Part 27 (1/2)

I saw his arhten around his neck; black hair touched the silken brown curls, their lipsI turned away

In a little ti beside me, utterly dejected

A hundredon the threshold of the house ofus She waved her hands, flitted in, was hidden from us And Drake still silent, we pushed on

The walls of the gateere close The sparse vegetation along the base of the cliffs had ceased; the roadway itself had ed into the se to vertical edge of the rocky portal stretched a curtain of shi+ mist As we drew nearerthat this was ht; it streamed in oddly fixed lines like atoms of crystals in a still solution Drake thrust an arm within it, waved it; the mist did not h bone and flesh were spectral, without power to dislodge the shi+ning particles from position

We passed within it--side by side

Instantly I knew that whatever these veils were, they were not moisture

The air we breathed was dry, electric I was sensible of a decided stiaiety alht-headed We could see each other quite plainly, the rocky floor on which we trod as well Within this vapor of light there was no ghost of sound; it was utterly eh, his lips h he bent close toHe frowned, puzzled, and walked on

Abruptly we stepped into an opening, a pocket of clear air Our ears were filled with a high, shrill hu as unpleasantly vibrant as the shriek of a sand blast Six feet to our right was the edge of the ledge on which we stood; beyond it was a sheer drop into space A shaft piercing down into the void and walled with the mists

But it was not that shaft that h it uprose a colossal column of the cubes It stood a hundred feet from us Its top was another hundred feet above the level of our ledge and its length vanished in the depths

And its head was a gigantic spinning wheel, yards in thickness, tapering at its point of contact with the cliff wall into a dia with flashes of green fla with tremendous speed at the face of the rock

Over it, attached to the cliff, was a great vizored hood of so off the vaporous light like an enormous umbrella made the pocket of clarity in which we stood, the shaft up which sprang the pillar

All along the length of that column as far as we could see the myriad tiny eyes of the Metal People shone out upon us, not twinkling rotesque as this may seem, I cannot help it--ith surprise

Only an instant longer did the great wheel spin I saw the screa like lava Then, as though it had received soe, abruptly its motion now ceased

It tilted; looked down upon us!

I noted that its grinding surface was studded thickly with the smaller pyramids and that the tips of these were each capped hat see with the same pale yellow radiance as the Shrine of the Cones

The colu

Drake seized me by the arm, drew me swiftly back into the mists We were shrouded in their silences Step by step ent on, peering for the edge of the shelf, feeling in fancy that prodigious wheeled face stealing upon us; afraid to look behind lest in looking we e

Yard after yard we slowly covered Suddenly the vapors thinned; we passed out of the of a es; the crashi+ng of a hundred years of thunder; the roarings of a thousand hurricanes The prodigious bellowings of the Pit beating against us now as they had e had flon the long raht

Instinct with unthinkable poas that clamor; the very voice of Force Stunned, nay BLINDED, by it, we covered ears and eyes

As before, the clangor died, leaving in its wake a bewildered silence

Then that silence began to throb with a vast hu a murmur as that of a river of diarip our throats as though a hand had clutched theht is it for me now to essay to draords the scene before us then For although I can set dohat it , I nor any man can transible wonder that was its synthesis--the appallingly beautiful, soul-shaking strangeness of it, its grandeur, its fantasy, and its alien terror