That night we slept 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
armor, a pair of cloaks and sandals, the jeweled 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 passable.”
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 of 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 lanced forests, swept with gigantic gonfalons of flame; we had seen
it emptied of its fiery mists--a vast slate covered with the chirography
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 of yellow flame froth upon which a sparkling hail fell,
within which reared islanded towers and a drowning mount running with
cataracts of sun fires; here we had watched a goddess woman, a being
half of earth, half of the unknown immured within a living tomb--a
dying tomb--of flaming mysteries; had seen a cross-shaped metal Satan, a
sullen flaming crystal Judas betray--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 hillocks sprawled; huge pillars arose, bent and
twisted as though they had been jettings of lava 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 Norhala, sealed by fire in the urn of
the Metal Emperor!
From side to side of the Pit, in broken beaches and waves and hummocks,
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 wreaths of steam
drifted. In those futile wraiths of vapor 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 heaped debris and out upon the plain.
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 blow. 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 of 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
that supernal order to set in motion the machinery of disintegration?
We could only conjecture. The cruciform Shape I have named the Keeper
was the agent of destruction--of that there could be no doubt. In the
enigmatic organism which while many still was one and which, retaining
its integrity as a whole could dissociate manifold parts yet still as a
whole maintain an unseen contact and direction over them through miles
of space, the Keeper had its place, its work, its duties.
So too had that wondrous Disk whose visible and concentrate power, whose
manifest leadership, had made us name it emperor.
And had not Norhala 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 of that mysterious law which Maeterlinck has called
the spirit of the Hive--and something infinitely greater, like that
which governs the swarming sun bees of Hercules' clustered orbs.
Had there evolved within the Keeper of the Cones--guardian and engineer
as it seemed to have been--ambition?
Had there risen within it a determination to wrest 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 duel in the shattered Hall of the Cones whose end
had been the signal for the final cataclysm?
How else explain the alinement of the cubes behind the Keeper against
the globes and pyramids remaining loyal to the will of the Disk?
We discussed this, Ventnor and I.
“This world,” he mused, “is a place of 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
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 hatreds, warfare. 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 hazarded be accepted, must remain
that monstrous suicide. Enigma, save for inconclusive theories, must
remain the question of the Monster's 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 Norhala 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 cliff whose shaft Norhala
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 into Gyantse.
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; its
symboled, 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 pall 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 a part, 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?