A little breeze came through the oval and played about us. It was laden with what seemed the mingled breath of spice flowers and pines. It was curiously vivifying, and in it the diamonded atoms of light shook and danced.

I stepped out of the car, the Russian following, and began to ascend the curved steps toward the opening, at the top of which O’Keefe and Olaf already stood. As they looked out I saw both their faces change⁠—Olaf’s with awe, O’Keefe’s with incredulous amaze. I hurried to their side.

At first all that I could see was space⁠—a space filled with the same coruscating effulgence that pulsed about me. I glanced upward, obeying that instinctive impulse of Earth folk that bids them seek within the sky for sources of light. There was no sky⁠—at least no sky such as we know⁠—all was a sparkling nebulosity rising into infinite distances as the azure above the day-world seems to fill all the heavens⁠—through it ran pulsing waves and flashing javelin rays that were like shining shadows of the aurora; echoes, octaves lower, of those brilliant arpeggios and chords that play about the poles. My eyes fell beneath its splendour; I stared outward.