brilliance. Sinister, menacing, now larger even
than the sun, the invader from beyond hung in the heavens.

As Phobar watched it, the air around him prickled strangely. A sixth
sense gave warning. He turned to race back into his house. His legs
failed. A fantastic orange light bathed him, countless needles of pain
shot through his whole body, the world darkened.

* * * * *

Earth had somehow been blotted out. There was a brief blackness, the
nausea of space and of a great fall that compressed eternity into a
moment. Then a swimming confusion, and outlines which gradually came to
rest.

Phobar was too utterly amazed to cry out or run. He stood inside the
most titanic edifice he could have imagined, a single gigantic structure
vaster than all New York City. Far overhead swept a black roof fading
into the horizon, beneath his feet was the same metal substance. In the
midst of this giant work soared the base of a tower that pierced the
roof thousands of feet above.

Everywhere loomed machines, enormous dynamos, cathode tubes a hundred
feet long, masses and mountains of such fantastic apparatus as he had
never encountered. The air was bluish, electric. From the black
substance came a phosphorescent radiance. The triumphant drone of motors
and a terrific crackle of electricity were everywhere. Off to his right
purple-blue flames the size of Sequoia trees flickered around a group of
what looked like condensers as huge as Gibraltar. At the base of the
central tower half a mile distant Phobar could see something that
resembled a great switchboard studded with silver controls. Near it was
a series of mechanisms at whose purpose he could not even guess.

* * * * *

All this his astounded eyes took in at one confused glance. The thing
that gave him unreasoning terror was the hundred-foot-high metal monster
before him. It defied description. It was unlike any color known on
Earth, a blinding color sinister with power and evil. Its shape was
equally ambiguous--it rippled like quicksilver, now compact, now spread
out in a thousand limbs. But what appalled Phobar was its definite
possession of rational life. More, its very thoughts were transmitted to
him as clearly as though written in his own English:

"Follow me!"

Phobar's mind did not function--but his legs moved regularly. In the
grasp of this mental, metal monster he was a mere automaton. Phobar
noticed idl