Behind us the sparkling eyes of the wall were dimmed, vacant--dying.

Something of that hellish loneliness, that demoniac desire for immolation that had assailed us in the haunted hollow of the ruins began to creep over me.
The crowded crater was fainting.

The life was going out of the City--its magnetic life, draining into the shaft of green fire.
Duller grew the Metal Emperor's glories.
Fourteen minutes.
"Goodwin," cried Drake, "the life's going out of these Things! Going out with that ray they're shooting." Fifteen minutes.
I watched the tentacles of the Keeper grope over the tablet.

Abruptly the flaming pyramid darkened--WENT OUT.
The radiant pillar hurtled upward like a thunder-bolt; vanished in space.
Before us stood the mount of cones, shrunken to a sixth of its former size.
Sixteen minutes.
All about the crater-lip the ringed shields tilted; thrust themselves on high, as though behind each was an eager lifting arm.

Below them the hived clusters of disks changed from globules into wide coronets.
Seventeen minutes.
I dropped my wrist; seized the glasses from Drake; raised them to the sun.