ok up at the sun spot--the big
one."

"I see it." He had obeyed me. "What of it?"

Nine minutes.

The shaft, if I were right, had by now touched the sun. What was to
follow?

"I don't get you at all," said Drake, and lowered the glasses.

Ten minutes.

"What's happening? Look at the Cones! Look at the Emperor!" gasped
Drake.

I peered down, then almost forgot to count.

The pyramidal flame that had been the mount of Cones was shrunken. The
pillar of radiance had not lessened--but the mechanism that was its
source had retreated whole yards within the field of its crystal base.

And the Metal Emperor! Dulled and faint were his fires, dimmed his
splendors; and fainter still were the violet luminescences of the
watching Stars, the shimmering livery of his court.

The Keeper of the Cones! Were not its outstretched planes hovering lower
and lower over the gleaming tablet; its tentacles moving aimlessly,
feebly--wearily?

I had a sense of force being withdrawn from all about me. It was as
though all the City were being drained of life--as though vitality were
being sucked from it to feed this pyramid of radiance; drained from it
to forge the thrusting spear piercing sunward.

The Metal People seemed to hang limply, inert; the living girders seemed
to sag; the living columns to bend; to droop and to sway.

Twelve minutes.

With a nerve-racking crash one of the laden beams fell; dragging down
with it others; bending, shattering in its fall a thicket of the
horned columns. Behind us the sparkling eyes of the wall were dimmed,
vacant--dying. Something of that hellish loneliness, that demoniac
desire for immolation that had assailed us in the haunted hollow of the
ruins began to creep over me.

The crowded crater was fainting. The life was going out of the City--its
magnetic life, draining into the shaft of green fire.

Duller grew the Metal Emperor's glories.

Fourteen minutes.

"Goodwin," cried Drake, "the life's going out of these Things! Going out
with that ray they're shooting."

Fifteen minutes.

I watched the tentacles of the Keeper grope over the tablet. Abruptly
the flaming pyramid darkened--WENT OUT.

The radiant pillar hurtled upward like a thunder-bolt; vanished in
space.

Before us stood the mount of cones, shrunken to a sixth of its former
size.

Sixteen minutes.

All about the crater-lip the ringed shields tilted; thrust themselves
on high, as though behind each was an eager lifti