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 rede of their
clamorous runes?
Ventnor stepped by the sentinel globe, bent over the tranced 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.
Abruptly Drake turned, walked out through the open portal, his strain
and a 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 bower 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
with another's eyes, were reflecting another'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 a vast relief. With shocked amaze I
realized that Ruth's agony--for in agony she clearly was--was calling
forth in him elation. He spoke--and I knew why.
“Norhala!” he whispered. “She is seeing with Norhala's eyes--feeling
what Norhala 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 Norhala'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 a 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--sees 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 bare slender feet, one sweet breast bare, hands upraised, 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 a 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 an 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; tied 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 nodded to Drake, who caught 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 glaring at him, the eyes from 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 how Norhala 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 Norhala'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 clamor 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 clamor as it was
of heat or cold--
“We've got to see,” Ventnor broke the chain of thought. “We've got to
get through and see what's happening. Win 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 curtaining 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-throes 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 clangors--but as one hears in the murmurings
of the fluted conch the great voice of ocean, its whispering and
its roarings, so here in the clamorous shell of the Pit echoed the
tremendous voices of that illimitable sea which laps 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 spindrift of lightnings; it was trodden by dervish mists of
molten flame thrust through with forests of lances of living light. It
cast a cadent spray high to 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 ark of metal breasting 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 spindrift, 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 though 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 too 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 Cherkis's city but to them as the
human hand is to the paw of the dinosaur.
Conceive this--conceive 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 as 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 levins
blasted.
Now I could see the Shapes that attacked. Grotesque; spined and tusked,
spiked and antlered, wenned and breasted; as chimerically angled, cusped
and cornute as though they were the superangled, supercornute gods of
the cusped and angled gods of the Javanese, they strove against the
sledge-headed and smiting, the multiarmed and blasting square towers.
High as them, as 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 massed 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 irised.
The hammer ends split, flew apart, were scattered, were falling showers
of sulphurous 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 wrestled, 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 Norhala's house.
Unlike them they held no dazzling sapphire brilliancies; they were
ochreous, suffused 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 chimerae 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 uprose
that prodigious barrage against the smiting rays.
Now to check them soared from the ranks of the besiegers clouds of
countless horned dragons, immense cylinders of clustered cubes studded
with the clinging tetrahedrons. They struck the cubed projectiles head
on; aimed themselves to meet them.
Bristling dragon and hurtling pillar stuck and fused or burst with
intolerable 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 chimerae which
against the glittering heavens traced luminous symbols of agony.
Shrilled a stronger wailing. Up from behind the ray hurling Towers shot
hosts of globes. Thousands of palely azure, metal moons they soared;
warrior moons charging in meteor rush and streaming with fluttering
battle pennons of violet flame. High they flew; they curved over the
mile high back of the Monster; they dropped upon it.
Arose to meet them 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 the open 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 vise. It CRUNCHED them. Plain through
the turmoil came a dreadful--bursting roar.
Down from the closing jaws of the vise 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 scarp 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 gap a metal curtaining of the cubes joined. Again the
wall was whole.
I turned my stunned gaze from the City--swept over the valley.
Everywhere, in towers, in writhing coils, in whipping flails, in 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 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, focussed them upon it. Now I saw that where
the radiant lances struck they--killed the blocks blackened under them,
became lustreless; 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 scarp 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.