"For a dozen heart beats there was silence. Then a rain of tinklings
that set the pulses racing with joy and at once checked them with tiny
fingers of ice--and ringing through them Stanton's voice from the
courtyard--a great cry--a scream--filled with ecstasy insupportable
and horror unimaginable! And once more there was silence. I strove to
burst the bonds that held me. I could not. Even my eyelids were fixed.
Within them my eyes, dry and aching, burned.

"Then Goodwin--I first saw the--inexplicable! The crystalline music
swelled. Where I sat I could take in the gateway and its basalt
portals, rough and broken, rising to the top of the wall forty feet
above, shattered, ruined portals--unclimbable. From this gateway an
intenser light began to flow. It grew, it gushed, and out of it walked
Stanton.

"Stanton! But--God! What a vision!"

A deep tremor shook him. I waited--waited.





CHAPTER V

Into the Moon Pool


"Goodwin," Throckmartin went on at last, "I can describe him only as a
thing of living light. He radiated light; was filled with light;