The eagerness, the relief in his voice betrayed the tension, the anxiety
which until now he had hidden so well; and hot shame burned me for my
shrinking, my dread of again passing through that haunted vale.
“I certainly DO.” I was once more master of myself. “Drake--don't you
agree?”
“Sure,” he replied. “Sure. I'll look after Ruth--er--I mean Miss
Ventnor.”
The glint of amusement in Ventnor's eyes at this faded abruptly; his
face grew somber.
“Wait,” he said. “I carried away some--some exhibits from the crevice of
the noises, Goodwin.”
“What kind of exhibits?” I asked, eagerly.
“Put 'em where they'd be safe,” he continued. “I've an idea they're far
more curious than our armored men--and of far more importance. At any
rate, we must take them with us.
“Go with Ruth, you and Drake, and look at them. And bring them back with
the pony. Then we'll make a start. A few minutes more probably won't
make much difference--but hurry.”
He turned back to his watch. Ordering Chiu-Ming to stay with him I
followed Ruth and Drake down the ruined stairway. At the bottom she came
to me, laid little hands on my shoulders.
“Walter,” she breathed, “I'm frightened. I'm so frightened I'm afraid to
tell even Mart. He doesn't like them, either, these little things you're
going to see. He likes them so little that he's afraid to let me know
how little he does like them.”
“But what are they? What's to fear about them?” asked Drake.
“See what you think!” She led us slowly, almost reluctantly toward the
rear of the fortress. “They lay in a little heap at the mouth of the
cleft where we heard the noises. Martin picked them up and dropped them
in a sack before we ran through the hollow.
“They're grotesque and they're almost CUTE, and they make me feel as
though they were the tiniest tippy-tip of the claw of some incredibly
large cat just stealing around the corner, a terrible cat, a cat as big
as a mountain,” she ended breathlessly.
We climbed through the crumbling masonry into a central, open court.
Here a clear spring bubbled up in a ruined and choked stone basin; close
to the ancient well was their pony, contentedly browsing in the thick
grass that grew around it. From one of its hampers Ruth took a large
cloth bag.
“To carry them,” she said, and trembled.
We passed through what had once been a great door into another chamber
larger than that we had just left; and it was in better preservation,
the ceiling unbroken, the light dim after the blazing sun of the court.
Near its center she halted us.
Before me ran a two-feet-wide ragged crack, splitting the floor and
dropping down into black depths. Beyond was an expanse of smooth
flagging, almost clear of debris.
Drake gave a low whistle. I followed his pointing finger. In the wall
at the end whirled two enormous dragon shapes, cut in low relief. Their
gigantic wings, their monstrous coils, covered the nearly unbroken
surface, and these CHIMERAE were the shapes upon the upthrust blocks of
the haunted roadway.
In Ruth's gaze I read a nameless fear, a half shuddering fascination.
But she was not looking at the cavern dragons.
Her gaze was fixed upon what at my first glance seemed to be a raised
and patterned circle in the dust-covered floor. Not more than a foot in
width, it shone wanly with a pale, metallic bluish luster, as though,
I thought, it had been recently polished. Compared with the wall's
tremendous winged figures this floor design was trivial, ludicrously
insignificant. What could there be about it to stamp that dread upon
Ruth's face?
I leaped the crevice; Dick joined me. Now I could see that the ring was
not continuous. Its broken circle was made of sharply edged cubes about
an inch in height, separated from each other with mathematical exactness
by another inch of space. I counted them--there were nineteen.
Almost touching them with their bases were an equal number of pyramids,
of tetrahedrons, as sharply angled and of similar length. They lay on
their sides with tips pointing starlike to six spheres clustered like
a conventionalized five petaled primrose in the exact center. Five of
these spheres--the petals--were, I roughly calculated, about an inch and
a half in diameter, the ball they enclosed larger by almost an inch.
So orderly was their arrangement, so much like a geometrical design
nicely done by some clever child that I hesitated to disturb it. I bent,
and stiffened, the first touch of dread upon me.
For within the ring, close to the clustering globes, was a miniature
replica of the giant track in the poppied valley!
It stood out from the dust with the same hint of crushing force, the
same die cut sharpness, the same METALLIC suggestion--and pointing
toward the globes were the claw marks of the four spreading star points.
I reached down and picked up one of the pyramids. It seemed to cling
to the rock; it was with effort that I wrenched it away. It gave to the
touch a slight sensation of warmth--how can I describe it?--a warmth
that was living.
I weighed it in my hand. It was oddly heavy, twice the weight, I should
say, of platinum. I drew out a glass and examined it. Decidedly the
pyramid was metallic, but of finest, almost silken texture--and I could
not place it among any of the known metals. It certainly was none I
had ever seen; yet it was as certainly metal. It was striated--slender
filaments radiating from tiny, dully lustrous points within the polished
surface.
And suddenly I had the weird feeling that each of these points was an
eye, peering up at me, scrutinizing me. There came a startled cry from
Dick.
“Look at the ring!”
The ring was in motion!
Faster the cubes moved; faster the circle revolved; the pyramids raised
themselves, stood bolt upright on their square bases; the six rolling
spheres touched them, joined the spinning, and with sleight-of-hand
suddenness the ring drew together; its units coalesced, cubes and
pyramids and globes threading with a curious suggestion of ferment.
With the same startling abruptness there stood erect, where but a moment
before they had seethed, a little figure, grotesque; a weirdly humorous,
a vaguely terrifying foot-high shape, squared and angled and pointed and
ANIMATE--as though a child should build from nursery blocks a fantastic
shape which abruptly is filled with throbbing life.
A troll from the kindergarten! A kobold of the toys!
Only for a second it stood, then began swiftly to change, melting
with quicksilver quickness from one outline into another as square
and triangle and spheres changed places. Their shiftings were like the
transformations one sees within a kaleidoscope. And in each vanishing
form was the suggestion of unfamiliar harmonies, of a subtle, a
transcendental geometric art as though each swift shaping were a symbol,
a WORD--
Euclid's problems given volition!
Geometry endowed with consciousness!
It ceased. Then the cubes drew one upon the other until they formed
a pedestal nine inches high; up this pillar rolled the larger globe,
balanced itself upon the top; the five spheres followed it, clustered
like a ring just below it. The other cubes raced up, clicked two by two
on the outer arc of each of the five balls; at the ends of these twin
blocks a pyramid took its place, tipping each with a point.
The Lilliputian fantasy was now a pedestal of cubes surmounted by a ring
of globes from which sprang a star of five arms.
The spheres began to revolve. Faster and faster they spun around the
base of the crowning globe; the arms became a disc upon which tiny
brilliant sparks appeared, clustered, vanished only to reappear in
greater number.
The troll swept toward me. It GLIDED. The finger of panic touched me. I
sprang aside, and swift as light it followed, seemed to poise itself to
leap.
“Drop it!” It was Ruth's cry.
But, before I could let fall the pyramid I had forgotten was in my hand,
the little figure touched me and a paralyzing shock ran through me. My
fingers clenched, locked. I stood, muscle and nerve bound, unable to
move.
The little figure paused. Its whirling disc shifted from the horizontal
plane on which it spun. It was as though it cocked its head to look up
at me--and again I had the sense of innumerable eyes peering at me. It
did not seem menacing--its attitude was inquisitive, waiting; almost as
though it had asked for something and wondered why I did not let it have
it. The shock still held me rigid, although a tingle in every nerve told
me of returning force.
The disc tilted back to place, bent toward me again. I heard a shout;
heard a bullet strike the pigmy that now clearly menaced; heard the
bullet ricochet without the slightest effect upon it. Dick leaped beside
me, raised a foot and kicked at the thing. There was a flash of light
and upon the instant he crashed down as though struck by a giant hand,
lay sprawling and inert upon the floor.
There was a scream from Ruth; there was softly sibilant rustling all
about her. I saw her leap the crevice, drop on her knees beside Drake.
There was movement on the flagging where she stood. A score or more of
faintly shining, bluish shapes were marching there--pyramids and cubes
and spheres like those forming the shape that stood before me. There was
a curious sharp tang of ozone in the air, a perceptible tightening as of
electrical tension.
They swept to the edge of the fissure, swam together, and there, hanging
half over the gap was a bridge, half spanning it, a weird and fairy arch
made up of alternate cube and angle. The shape at my feet disintegrated;
resolved itself into units that raced over to the beckoning span.
At the hither side of the crack they clicked into place, even as had the
others. Before me now was a bridge complete except for the one arc near
the middle where an angled gap marred it.
I felt the little object I held pulse within my hand, striving to
escape. I dropped it. The tiny shape swept to the bridge, ascended
it--dropped into the gap.
The arch was complete--hanging in one flying span over the depths!
Upon it, over it, as though they had but awaited this completion, rolled
the six globes. And as they dropped to the farther side the end of the
bridge nearest me raised itself in air, curved itself like a scorpion's
tail, drew itself into a closer circled arc, and dropped upon the floor
beyond.
Again the sibilant rustling--and cubes and pyramids and spheres were
gone.
Nerves tingling slowly back to life, mazed in absolute bewilderment,
my gaze sought Drake. He was sitting up, feebly, his head supported by
Ruth's hands.
“Goodwin!” he whispered. “What--what were they?”
“Metal,” I said--it was the only word to which my whirling mind could
cling--“metal--”
“Metal!” he echoed. “These things metal? Metal--ALIVE AND THINKING!”
Suddenly he was silent, his face a page on which, visibly, dread
gathered slowly and ever deeper.
And as I looked at Ruth, white-faced, and at him, I knew that my own was
as pallid, as terror-stricken as theirs.
“They were such LITTLE THINGS,” muttered Drake. “Such little
things--bits of metal--little globes and pyramids and cubes--just little
THINGS.”
“Babes! Only babes!” It was Ruth--“BABES!”
“Bits of metal”--Dick's gaze sought mine, held it--“and they looked for
each other, they worked with each other--THINKINGLY, CONSCIOUSLY--they
were deliberate, purposeful--little things--and with the force of a
score of dynamos--living, THINKING--”
“Don't!” Ruth laid white hands over his eyes. “Don't--don't YOU be
frightened!”
“Frightened?” he echoed. “I'M not afraid--yes, I AM afraid--”
He arose, stiffly--and stumbled toward me.
Afraid? Drake afraid. Well--so was I. Bitterly, TERRIBLY afraid.
For what we had beheld in the dusk of that dragoned, ruined chamber was
outside all experience, beyond all knowledge or dream of science. Not
their shapes--that was nothing. Not even that, being metal, they had
moved.
But that being metal, they had moved consciously, thoughtfully,
deliberately.
They were metal things with--MINDS!
That--that was the incredible, the terrifying thing. That--and their
power.
Thor compressed within Hop-o'-my-thumb--and thinking. The lightnings
incarnate in metal minacules--and thinking.
The inert, the immobile, given volition, movement,
cognoscence--thinking.
Metal with a brain!