of flaming scarlet.

Scattered among them were the flashing emeralds of the glaciers and the
immense pallid baroques of the snow fields.

Like a diadem the summits ringed the Pit. Below them ran the ring of
flashing amethyst with its aural mists. Between them lay the vast and
patterned flat covered with still symbol and inexplicable movement.
Under their summits brooded the blue black, metallic mass of the Seeing
City.

Within circling walls, over plain and from the City hovered a cosmic
spirit not to be understood by man. Like an emanation of stars and
space, it was yet gem fine and gem hard, crystalline and metallic,
lapidescent and--

Conscious!

Down from the ledge where we stood fell a steep ramp, similar to that by
which, in the darkness, we had descended. It dropped at an angle of at
least forty-five degrees; its surface was smooth and polished.

Through the mists at our back stole a shining block. It paused, seemed
to perk itself; spun so that in turn each of its six faces took us in.

I felt myself lifted upon it by multitudes of little invisible hands;
saw Drake whirling up beside me. I moved toward him--through the force
that held us. A block swept away from the ledge, swayed for a moment.
Under us, as though we were floating in air, the Pit lay stretched.
There was a rapid readjustment, a shifting of our two selves upon
another surface. I looked down upon a tremendous, slender pillar of the
cubes, dropping below, five hundred feet to the valley's floor a column
of which the block that held us was the top.

Gone was the whirling wheel that had crowned it, but I knew this for the
Grinding Thing from which we had fled; the questing block had been its
scout. As though curious to know more of us, the Shape had sought us out
through the mists, its messenger had caught us, delivered us to it.

The pillar leaned over--bent like that shining pillar that had bridged
for us, at Norhala's commands, the abyss. The floor of the valley arose
to meet us. Further and further leaned the pillar. Again there was a
rapid shifting of us to another surface of the crowning cube. Fast now
swept up toward us the valley floor. A dizziness clouded my sight. There
was a little shock, a rolling over the Thing that had held us--

We stood upon the floor of the Pit.

And breaking from the immense and prostrate shaft on whose top we had
ridden downward came score upon score of the cubes. They broke from it,
disintegrating it; c