Through and around these portals swirled hordes of the Metal People; in units and in combinations coming and going, streaming in and out, forming as they came and went patterns about the openings like the fretted spume of great breakers surging into, retreating from, ocean-bitten gaps in some iron-bound coast.
From the immensity of the City the eyes dropped back to the Pit in which it lay.

Its floor was plaquelike, a great plane smooth as though turned by potter's wheel, broken by no mound nor hillock, slope nor terrace; level, horizontal, flawlessly flat.

On it was no green living thing--no tree nor bush, meadow nor covert.
It was alive with movement.

A ferment that was as purposeful as it was mechanical, a ferment symmetrical, geometrical, supremely ordered-- The surging of the Metal Hordes.
There they moved beneath us, these enigmatic beings, in a countless host.

They marched and countermarched in battalions, in regiments, in armies.