 6. Nuhalla of the Lightnings We looked upon a vision of loveliness, such I think, as none has beheld since Trojan Helen was a maid. At first all I could note were the eyes, clear as rain-washed April skies, crystal clear as some secret spring sacred to christen to Diana. Their wide grey irises were flecked with golden amber and sapphire flecks that shone like clusters of little oriate and azure stars. Then, with a strange thrill of wonder, I saw that these tiny constellations were not in the irises alone, that they clustered even within the pupils, deep within them, like far-flung stars in the depths of velvety midnight heavens. Wings had come, those cold fires that had flared from them, I wondered. More menacing, in their cold tranquillity, than the hot flames of wroth. These eyes were not perilous, no. Calm they were and still, yet in them a shadow of interest flickered, a ghost of friendliness smiled. Above them were level, delicately penciled brows of bronze. The lips were coral crimson and a sleep. Sweet were those lips, as ever master painter, dreaming his dream of the very soul of woman's sweetness, saw in vision and lined upon his canvas and a sleep nor wistful for awakening. A proud straight nose, a broad low brow, and over it the masses of the trendling tresses, tawny lustrous topaz, cloudy metallic, like spun silk of ruddy copper and misty as the wisps of cloud that siltsy goddess of sleep sets in the skies of dawn to catch the wandering dreams of lovers. Down from the wondrous face melted the rounded column of her throat to merge into exquisite curves of shoulders and breasts half revealed beneath the swathing veils. But upon that face within her eyes kissing her red lips and clothing her breasts was something unearthly. Something that came straight out of the still mysteries of the star-filled spaces, out of the ordered and untroubled, the illimitable void. A passionless spirit that watched over the human passion in the scarlet mouth in every slumbering, sculptured line of her, guarding her against its awakening. Twilight calm dropping down from the sun's sleep to still the restless mountain-tarn. Ishtar dreamlessly asleep within Nirvana, something not of this world we know, and yet of it as the winds of the cosmos are to the summer breeze, the ocean to the wave, and lightnings to the glow-worm. She isn't human, I heard ventinol whispering at my ear. Look at her eyes, look at the skin of her. Her skin was white as milk of pearls, gossamer fine, silken and creamy, translucent, as though a soft brilliancy dwelt within it. Beside it Ruth's fair skin was like some sun and wind-ruffened country lasses to tanias. She studied us as though she was seeing for the first time beings of her own kind. She spoke, and her voice was elfin distant, chimingly sweet, like hidden little golden bells, filled with that tranquil far-off spirit that was part of her. As though indeed a tiny golden chime should ring out from the silences, speak for them, find tongues for them. The words were hesitating, halting, as though the lips that uttered them found speech strange, as strange as the clear eyes found our images. And the words were Persian, purest, most ancient Persian. I am Nohalla. The golden voice chimed forth, whispered down into silence, I am Nohalla. She shook her head impatiently. A hand stole forth from beneath her veils, slender, long-fingered, with nails like rosy pearls. Above the wrist was coiled a golden dragon, with wicked little crimson eyes. The slender white hand touched Ruth's head, turned it until the strange flecked orbs looked directly into the misty ones of blue. Long they gazed, and deep. Then she who had named herself Nohalla thrust out a finger, touched the ear that hung upon Ruth's curled lashes, regarded it wanderingly. Something of recognition, of memory, seemed to awaken within her. You are troubled, she asked, with that halting effort, Ruth shook her head. They do not trouble you? She pointed to the huddled hips, strewing the hollow. And then I saw whence the light, which had streamed from her great eyes came. For the little azure and golden stars paled, trembled, then flashed out like galaxies of tiny, clustered silver suns. From that weird radiance Ruth shrank, affrightened. No, no, she gasped. I weep for him. She pointed where Chuiming lay, a brown blotch at the edge of the shattered men. For him there was puzzlement in the faint voice. For that? But why? She looked at Chuiming, and I knew that to her the sight of the crumpled form carried no recognition of the human, nothing of kin to her. There was a faint wonder in her eyes, no longer light-filled, when at last she turned back to us. Long she considered us. Now she broke the silence. Now something stirs within me, that it seems has long been sleeping. It bids me, take you with me. Come!" Abruptly she turned from us, glided to the crevice. We looked at each other, seeking counsel, decision. Chuiming drags spoke. We can't leave him like that. At least let's cover him from the vultures. Come! the woman had reached the mouth of the Fisher. I'm afraid. O Martin, I'm afraid! Ruth reached little trembling hands to her tall brother. Come! Nohala called again. There was an echo of harshness, a clanging, peremptory and inexorable in the Chuiming. Vettnor shrugged his shoulders. Come then! he said. With one last look at the Chinese, the Lamajie is already circling about him. We walked to the crevice. Nohala waited, silent, brooding, until we passed her. Then glided behind us. Before we had gone ten paces, I saw that the place was no Fisher. It was a tunnel, a passage hewn by human hands. Its walls covered with the writhing dragon-lines. Its roof, the mountain. The swathed woman swept by us. Swiftly we followed her. Far, far ahead was a wan gleaming. It quivered, a faintly shimmering ghostly curtain, a full mile away. Now it was close. We passed through it, and we were out of the tunnel. Before us stretched a narrow gorge, a sword slash in the body of the towering giant under whose feet the tunnel crept. High above was the ribbon of the sky. The sides were dark, but it came to me that here were no trees, no vidua of any kind. Its floor was strewn with boulders, fantastically shaped, almost indistinguishable in the fast closing dark. Twin monoliths bulk-walked the passage end. The gigantic stones were leaning, crumbling. Fishes radiated from the opening, like deep wrinkles in the rock. Showing where earth warping, range-pressure had long been working to close this shewn way. Stop! Nuhala's abrupt golden note halted us, and again through the clear eyes I saw the white starshine flash. It may be well—she spoke as though to herself—it may be well too close this way. It is not needed. Her voice rang out again, vibrant, strangely disquieting, harmonious, murmurous chanting it was at first, rhythmic and low, ripples and flutings, tones and progressions utterly unknown to me, unfamiliar, abrupt and alien themes that kept returning, droppings of crystal clear jewels of sound, golden tollings, and all ordered, mathematical, geometric, even as had been the gestures of the shapes. Lilliputians of the Ruins. Prodignagian of the Haunted Hollow. What was it? I had it. It was those gestures transformed into sound. There was a movement down by the tunnel-mouth. It grew more rapid, seemed to vibrate with her song. Within the darkness there were little flashes. Glimmerings of light began to come and go, like little awakenings of eyes of soft jewelled flames, like giant gorgeous fireflies, flashes of cloudy amber, gleam of rose, sparkles of diamonds and of opals, of emeralds and of rubies, blinking, gleaming. A shimmering mist drew down around them, a swift and swirling mist. It thickened, was shot with slender shuttle threads like cobweb, cascading strands of light. The shining threads grew thicker, pulsed, were spangled with tiny, vivid sparklings. They ran together, condensed, and all this in an instant, in a tenth of the time it takes me to write it. From fiery mist and gemmed flashes came bolt upon bolt of lightning. The cliff-face leapt out, a cataract of green flame. The fishes widened, the monoliths trembled, fell. In the wake of that dazzling brilliancy came utter blackness. I opened my blinded eyes, slowly the flecks of green fire cleared. A faint lamency still clung to the cliff. By it I saw that the tunnel's mouth had vanished, had been sealed, where it had gaped, were only tons of shattered rock. Came a rushing past us, as of great bodies, something grazed my hand, something whose touch was like that of warm metal, but metal throbbing with life. They rushed by, and whispered down into silence. Come, Nohala flitted ahead of us, a faintly luminous shape in the darkness. Swiftly we followed. I found Ruth beside me, felt her hand grip my wrist. Walter, she whispered. Walter, she isn't human. Nonsense, I muttered. Nonsense, Ruth. What do you think she is? A goddess? A spirit of the Himalayas? She's as human as you or I. No. Even in the darkness I could sense the stubborn shake of her curly head. Not all human. Or how could she have commanded those things? Or have summoned the lightnings that blasted the tunnel's mouth? And her skin and hair. They're too wonderful, Walter. Why, she makes me look, look coarse. And the light that hovers about her. Why, it is by that light we are making our way. And when she touched me, I, I glowed all through. Who? Human? Yes. But there is something else in her. Something stronger than humaneness, something that makes it sleep, she said astonishingly. The ground was level, as a dancing floor. We followed the enigmatic glow, emanation, it seemed to me, from Nohala, which was as a light for us to follow within the darkness. The high ribbon of sky had vanished, seemed to be overcast, for I could see no stars. Within the darkness I began again to sense faint movement, soft stirring all about us. I had the feeling that on each side and behind us moved an invisible host. There's something moving all about us, going with us, Ruth echoed my thought. It's the wind, I said, and paused, for there was no wind. From the blackness before us came a succession of curious muffled clikings, like a smothered metroluse, the luminescence that clothed Nohala brightened, deepening the darkness. Cross! She pointed into the void ahead. Then, as we started forward, thrust out a hand to Ruth, held her back. Drake and Vettnor drew close to them, questioningly anxious. But I stepped forward out of the dim gleaming. Before me were two cubes, one I judged in that uncertain light to be six feet high, the other half its bulk. From them a shaft of pale blue phosphorescence pierced the merc. They stood, the smaller pressed against the side of the larger, for all the world, like a pair of immense nursery blocks, placed like steps by some giant child. As my eyes swept over them, I saw that the shining shaft was an unbroken span of cubes, not multi-arched, like the Lilliputian bridge of the dragon chamber, but flat and running out over an abyss that gave at my very feet. All of a hundred feet they stretched, a slender lustrous girder crossing unguessed depths of gloom. From far, far below came the faint whisper of rushing waters. I faltered, for these were the blocks that had formed the body of the monster of the hollow, its flailing arms, the thing that had played so murderously with the armoured men, and now had shaped itself into this anchored, crescent bridge. Do not fear, it was the woman speaking softly, as one would reassure a child. Ascent, cross, they obey me. I stepped firmly upon the first block, climbed to the second. The span stretched, sharp edged, smooth, only a slender shimmering line revealing where each great cube held fast to the other. I walked at first slowly, then with ever-increasing confidence. For up from the surface streamed a guiding, a holding force that was like a host of little invisible hands steadying me, keeping firm my feet. I looked down, the myriads of enigmatic eyes were staring, staring up at me from deep within. They fascinated me. I felt my pace slowing, a vertigo seized me. Resolutely I dragged my gaze up and ahead, marched on. From the depths came more clearly the sound of the waters. Now there were but a few feet more of the bridge before me. I reached its end, dropped my feet over, felt them touch a smaller cube, and descended. Over the span came Vettnor. He was leading his laden pony. He had bandaged its eyes so that it could not look upon the narrow way it was treading, and close behind, a band resting reassuringly upon its flank strode Drake, swinging along carelessly. The little beast ambled along serenely, sure-footed as all its mountain kind, and docile to darkness and guidance. Then an arm about Ruth floated no hala. Now she was beside us, dropped her arm from Ruth, glided past us. On for a hundred yards or more we went, and then she drew us a little toward the unseen canyon wall. She stood before us, shielding us. One golden call she sent. I looked back into the darkness. Something, like an enormous, dimly shimmering rod, was raising itself. Higher it rose, and higher. Now it stood, upright, a slender towering pillar, a gigantic, slim figure, whose tip pointed a four hundred feet in the air. Then slowly it inclined itself toward us, drew closer, closer to the ground, touched and lay there for an instant inert. Abruptly it vanished. But well I knew what I had seen. The span over which we had passed had raised itself even as had the baby bridge of the fortress. Had lifted itself across the chasm, and dropping itself upon the hither verge, had disintegrated into its units, was following us. A bridge of metal that could build itself, and break itself. A thinking conscious metal bridge. A metal bridge with volition, with mind, that was following us. The side from behind a soft, sustained wailing, rapidly it neared us. A wanly, glimmering shaped ribeye, halted. It was like a rigid serpent, cut from a gigantic square bar of cold, blue steel. Its head was a pyramid, a turtahedron. Its length vanished in the further darkness. The head raised itself. The blocks that formed its neck, separating into open wedges, like a broad Ignatian replica of those joined fantastic little painted reptiles the Japanese toy makers cut from wood. It seemed to regard us, mockingly. The pointed head dropped, past our stream to the body. Upon it other pyramids clustered, like the spiders that guarded the back of the nightmare Brontosaurus. Its end came swiftly into sight. Its tail, another pyramid, twinned to its head. It flirted by, gaily vanished. I had thought the span must disintegrate to follow, but it did not need to. It could move as a composite, as well as in units. Move intelligently, consciously, as the smitting thing had moved. Come! Nohala's command checked my thoughts. We fell in behind her. Looking up, I caught the friendly sparkle of a star, knew the cleft was widening. The star points grew thicker. We stepped out into a valley small, as that hollow from which we had fled. Ringed like it, with heaven-touching summits. I could see clearly. The place was suffused with soft radiance, as though into it the far bright stars were pouring all their rays, filling it as a cup with their pale flames. It was luminous as the Alaskan valleys, when on white arctic nights they are lighted, the Athabascans believe by the gleaming spears of hunting gods. The walls of the valley seemed to be drawn back into infinite distances. The shimmering mists that had nimbus Nohala had vanished, or merging into the wan gleaming had become one with it. I stared straight at her, striving to clarify in my own clouded thought what it was that I had sensed as inhuman, never of our world or its peoples. Yet this conviction came not because of the light that had hovered about her, nor of her summonings of the lightnings, nor even of her control of those things which had smitten the armoured men, and spanned for us the abyss. All of that, I was certain, lay in the domain of the explicable. Could be resolved into normality once the basic facts were gained. Suddenly I knew, side by side with what we termed the human, their dwelt within this woman, an actual consciousness foreign to earth, passionless, at least as we know passion, ordered, mathematical, an emanation of the eternal law which guides the circling stars. This it was that had moved in the gestures which had evoked the lightnings. This it was that had spoken in the song which were those gestures transformed into sound. This it was that something greater than my consciousness knew and accepted. Something which had shared know that reigned serene and untroubled upon the throne of her mind, something utterly uncomprehending, utterly unconscious of, cosmically blind to, or human emotion, that spread itself like a veil over her own consciousness, that plattered her thought. That was a strange word. Why had it come to me, something that had set its mark upon her like the gigantic claw print on the poppied field, the little print of the dragon-haul? I caught at my mind, whirling, I thought, then in the grip of fantasy, strove by taking minute note of her to bring myself back to normal. Her veils had slipped from her, bearing her neck, her arms, the right shoulder. Under the smooth throat, a buckle of dull gold held the sheer diaphanous folds of the pale amber silk, which swathed the high and rounded breasts, hiding no goddess curve of them. A wide and golden girdle clasped the waist, covered the rounded hips and thighs. The long, narrow and high arched feet were shod with golden sandals, laced just below the rounded knees with flat turquoise-studded bands, and shining through the amber folds, as glowing above them, the miracle of her body. The dream of master sculptor given life, a goddess of earth's youth reborn in Himalayan wilds. She raised her eyes, broke the long silence. Now being with you, she said dreamily, there waken within me old thoughts, old wisdom, old questioning, all that I had forgotten and thought forgotten forever. The golden voice died. She who had spoken was gone from us, like the fading out of a phantom, like the breaking of a film. A flicker shot over the skies, another and another. A brilliant ray of intense green, like that of a distant searchlight, swept to the zenith, hung for a moment, and withdrew. Up came pouring the lances and the streamers of the aurora, faster and faster, banners and slender, shining spears of green and iridescent blues and smoky glistening reds. The valley sprang into full view. I felt Vettnor's grip upon my wrist. I followed his pointing finger. Into the valley from the right ran a black spur of rock, half a mile from us, fifty feet high. Upon its crest stood Nohala. Her arms were lifted to the sparkling sky, her braids were loosened, and as the fires of the aurora rose and fell, raced and were still, the silken cloud of her tresses swelled and eddied with them. Little clouds of crustaceans danced gaily like fireflies about and through it. And all her bare body was outlined in living light, glowed and throbbed with light, light filled like a vessel. She bathed in it. She thrust arms through the streaming, flaming locks, held them out from her, present. She swayed slowly, rhythmically, like a faint golden chiming came the echo of her song. Abruptly around her, half circling her on the black spur, gleamed myriads of gemfires, flares and flames of pale emerald, steady glowing of flame rubies, glints and lambencies of deepest sapphire, of wan sapphire, flickering opalescences, iris glitterings. A moment they gleamed, then from them came bolt upon bolt of lightning, lightning that darted upon the lovely shape swaying there, lightnings that fell upon her, broke and dashed, cascading from her radiant body. The lightnings bathed her, she bathed in them. The skies were covered by a swift mist. The aurora was veiled. The valley filled with a palely shimmering radiance, which dropped like veils upon it, hiding all within it, hiding within fold upon luminous fold nor hala. End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 of The Metal Monster Recording by Julio Marchini The Metal Monster by Abraham Merritt The Shapes and the Mist Mutely we faced each other white and wan in the ghostly light. The valley was very still, as silent as those sound had been withdrawn from it. The shimmering radiance, effusing it, had thickened perceptibly. Hovered over the valley floor, faintly sparking mists hid it. Like a shroud was that silence. Beneath it my mind struggled, its unease, its forebodings growing ever stronger. Silently we repacked the saddle bags, girth upon me. Silently we waited for nor hala's return. Eily I had noted that the place on which we stood must be raised above the level of the veil. Up toward us the gathering mists had been steadily rising. Still was their wavering crest a half-score feet below us. Abruptly out of their dim nebulosity, a faintly phosphorescent square broke. It lifted, slowly, then swept, a dully lustrous six-foot cube, up the slope, and came to rest almost at our feet. A delta contemplated us from its myriads of deep-set sparkling striations. In its wake swam one by one the six others, their tops raising from the vapors like the first, watchfully, like shimmering backs of sea monsters, like tursts of fantastic angled submarines from phosphorescent seas. One by one they skimmed swiftly over the ledge, and one by one they nestled, edge to edge, and alternately against the cube which had gone before. In a crescent they stretched before us, back from them a pace, ten paces, twenty we retreated. They lay immobile, staring at us. Cleaving the mists, silk of copper hair streaming wide, and earthly eyes lambent floated up behind them, nor Hala. For an instant she was hidden behind their bulk, suddenly was upon them. Drifted over them like some spirit of light stood before us. Her veils were again about her, golden girdle, sandals of gold and turquoise in their places. Pearl white her body gleamed, no mark of lightning marred it. She walked toward us, turned and faced the watching cubes. She uttered no sound, but as at a signal the central cubes lit forward, halted before her. She rested at hand upon its edge. Ride with me, she said to Ruth. Nor Hala, Ventner took a step forward, nor Hala, we must go with her, and this, he pointed to the pony, must go with us. I meant you to come, the far away voice chimed, but I had not thought of that. A moment she considered, then turned to the six waiting cubes. Again, as at a command, four of the things moved, swirled in toward each other with a weird precision. With a monstrous marshal mimicry joined, stood before us, a platform 12 feet square, six high. Mount, sah, nor Hala, Ventner looked helplessly at the sheer front facing him. Mount, there was half one re-impatient in her command, see. She caught Ruth by the waist and with the same bewildering swiftness with which she had banished from us when the aurora beckoned she stood, holding the girl upon the top of the single cube. It was though the two had been lifted, had been levitated with an incredible rapidity. Mount, she murmured again, looking down upon us. Slowly, Ventner began to bandage the pony's eyes. I placed my hand upon the edge of the credible, sprang. A myriad unseen hands caught me, raised me, sat me instantaneously on the upward surface. Lift the pony to me, I called to Ventner. Lifted, he echoed incredulously. Drake's grin cut like a sun ray through the magmaire dread that shouted my mind. Catch, he called, placed one hand beneath the beast's belly, the other under its throat. His shoulders heaved and upshot the pony, laden as it was, landed softly upon four wide stretched legs beside me. The faces of the two gaped up, ludicrous in their amazement. Follow, cried Narhalla. Ventner leaped wildly for the top, Drake beside him, and the flash of a humming bird's wing they were gripping me, swearing feebly. The unseen hold angled, struck upward, clutched from ankle to thigh, held us fast, man and beast. Away swept the block that bore Ruth and Narhalla. I saw Ruth crouching, head bent, her arms around the knees of the woman. They slipped into the mists, vanished, and after them, like a log in a racing current, we, too, dipped beneath the faintly luminous vapors. The cubes moved with an entire absence of vibration, so smoothly and skimmingly, indeed, that it had not been for the sudden wind that had risen when we at first had stirred, and that now beat steadily upon our faces, and the cloudy walls streaming by, I would have thought ourselves at rest. I saw the blurb form of Ventner drift toward the forward edge. He walked as though waiting, I essayed to follow him. My feet I could not lift. I could advance only by gliding them, as though skating. Also, the force, whatever it was, that held me, seemed to pass me on from unseen clutch to clutch. It was as though up to my hips, I moved through a closely woven, yet fluid mass of cobwebs. I had the fantastic idea that if I so willed, I could slip over the edge of the blocks, crawl about their sides without falling. I could fly on the vertical faces of a huge sugar loaf. I drew beside Ventner. He was staring ahead, striving, I knew, to pierce the mists for some glimpse of Ruth. He turned to me, his face drawn with anxiety, his eyes feverish. Can you see them, Walter? His voice shook. God, why did I ever let her go like that? Why did I let her go alone? They'll be close ahead, Martin. I spoke out of conviction, I could not explain. Whatever it is we're bound for, wherever it is the woman's taken us, she means to keep us together, for time at least, I'm sure of it. She said, follow. It was Drake beside us. How the hell can we do anything else? We haven't any control over this burden one on, but she has. What she meant, Ventner, is that it would follow her. That's true, new hope softened the haggard face. That's true, but is it? We're reckoning with creatures that man's imagination never conceived nor could conceive. And with this woman human in shape, yes, but human in thought never, how then can we tell? He turned once more, all his consciousness concentrated in his search in eyes. Drake's rifle slipped from his hand. He stooped to pick it up, then tugged with both hands. The rifle lay immovable. I bent and strove to aid him. For all the pair of us could do, the rifle might have been a part of the gleaming surface on which it rested. The tiny, deep-set star points winked up. There, laughing at us, granted Drake, nonsense, I answered, and tried to check the involuntary shuttering that shook me. As I saw it shake him, nonsense, these blocks are great magnets. That's what holds the rifle, what holds us too. I don't mean the rifle, he said, I mean those points of lights, the eyes. There came from Ventner a cry of almost-anguished relief. We straightened. Our head shot above the mist like those of swimmers from water. Unnoticed, we had been climbing out of them. And a hundred yards ahead of us, cleaving them, veiled in them, almost to the shoulders, was Norhala, red hago, tresses, demon. And close beside her were the brown curls of Ruth. At her brother's cry she turned, and her arms flashed out of the veils with a reassuring gesture. A mile away was an opening in the valley mountainous wall. Toward it we were speeding. It was no ragged crevice, no nature-split fishing. It gave the impression of a gigantic doorway. Look, whispered Drake. Between us and the vast gateway, gleaming triangles began to break through the vapors, like the cutting fins of sharks, glints of round bodies like gigantic porpoises. The vapors sieved with them. Quickly the fins and rolling curves were all about us. They centered upon the portal, streamed through a horde of the metal things, leading us, guarding us, playing about us. And weird, unutterably weird, was that spectacle. The vast and silent veil with its still, smooth vapors, like a coverlet of cloud. The regal head of Norhal is sweeping over them. The dull, glinten gleam of the metal paradox is flowing in ordered motion all about us. The titanic gateway glowing before us. We were at its threshold over it. End of Chapter 7. Recording by Giulio Marchini, Iberão Preto, Brazil. The Metal Monster by Abraham Merritt. Chapter 8 of The Metal Monster. This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Giulio Marchini. The Metal Monster by Abraham Merritt. Chapter 8. The Drums of Thunder. Upon that threshold the mists foamed like breaking billows, then ceased abruptly to be. Keeping exactly the distance I had noted when our gaze had risen above the fog, glided the block that were Ruth and Orhala, and the strange light of the place into which we had emerged, and whether that place was canyon, corridor, or tunnel, I could not then determine. It stood out sharply. One arm of Orhala held Ruth, and in her attitude, I sensed a shielding intent, guardianship. The first really human impulse, the shape of mystery and beauty, had revealed. In front of them swept score upon score of her familiars, no longer duly lustrous, but shining as though cut from blue and polished steel. They marched in ordered rows, globes, and cubes, and pyramids, moving sedately now as units. I looked behind me. Out of the spune, boiling at the portal, were pouring forth other scores of the metal things, darting through like divers through a wave. And as they drew into our wake and swam into the light, their dim luster vanished like a film, their surfaces grew almost radiant. Once came the light that set them gleaming, our pace had slackened. I looked about me. The walls of the cleft or tunnel were perpendicular, smooth and shining, with a cold metallic greenish glow. Between the walls, like rhythmic flashing of fireflies, post soft and fugitive glimmerings that carried a sense of the infinitely minute of electrons, it came to me rather than atoms. Their radiance was greenish, like the walls, but I was certain that these corpuscules did not come from them. They blinked and faded, like modes within a shifting sunbeam, or to use a more scientific comparison, like colloids within the illuminated field of the ultra microscope. And like these latter, it was as though the eyes took in not the minute particles themselves, but their movement only. Save for the gleamings, the light of the place, although crepuscular, was crystalline clear. High above us, 500, 8000 feet, the walls merged into a haze of clouded barrel. Rock certainly the cliffs were, but rock cut and plained, smooth and polished and plated. Yes, that was it. Plated. Plated with some metallic substance that was itself a reservoir of luminosity, and from which it came to me, post the force that lighted the winking ions. But who could have done such a thing? For what purpose? How? And the meticulousness, the perfection of these smooth cliffs struck over my nerves as no rasp could, stirring a vague resentment, an irritated desire for human inharmonies, human disorder. Absorbed in my examination, I had forgotten those who must share with me my doubts and dangers. I felt a grip on my arm. If we get close enough and I can get my feet loose from the stamp thing, I'll jump, Drake said. What, I guess, blankly startled out of my preoccupation, jump where? I followed his pointing finger. We were rapidly closing upon the other queue. It was now a scan 20 paces ahead. It seemed to be stopping. Bentner was leaning forward, quivering with eagerness. Ruth, he called. Ruth, are you all right? Slowly she turned to us. My heart gave a great leap, then seemed to stop. For her sweet face was touched with the same unearthly tranquility which was Norhalus. Her brown eyes was a shadow of that passionless spirit. Brooding in Norhalus' own, her voice as she answered out within it, more than echo of Norhalus fainted, far off golden chiming. Yes, she saw. Yes, Martin. Have no fear for me, and turn from us. Gazing forward once more with the woman, and as silent as she. I glanced covertly at Bentner, at Drake. Had I imagined or had these two seen? Then I knew they had seen, for Bentner's face was white to the lips, and Drake's jaw was set, his teeth clenched, his eyes blazing with anger. What's she's doing to Ruth? You saw her face? He gritted, half inarticulately. Ruth, there was anguish in Bentner's cry. She did not turn again. It was as though she had not heard him. The cubes were now not five yards apart. Drake gathered himself, straying to loosen his feet from the shining surface, making ready to leap, when they should draw close enough. His great chest swelled with his effort, the muscles of his neck nodded, sweat steam down his face. No use, he gasped. No use, Goodwin. It's like trying to lift yourself by your bootstraps, like a fly stuck in molasses. Ruth cried Bentner once more. As though it had been a signal, the block darted forward, resuming the distance it had formally maintained between us. The vanguard of the metal things began to race, with an incredible speed they fled into, were lost in an instant within the luminous distances. The cube that bore the woman and girl accelerated, flew faster and faster onward, and as swiftly our own followed it, the lustrous wall flowed by dizzily. We had swept over toward the right wall of the cleft, and were gliding over a broad ledge. This ledge was, I judged, all over a hundred feet in width. From it, the floor of the place was dropping rapidly. The opposite precipices were slowly drawing closer. After us, flowed the flanking host. Steadily, our ledge arose and the floor of the canyon dropped. Now we were twenty feet above it, now thirty. And the character of the cliffs was changing. Veins of quartz shone under the metallic plating like cut crystal, like cloudy opals. Here was a splash of vermilion, there a patch of amber. Bands of pallet ochre stained it. My gaze was caught by a line of inky blackness in the exact center of the falling floor. So black was it that at first glance I took it for a vein of jetty lignite. It widened, it was a crack, a fissure. Now it was a yard in width, now three. And blackness seemed to well up from within it. Blackness, that was the very essence of the deaths. Steadily the ebb and rift expanded. Spread suddenly wide open in two sharp edged flying wedges, earth had dropped away. At our side a gulf had opened and abyss, striking down death upon death, profound and measurable. We were human atoms, riding upon a steed of sorcery and racing along a split ramper of infinite space. I looked behind. Scores of the cubes were darting from the metal hose trailing us. In a long column of twos they flashed by, raced ahead. Far in front of us a gloom began to grow, deepened until we were rushing into blackness night. Through the murk stabbed a long lance of pale blue phosphorescence. It unrolled like a ribbon of wan flame. Flicked like a serpent's tongue, held steady. I felt the thing beneath us leap forward. Its velocity grew, prodigious. The wind beat upon us with hurricane force. I shielded my eyes with my hands and peered through the chinks of my fingers. Range directly in our path was a barricade of the cubes and upon them we were racing like a flying battering ram. Involuntarily I closed my eyes against the annihilating impact that seemed inevitable. The thing on which we rode lifted. We were soaring at a long angle straight to the top of the barrier. Were upon it and still with that awful speed unchecked were hurling through the blackness over the shaft of phosphorescence. The ribbon of pale light that I had watched pierce it and knew now was but another span of the cubes that but a little before had fled past us. Beneath the span on each side of it I sensed a limitable void. We were over rushing along in darkness. There began a mighty tumult, a vast crashing and roaring. The clangor waxed, beat about us with tremendous strokes of sound. Far away was a dim glowing as a rising sun threw heavy mists of dawn. The mists faded, miles away gleaned at what at first glimpse seemed indeed to be the rising sun. A gigantic orb whose lower limb just touched was sharply horizontally cut by the blackness as though at its base that blackness was frozen. The sun, reason returned to me, told me this globe could not be that. What was it then? Raw harmoshes of the Egyptians stripped of his wings exiled in growing ode in the corridors of the dead. By that mocking luminary the coat phantom of the god of light and warmth which the ode Norsemen believed was set in their frozen hell to torment damned. I thrust aside the fantasies impatiently, but sun or no sun light streamed from this orb light in multicolored blanced rays vanishing the blackness through which we had been flying. Closer we came and closer, lighter it grew about us, and by the growing light I saw that still beside us ran the abyss, and even louder more thunderous became the clamor. At the foot of the radiant disc I glimpsed a luminous pool into it out of the depths protruded a tremendous rectangular tongue gleaming like a grey steel. On the tongue an inky shape appeared, it lifted itself from the abyss, rushed upon the disc and took form, like a gigantic spider it was, squat and horned. For an instant it was silhouetted against the smiling sphere, poised itself and vanished through it. Now, not far ahead, silhouetted as had been the spider shape, blackened into sight a cube, and on it Ruth and Norhalla. It seemed to hover, to wait. It's a door, Drake's shout beat thinly in my ears against the hurricane of sound. What I thought had been an orb was indeed a gateway, a portal, and it was gigantic. A light streamed through it, the flaming colors, the lightning glare, the drifting shadows were all beyond it. The suggestion of sphere had been an illusion, born of the darkness in which we were moving and in its own luminescence. And I saw that the steel tongue was a ramp, a slide dropping down into the gulf. Norhalla raised her hands high above her head, up from the darkness flew an incredible shape like a monstrous armored flat-backed crab, angled spikes protruded from it. Its huge body was strangled with darting greenish flames. It swept beneath us and by, on its back, from multi-turdiness breasts, from which issued blinding flashes sapphire blue, emerald green, sun yellow. It hung poised as had that other nightmare shape, standing out jet black in a colossal, raring upon columnar lights whose outlines were those of alternate enormous angled arrow points and lunettes. Sively its form shifted. An instant it hovered, half disintegrate. Now I saw spinning spheres and darting cubes and pyramids click into new positions. The front and side legs lengthened, the back legs shortened, fitting themselves plainly to what must be a varying angle of descent beyond. And it was no chimera, no crakin of the abyss. It was a car made of the metal things. I caught again the flashes and thought that they were jewels or heaps of shining oars carried by the conscious machine. It vanished. In its place hung poised the cube that bore the enigmatic women and Ruth. Then they were gone and we stood there, but an instant before they had been. We were high above in an ocean of living light, a sea of incandescent splendors that stretched mile upon uncounted mile and whose incredible waves streamed thousands of feet in air, full in gigantic banners and tremendous streamers and corresponding clouds of very colored flame as though torn by the talons of a mighty wind. My dazzled side cleared, glare and blaze and searing incandescents took form, became ordered. Within the sea of light I glimpsed shadow cyclopean, unnameable. They moved slowly with an awesome deliberateness. They shone darkly within the flame-weldened depths. From them came the volleys of the lightnings. Score upon score of them there were, huge and enigmatic, their flaming livens threatened the shimmering walls, patented them as though they were the flying robes of the very spirit of fire. And the tumult was as ten thousand thaws, smiting with hammers against the enemies of Odin, as a forge upon whose shouting anvils was being shaped a new world. A new world? A metal world. The thought spun through my mazed brain. Was gone and not until long after did I remember it, for suddenly all that clamor died, lightning ceased, all the flitting radiances paled and the sea of flaming splendors grew thin as moving mists. The stormy shapes dulled with them, seeming to darken into the murk. Through the fast waning light and far, far away, miles it seemed, on high and many, many miles in length, a broad band of fluorescent amethysts shone. From it dropped curtains, shimmering nebulous as the marching folds of the aurora. They poured cascaded from the amethystine band. Huge and purple black against their opalescence. Bulked at what at first I thought I mounted. So like was it too, one of the fantastic buds of our desert south west, when their cascaded tops are silhouetted against the setting of the sun. Knew instantly that this was but subconscious striving to translate into terms of reality the incredible. It was a city. A city full 5000 feet high and crowned with countless fires and turrets, titanic arches, stifendous domes. It was as though the man-made cliffs of lower New York were raised score as of their time their height. And weirdly enough it did suggest those same towering masses of masonry when one seems them blacken against the twilight sky. The pit darkened as though night were filtering down into it. The vast purple shadowed walls of the city sparkled out with countless lights. From the crowning arches and turrets leaked broad filaments of flame flashing electric. Was it my straining eyes? The play of the light and shadow? Or were those high flung excrescences shifting changing shape? An icy hand stretched out of the unknown stilled my heart for they were shifting. Arches and domes, turrets, and spires were melting reappearing in ferment like the lightning threaded rolling edges of the turtleneck cloud. I wrenched my gaze away, saw that our platform had come to rest upon a broad and silvery ledge close to the curving frame of the portal. And at a yard from where upon her block stood Norhala, her arm clasped about the rigid form of Ruth. I heard he saw from Ventner and an explanation from Drake. If one of us could cry out to Ruth, the cube glided to the edge of the shelf dipped out of sight. That upon which we rode trembled and sped after it. There came a sickening sense of falling. We lurched against each other for the first time the pony whined fearfully. Then with awful speed we were flying down a wide listening, steeply angled ramp into the pit, straight towards the half-hidden, storing escarpments flashing afar. Far ahead raced the thing on which stood woman and maid. Their hair streamed behind them, mingled, silken web of brown and shiny veil of red gold. Little clouds of sparkling corpuscules threaded them like flitting swarms of fireflies. Their bodies were nimbused with tiny flickering tongues of lavender flame. About us, above us, began again to rumble the countless drums of the thunder. End of chapter 8, The Metal Monster by Abraham Merth Chapter 9 of The Metal Monster This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recording on the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Julio Marchini The Metal Monster by Abraham Merth Chapter 9 The Portal of Flame It was as though we were on a meteor hurdling through space. The split air shrieked and shrilled, a keening barrier against the avalanche of the thunder. The blast bent as far back on thighs, held rigid by the magnetic grip. The pony spread its legs, dropped its head. Through the hurricane, roaring its screaming pierced thinly, that agonizing terrible lamentation which is of the horse and the horse alone, and at the limit of its endurance is reached. Ventner crouched lower and lower. Eye shielded behind arms folded over his brows, straining for a glimpse of Ruth. Drake crouched beside him, bracing him, supporting him against the tempest. Our line of flight became less abrupt, but the speed increased. The wind pressure became almost insupportable. I twisted, dropped upon my right arm, thrust my head against my shoulder, stared backward. When first I had looked upon the place I had sensed its immensity, now I began to realize how fast it must really be. For already the gateway through which we had come glimmered far away on high, shrunk to a hoop of incandescent brass and dwindling fast. Nor was it a cavern. I saw the stars, traced with deep relief the familiar northern constellations. Pit it might be, but whatever terror, whatever ordeals were before us, we would not have to face them buried deep within Earth. There was a curious comfort to me in the thought. Suddenly, stars and sky were blotted out. We had plunged beneath the surface of the radiant sea, lying in the position in which I was. I was sensible of a diminution of the cyclonic force. The blast stringed up and over the front of the cube. To me drifted only the wailings of our flight and the whimpering terror of the pony. I turned my head cautiously. Upon the very edge of the flying blocks squatted Drake and Ventner grotesquely frog-like. I crawled toward them, crawled literally like a caterpillar. Whatever my body touched, the surface of the cubes, the attracting force held it, allowed a creeping movement only, surface sliding upon surface, and weirdly enough, like a human measuring worm, I looped myself over to them. As my bare palms clung to the things I realized with the finality that whatever their activation, their life, they were metal. There was no mistaking now, the testimony of touch, metal they were, with a hint upon contact of highly polished platinum, or at least of a metal as finely grained as it. Also they had temperature, a curiously pleasant warmth. The surfaces were, I judged around 95 degrees Fahrenheit. I looked deep down into the light-sparkling points that were, I knew, organs of sight. They were like the points of contact of innumerable intersecting crystal planes. They held strangest paradoxical suggestion of being close to the surface and still infinite distances away. And they were like, what was it they were like? It came to me with a distinct shock. They were like the galaxies of a little oriate and sapphire stars in the clear gray heavens of Norhala's eyes. I crept beside Drake, struck him with my head. Can't move, I shouted. Can't lift my hands. Stuck fast. I could fly, just as you said. Grag him over your knees, he cried, bending to me. It slides him out of the attraction. Acting as he had suggested, I found to my astonishment I could slip my hands free. I caught his belt, tried to lift myself by it. No use, doc, the old grin lightened for a moment his tense young face. You'll have to keep praying till the powers turned off. Nothing here you can slide your knees on. I nodded, waddling close to his side, then sank back on my haunches to relieve the strain upon my aching leg muscles. Can you see them ahead, Walter? Ruth and the woman? Vettner turned his anxious eyes toward me. I peered into the glimmering mark, shook my head. I could see nothing. It was indeed as though the clustered cube sped within a bubble of the now wildly glistening vapors, or rather as though in our passage, as a projectile doesn't air. We piled before us a thick way of the mists which streaming along each side, closing in behind, obscured all that lay around. Yet I had persistently the feeling that beyond these shroudings was fast and ordered movement, marchings and counter-marchings of hosts greater even than those golden hordes of Genghis, which ages agon had washed about the outer bases of the buried peaks that hid this place. Came two, flitting shadowings of huge shapes, unnameable moving swiftly beside our way, gleaming that thrust themselves through the veils, like wheeling javelins of flame, and always, always everywhere that constant movement, rhythmic, terrifying, like myriads of feet of creatures of an unseen stranger world making time just outside the threshold of our own, preparing, drilling there in some wide vestibule of space between the known and the unknown, alert and menacing, poised for the signal which would send them pouring over it. Once again, I seemed to stand upon the brink of an abyss of an incredible revelation, striving helplessly, struggling for realization, and so struggling became aware that our speed was swiftly slackening, the roaring blast dying down, the veils before us thinning. They cleared away. I saw Drake and Ventner straighten up, raised myself to my own aching knees. We were at one end of a vortex, a funneling within the radiant vapors, a funnel whose further end a mile ahead broadened out into a huge circle. Its mistily outlined edges impinging upon the towering scarf of the city. It was as though before us lay upon its side a cone of crystalline clear air against whose curved sides some radiant medium heavy under an air lighter than water pressed. The top arc of its prostrate base reached a thousand feet or more up the precipitous wall. Above it all was hidden in sparkling velocities that were like still clouds of greenly glimmering fireflies. Back from the curving sides of this cone, above it and below it, the pressing luminosity stretched into its seemed infinite distances. Through them, suddenly, thousands of bright beams began to dart, to dance, weaving an intro even, shooting hither and yon, like myriads of great searchlights in a phosphorescent seafog, like countless lances of the aurora thrusting through its own iridescent veils. And in the play of these beams was something appalingly ordered, appalingly rhythmic. It was, how can I describe it, purposeful, purposeful, as the geometric shiftings of the little things of the ruins, of the summoning song of Nirhala, of the protein changes of this mighty shape, and the following thing. And like all of these, it was as laden with that baffling certainty of hidden meanings, of messages that the brain recognized as such, yet knew it never could read. The rays seemed to spring upward from the earth. Now they were like countless lances of light, born by marching armies of titans. Now they crossed and angled and flew as though they were clouds of javelins hurled by battling swarms of the guinea of light. Now they stood upright, while through them, thrusting them aside, bending them, past vast vague shapes like mountains, forming and dissolving, like darkening monsters of some world of light pushing through thick forest of slender, high-reaching trees of code flame. Shifting shadows of monstrous chimera, slipping through jungles of bamboo, with trunks of diamond fire, phantasmal leviathans, swimming through breaks of giant reeds of radiance, rising from the sparking ooze of a sea of starshine. Whence came the force, the mechanism that produced this cone of clarity, this not-search light, but un-light in the midst of light, not from behind, that was certain, for turning I saw that behind us the mist was as thick. I turned again. It came to me why I knew not, yet with an absolute certainty that the energy the force emanated from the distant wall itself. The funnel, the cone, it did not expend from where we were standing now motionless. It began at the wall and focused upon us. Within the great circle, the surface of the wall was smooth, utterly blank. Upon it was no trace of those flitting lights we had seen before we had plunged down toward the radiant sea. It shone with a pale blue phosphorescence. It was featureless, smooth, a blind cliff of polished blue meadow, and that was all. Ruth, grown vendor, where is she? I cast at my mental withdrawal from him, angry at myself for my callousness. Awkwardly I tried to crawl over to him, to touch him, comfort him as well as I might. And then as though his cry had been a signal, the great cone began to move. Slowly the circled base slipped down the shimmering facades. Down, steadily down, I realized that we had paused at the edge of some steep declivity. For the bottom of the cone was now at a decided angle, while the upper edge of the circle had dropped a full 200 feet below the place where it had rested. And still it fell. There came a gasp of relief from Vettner. A sigh from Drake while, from my own heart, a weight rode. Not ten yards ahead of us, and still deep within the luminosity, had appeared the regal head of Nirhala, the lovely head of Ruth. The two rose out of the glow like swimmers floating from the depths. Now they were clear before us, and now we could see the surface of the cube on which they were rode. But neither turned to us. Each stared sterically motionless, along the axis of the sinking cone. The woman's left arm holding Ruth close to her side. Drake's hand caught my shoulder in a grip that hurt. Nor did he need to point toward that which had wrung the exclamation from him. The funnel had broken from its slow falling. It had made one swift, startling drop and had come to rest. Its recumbent side was now flattened into a triangular plane, widening from the narrow tip in which we stood to all of 500 feet where its base rested against the blue wall, and falling at a full 30 degree pitch. The misty edged circle had become an oval, a flattened ellipse another 500 feet high and three times that in length. And in its exact center, shining forth as though it opened into a place of pale azure incandescence, was another rectangular cyclopean portal. On each side of it, in the apparently solid face of the gleaming metallic cliffs, a slit was opening. They began as thin lines a hundred yards in height, through which the intense light seemed to hiss. Quickly they opened, widening like monstrous cat pupils, until at last they're widening and ceasing. They glared forth, the blue incandescence gushing from them like molten steel from an open sluice. Deep within them I sensed a movement. Scores of towering shapes swam within and glided out of them, each reflecting the vivid light as though they themselves were incandescent. Around their crest spun wide and flaming cornets. They rushed forth, wheeling, whirling, driven like leaves in a whirlwind. Out they swirled from the cat's eyes of the glimmering mole. These dervish obelisks crowded with spinning fires. They vanished in the mists, instantly with their going the eyes contracted, where but slits were gone. And before us within the oval was only the waiting portal. The leading block leaped forward. As abruptly, those that bore us followed. Again, under that strain of projectile flight we clutched each other. The pony screamed in terror. The metal cliff rushed to meet us like a thunder cloud of steel. The portal raced upon us, a square mouth of cold blue flame. And into it we swept, were devoured by it. Light and blinding intolerable flood beat about us, blackening the sight with agony. We pressed the three of us against the side of the pony, burying our faces in its shaggy coat, striving to hide our eyes from the radiant switch, strained closely as we might seem to pierce through the body of the little beast, through our own heads, searing the sight. End of Chapter 9 THE METAL MONSTER by Abraham Merritt Give back my sister. How long we were within that glare I do not know. It seemed unending hours. It was of course only minutes, seconds perhaps. Then I was sensible of a permeating shadow, a darkness gentle and healing. I raised my head and opened my eyes. We were moving tranquilly with a curious suggestion of homing leisureliness through a soft blue shimmering darkness. It was as though we were drifting within some high border land of light, a region in which that rapid vibration we call the violet was mingled with a still more rapid vibration whose quick pulsing was felt by the brain, but ever fled ere that brain could register it in terms of colour. And there seemed to be a film over my sight, dazzlement from the unearthly blaze, I thought, shaking my head impatiently. My eyes focused upon an object a little more than a foot away. My neck grew rigid, my scalp prickled while I stared, unbelieving. And that at which I stared was a skeleton hand, every bone a grayish black, sharply silhouetted, clean as some master surgeon's specimen. It was extended as though clutching at, clutching at, what was that toward which it was reaching? Again an icy prickling over scalp and skin, for its talons stretched out to grasp a steed that death himself might have ridden, a rack whose bare skull hung drooping upon bent vertebrae. I raised my hands to my face to shut out the ghostly sight. And swiftly the clutching bony hand moved toward me, was before my eyes, touched me. The cry that sheer horror rested from me was strangled by realisation. And so acute was my relief, so reassuring was it to have in the midst of these mysteries some sane understandable thing occur that I laughed aloud. For the skeleton hand was my own, the mournful ghastly mount of death was our pony. And when I looked again, I knew what I would see, and see them I did. Two tall skeletons, skulls resting on their bony arms, leaning against the frame of the beast. While ahead of us, floating poised upon the surface of the glistening cube, were two women's skeletons, Ruth and Nohalla. Weird enough was the sight, due a risk grimly awful as materialisation of a scene of the dance macabre, and yet vastly comforting. For here was something which was well within the range of human knowledge. It was the light about us that did it, a vibration that even as I conjectured was within the only partly explored region of the ultraviolet and the comparatively unexplored region above it. Yet there were differences, for there was none of that misty halo around the bones, the flesh which the X-rays cannot render wholly invisible. The skeleton stood our clean cut, with no trace of fleshy vestments. I crept over, spoke to the true. Don't look up yet, I said. Don't open your eyes. We're going through a queer light. It has an X-ray quality. You're going to see me as a skeleton. What! shouted Drake, disobeying my warning, he straightened, glared at me, and, disquieting as the spectacle had been before, fully understanding it, as I did, I could not restrain my shudder at the utter weirdness of that skull which was his head thrusting itself toward me. The skeleton that was ventinor turned to me, was arrested by the sight of the flitting pair ahead. I saw the fleshless jaws clamp, then opened to speak. Abruptly upon the skeletons in front the flesh dropped back, girl and woman stood there once again, robed in beauty. So swift was that transition from the grisly unreal to the normal, that even to my unsubstitious mind it smacked of necromancy. The next instant the three of us stood looking at each other, clothed once more in the flesh, and the pony no longer the steed of death, but our shaggy, patient little companion. The light had changed, the high violet had gone from it, and it was shot with yellow gleamings, like fugitive sunbeams. We were passing through a wide corridor that seemed to be unending. The yellow light grew stronger. That light wasn't exactly the Rentgen variety. Drake interrupted my absorption in our surroundings. And I hoped to God it's as different as it seemed. If it's not, we may be up against a lot of trouble. More trouble than we're in, I asked, a trifle satirically. X-ray burns, he answered, and no way to treat them in this place. If we live to want treatment, he ended grimly. I don't think we were subjected to their action long enough. I began, and was silent. The corridor had opened without warning, into a place for whose immensity I have no images that are adequate. It was a chamber that was faster than ten score of the great halls of Karnak in one, great as that fabled hall in Dredd Amenty, where Osiris sits thrown between the searcher of hearts and the eater of souls, judging the jostling hosts of the newly dead. Temple, it was in its immensity, and its solemn vastness, but unlike any temple ever raised by human toil. In no ruin of earth's youth giants, work now scrubbing under the weight of time, had I ever sensed a shadow of the strangeness with which this was instinct. No, nor in the shattered feigns that once had held the gods of old Egypt, nor in the pillared shrines of ancient Greece, nor the imperial Rome, nor Mosque, Basilica, nor Cathedral. All these had been dedicated to God's which, whether created by humanity as science believes, or creators of humanity as their worshippers believed, still held in them that essence we term human. The spirit, the force that filled this place, had in it nothing, nothing of the human. No place? Yes, there was one. Stonehenge. Within that monolithic circle, I had felt as something akin to this, as in human, a brooding spirit stony, stark, unyielding, as though not men, but a people of stone had raised the great many as. This was a sanctuary built by a people of metal. It was filled with a soft yellow glow, like pale sunshine. Up from its floor arose hundreds of tremendous square pillars, down whose polished sides the crocus light seemed to flow. Far, far as the gaze could reach, the columns marched oppressively ordered, appallingly mathematical. From their massiveness distilled a sense of power, mysterious, mechanical, yet living, something priestly, horrific as though they were guardians of a shrine. Now I saw whence came the lights of fusing this place. High up among the pillars floated scores of orbs that shine like pale, gilt, frozen suns, great and small. Through all the upper levels, these strange luminaries gleamed, fixed and motionless, hanging unsupported in space. Out from their shining spherical surfaces, darted rays of the same pale gold, rigid unshifting, with the same suggestion of frozen stillness. They look like big Christmas tree stars, muttered drake. Their lights, I answered. Of course they are. They're not matter, not metal. I mean, there's something about them, like almost fire. Witch lights, condensations of atmospheric electricity. Vettnoor's voice was calm. Now that it was plain we were nearing the heart of this mystery in which we were enmeshed. He had clearly taken fresh grip, was again his observant, scientific self. We watched, once more silent. And indeed we had spoken little since we had begun that ride, whose end we sensed close. In the unfolding of enigmatic happening after happening the mind had deserted speech and crouched listening at every door of sight and hearing to gather some clue to causes, some thread of understanding. Slowly now we were gliding through the forest of pillars, so effortless, so smooth our flight that we seemed to be standing still. The tremendous columns flitting past us, turning and wheeling around us, dizzyingly. My head swam with the mirage motion. I closed my eyes. Look! Drake was shaking me. Look! What do you make of that? Half a mile ahead the pillars stopped at the edge of a shimmering, quivering curtain of green luminescence. High, high up past the pale gilt suns, its smooth folds ran into the golden amber mist that had canopied the columns. In its sparkling was more than a hint of the dancing corpuscles of the aurora. It was indeed as they were woven of the aurora rays. And all about it played shifting, tremulous shadows formed by the merging of the golden light with the curtain's emerald gleaming. Up to its base swept the cube that bore Ruth and Nuhalla and stopped. From it leapt the woman and drew Ruth down beside her, then turned and gestured toward us. That upon wiggly road drew close. I felt it quiver beneath me. Felt on the instant the magnetic grip dropped from me, angled downward and left me free. Shakily I arose from aching knees, and saw Ventnor flash down and run, rifle in hand. Drake bent for his gun. I moved unsteadily toward the side of the clustered cubes. There came a curious pushing motion driving me to the edge. Sliding over upon me came Drake and the pony. The cube tilted gently, playfully, and with the slightest of jars the three of us stood beside it on the floor. We two men gaping at it in renewed wonder, and the little beast stretching its legs, lifting its feet and whining with relief. Then abruptly the four blocks that had been our steed broke from each other, that which had been the woman's glided to them. The four clicked into place behind it and darted from sight. Ruth! Ventnor's voice was vibrant with his fear. Ruth, what is wrong with you? What has she done to you? We ran to his side. He stood clutching her hands, searching her eyes. They were wide, unseeing, dream filled. Upon her face the calm and stillness, which were mirrored reflections of Noohala's unearthly tranquillity, had deepened. Brother, the sweet voice seemed far away, drifting out of untroubled space, an echo of Noohala's golden chiming. Brother, there is nothing wrong with me. Indeed, all is well with me, brother. He dropped the listless palms, faced the woman, tall figure tense, drawn with mingled rage and anguish. What have you done to her? he whispered in Noohala's own tongue. Her serene gaze took him in, undisturbed by his anger, save for the faintest shadow of wonder, of perplexity. Done, she repeated slowly, I have stilled all that was troubled within her, have lifted her above sorrow. I have given her the peace, as I will give it to you if you'll give me nothing, he interrupted fiercely. Then his passion breaking through all restraint, yes, you damned witch, you'll give me back, my sister. In his rage he had spoken English. She could not, of course, have understood the words. But their anger and hatred she did understand. Her serenity quivered, broke. The strange stars within her eyes began to glitter forth, as they had when she had summoned the smiting thing, unheeding, ventinal thrust out of hand, caught her rough by one bare, lovely shoulder. Give her back to me, I say. He cried, give her back to me. The woman's eyes grew awful. Out of the distended pupils, the strange stars blazed upon her face were something of the goddess outraged. I felt the shadow of death's wings. No, no, no, Hala, no, Martin. The veils of inhuman calm, shrouding with were torn, swiftly the girl we knew looked out from them. She threw herself between the two arms outstretched, ventinaire, Drake caught his arms, held them tight. That's not the way to save her! her. Vettnor stood between us, quivering, half sobbing. Never until then had I realised how great, how absorbing, was that love of his for Ruth, and the woman saw it, too. Even though dimly envisioned it humanly, for under the shock of human passion, that which I thought then as utterly unknown to her, as her cold serenity was to us, the sleeping soul. I used the popular word for those emotional complexes that are peculiar to mankind, stirred, awakened. Ruth fled from her knitted brows. Her eyes, dropping to the girl, lost their dreadfulness, softened. She turned them upon Vettnor. They brooded upon him. Within their depths a half troubled interest, a questioning, a smile dawned upon the exquisite face, humanising it, transfiguring it, touching with tenderness the sweet and sleeping mouth, as a hovering dream the lips of the slumbering maid. And on the face of Ruth, as upon a mirror, I watched that same slow understanding tenderness reflected. Come, said Nohalla, and led the way through the sparkling curtains. As she passed, an arm around Ruth's neck, I saw the marks of Vettnor's fingers upon her white shoulder, staining its purity. Marrying it like a blasphemy. For an instant I hung behind. Watching their fingers grow misty within the shining shadows. Then followed hastily. Entering the mists, I was conscious of a pleasant tingling, an acceleration of the pulse, an increase of that sense of well-being which, I grew suddenly aware, had since the beginning of our strange journey minimised the nervous attrition of constant contact with the abnormal. Striving to clarify, to reduce to order, my sensations I drew close to the others, overtaking them in a dozen paces. A dozen paces more, and we stepped out of the curtainings. End of chapter 10. Chapter 11 of The Metal Monster This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Giulio Marchini. The Metal Monster by Abraham Merritt. The Metal Emperor. We stood at the edge of a well whose walls were of the same green vaporous iridescence through which we had just come, but finer grained, compact, as though here the corpuscules of which they were woven were far closer spun. Thousands of feet above us, the mighty cylinder of rose, and in the lesson circle that was its mouth, I glimpsed the bright stars. I knew by this it opened into the free air. All of half a mile in diameter was this shaft, and ringed regularly along its height by wide amethystine bands, like rings of a hollow piston. They were, in colour, replicas of that I had glimpsed before are dissent into this place, and against whose gleaming cataracts the outlines of the incredible city had lowered, and they were in motion, spinning smoothly and swiftly. Only once with glance I gave them, my eyes held by a most extraordinary edifice, altar, machine, I could not find the word for it then. Its base was a scant hundred yards from where we had paused and concentric with the sides of the pit. It stood upon a thick circular pedestal of what appeared to be a cloudy rock crystal, supported by hundreds of thick rods of the same material. Up from it lifted the structure, a thing of glistening cones, and spinning golden discs, fantastic yet disquietingly symmetrical. Bizarre is an angled headrest worn by a mountainous Javanese god, yet coldly, painfully mathematical, in every direction the cones pointed, seemingly interwoven of strands of metal and of light. What was their colour? It came to me, that of a mysterious element which stains the sun's corona, that diadem seen only when our day starts in eclipse, the unknown element which science has named Cronium, which never yet has been found on earth, and that may be electricity in its one material form, electricity that is ponderable, force whose vibration are keyed down to mass, power transmuted into substance. Thousands upon thousands the cones bristle, pyramiding to the base of one tremendous fire that tapered up almost to the top of the shaft itself, in their grouping the mind caught infinite calculations carried into infinity, an apotheosis of geometry compassing the rhythms of unknown spatial dimensions, concentration of the equations of the star hordes, the mathematics of the cosmos. From the left of the crystalline base swept an enormous sphere, it was twice the height of a tall man, and it was paler blue than any of these things I had seen, almost indeed an azure, different to, an other subtle, indefinable ways. Behind it glided a pair of pyramidal shapes, they're pointed tips higher by a yard or more than the top of the sphere, they paused, regarding us. Out from the opposite arc of the crystal pedestal moved six other globes, somewhat smaller than the first end of a deep purplish luster, they separated, lining up on each side of the leader, now standing a little in advance of the twin tetrahedrons, rigid and motionless as watching guards. There they stood, that enigmatic row, intent, stunning us beneath the god or altar, or machine of cones and discs within their cylinder wall with light, and at that moment they're crystallized within my consciousness, the sublimation of all the strangeness of all that had gone before, a panicked loneliness as though I had wandered into an alien world, a world as unfamiliar to humanity, as unfamiliar with it as our own would seem to a thinking mobile crystal adrift among men. Norhalla raised her white arms in salutation, from her throat came a lilting teen of her weirdly ordered golden chanting, was it speech I wandered, and if so, prayer or entreaty or command. The great sphere quivered and undulated, swifter than the eye could follow, it dilated, opened, where the eyes of your globe had been, flashed out at disc of flaming splendors, the very secret soul of foward flame, and simultaneously the pyramids leaped up and out behind it, two gigantic four-rayed stars blazing with cold blue fires. The green auroral cartonings flared out, ran with streaming radiance as though some spirit of jewels had broken bonds of enchantment, and burst forth jubilant, flooding the shaft with its free glories. Norhalla's song ceased, an arm dropped down upon the shoulders of Ruth. Then women and girl began to float toward the radiant disc. As one, the three of us sprang after them, I felt a shock that was like a quick abrupt tap upon every nerve and muscle, stiffening them into helpless rigidity, paralyzing that sharp unseen contact had been, but nothing of pain followed it, instead it created an extraordinary acuteness of sight and hearing, an abnormal keying up of the observational faculties, as though the energy so mysteriously darned from our motor centers had been thrown back into the sensory. I could take in every minute detail of the flashing miracle of jammed fires and its flaming ministers. Halfway between them and us, Norhalla and Ruth drifted. I could catch no hint of voluntary motion on their part and knew that they were not walking, but were being born onward by some manifestation of that same force which held us motionless. I forgot them in my contemplation of the disc. It was oval, twenty feet in height, I judged, and twelve in its greatest width. A broad band, translucent to sun-golden chryslet, ran about its periphery. Set within this zodiac and spaced at mathematically regular intervals were nine ovoids of intensely living light. They shone like nine gigantic cabochon-cut sapphires. They ranged from palest, watery blue up through azure and purple and down to a ghostly maw shot with sullen undertones of crimson. And each of them was thrown the flame that seemed the very furious essence of vitality. The body was convex, swelling outward like the boss of a shield, shimmering rosy gray and crystalline. From the vital ovoids ran a pattern of sparkling threads, iris'd and brilliant as flaws of molten jewels, converging with interfacings of spirals, of volutes, and of triangles into the nucleus. That nucleus, what was it? Even now I can but guess. Brain and part as we understand brain, certainly, but far, far more than that in its energies, its powers. It was like an immense rose, an incredible rose of thousand-close clustering petals. It blossomed with a myriad shifting hues, an instant by instant the flood of very colored flame that poured in its petalings down from the sapphire ovoids, waxed in wanes and crescendos and diminuendos, of reluscent harmonies, ecstatic, awesome. The heart of the rose was a star of incandescent ruby. From the flaming crimson center to aureate, flashing penumbra, it was instinct with and poured forth power, power vast and conscious. Not with the same completeness could I realize the ministery star shapes, half-hidden as they were by the disk. Their radiance was less, nor had they its miracles of pulsing gemfires. Blue they were, blue of a peculiar vibrancy, and blue were the glistening threads that ran down from blue-black circular convexities that ended in each of the points visible to me. Unlike in shape, their flames of vitality dimmered than the ovoids of the disk's golden zone. Still I knew that they were even as those organs, organs of unknown senses, unknown potentialities their nuclei could not observe. The floating figures had drawn close to that disk and had paused, and on the moment of their pausing I felt a surge of strength, a snapping of the spell that had bound us, an instantaneous withdrawal of the inhibiting force. Ventner broke into a run, holding his rifle at the alert. We raced after him. We're close to the shining shapes, and gasping we stopped short, not a dozen paces away. For Narhalla had soared up toward the flaming rose of the disk as though lifted by gentle unseen hands. Close to it, for an instant, she swung. I saw the exquisite body gleam through her thin robes as though bathed in soft flames of rosy pearl. Higher she floated and tore the right of the zodiac. From the edges of three of the ovoids swirled a little cloud of tentacles, gossamer filaments of opal. They whipped out a full yard from the disk's surface, touching her, caressing her. For a moment she hung there, her face hidden from us, then was dropped softly to her feet and stood, arms stretched wide, her copper hair streaming cloudily about her rico head. And up past her floated roof, levitated as had been she, and her face ecstatic as though she were gazing into paradise, yet drenched with the timquality of the infinite. Her wide eyes stared up toward that rose of splendors through which the pulsing colors now raced more swiftly. She hung poised before it while around her head a faint aerial began to form. Again the gossamer threads thrust forth, searched her. They ran over her clothing perpexedly. They culled about her neck, stole through her hair, brushed shut her eyes, circled her brow, her breasts gilded her. Weirdly was it like some intelligence observing, studying some creature of another species puzzled by its similarity and unsimilarity with the one other creature of its kind it knew, and striving to reconcile those differences. And like such a questioning brain culling up on others for counsel it swung roof upward to the watching star at the ride. A rifle shot rang out. Another, the reports breaking the silence like a profanation. Unseen by either of us, Vendor had slipped to one side where he could cover the core of the ruby flame that must have seemed to him the heart of the disk's rose of fire. He knelt a few yards away, white-lipped, and rolled gray eyes, siding carefully for a third shot. Don't, Martin! Don't fire! I shouted, leaping towards him. Stop, Vendor! Drake's panic cry mingled with my own. But before we could reach him nor how it flew to him like a darting swallow, down the face of the disk glided the upright body of Ruth, struck softly, stood swaying. And out of the blue-black convexity within a star point of one of the open pyramids an intense green flame darted, a lightning bolt as real as any hurled by tempest upon Vendor. The shattered air closed behind a seeming spark with the sound of breaking glass. It struck, nor howl. It struck her. It seemed to splash upon her to run down her like water, one curling tongue ribbed over her bare shoulder and leaked to the barrel of the rifle in Vendor's hand. It flashed up it and licked him. The gun was torn from his grip, hurled high in air, exploding as it went. He leaped convulsively from his knees and dropped. I heard a wailing, low, bitter, and heartbroken. Past us ran Ruth. All dream, all unearthliness gone from a face, not a tragic mask of human woe and terror. She threw herself down beside her brother, felt of his heart, then raised herself upon her knees and thrust out, supplicating hands to the shapes. Don't hurt him any more. He didn't mean it. She cried out to them bituously like a child. She reached up, caught one of Norhala's hands. Norhala, don't let them kill him. Don't let them hurt him any more, please. She sobbed. Beside me, I heard drape cursing. If they touch her, I'll kill the woman. I will, by God I will. He strode to Norhala's side. If you want to live, call off these devils of yours. His voice was strangled. She looked at him, wonder deepening on the tranquil brow in the clear and troubled gaze. Of course she could not understand his words, but it was not that which made my own sick apprehension grow. It was that she did not understand what called them forth. Did not even understand what reasonably behind Ruth Sorrows, Ruth's prayer. And more and more wondering grew in her eyes as she looked from threatening drape to the supplicating Ruth, and from them to the still body of Ventner. Tell her I'd say, Goodwin, I mean it. I shook my head. That was not the way I knew it. I looked towards the disc, still flanked with sextet of seers, still guarded by the flaming blue stars. They were motionless, calm, watching. I sensed no hostility, no anger. It was as though they were waiting for us to, to, waiting for us to do what? It came to me. They were indifferent. That was it. As indifferent as we could be to the struggle of an ephemera, and as mildly curious. Nor how I turned to the woman. She would not have him suffer. She would not have him die. She loves him. Love, she repeated. And all of her wonderment seemed crystallized in the word. Love, she asked. She loves him, I said. And then why I did not know, but I added pointing to Drake. And he loves her. There was a tiny, astonished sob from Ruth. Again, Norhalla brooded over her. Then, with the little despairing shake of her head, she paced over and faced the great disc. Tensely we waited. Communication that was between them. Interchange of thought. How carried out I would not hazard even to myself. But of surety these two, the goddess woman, the holy and human shape of metal, of jeweled fires and conscious force understood each other. Where she turned, stood aside. And the body of Ventner quivered. Rose from the floor stood upright and with closed eyes, head drooping upon one shoulder, glided toward the disc like a dead man carried by those messengers never seen by man, who the Arabs believed bad death drugged souls before Allah for their awakening. Ruth moaned and hit her eyes. Drake reached down, gathered her up in his arms and held her close. Ventner's body stood before the disc. Then swam up along its face. The tendrils waved out, felt of it. Thrust themselves down through the white color of the shirt. The floating form passed higher over the edge of the disc. Lay high beside the right star point of the rage shaped to which Ruth had been passing when Ventner's shot brought the tragedy upon us. I saw other tentacles whip forth, examine, caress. Then down the body swung, was born through air, laid gently at our feet. He is not dead. It was Norhala beside me. She lifted Ruth's face from Drake's breast. He will not die. It may be he will walk again. They cannot help. There was a shadow of her apology in her tones. They did not know. They thought it was the she hesitated as though it lost words. The, the fire play. The fire play, I guessed. Yes, she nodded. You shall see it. And I will take him to my house. You are safe now. Nor need you trouble for he has been giving you to me. Who has given us to you, Norhala? I asked as calmly as I could. He, she nodded to the disc, and spoke the phrase that was both Asian to Sirius and Asian Persia's title for their all conquering ruler, and that meant the King of Kings, the Great King, the Master of Life and Death. She took Ruth from Drake's arms, pointing to Ventner. Bear him, she commanded, and led the way back through the walls of light. As we lifted the body, I slipped my hand through the shirt, felt at the heart. It was the pulsation and slow, but regular. Close to the encircling vapors, I cast one look behind me. The shape stood immobile, flashing discs, gigantic radiant stars, and the six great spheres beneath their geometric super clean god, or shrine, or machine of interwoven threads of luminous force and metal, still motionless, still watching. We emerged into the place of pillars. There stood the hooded pony and its patients, its uncomplaining acceptance of its place as servant to man, brought her lump into my throat, salt, I suppose, my human vanity, a base as it had been by the colossal indifference of those things to which we were but play things. Again, Norhala sent forth her call. Out of the maze, glided her kintet of familiar, again the fork clicked into one. Upon its top, we lifted, Drake ascending first, the pony, then the body of Ventner. I saw Norhala lead Ruth to the remaining cube. Saw the girl break away from her, leap beside me, and kneeling at her brother's hand, Crayolid against her soft breast. Then as I found in the medicine case the hypodermic medial, and stricken for which I had been searching, I began my examination of Ventner. The cubes quivered, swept away through the forest of columns. We crouched, the three of us, blind to anything that lay about us, heedless of whatever road of wonders we were on, striving to strengthen in Ventner the spark of life to so new extinctions. End of Chapter 11, Recording by Giulio Marchini, Ibn Ambrito Berzi The Metal Monster by Abraham Merritt