Jim was totally unable to discover. He saw, however, that it
was blinking rapidly, the alternations being so swift that it was only
just possible to be conscious of them. Perhaps the Eye was opening and
closing ten times a second.

Jim strained his eyes to see what was taking place on the stage at the
end of the tongue on which he stood. What was it? What were they doing
there? And was that the captured Atom Smasher standing between what
looked like grinning idols? A group of captured Drilgoes near it?

A shrill scream from Lucille echoed through the vast amphitheatre. Her
eye had seen what Jim's had not yet seen--something that had shocked
her into complete unconsciousness.

A marble figure, she stood leaning against the invisible force that
kept her on her feet, and in those open, staring eyes was a look of
ineffable horror.

* * * * *

Jim could see clearly now, for the light from the Eye was slowly
diminishing in brilliancy, or else his own eyes were growing more
accustomed to it. Those carven figures, forming a semi-circle upon the
platform were figures of gods, squat, huge forms seeming to emerge out
of the blocks of rock from which they had been fashioned.

Hideous, gruesome carvings they were, resembling some futuristic
sculpture of to-day, for the artist who had fashioned them had given
hardly more than a hint of the finished representation. It was rather
as if the masses of rock that had been transported there had become
vitalized, foreshadowing the dim yet awful beings that were some day
to emerge from them.

Only the arms were clearly sculptured, and each of the half-dozen
figures squatting upon its haunches in that semi-circle had four of
them. Arms that protruded so as to form an interlacing network, and
the fingers were long claws fashioned of some metal. Over the arms the
shapeless heads beat down with a leering look, and from each mouth
protruded a curved tongue.

A masterpiece of horror, that group, like the great stone figures of
the Aztecs, or some of the hideous Indian gods. Seen under the glare
of the Eye, they formed a background of horrible omen. In a flash it
dawned upon Jim that these hideous figures might be gods of bloody
sacrifice.

"That's why these people seem so gentle," he heard himself saying.
"It's the--the contrast."

He pulled himself together. Again he tried to move towards Lucille,
and again that invisible force restrained him.

Yes, i