f a river of diamonds.

We opened our eyes, felt awe grip our throats as though a hand had
clutched them.

Difficult, difficult almost beyond thought is it for me now to essay to
draw in words the scene before us then. For although I can set down what
it was we saw, I nor any man can transmute into phrases its essence, its
spirit, the intangible wonder that was its synthesis--the appallingly
beautiful, soul-shaking strangeness of it, its grandeur, its fantasy,
and its alien terror.

The Domain of the Metal Monster--it was filled like a chalice with Its
will; was the visible expression of that will.

We stood at the very rim of a wide ledge. We looked down into an immense
pit, shaped into a perfect oval, thirty miles in length I judged, and
half that as wide, and rimmed with colossal precipices. We were at the
upper end of this deep valley and on the tip of its axis; I mean that
it stretched longitudinally before us along the line of greatest length.
Five hundred feet below was the pit's floor. Gone were the clouds of
light that had obscured it the night before; the air crystal clear;
every detail standing out with stereoscopic sharpness.

First the eyes rested upon a broad band of fluorescent amethyst, ringing
the entire rocky wall. It girdled the cliffs at a height of ten thousand
feet, and from this flaming zone, as though it clutched them, fell the
curtains of sparkling mist, the enigmatic, sound-slaying vapors.

But now I saw that all of these veils were not motionless like those
through which we had just passed. To the northwest they were pulsing
like the aurora, and like the aurora they were shot through with swift
iridescences, spectrums, polychromatic gleamings. And always these were
ordered, geometric--like immense and flitting prismatic crystals flying
swiftly to the very edges of the veils, then darting as swiftly back.

From zone and veils the gaze leaped to the incredible City towering not
two miles away from us.

Blue black, shining, sharply cut as though from polished steel, it
reared full five thousand feet on high!

How great it was I could not tell, for the height of its precipitous
walls barred the vision. The frowning facade turned toward us was, I
estimated, five miles in length. Its colossal scarp struck the eyes
like a blow; its shadow, falling upon us, checked the heart. It was
overpowering--dreadful as that midnight city of Dis that Dante saw
rising up from another pit.

It was a met