ou--Ruth, Walter, Drake.

"See without seeing--here floating in darkness that is also light--black
light--indescribable. In touch, too, with these--"

Again the voice trailed into silence; returned, word and phrase pouring
forth disconnected, with a curious and turbulent rhythm, like rushing
wave crests linked by half-seen threads of the spindrift, vocal
fragments of thought swiftly assembled by some subtle faculty of the
mind as they fell into a coherent, incredible message.

"Group consciousness--gigantic--operating within our sphere--operating
also in spheres of vibration, energy, force--above, below one to which
humanity reacts--perception, command forces known to us--but in
greater degree--cognizant, manipulate unknown energies--senses known to
us--unknown--can't realize them fully--impossible cover, only impinge
on contact points akin to our senses, forces--even these profoundly
modified by additional ones--metallic, crystalline, magnetic,
electric--inorganic with every power of organic--consciousness basically
same as ours--profoundly changed by differences in mechanism through
which it finds expression--difference our bodies--theirs.

"Conscious, mobile--inexorable, invulnerable. Getting clearer--see more
clearly--see--" the voice shrilled out in a shuddering, thin lash of
despair--"No! No--oh, God--no!"

Then clearly and solemnly:

"And God said: let us make men in our image, after our likeness, and
let them have dominion over all the earth, and every creeping thing that
creepeth upon the earth."

A silence; we bent closer, listening; the still, small voice took up
the thread once more--but clearly further on. Something we had missed
between that text from Genesis and what we were now hearing; something
that even as he had warned us, he had not been able to articulate. The
whisper broke through clearly in the middle of a sentence.

"Nor is Jehovah the God of myriads of millions who through those same
centuries, and centuries upon centuries before them, found earth a
garden and grave--and all these countless gods and goddesses only
phantom barriers raised by man to stand between him and the eternal
forces man's instinct has always warned him are ever in readiness to
destroy. That do destroy him as soon as his vigilance relaxes, his
resistance weakens--the eternal, ruthless law that will annihilate
humanity the instant it runs counter to that law and turns its will and
strength against itself--"

A lit