I looked behind me; out of the spume boiling at the portal, were pouring forth other scores of the Metal Things, darting through like divers through a wave. And as they drew into our wake and swam into the light, their dim lustre vanished like a film; their surfaces grew almost radiant. Whence came the light that set them gleaming? Our pace had slackened--I looked about me. The walls of the cleft or tunnel were perpendicular, smooth and shining with a cold, metallic, greenish glow. Between the walls, like rhythmic flashing of fire-flies, pulsed soft and fugitive glimmerings that carried a sense of the infinitely minute--of electrons, it came to me, rather than atoms. Their irradiance was greenish, like the walls; but I was certain that these corpuscles did not come from them. They blinked and faded like motes within a shifting sunbeam; or, to use a more scientific comparison, like colloids within the illuminated field of the ultramicroscope; and like these latter it was as though the eyes took in not the minute particles themselves but their movement only. Save for these gleamings the light of the place, although crepuscular, was crystalline clear. High above us--five hundred, a thousand feet--the walls merged into a haze of clouded beryl. Rock certainly the cliffs were--but rock cut and planed, smoothed and polished and PLATED! Yes, that was it--plated. Plated with some metallic substance that was itself a reservoir of luminosity and from which, it came to me, pulsed the force that lighted the winking ions. But who could have done such a thing? For what purpose? How? And the meticulousness, the perfection of these smoothed cliffs struck over my nerves as no rasp could, stirring a vague resentment, an irritated desire for human inharmonies, human disorder. Absorbed in my examination I had forgotten those who must share with me my doubts and dangers. I felt a grip on my arm. “If we get close enough and I can get my feet loose from this damned thing I'll jump,” Drake said. “What?” I gasped, blankly, startled out of my preoccupation. “Jump where?” I followed his pointing finger. We were rapidly closing upon the other cube; it was now a scant twenty paces ahead; it seemed to be stopping. Ventnor was leaning forward, quivering with eagerness. “Ruth!” he called. “Ruth--are you all right?” Slowly she turned to us--my heart gave a great leap, then seemed to stop. For her sweet face was touched with that same unearthly tranquillity which was Norhala's; in her brown eyes was a shadow of that passionless spirit brooding in Norhala's own; her voice as she answered held within it more than echo of Norhala's faint, far-off golden chiming. “Yes,” she sighed; “yes, Martin--have no fear for me--” And turned from us, gazing forward once more with the woman and as silent as she.