these rooms they found no
trace. There were only the garments they had once worn, the chairs in
which they had sat. About these clung the ghosts of their presences.
Over all was an air of desertion and long neglect.

They entered another section. Here there were rooms as large as halls,
spread with queer tables and chairs. One they found to be a library, for
on shelves they found large, tablet-like books whose stiff pages were
covered with glowing hieroglyphs.

Then they found their first stairway, a succession of small ramps
leading to some floor above. They ascended slowly, with the feelings of
men entering some new portion of strange and utterly alien world.

Here they found but one, huge room, and this their lights revealed to be
perfectly circular. In the center, glowing greenly, was what appeared to
be an immensely thick column, rising from floor to ceiling. About this
banks of strange instruments and machinery were grouped.

"Brad," Big Tim whispered. "This place--What on earth could it have been
for?"

Nellon made small, slow shakes of his head.

"That's what bothers me. I can't imagine any possible use. They knew
utility, the beings who built these rooms. There was a good purpose for
this room, I'm sure. Yet I can't imagine what it could have been. None
of the activities which we normally carry on in life would seem to fit
in with these surroundings."

"Brad--that's it! This room was for no normal use. It was for
something--oh, I don't know. But it must have been something
tremendously important to them. I feel--" Big Tim did not finish. His
strained, low voice died away, and he moistened his lips. The reverie
heavy upon his face showed clearly how oblivious he was of the act.

"Let's take a closer look at that column, or whatever it is," Nellon
suggested. "We might find a clue."

* * * * *

The column was big. Just how big they had never realized. It was only
when halfway to it, and still approaching, that awareness of its size
began to dawn upon them.

The vastness of the room had dwarfed it somewhat, but now, almost upon
it and with their own sizes as standards of comparison, they were amazed
and awed at its cyclopean girth. Slow understanding of the heroic
dimensions of the place in its mysterious entirety began to dawn upon
them.

And then Nellon became conscious of something else besides size. With
closer and closer approach to the column, a strange comfort a