The segments were jammed; the people seemed crouching upon low pedestals one close against the other. A few of the pedestals were vacant. None where we entered, and the nearest I saw were almost above us. We passed along an aisle to reach them. The globe and everyone in it appeared slowly turning over, so that always we seemed to be at its bottom with those opposite to us over our heads. At last we were seated. In the center of the globe, suspended there in space by what means I could not know, was a ball some fifty feet in diameter. Upon it men were sitting. Dignitaries; leaders of the people facing from every angle the waiting throng. And one--a man of great stature--Ala's father, walking around the ball restlessly, awaiting the moment when he would begin his address. A silence hung over everything. Again I was reminded of the utter soundlessness of this realm. I felt the suppressed murmurs of the people--but I know no physical sounds were audible. Nor indeed, had I ear-drums with which to hear them had such sounds existed. Time passed as we found our seats. Immobile we sat; and for me at least, time ceased to exist. Then Ala's father spoke. "My people--danger has come to a strange race of friendly neighboring beings. And it brings a danger also to us all--to you, to me----" He stopped abruptly. I felt a sound; a myriad of sounds everywhere about us. Shouts of menace; a swishing, queerly aerial sound as of many rapidly moving bodies. Through all the aisles of the globe, from outside, the shapes of men were bursting. Swishing through the opaque surface of the globe, entering among us, whirling inward. Like storm-tossed feathers they whirled, end over end, uncontrolled with the power of their rush. A cloud of hostile grey shapes in the fashion of menacing men come to attack us! CHAPTER X CAPTURED BY THOUGHTS MALEVOLENT As the followers of Brutar burst into the globular amphitheatre with shouts of menace, a confusion--a chaos--a panic descended upon the gathering. Everywhere the people were rising to flight; struggling to escape, struggling with each other, aimlessly, unreasonably, with scarce the steady thought to distinguish friend from foe. The stools upon which we had been sitting were overturned; the floor around me, and above me was grey with its surging occupants; they were floating inward, struggling groups of them; the air soon was full of them, like feathers tossed in a breeze. I could feel the breeze now--a turgid motion of that imponderable, invisible fluid for which I have no other name save air; a breeze caused by the fluttering things which were ourselves.