Then as when first we had seen the phenomenon in the valley of the blue poppies, the ring vanished, hidden by a fog of coruscations--as though the force streaming through the rings became diffused after it had been caught. Crouching, forgetful of our juxtaposition to these two unhuman, anomalous Things, we watched the play of the tentacles upon the upthrust rods. But if we forgot, we were not forgotten! The Emperor slipped nearer; seemed to contemplate us--quizzically, AMUSED; as a man would look down upon some curious and interesting insect, a puppy, a kitten. I sensed this amusement in the Disk's regard even as I had sensed its soul of awful tranquillity; as we had sensed the playful malice in the eye stars of the living corridor, the curiosity in the column that had dropped us into the valley. I felt a push--a push that was filled with a colossal, GLITTERING playfulness. Under it I went spinning away for yards--Drake twirling close behind me. The force, whatever it was, swept out from the Emperor, but in it was no slightest hint of anger or of malice, no slightest shadow of the sinister. Rather it was as though one would blow away a feather; urge gently some little lesser thing away. The Disk watched our whirlings--with a sparkling, jeweled LAUGHTER in its pulsing radiance. Again came the push--farther yet we spun. Suddenly before us, across the pave, shone out a twinkling trail--the wakened eyes of the cubes that formed it, marking out a pathway for us to follow. Immediately upon their gleaming forth I saw the Emperor turn--his immense, oval, metallic back now black against the radiance of the cones. Up from the narrow gleaming path--a path opened I knew by some command--lifted the hosts of tiny unseen hands; the sentient currents of magnetic force that were the fingers and arms of the Metal Hordes. They held us, thrust us along, passed us forward. Faster and faster we moved, speeding on the wake of the long-vanished metal monks. I turned my head--the cones were already far away. Over the tablet of limpid violet phosphorescence still hovered the planes of the Keeper; and still was the oval of the Emperor black against the radiance. But the twinkling, sparkling path between us and them was gone--was fading out close behind us as we swept onward. Faster and faster grew our pace. The cylindrical wall loomed close. A high oblong portal showed within it. Into this we were carried. Before us stretched a corridor precisely similar to that which, closing upon us, had forced us completely out into the hall.