Drake. Disobeying my warning he straightened, glared
at me. And disquieting as the spectacle had been before, fully
understanding it as I did, I could not restrain my shudder at the utter
weirdness of that skull which was his head thrusting itself toward me.

The skeleton that was Ventnor turned to me; was arrested by the sight of
the flitting pair ahead. I saw the fleshless jaws clamp, then opened to
speak.

Abruptly, upon the skeletons in front the flesh dropped back. Girl and
woman stood there once again robed in beauty.

So swift was that transition from the grisly unreal to the normal that
even to my unsuperstitious mind it smacked of necromancy. The next
instant the three of us stood looking at each other, clothed once more
in the flesh, and the pony no longer the steed of death, but our shaggy,
patient little companion.

The light had changed; the high violet had gone from it, and it was shot
with yellow gleamings like fugitive sunbeams. We were passing through
a wide corridor that seemed to be unending. The yellow light grew
stronger.

"That light wasn't exactly the Roentgen variety," Drake interrupted my
absorption in our surroundings. "And I hope to God it's as different as
it seemed. If it's not we may be up against a lot of trouble."

"More trouble than we're in?" I asked, a trifle satirically.

"X-ray burns," he answered, "and no way to treat them in this place--if
we live to want treatment," he ended grimly.

"I don't think we were subjected to their action long enough--" I began,
and was silent.

The corridor had opened without warning into a place for whose immensity
I have no images that are adequate. It was a chamber that was vaster
than ten score of the Great Halls of Karnac in one; great as that fabled
hall in dread Amenti where Osiris sits throned between the Searcher of
Hearts and the Eater of Souls, judging the jostling hosts of the newly
dead.

Temple it was in its immensity, and its solemn vastness--but unlike any
temple ever raised by human toil. In no ruin of earth's youth giants'
work now crumbling under the weight of time had I ever sensed a
shadow of the strangeness with which this was instinct. No--nor in the
shattered fanes that once had held the gods of old Egypt, nor in the
pillared shrines of Ancient Greece, nor Imperial Rome, nor mosque,
basilica nor cathedral.

All these had been dedicated to gods which, whether created by humanity
as science believes, or creators of h