"Look up at the sun spot--the big one." "I see it." He had obeyed me.

"What of it ?" Nine minutes.
The shaft, if I were right, had by now touched the sun.

What was to follow?
"I don't get you at all," said Drake, and lowered the glasses.
Ten minutes.
"What's happening?
Look at the Cones! Look at the Emperor!" gasped Drake.
I peered down, then almost forgot to count.
The pyramidal flame that had been the mount of Cones was shrunken.

The pillar of radiance had not lessened--but the mechanism that was its source had retreated whole yards within the field of its crystal base.
And the Metal Emperor! Dulled and faint were his fires, dimmed his splendors; and fainter still were the violet luminescences of the watching Stars, the shimmering livery of his court.
The Keeper of the Cones! Were not its outstretched planes hovering lower and lower over the gleaming tablet; its tentacles moving aimlessly, feebly--wearily?
I had a sense of force being withdrawn from all about me.

It was as though all the City were being drained of life--as though vitality were being sucked from it to feed this pyramid of radiance; drained from it to forge the thrusting spear piercing sunward.
The Metal People seemed to hang limply, inert; the living girders seemed to sag; the living columns to bend; to droop and to sway.
Twelve minutes.
With a nerve-racking crash one of the laden beams fell; dragging down with it others; bending, shattering in its fall a thicket of the horned columns.