'Closer to the electricity.' Torrit, his hands shaking, looked down at the Thing.

Where there had been smooth black surfaces there were now little dancing lights. Hundreds of them. In fact, Masklin thought, feeling slightly proud of knowing what the word meant, there were probably thousands of them.

'Who said that?' said Masklin.

The Thing dropped out of Torrit's grasp and landed on the floor, where its lights glittered like a thousand motorways at night. The nomes watched it in horror.

'The Thing does tell you things... 'said Mask­lin. 'Gosh!' Torrit waved his hands frantically. 'Not like that! Not like that! It ain't supposed to talk out loud! It's ain't done that before!' 'Closer to the electricity!' 'It wants the electricity,' said Masklin.

'Well, I'm not going to touch it!' Masklin shrugged and then, using his spear gingerly, pushed the Thing across the floor until it was under the wires. 'How does it speak? It hasn't got a mouth,' said Grimma.

The Thing whirred. Coloured shapes flickered across its surfaces faster than Masklin's eyes could follow. Most of them were red.

Torrit sank to his knees. 'It is angry,' he moaned. We shouldn't have eaten rat, we shouldn't have come here, we shouldn't-' Masklin also knelt down. He touched the bright areas, gingerly at first, but they weren't hot.

He felt that strange feeling again, of his mind wanting to think certain thoughts without having the right words.

'When the Thing has told you things before,' he said slowly, 'you know, how we should live proper lives-' Torrit gave him an agonized expression.

'It never has,' he said.

'But you said-' 'It used to, it used to,' moaned Torrit. 'When old Voozel passed it on to me he said it used to, but he said that hundreds and hundreds of years ago it just stopped.' What?' said Granny Morkie.