-a cross inverted.

Its upper arm arose to twice the length either of its horizontals or
the square that was its foot. In its opening it must have turned, for
its--FACE--was toward us and away from the Cones, its body hid the Disk,
and almost all the surfaces of the two watchful Stars.

Eighty feet at least in height, this cruciform shape stood. It flamed
and flickered with angry, smoky crimsons and scarlets; with sullen
orange glowings and glitterings of sulphurous yellows. Within its fires
were none of those leaping, multicolored glories that were the Metal
Emperor's; no trace of the pulsing, mystic rose; no shadow of jubilant
sapphire; no purple royal; no tender, merciful greens nor gracious
opalescences. Nothing even of the blasting violet of the Stars.

All angry, smoky reds and ochres the cross blazed forth--and in its
lurid glowings was something sinister, something real, something cruel,
something--nearer to earth, closer to man.

"The Keeper of the Cones and the Metal Emperor!" muttered Drake. "I
begin to get it--yes--I begin to get--Ventnor!"

Once more the pulse, the avid throbbing shook the crater. And as swiftly
in its wake rushed back the stillness, the silence.

The Keeper turned--I saw its palely lustrous blue metallic back. I drew
out my little field-glasses, focussed them.

The Cross slipped sidewise past the Disk, its courtiers, its stellated
guardians. As it went by they swung about with it; ever facing it.

And now at last was clear a thing that had puzzled greatly--the
mechanism of that opening process by which sphere became oval disk,
pyramid a four-pointed star and--as I had glimpsed in the play of the
Little Things about Norhala, could see now so plainly in the Keeper--the
blocks took this inverted cruciform shape.

The Metal People were hollow!

Hollow metal--boxes!

In their enclosing sides dwelt all their vitality--their
powers--themselves!

And those sides were--everything that THEY were!

Folded, the oval disk became the sphere; the four points of the star,
the square from which those points radiated; shutting became the
pyramid; the six faces of the cubes were when opened the inverted cross.

Nor were these flexible, mobile walls massive. They were indeed,
considering the apparent mass of the Metal Folk, most astonishingly
fragile. Those of the Keeper, despite its eighty feet of height, could
not have been more than a yard in thickness. At the edges I thought I
could see g