To these, though, and to the buildings about us we paid but small attention; for at the end of the narrow street down which we were marching there loomed a great blue-shining structure of the same vibration as the others, but which dwarfed them by its tremendous size. Its vast, terraced sides slanted up for level upon mighty level, and as we neared it we saw that the street itself ended in it, passing through the high, great doorway before us into the shining structure's interior. In and out of it were pouring hordes of the serpent-creatures, and into it we were marched by our guards, through the great hall inside and on through a succession of other corridors in which writhed serpent-throngs. Through the open doors of the rooms along those corridors, as we passed by them, I could see serpent-creatures grouped about low, desk-like platforms, could see massed rows of great mechanisms that seemed tabulating or recording machines of some sort, saw other great rooms filled with flexible metal rolls like those we had captured with our oval ship, great collections of written records, and realized that this huge building must hold within itself the central controlling government of all the races of the serpent-creatures, on this great central world and on the worlds that revolved about the few living suns in the universe about us. Our captors halted us, at last, before a door heavily guarded by serpent-creatures with ray-tubes, and while one of our own guards passed through the door into the great rooms we could glimpse inside, the remainder kept close watch upon us. I sensed that our own fate was being decided in those rooms beside us, and a few moments later saw that my guess had been right, for there came out the serpent-creature who had gone in, giving to our guards brief hissing orders. At once they marched us onward, emerging again into the great central hall that ran through the vast, blue-shimmering building, and progressing with us down that great, crowded corridor, until they turned us sharply to the right, through a big open door into a mighty hall or room, the nature and purpose of which we could not grasp for the moment.