Part 30 (2/2)

CHAPTER XX VAMPIRES OF THE SUN

It was a crater; a half h and all of two thousand feet across ran the circular lip of its vast ri sky in whose center flarasp a tithe of that panorama, I knew that this place was the very heart of the City; its vital ganglion; its soul

Around the crater lip were poised thousands of concave disks, vernal green, enorantic, upthrust shi+elds; and within each, e flower of flame--the reflected, dilated face of the sun Below this diade, pendent, clusters of other disks, swar of the constellation Hercules' captured stars And each of these prisoned the ie of our sun

A hundred feet beloas the crater floor

Up from it thrust a ; prodigious Tier upon tier, thicket upon thicket, phalanx upon phalanx they cli their spiked hosts

They drew together two thousand feet above us, clustering close about the foot of a single huge spire which thrust itself skyward above them

The crest of this spire was truncated Fro and slender spokes holding in place a thousand feet heel of wan green disks whose concave surfaces, unlike those s the crater, were curiously faceted

This a structure rested upon a myriad-footed base of crystal, even as had that other cornute fantasy beside which we had reat Disk But it was in size to that as--as Leviathan to a estion of invincible force transible; power made concentrate in the vestments of substance

Half-way between crater lip and floor began the hordes of the Metal People

In colossal aniirders they thrust the walls--walls, I knew, as alive as they!

Fro in ropes and clusters--spheres and cubes studded as thickly with the pyraroup they dropped; pendulous Coppices of slender colu up to irders they draped therouped themselves in innumerable, kaleidoscopic patterns

They clicked into place around the golden turret in which we crouched

In fantastic arrases they swayed in front of us--now hiding by, now revealing through their quicksilver interweavings thein below added to theirout still further the living girders, stringing the in a their sy arabesque, in Gothic traceries, in lace-like fantasies; utterly bizarre, unutterably beautiful--crystalline, geometric always

Abruptly their e of all the ordered turinable tapestry bedight with incredible broidery, the Metal People draped the vast cup

Pillared it as though it were a teh it were a shrine

Across the floor toward the Cones glided a palely lustrous sphere In shape only a globe like all its kind, yet it was invested with power; it radiated power as a star does light; was clothed in unseen garreat pyramids; after them ten spheres but little smaller than the Shape which led

”The Metal Emperor!” breathed Drake

On they swept until they reached the base of the Cones They paused at the edge of the crystal tabling They turned

There was a flashi+ng as of a lobe had opened into that splendor of jewel fires before which had floated Norhala and Ruth