I turned again--it came to me, why I knew not, yet with an absolute certainty, that the energy, the force emanated from the distant wall itself.
The funnel, the cone, did not expand from where we were standing, now motionless.
It began at the wall and focused upon us.
Within the great circle the surface of the wall was smooth, utterly blank; upon it was no trace of those flitting lights we had seen before we had plunged down toward the radiant sea.

It shone with a pale blue phosphorescence.

It was featureless, smooth, a blind cliff of polished, blue metal--and that was all.
"Ruth!" groaned Ventnor.

"Where is she ?" Aghast at my mental withdrawal from him, angry at myself for my callousness, awkwardly I tried to crawl over to him, to touch him, comfort him as well as I might.
And then, as though his cry had been a signal, the great cone began to move.

Slowly the circled base slipped down the shimmering facades; down, steadily down; I realized that we had paused at the edge of some steep declivity, for the bottom of the cone was now at a decided angle while the upper edge of the circle had dropped a full two hundred feet below the place where it had rested--and still it fell.
There came a gasp of relief from Ventnor, a sigh from Drake while, from my own heart, a weight rolled.