第36章

It was from these cliffs that the spangled radiance came, shimmering out from all their lustrous surfaces.To left and to right, as far as the eye could see, they stretched--and they vanished in the auroral nebulosity on high!

"Look at that!" exclaimed Larry.I followed his pointing finger.On the face of the shining wall, stretched between two colossal columns, hung an incredible veil; prismatic, gleam-ing with all the colours of the spectrum.It was like a web of rainbows woven by the fingers of the daughters of the Jinn.In front of it and a little at each side was a semi-circular pier, or, better, a plaza of what appeared to be glistening, pale-yellow ivory.At each end of its half-circle clustered a few low-walled, rose-stone structures, each of them sur-mounted by a number of high, slender pinnacles.

We looked at each other, I think, a bit helplessly--and back again through the opening.We were standing, as I have said, at its base.The wall in which it was set was at least ten feet thick, and so, of course, all that we could see of that which was without were the distances that revealed them-selves above the outer ledge of the oval.

"Let's take a look at what's under us," said Larry.

He crept out upon the ledge and peered down, the rest of us following.A hundred yards beneath us stretched gardens that must have been like those of many-columned Iram, which the ancient Addite King had built for his pleasure ages before the deluge, and which Allah, so the Arab legend tells, took and hid from man, within the Sahara, beyond all hope of finding--jealous because they were more beautiful than his in paradise.Within them flowers and groves of laced, fern-like trees, pillared pavilions nestled.

The trunks of the trees were of emerald, of vermilion, and of azure-blue, and the blossoms, whose fragrance was borne to us, shone like jewels.The graceful pillars were tinted delicately.I noted that the pavilions were double--in a way, two-storied--and that they were oddly splotched with circles, with squares, and with oblongs of--opacity; noted too that over many this opacity stretched like a roof; yet it did not seem material; rather was it--impenetrable shadow!

Down through this city of gardens ran a broad shining green thoroughfare, glistening like glass and spanned at reg-ular intervals with graceful, arched bridges.The road flashed to a wide square, where rose, from a base of that same silvery stone that formed the lip of the Moon Pool, a titanic struc-ture of seven terraces; and along it flitted objects that bore a curious resemblance to the shell of the Nautilus.Within them were--human figures! And upon tree-bordered prome-nades on each side walked others!

Far to the right we caught the glint of another emerald-paved road.

And between the two the gardens grew sweetly down to the hither side of that opalescent water across which were the radiant cliffs and the curtain of mystery.

Thus it was that we first saw the city of the Dweller;blessed and accursed as no place on earth, or under or above earth has ever been--or, that force willing which some call God, ever again shall be!

"Chert!" whispered Marakinoff."Incredible!""Trolldom!" gasped Olaf Huldricksson."It is Trolldom!""Listen, Olaf!" said Larry."Cut out that Trolldom stuff!

There's no Trolldom, or fairies, outside Ireland.Get that!

And this isn't Ireland.And, buck up, Professor!" This to Marakinoff."What you see down there are people--JUST PLAINPEOPLE.And wherever there's people is where I live.Get me?

"There's no way in but in--and no way out but out," said O'Keefe."And there's the stairway.Eggs are eggs no matter how they're cooked--and people are just people, fellow travellers, no matter what dish they are in," he concluded.

"Come on!"

With the three of us close behind him, he marched toward the entrance.