 CHAPTER XXVIII. THE FRIENDSY OF ROOTH. For many minutes we stood silent in the shadowy chamber, listening, each absorbed in his own thoughts. The thunderous drumming was continuous. Sometimes it faded into a background for clattering storms as of thousands of machine-guns, thousands of riveters at work at once upon a thousand metal frameworks. Sometimes it was nearly submerged beneath splitting crashes as of meeting meteors of hollow steel. But always the drumming persisted. Rhythmic thunderous. Through it all Ruth slept, undisturbed. Cheek pillowed in one rounded arm the two great pyramids erect behind her, watchful. A globe at her feet, a globe at her head, the third sphere poised between her and us, and like the pyramids, watchful. What was happening out there, over the edge of the canyon, beyond the portal of the cliffs, behind the veils in the pit of the metal monster? What was the message of the roaring drums? What the reed of their clamorous runes? Ventnor stepped by the sentinel globe, bent over the trans'd girl. Sphere nor pointed pair stirred, only they watched him, like a palpable thing one felt their watchfulness. He listened to her heart, caught up a wrist, took note of her pulse of life. He drew a deep breath, stood upright, nodded reassuringly. A abruptly drake turned, walked out through the open portal, his strain and the very deep anxiety written plainly in deep lines that ran from nostrils to firm young mouth. Just went out to look for the pony, he muttered when he returned. It's safe. I was afraid it had been stepped on. It's getting dusk. There's a big light down the canyon, over in the valley. Ventnor drew back past the globe, rejoined us. The blue power trembled under a gust of sound. Ruth stirred, her brows knitted, her hands clenched. The sphere that stood before her spun on its axis, swept up to the globe at her head, glided from it to the globe at her feet, as though whispering. Ruth moaned, her body bent upright, swayed rigidly. Her eyes opened, they stared through us, as though upon some dreadful vision. And strangely was it, as though she were seeing within other's eyes, were reflecting in other's sufferings. The globes at her feet, and at her head, swirled out, clustering against the third sphere, three weird shapes in silent consultation. On Ventnor's face I saw pity and vast relief. With shocked amaze I realized that Ruth's agony, for an agony she clearly was, was calling forth in him elation. He spoke, and I knew why. Norhalla, he whispered. She is seeing with Norhalla's eyes, feeling what Norhalla feels. It's not going well with that out there. If we dared leave, Ruth could only see. Ruth leaped to her feet, cried out. A golden bugling that might have been Norhalla's own wrathful trumpet notes. Instantly the two pyramids, flamed open, became two gleaming stars that bathed her in violet radiance. Beneath their upper tips I saw the blasting ovals glitter menacingly. The girl glared at us, more brilliant grew the glittering ovals as though their lightnings trembled on their lips. Ruth called Ventnor softly. A shadow softened the intolerable hard brilliancy of the brown eyes. In them something struggled to arise, fighting its way to the surface like some drowning human thing. It sank back upon her face dropped cloud of heartbreak, appalling woe. The despair of a soul, that having withdrawn all faith in its own kind to rest all faith as it thought on angels, seized that faith betrayed. There stared upon us a stripped spirit, naked and hopeless and terrible. Despairing, raging she screamed once more. The central globe swam to her. It raised her upon its back, glided to the doorway. Upon it she stood poised like some youthful, anguished victory. A victory who faced and knew she faced destroying defeat. Poised upon that enigmatic orb on bear's slender feet, one sweet breast bear hands upbraised, virginally archaic, nothing about her of the Ruth we knew. Ruth cried drake. Despair as great as that upon her face was in his voice. He sprang before the globe that held her, barred its way. For an instant the thing paused, and in that instant the human soul of the girl rushed back. No, she cried. No! A weird call issued from the white lips, stumbling, uncertain, as though she who sent it forth herself wondered whence it sprang. Abruptly the angry stars closed. The three globes spun, doubting, puzzled. Again she called, now a tremulous halting cadence. She was lifted, dropped gently to her feet. For an instant the globes and pyramids whirled and danced before her, then sped away through the portal. Ruth swayed, sobbing. Then, as though drawn, she ran to the doorway, fled through it, as one we sprang after her. Rods ahead her white body flashed, speeding toward the pit. Like fleet-footed Atalanta she fled, and far, far behind us was the blue bower, the misty barrier of the veils close, when Drake, with the last desperate burst, reached her side, gripped her. Down the two fell. Rolling upon the smooth roadway, silently she fought, biting, tearing at Drake, struggling to escape. Quick, gasped ventnor, stretching out to me in arm, cut off the sleeve, quick! Unquestioningly I drew my knife, ripped the garment at the shoulder. He snatched the sleeve, knelt at Ruth's head. Rapidly he crumpled an end, thrust it roughly into her mouth, tight it fast, gagging her. Hold her, he ordered Drake, and with a sob of relief sprang up. The girl's eyes blazed at him, filled with hate. Cut that other sleeve, he said, and when I had done so, he knelt again, pinned Ruth down with a knee at her throat, turned her over and knotted her hands behind her. She ceased struggling. Gently now he drew up the curly head, swung her upon her back. Hold her feet, he knotted to Drake, who cut the slender bare ankles in his hands. She lay there helpless, being unable to use her hands or feet. Too little Ruth and too much Norhala said ventnor, looking up at me. If she'd only thought to cry out, she could have brought a regiment of those things down to blast us, and would if she had thought. You don't think that is Ruth, do you? He pointed to the pallid face, sclaring at him, the eyes for which cold fires flamed. No you don't, he caught Drake by the shoulder, sent him spinning a dozen feet away. Damn it, Drake, don't you understand, for suddenly Ruth's eyes softened. She had turned them on dick pitifully, appealingly, and he had loosed her ankles. Had leaned forward as though to draw away the band that covered her lips. Your gun, whispered ventnor to me. Before I had moved he had snatched the automatic from my holster. Had covered Drake with it. Drake, he said, stand where you are. If you take another step toward this girl I'll shoot you, by God I will. Drake halted, shocked amazement in his face. I myself felt resentful, wondering at his outburst. But it's hurting her, he muttered. Ruth's eyes soft and pleading, still dwelt upon him. Hurting her, exclaimed ventnor. Man, she's my sister, I know what I'm doing. Can't you see? Can't you see how little of Ruth is in that body there? How little of the girl you love? How or why I don't know, but that it is so, I do know. Drake, have you forgotten now nor Hala beguiled Cherkis? I want my sister back. I'm helping her to get back. Now let be. I know what I'm doing. Look at her. We looked. In the face that glared up at ventnor was nothing of Ruth, even as he had said. There was the same cold, awesome wrath that had rested upon nor Hala's as she watched Cherkis weep over the eating up of his city. Swiftly came a change, like the sudden smoothing out of the rushing waves of a hill-locked, wind-lashed lake. The face was again Ruth's face, and Ruth's alone. The eyes were Ruth's eyes, supplicating, adjuring. Ruth, ventnor cried. While you can hear, am I not right? She nodded vigorously, sternly. She was lost, hidden once more. You see, he turned to us grimly. A shattering shaft of light flashed upon the veils, almost pierced them. An avalanche of sound passed high above us. Yet now I noted that where we stood the clamour was lessened, muffled. Of course it came to me. It was the veils. I wondered why, for whatever the quality of the radiant mists their purpose certainly had to do with concentration of the magnetic flux. The deadening of the noise must be accidental. Could have nothing to do with their actual use. For sound is an air vibration solely. No, it must be a secondary effect. The metal monster was as heedless of clamour as it was of heat or coal. We've got to see, ventnor broke the chain of thought. We've got to get through and see what's happening. When or lose, we've got to know. Cut off your sleeve, as I did. He motioned to drake. Tie her ankles. We'll carry her. Quickly it was done. Ruth's light body, swinging between brother and lover, we moved forward into the mists. We crept cautiously through their dead silences. Passed out and fell back into them from a searing chaos of light. Chaotic tumult. From the slackened grip of ventnor and drake, the body of Ruth dropped while we three stood blinded, deafened, fighting for recovery. Ruth twisted, rolled toward the brink. Ventnor threw himself upon her, held her fast. Dragging her, crawling on our knees, we crept forward. We stopped, when the thinning of the mists permitted us to see through them yet still interposed a curtening which, though tenuous, dimmed the intolerable brilliancy that filled the pit, muffled its din to a degree we could bear. I peered through them, and nerve and muscle were locked in the grip of a paralyzing awe. I felt, then, as one would feel, set close to warring regiments of stars, made witness to the death-throws of a universe, or swept through space and, held above the whirling coils of Andromeda's nebula to watch its birth-agonies of nascent suns. These are no figures of speech, no hyperboles. Speck as our whole planet would be in Andromeda's vast loom, pinprick as was the pit to the cyclone craters of our own sun. Within the cliff-cupped walls of the valley was a tangible, struggling living force, akin to that which dwells within the nebula and the star, a cosmic spirit transcending all dimensions and thrusting its confines out into the infinite, a sentient emanation of the infinite itself, nor was its voice less unearthly. It used the shell of the earth valley for its trumpetings, its clangers, but as one hears in the murmurings of the fluted conch, the great voice of the ocean, its whispering and its roaring, so here in the clamourous shell of the pit, echoed the tremendous voices of that illimitable sea which lapsed the shores of the countless suns. I looked upon a mighty whirlpool miles and miles wide, it whirled with surges whose racing crests were smiting incandescences. It was threaded with a spin-drift of lightnings. It was trodden by dervish mists of molten flame thrust through with forests of lances of living light. It cast a cadence spray high into the heavens. Over it the heavens glittered as though they were a shield held by fearful gods. Through the maelstrom staggered a mountainous bulk. A gleaming leviathan of pale blue metal caught in the swirling tide of some incredible volcano. A huge arc of metal resting a deluge of flame. And the drumming we heard as of hollow beaten metal worlds. The shouting tempests of cannonading stars was the breaking of these incandescent crests, the falling of the lightning spin-drift, the rhythmic impact of the lanced rays upon the glimmering mountain that reeled and trembled as they struck it. The reeling mountain, the struggling leviathan, was the city. It was the mass of the metal monster itself guarded by, stormed by, its own legions, that those separate from it were still as much of it as were the cells that formed the skin of its walls, its carapace. It was the metal monster tearing, rending, fighting for, battling against, itself. Mile high as when I had first beheld it was the inexplicable body that held the great heart of the cones into which had been drawn the magnetic cataracts from our sun that held to the smaller hearts of the lesser cones, the workshops, the birth-chamber, and manifold other mysteries unguessed and unseen. By a full fourth had its base been shrunken. Ranged in double line along the side turned toward us were hundreds of dread forms, shapes that in their intensity bore down upon, oppressed with a nightmare weight, the consciousness. Rectangular upon their outlines, no spike of pyramid, no curve of globe showing, uncompromisingly ponderous they upthrust. Upon the tops of the first rank were enormous masses, sledge-shaped, like those metal fists that had battered down the walls of Cherkiss's city, but to them as the human hand is to the paw of the dinosaur. Conceived this, conceived these shapes as animate and flexible, beating down with the prodigious mallets, smashing from side to side as though the tremendous pillars that held them were thousand jointed upright pistons. That as closely as I can present it in images of things we know is the picture of the hammering things. Behind them stood a second row, high as they and angular. From them extended scores of girdered arms, these were thickly studded with the flaming cruciform shapes, the opened cubes gleaming with their angry flares of reds and smoky yellows, from the tentacles of many swung immense shields like those which ringed the hall of the great cones, and as the sledges beat ever over their bent heads poured from the crosses a flood of crimson lightnings. Out of the concave depths of the shields whipped lashes of blinding flame, with ropes of fire they knouted the things the sledges struck. The sullen crimson leavens blasted. Now I could see the shapes that attacked, grotesque, spined and tusked, spiked and antlered, wend and breasted, as chimerically angled, cusped and corneute, as though they were the super-angled super-corneute gods of the cusped and angled gods of the Javanese. They strove against the sledge-headed and smiting the multi-armed and blasting square towers, high as them and huge as they, incomparably fantastic in dozens of shifting forms they battled. More than a mile from the stumbling city stood ranged like sharpshooters a host of solid bristling-legged towers. Upon their tops spun gigantic wheels out of the centers of these wheels shot the radiant lances hosts of spears of intensest violet light. The radiance they volleyed was not continuous. It was broken, so that the javelin rays shot out in rhythmic flights, each flying fast upon the shafts of the others. It was their impact that sent forth the thunderous drumming. They struck and splintered against the walls, dropping from them in great gouts of molten flame. It was as though before they broke they pierced the wall, the monster's side, bled fire. With the crashing of broadsides of masked batteries the sledges smashed down upon the bristling attackers. Under the awful impact globes and pyramids were shattered into hundreds of fragments, rocket bursts of blue and azure and violet flame, flames rainbowed and iris'd. The hammer ends split, flew apart, were scattered, were falling showers of sulfurous yellow and scarlet meteors, but ever other cubes swarmed out and repaired the broken smiting tips, and always where a tusked and cornute shape had been battered down, disintegrated, another arose as huge and as formidable, pouring forth upon the squared tower its lightnings, tearing at it with colossal spiked and hooked claws, beating it with incredible spiked and globular fists that were like the clenched hands of some metal atlas. As the striving shapes swayed and rustled, gave way or thrust forward, staggered or fell, the bulk of the monster stumbled and swayed, advanced and retreated, an unearthly motion wedded to an amorphous immensity that flooded the watching consciousness with a deathly nausea. Unceasingly the hail of radiant lances poured from the spinning wheels, falling upon towered shapes and city's wall alike, there arose a prodigious wailing, an unearthly thin screaming, about the bases of the defenders flashed blinding bursts of incandescence, like those which had heralded the flight of the flying thing dropping before Norhalla's house. Unlike them, they held no dazzling sapphire brilliancies. They were ochrous, effused with raging vermilion. Nevertheless they were factors of that same inexplicable action, for from thousands of gushing lights leaped thousands of gigantic square pillars, unimaginable projectiles, hurled from the flaming mouths of earth-hidden titanic mortars. They soared high, swerved, and swooped upon the lance-throwers. Beneath their onslaught those Kimmeray tottered. I saw living projectiles and living target fuse where they met, melt and weld in jets of lightnings. But not all. There were those that tore great gaps in the horned giants, wounds that instantly were healed, with globes and pyramids seething out from the cyclopean trunk. Ever the incredible projectiles flashed and flew as though from some inexhaustible store. Ever uproars that prodigious barrage against the smiting rays. Now to check them soared from the ranks of the bee-seizures, clouds of countless horned dragons, immense cylinders of clustered cubes studded with the clean tetrahedrons. They struck the cubed projectiles head-on, aimed themselves to meet them. Bristling dragon and hurtling pillar stuck and fused or burst with indolable blazing. They fell, cube and sphere and pyramid, some half-opened, some fully, in a rain of disks of stars, huge flaming crosses, a storm of unimaginable pyrotechnics. Now I became conscious that within the city, within the body of the metal monster, there raged a strife colossal as this without. From it came a vast volcanic roaring, up from its top-shot tortured flames, cascades and fountains of frenzied things that looped and struggled, writhed over its edge, hurled themselves back, battling chimerade which, against the glittering heavens, traced luminous symbols of agony. Shrilled a stronger wailing, up from beneath the ray-hurling towers shot hosts of globes, thousands of pale-ly azure metal moons they soared, warrior moons, charging in meteor rush and streaming with fluttering battle-penins of violet flame. High they flew, they curved over the mile-high back of the monster, they dropped upon it, arose to meet them the immense columns of the cubes, battered against the spheres, swept them over and down into the depths, hundreds fell, broken, but thousands held their place. I saw them twine about the pillars, writhing columns of interlaced cubes and globes, straining like monstrous serpents while all along their coils, he opened disks and crosses smote with the scimitars of their lightnings. In the wall of the city appeared a shining crack, from top to bottom it ran, it widened into a rift, from which a flood of radiance gushed. Out of this rift poured a thousand-foot-high torrent of horned globes. Only for an instant they flowed, the rift closed upon them, catching those still emerging in a colossal vice. It crunched them, plain through the turmoil came a dreadful, bursting roar. Down from the closing jaws of the vice dripped a stream of fragments that flashed and flickered, and died. And now in the wall was no trace of the breach. A hurricane of radiant lances swept it, under them a mile-wide section of the living scarps split away, dropped like an avalanche. Its fall revealed great spaces, huge vaults and chambers filled with warring lightnings. Out from them came roaring, bellowing thunders, swiftly from each side of the ga- a metal curting of the cubes joined. Again the wall was whole. I turned my stunned gaze from the city, swept over the valley, everywhere in towers and writhing coils and whipping flails and waves that smote and crashed, in countless forms and combinations the metal hordes battled. Here were pillars against which metal billows rushed and were broken. There were metal comets that crashed high above the mad turmoil. From streaming silent veil to veil, north and south, east and west, the monster slew itself beneath its racing flaming banners, the tempests of its lightnings. The tortured hulk of the city lurched. It swept toward us. Before it blotted out from our eyes the pit and I saw that the crystal spans upon the river of Jade were gone. That the wondrous jeweled ribbons of its banks were broken. Closer came the reeling city. I fumbled for my lenses, focused them upon it. Now I saw that where the radiant lances struck they killed the blocks, blackened under them, became lustrous. The sparkling of the tiny eyes went out. The metal carapaces crumbled. Closer to the city came the monster. Shuddering I lowered the glasses that it might not seem so near. Down dropped the bristling shapes that wrestled with the squared towers. They rose again in a single monstrous wave that rushed to overwhelm them before they could strike the city swept closer, had hidden them from me. Again I raised the glasses. They brought the metal scarf not fifty feet away. Within it the hosts of tiny eyes glittered, no longer mocking nor malicious. But insane. Nearer drew the monster. Nearer. A thousand feet away it checked its movement seemed to draw itself together. Then like the roar of a falling world that whole side facing us slid down to the valley's floor. CHAPTER XXIX. THE PASSING OF NOR HALLAH. Thousands of feet through must have been the fallen mass. Within it who knows what chambers filled with mysteries? Yes, thousands of feet thick it must have been. For the debris of it splintered and lashed to the very edge of the ledge on which we were crouched. Heaped it with the dimming fragments of the bodies that had formed it. We looked into a thousand vaults, a thousand spaces. There came another avalanche, roaring, before us opened the crater of the cones. Through the torn gap I saw them, clustering undisturbed about the base of that one slender, cornetted and star-pointing spire, rising serene and unshaken from a hell of lightnings. But the shields that had rimmed the crater were gone. Ventner snatched the glasses from my hand, levelled and held them long to his eyes. He thrust them back to me. Look! Through the lenses the great hall leaped into full view apparently only a few yards away. It was a cauldron of chameleon flame. It seethed with the hordes battling over the remaining walls and floors. But around the crystal base of the cones was an open zone into which none broke. In that wide ring girdling the shimmering fantasy like a circled sanctuary were but three forms. One was the wondrous disc of the jeweled fires I have called the Metal Emperor. The second was the sullen-fired cruciform of the Keeper. The third was Norhala. She stood at the side of that weird master of hers, or was it after all the servant? Between them and the Keeper's planes gleamed the gigantic T-shaped tablet of countless rods which controlled the activities of the cones that had controlled the shifting of the vanished shields. That manipulated too perhaps the energies of whatever similar but smaller, cornute ganglia were scattered throughout the city and one of which we had beheld when the Emperor's guards had blasted Ventonar. Close was Norhala in the lenses. So close that almost it seemed I could reach out and touch her. The flaming hair streamed and billowed above her glorious head like a banner of molten floss of coppery gold. Her face was as a mask of wrath and despair. Her great eyes blazed upon the Keeper. Her exquisite body was bare, stripped of every shred of silk and covering. From streaming tresses to white feet, an oval of pulsing golden light nimbosed her, maiden Isis, virgin Astarte she stood there, held in the grip of the disc like a goddess betrayed and hopeless, yet thirsting for revenge. For all their stillness, their immobility had came to me that the Emperor and Keeper were at grapple, locked in death grip. The realization was as definite as though like Ruth I thought with Norhala's mind, saw with her eyes. Clearly, too, it came to me that in this contest between the two was epitomized all the vast conflict that raged around them, that in it was fast ripening that fruit of destiny of which Vettner had spoken, and that here in the Hall of the Cones would be settled, and soon the fate not only of the disc and cross, but it might be of humanity. But with what unknown powers was that duel being fought? They cast no lightnings, they battled with no visible weapons. Only the Great Plains of the inverted cruciform shape smoked and smoldered with their sullen flares of ochres and of scarlets, while over all the face of the disc its cold and iris'd fires raced and shone, beating with a rhythm incredibly rapid, its core of incandescent ruby blazed, its sapphire ovals were kaboshund pools of living, lucent radiance. There was a splitting roar that rose above all the clamor, deafening us even in the shelter of the silent veils. On each side of the crater whole masses of the city dropped away. Fleetingly I was aware of scores of smaller pits in which up rose lesser replicas of the coned mount, lesser reservoirs of the monster's force. Neither the Emperor nor the Keeper moved, both seemingly indifferent to the catastrophe fast developing around them. Now I strained forward to the very thinnest edge of the Kirtnings, for between the disc and cross began to form a fine black mist. It was transparent. It seemed spun of minute translucent ebb and corpuscles. It hung like a black shroud suspended by unseen hands. It shook and wavered now toward the disc, now toward the cross. I sensed a keying up of force within the two, knew that each was striving to cast like a net that hanging mist upon the other. Abruptly the Emperor flashed forth blindingly. As though caught upon a blast the black shroud flew toward the Keeper and velloped it. And as the mist covered and clung I saw the sulphurus and crimson flares dim. They were snuffed out. The Keeper fell. Upon Norhala's face flamed a wild triumph banishing despair. The outstretched plains of the cross swept up as though in torment. For an instant its fires flared and licked through the clean blackness. It writhed half upright, threw itself forward, crashed down prostrate upon the enigmatic tablet which only its tentacles could manipulate. From Norhala's face the triumph fled. On its heels rushed stark and credulous horror. The mount of cones shuddered. From it came a single mighty throb of force like a prodigious heartbeat. Under that pulse of power the Emperor staggered, spun, and spinning swept Norhala from her feet, swung her close to its ever flashing rose. A second throb pulsed from the cones and mightier. A spasm shook the disc. A paroxysm. Its fires faded. They flared out again, bathing the floating unearthly figure of Norhala with their iridescences. I saw her body writhe as though it shared the agony of the shape that held her. Her head twisted. The great eye's pools of uncomprehending, unbelieving horror stared into mine. With a spasmotic infinitely dreadful movement the disc closed and closed upon her. Norhala was gone, was shut within it, crushed to the pentfires of its crystal heart. I heard a sobbing, agonized choking, knew it was I who sobbed. Against me I felt Ruth's body strike, bend and convulsive arc drop inert. The slender steeple of the cones drooped sending its faceted coronet shattering to the floor. The mount melted. Beneath the flooding radiance sprawled Keeper and the great inert Globe that was the goddess woman's sepulcher. The crater filled with the pallid luminescence. Faster and even faster it poured down into the pit, and from all the lesser craters of the small cones swept silent cataracts of the same pale radiance. The city began to crumble, the monster to fall. Like pent-up waters rushing through a broken dam the gleaming deluge swept over the valley, gushing in steady torrents from the breaking mass. Over the valley fell a vast silence. The lightning ceased. The metal hordes stood rigid. The shining flood lapping at their bases rising swiftly ever higher. Now from the sinking city swarmed multitudes of its weird luminaries. Out they trooped, swirling from every rent and gap. Orbs, Scarlet and Sapphire, Ruby Orbs, Orbs Tulip and Iris, the jokun sons of the birth chamber, and side by side with them hosts of the frozen pale-guilt stiff-raid sons. Thousands upon thousands they marched forth and poised themselves solemnly over all the pit that now was a fast-rising lake of yellow froth of sun flame. They swept forth in squadrons and companies and regiments those mysterious orbs. They floated over all the valley. They separated and swung motionless above it as though they were mysterious multiple souls of fire brooding over the dying shell that had held them. Beneath, thrusting up from the lambent lake like grotesque towers of some drowned fantastic metropolis, the great shapes stood, black against its glowing. What had been the city, that which had been the bulk of the monster, was now only a vast and shapeless hill from which streamed the silent torrents of that released unknown force which, concentrate and bound, had been the cones. As though it was the monster's shining life-blood it poured, raising ever higher in its swift flooding, the level radiant lake. Lower and lower sank the immense bulk, squattered and spread, ever lowering, about its helpless patient crouching something ineffably piteous, something indescribably, cosmically tragic. Abruptly the watching orbs shook under a hail of sparkling atoms streaming down from the glittering sky, raining upon the lambent lake. So thick they fell that now the brooding luminaries were dim orioles within them. From the pit came a blinding, insupportable brilliancy. From every rigid tower gleamed out jeweled fires. Their clinging units opened into a blazing star and disc and cross. The city was a hill of living gems over which flowed torrents of pale, molten gold. The pit blazed. There followed an appalling density, a prodigious gathering of force, a panic stirring, concentration of energy. Thicker fell the clouds of sparkling atoms, higher rose the yellow flood. Ventner cried out, I could not hear him, but I read his purpose and so did Drake. Up on his broad shoulders he swung Ruth as though she had been a child. Back through the throbbing veils we ran, passed out of them. Back, shouted Ventner, back as far as you can. On we raced, we reached the gateway of the cliffs, we dashed on and on, up the shining roadway toward the blue globe now a scant mile before us, ran sobbing, panting, ran we knew for our lives. Out of the pit came a sound, I cannot describe it. An unutterably desolate, dreadful wail of despair, it shuddered past us like the groaning of a broken-hearted star, anguished and awesome. It died. There rushed upon us a sea of that incredible loneliness, that longing for extinction, that had assailed us, in the haunted hollow where first we had seen Norhalla. But its billows were resistless, invincible. Beneath them we fell, we were torn by desire for swift death. Dimly through fainting eyes I saw a dazzling brilliancy fill the sky, heard with dying ears a chaotic blasting roar. A wave of air thicker than water caught us up, hurled us hundreds of yards forward. It dropped us. In its wake rushed another wave, withering, scorching. It raced over us, scorching though it was, within its heat was energizing, revivifying force. Something that slew the deadly despair and fed the fading fires of life. I staggered to my feet, looked back. The veils were gone. The precipice-walled gateway they had curtained was filled with a plutonic glare as though it opened into the incandescent heart of a volcano. Ventner clutched my shoulder, spun me around. He pointed to the sapphire house, started to run to it. Far ahead I saw Drake, the body of the girl clasped to his breast. The heat became blasting, insupportable my lungs burned. Over the sky, above the canyon, streaked a serpentine chain of lightnings. A sudden cyclonic gust swept the cleft, whirling us like leaves toward the pit. I threw myself upon my face, clutching at the smooth rock. A volley of thunder burst, but not the thunder of the metal monster or its hordes. No, the bellowing of the leavens of our own earth. And the wind was cold. It bathed the burning skin, laved the fevered lungs. Again the sky was split by the lightnings, and roaring down from it in solid sheets came the rain. From the pit-a-rosa hissing as though within it raged Babylonian Tiamat, mother of chaos, serpent-dweller in the void, midgard snake of the ancient Norse holding in her coils the world. Buffeted by the wind, beaten down by rain, clinging to each other like drowning men, Vettner and I pushed on to the elfin globe. The light was dying fast. By it we saw Drake pass within the portal with his burden. The light became embers. It went out. Blackness clasped us. Guided by the lightnings we beat our way to the door, passed through it. In the electric glare we saw Drake bending over Ruth. In it I saw a slide draw over the open portal, through which shrieked the wind, streamed the rain. As though its crystal panel was moved by unseen gentle hands the portal closed, the tempest shut out. We dropped beside Ruth upon a pile of silken stuffs, odd, marvelling, trembling with pity and thanksgiving. For we knew each of us knew with an absolute definiteness, as we crouched there among the racing, dancing black and silver shadows, with which the lightnings filled the blue globe, that the metal monster was dead, slain by itself. BURNED OUT Ruth sighed and stirred. By the glare of the lightnings, now almost continuous, we saw that her rigidity, and in fact all the puzzling cataleptic symptoms, had disappeared. Her limbs relaxed. Her skin faintly flushed. She lay in deepest but natural slumber, undisturbed by the incessant cannonading of the thunder under which the walls of the blue globe shuddered. Vettner passed through the curtains of the central hall. He returned with one of Norhala's cloaks, covered the girl with it. An overwhelming sleepiness took possession of me, a weariness ineffable, nerve and brain and muscles suddenly relaxed, went slack and numb. Without a struggle I surrendered to an overpowering stupor, and cradled deep in its heart, ceased consciously to be. When my eyes unclosed, the chamber of the moonstone walls was filled with silvery crepuscular light. I heard the murmuring and laughing of running water, the play, I lazily realized, of the fountain to pool. I lay for whole minutes on thinking, luxuriating in the sense of tension gone and of security. Lay steeped in the aftermath of complete rest, memory flooded me. Quietly I sat up, Ruth still slept, breathing peacefully beneath the cloak, one white arm stretched over the shoulder of Drake, as though in her sleep she had drawn close to him. At her feet lay Vettner, as deep and slumber as they. I arose and tiptoed over to the closed door, searching I found its key, a cupped indentation upon which I pressed. The crystalline panel slipped back, it was moved, I suppose, by some mechanism of counterbalances, responding to the weight of the hand. It must have been some vibration of the thunder which had loosed that mechanism and had closed the panel upon the heels of our entrance. So I thought, then seeing again in memory that uncanny, deliberate shutting was not at all convinced that it had been the thunder. I looked out. How many hours the sun had been up there was no means of knowing. The sky was low and slaty gray, a fine rain was falling. I stepped out. The garden of Norholla was a wreckage of uprooted and splintered trees and torn masses of what had been blossoming Berger. The gateway of the precipices beyond which lay the pit was hidden in the webs of the rain. Long I gazed down the canyon and longingly, striving to picture what the pit now held, eager to read the riddles of the night. There came from the valley no sound, no movement, no light. I re-entered the blue globe and paused on the threshold, staring into the wide and wandering eyes of Ruth, bolt upright in her silken bed with Norholla's cloak clutched to her chin like a suddenly awakened and startled child. As she glimpsed me she stretched out her hand. Drake, wide awake on the instant, deep to his feet, his hand jumping to his pistol. Dick, called Ruth, her voice tremulous, sweet. He swung about. Looked deep into the clear and fearless brown eyes in which, with leaping heart, I realized it was thrown to only that spirit which was Ruth's and Ruth's alone. Ruth's clear, unchattered eyes, glad and shy and soft with love. Dick, she whispered, and held soft arms out to him. The cloak fell from her. He swung her up. Their lips met. Upon them embraced the waking eyes of Ventner dwelt. They filled with relief and joy, nor was there lacking in them a certain amusement. She drew from Drake's arms, pushed him from her, stood for a moment shakily with covered eyes. Ruth called Ventner softly. Oh, she cried. Oh, Martin, I forgot! She ran to him, held him tight, face hidden in his breast, his hand rested on the clustering brown curls tenderly. Martin, she raised her face to him. Martin, it's gone. I'm me again. All me. What happened? Where's Norhalla? I started. Did she not know? Of course, lying bound as she had in the vanished veils, she could have seen nothing of the stupendous tragedy enacted beyond them. But had not Ventner said that possessed by the inexplicable obsession evoked by the weird woman Ruth had seen with her eyes, thought with her mind, and had there not been evidence that in her body had echoed the torments of Norhalla's, had she forgotten? I started to speak. Was checked by Ventner's swift warning glance. She's over in the pit, he answered her quietly. But do you remember nothing, little sister? There's something in my mind that's been rubbed out, she replied. I remember the city of Cherkis and your torture, Martin, and my torture, her face widened. Ventner's brow contracted anxiously. I knew for what he watched, but Ruth's shamed face was all human. On it was no shadow nor trace of that alien soul which so few hours since had threatened us. Yes, she nodded. I remember that, and I remember how Norhalla repaid them. I remember that I was glad, fiercely glad, and then I was tired. So tired. And then I come to the rubbed out place, she ended perplexedly. Deliberately, almost vainly, had I not realized his purpose. He changed the subject. He held her from him at arm's length. Ruth, he exclaimed, half mockingly, half reprovingly. Don't you think your morning negligee is just a little scanty even for this godforsaken corner of the earth? Lips parted in sheer astonishment. She looked at him. Then her eyes dropped to her bare feet, her dimpled knees. She clasped her arms across her breasts. Rosie Red turned all her fair skin. Oh, she gasped. Oh, and hid from Drake and me behind that tall figure of her brother. I walked over to the pile of silken stuffs, took the cloak, and tossed it to her. Metiner pointed to the saddlebags. Even another outfit there, Ruth, he said. We'll take a turn through the place. Call us when you're ready. We'll get something to eat and go see what's happening out there. She nodded. We passed through the curtains and out of the hall into the chamber that had been Norhalla's. There we halted, Drake eyeing Martin with a certain embarrassment. The older man thrust out his hand to him. I knew it, Drake, he said. Ruth told me all about it when Chirkus had us. And I'm very glad. It's time she was having a home of her own and not running around the lost places with me. I'll miss her, miss her damnably, of course, but I'm glad, boy. Glad. There was a little silence while each looked deep into each other's hearts. Then Metiner dropped Dick's hand. And that's all of that, he said. The problem before us is how are we going to get back home? The thing is dead. I spoke from an absolute conviction that surprised me, based as it was upon no really tangible known evidence. I think so, he said. No, I know so. Yet even if we can pass over its body, how can we climb out of its lair? That slide down which we rode with Norhalla is climbable. The walls are unscalable. And there is that chasm she spanned for us. How can we cross that? The tunnel to the ruins was sealed. There remains of possible roads the way through the forest to what was the city of Chirkus. Frankly, I'm loath to take it. I am not at all sure that all the armored men were slain. That some few may not have escaped and be lurking there. It'll be short shrift for us if we fell into their hands now. And I'm not sure of that, objected Drake. I think their pep and push must be pretty thoroughly knocked out. If any do remain. I think if they saw us coming they'd beat it so fast they'd smoke with the friction. There's something to that, Fenton are smiled. Still I'm not keen on taking the chance. At any rate, the first thing to do is to see what happened down there in the pit. Maybe we'll have some other idea after that. I know what happened there, announced Drake, surprisingly. It was a short circuit. We gaped at him mystified. Burned out, said Drake. Every damned one of them. Burned out. What were they after all? A lot of living dynamos. Dynomotors, rather. And all of a sudden they had too much juice turned on. Bang went their insulations, or whatever they were. Bang went they. Burned out, short-circuited. I don't pretend to know why or how. Nonsense, I do know. The cones were some kind of immensely concentrated force, electric, magnetic, either both or more. I myself believe that they were probably solid in a way of speaking Coronium, if about twenty of the greatest scientists the world has ever known, or right. Coronium, as well, call it, curdled energy. The electric potentiality of Niagara in a pinpoint of dust of yellow fire. All right, they, or it, lost control. Every pinpoint swelled out into a Niagara, and as it did so it expanded from a controlled dust dot to an uncontrolled cataract. In other words, its energy was unleashed and undamped. Very well. What followed? What had to follow? Every living battery of block and globe and spike was supercharged and went bluey. The valley must have been some sweet little volcano while that short circuiting was going on. All right, let's go down and see what it did to your unclimbable slide and unscalable walls, Vettner. I'm not sure we won't be able to get out that way. Come on, everything's ready, Ruth was calling. Her summoning blocked any objection we might have raised to Drake's argument. It was no dry add, no distressed pagan clad maid we saw as we passed back into the room of the pool. In knickerbockers and short skirt, prim and self-possessed rebellious curls held severely in place by close fitting cap and slender feet stoutly shot. Ruth hovered over the steaming kettle swung above the spirit lamp, and she was very silent as we hastily broke fast. Nor when we had finished did she go to Drake. She clung close to her brother and beside him as we set forth down the roadway, through the rain, toward the ledge between the cliffs where the veils had shimmered. Hotter and hotter it grew as we advanced. The air steamed like a Turkish bath. The mists clustered so thickly that last we groped forward step by step, holding to each other. No use, gasp Vettner. We couldn't see. We'll have to turn back. Burned out, said Dick. Didn't I tell you? The whole valley was a volcano. And with that deluge falling in it, why wouldn't there be a fog? It's why there IS a fog. We'll have to wait until it clears. We trudged back to the blue globe. All that day the rain fell. Throughout the few remaining hours of daylight we wandered over the house of Norhalla, examining its most interesting contents or sat theorizing, discussing all the phases of the phenomena we had witnessed. We told Ruth what had occurred after she had thrown in her lot with Norhalla, and of the enigmatic struggle between the glorious disc and the sullenly flaming thing I have called the Keeper. We told her of the entombment of Norhalla. When she heard that she wept. She was sweet, she sobbed. She was lovely and she was beautiful. Dearly she loved me. I know she loved me. Oh, I know that we and ours and that which was hers could not share the world together. But it comes to me that earth would have been far less poisonous with those that were Norhallas than it is with us and ours. Weeping, she passed through the curtainings going we knew to Norhalla's chamber. It was a strange thing indeed that she had said. I thought, watching her go, that the garden of the world would be far less poisonous blossoming with those things of wetted crystal and metal and magnetic fires than fertile as now with us of flesh and blood and bone. To me came appreciations of their harmonies and mingled with those perceptions where others of humanity, disharmonious and coordinate, ever struggling, ever striving to destroy itself. There was a plaintive whinnying at the open door. A long and hairy face, a pair of patient inquiring eyes, looked in. It was a pony. For a moment it regarded us and then trotted trustfully through, ambled up to us, poked its head against my side. It had been ridden by one of the Persians whom Ruth had killed, for under it slipped from the girths, a saddle dangled, and its owner must have been kind to it. We knew that from its lack of fear for us. Driven by the tempest of the night before it had been led back by instinct to the protection of man. Some luck, breathed Drake. He busied himself with the pony, stripping away the hanging saddle, grooming it. CHAPTER XXXI That night we slipped well. Awakening, we found that the storm had grown violent again. The wind roaring and the rain falling in such volume that it was impossible to make our way to the pit. Twice, as a matter of fact, we tried, but the smooth roadway was a torrent and drenched even through our oils to the skin. We at last abandoned the attempt. Ruth and Drake drifted away together among the other chambers of the globe. They were absorbed in themselves, and we did not thrust ourselves upon them. All the day the torrents fell. We sat down that night to what was well nigh the last of Ventnor's stores. Seemingly Ruth had forgotten Norhala at least. She spoke no more of her. Martin, she said, can't we start back tomorrow? I want to get away. I want to get back to our own world. As soon as the storm ceases, Ruth, he answered, we start. Little sister, I too want you to get back quickly. The next morning the storm had gone. We awakened soon after dawn into clear and brilliant light. We had a silent and hurried breakfast. The saddlebags were packed and strapped upon the pony. Within them were what we could carry of souvenirs from Norhala's home, a suit of lacquered armour, a pair of cloaks and sandals, the dueled combs. Ruth and Drake at the side of the pony, Ventnor and I leading. We set forth toward the pit. We'll probably have to come back, Walter, he said. I don't believe the place is possible. I pointed. We were then just over the threshold of the Elfin Globe, where the veils had stretched between the perpendicular pillars of the cliffs, was now a wide and ragged-edged opening. The roadway, which had run so smoothly through the scarps, was blocked by a thousand-foot barrier. Over it, beyond it, I could see through the crystalline clarity at the air, the opposing walls. We can climb it, Ventnor said. We passed on and reached the base of the barrier. An avalanche had dropped there. The barricade was the debris of the torn cliffs, their dust, their pebbles, their boulders. We toiled up. We reached the crest. We looked down upon the valley. When first we had seen it, we had gazed upon a sea of radiance pierced with glanced forests, swept with gigantic confounds of flame. We had seen it emptied of its fiery mists, a vast slate covered with the choreography of a mathematical god. We had seen it filled with the symboling of the metal hordes and dominated by the colossal, integrate hieroglyph of the living city. We had seen it as a radiant lake over which brooded weird suns. A lake, a yellow flame, froth upon which a sparkling hail fell, within which red island towers and a drowning mount, running with cataracts of sunfires. Here we had watched a goddess woman, a being half of earth, half of the unknown immured within a living tomb, a dying tomb, a flaming mysteries, had seen a cross shaped metal satan. A sullen flaming crystal Judas betrayed itself. Where we had peered into the unfathomable, had glimpsed the infinite, had heard and had seen the inexplicable, now was slag. The amethystine ring from which had been streamed the circling veils was cracked and blackened. Like a seam of coal it had stretched around the pit. A crown of mourning. The veils were gone. The floor of the valley was fissured and blackened. Its patterns, its writings burned away. As far as we could see stretched a sea of slag, coal black, vitrified and dead. Here and there black helox sprawled. Huge pillars arose, bent and twisted, as though they had been jettings of laba cooled into rigidity before they could sink back or break. These shapes clustered most thickly around an immense calcified mound. They were what were left of the battling hordes and the mound was what had been the metal monster. Somewhere there were the ashes of Nuhalla sealed by fire in the urn of the metal emperor. From side to side of the pit in broken beaches and waves and hammocks in blackened distorted tusks and warped towerings reaching with hideous pathos in thousands of forms toward the charred mound was only slag. From rifts and hollows still filled with water, little rifts of steam drifted. In those futile rafts of vapour was all that remained of the might of the metal monster. Catastrophe I had expected. Tragedy I knew we would find, but I had looked for nothing so filled with the abomination of desolation, so frightful as was this. Burned out, muttered drake, short circuited and burned out, like a dynamo, like an electric light. Destiny, said Ventnor. Destiny. Not yet was the hour struck for man to relinquish his sovereignty over the world. Destiny. We began to pick our way down the heat debris and out upon the plane. For all that day and part of another we searched for an opening out of the pit. Everywhere was the incredible calcification, the surfaces that had been the smooth metallic carapaces with the tiny eyes deep within them crumbled beneath the lightest glow. Not long would it be until under wind and rain they dissolved into dust and mud and it grew increasingly obvious that drake's theory at the destruction was correct. The monster had been one prodigious magnet or rather a prodigious dynamo. By magnetism, by electricity, it had lived and had been activated. Whatever the force of which the cones were built and that I have likened to energy made material it was certainly akin to electromagnetic energies. When in the cataclysm that force was diffused there had been created a magnetic field of incredible intensity had been concentrated an electric charge of inconceivable magnitude. Discharging it had blasted the monster short circuited it and burned it out but what was it that had led up to the cataclysm? What was it that had turned the metal monster upon itself? What disharmony had crept into the supernal order to set in motion the machinery of disintegration? We can only conjecture the cruciform shape I have named the keeper was the agent of destruction of what there could be no doubt in the enigmatic organism which while many still was one and which retaining its integrity as a whole could disassociate manifold parts yet still as a whole maintain an unseen contact and direction over them three miles of space the keeper had its place its work its duties so too had that wondrous disk which visible and concentrate power whose manifest leadership had made us name its emperor and had not nor hala called the disk ruler what were the responsibilities of these twain to the mass of the organism of which they were such important units what were the laws they administered the laws they must obey something certainly at that mysterious flaw which matrilink had called the spirit of the hive and something infinitely greater like that which governs the swarming sunbees of hercules casted orbs had their evolved within the keeper of the cones guardian and engineer as it seemed to have been ambition had their risen within it a determination to rest power from the disk to take its place as ruler how else explain that conflict i had sensed when the emperor had plucked drake and me from the keeper's grip that night following the orgy of the feeding how else explain that jewel in the shattered hall of the cones whose end had been the signal for the final cataclysm how else explain the alignment of the cubes behind the keeper against the globes and pyramids remaining loyal to the will of the disk we discuss this ventnor and i this world he mused is a place of the struggle air and sea and land and all things that dwell within and on them must battle for life earth not mars is the planet of war i have a theory he hesitated that the globe magnetic currents which are the nerve force of this globe of ours were what fed the metal things within those currents is the spirit of earth and always they have been supercharged with strife with hatred for fear were these drawn in by the things as they fed did it happen that the keeper became tuned to them that it absorbed and responded to them growing even more sensitive to these forces until it reflected humanity who knows goodwin who can tell enigma unless the explanations i have hesitated be accepted must remain that monstrous suicide enigma save for inconclusive theories must remain the question of the monsters origin if answers there were they were lost forever in the slag we trod it was afternoon of the second day that we found a rift in the blasted wall of the valley we decided to try it we had not dared to take the road by which norhalla had led us into the city the giant slide was broken and climbable but even if we could have passed safely through the tunnel of the abyss there still was left the chasm over which we could have thrown no bridge and if we could have bridged it still at that road's end was the clip whose sharp norhalla had sealed with her lightnings so we entered the rift of our wanderings thereafter i need not write from the rift we emerged into a maze of the valleys and after a month in that wilderness living upon what game we could shoot we found a road that led us in to guianzi in another six weeks we were home in america my story is finished there in the trans himalayan wilderness is the blue globe that was the weird home of the lightning witch and looking back i feel now she could not have been all woman there is the vast pit with its coronet of fantastic peaks it's cymbal calcined floor and the crumbling body of the inexplicable the incredible thing which alive was the shadow of extinction annihilation hovering to hurl itself upon humanity that shadow is gone that pool withdrawn but to me to each of us four who saw those phenomena their lesson remains ineradicable giving a new strength and purpose to us teaching us a new humility for in that vast crucible of life of which we are so small apart what other shapes may even now be rising to submerge us in that vast reservoir of force that is the mystery filled infinite through which we roll what other shadows may be speeding upon us who knows end of chapter 31 end of the metal monster by abraham merrick