Part 33 (1/2)

Twenty --twenty irdle of the upthrust shi+elds a gli; a translucent mist, beryl pale and beryl clear In a heart-beat it had thickened into a vast and vaporous ring through whose sware upon each disk shone clear--as though seen through clouds of transparent atoain the filaments of the Keepershi+elds shi+fted doard Brilliant, everan to revolve Froe circlets below thereen life itself Corpuscular, spun of uncounted rushi+ng, dazzling ions the great rays struck across, ied upon the thousand-foot wheel that crowned the cones; set it whirling

Over it I saw form a limpid cloud of the brilliant vapors Whence caht? It was as though the clustered, spinning disks reached into the shadowless air, sucked froy and transfor flood

For noas a flood Down froreen fires They cascaded over the cones; deluged theulfed therew Perceptibly their voluht No--it was as though the corpuscles flew to them, coalesced and built themselves into the structure

Out and further out upon the base of crystal they crept And higher and higher soared their tips, thrusting, ever thrusting upward toward the whirling wheel that fed them

Now frole of tentacles, uncoiling eagerly, avidly, through the twenty feet of space between their source and the enigmatic mechanism they manipulated The crater's disks tilted doard Into the vast hollow shot their jets of green radiance, drenching the Metal Hordes, splashi+ng from the polished walls wherever the Metal Hordes had left those living walls exposed

All about us was a tre pulse of life Colossal, rhythmic, ever quicker, ever ious vibration ! Feeding on the sun!”

Faster danced the radiant beah which the conical rays angled and interwove, crossed and led, where they crossed, flamed out suddenly immense raylessob; palpitant for an instant, then dissolving in spiralling, feathery spray of pallid eer beat the pulse of returning life

A jetting stream struck squarely upon the Metal Eolden zodiac, no longer tarnished and dull, ran with sun fla, lambent miracle

Up snapped the Keeper; towered behind hier wrathful or sullen

The place dripped radiance; was filling like a chriso mists bathed

I was conscious of a curiously wild exhilaration; a quickening of the pulse; an abnor I stooped to touch Drake; sparks leaped froreen sparks that crackled as they iave them no heed; but stared with fascinated eyes upon the crater

Now froirder and colulitterings, ruby luminescences, lanced flas of a spectrums

The holloas a cave of some Aladdin of the titans ablaze with enchanted hoards It was a place of geeht beat sparkling against their crystal walls to escape

I thrust the fantasies frolobe and pyra in, drinking from the radiant maelstrom that faster and ever faster swirled about the on the sun!”

The circling shi+elds were raising theher above the crater-lip Into the crowded cylinder cah circlets, the strea cones

Up and up the shi+elds rose, but by what mechanism raised I could not see Their motion ceased; in all their thousands they turned Over the City's top and out into the oval valley they poured their torrents of light; flooding it, deluging it even as they had this pit that was the City's heart Feeding, I knew, those other Metal Hordes without

And as though in answer, sweeping down upon us through the circles of open sky, a clamor poured