Pin, bonded uncomfortably to the sticky web, eventually drifted into a kind of doze that was closer to unconsciousness. Beside him, Mai's head also drooped and caught against the net. When Pin came round again, he saw that the sky above them was beginning to lighten, but this time it was boiling with cloud, a yellow-gray billow, moving fast. Then the demon turned and Pin saw that it wasn't cloud at all, but smoke, roaring out of the chimney of a sprawling factory. "What is that?" Mai whispered. The factory covered the floor of a wide valley. Pin saw great derricks reaching out of the soil, gouts of flame shooting out of refinery chimneys, and huge open containers in which fires blazed. The churn and pound of industrial processes filled the air. It was like an amalgamation of every heavy industry that Pin could imagine: mining, steelworks, oil refineries . . . . Soon, they came upon the freight rail: a group of sweating, panting demons, their skin burned and cracked to black, pulling a cart behind them.
