There was a ringing about us--an elfin chiming, sweet
and crystalline. It came from the cones--and strangely
was it their vocal synthesis, their voice. Into the vast
circle of sky pierced a lance of green fire; swift in its
wake uprose others.
We slid gently down, stood swaying at the Disk's base.
The Keeper bent; angled. Again the planes above the supporting
square hovered over the tablet. The tendrils swept
down, pushed here and there, playing upon the rods some
unknown symphony of power.
Thicker pulsed the lances of the aurora; changed to
vast billowing curtains. The faceted wheel at the top of
the central spire of the cones swung upward; a light began
to stream from the cones themselves--no pillar now,
but a vast circle that shot whirling into the heavens like a
noose.
And like a noose it caught the aurora, snared it!
Into it the coruscating mists of mysterious flame
swirled; lost their colors, became a torrent of light flying
down through the ring as though through a funnel top.
Down poured the radiant corpuscles, bathing the cones.
They did not glow as they had beneath the flood from
the shields, and if they grew it was too slowly for me to
see; the shields were motionless. Now here, now there,
I saw the other rings whirl up--smaller mouths of lesser
cones hidden within the body of the Metal Monster, I
knew, sucking down this magnetic flux, these countless
ions gushing forth from the sun.
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