The enclosure had a wall about it—a thick high wall built of a grey substance lying in layers, folded in convolutions. We stood upon the wall, gazing at the scene within.
"I would not have you see too much—now," Brutar said.
A cunning look was on his face. "Not—too much, until we are better friends and I can be sure of your loyalty."
The lights were dazzling when near at hand—yet their rays carried but a little distance. I saw in the foreground beneath us, a section where men were squatting one behind the other in a long curved line. Their backs were bent forward, with heads and necks unnaturally held upright. Their arms and hands were outstretched in a curious attitude as with supplication. There must have been two hundred of the men, squatting in this single line which curved in a crescent until its end was near its beginning. They were men with bodies which seemed shrunken; their arms and hands very long; thin, tenuous. But their heads were over-large; distorted to a swollen size.
Brutar said softly, "Now—in a moment—watch them."
A leader, raised above these squatting, motionless workmen, gave a signal. From the head of the man at the back of the line a pallid light seemed streaming. It was very faint—a glow of pale white light, no more. But as I stared, breathless, I saw that it was not exactly like light, but a stream of something moving. Very faint; a fog, a mist, which a sweep of the hand might dissipate.
It streamed forward; and as it passed the head of the next man, there seemed additional light adding to it. Both men had their hands up, as though to guide the stream—gently to guide that which must have been very nearly impalpable.
But it was growing in density. Soon, further up the line with every brain contributing a share, the slowly moving stream began to have substance. From vague, luminous pallidness, it turned darker; gaining a solidity—a weight. The guiding hands sustained it, moulded it, pushed it onward.
It came to the end of the line. Other workers appeared; carried it away—a long flexible rod of newly created thought-matter. The basic inorganic substance of this world. The thickness of a man's body, it seemed coming of interminable length. Then the first worker gave out—dropped back exhausted. Then others. The rod grew tenuous and pale in places. It broke. Workers carried away the broken segments. It was not a solid yet; they moulded it by their touch as they carried it away.