“I can’t face rebirth,” said Nightspore.  “The horror of death is nothing to it.”

“You will choose.”

“I can do nothing.  Crystalman is too powerful.  I barely escaped with—­ my own soul.”

“You are still stupid with Earth fumes, and see nothing straight,” said Krag.

Nightspore made no reply, but seemed to be trying to recall something.  The water around them was so still, colourless, and transparent, that they scarcely seemed to be borne up by liquid matter at all.  Maskull’s corpse had disappeared.

The drumming was now like the clanging of iron.  The oblong patch of light grew much bigger; it burned, fierce and wild.  The darkness above, below, and on either side of it, began to shape itself into the semblance of a huge, black wall, without bounds.

“Is that really a wall we are coming to?”

“You will soon find out.  What you see is Muspel, and that light is the gate you have to enter.”

Nightspore’s heart beat wildly.

“Shall I remember?” he muttered.

“Yes, you’ll remember.”

“Accompany me, Krag, or I shall be lost.”

“There is nothing for me to do in there.  I shall wait outside for you.”

“You are returning to the struggle?” demanded Nightspore, gnawing his fingertips.

“Yes.”

“I dare not.”

The thunderous clangor of the rhythmical beats struck on his head like actual blows.  The light glared so vividly that he was no longer able to look at it.  It had the startling irregularity of continuous lightning, but it possessed this further peculiarity—­that it seemed somehow to give out not actual light, but emotion, seen as light.  They continued to approach the wall of darkness, straight toward the door.  The glasslike water flowed right against it, its surface reaching up almost to the threshold.

They could not speak any more; the noise was too deafening.

In a few minutes they were before the gateway.  Nightspore turned his back and hid his eyes in his two hands, but even then he was blinded by the light.  So passionate were his feelings that his body seemed to enlarge itself.  At every frightful beat of sound, he quivered violently.

The entrance was doorless.  Krag jumped onto the rocky platform and pulled Nightspore after him.

Once through the gateway, the light vanished.  The rhythmical sound—­ blows totally ceased.  Nightspore dropped his hands....  All was dark and quiet as an opened tomb.  But the air was filled with grim, burning passion, which was to light and sound what light itself is to opaque colour.

Nightspore pressed his hand to his heart.  “I don’t know if I can endure it,” he said, looking toward Krag.  He felt his person far more vividly and distinctly than if he had been able to see him.

“Go in, and lose no time, Nightspore....  Time here is more precious than on earth.  We can’t squander the minutes.  There are terrible and tragic affairs to attend to, which won’t wait for us...  Go in at once.  Stop for nothing.”