the mist flew. And at the last, as the ultimate atoms drove
through, the holding tendrils were thrust almost within it; touched it,
certainly.

A score of times they repeated this process while we watched. Unaware of
us they seemed, or--if aware, then indifferent. More rapid became their
movements, the glassy ingots streaming through the floating braziers
with hardly a pause in their passing. Abruptly, as though switched, the
incandescences lessened into candle-points; instantly, as at a signal,
the crescent of crosses closed into a crescent of cubes.

Motionless they stood, huge blocks blackened against the dim glowing
of the cones--sentient monoliths; a Druid curve; an arc of a metal
Stonehenge. And as at dusk and dawn the great menhirs of Stonehenge fill
with a mysterious, granitic life, seem to be praying priests of stone,
so about these gathered hierophantic illusion.

They quivered; the slender pedicles cupping, the waned lights swayed;
the lights lifted and soared, upright, to their backs.

Two by two with measured pace, solemnly the cubes glided off into the
encircling darkness. As they swept away there streamed behind them other
scores not until then visible to us, joining pair by pair from hidden
arcs.

Into the secret shadows they flowed, two by two, each bearing over it
the slim shaft holding the serene flame.

Grotesquely were they like a column of monks marching with dimmed
flambeau of their worship. Angled metal monks of some god of metal,
carrying tapers of electric fire, withdrawing slowly from a Holy of
Holies whose metallically divine Occupant knew nothing of man--nor cared
to know.

Grotesque--yes. But would that I had the power to crystallize in words
the underlying, alien terror every movement of the Metal Monster
when disintegrate, its every manifestation when combined, evoked; the
incredulous, amazed lurking always close behind the threshold of the
mind; the never lifting, thin-shuddering shadow.

Smaller, dimmer waned the lights--they were gone.

We crouched, motionless. Nothing stirred; there was no sound. Without
speaking we arose; crept together over the smooth floor toward the
cones.

As we crossed I saw that the pave, like the walls, was built of the
bodies of the Metal People; and, like the walls, they were dormant,
filmed eyes oblivious to our passing. Closer we crept--were only a scant
score of rods from that colossal mechanism. I noted that the crystal
foundation was set