From every girder and column, from every arras, pendent and looping, burst diamond glitterings, ruby luminescences, lanced flames of molten emerald and sapphires, flashings of amethyst and opal, meteoric iridescences, dazzling spectrums.
The hollow was a cave of some Aladdin of the Titans ablaze with enchanted hoards.It was a place of gems ensorcelled, gems in which imprisoned hosts of the Jinns of Light beat sparkling against their crystal walls to escape.
I thrust the fantasies from me.Fantastic enough was this reality--globe and pyramid and cube of the Metal People opening wide, bathing in, drinking from the radiant maelstrom that faster and ever faster swirled about them.
"Feeding!" It was Drake's awed voice."Feeding on the sun!"The circling shields were raising themselves, lifting themselves higher above the crater-lip.Into the crowded cylinder came now only the rays from the high circlets, the streams from the huge wheel above the still growing cones.
Up and up the shields rose, but by what mechanism raised I could not see.Their motion ceased; in all their thousands they turned.Over the City's top and out into the oval valley they poured their torrents of light; flooding it, deluging it even as they had this pit that was the City's heart.Feeding, I knew, those other Metal Hordes without.
And as though in answer, sweeping down upon us through the circles of open sky, a clamor poured.
"If we'd but known!" Drake's voice came to me, thin and unreal through the tumult."It's what Ventnor meant!
If we had got down there when they were so weak--if we could have handled the Keeper--we could have smashed that plate that works the Cones! We could have killed them!""There are other Cones," I cried back to him.
"No," he shook his head."This is the master machine.
It's what Ventnor meant when he said to strike through the sun.And we've lost the chance--"Louder grew the hurricane without; and now within began its mate.Through the mists flashed linked tempests of lightnings.Bolt upon javelin bolt, and ever more thickly;lightnings green as the mists themselves; lightning bolts of destroying violets, searing scarlets; tearing chains of withering yellows, globes of exploding multicolored electric incandescences.
The crater was threaded with the lightnings of the Metal People; was broidered with them; was a Pit woven with vast and changing patterns of electric flame.
What was it that Drake had said? That if but we could have known we could have destroyed these--Things--Destroyed--Them? Things that could thrust their will and power up through ninety million miles of space and suck from the sun the honey of power! Drain it and hive it within these great mountains of the cones!
Destroy Things that could feed their own life into a machine to draw back from the sun a greater life--Things that could forge of their strength a spear which, piercing the side of the sun, sent gushing back upon them a tenfold, nay, a thousandfold strength!
Destroy this City that was one vast and living dynamo feeding upon the magnetic life of earth and sun!
The clamor had grown stupendous, destroying--like armored Gods roaring at sword play in a hundred Valhallas; like the war drums of battling universe; like the smitings of warring suns.
And all the City was throbbing, beating with a gigantic pulse of life--was fed and drunken with life.I felt that pulsing become my own; I echoed to it; throbbed in unison.I saw Drake outlined in flame; that around me a radiant nimbus was growing.
I thought I saw Norhala floating, clothed in shouting, flailing fires.I strove to call out to her.By me slipped the body of Drake; lay flaming at my feet upon the narrow ledge.
There was a roaring within my head--louder, far louder, than that which beat against my ears.Something was drawing me forth; drawing me out of my body into unimaginable depths of blackness.Something was hurling me out into those cold depths of space that alone could darken the fires that encircled me--the fires of which Iwas becoming a part.
I felt myself leap outward--outward and outward--into--oblivion.
