and column, from every arras, pendent and looping, burst diamond
glitterings, ruby luminescences, lanced flames of molten emerald and
sapphires, flashings of amethyst and opal, meteoric iridescences,
dazzling spectrums.

The hollow was a cave of some Aladdin of the Titans ablaze with
enchanted hoards. It was a place of gems ensorcelled, gems in which
imprisoned hosts of the Jinns of Light beat sparkling against their
crystal walls to escape.

I thrust the fantasies from me. Fantastic enough was this reality--globe
and pyramid and cube of the Metal People opening wide, bathing in,
drinking from the radiant maelstrom that faster and ever faster swirled
about them.

"Feeding!" It was Drake's awed voice. "Feeding on the sun!"

The circling shields were raising themselves, lifting themselves higher
above the crater-lip. Into the crowded cylinder came now only the rays
from the high circlets, the streams from the huge wheel above the still
growing cones.

Up and up the shields rose, but by what mechanism raised I could not
see. Their motion ceased; in all their thousands they turned. Over the
City's top and out into the oval valley they poured their torrents of
light; flooding it, deluging it even as they had this pit that was the
City's heart. Feeding, I knew, those other Metal Hordes without.

And as though in answer, sweeping down upon us through the circles of
open sky, a clamor poured.

"If we'd but known!" Drake's voice came to me, thin and unreal through
the tumult. "It's what Ventnor meant! If we had got down there when they
were so weak--if we could have handled the Keeper--we could have smashed
that plate that works the Cones! We could have killed them!"

"There are other Cones," I cried back to him.

"No," he shook his head. "This is the master machine. It's what Ventnor
meant when he said to strike through the sun. And we've lost the
chance--"

Louder grew the hurricane without; and now within began its mate.
Through the mists flashed linked tempests of lightnings. Bolt upon
javelin bolt, and ever more thickly; lightnings green as the mists
themselves; lightning bolts of destroying violets, searing scarlets;
tearing chains of withering yellows, globes of exploding multicolored
electric incandescences.

The crater was threaded with the lightnings of the Metal People; was
broidered with them; was a Pit woven with vast and changing patterns of
electric flame.

What was it that Drake had said? That if