Here were palisades of burning orange with barbicans of incandescent bronze; there aiguilles of azure rising from bastions of cinnabar red; turrets of royal purple, obelisks of indigo; titanic forts whose walls were splashed with vermilion, with citron yellows and with rust of rubies; watch towers of flaming scarlet.
Scattered among them were the flashing emeralds of the glaciers and the immense pallid baroques of the snow fields.
Like a diadem the summits ringed the Pit.

Below them ran the ring of flashing amethyst with its aural mists.

Between them lay the vast and patterned flat covered with still symbol and inexplicable movement.
Under their summits brooded the blue black, metallic mass of the Seeing City.
Within circling walls, over plain and from the City hovered a cosmic spirit not to be understood by man.

Like an emanation of stars and space, it was yet gem fine and gem hard, crystalline and metallic, lapidescent and-- Conscious! Down from the ledge where we stood fell a steep ramp, similar to that by which, in the darkness, we had descended.

It dropped at an angle of at least forty-five degrees; its surface was smooth and polished.
Through the mists at our back stole a shining block.