Closer we crept--were only a scant score of rods from that colossal mechanism.

I noted that the crystal foundation was set low; was not more than four feet above the floor.
The sturdy, dwarfed pilasters supporting it thrust up in crowded copses, merging through distance into apparent solidity.
Now, too, I realized, as I had not when looking down from above, how stupendous the structure rising from the crystal foundation was.
I began to wonder how so thin a support could bear the mount bristling above it--then remembered what it was that at first had flown from them, shrinking them, and at last had fed and swelled them.
Light! Weightless magnetic ions; swarms of electric ions; the misty breath of the infinite energy breathing upon, condensing upon, them.
Could it be that the Cones for all their apparent mass had little, if any, weight?
Like ringed Saturn, thousands of times Earth's bulk, flaunting itself in the Heavens--yet if transported to our world so light that rings and all it would float like a bubble upon our oceans.
The Cones towered above me--close, so close.
The Cones were weightless.

How I knew I cannot say--but now, almost touching them, I did know.

Nebulous, yet solid, were they; compact, yet tenuous, dense and unsubstantial.
Again the thought came to me--they were force made visible; energy made concentrate into matter.
We skirted, seeking for the tablet over which the Keeper had hovered; the mechanism which, under his tentacles, had shifted the circling shields, thrust the spear of green fire into the side of the wounded sun.

Hesitantly I touched the crystal base; the edge was warm, but whether this warmth came from the dazzling rain which we had just watched build it outward or whether it was a property inherent with the substance itself I do not know.
Certainly there was no mark upon it to show where the molten mists had fallen.