great parabola, deep and wide, and
it was lined throughout with beaten gold. In a straight path the light
was reflected from every point--every point but one for at the far
end, where the curved sides joined, was a circle of darkness. It
stared like an eye, evil, portentous. Jerry nerved himself for an
ordeal, unknown but imminent. The black eye glared at him unwinkingly.

Before him was the pathway of light: it shone brilliantly down the
sloping ramp where a floor of bright gold led up to the sun god
itself.

The figure on the dais raised its hand. Jerry heard the words come
from its lips and roll sonorously back from above. The figure waited
for an answer.

Jerry's hands slipped beneath his coat to rest reassuringly upon his
weapons. He withdrew his hands empty and raised one toward the figure
above.

"I do not understand your words," he said. "Your language is strange.
No doubt mine is as strange to you. I come as a visitor--I am
friendly." He held out both his hands, palms upward.

"We have come, my friend and myself, on a friendly errand." He paused
to look vainly about for Winslow. "And you have received us as if we
were wild animals."

* * * * *

Jerry Foster, of San Francisco, U. S. A., was suddenly resentful of
their treatment. His words were meaningless, but his tones were not.
"You have tied us," he said, "bound us--dragged us before you. Is that
the way you receive your guests from another world?"

The golden-clad figure stood in majestic silence while Jerry was
speaking. It waited a moment after his outburst, then crossed again to
bow low in the floodlight of gold. As before, it seemed listening to
words from the black heart of the strange sun, words quite
inaudible--soundless. He returned quickly and waved Jerry's attention
to the place of light.

The sense of a presence there in the central blackness was strong upon
the waiting man. In that other life that now seemed so remote--his
life on earth--Jerry had once felt the threat of a concealed intruder
in the dark. He recalled it vividly now. The sensation was the same.

But it was magnified. There was no denying the reality of a malign
something at the heart of that golden glow. The black center of it
vibrated with cold and venomous hate. It struck upon the waiting man
like a physical force. His head was swimming, his thoughts refused to
form. He was as if suspended in a great void, where all that was lay
deep