ground, and prodded at them gingerly, thinking they might be controls. Nothing happened. Climbing up it, I found another phalanx of levers and buttons and tiny glass windows with numbers behind them, but they gave not the slightest hint of the machine’s function. Higher up, there was a computermachine with a seat built into it. The seat covering and padding had long decayed, leaving no more than a metal plate to sit on. I sat down.

There was a small spyglass protruding from the end of the device right before me. I put my eye to it but saw only darkness. I touched a few of the panels and numbers and even a few keys, but nothing happened. As far as I could see, the device was dead. Was that how Jacob had found it? Had he come here at all, I wondered. He had intended to do so, but how could an old man have made that climb? Unless Swallow had been right about there being a bridge.

Ahmedri called out and I turned to see he was now on the ground examining the floor by the split in the wall. ‘There are words scratched into the stone,’ he said, looking up as I approached.

I dropped to my knees and my heart began to pound as I read the neat, spiky script.

My darling Hannah, nothing works here, but my instrumentation is picking up a strong power source to the north-east. That is the direction in which the Pellmar Quadrants lie. I remember I suggested to Cassandra that she had better carve her messages to the future in stone. She said only a dinosaur like me would come up with such an idea. Now here I am playing dinosaur, for any note I would write will soon perish in this place. There is so much I would say but this is a tedious method of writing a letter and I fear the little neochisel I am using is near blunted. So I will say it has been a terrible, bleak journey and the only thing that kept me from despair was the thought of you. These mountains, once so beautiful, are now utterly barren and so contaminated that they glow at night, but I am safe enough in my biohazard suit and my little hover still serves me well. I hope it will continue to do so, at least until I leave these poor blighted peaks and cross the worst of the plain between the mountains and Pellmar. I leave this message so that you will know which way I have gone.