other
forces use for their vestments other machines? After all, I thought,
what is this conscious self of ours, the ego, but a spark of realization
running continuously along the path of time within the mechanism we call
the brain; making contact along that path as the electric spark at the
end of a wire?

Is there a sea of this conscious force which laps the shores of the
farthest-flung stars; that finds expression in everything--man and rock,
metal and flower, jewel and cloud? Limited in its expression only by the
limitations of that which animates, and in essence the same in all. If
so, then this problem of the life of the Metal People ceased to be a
problem; was answered!

So thinking I became aware of increasing light; strode past Yuruk to
the door and peeped out. Dawn was paling the sky. I stooped over Drake,
shook him. On the instant he was awake, alert.

"I only need a little sleep, Dick," I said. "When the sun is well up,
call me."

"Why, it's dawn," he whispered. "Goodwin, you ought not to have let me
sleep so long. I feel like a damned pig."

"Never mind," I said. "But watch the eunuch closely."

I rolled myself up in his warm blanket; sank almost instantly into
dreamless slumber.

CHAPTER XVIII. INTO THE PIT

High was the sun when I awakened; or so, I supposed, opening my eyes
upon a flood of daylight. As I lay, lazily, recollection rushed upon me.

It was no sky into which I was gazing; it was the dome of Norhala's
elfin home. And Drake had not aroused me. Why? And how long had I slept?

I jumped to my feet, stared about. Ruth nor Drake nor the black eunuch
was there!

"Ruth!" I shouted. "Drake!"

There was no answer. I ran to the doorway. Peering up into the white
vault of the heavens I set the time of day as close to seven; I had
slept then three hours, more or less. Yet short as that time of slumber
had been, I felt marvelously refreshed, reenergized; the effect, I was
certain, of the extraordinarily tonic qualities of the atmosphere of
this place. But where were the others? Where Yuruk?

I heard Ruth's laughter. Some hundred yards to the left, half hidden
by a screen of flowering shrubs, I saw a small meadow. Within it a
half-dozen little white goats nuzzled around her and Dick. She was
milking one of them.

Reassured, I drew back into the chamber, knelt over Ventnor. His
condition was unchanged. My gaze fell upon the pool that had been
Norhala's bath. Longingly I looked at it;