And that nucleus, what was it?
Even now I can but guess — brain in part as we understand brain, certainly; but far, far more than that in its energies, its powers.
It was like an immense rose. An incredible rose of a thousand close clustering petals. It blossomed with a myriad shifting hues. And instant by instant the flood of varicolored flame that poured into its petalings down from the sapphire ovoids waxed and waned in crescendoes and diminuendoes of relucent harmonies — ecstatic, awesome.
The heart of the rose was a star of incandescent ruby.
From the flaming crimson center to aureate, flashing penumbra it was instinct with and poured forth power — power vast and conscious.
Not with that same completeness could I realize the ministering star shapes, half hidden as they were by the Disk. Their radiance was less, nor had they its miracle of pulsing gem fires. Blue they were, blue of a peculiar vibrancy, and blue were the glistening threads that ran down from blue-black circular convexities set within each of the points visible to me.
Unlike in shape, their flame of vitality dimmer than the ovoids of the Disk’s golden zone, still I knew that they were even as those — ORGANS, organs of unknown senses, unknown potentialities. Their nuclei I could not observe.
The floating figures had drawn close to that disk and had paused.
And on the moment of their pausing I felt a surge of strength, a snapping of the spell that had bound us, an instantaneous withdrawal of the inhibiting force. Ventnor broke into a run, holding his rifle at the alert. We raced after him; were close to the shining shapes. And, gasping, we stopped short not a dozen paces away.
For Norhala had soared up toward the flaming rose of the Disk as though lifted by gentle, unseen hands. Close to it for an instant she swung. I saw the exquisite body gleam through her thin robes as though bathed in soft flames of rosy pearl.
Higher she floated, and toward the right of the zodiac. From the edges of three of the ovoids swirled a little cloud of tentacles, gossamer filaments of opal. They whipped out a full yard from the Disk’s surface, touching her, caressing her.
For a moment she hung there, her face hidden from us; then was dropped softly to her feet and stood, arms stretched wide, her copper hair streaming cloudily about her regal head.
And up past her floated Ruth, levitated as had been she — and her face, ecstatic as though she were gazing into Paradise, yet drenched with the tranquillity of the infinite. Her wide eyes stared up toward that rose of splendors through which the pulsing colors now raced more swiftly. She hung poised before it while around her head a faint aureole began to form.
Again the gossamer threads thrust forth, searched her. They ran over her rough clothing — perplexedly. They coiled about her neck, stole through her hair, brushed shut her eyes, circled her brow, her breasts, girdled her.
Weirdly was it like some intelligence observing, studying, some creature of another species — puzzled by its similarity and unsimilarity with the one other creature of its kind it knew, and striving to reconcile those differences. And like such a questioning brain calling upon others for counsel, it swung Ruth upward to the watching star at the right.
A rifle shot rang out.
Another — the reports breaking the silence like a profanation. Unseen by either of us, Ventnor had slipped to one side where he could cover the core of ruby flame that must have seemed to him the heart of the Disk’s rose of fire. He knelt a few yards away, white lipped, eyes cold gray ice, sighting carefully for a third shot.
“Don’t! Martin — don’t fire!” I shouted, leaping toward him.
“Stop! Ventnor —” Drake’s panic cry mingled with my own.
But before we could reach him, Norhala flew to him, like a darting swallow. Down the face of the Disk glided the upright body of Ruth, struck softly, stood swaying.
And out of the blue-black convexity within a star point of one of the opened pyramids a lance of intense green flame darted, a lightning bolt as real as any hurled by tempest, upon Ventnor.
The shattered air closed behind the streaming spark with the sound of breaking glass.
It struck — Norhala.
It struck her. It seemed to splash upon her, to run down her like water. One curling tongue writhed over her bare shoulder and leaped to the barrel of the rifle in Ventnor’s hands. It flashed up it and licked him. The gun was torn from his grip, hurled high in air, exploding as it went. He leaped convulsively from his knees and dropped.
I heard a wailing, low, bitter and heartbroken. Past us ran Ruth, all dream, all unearthliness gone from a face now a tragic mask of human woe and terror. She threw herself down beside her brother, felt of his heart; then raised herself upon her knees and thrust out supplicating hands to the shapes.
“Don’t hurt him any more! He didn’t mean it!” she cried out to them piteously — like a child. She reached up, caught one of Norhala’s hands. “Norhala — don’t let them kill him. Don’t let them hurt him any more. Please!” she sobbed.
Beside me I heard Drake cursing.
“If they touch her I’ll kill the woman! I will, by God I will!” He strode to Norhala’s side.
“If you want to live, call off these devils of yours.” His voice was strangled.
She looked at him, wonder deepening on the tranquil brow, in the clear, untroubled gaze. Of course she could not understand his words — but it was not that which made my own sick apprehension grow.
It was that she did not understand what called them forth. Did not even understand what reason lay behind Ruth’s sorrow, Ruth’s prayer.
And more and more wondering grew in her eyes as she looked from the threatening Drake to the supplicating Ruth, and from them to the still body of Ventnor.
“Tell her what I say, Goodwin. I mean it.”
I shook my head. That was not the way, I knew. I looked toward the Disk, still flanked with its sextette of spheres, still guarded by the flaming blue stars. They were motionless, calm, watching. I sensed no hostility, no anger; it was as though they were waiting for us to — to — waiting for us to do what?
It came to me — they were indifferent. That was it — as indifferent as we could be to the struggle of an ephemera; and as mildly curious.
“Norhala,” I turned to the woman, “she would not have him suffer; she would not have him die. She loves him.”
“Love?” she repeated, and all of her wonderment seemed crystallized in the word. “Love?” she asked.
“She loves him,” I said; and then, why I did not know, but I added, pointing to Drake: “and he loves her.”
There was a tiny, astonished sob from Ruth. Again Norhala brooded over her. Then with a little despairing shake of her head, she paced over and faced the great Disk.
Tensely we waited. Communication there was between them, interchange of — thought; how carried out I would not hazard even to myself.
But of a surety these two — the goddess woman, the wholly unhuman shape of metal, of jeweled fires and conscious force — understood each other.
For she turned, stood aside — and the body of Ventnor quivered, arose from the floor, stood upright and with closed eyes, head dropping upon one shoulder, glided toward the Disk like a dead man carried by those messengers never seen by man who, the Arabs believe, bear the death drugged souls before Allah for their awakening.
Ruth moaned and hid her eyes; Drake reached down, gathered her up in his arms, held her close.
Ventnor’s body stood before