The Metal Monster Part 28

Scattered among them were the flas.h.i.+ng emeralds of the glaciers and the immense pallid baroques of the snow fields.

Like a diadem the summits ringed the Pit. Below them ran the ring of flas.h.i.+ng amethyst with its aural mists. Between them lay the vast and patterned flat covered with still symbol and inexplicable movement.

Under their summits brooded the blue black, metallic ma.s.s of the Seeing City.

Within circling walls, over plain and from the City hovered a cosmic spirit not to be understood by man. Like an emanation of stars and s.p.a.ce, it was yet gem fine and gem hard, crystalline and metallic, lapidescent and--

Conscious!

Down from the ledge where we stood fell a steep ramp, similar to that by which, in the darkness, we had descended. It dropped at an angle of at least forty-five degrees; its surface was smooth and polished.

Through the mists at our back stole a s.h.i.+ning block. It paused, seemed to perk itself; spun so that in turn each of its six faces took us in.

I felt myself lifted upon it by mult.i.tudes of little invisible hands; saw Drake whirling up beside me. I moved toward him--through the force that held us. A block swept away from the ledge, swayed for a moment.

Under us, as though we were floating in air, the Pit lay stretched.

There was a rapid readjustment, a s.h.i.+fting of our two selves upon another surface. I looked down upon a tremendous, slender pillar of the cubes, dropping below, five hundred feet to the valley's floor a column of which the block that held us was the top.

Gone was the whirling wheel that had crowned it, but I knew this for the Grinding Thing from which we had fled; the questing block had been its scout. As though curious to know more of us, the Shape had sought us out through the mists, its messenger had caught us, delivered us to it.

The pillar leaned over--bent like that s.h.i.+ning pillar that had bridged for us, at Norhala's commands, the abyss. The floor of the valley arose to meet us. Further and further leaned the pillar. Again there was a rapid s.h.i.+fting of us to another surface of the crowning cube. Fast now swept up toward us the valley floor. A dizziness clouded my sight. There was a little shock, a rolling over the Thing that had held us--

We stood upon the floor of the Pit.

And breaking from the immense and prostrate shaft on whose top we had ridden downward came score upon score of the cubes. They broke from it, disintegrating it; circled about us, curiously, interestedly, twinkling at us from their deep sparkling points of eyes.

Helplessly we gazed at those who circled around us. Then suddenly I felt myself lifted once more, was tossed to the surface of the nearest block.

Upon it I spun while the tiny eyes searched me. Then like a human ball it tossed me to another. I caught a glimpse of Drake's tall figure drifting through the air.

The play became more rapid, breathtaking. It was play; I recognized that. But it was perilous play for us. I felt myself as fragile as a doll of gla.s.s in the hands of careless children.

I was tossed to a waiting cube. On the ground, not ten feet from me, was Drake, swaying dizzily. Suddenly the cube that held me tightened its grip; tightened it so that it drew me irresistibly flat down upon its surface. Before I dropped, Drake's body leaped toward me as though drawn by a la.s.so. He fell at my side.

Then pursued by scores of the Things and like some mischievous boy bearing off the spoils, the block that held us raced away, straight for an open portal. A blaze of incandescent blue flame blinded me; again as the dazzlement faded I saw Drake beside me--a skeleton form. Swiftly flesh melted back upon him, clothed him.

The cube stopped, abruptly; the hosts of little unseen hands raised us, slid us gently over its edge, set us upright beside it. And it sped away.

All about us stretched another of those vast halls in which on high burned the pale-gilt suns. Between its colossal columns streamed thousands of the Metal Folk; no longer hurriedly, but quietly, deliberately, sedately.

We were within the City--even as Ventnor had commanded.

CHAPTER XIX. THE CITY THAT WAS ALIVE

Close beside us was one of the cyclopean columns. We crept to it; crouched at its base opposite the drift of the Metal People; strove, huddled there, to regain our shaken poise. Like bagatelles we felt in that tremendous place, the weird luminaries gleaming above like garlands of frozen suns, the enigmatic hosts of animate cubes and spheres and pyramids trooping past.

They ranged in size from shapes yard-high to giants of thirty feet or more. They paid no heed to us, did not stop; streaming on, engrossed in whatever mysterious business was summoning them. And after a time their numbers lessened; thinned down to widely separate groups, to stragglers; then ceased. The hall was empty of them.

As far as the eye could reach the columned s.p.a.ces stretched. I was conscious once more of that unusual flow of energy through every vein and nerve.

"Follow the crowd!" said Drake. "Do you feel just full of pep and ginger, by the way?"

"I am aware of the most extraordinary vigor," I answered.

"Some weird joint," he mused, looking about him. "Wonder if they have any windows? This whole place looked solid to me--what I could see of it. Wonder if we'll get up against it for air? These Things don't need it, that's sure. Wonder--"

He broke off staring fascinatedly at the pillar behind us.

"Look here, Goodwin!" There was a tremor in his voice. "What do you make of THIS?"

I followed his pointing finger; looked at him inquiringly.

"The eyes!" he said impatiently. "Don't you see them? The eyes in the column!"

And now I saw them. The pillar was a pale metallic blue, in color a trifle darker than the Metal Folk. All within it were the myriads of tiny crystalline points that we had grown to know were the receptors of some strange sense of sight. But they did not sparkle as did those others; they were dull, lifeless. I touched the surface. It was smooth, cool--with none of that subtle, warm vitality that pulsed through all the Things with which I had come in contact. I shook my head, realizing as I did so what a shock the incredible possibility he had suggested had given me.

"No," I said. "There is a resemblance, yes. But there is no force about this--stuff; no life. Besides, such a thing is utterly incredible."

"They might be--dormant," he suggested stubbornly. "Can you see any mark of their joining--if they ARE the cubes?"

Together we scanned the pillar minutely. The faces seemed unbroken, continuous; there was no trace of those thin and s.h.i.+ning lines that marked the juncture of the cubes when they had clicked together to form the bridge of the abyss or that had gleamed, crosslike, upon the back of the combined four upon which we had followed Norhala.

"It's a sheer impossibility. It's madness to think such a thing, Drake!"

I exclaimed, and wondered at my own vehemence of denial.

"Maybe," he shook his head doubtfully. "Maybe--but--well--let's be on our way."

We strode on, following the direction the Metal Folk had gone. Clearly Drake was still doubtful; at each pillar he hesitated, scanning it closely with troubled eyes.

But I, having determinedly dismissed the idea, was more interested in the fantastic lights that flooded this columned hall with their b.u.t.tercup radiance. They were still and unwinking; not disks, I could see now, but globes. Great and small, they floated motionless, their rays extending rigidly and as still as the orb that shed them.

Yet rigid as they were there was nothing about either rays or orbs that suggested either hardness or the metallic. They were vaporous, soft as St. Elmo's fire, the witch lights that cling at times to the spars of s.h.i.+ps, weird gleaming visitors from the invisible ocean of atmospheric electricity.

When they disappeared, as they did frequently, it was instantaneously, completely, with a disconcerting sleight-of-hand finality. I noted, though, that when they did vanish, immediately close to where they had been other orbs swam forth with that same astonis.h.i.+ng abruptness; sometimes only one, larger it might be than that which had gone; sometimes a cl.u.s.ter of smaller globes, their frozen, crocused rays impinging.

What could they be, I wondered--how fixed, and what the source of their light? Products of electro-magnetic currents and born of the interpenetration of such streams flowing above us? Such a theory might account for their disappearance, and reappearance, s.h.i.+ftings of the flows that changed the light producing points of contact. Wireless lights? If so here was an idea that human science might elaborate if ever we returned to--

"Now which way?" Drake broke in upon my musing. The hall had ended. We stood before a blank wall vanis.h.i.+ng into the soft mists hiding the roof of the chamber.

"I thought we had been going along the way They went," I said in amazement.

"So did I," he answered. "We must have circled. They never went through THAT unless--unless--" He hesitated.

"Unless what?" I asked sharply.

"Unless it opened and let them through," he said. "Have you forgotten those great ovals--like cat's eyes that opened in the outer walls?" he added quietly.

I HAD forgotten. I looked again at the wall. Certainly it was smooth, lineless. In one unbroken, s.h.i.+ning surface it rose, a facade of polished metal. Within it the deep set points of light were duller even than they had been in the pillars; almost indeed indistinguishable.