hat do
you mean?"

"Whence did--They--come?" His voice was clear and calm, the eyes beneath
the red brand clear and quiet, too. "Whence did They come--these Things
that carry us? That strode like destroying angels over Cherkis's
city? Are they spawn of Earth--as we are? Or are they foster
children--changelings from another star?

"These creatures that when many still are one--that when one still are
many. Whence did They come? What are They?"

He looked down upon the cubes that held us; their hosts of tiny eyes
shone up at him, enigmatically--as though they heard and understood.

"I do not forget," he said. "At least not all do I forget of what I saw
during that time when I seemed an atom outside space--as I told you,
or think I told you, speaking with unthinkable effort through lips that
seemed eternities away from me, the atom, who strove to open them.

"There were three--visions, revelations--I know not what to call them.
And though each seemed equally real, of two of them, only one, I think,
can be true; and of the third--that may some time be true but surely is
not yet."

Through the air came a louder drum roll--in it something ominous,
something sinister. It swelled to a crescendo; abruptly ceased. And now
I saw Norhala raise her head; listen.

"I saw a world, a vast world, Goodwin, marching stately through space.
It was no globe--it was a world of many facets, of smooth and polished
planes; a huge blue jewel world, dimly luminous; a crystal world cut
out from Aether. A geometric thought of the Great Cause, of God, if you
will, made material. It was airless, waterless, sunless.

"I seemed to draw closer to it. And then I saw that over every facet
patterns were traced; gigantic symmetrical designs; mathematical
hieroglyphs. In them I read unthinkable calculations, formulas of
interwoven universes, arithmetical progressions of armies of stars,
pandects of the motions of the suns. In the patterns was an appalling
harmony--as though all the laws from those which guide the atom to those
which direct the cosmos were there resolved into completeness--totalled.

"The faceted world was like a cosmic abacist, tallying as it marched the
errors of the infinite.

"The patterned symbols constantly changed form. I drew nearer--the
symbols were alive. They were, in untold numbers--These!"

He pointed to the Thing that bore us.

"I was swept back; looked again upon it from afar. And a fantastic
notion came to me--