was the Goddess woman's
sepulcher.

The crater filled with the pallid luminescence. Faster and ever faster
it poured down into the Pit. And from all the lesser craters of the
smaller cones swept silent cataracts of the same pale radiance.

The City began to crumble--the Monster to fall.

Like pent-up waters rushing through a broken dam the gleaming deluge
swept over the valley; gushing in steady torrents from the breaking
mass. Over the valley fell a vast silence. The lightnings ceased. The
Metal Hordes stood rigid, the shining flood lapping at their bases,
rising swiftly ever higher.

Now from the sinking City swarmed multitudes of its weird luminaries.

Out they trooped, swirling from every rent and gap--orbs scarlet and
sapphire, ruby orbs, orbs tuliped and irised--the jocund suns of the
birth chamber and side by side with them hosts of the frozen, pale gilt,
stiff rayed suns.

Thousands upon thousands they marched forth and poised themselves
solemnly over all the Pit that now was a fast rising lake of yellow
froth of sun flame.

They swept forth in squadrons, in companies, in regiments, those
mysterious orbs. They floated over all the valley; they separated and
swung motionless above it as though they were mysterious multiple souls
of fire brooding over the dying shell that had held them.

Beneath, thrusting up from the lambent lake like grotesque towers of
some drowned fantastic metropolis, the great Shapes stood, black against
its glowing.

What had been the City--that which had been the bulk of the Monster--was
now only a vast and shapeless hill from which streamed the silent
torrents of that released, unknown force which, concentrate and bound,
had been the cones.

As though it was the Monster's shining life-blood it poured, raising
ever higher in its swift flooding the level radiant lake.

Lower and lower sank the immense bulk; squattered and spread, ever
lowering--about its helpless, patient crouching something ineffably
piteous, something indescribably, COSMICALLY tragic.

Abruptly the watching orbs shook under a hail of sparkling atoms
streaming down from the glittering sky; raining upon the lambent lake.
So thick they fell that now the brooding luminaries were dim aureoles
within them.

From the Pit came a blinding, insupportable brilliancy. From every
rigid tower gleamed out jeweled fires; their clinging units opened into
blazing star and disk and cross. The City was a hill of living gems