The temple stirred, became suddenly sensible of his human presence. Whispered murmurings rose in volume, became a tide of slithering sound. The ranks of greenery moved toward him. Unheeding, Alston staggered to the soaring ramp. Ahead, he sensed vaguely the figure of radiance, rags of stolen moonsilver flowing from it. Caught by some unholy lure, he forced a way toward it, moving slowly, sluggishly as if the very air grew dense and sought to impede him. At the pedestal, knees buckled under him. His knees scraped jagged stone. He floundered, recovered, stared upward, reaching. Infernal glory lit the face. Nearer, he could see that it bore less resemblance to humanity than to the half-open, convoluted petals of a strange flower. Within its muted planes were the soft, chill delicacies of an orchid, the flushed, still colors of a rose in moonlight. About her hovered a funereal fragrance, sickeningly sweet, like the perfume of no blossom of Earth or Mars. Flowerlike, she stirred, eyelids twitched and lifted, petal-white lips moved. In dread miracle, she spoke. Articulation was difficult and the sound seemed to come from immense distances. The tones were soulless, a rippling sibilance of sounds and half-accented syllables, the words a meaningless babel upon his ears. She spoke in whispers, softly murmuring, ecstatic.... In his brain images formed, alien, untranslatable. He saw the ancient city at the height of its power. Streets thronged with a strange people, in form the product of a variant evolution. This was their city, their temple. Here they housed a god-thing, slimy, monstrous, a being of their own creation, blending within itself something of both protoplasmic matter and living energy. Here in the temple it lived and was worshipped by strange rites and awful sacrifice. Then came a whirlwind of war. The race of creators and worshippers vanished, destroyed with their enemies when the atomic weapons of both races burst the bounds, sweeping in fiery wrath over seas and continents until the planet lay bare and smoldering. The race died, but their god-thing lived. Deep within the sacred fountain of its temple, the slime-being lay dormant. But the ravening atomic fires had touched off a vein of almost pure uranium beneath the city. Something of that atomic fire still lingered, spreading slowly through the mass, reacting like a slow pile, half-alive, partially radioactive. Through the ages, the element fissioned, emitting low-degree heat and some radiant energy. In its pit of slow incubation, the god-thing developed, wakened to new life, grew in strength and diabolical intelligence. In time it wearied of passive existence, hungered after more power and freedom of movement. Bursting its bonds, it rose into the well, whence it hurled forth impulses, urgent, hypnotic, angry and summoning. With promises and deceits it lured the forest, called to itself the more mobile plants, enslaved the green living things.