The crater's disks tilted downward.

Into the vast hollow shot their jets of green radiance, drenching the Metal Hordes, splashing from the polished walls wherever the Metal Hordes had left those living walls exposed.
All about us was a trembling, an accelerating pulse of life.

Colossal, rhythmic, ever quicker, ever more powerfully that pulse throbbed--a prodigious vibration monstrously alive.
"Feeding!" whispered Drake.

"Feeding! Feeding on the sun!" Faster danced the radiant beams.

The crater was a cauldron of green fires through which the conical rays angled and interwove, crossed and mingled.