hone brilliantly.

There were four great aisles, leading from the four angles of the
lozenge, and many narrower ones, to give ready access to the benches,
all radiating from a raised dais in the center, and the whole building
illuminated by bluish globes of light that I recognized from
descriptions and visits to scientific museums, as replicas of an early
form of the ethon tube.

These things I took in at a glance. It was the object upon the huge
central dais that caught and held my attention.

"Hendricks!" I muttered, just loud enough to make my voice audible
above the solemn chanting. "Are we dreaming?"

"No, sir!" Hendricks' eyes were starting out of his head, and I have no
doubt I looked as idiotic as he did. "It's there."

On the dais was a gleaming object perhaps sixty feet long--which is a
length equal to the height of about ten full-sized men. It was shaped
like an elongated egg--like the metal object surmounting the staffs of
the pennon-bearers!

And, unmistakably, it was a ship for navigating space.

* * * * *

As we came closer, I could make out details. The ship was made of some
bluish, shining metal that I took to be chromium, or some compound of
chromium, and there was a small circular port in the side presented to
us. Set into the blunt nose of the ship was a ring of small disks,
reddish in color, and deeply pitted, whether by electrical action or
oxidization, I could not determine. Around the more pointed stern were
innumerable small vents, pointed rearward, and smoothly stream-lined
into the body. The body of the ship fairly glistened, but it was dented
and deeply scratched in a number of places, and around the stern vents
the metal was a dark, iridescent blue, as though stained by heat.

The chanting stopped as we reached the dais, and I turned to our guide.
He motioned that Hendricks and I were to precede him up a narrow,
curving ramp that led upwards, while the three Zenians who accompanied
us were to remain below. I nodded my approval of this arrangement, and
slowly we made our way to the top of the great platform, while the
pennon-bearers formed a close circle around its base, and the people,
who had surrounded the great building filed in with military precision
and took seats. In the short space of time that it took us to reach the
top of the dais, the whole great building filled itself with humanity.

Artur turned to that great sea of faces and