apphires and topazes amorous; orbs
born of cool virginal dawns and of imperial sunsets and orbs that were
the tuliped fruit of mating rainbows of fire.

They danced, these countless aureoles; they swung and threaded in
radiant choral patterns, in linked harmonies of light. And as they
danced their gay rays caressed and bathed myriads of the Metal Folk open
beneath them. Under the rays the jewel fires of disk and star and cross
leaped and pulsed and danced to the same bright rhythm.

We sought the source of the music--a tremendous thing of shimmering
crystal pipes like some colossal organ. Out of the radiance around it
great flames gathered, shook into sight with streamings and pennonings,
in bannerets and bandrols, leaped upon the crystal pipes, and merged
within them.

And as the pipes drank them the flames changed into sound!

Throbbing bass viols of roaring vernal winds, diapasons of waterfall
and torrents--these had been flames of emerald; flaming trumpetings of
desire that had been great streamers of scarlet--rose flames that had
dissolved into echoes of fulfillment; diamond burgeonings that melted
into silver symphonies like mist entangled Pleiades transmuted into
melodies; chameleon harmonies to which the strange suns danced.

And now I saw--realizing with a clutch of indescribable awe, with
a sense of inexplicable profanation the secret of this ensorcelled
chamber.

Within every pulsing rose of irised fire that was the heart of a disk,
from every rubrous, clipped rose of a cross, and from every rayed purple
petaling of a star there nestled a tiny disk, a tiny cross, a tiny star,
luminous and symboled even as those that cradled them.

The Metal Babes building like crystals from hearts of radiance beneath
the play of jocund orbs!

Incredible blossomings of crystal and of metal whose lullabies and
cradle songs were singing symphonies of flame.

It was the birth chamber of the City!

The womb of the Metal Monster!

Abruptly the walls of the niche sparkled out, the glittering eye points
regarding us with a most disquieting suggestion of sentinels who,
slumbering, had been caught unaware, and now awakening challenged us.
Swiftly the niche closed--so swiftly that barely had we time to spring
over its threshold into the corridor.

The corridor was awake--alive!

The power darted out; gripped us. Up it swept us and on. Far away a
square of light appeared, grew quickly larger. Framed in it was the
amethys