Krag turned his head around. “The night is really past at last, Nightspore.... The day is here.” Nightspore gazed long and earnestly at Maskull’s body. “Why was all this necessary?” “Ask Crystalman,” replied Krag sternly. “His world is no joke. He has a strong clutch—but I have a stronger... Maskull was his, but Nightspore is mine.” Chapter 21. MUSPEL The fog thickened so that the two suns wholly disappeared, and all grew as black as night. Nightspore could no longer see his companion. The water lapped gently against the side of the island raft. “You say the night is past,” said Nightspore. “But the night is still here. Am I dead, or alive?” “You are still in Crystalman’s world, but you belong to it no more. We are approaching Muspel.” Nightspore felt a strong, silent throbbing of the air—a rhythmical pulsation, in four-four time. “There is the drumming,” he exclaimed. “Do you understand it, or have you forgotten?” “I half understand it, but I’m all confused.” “It’s evident Crystalman has dug his claws into you pretty deeply,” said Krag. “The sound comes from Muspel, but the rhythm is caused by its travelling through Crystalman’s atmosphere. His nature is rhythm as he loves to call it—or dull, deadly repetition, as I name it.” “I remember,” said Nightspore, biting his nails in the dark. The throbbing became audible; it now sounded like a distant drum. A small patch of strange light in the far distance, straight ahead of them, began faintly to illuminate the floating island and the glassy sea around it. “Do all men escape from that ghastly world, or only I, and a few like me?” asked Nightspore. “If all escaped, I shouldn’t sweat, my friend... There’s hard work, and anguish, and the risk of total death, waiting for us yonder.” Nightspore’s heart sank. “Have I not yet finished, then?” “If you wish it. You have got through. But will you wish it?” The drumming grew loud and painful. The light resolved itself into a tiny oblong of mysterious brightness in a huge wall of night. Krag’s grim and rocklike features were revealed. “I can’t face rebirth,” said Nightspore. “The horror of death is nothing to it.” “You will choose.” “I can do nothing. Crystalman is too powerful. I barely escaped with my own soul.” “You are still stupid with Earth fumes, and see nothing straight,” said Krag. Nightspore made no reply, but seemed to be trying to recall something. The water around them was so still, colourless, and transparent, that they scarcely seemed to be borne up by liquid matter at all. Maskull’s corpse had disappeared. The drumming was now like the clanging of iron. The oblong patch of light grew much bigger; it burned, fierce and wild. The darkness above, below, and on either side of it, began to shape itself into the semblance of a huge, black wall, without bounds. “Is that really a wall we are coming to?” “You will soon find out. What you see is Muspel, and that light is the gate you have to enter.”