ere motionless. Now here, now
there, I saw the other rings whirl up--smaller mouths of lesser cones
hidden within the body of the Metal Monster, I knew, sucking down this
magnetic flux, these countless ions gushing forth from the sun.

Then as when first we had seen the phenomenon in the valley of the blue
poppies, the ring vanished, hidden by a fog of coruscations--as though
the force streaming through the rings became diffused after it had been
caught.

Crouching, forgetful of our juxtaposition to these two unhuman,
anomalous Things, we watched the play of the tentacles upon the upthrust
rods.

But if we forgot, we were not forgotten!

The Emperor slipped nearer; seemed to contemplate us--quizzically,
AMUSED; as a man would look down upon some curious and interesting
insect, a puppy, a kitten. I sensed this amusement in the Disk's regard
even as I had sensed its soul of awful tranquillity; as we had sensed
the playful malice in the eye stars of the living corridor, the
curiosity in the column that had dropped us into the valley.

I felt a push--a push that was filled with a colossal, GLITTERING
playfulness.

Under it I went spinning away for yards--Drake twirling close behind me.
The force, whatever it was, swept out from the Emperor, but in it was
no slightest hint of anger or of malice, no slightest shadow of the
sinister.

Rather it was as though one would blow away a feather; urge gently some
little lesser thing away.

The Disk watched our whirlings--with a sparkling, jeweled LAUGHTER in
its pulsing radiance.

Again came the push--farther yet we spun. Suddenly before us, across the
pave, shone out a twinkling trail--the wakened eyes of the cubes that
formed it, marking out a pathway for us to follow.

Immediately upon their gleaming forth I saw the Emperor turn--his
immense, oval, metallic back now black against the radiance of the
cones.

Up from the narrow gleaming path--a path opened I knew by some
command--lifted the hosts of tiny unseen hands; the sentient currents of
magnetic force that were the fingers and arms of the Metal Hordes. They
held us, thrust us along, passed us forward. Faster and faster we moved,
speeding on the wake of the long-vanished metal monks.

I turned my head--the cones were already far away. Over the tablet of
limpid violet phosphorescence still hovered the planes of the Keeper;
and still was the oval of the Emperor black against the radiance.

But the twinkling, spar