As they progressed Glayne saw the tough, all-metal walls were more heavily buttressed with the massive beralloy supports. Selzi-Narfid saw the direction of his glance and said, "Those were necessary when we maneuvered the Jewel into the center of the discoid. You have no idea of what such a tremendous mass in a body the size of the Jewel can do when it is not balanced." Glayne listened to the Admiral with just a part of his mind. His main attention was devoted to photographing mentally the warren of passages. Here and there he saw groups of Delban technicians, none of them armed. Good, thought Glayne. They reached the entrance stage of the Jewel Chamber. The beralloy walls here were nearly a meter thick. In single file the party crawled through the narrow opening that dilated ponderously in the entrance stage. Two very weary-looking guards snapped to attention as they passed, but almost immediately slumped back into their somnolent positions, exhausted by their abnormally increased weight. Better yet, thought Glayne. "This is the Jewel Chamber, Captain. It is the very heart of Tjadlinn," puffed Selzi-Narfid after he had crawled through the dilated entrance stage. Glayne stared about the vaulted room curiously. It was shaped like the inside of an oval, thick at the center but tapering off to nothing at the sides. They were standing on a balcony which was heavily buttressed and ran all the way around the Chamber past several other massive portals. In the exact center of the Chamber a kind of a nest was formed by the tremendously thick beralloy girders. Something burned there with a cold, golden brilliance that filtered through the interstices of the girders and etched them sharply in banded shadows about the heavy walls. An uncanny sensation possessed Glayne as he gazed at the Jewel. A vague dread passed over him and he found himself wondering if the Elder Tane Gods would emerge from their crypt and wreak hideous vengeance on mere mortals for disturbing their sleep. Uneasily he crushed the fantasy that was rioting up in his mind and determined to look for something more practical. He concentrated on the power drain machinery which hung in clusters from the massive girders. Obviously those mechanisms were far more delicate than their supports and could be sabotaged with comparatively little work. As he calculated he gradually became aware of Bro-Doral who was speaking: "--were remarkable creatures. As you know, Tane legends exist in every part of the known galaxy. They even possessed immortality--but they lost it for all practical purposes when they failed to adjust their bodies to the expanding universe.