And here they were again on the limits of the unknown and vague. This sense that was closest to the portal of the soul, their filammu, had brought them to face an intelligence that came they knew not whence, and to stand in the presence of an infinite darkness that flashed out at times the lightning of noble impulse. They were by no means unwilling to listen to its report, but gladly received it as a sure and trustworthy revelation; however dim the region into which it was about to lead them, they were eager to follow, if only they set each step upon solid fact. If there was anything unverifiable in this new leading, they would soon be done with it. It now became one of the duties of the astrobiological families to watch for these extra-terrene vibrations of the will-telegraph, and to investigate the circumstances and conditions. These families had been the first to feel the new impetus to discovery, for they were the couriers who went out to the borders of the atmosphere and watched for signs of energy and life in the infinite beyond. Again and again had they brought back specimens of microscopic and attenuated life, which seemed to float in interstellar space. Again and again had they analysed the beams of light shooting through it, but without much result. Now they were to be rewarded for their patience. They had taken out with them one of the new faleenas made of transparent and colourless irelium like glass; and as an experiment they sent it up by means of electricity far above themselves. As it rose above the limit of the earth’s atmosphere, they saw all over its surface a strange fluorescence, which grew unearthly in its beauty and brilliance. Rainbow colours played through its texture as if they were threads thrown by the shuttle of some hand out of heaven. Its wings moved at lightning pace, and yet soon it began to fall towards the earth. Again it struck upwards, and again the prismatic weavings gave it more brilliant life. They watched it as it rose and fell between the denser and the rarer medium. And when finally they caught it and brought it down to earth, upon its wings both within and without there was imprinted, not the iridescent web that had been weaving over it, but a hieroglyph of faint, half-distinguishable forms, some familiar, some strange, inextricably mingled.