"As I fired, it swayed and shook; gathered again. I slipped a second
clip into the automatic and another idea coming to me took careful aim
at one of the globes in the roof. From thence I knew came the force
that shaped this Dweller in the Pool--from the pouring rays came its
strength. If I could destroy them I could check its forming. I fired
again and again. If I hit the globes I did no damage. The little motes
in their beams danced with the motes in the mist, troubled. That was
all.

"But up from the Pool like little bells, like tiny bursting bubbles of
glass, swarmed the tinkling sounds--their pitch higher, all their
sweetness lost, angry.

"And out from the Inexplicable swept a shining spiral.

"It caught me above the heart; wrapped itself around me. There rushed
through me a mingled ecstasy and horror. Every atom of me quivered
with delight and shrank with despair. There was nothing loathsome in
it. But it was as though the icy soul of evil and the fiery soul of
good had stepped together within me. The pistol dropped from my hand.

"So I stood while the Pool gleamed and sparkled; the streams of light
grew more intense and the radiant Thing that held me gleamed and
strengthened. Its shining core had shape--but a shape that my eyes and
brain could not define. It was as though a being of another sphere
should assume what it might of human semblance, but was not able to
conceal that what human eyes saw was but a part of it. It was neither
man nor woman; it was unearthly and androgynous. Even as I found its
human semblance it changed. And still the mingled rapture and terror