that I was certain.

"It's opened since we went by," whispered Drake.

We peered through it. The passage was narrow; its pave led downward.
For a moment we hesitated, the same foreboding in both our minds. And
yet--among the perils that crowded in upon us what choice had we? There
could be no more danger there than here.

Both ways were--ALIVE, both obedient to impulses over which we had
no more control and no more way of predetermining than mice in some
complex, man-made trap. Furthermore, this shaft also ran downward, and
although its pitch was less and it did not therefore drop as quickly
toward that level we sought and wherein lay the openings of escape into
the outer valley, it fell at right angles to the corridor through which
we had come.

We knew that to retrace our steps now would but take us back to the
forges and thence to the hall of the Cones and the certain peril waiting
for us there.

We stepped into this opened way. For a little distance it ran
straightly, then turned and sloped gently upward; and a little distance
more we climbed. Then suddenly, not a hundred yards from us, gushed out
a flood of soft radiance, opalescent, filled with pearly glimmerings and
rosy shadows of light.

It was as though a door had opened into some world of luminescence. From
it the lambent torrent poured; billowed down upon us. In its wake
came music--if music the mighty harmonies, the sonorous chords, the
crystalline themes and the linked chaplet of notes that were like
spiralings of tiny golden star bells could be named.

Toward source of light and sound we moved, nor could we have halted nor
withdrawn had we willed; the radiance drew us to it as the sun the water
drop, and irresistibly the sweet, unearthly music called. Closer we
came--it was a narrow alcove from which sound and light poured--into it
we crept--and went no further.

We peered into a vast and columnless vault, a limitless temple of light.
High up in it, strewn manifold, danced and shone soft orbs like tender
suns. No pale gilt luminaries of frozen rays were these. Effulgent,
jubilant, they flamed--orbs red as wine of rubies that Djinns of Al
Shiraz press from his enchanted vineyards of jewels; twin orbs
rosy white as breasts of pampered Babylonian maids; orbs of pulsing
opalescences and orbs of the murmuring green of bursting buds of spring,
crocused orbs and orbs of royal coral; suns that throbbed with singing
rays of wedded rose and pearl and of s