He stepped into the heavy torus coil which terminated the series—there had been no time to set up a new frame—and turned out the cellar light.
The machine made no sound, and in the blackness no one could have seen that after a few moments it was alone.
The light of the red sun ran back and forth along the catwalk in quivering lines, and all around it the city glistened in faery-like beauty. Andreson regarded the bridge dubiously; it was little more than a thread of crystal.
"It will bear your weight," the girl said, mistaking his trepidation. Masking his thoughts, he set out across it.
"They have come through several times, just recently," Atel continued evenly. "In a sort of borer—I suppose they thought of it as that—whose walls were invisible, its machinery a contorted group of vacancies in a solid interior. But we destroyed the solid part, and they were crushed. It is hard to imagine how empty space could crush. But we have the law that two objects may not exist in the same space at the same time, and this seems to be its converse."
Andreson tried it out: two spaces cannot exist in the same—in the same what? Abruptly his head was whirling and in the vast distance the earth reeled and shuddered; the glassy thread under his feet seemed to swivel back and forth like a tightrope. He was going over—
Behind him, powerful vanes cracked open, and lean hands grappled his shoulders firmly. "Thanks," he gasped, flailing with his feet at the landing of the next building. Atel grinned contemptuously and leaned him against the wall like a manikin.
"Nevertheless," the winged man proceeded as imperturbably as ever, "they learn rapidly. If they ever find out the secret of reversing their condition, we can close the book on Varan history." He jerked open the door to which the platform led, and Andreson and the girl followed him through.
From the level upon which they were standing all the way up to the summit of this new tower there was a vast chamber, domed with a clear roof. Around the base of the dome proper a ledge or platform ran, upon which was more of the furniture-like stuff—evidently a sort of solarium. Extending outside the walls as well as inside, it gave the building the look of a giant in a plastic helmet. At the apex of the dome a gem, like a giant's diamond, was fixed, rotating slowly, catching the sunlight and sending a parade of rainbow hues over the seats banked far below.