 CHAPTER XII. I WILL GIVE YOU PEACE. In our concentration upon Ventner none of us had given thought to the passing of time nor where we were going. We stripped him to the waist, and while Ruth massaged head and neck, Drake's strong fingers kneaded chest and abdomen. I had used to the utmost my somewhat limited medical knowledge. We had found no mark nor burn upon him, not even upon his hands over which had run the licking flame. The slightly purplish, cyanotic tinge of his skin had given way to a clear pallor. The skin was itself, disquietingly cold, the blood pressure only slightly subnormal. The pulse was more rapid, stronger, the breathing faint but regular and with no laboring. The pupils of his eyes were contracted almost to the point of invisibility. I could get no nervous reactions whatever. I am familiar with the effects of electric shock and know what to do in such cases, but Ventner's symptoms, while similar in part, presented other features unknown to me and most puzzling. There was a passive automatism, a perplexing muscular rigidity which caused arms and legs, hands and head to remain, doll-like, in any position placed. Several times during my labours I had been aware of Norala, gazing down upon us, but she made no effort to help nor did she speak. Now, my strained attention relaxing, I began to receive and note impressions from without. There was a different feeling in the air, a diminution of the magnetic tension. I smelled the blessed breath of trees and water. The light about us was clear and pearly, about the intensity of the moon at full. Looking back along the way we had been travelling, I saw, a half mile away, vertical, knife-sharp edges of two facing cliffs, the gap between them a mile or more wide. Through them we must have passed, for beyond them were the radiant mists of the pit of the city, and through this precipitous gateway filtered the enveloping luminosity. On each side of us up rose gradually converging and perpendicular scarps, along whose base huddled a sparse foliage. There came a low whistle of astonishment from Drake, I turned. We were slowly gliding toward something that looked like nothing so much as a huge and shimmering bubble of mingled sapphire and turquoise, swimming up from and two-thirds above, and the balance still hidden within earth. It seemed to draw to itself the light, sending it back with gleamings of the gray-blue of the star sapphire, with pollucid azures and lazulis like clouded jades, with glistening peacock iridescences and tender milky greens of tropic shallows. Little turrets globular and topaz yellow and pierced with tiny hexagonal openings clustered about it like baby bubbles just nestling down to rest. Great trees shadowed it, unfamiliar trees among whose glossy leaves blossomed in wreaths, flowers pink and white as apple blossoms. From their graceful branches strange fruits, golden and scarlet and pear shaped hung pendulous. It was an elfin palace, a goblin dwelling, such a bower as some mirthful, beauty-loving, gin-king of jewels might have built from enchanted hordes for some well-beloved daughter of earth. All of fifty feet in height was the blue globe, and up to a wide and ovaled entrance ran a broad and shining roadway. Along this the cube swept and stopped. My house, Mervyn Norhalla. The attraction that had held us to the surface of the blocks relaxed, angled through changed and assisting lines of force. The hosts of minute eyes sparkling quizzically. Interestingly, at us, we gently slid Menter's body, lifted down the pony. Enter, sighed Norhalla, and waved a welcoming hand. Tell her to wait a minute, ordered Drake. He slipped the bandage off from the pony's head, threw off the saddle-bags, and led it to the side of the roadway where thick lush grass was growing, spangled with flower-ets. There he hobbled it and rejoined us. Together we picked up Ventner and passed slowly through the portal. We stood in a shadowed chamber, the light that filled it was translucent and oddly enough with little of the bluish quality I had expected. Crystalline it was. The shadows crystalline too, rigid, like the facets of great crystals, and as my eyes accustomed themselves I saw that what I had thought shadows actually were none. They were slices of semi-transparent stone like pale moonstones, springing from the curving walls and the high dome, and bisecting and intersecting the chamber. They were pierced with oval doorways over which fell glimmering metallic curtains, silk of silver and gold. I glimpsed a pile of the silk and stuff nearby, and as we laid our burden upon it, roof caught my arm with a little frightened cry. Through a curtained oval, sidled a figure. Black and tall, its long and gnarled arms swung, ape-like, its shoulders were distorted, one so much longer than the other that the hand upon that side hung far below the knee. It walked with a curious, crab-like motion. Upon its face were stamped countless wrinkles, and its blackness seemed less that of pigmentation than the weathering of unbelievable years, the very stain of ancientness. And about neither face nor figure was there anything to show whether it was man or woman. From the twisted shoulders a short and sleeveless red tunic fell. Incredibly old the creature was, and by its corded muscles its sinewy tendons as incredibly powerful. It raised within me a half-sick revulsion, loathing. But the eyes were not ancient, no. Iris-less, lashless, black and brilliant they blazed out of the face's cavern web of wrinkles, intent upon Norala, and filled with a flame of worship. It threw itself at her feet, prostrate, the inordinately long arms outstretched. Mistress! It whined in a high and curiously unpleasant falsetto. Great Lady Goddess! She stretched out a sandal foot, touched one of the black talant hands, and at the contact I saw a shiver of ecstasy run through the lank body. Uruk, she began, and paused regarding us. The Goddess speaks! Uruk hears! The Goddess speaks! It was a chant of adoration. Uruk, rise, look upon the strangers. The creature, and now I knew what it was, writhed, twisted and hideously ape-like, crouched upon its haunches, hands knuckling the floor. By the amazement in the unwinking eyes it was plain that not till now had the eunuch taken cognizance of us. The amazement fled, was replaced with a black fire of malignancy, of hatred, jealousy. Ag, he snarled, leaped to his feet, thrust an arm toward Ruth. She gave a little cry, cowered against drake. None of that, he struck down the clutching arm. Uruk! There was a hint of anger in the bell-toned voice. Uruk, these belong to me. No harm must come to them. Uruk, beware! The Goddess commands! Uruk, obey! If fear quavered in the words, beneath was more than a trace of sulleness, too, sinister enough. That's a nice little playmate for her new play-things, mutterdrake. If that bird gets the least bit gay, I shoot him pronto. He gave Ruth a reassuring hug. Cheer up, Ruth. Don't mind that thing, he's something we can handle. Nohalla waved a wide hand. Uruk sidled over to one of the curtained ovals, and threw it, reappearing almost instantly with a huge platter, upon which were fruits, and a curtly white liquid in bowls of thick porcelain. Eat, she said, as the gnarled black arms place the platter at our feet. Hungry, asked Drake. Ruth shook her head violently. I'm going out for the saddle-bags, said Drake. We'll use our own stuff while it lasts. I'm taking no chances on what the Uruk lad brings, with all due respect to Nohalla's good intentions. He started for the doorway. The eunuch blocked his way. We have food with us of our own, Nohalla, I explained. He goes to get it. She nodded indifferently, clapped her hands. Uruk shrank back, and out strode Drake. I am weary, sighed Nohalla. The way was long. I will refresh myself. She stretched out a foot toward Uruk. He knelt, unlaced the turquoise bands, drew off the sandals. Her hand sought her breast, dwelt for an instant there. Down slipped her silken veils, clingingly, slowly, as though reluctant to unclasp her. Whispering they fell from the high and tender breasts, the delicate rounded hips, and clustered about her feet in soft petalings as of some flower of pale amber foam. Out of the calyx of that flower arose the gleaming miracle of her body crowned with glowing glory of her cloudy hair. Naked she was, yet clothed with an unearthly purity, the purity of the far flung, serene stars, of the eternal snows upon some calm, high-flung peak, the tranquil, silver dawns of spring, protected by some spell of divinity which chilled and slew the flame of desire. A maiden Ishtar, a virginal Isis, a woman, yet with no more of a woman's lure than if she had been some exquisite and breathing statue of mingled ivory and milk of pearls. So she stood indifferent to us who gazed upon her, withdrawn, musing, as though she had forgotten us. And that serene indifference, with its entire absence of what we termed sex consciousness, revealed to me once more how great was the abyss between us and her. Slowly she raised her arms, wound the floating tresses into a coronal. I saw Drake enter with the saddle-bags, saw them drop from hands relaxing under the shock of this amazing tableau, saw his eyes widen and fill with wonder and half-odd admiration. Now Norhalus stepped out of her fallen robes and moved toward the further wall, Uruk following. He stooped, raised an ewer of silver, and began gently to pour over her shoulders its contents. Again and again he bent and filled the vessel, dipping it into a shallow basin from which came the bubbling and chuckling of a little spring. And again I marveled at the marvel smoothness and fineness of her skin on which the caressing water left tiny silvery globules, gemming it. The eunuch slithered to one side, drew from a quaint chest, clothes of white floss, padded her dry with them, threw over her shoulders a silk and robe of blue. Back, she floated to us, hovered over Ruth, crouching with her brother's head upon her knees. She made a motion as though to draw the girl to her, hesitated as Ruth's face set in a passion of denial. A shadow of kindness drifted through the wide, mysterious eyes. A shadow of pity joined it as she looked curiously down on ventnor. Baid, she murmured and pointed to the pool, and rest, no harm shall come to any of you here, and you, a hand rested for a moment lightly upon the girl's curly head, when you desire it, I will again give you peace. She parted the curtains, and the eunuch's still following was hidden beyond them. End of Chapter 12 Chapter 13 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 This reading by Anna Roberts The Metal Monster by Abraham Merritt Chapter 13 Voice from the Void Helplessly we looked at each other. Then called forth perhaps by what she saw in Drake's eyes, perhaps by another thought, Ruth's cheeks crimsonned, her head drooped. The web of her hair hid the warm rose of her face, the frozen pallor of ventnor's. Abruptly she sprang to her feet. Walter, Dick, something's happening to Martin. Before she'd ceased we were beside her, bending over ventnor. His mouth was opening slowly, slowly, with an effort agonizing to watch. Then his voice came through lips that scarcely moved. Faint, faint as though it floated from infinite distances, a ghost of a voice whispering with phantom breath out of a dead throat. Hard, hard, so hard, the whispering complained. Don't know how long I can keep connection with voice. Was fooled to shout, sorry, might have gotten you in worse trouble, but crazy with fear for Ruth. Thought, too, might be worth chance. Sorry, not my usual line. The thin thread of sound ceased. I felt my eyes fill with tears. It was like ventnor to flay himself like this for what he thought stupidity, like him to make this effort to admit his supposed fault and crave forgiveness. As like him as that mad attack upon the flaming disc in its own temple, surrounded by its ministers, had been so bafflingly unlike his usual cool collected self. Martin, I called, bending closer. It's nothing, old friend. No one blames you. Try to rouse yourself. Dear, it was Ruth passionately tender. It's me. Can you hear me? Only speck of consciousness and motionless in the void. The whisper began again, terribly alive, terribly alone, seem outside space yet, still in body, can't see, hear, feel, short circuited from every sense, but in some strange way realize you, Ruth, Walter, Drake, see without seeing, hear floating in darkness that is also light, black light, indescribable, in touch, too, with these. Again, the voice trailed into silence, returned, word and phrase pouring forth, disconnected with a curious and turbulent rhythm, like rushing wave crests linked by half seen threads of the spin drift, vocal fragments of thought swiftly assembled by some subtle faculty of the mind as they fell into a coherent, incredible message, group consciousness, gigantic, operating within our sphere, operating also in spheres of vibration, energy, force, above, below one to which humanity reacts, perception command forces known to us, but in greater degree, cognizant, manipulate unknown energies, senses known to us unknown, can't realize them fully, impossible cover, only impinge on contact points akin to our senses, forces, even these profoundly modified by additional ones, metallic, crystalline, magnetic, electric, inorganic, with every power of organic, consciousness basically same as ours, profoundly changed by differences in mechanism through which it finds expression, difference, our bodies, theirs, conscious, mobile, inexorable, invulnerable, getting clear, see more clearly, see the voice shrilled out in a shuttering, thin lash of despair. No, no, oh God, no. Then clearly and solemnly, and God said, let us make men in our own image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over all the earth, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. A silence, we bent closer, listening. The still, small voice took up the thread once more, but clearly further on, something we had missed between the text from Genesis, and what we were now hearing, something that even as he had warned us, he had not been able to articulate. The whisper broke through clearly in the middle of a sentence. Nor is Jehovah the God of myriads of millions, who threw those same centuries, and centuries upon centuries before them, found earth a garden and grave, and all these countless gods and goddesses, only phantom barriers raised by man to stand between him and the eternal forces man's instinct has always warned him are ever in readiness to destroy that do destroy him as soon as his vigilance relaxes, his resistance weakens, the eternal ruthless law that will annihilate humanity, the instant it runs counter to that law, and turns its will and strength against itself. A little pause, then came these singular sentences, weaklings praying for miracles to make easy the path their own will should clear, beggars who whine for alms from dreams, shirkers each struggling to place upon his God, the burden who's carrying and who's carrying alone can give him strength to walk free and unafraid, himself God like among the stars. And now, distinctly, unfalteringly, the voice went on. Dominion over all the earth? Yes, as long as man is fit to rule, no longer. Science has warned us. Where was the mammal when the giant reptiles reigned, slinking, hidden, and afraid in the dark and secret places, yet man sprang from these skulking beasts. For how long a time in the history of earth has man been master of it? For a breath, for a cloud's passing, and will remain master only until something grown stronger rests mastery from him, even as he rested it from his ravening kind, as they took it from the reptiles, as did the reptiles from the giant Saurians, which snatched it from the nightmare rulers of the Triassic, and so down to whatever held sway in the murk of earth dawn. Life, life, life, life everywhere, struggling for completion, life crowding other life aside, battling for its moment of supremacy, gaining it, holding it for one rise and fall of the wings of time, beating through eternity, and then hurled down, trampled under the feet of another, straining life whose hour has struck. Life, crowding outside every barred threshold, in a million circling worlds, yes, in a million rushing universes, pressing against the doors, bursting them down, overwhelming, forcing out those dwellers who had thought themselves so secure. And these, these, the voice suddenly dropped, became thickly, vibrantly resonant, over the threshold, within the house of man, nor does he even dream that his doors are down. These, things of metal whose brains are thinking crystals, things that suck their strength from the sun and whose blood is the lightning. The sun, the sun, he cried, there lies their weakness. The voice rose in pitch grew strident. Go back to the city, go back to the city, Walter, Drake, they are not invulnerable. No, the sun, strike them through the sun, go into the city, not invulnerable. The keeper of the cones, strike at the cones when the keeper of the cones, ah, ah, ah. We shrank back appalled for from the parted, scarcely moving lips in the unchanging face, a gust of laughter, mad, mocking, terrifying, racked its way. Vulnerable under the law, even as we, the cones. Go, he gasped. A tremor shook him, slowly the mouth closed. Martin, brother, wept, Ruth. I thrust my hand into his breast, felt the heart beating, with a curious suggestion of stubborn, unshakable strength, as though every vital force had concentrated there, as in a beleaguered citadel. But Ventner himself, the consciousness that was Ventner, was gone, had withdrawn into that subjective void in which he had said he floated, a lonely sentient atom, his one line of communication with us cut, severed from us as completely as though he were, as he had described it, outside space. And Drake and I looked at each other's eyes, neither daring to be the first to break the silence of which the muffled sobbing of the girl seemed to be the sorrowful soul. End of Chapter 13 Chapter 14 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. This reading by Anna Roberts. The Metal Monster by Abraham Merritt. Chapter 14 Free but a Monster The peculiar ability of the human mind to slip so readily into the refuge of the commonplace after, or even during, some well-nigh intolerable crisis, has been to me long one of the most interesting phenomena of our psychology. It is instinctively a protective habit, of course, acquired through precisely the same causes that had given to animals their protective coloration. The stripes, say, of the zebra and tiger that blend so cunningly with the barred and speckled shadowings of bush and jungle, the twig and leaf-like shapes and hues of certain insects, in fact, all that natural camouflage, which was the basis of the art of concealment so astonishingly developed in the late war. Like the animals of the wild, the mind of man moves through a jungle, the jungle of life, passing along paths beaten out by the thought of his countless forefathers in their progress from birth to death. And these paths are bordered and screened, figuratively and literally, with bush and trees of his own selection, setting out in cultivation, shelters of the familiar, the habitual, the customary. On these ancestral paths, within these barriers of usage, man moves hidden and secures the animals in their haunts, or so he thinks. Outside them lie the wilderness and the gardens of the unknown, and man's little trails are but the rabbit runs in an illimitable forest. But they are home to him. Therefore, it is that he scurries from some open place of revelation, some storm of emotion, some strength-testing struggle, back into the shelter of the obvious, finding it an intellectual environment that demands no slightest expenditure of mental energy or initiative, strength to sally forth again into the unfamiliar. I crave pardon for this digression. I set it down because now I remember how, when Drake at last broke the silence that had closed in upon the passing of that still, small voice, the essence of these thoughts occurred to me. He strode over to the weeping girl, and in his voice was a roughness that angered me until I realized his purpose. Get up, Ruth. He ordered. He came back once and he'll come back again. Now let him be and help us get a meal together. I'm hungry. She looked at him incredulously, indignation rising. Eat, she exclaimed. You can be hungry? You bet I can, and I am. He answered cheerfully. Come on, we've got to make the best of it. Ruth, I broken gently. We'll all have to think about ourselves a little if we're to be of any use to him. You must eat and then rest. No use crying in the milk even if it's spelt. Observed Drake, even more cheerfully brutal. I learned that at the front where we got so we'd yelp for food even when the lads who'd been bringing it were all mixed up in it. She lifted Ventner's head from her lap, rested it on the silks. A rose, eyes wrathful, her little hands closed in fists as though to strike him. Oh, you brute, she whispered. And I thought, I thought, oh, I hate you. That's better, said Dick. Go ahead and hit me if you want, the matter you get, the better you'll feel. For a moment, I thought she was going to take him in his word. Then her anger fled. Thanks, Dick, she said quietly. And while I sat studying Ventner, they put together a meal from the stores, brewed tea over the spirit lamp with water from the bubbling spring. In these common places, I knew that she at least was finding relief from that strain of the abnormal under which we had labored so long. To my surprise, I found that I was hungry, and with deeper relief I watched Ruth partake of food and drink, even though lightly. About her seemed to hover something of the ethereal, elusive, and disquieting. Was it the strangely pollucid light that gave the effect I wondered, and knew it was not, for as I scanned her covertly, there fell upon her face that shadow of inhuman tranquility, of unearthly withdrawal which, I guessed, had more than anything else maddened Ventner into his attack upon the disc. I watched her fight against it, drive it back. White lipped, she raised her head and met my gaze, and in her eyes I read both terror and shame. It came to me that painful as it might be for her, the time for questioning had come. Ruth, I said, I know it's not necessary to remind you that we're in a tight place. Every fact and every scrap of knowledge that we can lay hold of is of the utmost importance in enabling us to determine our course. I'm going to repeat your brother's question. What did Norhalla do to you, and what happened when you were floating before the disc? The blaze of interest in Drake's eyes at these questions changed to amazement at her stricken recoil from them. There was nothing, she whispered, then defiantly, nothing. I don't know what you mean. Ruth, I spoke sharply now in my own perplexity. You do know you must tell us for his sake, I pointed toward the ventner. She drew a long breath. You're right, of course, she said unsteadily. Only I thought maybe I could fight it out myself. But you'll have to know it, there's a taint upon me. I caught in Drake's swift glance the echo of my own thrill of apprehension for her sanity. Yes, she said, now quietly, some new and alien thing within my heart, my brain, my soul. It came to me from Norhalla when we rode the flying block, and he sealed upon me when I was in his, again, she crimsoned, embrace. And as we gazed at her incredulously, a thing that urges me to forget you two, and Martin, and all the world I've known, that tries to pull me from you, from all, to drift untroubled in some vast calm filled with an ordered ecstasy of peace, and whose calling I want, God help me, oh, so desperately to heed. It whispered to me first, she said, from Norhalla. When she put her arm around me, it whispered and then seemed to float from her and cover me like a veil, and from head to foot. It was a quietness and peace that held within it a happiness at one, and the same time utterly tranquil and utterly free. I seemed to be at the doorway to unknown ecstasies, and the life I had known only a dream, and you, all of you, even Martin, dreams within a dream. You weren't real, and you did not matter. Hypnotism, muttered Drake as she paused. No, she shook her head. No, more than that. The wonder of it grew and grew. I thrilled with it. I remember nothing of that ride, saw nothing, except that once, through the peace in folding me, pierced warning that Martin was in peril, and I broke through to see him clutching Norhalla, and to see floating up in her eyes death for him, and I saved him and again forgot. Then when I saw that beautiful flaming shape, I felt no terror, no fear, only a tremendous joyous anticipation as though, as though she faltered, hung her head, then leaving that sentence unfinished, whispered, and when it lifted me, it was as though I had come at last out of some endless black ocean of despair into the full sun of paradise. Ruth, cried Drake, and at the pain in his cry she winced. Wait, she said, and held up a little tremulous hand. You asked, and now you must listen. She was silent, and when once more she spoke her voice was low, curiously rhythmic, her eyes wrapped. I was free, free from every human fetter of fear or sorrow or love or hate, free even of hope, for what was there to hope for when everything desirable was mine, and I was elemental, one with the eternal things, yet fully conscious that I was I. It was as though I were the shining shadow of a star afloat upon the breast of some still and hidden woodland pool, as though I were a little wind dancing among the mountaintops, a mist whirling down a quiet glen, a shimmering lance of the aurora pulsing in the high solitudes. And there was music, strange and wondrous music and terrible, but not terrible to me, who was part of it. Vast chords and singing themes that rang like clusters of little swinging stars and harmonies that were like the very voice of infinite law resolving within itself all discords, and all, all passionless yet rapturous. Out of the thing that held me, out from its fires pulsed vitality, a flood of inhuman energy in which I was bathed. And it was as though this energy were reassembling me, fitting me even closer to the elemental things, changing me fully into them. I felt the little tendrils touching, caressing, then came the shots. Awakening was dreadful, struggling back from drowning. I saw Martin blasted. I drove the spell away from me, tore it away. And oh, Walter, Dick, it hurt, it hurt, and for a breath before I ran to him, it was like, like coming from a world in which there was no disorder, no sorrow, no doubts, a rhythmic harmonious world of light and music into, into a world that was like a black and dirty kitchen. And it's there, her voice rose hysterically. It's still within me, whispering, urging me away from you, from Martin, from every human thing, bidding me give myself up, surrender my humanity. It's seal, she sobbed. No, his seal, an alien consciousness sealed within me that tries to make the human me a slave that waits to overcome my will. And if I surrender, gives me freedom, an incredible freedom, but makes me being still human a monster. She hit her face in her hands, quivering. If I could sleep, she wailed. But I'm afraid to sleep. I think I shall never sleep again. For sleeping, how do I know what I may be when I wake? I caught Drake's eye, he nodded. I slipped my hand down into the medicine case, brought forth a certain potent and tasteless combination of drugs which I carry upon explorations. I dropped a little into her cup, then held it to her lips, like a child and thinking she obeyed and drank. But I'll not surrender. Her eyes were tragic. Never think it. I can win. Don't you know I can? Win, Drake dropped down beside her, drew her toward him. Bravest girl I've ever known, of course you'll win. And remember this, nine tenths of what you're thinking now is purely overwrought nerves and weariness. You'll win and we'll win, never doubt it. I don't, she said. I know it. Oh, it will be hard, but I will, I will end of Chapter 14. Chapter 15 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 Lucy LaFaro. The Metal Monster. By Abraham Merritt. Chapter 15. The House of Nohalla. Her eyes closed, her body relaxed. The potion had done its work quickly. We laid her beside Vettnoe on the pile of silk and stuffs, covered them both with a fold, then looked at each other long and silently. And I wondered whether my face was as grim and drawn as his. It appears, he said at last, curtly, that it's up to you and me for power our quick. I hope you're not sleepy. I am not, I answered as curtly, the edge of nerves in his manner of questioning, doing nothing to soothe my own. And even if I were, I would hardly expect to put all the burden of the present problem upon you by going to sleep. For God's sake, don't be a prima donna, he fled up. I meant no offence. There's nothing inexplicable in that at any rate, I answered. Abnormal sensitivity of perception due to the cutting off of all sensual impressions. There's nothing uncommon in that. You have its most familiar form in the some special ones of her own. I've an idea, I hesitated, an idea that there was no exaggeration in that story, she told, an idea that if anything, she underplayed it. I too, I replied somberly. And to me, it is the most hideous phase of this whole situation. And for reasons not all connected with Ruth, I added. Hideous, he repeated, unthinkable. Yet all this is unthinkable. And still it is. And Vettno, coming back that way, like a lost soul finding voice. Was it raving, Goodwin? Or could he have been? How was it? He put it in touch with these things, and their purpose? Was that message truth? Ask yourself that question, I said. Man, you know it was truth. Had not inklings of it come to you even before he spoke? They had to me. His message was but an interpretation, a synthesis of facts. I, for one, lacked the courage to admit. I too, he nodded. But he went further than that. What did he mean by the keeper of the cones, and that the things were vulnerable under the same law that orders us? And why did he command us to go back to the city? How could he know? How could he? There's nothing inexplicable in that at any rate, I answered. Abnormal sensitivity of perception, due to the cutting off of all sensual impressions. There's nothing uncommon in that. You have its most familiar form in the sensitivity of the blind. You've watched the same thing at work in certain forms of hypnotic experimentation, haven't you? Through the operation of entirely understandable causes, the mind gains the power to react to vibrations that normally pass unperceived, is able to protect itself through this keying up of perception into a wider area of consciousness than the normal. Just as in certain diseases of the ear, the sufferer, though death to sounds within the average range of hearing, is fully aware of sound vibrations far above and far below those the healthy ear registers. I know, he said. I don't need to be convinced. But we accept these things in theory. And when we get up against them for ourselves, we doubt. How many people are there in Christendom, do you think, who believe that the Saviour ascended from the dead? But who, if they saw it today, would insist upon medical inspection, doctor certificates, a clinic, and even after that render a scotch verdict? I'm not speaking irreverently. I'm just stating a fact. Suddenly he moved away from me, strode over to the curtained oval through which Norhala had gone. Dick! I cried, following him hastily. Where are you going? What are you going to do? I'm going after Norhala, he answered. I'm going to have a showdown with her, or know the reason why. Drake! I cried again aghast. Don't make the mistake Ventnor did. That's not the way to win through. Don't! I beg you, don't! You're wrong, he answered stubbornly. I'm going to get her. She's got to talk. He thrust out a hand to the curtains. Before he could touch them they were parted. Out from between them slithered the black eunuch. He stood motionless, regarding us. In the ink-black eyes a red flame of hatred. I pushed myself between him and Drake. Where is your mistress, Eurick? I asked. The goddess has gone, he replied sullenly. Gone, I said suspiciously, for certainly Norhala had not passed us. Where? Who shall question the goddess? he asked. She comes and she goes as she pleases. I translated this for Drake. He's got to show me, he said. Don't think I'm going to spill any beans, Goodwin, but I want to talk to her. I think I'm right. Honestly I do. After all, I reflected. There was much in his determination to recommend it. It was the obvious thing to do. Unless we admitted that Norhala was superhuman, and that I would not admit. Incommer, and of forces, we did not yet know. And rapport with these people of metal, sealed with that alien consciousness, Ruth had described. All these, yes. But still a woman. Of that I was certain. And surely Drake could be trusted not to repeat Ventnor's error. Eurick, I said, we think you lie. We would speak to your mistress. Take us to her. I have told you that the goddess is not here, he said. If you do not believe, it is nothing to me. I cannot take you to her, for I do not know where she is. Is it your wish that I take you through her house? It is, I said. The goddess has commanded me to serve you in all things. He bowed sardonically. Follow. Our search was short. We stepped out into what, for want of better words, I can describe only as a central hall. It was circular and strewn with thick, piled, small rugs, whose hues had been softened by the alchemy of time into exquisite, shadowy echoes of colour. The walls of this hall were of the same substance that had enclosed the chamber upon whose inner threshold we were. They whirled straight up to the dome into a crystalline cylindrical cone. Four doorways like that in which we stood pierced them. Through each of their curtainings, in turn, we peered. All were precisely similar in shape and proportions, radiating in a lunated, curved base triangle from the middle chamber, the curvature of the enclosing globe, forming back wall and roof, the translucent slicing the sides, the circle of floor of the inner hall, the truncating lunette. The first of these chambers was utterly bare. The one opposite held a half-dozen suits of the lacquered armour, as many wicked-looking, short and double-edge swords and long javelins. The third I judged to be the lair of Uruk. Within it was a copper brassiere, a standard spears, and a gigantic bow, a quiver full of arrows leaning beside it. The fourth room was littered with coffers great and small, of wood and of bronze, and all tightly closed. The fifth room was beyond question Nohala's bed-chamber. Upon its floor the ancient rugs were thick, a low couch of cavern ivory inset with gold rested a few feet from the doorway. A dozen or more of the chests were scattered about and flowing over with silken stuffs. Upon the back of four golden lions stood a high mirror of polished silver, and close to it, in curiously incongruous domestic array stood a stiffly marshaled row of sandals. Upon one of the chests were heaped combs and fillets of shell, and gold and ivory, studded with jewels blue and jello and crimson. To all of these we gave but a passing glance. We sought for Nohala, and of her we found no shadow. She had gone even as the black eunuch had said, flitting unseen past Ruth, perhaps absorbed in her watch over her brother, perhaps through some hidden opening in this room of hers. Eureklet dropped the curtains, sidled back to the first room way after him. The two there had not moved. We drew the saddlebags close, propped ourselves against them. The black eunuch squatted a dozen feet away facing us, chin upon his knees, taking us in with unblinking eyes, blank of any motion. Then he began to move slowly his tremendously long arms in easy soothing motion, the hands running along the floor, upon their talons in arcs and circles. It was curious how these hands seemed to be endowed with the volition of their own, independent of the arms upon which they swung. And now I could see only the hands, shutling so smoothly, so rhythmically back and forth, weaving so sleepily, so sleepily back and forth, black hands that dripped sleep. Hypnotic. Hypnotic I sprang from the lethargy closing upon me. In one quick side-glance I saw Drake's head nodding, nodding in time to the movement of the black hands. I jumped to my feet, shaking with an intensity of rage unfamiliar to me, thrust my pistol into the wrinkled face. Damn you, I cried. Stop that. Stop it and turn your back. The corded muscles of the arms contracted. The claws of the slithering paws drew in as though he were about to clutch me. The ebb and pools of eyes were covered with a frozen film of hate. He could not have known what was this tube with which I menaced him. But its threat he certainly sensed and was afraid to meet. He squatted about, wrapped his arms around his knees, crouched his back toward us. What's the matter? asked Drake drowsily. He tried to hypnotise us, I answered shortly, and pretty nearly did. So that's what it was. He was now wide awake. I watched those hands of his, and got sleepier and sleepier. I guess we'd better time Mr. Eurek up. He jumped to his feet. No, I said, restraining him. No. He's safe enough, as long as we're on the alert. I don't want to use any force on him yet. Wait until we know we can get something worthwhile by doing it. All right. He nodded grimly. But when the time comes, I'm telling you straight doc, I'm going the limit. There's something about that human spider that makes me itch to squash him, slowly. I'll have no compunction when it's worthwhile, he answered grimly. We sank down again against the saddle bags. Drake brought out a black pipe, looked at it sorrowfully, at me appealingly. All mine was on that pony that bolted, I answered his wistfulness. All mine was on my beast too, he sighed, and I lost my pouch in that spurt from the ruins. He sighed again, clamped white teeth down upon the stem. Of course, he said at last, if Fetnor was right in that, that disembodied analysis of his, it's rather well terrifying, isn't it? It's all of that I replied, and considerably more. Metal, he said, Drake mused, things of metal with brains of thinking crystal and their blood the lightnings. You accept that? So far as my own observation has gone, yes, I said, metallic, yet mobile, inorganic, but with all the quantities we have here there too thought only those of the organic, and with others added, crystalline, of course, in structure and highly complex, activated by magnetic electric forces, consciously exerted, and as much a part of their life as brain energy and nerve currents are of our human life, animate, moving, sentient combinations of metal and electric energy. He said, the opening of the disk from the globe and of the two blasting stars from the pyramids show the flexibility of the outer, plate, would you call it? I couldn't help thinking of the armadillo after I had time to think at all. It may be. I struggled against the conviction now strong upon me. It may be that within that metallic shell is an organic body, something soft, animal, as there is within the horny carapace of the turtle, the necrious valves of the oyster, the shells of the crustaceans. It may be that even their inner surface is organic. No, I interrupted. If there is a body as we know a body, it must be between the outer surface and the inner, for the latter is crystal, dual-hard, impenetrable. Goodwin, Vettner's bullets hit fair. I saw them strike. They did not ricochet. They dropped dead, like flies dashed up against a rock, and the thing was no more conscious of their striking than a rock would have been of those flies. Drake, I said, my own conviction is that these creatures are absolutely metallic, entirely inorganic, incredible, unknown forms. Let us go on that basis. I think so too, he nodded, but I wanted you to say it first, and yet is it so incredible, Goodwin? What is the definition of vital intelligence? Sentience? Heichels is the accepted one. Anything which can receive a stimulus that can react to a stimulus and retains memory of a stimulus must be called an intelligent, conscious entity. The gap between what we have long called the organic and the inorganic decreasing. Do you know of the remarkable experiments of Lily upon various metals? Vaguely, I said. Lily, he went on, proved that under the electric current and other exciting mediums metals exhibited practically every reaction of the human nerve and muscle. It grew weary, rested, and after resting was perceptibly stronger than before. It got what was practically indigestion and it exhibited a peculiar but unmistakable memory. Also he found it could acquire disease and die. Lily concluded that there existed a real metallic consciousness. It was Le Bon who first proved also more sensitive than man, and that its immobility is only apparent. Le Bon in Evolution of Matter Chapter 11 Take the block of magnetic iron that stands so grey and apparently lifeless. Subject it to a magnetic current lifeless. What happens? The iron block is composed of molecules which under ordinary conditions are disposed of multiple directions indifferently. But when the current passes through there is tremendous movement in that apparently inert mass. All of the tiny particles of which it is composed turn and shift until their north poles all point more or less approximately in the direction of the magnetic force. When that happens it is moved with and surrounded by a field of magnetic energy, instinct with it. Outwardly it has not moved. Actually there has been prodigious motion. But it is not conscious motion I objected. Ah, but how do you know? He asked. If Jacques Loeb is right that action of the iron molecules is every bit as conscious a movement as the least and the greatest of our own. There is absolutely no difference between them. Your and my and it's every movement is nothing but an involuntary and inevitable reaction to a certain stimulus. If he's right then I'm a buttercup. But that's neither here nor there. Loeb, all he did was to restate destiny. One of humanity's oldest ideas in the terms of tropism, infusoria and light. Omar K.M. chemically reincarnated in the Rockefeller Institute. Nevertheless those who accept his theories have to admit that there is essentially no difference between their impulses and the rush of filings toward a magnet. Equally nevertheless, Goodwin the iron does meet Heichel's three tests. It can receive a stimulus, it does react to that stimulus and it retains memory of it. For even after the current has ceased it remains changed in tensile strength, conductivity and other qualities of that current. And as time passes this memory fades. Precisely as some human experience increases weariness, caution which keying up of qualities remains with us after the experience has passed and fades away in the ratio of our sensitivity plus retentiveness divided by the time elapsing from the original experience exactly as it is in the iron. Professor Jacques Loweb of the Rockefeller Institute New York. The mechanistic conception of life. End of Chapter 15. Chapter 16 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. The Metal Monster by Adam Merritt. Chapter 16. Conscious Metal. Granted, I acquiesce, we now come to their means of locomotion. In as simplest terms all locomotion is progressed through space against the force of gravitation. Man's Walk is a series of rhythmic stumbles against this force that constantly strives to drag him down to Earth's face and keep him pressed there. Gravitation is an atheric magnetic vibration akin to the force which holds to use your simile again Drake the filing against the magnet. A walk is a constant breaking of the current. Take a motion, picture of a man walking and run it through a lantern rapidly and he seems to be flying. We have none of the awkward fallings and recoveries that are the tempo of walking as we see it. I take it that the movement of these things is a conscious breaking of the gravitational current just as much as is our own movement, but by a rhythm so swift that it appears to be continuous. Doubtless if we could so control our sight as to admit the vibrations of light slowly enough, we would see this apparently smooth motion as a series of leaps just as we do when the motion picture operator slows down his machine sufficiently to show us walking in a series of stumbles. Very well, so far then we have nothing in this phenomenon which the human mind cannot conceive as possible. Therefore intellectually we still remain masters of the phenomena for it is only that which human thought cannot encompass which it need fear. A metallic, he said, and crystalline. And yet why not? What are we but bags of skin filled with certain substances in solution and stretched over a supporting and mobile mechanism largely made up of light? Out of that primeval jelly which Gregory calls proto-bion came after untold millions of years us with our skin, our nails and our hair. Came to the serpents with their scales the birds with their feathers the horny hide of the rhionoceros and the fairy wings of the butterfly the shell of the crab the gosma loveliness of the moth and the shimmering wonder of the mother of pearl. Is there any greater gap between any of these and the metallic? I think not. Not materially I answered, no, but there remains consciousness. That, he said, I cannot understand. Vento spoke of, how did he put it, a group consciousness operating in our spear and in spears above and below ours with senses known and unknown. I got glimpses, Goodwin, but I cannot understand. We have agreed for reasons that seem sufficient to us to call these things metallic, Dick, I reply, but that does not necessarily mean that they are composed of any metal that we know. Nevertheless, being metal, they must be of crystalline structure. As Gregory has pointed out, crystals and what we call living matter had an equal start in the first essentials of life. We cannot conceive life without giving it the attribute of some sort of consciousness. Hunger cannot be anything but conscious and there is no other stimulus to eat but hunger. The crystals eat. The extraction of power from food is consciousness. The extraction of power from food is conscious because it is purposeful and there can be no purpose without consciousness. Similarly, the power to work from such derived energy is also purposeful and therefore conscious. The crystals do both and the crystals can transmit all these abilities to their children just as we do. For though there would seem to be no reason why they should not continue to grow to gigantic size under favorable conditions, yet they do not. They reach a size beyond which they do not develop. Instead they bud, give birth in fact to smaller ones which increase until they reach the size of the preceding generation. And like the children of man and animals, these younger generations grow on precisely as their progenitals. Very well then, we arrive at the conception of a metallic crystalline being which by some explosion of force of evolution has burst from the to us familiar and apparently inert stage into these things that hold us. And is there any greater difference between the forms with which we are familiar and them than there is between us and the quarly amphibian which is our remote ancestor or between that and the amoeba, the little swimming stomach from which it evolved or the amoeba and the inert jelly of the proto-bion? As for what Fenter calls a group consciousness, I would assume that he means a communal intelligence such as that shown by the bees and the ants that in the case of the former metalink calls the spirit of the hive. It is shown in their groupings just as the geometric arrangement of those groupings shows also clearly their crystalline intelligence. I submit that in their rapid coordination either for tack or movement or work without apparent communication having passed between the udens there is nothing more remarkable than the swarming of a hive of bees. But also without apparent communication just so many wax makers, nurses, honey gatherers, chemists, bread makers and all the various specialists of the hive go with the old queen leaving behind sufficient number of each class for the needs of the young queen. All this apportionment is affected without any means of communication that we recognise. Still it is most obviously intelligent selection for if it were haps hazard all the honey makers might leave and the hive starve all the chemists might go and the food for the young bees be not properly prepared and so on. But metal he muttered and conscious It's all very well but where did that consciousness come from and what is it and where did they come from and most of all why haven't they overrun the world before this such development as there is such an evolution presupposes eons of time long as it took us to drag up from the lizards what have they been doing why haven't they been ready to strike if Fent is right I don't know I answered helplessly but evolution is not the slow plotting process that Darwin thought there seem to be explosions nature will create a new form almost in a night then comes the long ages of development and adjustment and suddenly another new race appears It might be so of these some extraordinary conditions that shaped them or they might have developed through the ages in spaces within the earth there's that incredible abyss we saw that is evidently one of their highways or they might have dropped here upon some fragment of a broken world found in this valley the right conditions and developed in amazing rapidity they're all possible theories take your pick some things held them back and they're rushing to a climax he whispered Benton was right about that I feel it and what can we do go back to their city I said go back as he ordered I believe he knows what he's talking about and I believe he'll be able to help us it wasn't just a request he made nor even an appeal it was a command but what can we do just two men against these things he groaned maybe we'll find out when we're back in the city I answered well his old reckless cheerfulness came back to him in every crisis of this old globe it's been up to one man to turn the trick where to the worst we can only go down fighting a little before the rest of us so after all whatever the hell what the hell for a time we were silent well he said at last we have to go to the city in the morning he laughed sounds as though we were living in the suburbs somehow doesn't him he can't be many hours before dawn I said turn in for a while I'll wake you and I think you've slept enough it doesn't seem fair he protested but sleepily I'm not sleepy I told him nor was I but whether I was or not I wanted to question Yarek uninterrupted and undisturbed Drake stretched himself out when his breathing showed him fast asleep indeed I slipped over to the black unit and crouched right hand close to the butt of my automatic facing him end of chapter 16 chapter 17 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 Al Dano the metal monster by Abraham Merritt chapter 17 Yarek Yarek I whispered you love us as the wheat field loves the hail we are as welcome to you as the death cord to the condemned low a door opened into a land of unpleasant dreams you thought sealed and we came through answer my questions truthfully and it may be that we shall return through that door interest welled up in the depths the black eyes there is a way from here he muttered nor does it pass through them I can show it to you I had not been blind to the flash of malice of cunning that had shot across the wrinkled face where does that way lead I asked there were those who sought us men clad in armor with javelins and arrows does your way lead to them Yarek for a time he hesitated the lashless lids half closed yes he said suddenly the way leads to them to their place but will it not be safer for you there among your kind I don't know that it will I answered promptly those who are unlike us smote those who are like us and drove them back when they would have taken and slain us why is it not better to remain with them than to go to our kind who would destroy us they would not he said if you gave them her he thrust a long thumb backward toward sleeping-rooth Cherkis would forgive much for her and why should you not she is only a woman he spat in a way that made me want to kill him besides he ended have you no arts to amuse him Cherkis I asked Cherkis he whined is your a fool not to know that in the world without new things have it reasons since long ago we fled from Iskander into the secret valley what have you to be guile Cherkis beyond this woman flesh much I think go then to him Cherkis there was a familiar sound to that Cherkis of course it was the name of Xerxes the Persian conqueror corrupted by time into this Cherkis and Iskander equally of course Alexander Ventner had been right Uruk I demanded directly is she whom you call the goddess Norhala of the people of Cherkis long ago he answered long long ago there was trouble in their city even in the great wedding place of Cherkis I fled with her who was the mother of the goddess there were 20 of us and we fled here by the way which I will show you he leered cunningly I gave no sign of interest she who was the mother of the goddess found favor in the sight of the ruler here he went on but after a time she grew old and ugly and withered so he slew her like a little mound of dust she danced and blew away after he had slain her and also he slew others who had grown displeasing to him he blasted me as he was blasted he pointed to Ventner then it was that recovering I found my crooked shoulder the goddess was born here she is kin to him who rules how else could she shed the lightnings was not the father of Iskander the god Zeus Amon who came to Iskander's mother in the form of a great snake well at any rate the goddess was born shed her of the lightnings even from her birth and she is as you see her cleave to your kind cleave to your kind suddenly he shrilled better it is to be whipped by your brother than to be eaten by the tiger cleave to your kind look I will show you the way to them he sprang to his feet clasped my wrist in one of his long hands led me through the curtain oval into the cylindrical hall parted the curtainings of Noahala's bedroom and pushed me within over the floor he slid still holding fast to me and pressed against the father wall an ovoid slice of the gem like material slid aside revealing a doorway I glimpsed a path a trail leading into a forest pallid green beneath the wan light this way thrust itself like a black tongue into the and vanished into the depths follow it he pointed take those who came with you and follow it the wrinkles upon his face writhed with his eagerness will you go panted yurk you will take them and go by that path not yet I answered absently not yet and was brought abruptly to full alertness vigilance by the flame of rage that filled the eyes thrust so close lead back I directed curtly he slid the door into place turned suddenly I followed wondering what were the sources of the bitter hatred he so plainly bore for us the reasons for his eagerness to be rid of us despite the commands of this woman who to him at least was goddess and by that curious human habit of seeking for the complex when the simple answer lies close failed to recognize that it was jealousy of us that was the root of his behavior that he wished to be as it would seem he had been for years the only human thing near nohalla failed to realize this and with ruth and drake was terribly to pay for this failure I looked down upon the pair sleeping soundly upon ventner lost still at trance sit I ordered the eunuch and turn your back to me I dropped down beside drake my mind wrestling with the mystery but every sense alert for movement from the black glibly enough I had passed over dicks questioning as to the consciousness of the metal people now I faced it knowing it to be the very crux of these incredible phenomena admitting to that despite all my special pleading about that point swirled in my own mind the thickest mists of uncertainty that their sense of order was immensely beyond a man's was plain as plain was it that their knowledge of magnetic force and its manipulation were far beyond the sphere of humanity that they had realization of beauty in this place of nohalla's proved and no human nation could have conceived it nor human hands have made its thought of beauty real what were their senses through which their consciousness fed nine in number had been the sapphire ovals set within the golden zone of the disk clearly it came to me that these were sense organs but nine senses and the great stars how many had they and the cubes did they open as did globe and pyramid consciousness itself after all what is it a secretion of the brain the cumulative expression holy chemical of the multitudes of cells that form us the inexplicable governor of the city of the body of which these myriads of cells are the citizens and created by them out of themselves to rule is it what many call the soul or is it a finer form of matter a self realizing force which uses the body as its vehicle just as other forces use for their vestments other machines after all I thought what is this conscious self of ours the ego but a spark of realization running continuously along the path of time within the mechanism we call the brain making contact along the path as the electric spark at the end of a wire is there a sea of this conscious force which laps the shores of the farthest flung stars that finds expression in everything man and rock metal and flower jewel and cloud this expression only by the limitations of that which animates and in essence the same in all if so then this problem of life of the metal people seems to be a problem was answered so thinking I became aware of increasing light strode past york to the door and peeped out dawn was paling the sky I stooped over drake shook him on the instant he was awake alert I only need a little sleep dick I said when the sun is well up call me why it's dawn he whispered goodwin you ought not to have left me sleep so long I feel like a damned pig never mind I said but watch the unit closely I rolled myself up in his warm blanket sank almost instantly into dreamless slumber end of chapter 17 york recording by al dano chapter 18 of the metal monster this is a libervox recording all libervox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libervox.org recording by calmdragon the metal monster by abraham merit chapter 18 into the pit I was the sun when I awakened or so I supposed opening my eyes upon a flood of daylight as I lay lazily recollection rushed upon me it was no sky into which I was gazing it was the dome of norhala's elfin home and drake I did not arouse me why and how long had I slept I jumped to my feet stared about ruth nor drake nor the black eunuch was there ruth I shouted drake there was no answer I ran to the doorway peering up into the white vault of the heavens I set the time of day as close to seven I had slept in three hours more or less at that time of slumber had been I felt marvelously refreshed re-energize the effect I was certain of the extraordinarily tonic qualities of the atmosphere of this place but where were the others where are you ruth I heard ruth's laughter some hundreds yards to the left half hidden by a screen of flowering shrubs I saw a small meadow within it a half dozen little white goats nuzzled around her and dick she was milking one of them reassured I drew back into the chamber knelt over ventnor his condition was unchanged my gaze fell upon the pool that had been norhala's bath longingly I looked at it then satisfying myself that the milking process was not finished slipped off my clothes and splashed about I had just time to get back into my clothes when through the doorway came the pair carrying a porcelain panikin full of milk there was no shadow of fear or horror on her face it was the old ruth who stood before me nor was their effort in the smile she gave me she had been washed clean in the waters of sleep don't worry walter she said I know what you're thinking but I'm me again where is urik I turned to drake brusquely to smother the sob of sheer happiness rising in my throat and at his wink and warning grimace abruptly forbode to press the question you men pick out the things and I'll get breakfast ready said ruth drake picked up the tea kettle and motioned me before him about urik he whispered when he had gotten outside I gave him a little object lesson persuaded him to go down the line a bit showed him my pistol and then picked off one of norhala's goats with it waited to do it but I knew it would be good for his soul he gave one screech and fell on his face and groveled thought it was a lightning bolt I figure decided I had been stealing norhala's stuff urik I told him that's what you'll get and worse if you lay a finger on that girl inside there and then what happened I asked he beat it back there he grinned pointing toward the forest through which ran the path the eunuch had shown me probably hiding back of a tree as we filled the container at the outer spring I told him of the revelations and the offer urik had made to me whoa he whistled in the nutcracker a trouble behind us and trouble in front of us when do we start he asked as we turned back right after we've eaten I answered there's no use putting it off how do you feel about it frankly like the chief guest at a lynching party he said curious but none too cheerful nor was I I was filled with a fever of scientific curiosity but I was not cheerful no we ministered to vet nor as well as we could forcing open his set jaws thrusting a thin rubber tube down past his windpipe into his gullet and dropping through it a few ounces of the goat milk our own breakfasting was silent enough we could not take Ruth with us upon our journey that was certain she must stay here with her brother she would be safer at norhalla's home than where we were going of course and yet to leave her was most distressing after all I wondered was there any need of both of us taking the journey would not one do just as well Drake could stay no use putting all of our eggs in one basket I broached the subject I'll go down by myself while you stay and help Ruth you can always follow me if I don't turn up in a reasonable time his indignation at this proposal was matched only by her own you'll go with him Dick Drake she cried or I'll never look at or speak to you again good lord did you think for a minute I wouldn't pain and wrath struggled on his face we go together or neither of us goes Ruth will be alright here goodwin the only thing she has any cause to fear is Uruk and he's had his lesson besides she'll have the rifles and her pistols and she knows how to use them what do you mean by making such a proposition as that his indignation burst all bounds lamely I tried to justify myself I'll be alright said Ruth I'm not afraid of Uruk one of these things will hurt me not after not after her eyes fell her lips quivered then she faced us steadily don't ask me how I know that she said quietly believe me I do know it I am closer to them than you two are and if I chose I can call upon that alien strength their master gave me it is for you two that I fear no fear for us straight burst out hastily we're no hollers to play things we're taboo take it from me Ruth I'd bet my head there isn't one of these things great or small and no matter how many that doesn't by this time know all about us we'll probably be received with demonstrations of interest by the populace as a welcome guest probably we'll find a sign our city hung up over the front gate she smiled a trifle tremulously we'll come back he said suddenly he leaned forward put his hands on her shoulders do you think there is anything that could keep me from coming back he whispered she trembled wide-eyed searching deep into his well I broke in a bit uncomfortably we'd better be starting I think as Drake does that we're taboo barring accident there's no danger and if I guess right about these things accident is impossible as inconceivable as the multiplication table going wrong he laughed straightening and so we made ready our rifles would be worse than useless we knew our pistols we decided to carry as Drake put it for comfort canteens filled with water a couple of emergency rations a few instruments including a small spectroscope a selection from the medical kit all these packed in a little haversack which he threw over his broad shoulders I pocketed my compact but exceedingly powerful field glasses to my poignant and everlasting regret my camera had been upon the bolting pony and Vettnor had long been out of films for his we were ready for our journey our path led straight away a smooth and dark grey road whose surface resembled cement packed under enormous pressure it was all of 50 feet wide now and in daylight glistened faintly as though overlaid with some viturous coating it narrowed abruptly into a wedged way that stopped at the threshold of Norhala's door diminishing through the distance it stretched straight as an arrow onward and vanished between perpendicular cliffs which formed the frowning gateway through which the night before we had passed upon the coursing cubes from the pit of the city here as then a mistiness checked the gaze Ruth with us we made a brief inspection of the surroundings of Norhala's house it was said as though in the narrowest portion of an hourglass the precipitous walls marched inward from the gateway forming the lower half of the figure at the back they swung apart at a wider angle this upper part of the hourglass was filled with a park-like forest it was closed perhaps 20 miles away by a barrier of cliffs how, I wondered did the path which Uruk had pointed out to me pierced them was it by pass or tunnel and why was it the armored men had not found and followed it the waste between these two mountain wedges was a valley not more than a mile wide Norhala's house stood in its center and it was like a garden dotted with flowering and fragrant lilies and here and there a tiny green meadow the great globe of blue that was Norhala's dwelling seemed less to rest upon the ground than to emerge from it as though its basic curvatures were hidden in the earth what was its substance I could not tell it was as though built of the lacquer of the gems whose color it held and beautiful wondrously incredibly beautiful it was an immense bubble of froth of molten sapphires and turquoise we had not time to study its beauties a few last instructions to Ruth and we set forth down the grey road hardly had we taken a few steps when there came a faint cry from her Dick? Dick? come here whisper, caught her hands in his for a moment half frightened it seemed she considered him Dick? I heard her whisper Dick? come back safe to me I saw his arms close about her hers tightened around his neck black hair touched the silken brown curls their lips met clung I turned away in little time he joined me head down silent hide me utterly dejected a hundred more yards and we turned Ruth was still standing on the threshold of the house of mystery watching us she waved her hands flitted in she was hidden from us and drake still silent we pushed on the walls of the gateway were close the sparse vegetation along the base of the cliffs had ceased the roadway itself had merged into the entire floor of the canyon from vertical edge to vertical edge of the rocky portal stretched a curtain of shimmering mist as we drew nearer we saw that this was motionless and less like vapor of water than vapor of light it streamed in oddly fixed lines like atoms of crystals in a still solution drake thrust an arm within it waved it the mist did not move it seemed instead to interpenetrate the arm as though bone and flesh were spectral without power to dislodge the shining particles from position we passed within it side by side instantly I knew that whatever these veils were they were not moisture the air we breathed was dry electric I was sensible of a decided simulation tingling along every nerve a gait he almost slight headed we could see each other quite plainly the rocky floor on which we trod as well within this vapor of light there was no ghost of sound it was utterly empty of it I saw drake turn to me his mouth opened in a laugh his lips move in speech and although he bent close to my ear I heard nothing he frowned puzzled and walked on abruptly we stepped into an opening a pocket of clear air our ears were filled with a high shrill humming as unpleasantly vibrant as the shriek of a sandblast six feet to our right was the edge of the ledge on which we stood beyond it was a sheer drop into space a shaft piercing down into the void and walled with the mists but it was not that shaft that made us clutch each other no it was that through it up rose a colossal column of the cubes it stood a hundred feet from us its top was another hundred feet above the level of our ledge and its length vanished in the depths and its head was a gigantic spinning wheel yards and thickness tapering at its point of contact with the cliff wall into a diameter half that of the side closest the column gleaming with flashes of green flame and grinding with tremendous speed at the face of the rock over it attached the cliff was a great visored hood of some pale yellow metal and it was this shelter that cutting off the vaporous light like an enormous umbrella made the pocket of clarity when which we stood the shaft up which sprang the pillar all along the length of that column as far as we could see the myriad tiny eyes of the metal people shown out upon us not twinkling mischievously but grotesque as this may seem I cannot help it wide with surprise only an instant longer did the great wheel spin I saw the screaming rock melting beneath it dropping like lava then as though it had received some message abruptly its motion now ceased it tilted looked down upon us I noted that its grinding the surface was studded thickly with the smaller pyramids and that the tips of these were each capped with what seemed to be fauceted gems gleaming with the same pale yellow radiance as the shrine of the cones the column was bending the wheel approaching Drake seized me by the arm drew me swiftly back into the mists we were shrouded in their silences step by step we went on peering for the edge of the shelf looking in fancy that prodigious wheeled face stealing upon us afraid to look behind lest in looking we might step too close to the unseen verge yard after yard we slowly covered suddenly the vapors thinned we passed out of them a chaos of sound beat about us the clanging of a million anvils the clamor of a million forges the crashing of a hundred yards of thunder the roaring of thousand hurricanes the prodigious bellowings of the pit beating against us now as they had when we had flown down the long ramp into the depths of the sea of light instinct with unthinkable power was that clamor the very voice of force stunned nay blinded by it we covered ears and eyes as before the clangers died leaving in its wake a bewildered silence then that silence began to throb with a vast humming and through that humming rang a murmur as that of a river of diamonds we opened our eyes felt awe grip our throats as though a hand had clutched them difficult difficult almost beyond thought is it for me now to assay to draw in words the scene before us then for although I can set down what is what we saw I nor any man can transmute into phrases its essence its spirit the intangible wonder that was its synthesis the appallingly beautiful soul shaking strangeness of it its grandeur its fantasy its alien terror the domain of the metal monster it was filled like a chalice with its will was the visible expression of that will we stood at the very rim of a wide ledge we looked down into an immense pit shaped into a perfect oval 30 miles in length I judged and half that is wide and rimmed with colossal precipices we were at the upper end of this deep valley and on the tip of its axis I mean that it stretched longitudinally before us along the line of greatest length 500 feet below was the pit's floor gone were the clouds of light that obscured it the night before the air crystal clear every detail standing out with stereoscopic sharpness first the eyes rested upon a broad band of fluorescent amethyst ringing the entire rocky wall it girdled the cliffs at a height of 10,000 feet and from this flaming zone as though it clutched them fell the curtains of sparkling mist the enigmatic sound slaying vapors but now I saw that all of these were not motionless like those through which we had just passed to the northwest they were pulsing like the aurora and like the aurora they were shot through with swift iridescences spectrums polychromatic gleamings and always these were ordered geometric like immense and flitting prismatic crystals flying swiftly to the very edges of the veils then darting a swiftly back one in veils the gaze leap to the incredible city towering not two miles away from us blue black shining sharply cut as though from polished steel it reared full 5,000 feet on high how great it was I could not tell for the height of its precipitous walls barred the vision the frowning facade turned toward us was I estimated five miles in length its colossal scarf struck the eyes like a blow its shadow falling upon us checked the heart it was overpowering dreadful as that midnight city of discs that Dante saw rising up from another pit it was a metal city mountainous featureless smooth the immense wall of it heaved heavenward it should have been blind that vast oblong face but it was not blind from it radiated alertness vigilance it seemed to gaze toward us as though every foot were manned with sentinels guardians invisible to the eyes whose concentration of watchfulness was caught by some subtle hidden sense higher than sight it was a metal city mountainous and aware about its base were huge openings through and around these portals swirled hordes of the metal people in units and in combinations coming and going streaming in and out forming as they came and went patterns about the openings like the fredded spume of great breakers surging into retreating from ocean-bidden gaps in some iron-bound coast from the immensity of the city the eyes dropped back to the pit in which it lay its floor was plaque-like it turned by potter's wheel broken by no mound nor hillock slope nor terrace level horizontal flawlessly flat on it was no green-living thing no tree nor bush meadow nor covert it was alive with movement a fairment that was as purposeful as it was mechanical symmetrical, geometrical and supremely ordered the surging of the metal hordes there they moved beneath us these enigmatic beings in a countless host they marched and counter-marched in battalions, in regiments in armies far to the south I glimpsed a company of colossal shapes like mobile, castellated and pyramidal mounts they were circling weaving about each other with incredible rapidity like scores of great pyramids crowned with gigantic turrets and dancing from these turrets came vivid flashes lightning bright on their wake the rolling echoes of faraway thunder out of the north sped a squadron of obelisks from whose tops flamed and flared the immense spinning wheels appearing at this distance fiery whirling discs up from their setting the metal people lifted themselves in a thousand incredible shapes shapes squared and globed and spiked and shifting swiftly into other thousands as incredible I saw a mass of them draw themselves up into the likeness of a tent skyscraper high hang so for an instant then writhe into a monstrous chimera of a dozen towering legs that strode away like a gigantic headless and bodyless tarantula in steps two hundred feet long I watched mile long lines of them shape and reshape into circles into interlaced lozenges and pentagons then lift into great columns and shoot through the air an unimaginable barrage though all this incessant movement I sensed plainly purpose definite activity toward a definite end caught the clear suggestion of drill of maneuver and when the shiftings of the metal hordes permitted we saw that all the flat floor of the valley was striped and checkered stippled and tessellated with every color patterned with enormous lozenges and squares rhomboids and parallelograms pentagons and hexagons and diamonds lunettes circles and spirals harlequin yet harmonious instinct with a grotesque suggestion of a superfuturism but always this patterning was ordered always coherent as though it were a page on which was spelled some untranslatable otherworld message fourth dimensional revelations by some ecludian deity commandments traced by some mathematical god looping across the veil emerging from the sparkling folds of the southernmost curtainings and vanishing into the gleam of veils of the easternmost ran a broad ribbon of pale green jade not straightly but with manifold convolutions and flourishes it was like a sentence in arabic it was margined with sapphire blue all along its twisting course two broad bands of jet margin the cerulean shore banned by scores of flashing crystal arches nor were these bridges even from that distance i knew there were no bridges from them came the crystalline murmurings jade this stream jade if so then it must be in truth molten for i caught it swift and polished rushing it was no jade it was in truth a river a river running like a riding across a patterned plane i looked upward up to the circling peaks they were a stupendous cornet thrusting miles deep into the dazzling sky i raised my glasses swept them in color they were an immense and variegated flower with countless multi-form petals of stone in outline they were a ring of fortresses built by fantastic unknown gods up they thrust domed arched, spired and horned pyramided fanged and needled here were palisades of burning orange with barbecons of incandescent bronze their aegyles of azure rising from bastions of cinnabar red turrets of royal purple obliques of indigo titanic forts whose walls were splashed with vermilion with citron yellows and with rust of rubies watchtowers of flaming scarlet scattered among them were the flashing emeralds of the glaciers and the immense pallid baroques of the snow fields like a die-dem the summits ring the pit below them ran the ring of flashing amethyst and its oral mists between them lay the vast and patterned flat covered with still symbol an inexplicable movement under their summits brooded the blue-black metallic mask of the seeing city within the circling walls over the plain and from the city hovered a cosmic spirit not to be understood by man like an emanation of stars and space it was yet gem-fine and gem-hard crystalline and metallic lapidescent and conscious down from the ledge where we stood in phyllis-deep ramp similar to that which by in the darkness descended it dropped at an angle of at least 45 degrees its surface was smooth and polished through the mist at our back stole a shining block it paused seemed to perk itself spun so that in turn each of its six faces took us in I felt myself lifted upon it by multitudes of little invisible hands saw drake whirled up beside me I moved toward him through the force that held us a block swept away from the ledge swayed for a moment under us as though we were floating in air the pit lay stretched there was a rapid readjustment a shifting of our two selves upon another surface I looked down upon a tremendous slender pillar of the cubes dropping below 500 feet to the valley's floor a column of which the block that held us was the top gone was the whirling wheel that had crowned it but I knew this for the grinding thing from which we had fled the questing block had been at scout as though curious to know more of us the shape had set us out through the mists its messenger had caught us delivered us to it the pillar leaned over bent like that shining pillar that had bridged for us at Marhala's commands the abyss the floor of the valley arose to meet us further and further leaned the pillar again there was a rapid shifting of us to another surface of the crowning cube fast now swept up toward us the valley floor a dizziness clouded my sight there was a little shock a rolling over the thing that held us we stood upon the floor of the pit and breaking from the immense and prostrate shaft on whose top we had ridden downward came score upon score of the cubes they broke from it disintegrating it circled about us curiously interestedly twinkling at us from their deep sparkling points of eyes helplessly we gazed at those who circled around us then suddenly I felt myself lifted once more was tossed to the surface of the nearest block upon it I spun while the tiny I searched me then like a human ball it tossed me to another I caught a glimpse of Drake's tall figure drifting through the air the play became more rapid breathtaking it was play I recognized that but it was perilous play for us I felt myself as fragile as a doll of class in the hands of careless children I was tossed to a waiting cube on the ground not ten feet from me was Drake swaying dizzily suddenly the cube that held me tightened its grip tightened it so that it drew me irresistibly flat down upon its surface before I dropped Drake's body leaped toward me as though drawn by a lasso he fell at my side then pursued by scores of the things and like some mischievous boy bearing off the spoils the block that held us raced away straight for an open portal a blaze of incandescent blue flame blinded me again as the dazzlement faded I saw Drake beside me a skeleton form swiftly flesh melted back upon him clothed him the cube stopped abruptly the host of little unseen hands raised us slid us gently over its edge set us upright beside it and it sped away all about us stretched another of those vast halls in which on high burned the pale guilt suns between its colossal columns streamed thousands of the metal folk no longer hurriedly but quietly, deliberately sedately we were within the city even as Vettnor had commanded end of chapter recording by calmdragon.net