And steadily those flowing in below added to their multitudes; gliding up cable and pillar; building out still further the living girders, stringing themselves upon living festoon and living garland, weaving in among them, changing their shapes, rewriting their symbols.
They swung and threaded swiftly, in shifting arabesque, in Gothic traceries, in lace-like fantasies; utterly bizarre, unutterably beautiful—crystalline, geometric always.
Abruptly their movement ceased—so abruptly that the stoppage of all the ordered turmoil had the quality of appalling silence.
An unimaginable tapestry bedight with incredible broidery, the Metal People draped the vast cup.
Pillared it as though it were a temple.
Garnished it with their bodies as though it were a shrine.
Across the floor toward the Cones glided a palely lustrous sphere. In shape only a globe like all its kind, yet it was invested with power; it radiated power as a star does light; was clothed in unseen garments of supernal force. In its wake drifted two great pyramids; after them ten spheres but little smaller than the Shape which led.
“The Metal Emperor!” breathed Drake.
On they swept until they reached the base of the Cones. They paused at the edge of the crystal tabling. They turned.
There was a flashing as of a meteor bursting. The globe had opened into that splendor of jewel fires before which had floated Norhala and Ruth.