Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 3 — page 106: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

480 golden disks; fantastic yet disquietingly symmetrical; bizarre as an angled’ head- dress worn by a mountainous Javanese god —yet coldly, painfully mathematical. In every direction the cones pointed, seeming- ly interwoven of strands of metal aad of light. . What was their color? It came to me— that of the mysterious element which stains the sun’s corona, that diadem seen only when our day star is in eclipse; the un- known element that science has named co- ronium, that never yet has been found on earth and that may be, electricity in its one - material form; electricity that is ponder- able; electricity in metal shape; force whose vibrations are keyed down to mass; power transmuted into substance! Thousands upon: uncountable thousands the cones bristled, pyramiding to the base of one tremendous spire that tapered up almost to the top of the shaft itself. In their grouping the mind caught infinite cal- culations each: carried out into infinity; an apotheosis of geometry compassing the rhythms of unknown spatial dimensions; concentration of the equations of the star hordes, the mathematics of the Cosmos! @ Silently from the left of the crystalline base swept an enormous sphere. Twice the height of a tall man it was, a paler blue than any of these Things I had seen, al- . most, indeed, an azure; different, too, in other subtle, indefinable ways. Behind it glided a pair of the pyramidal shapes, their pointed tips higher by a yard or more than the top of the sphere. They paused, regarding us: Out from the op- posite arc of the crystal pedestal moved six other globes, somewhat smaller than the first and of a deep purplish luster. They separated, lining up on each side of the leader now standing a little in ad- vance of the twin tetrahedrons, rigid and motionless as watching guards. There they stood—that enigmatic row, Intent, studying us beneath their god or altar or machine of cones and disks within their cylinder walled with light — and at that moment there crystallized within my consciousness the sublimation of all the strangenesses of all that had gone before, smothering throat and heart; a panic lone- ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. liness as though I had wandered into an alien world—a wortd as unfamiliar to hvu- manity, as unfamiliar with it as our own would seem to a thinking, mobile crystal adrift among men. Norhala threw up both white arms in a Strangely harmonious, dancing yet majestic gesture of salutation; from her throat a lilting theme of her weirdly ordered golden chanting. Was it speech, I wondered; and if so—prayer or entreaty or command? The great sphere quivered, undulated. Swifter than the eye could follow it dilated, opened! Where the azure globe had been flashed out a disk of flaming splendors, the very secret soul of flowered flame! And simultaneously the pyramids leaped up and out behind it—two gigantic four-rayed stars blazing with cold blue fires! The green auroral curtainings flared out, ran with streaming radiance — as though some Spirit of Jewels had broken bonds of enchantment and burst forth jubilant, flooding the shaft with its freed giories. Norhala’s song ceased; an arm dropped down about the shoulders of Ruth. Then woman and girl began to float to- ward the radiant disk! As one, the three of us sprang after them. I felt a shock that was like a quick, abrupt tap upon every nerve and muscke, stiffening them into helpless rigidity; heard Ventnor groan, Drake curse. Paralyzing that sharp, unseen contact had been, but nothiAg of pain followed it. Instead it had created, indeed, an extraor- dinary acuteness of sight and hearing, an abnormal keying up of the observational faculties, as though the energy so mysteri- ously drawn from our motor centers had been thrown back into the sensory. Closely, with stereoscopic clarity, I could take in every minute detail of that flashing miracle of gemmed fires and its flaming ministers. Half-way between them and us Ruth and Norhala now were, drifting slow- ly; I could catch no hint of voluntary mo- tion on their part—-knew that they were not walking, but were being borne onward by some manifestation of that same farce which held us motionless. And forgot them in my contemplation of the disk! [email protected]@ __)