arking ooze of a sea of star shine.

Whence came the force, the mechanism that produced this cone of clarity,
this NOT searchlight, but unlight in the midst of light? Not from
behind, that was certain--for turning I saw that behind us the mist was
as thick. I turned again--it came to me, why I knew not, yet with an
absolute certainty, that the energy, the force emanated from the distant
wall itself.

The funnel, the cone, did not expand from where we were standing, now
motionless.

It began at the wall and focused upon us.

Within the great circle the surface of the wall was smooth, utterly
blank; upon it was no trace of those flitting lights we had seen before
we had plunged down toward the radiant sea. It shone with a pale blue
phosphorescence. It was featureless, smooth, a blind cliff of polished,
blue metal--and that was all.

"Ruth!" groaned Ventnor. "Where is she?"

Aghast at my mental withdrawal from him, angry at myself for my
callousness, awkwardly I tried to crawl over to him, to touch him,
comfort him as well as I might.

And then, as though his cry had been a signal, the great cone began to
move. Slowly the circled base slipped down the shimmering facades; down,
steadily down; I realized that we had paused at the edge of some steep
declivity, for the bottom of the cone was now at a decided angle while
the upper edge of the circle had dropped a full two hundred feet below
the place where it had rested--and still it fell.

There came a gasp of relief from Ventnor, a sigh from Drake while, from
my own heart, a weight rolled. Not ten yards ahead of us and still deep
within the luminosity had appeared the regal head of Norhala, the lovely
head of Ruth. The two rose out of the glow like swimmers floating from
the depths. Now they were clear before us, and now we could see the
surface of the cube on which they rode.

But neither turned to us; each stared straightly, motionless along the
axis of the sinking cone, the woman's left arm holding Ruth close to her
side.

Drake's hand caught my shoulder in a grip that hurt--nor did he need to
point toward that which had wrung the exclamation from him. The funnel
had broken from its slow falling; it had made one swift, startling
drop and had come to rest. Its recumbent side was now flattened into a
triangular plane, widening from the narrow tip in which we stood to all
of five hundred feet where its base rested against the blue wall, and
falling at a full th