vered the planes of the Keeper; and still was the oval of the Emperor black against the radiance.
But the twinkling, sparkling path between us and them was gone — was fading out close behind us as we swept onward.
Faster and faster grew our pace. The cylindrical wall loomed close. A high oblong portal showed within it. Into this we were carried. Before us stretched a corridor precisely similar to that which, closing upon us, had forced us completely out into the hall.
Unlike that passage, its floor lifted steeply — a smooth and shining slide up which no man could climb. A shaft, indeed, which thrust upward straight as an arrow at an angle of at least thirty Paris Saint Germain PSG Drakt Barn degrees and whose end or turning we could not see. Up and up it cleared its way through the City — through the Metal Monster — closed only by the inability of the eye to pierce the faint luminosity that thickened by distance became impenetrable.
For an instant we hovered upon its threshold. But the impulse, the command, that had carried us thus far was not to stop here. Into it and up it we were thrust, our feet barely touching the glimmering surface; lifted by Arizona Cardinals Hattar the force that emanated from its floor, carried on by the force that pressed out from the sides.
Up and up we went — scores of feet — hundreds —
Chapter XXII The Ensorcelled Chamber
“Goodwin!” Drake broke the silence; desperately he was striving to keep his fear out of his voice. “Goodwin Buffalo Sabres Drakter — this isn’t the way to get out. We’re going up — farther away all the time from the — the gates!”
“What can we do?” My anxiety was no less than his, but my realization of our helplessness was complete.
“If we only knew how to New York Giants Tröjor talk to these Things,” he said. “If we could only have let the Disk know we wanted to get out — damn it, Goodwin, it would have helped us.”
Grotesque as the idea sounded, I felt that he spoke the truth. The Emperor meant no harm to us; in fact in speeding us away I was not at all sure that he had not deliberately wished us well — Scarpe Nike Air Max 1 Donna there was that about the Keeper —
Still up we sped along the shaft. I knew we must now be above the level of the valley.
“We’ve got to get back to Ruth! Goodwin — NIGHT! And what may have HAPPENED to her?”
“Drake, boy”— I dropped into his own colloquialism — “we’re up against it. We can’t help it. And remember — she’s there in Norhala’s home. I don’t believe, I honestly don’t believe, Dick, that there’s any danger As Roma Drakt Barn as long as she remains there. And Ventnor ties her fast.”
“That’s true,” he said, more hopefully. “That’s true — and probably Norhala is with her by now.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Cleverland Browns I said cheerfully. An idea came to me — I half believed it myself. “And another thing. There’s not an action here that’s purposeless. We’re being driven on by the command of that Thing we call the Metal Emperor. It means us no harm. Maybe — maybe this IS the way out.”
“Maybe so,” he shook his head doubtfully. “But I’m not su |