I gathered up my few possessions, and we were ready. Entt extinguished the soft lights of the globe. Our round doorway showed with the dull radiance outside; voices in a strange tongue floated in to us; the clanking sounds of mechanisms; the last hiss of rushing air. The woman’s voice sounded sharp, vehemently commanding. With pounding heart I went down the swaying incline which they had put up. I stood on the damp metallic floor. The realm of the abyss! * * * * * Black-garbed figures crowded around us. Entt scattered them. The gray woman on the balcony stood gazing down at us. Entt led us away. “See here,” said Arturo, “Entt, you tell her we must have the fastest car. Tell her we’re in a hurry.” Entt called up. His words echoed dully through the heavy air. The woman answered--a brief, sharp, rasping retort. Her gray-white arm waved us away. Arturo spurred us with fevered haste. We went through a small, heavy door. Down a ladder, out into an open space. A sense of great open distance lay around me. It was wholly dark; a pregnant darkness wherein I felt that many strange things might be seen. A heavy, slow-moving breeze, coming from far off, stirred against my hot, tingling cheeks. I gazed into what seemed an ocean of black space. I tried to focus my straining eyes upon something. Ah, there were stars! But I knew it was incredible. Not stars; points of twinkling light. They gleamed overhead, straight before me, to the sides, and even below--far ahead, but on a lower level than we were walking, so that I stopped suddenly, clutching at Arturo with the feeling that an abyss must yawn at my feet. “This way, Jeff. Can you see?” “No.” “Hold to me. The car is right here.” Tiny, distant points of light, like stars. I gazed at them across what was immeasurable blank distance. But near at hand there were things vaguely to be seen. The dull blob of a passing man’s figure. A hundred feet away, perhaps, the vaguest of yellow radiance. Figures there; and a long, gleaming white thing lying in an upraised framework. Entt headed us toward it. I walked, swaying as though alcoholite had befuddled me. A different gravity here. I felt lighter; yet it was not so much that. A difference. There have since been many learned discussions on this subject; I am not one to attempt it in technical detail. I felt as though all my weight were not pressing upon my feet with a downward pull in normal fashion. There was a side thrust--first one side and then the other as I chanced to be moving. As though by inertia, my movement tended abnormally to persist. A different application of the gravitational force. And I believe, too, that the quality of this air had its effect. It seemed an atmosphere almost ponderable as I plowed through it. There was a sensible pressing of it upon me; the weight of the breeze was tangibly heavy.