they seem to be, the magnetic attraction may pull them toward this mountain.
"A good point." Carruthers nodded approval, lowered the intensity of the current flowing through the rods and switched on the Annihilator. Carefully he changed the angle so that the discharge was activated to the east. Almost at once the shining things responded to the pull. Instead of falling vertically downward, they twisted slightly so that the points of their metal bodies were aimed toward the magnetic field set up by the annihilator beam.
Those that were slow in responding were destroyed by friction within the earth's air barrier. Three of them, however, got through the barrier. An hour before sunset these three shining things moved down upon the earth. No longer was it necessary to follow their course with the ether-vision machine. Both men moved out into the open and stared into the sky at the shining things that had come out of the sky's vast immensity.
"They may be rocket cylinders," said Carruthers, shading his eyes against the setting sun, "except for the fact that they're pointed on both ends. Certainly, they're man-made."
"They certainly are," agreed Vignot. "But made by what race of men? Aaron, this is the most astounding and fabulous..."
"They're falling this way," Carruthers broke in. "The magnetic attraction is... Oh! They're out of it. And now they're falling vertically."
They waited and watched with fear-expanded eyes. One of the shining things disappeared into the lake behind the power-station dam. A second nosed hissingly into the still smoldering crevasse down the mountainside.
A miracle preserved the third and last from destruction. It struck the tops of a dense growth of pine trees glancingly. Their great, arching trunks bent but did not break. Small branches snapped. Needles showered to the ground. But the force of the metal object's speed had been slowed to such an extent that it remained intact and scarcely dented when it finally slithered through the branches to the ground less than a hundred feet from where the two men stood watching it.
They raced toward it. The shining thing, a metallic cylinder at least eight feet in length, gleamed and sparkled in the fading sunlight. But before they reached it something happened that checked their impetuousness. Carruthers felt his breath snag deep down into his throat.
A section of the cylinder was opening slowly as if on hinges. The last, lingering rays of the setting sun revealed what at first seemed a dazzling apparition—an angel without wings, crowned with a golden aura of flame. And then the goddess from another world stepped from the cylinder.
Out of the dim recesses of his mind, from some memory cells that seemed to have been dormant for a thousand years, arose a cloudy picture that Carruthers knew had always been there. This girl was no stranger. He had seen her before. She was a part of some past experience as elusive as dancing shadows. Within his heart stirred a lively breeze. It was as though the creator had returned to him something he had loved and lost in the mouldy centuries of another existence.
She stood for a time on the daintiest slippered feet, clothed in soft, transparent clinging garments that followed every curve of her splendid, unashamed body. Her golden hair was gathered into a knot at the nape of her bare neck. Her eyes, indefinite as to color, were startled as a fawn's. She seemed poised for instant flight as she stood just outside the door to the cylinder.
Neither man made any motion to come
