Out shot a neck, a tremendous serpent body. Crested it was with pyramids; crested with them, too, was its immense head. Thickly the head bristled with them, poised motionless upon spinning globes as huge as they. For hundreds of feet that incredible neck stretched ahead of us and for twice as far behind a monstrous, lizard-shaped body writhed.

We rode now upon a serpent, a glittering blue metal dragon, spiked and knobbed and scaled. It was the weird steed of Norhala flattening, thrusting out to pierce the rift.

And still as when it had reared on high beat through it the wild, triumphant, questing pulse. Still rang out Norhala's chanting.

The trees parted and fell upon each side of us as though we were some monster of the sea and they the waves we cleft.

The rift enclosed us. Lower we dropped; were not more than fifty feet above its floor. The Thing upon which we rode was a torrent roaring through it.

A deeper blackness enclosed us—a tunneling.

Through that we flowed. Out of it we darted into a widening filled with wan light drifting down through a pinnacle fanged mouth miles on high. Again the cleft shrunk. A thousand feet ahead was a crack, a narrowing of the cleft so small that hardly could a man pass through it.

Abruptly the metal dragon halted.

Norhala's chanting changed; became again the arrogant clarioning. And close below us the huge neck split. It came to me then that it was as though Norhala were the overspirit of this chimera—as though it caught and understood and obeyed each quick thought of hers.

As though, indeed, she was a PART of it—as IT was in reality a part of that infinitely greater Thing, crouching there in its lair of the Pit—the Metal Monster that had lent this living part of itself to her for a steed, a champion. Little time had I to consider such matters.

Up thrust the Shape before us. Into it raced and spun Things angled, Things curved and Things squared. It gathered itself into a Titanic pillar out of which, instantly, thrust scores of arms.

Over them great globes raced; after these flew other scores of huge pyramids, none less than ten feet in height, the mass of them twenty and thirty. The manifold arms grew rigid. Quiet for a moment, a Titanic metal Briareous, it stood.

Then at the tips of the arms the globes began to spin—faster, faster. Upon them I saw the hosts of the pyramids open—as one into a host of stars. The cleft leaped out in a flood of violet light.

Now for another instant the stars which had been motionless, poised upon the whirling spheres, joined in their mad spinning. Cyclopean pin wheels they turned; again as one they ceased. More brilliant now was their light, dazzling; as though in their whirling they had gathered greater force.

Under me I felt the split Thing quiver with eagerness.

From the stars came a hurricane of lightning! A cataract of electric flame poured into the crack, splashed and guttered down the granite walls. We were blinded by it; were deafened with thunders.

The face of the precipice smoked and split; was whirled away in clouds of dust.

The crack widened—widened as a gulley in a sand bank does when a swift stream rushes through it. Lightnings these were—and more than lightnings; lightnings keyed up to an invincible annihilating weapon that could rend and split and crumble to atoms the living granite.

Steadily the cleft expanded. As its walls melted away the Blasting Thing advanced, spurting into it the flaming torrents. Behind it we crept. The dust of the shattered rocks swirled up toward us like angry ghosts—before they reached us they were blown away as though by strong winds streaming from beneath us.

On we went, blinded, deafened. Interminably, it seemed, poured forth the hurricane of blue fire; interminably the thunder bellowed.

There came a louder clamor—volcanic, chaotic, dulling the thunders. The sides of the cleft quivered, bent outward. They split; crashed down. Bright daylight poured in upon us, a flood of light toward which the billows of dust rushed as though seeking escape; out it poured like the smoke of ten thousand cannon.

And the Blasting Thing shook—as though with laughter!

The stars closed. Back into the Shape ran globe and pyramid. It slid toward us—joined the body from which it had broken away. Through all the mass ran a wave of jubilation, a pulse of mirth—a colossal, metallic—SILENT—roar of laughter.

We glided forward—out of the cleft. I felt a shifting movement.

Up and up we were thrust. Dazed I looked behind me. In the face of a sky climbing wall of rock, smoked a wide chasm. Out of it the billowing clouds of dust still streamed, pursuing, threatening us. The whole granite barrier seemed to quiver with agony. Higher we rose and higher.

"Look," whispered Drake, and whirled me around.

Less than five miles away was Ruszark, the City of Cherkis. And it was like some ancient city come into life out of long dead centuries. A page restored from once conquering Persia's crumbled book. A city of the Chosroes transported by Jinns into our own time.

Built around and upon a low mount, it stood within a valley but little larger than the Pit. The plain was level, as though once it had been the floor of some primeval lake; the hill of the City was its only elevation.

Beyond, I caught the glinting of a narrow stream, meandering. The valley was ringed with precipitous cliffs falling sheer to its floor.

Slowly we advanced.

The city was almost square, guarded by double walls of hewn stone. The first raised itself a hundred feet on high, turreted and parapeted and pierced with gates. Perhaps a quarter of a mile behind it the second fortification thrust up.

The city itself I estimated covered about ten square miles. It ran upward in broad terraces. It was very fair, decked with blossoming gardens and green groves. Among the clustering granite houses, red and yellow roofed, thrust skyward tall spires and towers. Upon the mount's top was a broad, flat plaza on which were great buildings, marble white and golden roofed; temples I thought, or palaces, or both.

Running to the city out of the grain fields and steads that surrounded it, were scores of little figures, rat-like. Here and there among them I glimpsed horsemen, arms and armor glittering. All were racing to the gates and the shelter of the battlements.

Nearer we drew. From the walls came now a faint sound of gongs, of drums, of shrill, flutelike pipings. Upon them I could see hosts gathering; hosts of swarming little figures whose bodies glistened, from above whom came gleamings—the light striking upon their helms, their spear and javelin tips.

"Ruszark!" breathed Norhala, eyes wide, red lips cruelly smiling. "Lo—I am before your gates. Lo—I am here—and was there ever joy like this!"

The constellations in her eyes blazed. Beautiful, beautiful was Norhala—as Isis punishing Typhon for the murder of Osiris; as avenging Diana; shining from her something of the spirit of all wrathful Goddesses.

The flaming hair whirled and snapped. From all her sweet body came white-hot furious force, a withering perfume of destruction. She pressed against me, and I trembled at the contact.

Lawless, wild imaginings ran through me. Life, human life, dwindled. The City seemed but a thing of toys.

On—let us crush it! On—on!

Again the monster shook beneath us. Faster we moved. Louder grew the clangor of the drums, the gongs, the pipes. Nearer came the walls; and ever more crowded with the swarming human ants that manned them.

We were close upon the heels of the last fleeing stragglers. The Thing slackened in its stride; waited patiently until they were close to the gates. Before they could reach them I heard the brazen clanging of their valves. Those shut out beat frenziedly upon them; dragged themselves close to the base of the battlements, cowered there or crept along them seeking some hole in which to hide.

With a slow lowering of its height the Thing advanced. Now its form was that of a spindle a full mile in length on whose bulging center we three stood.

A hundred feet from the outer wall we halted. We looked down upon it not more than fifty feet above its broad top. Hundreds of the soldiers were crouching behind the parapets, companies of archers with great bows poised, arrows at their cheeks, scores of leather jerkined men with stands of javelins at their right hands, spearsmen and men with long, thonged slings.

Set at intervals were squat, powerful engines of wood and metal beside which were heaps of huge, rounded boulders. Catapults I knew them to be and around each swarmed a knot of soldiers, fixing the great stones in place, drawing back the thick ropes that, loosened, would hurl forth the projectiles. From each side came other men, dragging more of these balisters; assembling a battery against the prodigious, gleaming monster that menaced their city.

Between outer wall and inner battlements galloped squadrons of mounted men. Upon this inner wall the soldiers clustered as thickly as on the outer, preparing as actively for its defense.

The city seethed. Up from it arose a humming, a buzzing, as of some immense angry hive.

Involuntarily I visualized the spectacle we must present to those who looked upon us—this huge incredible Shape of metal alive with quicksilver shifting. This—as it must have seemed to them—hellish mechanism of war captained by a sorceress and two familiars in form of men. There came to me dreadful visions of such a monster looking down upon the peace-reared battlements of New York—the panic rush of thousands away from it.

There was a blaring of trumpets. Up on the parapet leaped a man clad all in gleaming red armor. From head to feet the close linked scales covered him. Within a hood shaped somewhat like the tight-fitting head coverings of the Crusaders a pallid, cruel face looked out upon us; in the fierce black eyes was no trace of fear.

Evil as Norhala had said these people of Ruszark were, wicked and cruel—they were no cowards, no!

The red armored man threw up a hand.

"Who are you?" he shouted. "Who are you three, you three who come driving down upon Ruszark through the rocks? We have no quarrel with you?"

"I seek a man and a maid," cried Norhala. "A maid and a sick man your thieves took from me. Bring him forth!"

"Seek elsewhere for them then," he answered. "They are not here. Turn now and seek elsewhere. Go quickly, lest I loose our might upon you and you go never."

Mockingly rang her laughter—and under its lash the black eyes grew fiercer, the cruelty on the white face darkened.

"Little man whose words are so big! Fly who thunders! What are you called, little man?"

Her raillery bit deep—but its menace passed unheeded in the rage it called forth.

"I am Kulun," shouted the man in scarlet armor. "Kulun, the son of Cherkis the Mighty, and captain of his hosts. Kulun—who will cast your skin under my mares in stall for them to trample and thrust your red flayed body upon a pole in the grain fields to frighten away the crows! Does that answer you?"

Her laughter ceased; her eyes dwelt upon him—filled with an infernal joy.

"The son of Cherkis!" I heard her murmur. "He has a son—"

There was a sneer on the cruel face; clearly he thought her awed. Quick was his disillusionment.

"Listen, Kulun," she cried. "I am Norhala—daughter of another Norhala and of Rustum, whom Cherkis tortured and slew. Now go, you lying spawn of unclean toads—go and tell your father that I, Norhala, am at his gates. And bring back with you the maid and the man. Go, I say!"



CHAPTER XXV. CHERKIS

There was stark amazement on Kulun's face; and fear now enough. He dropped from the parapet among his men. There came one loud trumpet blast.

Out from the battlements poured a storm of arrows, a cloud of javelins. The squat catapults leaped forward. From them came a hail of boulders. Before that onrushing tempest of death I flinched.

I heard Norhala's golden laughter and before they could reach us arrow and javelin and boulder were checked as though myriads of hands reached out from the Thing under us and caught them. Down they dropped.

Forth from the great spindle shot a gigantic arm, hammer tipped with cubes. It struck the wall close to where the scarlet armored Kulun had vanished.

Under its blow the stones crumbled. With the fragments fell the soldiers; were buried beneath them.

A hundred feet in width a breach gaped in the battlements. Out shot the arm again; hooked its hammer tip over the parapet, tore away a stretch of the breastwork as though it had been cardboard. Beside the breach an expanse of the broad flat top lay open like a wide platform.

The arm withdrew, and out from the whole length of the spindle thrust other arms, hammer tipped, held high aloft, menacing.

From all the length of the wall arose panic outcry. Abruptly the storm of arrows ended; the catapults were still. Again the trumpets sounded; the crying ceased. Down fell a silence, terrified, stifling.

Kulun stepped forth again, both hands held high. Gone was his arrogance.

"A parley," he shouted. "A parley, Norhala. If we give you the maid and man, will you go?"

"Go get them," she answered. "And take with you this my command to Cherkis—that HE return with the two!"

For an instant Kulun hesitated. Up thrust the dreadful arms, poised themselves to strike.

"It shall be so," he shouted. "I carry your command."

He leaped back, his red mail flashed toward a turret that held, I supposed, a stairway. He was lost to sight. In silence we waited.

On the further side of the city I glimpsed movement. Little troops of mounted men, pony drawn wains, knots of running figures were fleeing from the city through the opposite gates.

Norhala saw them too. With that incomprehensible, instant obedience to her unspoken thought a mass of the Metal Things separated from us; whirled up into a dozen of those obelisked forms I had seen march from the cat eyes of the City of the Pit.

In but a breath, it seemed, their columns were far off, herding back the fugitives.

They did not touch them, did not offer to harm—only, grotesquely, like dogs heading off and corraling frightened sheep, they circled and darted. Rushing back came those they herded.

From the watching terraces and walls arose shrill cries of terror, a wailing. Far away the obelisks met, pirouetted, melted into one thick column. Towering, motionless as we, it stood, guarding the further gates.

There was a stir upon the wall, a flashing of spears, of drawn blades. Two litters closed with curtainings, surrounded by triple rows of swordsmen fully armored, carrying small shields and led by Kulun were being borne to the torn battlement.

Their bearers stopped well within the platform and gently lowered their burdens. The leader of those around the second litter drew aside its covering, spoke.

Out stepped Ruth and after her—Ventnor!

"Martin!" I could not keep back the cry; heard mingled with it Drake's own cry to Ruth. Ventnor raised his hand in greeting; I thought he smiled.

The cubes on which we stood shot forward; stopped within fifty feet of them. Instantly the guard of swordsmen raised their blades, held them over the pair as though waiting the signal to strike.

And now I saw that Ruth was not clad as she had been when we had left her. She stood in scanty kirtle that came scarcely to her knees, her shoulders were bare, her curly brown hair unbound and tangled. Her face was set with wrath hardly less than that which beat from Norhala. On Ventnor's forehead was a blood red scar, a line that ran from temple to temple like a brand.

The curtains of the first litter quivered; behind them someone spoke. That in which Ruth and Ventnor had ridden was drawn swiftly away. The knot of swordsmen drew back.

Into their places sprang and knelt a dozen archers. They ringed in the two, bows drawn taut, arrows in place and pointing straight to their hearts.

Out of the litter rolled a giant of a man. Seven feet he must have been in height; over the huge shoulders, the barreled chest and the bloated abdomen hung a purple cloak glittering with gems; through the thick and grizzled hair passed a flashing circlet of jewels.

The scarlet armored Kulun beside him, swordsmen guarding them, he walked to the verge of the torn gap in the wall. He peered down it, glancing imperturbably at the upraised, hammer-banded arms still threatening; examined again the breach. Then still with Kulun he strode over to the very edge of the broken battlement and stood, head thrust a little forward, studying us in silence.

"Cherkis!" whispered Norhala—the whisper was a hymn to Nemesis. I felt her body quiver from head to foot.

A wave of hatred, a hot desire to kill, passed through me as I scanned the face staring at us. It was a great gross mask of evil, of cold cruelty and callous lusts. Unwinking, icily malignant, black slits of eyes glared at us between pouches that held them half closed. Heavy jowls hung pendulous, dragging down the corners of the thick lipped, brutal mouth into a deep graven, unchanging sneer.

As he gazed at Norhala a flicker of lust shot like a licking tongue through his eyes.

Yet from him pulsed power; sinister, instinct with evil, concentrate with cruelty—but power indomitable. Such was Cherkis, descendant perhaps of that Xerxes the Conqueror who three millenniums gone ruled most of the known world.

It was Norhala who broke the silence.

"Tcherak! Greeting—Cherkis!" There was merciless mirth in the buglings of her voice. "Lo, I did but knock so gently at your gates and you hastened to welcome me. Greetings—gross swine, spittle of the toads, fat slug beneath my sandals."

He passed the insults by, unmoved—although I heard a murmuring go up from those near and Kulun's hard eyes blazed.

"We will bargain, Norhala," he answered calmly; the voice was deep, filled with sinister strength.

"Bargain?" she laughed. "What have you with which to bargain, Cherkis? Does the rat bargain with the tigress? And you, toad, have nothing."

He shook his head.

"I have these," he waved a hand toward Ruth and her brother. "Me you may slay—and mayhap many of mine. But before you can move my archers will feather their hearts."

She considered him, no longer mocking.

"Two of mine you slew long since, Cherkis," she said, slowly. "Therefore it is I am here."

"I know," he nodded heavily. "Yet now that is neither here nor there, Norhala. It was long since, and I have learned much during the years. I would have killed you too, Norhala, could I have found you. But now I would not do as then—quite differently would I do, Norhala; for I have learned much. I am sorry that those that you loved died as they did. I am in truth sorry!"

There was a curious lurking sardonicism in the words, an undertone of mockery. Was what he really meant that in those years he had learned to inflict greater agonies, more exquisite tortures? If so, Norhala apparently did not sense that interpretation. Indeed, she seemed to be interested, her wrath abating.

"No," the hoarse voice rumbled dispassionately. "None of that is important—now. YOU would have this man and girl. I hold them. They die if you stir a hand's breadth toward me. If they die, I prevail against you—for I have cheated you of what you desire. I win, Norhala, even though you slay me. That is all that is now important."

There was doubt upon Norhala's face and I caught a quick gleam of contemptuous triumph glint through the depths of the evil eyes.

"Empty will be your victory over me, Norhala," he said; then waited.

"What is your bargain?" she spoke hesitatingly; with a sinking of my heart I heard the doubt tremble in her throat.

"If you will go without further knocking upon my gates"—there was a satiric grimness in the phrase—"go when you have been given them, and pledge yourself never to return—you shall have them. If you will not, then they die."

"But what security, what hostages, do you ask?" Her eyes were troubled. "I cannot swear by your gods, Cherkis, for they are not my gods—in truth I, Norhala, have no gods. Why should I not say yes and take the two, then fall upon you and destroy—as you would do in my place, old wolf?"

"Norhala," he answered, "I ask nothing but your word. Do I not know those who bore you and the line from which they sprung? Was not always the word they gave kept till death—unbroken, inviolable? No need for vows to gods between you and me. Your word is holier than they—O glorious daughter of kings, princess royal!"

The great voice was harshly caressing; not obsequious, but as though he gave her as an equal her rightful honor. Her face softened; she considered him from eyes far less hostile.

A wholesome respect for this gross tyrant's mentality came to me; it did not temper, it heightened, the hatred I felt for him. But now I recognized the subtlety of his attack; realized that unerringly he had taken the only means by which he could have gained a hearing; have temporized. Could he win her with his guile?

"Is it not true?" There was a leonine purring in the question.

"It IS true!" she answered proudly. "Though why YOU should dwell upon this, Cherkis, whose word is steadfast as the running stream and whose promises are as lasting as its bubbles—why YOU should dwell on this I do not know."

"I have changed greatly, Princess, in the years since my great wickedness; I have learned much. He who speaks to you now is not he you were taught—and taught justly then—to hate."

"You may speak truth! Certainly you are not as I have pictured you." It was as though she were more than half convinced. "In this at least you do speak truth—that IF I promise I will go and molest you no more."

"Why go at all, Princess?" Quietly he asked the amazing question—then drew himself to his full height, threw wide his arms.

"Princess?" the great voice rumbled forth. "Nay—Queen! Why leave us again—Norhala the Queen? Are we not of your people? Am I not of your kin? Join your power with ours. What that war engine you ride may be, how built, I know not. But this I do know—that with our strengths joined we two can go forth from where I have dwelt so long, go forth into the forgotten world, eat its cities and rule.

"You shall teach our people to make these engines, Norhala, and we will make many of them. Queen Norhala—you shall wed my son Kulun, he who stands beside me. And while I live you shall rule with me, rule equally. And when I die you and Kulun shall rule.

"Thus shall our two royal lines be made one, the old feud wiped out, the long score be settled. Queen—wherever it is you dwell it comes to me that you have few men. Queen—you need men, many men and strong to follow you, men to gather the harvests of your power, men to bring to you the fruit of your smallest wish—young men and vigorous to amuse you.

"Let the past be forgotten—I too have wrongs to forget, O Queen. Come to us, Great One, with your power and your beauty. Teach us. Lead us. Return, and throned above your people rule the world!"

He ceased. Over the battlements, over the city, dropped a vast expectant silence—as though the city knew its fate was hanging upon the balance.

"No! No!" It was Ruth crying. "Do not trust him, Norhala! It's a trap! He shamed me—he tortured—"

Cherkis half turned; before he swung about I saw a hell shadow darken his face. Ventnor's hand thrust out, covered Ruth's mouth, choking her crying.

"Your son"—Norhala spoke swiftly; and back flashed the cruel face of Cherkis, devouring her with his eyes. "Your son—and Queenship here—and Empire of the World." Her voice was rapt, thrilled. "All this you offer? Me—Norhala?"

"This and more!" The huge bulk of his body quivered with eagerness. "If it be your wish, O Queen, I, Cherkis, will step down from the throne for you and sit beneath your right hand, eager to do your bidding."

A moment she studied him.

"Norhala," I whispered, "do not do this thing. He thinks to gain your secrets."

"Let my bridegroom stand forth that I may look upon him," called Norhala.

Visibly Cherkis relaxed, as though a strain had been withdrawn. Between him and his crimson-clad son flashed a glance; it was as though a triumphant devil sped from them into each other's eyes.

I saw Ruth shrink into Ventnor's arms. Up from the wall rose a jubilant shouting, was caught by the inner battlements, passed on to the crowded terraces.

"Take Kulun," it was Drake, pistol drawn and whispering across to me. "I'll handle Cherkis. And shoot straight."



CHAPTER XXVI. THE VENGEANCE OF NORHALA

Norhala's hand that had gone from my wrist dropped down again; the other fell upon Drake's.

Kulun loosed his hood, let it fall about his shoulders.

He stepped forward, held out his arms to Norhala.

"A strong man!" she cried approvingly. "Hail—my bridegroom! But stay—stand back a moment. Stand beside that man for whom I came to Ruszark. I would see you together!"

Kulun's face darkened. But Cherkis smiled with evil understanding, shrugged his shoulders and whispered to him. Sullenly Kulun stepped back. The ring of the archers lowered their bows; they leaped to their feet and stood aside to let him pass.

Quick as a serpent's tongue a pyramid tipped tentacle flicked out beneath us. It darted through the broken circle of the bowmen.

It LICKED up Ruth and Ventnor and—Kulun!

Swiftly as it had swept forth it returned, coiled and dropped those two I loved at Norhala's feet.

It flashed back on high with the scarlet length of Cherkis's son sprawled along its angled end.

The great body of Cherkis seemed to wither.

Up from all the wall went a tempestuous sigh of horror.

Out rang the merciless chimes of Norhala's laughter.

"Tchai!" she cried. "Tchai! Fat fool there. Tchai—you Cherkis! Toad whose wits have sickened with your years!

"Did you think to catch me, Norhala, in your filthy web? Princess! Queen! Empress of Earth! Ho—old fox I have outplayed and beaten, what now have you to trade with Norhala?"

Mouth sagging open, eyes glaring, the tyrant slowly raised his arms—a suppliant.

"You would have back the bridegroom you gave me?" she laughed. "Take him, then."

Down swept the metal arm that held Kulun. The arm dropped Cherkis's son at Cherkis's feet; and as though Kulun had been a grape—it crushed him!

Before those who had seen could stir from their stupor the tentacle hovered over Cherkis, glaring down at the horror that had been his son.

It did not strike him—it drew him up to it as a magnet draws a pin.

And as the pin swings from the magnet when held suspended by the head, so swung the great body of Cherkis from the under side of the pyramid that held him. Hanging so he was carried toward us, came to a stop not ten feet from us—

Weird, weird beyond all telling was that scene—and would I had the power to make you who read see it as we did.

The animate, living Shape of metal on which we stood, with its forest of hammer-handed arms raised menacingly along its mile of spindled length; the great walls glistening with the armored hosts; the terraces of that fair and ancient city, their gardens and green groves and clustering red and yellow-roofed houses and temples and palaces; the swinging gross body of Cherkis in the clutch of the unseen grip of the tentacle, his grizzled hair touching the side of the pyramid that held him, his arms half outstretched, the gemmed cloak flapping like the wings of a jeweled bat, his white, malignant face in which the evil eyes were burning slits flaming hell's own blackest hatred; and beyond the city, from which pulsed almost visibly a vast and hopeless horror, the watching column—and over all this the palely radiant white sky under whose light the encircling cliffs were tremendous stony palettes splashed with a hundred pigments.

Norhala's laughter had ceased. Somberly she looked upon Cherkis, into the devil fires of his eyes.

"Cherkis!" she half whispered. "Now comes the end for you—and for all that is yours! But until the end's end you shall see."

The hanging body was thrust forward; was thrust up; was brought down upon its feet on the upper plane of the prostrate pyramid tipping the metal arm that held him. For an instant he struggled to escape; I think he meant to hurl himself down upon Norhala, to kill her before he himself was slain.

If so, after one frenzied effort he realized the futility, for with a certain dignity he drew himself upright, turned his eyes toward the city.

Over that city a dreadful silence hung. It was as though it cowered, hid its face, was afraid to breathe.

"The end!" murmured Norhala.

There was a quick trembling through the Metal Thing. Down swung its forest of sledges. Beneath the blow down fell the smitten walls, shattered, crumbling, and with it glittering like shining flies in a dust storm fell the armored men.

Through that mile-wide breach and up to the inner barrier I glimpsed confusion chaotic. And again I say it—they were no cowards, those men of Cherkis. From the inner battlements flew clouds of arrows, of huge stones—as uselessly as before.

Then out from the opened gates poured regiments of horsemen, brandishing javelins and great maces, and shouting fiercely as they drove down upon each end of the Metal Shape. Under cover of their attack I saw cloaked riders spurring their ponies across the plain to shelter of the cliff walls, to the chance of hiding places within them. Women and men of the rich, the powerful, flying for safety; after them ran and scattered through the fields of grain a multitude on foot.

The ends of the spindle drew back before the horsemen's charge, broadening as they went—like the heads of monstrous cobras withdrawing into their hoods. Abruptly, with a lightning velocity, these broadenings expanded into immense lunettes, two tremendous curving and crablike claws. Their tips flung themselves past the racing troops; then like gigantic pincers began to contract.

Of no avail now was it for the horsemen to halt dragging their mounts on their haunches, or to turn to fly. The ends of the lunettes had met, the pincer tips had closed. The mounted men were trapped within half-mile-wide circles. And in upon man and horse their living walls marched. Within those enclosures of the doomed began a frantic milling—I shut my eyes—

There was a dreadful screaming of horses, a shrieking of men. Then silence.

Shuddering, I looked. Where the mounted men had been was—nothing.

Nothing? There were two great circular spaces whose floors were glistening, wetly red. Fragments of man or horse—there was none. They had been crushed into—what was it Norhala had promised—had been stamped into the rock beneath the feet of her—servants.

Sick, I looked away and stared at a Thing that writhed and undulated over the plain; a prodigious serpentine Shape of cubes and spheres linked and studded thick with the spikes of the pyramid. Through the fields, over the plain its coils flashed.

Playfully it sped and twisted among the fugitives, crushing them, tossing them aside broken, gliding over them. Some there were who hurled themselves upon it in impotent despair, some who knelt before it, praying. On rolled the metal convolutions, inexorable.

Within my vision's range there were no more fugitives. Around a corner of the broken battlements raced the serpent Shape. Where it had writhed was now no waving grain, no trees, no green thing. There was only smooth rock upon which here and there red smears glistened wetly.

Afar there was a crying, in its wake a rumbling. It was the column, it came to me, at work upon the further battlements. As though the sound had been a signal the spindle trembled; up we were thrust another hundred feet or more. Back dropped the host of brandished arms, threaded themselves into the parent bulk.

Right and left of us the spindle split into scores of fissures. Between these fissures the Metal Things that made up each now dissociate and shapeless mass geysered; block and sphere and tetrahedron spike spun and swirled. There was an instant of formlessness.

Then right and left of us stood scores of giant, grotesque warriors. Their crests were fully fifty feet below our living platform. They stood upon six immense, columnar stilts. These sextuple legs supported a hundred feet above their bases a huge and globular body formed of clusters of the spheres. Out from each of these bodies that were at one and the same time trunks and heads, sprang half a score of colossal arms shaped like flails; like spike-studded girders, Titanic battle maces, Cyclopean sledges.

From legs and trunks and arms the tiny eyes of the Metal Hordes flashed, exulting.

There came from them, from the Thing we rode as well, a chorus of thin and eager wailings and pulsed through all that battle-line, a jubilant throbbing.

Then with a rhythmic, JOCUND stride they leaped upon the city.

Under the mallets of the smiting arms the inner battlements fell as under the hammers of a thousand metal Thors. Over their fragments and the armored men who fell with them strode the Things, grinding stone and man together as we passed.

All of the terraced city except the side hidden by the mount lay open to my gaze. In that brief moment of pause I saw crazed crowds battling in narrow streets, trampling over mounds of the fallen, surging over barricades of bodies, clawing and tearing at each other in their flight.

There was a wide, stepped street of gleaming white stone that climbed like an immense stairway straight up the slope to that broad plaza at the top where clustered the great temples and palaces—the Acropolis of the city. Into it the streets of the terraces flowed, each pouring out upon it a living torrent, tumultuous with tuliped, sparkling little waves, the gay coverings and the arms and armor of Ruszark's desperate thousands seeking safety at the shrines of their gods.

Here great carven arches arose; there slender, exquisite towers capped with red gold—there was a street of colossal statues, another over which dozens of graceful, fretted bridges threw their spans from feathery billows of flowering trees; there were gardens gay with blossoms in which fountains sparkled, green groves; thousands upon thousands of bright multicolored pennants, banners, fluttered.

A fair, a lovely city was Cherkis's stronghold of Ruszark.

Its beauty filled the eyes; out from it streamed the fragrance of its gardens—the voice of its agony was that of the souls in Dis.

The row of destroying shapes lengthened, each huge warrior of metal drawing far apart from its mates. They flexed their manifold arms, shadow boxed—grotesquely, dreadfully.

Down struck the flails, the sledges. Beneath the blows the buildings burst like eggshells, their fragments burying the throngs fighting for escape in the thoroughfares that threaded them. Over their ruins we moved.

Down and ever down crashed the awful sledges. And ever under them the city crumbled.

There was a spider Shape that crawled up the wide stairway hammering into the stone those who tried to flee before it.

Stride by stride the Destroying Things ate up the city.

I felt neither wrath nor pity. Through me beat a jubilant roaring pulse—as though I were a shouting corpuscle of the rushing hurricane, as though I were one of the hosts of smiting spirits of the bellowing typhoon.

Through this stole another thought—vague, unfamiliar, yet seemingly of truth's own essence. Why, I wondered, had I never recognized this before? Why had I never known that these green forms called trees were but ugly, unsymmetrical excrescences? That these high projections of towers, these buildings were deformities?

That these four-pronged, moving little shapes that screamed and ran were—hideous?

They must be wiped out! All this misshapen, jumbled, inharmonious ugliness must be wiped out! It must be ground down to smooth unbroken planes, harmonious curvings, shapeliness—harmonies of arc and line and angle!

Something deep within me fought to speak—fought to tell me that this thought was not human thought, not my thought—that it was the reflected thought of the Metal Things!

It told me—and fiercely it struggled to make me realize what it was that it told. Its insistence was borne upon little despairing, rhythmic beatings—throbbings that were like the muffled sobbings of the drums of grief. Louder, closer came the throbbing; clearer with it my perception of the inhumanness of my thought.

The drum beat tapped at my humanity, became a dolorous knocking at my heart.

It was the sobbing of Cherkis!

The gross face was shrunken, the cheeks sagging in folds of woe; cruelty and wickedness were wiped from it; the evil in the eyes had been washed out by tears. Eyes streaming, bull throat and barrel chest racked by his sobbing, he watched the passing of his people and his city.

And relentlessly, coldly, Norhala watched him—as though loath to lose the faintest shadow of his agony.

Now I saw we were close to the top of the mount. Packed between us and the immense white structures that crowned it were thousands of the people. They fell on their knees before us, prayed to us. They tore at each other, striving to hide themselves from us in the mass that was themselves. They beat against the barred doors of the sanctuaries; they climbed the pillars; they swarmed over the golden roofs.

There was a moment of chaos—a chaos of which we were the heart. Then temple and palace cracked, burst; were shattered; fell. I caught glimpses of gleaming sculptures, glitterings of gold and of silver, flashing of gems, shimmering of gorgeous draperies—under them a weltering of men and women.

We closed down upon them—over them!

The dreadful sobbing ceased. I saw the head of Cherkis swing heavily upon a shoulder; the eyes closed.

The Destroying Things touched. Their flailing arms coiled back, withdrew into their bodies. They joined, forming for an instant a tremendous hollow pillar far down in whose center we stood. They parted; shifted in shape? rolled down the mount over the ruins like a widening wave—crushing into the stone all over which they passed.

Afar away I saw the gleaming serpent still at play—still writhing along, still obliterating the few score scattered fugitives that some way, somehow, had slipped by the Destroying Things.

We halted. For one long moment Norhala looked upon the drooping body of him upon whom she had let fall this mighty vengeance.

Then the metal arm that held Cherkis whirled. Thrown from it, the cloaked form flew like a great blue bat. It fell upon the flattened mound that had once been the proud crown of his city. A blue blot upon desolation the broken body of Cherkis lay.

A black speck appeared high in the sky; grew fast—the lammergeier.

"I have left carrion for you—after all!" cried Norhala.

With an ebon swirling of wings the vulture dropped beside the blue heap—thrust in it its beak.



CHAPTER XXVII. "THE DRUMS OF DESTINY"

Slowly we descended that mount of desolation; lingeringly, as though the brooding eyes of Norhala were not yet sated with destruction. Of human life, of green life, of life of any kind there was none.

Man and tree, woman and flower, babe and bud, palace, temple and home—Norhala had stamped flat. She had crushed them within the rock—even as she had promised.

The tremendous tragedy had absorbed my every faculty; I had had no time to think of my companions; I had forgotten them. Now in the painful surges of awakening realization, of full human understanding of that inhuman annihilation, I turned to them for strength. Faintly I wondered again at Ruth's scantiness of garb, her more than half nudity; dwelt curiously upon the red brand across Ventnor's forehead.

In his eyes and in Drake's I saw reflected the horror I knew was in my own. But in the eyes of Ruth was none of this—sternly, coldly triumphant, indifferent to its piteousness as Norhala herself, she scanned the waste that less than an hour since had been a place of living beauty.

I felt a shock of repulsion. After all, those who had been destroyed so ruthlessly could not ALL have been wholly evil. Yet mother and blossoming maid, youth and oldster, all the pageant of humanity within the great walls were now but lines within the stone. According to their different lights, it came to me, there had been in Ruszark no greater number of the wicked than one could find in any great city of our own civilization.

From Norhala, of course, I looked for no perception of any of this. But from Ruth—

My reaction grew; the pity long withheld racing through me linked with a burning anger, a hatred for this woman who had been the directing soul of that catastrophe.

My gaze fell again upon the red brand. I saw that it was a deep indentation as though a thong had been twisted around Ventnor's head biting the bone. There was dried blood on the edges, a double ring of swollen white flesh rimming the cincture. It was the mark of—torture!

"Martin," I cried. "That ring? What did they do to you?"

"They waked me with that," he answered quietly. "I suppose I ought to be grateful—although their intentions were not exactly—therapeutic—"

"They tortured him," Ruth's voice was tense, bitter; she spoke in Persian—for Norhala's benefit I thought then, not guessing a deeper reason. "They tortured him. They gave him agony until he—returned. And they promised him other agonies that would make him pray long for death.

"And me—me"—she raised little clenched hands—"me they stripped like a slave. They led me through the city and the people mocked me. They took me before that swine Norhala has punished—and stripped me before him—like a slave. Before my eyes they tortured my brother. Norhala—they were evil, all evil! Norhala—you did well to slay them!"

She caught the woman's hands, pressed close to her. Norhala gazed at her from great gray eyes in which the wrath was dying, into which the old tranquillity, the old serenity was flowing. And when she spoke the golden voice held more than returning echoes of the far-away, faint chimings.

"It is done," she said. "And it was well done—sister. Now you and I shall dwell together in peace—sister. Or if there be those in the world from which you came that you would have slain, then you and I shall go forth with our companies and stamp them out—even as I did these."

My heart stopped beating—for from the depths of Ruth's eyes shining shadows were rising, wraiths answering Norhala's calling; and, as they rose, steadily they drew life from the clear radiance summoning—drew closer to the semblance of that tranquil spirit which her vengeance had banished but that had now returned to its twin thrones of Norhala's eyes.

And at last it was twin sister of Norhala who looked upon her from the face of Ruth!

The white arms of the woman encircled her; the glorious head bent over her; flaming tresses mingled with tender brown curls.

"Sister!" she whispered. "Little sister! These men you shall have as long as it pleases you—to do with as you will. Or if it is your wish they shall go back to their world and I will guard them to its gates.

"But you and I, little sister, will dwell together—in the vastnesses—in the peace. Shall it not be so?"

With no faltering, with no glance toward us three—lover, brother, old friend—Ruth crept closer to her, rested her head upon the virginal, royal breasts.

"It shall be so!" she murmured. "Sister—it shall be so. Norhala—I am tired. Norhala—I have seen enough of men."

An ecstasy of tenderness, a flame of unearthly rapture, trembled over the woman's wondrous face. Hungrily, defiantly, she pressed the girl to her; the stars in the lucid heavens of her eyes were soft and gentle and caressing.

"Ruth!" cried Drake—and sprang toward them. She paid no heed; and even as he leaped he was caught, whirled back against us.

"Wait," said Ventnor, and caught him by the arm as wrathfully, blindedly, he strove against the force that held him. "Wait. No use—now."

There was a curious understanding in his voice—a curious sympathy, too, in the patient, untroubled gaze that dwelt upon his sister and this weirdly exquisite woman who held her.

"Wait!" exclaimed Drake. "Wait—hell! The damned witch is stealing her away from us!"

Again he threw himself forward; recoiled as though swept back by an invisible arm; fell against us and was clasped and held by Ventnor. And as he struggled the Thing we rode halted. Like metal waves back into it rushed the enigmatic billows that had washed over the fragments of the city.

We were lifted; between us and the woman and girl a cleft appeared; it widened into a rift. It was as though Norhala had decreed it as a symbol of this her second victory—or had set it between us as a barrier.

Wider grew the rift. Save for the bridge of our voices it separated us from Ruth as though she stood upon another world.

Higher we rose; the three of us now upon the flat top of a tower upon whose counterpart fifty feet away and facing the homeward path, Ruth and Norhala stood with white arms interlaced.

The serpent shape flashed toward us; it vanished beneath, merging into the waiting Thing.

Then slowly the Thing began to move; quietly it glided to the chasm it had blasted in the cliff wall. The shadow of those walls fell upon us. As one we looked back; as one we searched out the patch of blue with the black blot at its breast.

We found it; then the precipices hid it. Silently we streamed through the chasm, through the canyon and the tunnel—speaking no word, Drake's eyes fixed with bitter hatred upon Norhala, Ventnor brooding upon her always with that enigmatic sympathy. We passed between the walls of the further cleft; stood for an instant at the brink of the green forest.

There came to us as though from immeasurable distances, a faint, sustained thrumming—like the beating of countless muffled drums. The Thing that carried us trembled—the sound died away. The Thing quieted; it began its steady, effortless striding through the crowding trees—but now with none of that speed with which it had come, spurred forward by Norhala's awakened hate.

Ventnor stirred; broke the silence. And now I saw how wasted was his body, how sharpened his face; almost ethereal; purged not only by suffering but by, it came to me, some strange knowledge.

"No use, Drake," he said dreamily. "All this is now on the knees of the gods. And whether those gods are humanity's or whether they are—Gods of Metal—I do not know.

"But this I do know—only one way or another can the balance fall; and if it be one way, then you and we shall have Ruth back. And if it falls the other way—then there will be little need for us to care. For man will be done!"

"Martin! What do you mean?"

"It is the crisis," he answered. "We can do nothing, Goodwin—nothing. Whatever is to be steps forth now from the womb of Destiny."

Again there came that distant rolling—louder, now. Again the Thing trembled.

"The drums," whispered Ventnor. "The drums of destiny. What is it they are heralding? A new birth of Earth and the passing of man? A new child to whom shall be given dominion—nay, to whom has been given dominion? Or is it—taps—for Them?"

The drumming died as I listened—fearfully. About us was only the swishing, the sighing of the falling trees beneath the tread of the Thing. Motionless stood Norhala; and as motionless Ruth.

"Martin," I cried once more, a dreadful doubt upon me. "Martin—what do you mean?"

"Whence did—They—come?" His voice was clear and calm, the eyes beneath the red brand clear and quiet, too. "Whence did They come—these Things that carry us? That strode like destroying angels over Cherkis's city? Are they spawn of Earth—as we are? Or are they foster children—changelings from another star?

"These creatures that when many still are one—that when one still are many. Whence did They come? What are They?"

He looked down upon the cubes that held us; their hosts of tiny eyes shone up at him, enigmatically—as though they heard and understood.

"I do not forget," he said. "At least not all do I forget of what I saw during that time when I seemed an atom outside space—as I told you, or think I told you, speaking with unthinkable effort through lips that seemed eternities away from me, the atom, who strove to open them.

"There were three—visions, revelations—I know not what to call them. And though each seemed equally real, of two of them, only one, I think, can be true; and of the third—that may some time be true but surely is not yet."

Through the air came a louder drum roll—in it something ominous, something sinister. It swelled to a crescendo; abruptly ceased. And now I saw Norhala raise her head; listen.

"I saw a world, a vast world, Goodwin, marching stately through space. It was no globe—it was a world of many facets, of smooth and polished planes; a huge blue jewel world, dimly luminous; a crystal world cut out from Aether. A geometric thought of the Great Cause, of God, if you will, made material. It was airless, waterless, sunless.

"I seemed to draw closer to it. And then I saw that over every facet patterns were traced; gigantic symmetrical designs; mathematical hieroglyphs. In them I read unthinkable calculations, formulas of interwoven universes, arithmetical progressions of armies of stars, pandects of the motions of the suns. In the patterns was an appalling harmony—as though all the laws from those which guide the atom to those which direct the cosmos were there resolved into completeness—totalled.

"The faceted world was like a cosmic abacist, tallying as it marched the errors of the infinite.

"The patterned symbols constantly changed form. I drew nearer—the symbols were alive. They were, in untold numbers—These!"

He pointed to the Thing that bore us.

"I was swept back; looked again upon it from afar. And a fantastic notion came to me—fantasy it was, of course, yet built I know around a nucleus of strange truth. It was"—his tone was half whimsical, half apologetic—"it was that this jeweled world was ridden by some mathematical god, driving it through space, noting occasionally with amused tolerance the very bad arithmetic of another Deity the reverse of mathematical—a more or less haphazard Deity, the god, in fact, of us and the things we call living.

"It had no mission; it wasn't at all out to do any reforming; it wasn't in the least concerned in rectifying any of the inaccuracies of the Other. Only now and then it took note of the deplorable differences between the worlds it saw and its own impeccably ordered and tidy temple with its equally tidy servitors.

"Just an itinerant demiurge of supergeometry riding along through space on its perfectly summed-up world; master of all celestial mechanics; its people independent of all that complex chemistry and labor for equilibrium by which we live; needing neither air nor water, heeding neither heat nor cold; fed with the magnetism of interstellar space and stopping now and then to banquet off the energy of some great sun."

A thrill of amazement passed through me; fantasy all this might be but—how, if so, had he gotten that last thought? He had not seen, as we had, the orgy in the Hall of the Cones, the prodigious feeding of the Metal Monster upon our sun.

"That passed," he went on, unnoticing. "I saw vast caverns filled with the Things; working, growing, multiplying. In caverns of our Earth—the fruit of some unguessed womb? I do not know.

"But in those caverns, under countless orbs of many colored lights"—again the thrill of amaze shook me—"they grew. It came to me that they were reaching out toward sunlight and the open. They burst into it—into yellow, glowing sunlight. Ours? I do not know. And that picture passed."

His voice deepened.

"There came a third vision. I saw our Earth—I knew, Goodwin, indisputably, unmistakably that it was our earth. But its rolling hills were leveled, its mountains were ground and shaped into cold and polished symbols—geometric, fashioned.

"The seas were fettered, gleaming like immense jewels in patterned settings of crystal shores. The very Polar ice was chiseled. On the ordered plains were traced the hieroglyphs of the faceted world. And on all Earth, Goodwin, there was no green life, no city, no trace of man. On this Earth that had been ours were only—These.

"Visioning!" he said. "Don't think that I accept them in their entirety. Part truth, part illusion—the groping mind dazzled with light of unfamiliar truths and making pictures from half light and half shadow to help it understand.

"But still—SOME truth in them. How much I do not know. But this I do know—that last vision was of a cataclysm whose beginnings we face now—this very instant."

The picture flashed behind my own eyes—of the walled city, its thronging people, its groves and gardens, its science and its art; of the Destroying Shapes trampling it flat—and then the dreadful, desolate mount.

And suddenly I saw that mount as Earth—the city as Earth's cities—its gardens and groves as Earth's fields and forests—and the vanished people of Cherkis seemed to expand into all humanity.

"But Martin," I stammered, fighting against choking, intolerable terror, "there was something else. Something of the Keeper of the Cones and of our striking through the sun to destroy the Things—something of them being governed by the same laws that govern us and that if they broke them they must fall. A hope—a PROMISE, that they would NOT conquer."

"I remember," he replied, "but not clearly. There WAS something—a shadow upon them, a menace. It was a shadow that seemed to be born of our own world—some threatening spirit of earth hovering over them.

"I cannot remember; it eludes me. Yet it is because I remember but a little of it that I say those drums may not be—taps—for us."

As though his words had been a cue, the sounds again burst forth—no longer muffled nor faint. They roared; they seemed to pelt through air and drop upon us; they beat about our ears with thunderous tattoo like covered caverns drummed upon by Titans with trunks of great trees.

The drumming did not die; it grew louder, more vehement; defiant and deafening. Within the Thing under us a mighty pulse began to throb, accelerating rapidly to the rhythm of that clamorous roll.

I saw Norhala draw herself up, sharply; stand listening and alert. Under me, the throbbing turned to an uneasy churning, a ferment.

"Drums?" muttered Drake. "THEY'RE no drums. It's drum fire. It's like a dozen Marnes, a dozen Verduns. But where could batteries like those come from?"

"Drums," whispered Ventnor. "They ARE drums. The drums of Destiny!"

Louder the roaring grew. Now it was a tremendous rhythmic cannonading. The Thing halted. The tower that upheld Ruth and Norhala swayed, bent over the gap between us, touched the top on which we rode.

Gently the two were plucked up; swiftly they were set beside us.

Came a shrill, keen wailing—louder than ever I had heard before. There was an earthquake trembling; a maelstrom swirling in which we spun; a swift sinking.

The Thing split in two. Up before us rose a stupendous, stepped pyramid; little smaller it was than that which Cheops built to throw its shadows across holy Nile. Into it streamed, over it clicked, score upon score of cubes, building it higher and higher. It lurched forward—away from us.

From Norhala came a single cry—resonant, blaring like a wrathful, golden trumpet.

The speeding shape halted, hesitated; it seemed about to return. Crashed down upon us an abrupt crescendo of the distant drumming; peremptory, commanding. The shape darted forward; raced away crushing to straw the trees beneath it in a full quarter-mile-wide swath.

Great gray eyes wide, filled with incredulous wonder, stunned disbelief, Norhala for an instant faltered. Then out of her white throat, through her red lips pelted a tempest of staccato buglings.

Under them what was left of the Thing leaped, tore on. Norhala's flaming hair crackled and streamed; about her body of milk and pearl—about Ruth's creamy skin—a radiant nimbus began to glow.

In the distance I saw a sapphire spark; knew it for Norhala's home. Not far from it now was the rushing pyramid—and it came to me that within that shape was strangely neither globe nor pyramid. Nor except for the trembling cubes that made the platform on which we stood, did the shrunken Thing carrying us hold any unit of the Metal Monster except its spheres and tetrahedrons—at least within its visible bulk.

The sapphire spark had grown to a glimmering azure marble. Steadily we gained upon the pyramid. Never for an instant ceased that scourging hail of notes from Norhala—never for an instant lessened the drumming clamor that seemed to try to smother them.

The sapphire marble became a sapphire ball, a great globe. I saw the Thing we sought to join lift itself into a prodigious pillar; the pillar's base thrust forth stilts; upon them the Thing stepped over the blue dome of Norhala's house.

The blue bubble was close; now it curved below us. Gently we were lifted down; were set before its portal. I looked up at the bulk that had carried us.

I had been right—built it was only of globe and pyramid; an inconceivably grotesque shape, it hung over us.

Throughout the towering Shape was awful movement; its units writhed within it. Then it was lost to sight in the mists through which the Thing we had pursued had gone.

In Norhala's face as she watched it go was a dismay, a poignant uncertainty, that held in it something indescribably pitiful.

"I am afraid!" I heard her whisper.

She tightened her grasp upon dreaming Ruth; motioned us to go within. We passed, silently; behind us she came, followed by three of the great globes, by a pair of her tetrahedrons.

Beside a pile of the silken stuffs she halted. The girl's eyes dwelt upon hers trustingly.

"I am afraid!" whispered Norhala again. "Afraid—for you!"

Tenderly she looked down upon her, the galaxies of stars in her eyes soft and tremulous.

"I am afraid, little sister," she whispered for the third time. "Not yet can you go as I do—among the fires." She hesitated. "Rest here until I return. I shall leave these to guard you and obey you."

She motioned to the five shapes. They ranged themselves about Ruth. Norhala kissed her upon both brown eyes.

"Sleep till I return," she murmured.

She swept from the chamber—with never a glance for us three. I heard a little wailing chorus without, fast dying into silence.

Spheres and pyramids twinkled at us, guarding the silken pile whereon Ruth lay asleep—like some enchanted princess.

Beat down upon the blue globe like hollow metal worlds, beaten and shrieking.

The drums of Destiny!

The drums of Doom!

Beating taps for the world of men?



CHAPTER XXVIII. THE FRENZY OF RUTH

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.



CHAPTER XXIX. THE PASSING OF NORHALA

Hundreds 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 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, coroneted and star pointing spire, rising serene and unshaken from a hell of lightnings. But the shields that had rimmed the crater were gone.

Ventnor snatched the glasses from my hand, leveled 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 floor. 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 Disk of 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 Ventnor.

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 a mask of wrath and despair; her great eyes blazed upon the Keeper; her exquisite body was bare, stripped of every shred of silken covering.

From streaming tresses to white feet an oval of pulsing, golden light nimbused her. Maiden Isis, virgin Astarte she stood there, held in the grip of the Disk—like a goddess betrayed and hopeless yet thirsting for vengeance.

For all their stillness, their immobility, it came to me that 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 Ventnor had spoken, and that here in the Hall of the Cones would be settled—and soon—the fate not only of Disk 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 planes of the inverted cruciform Shape smoked and smoldered with their sullen flares of ochres and of scarlets; while over all the face of the Disk its cold and irised fires raced and shone, beating with a rhythm incredibly rapid; its core of incandescent ruby blazed, its sapphire ovals were cabochoned pools of living, lucent radiance.

There was a splitting roar that arose 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 uprose 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 curtainings. For between the Disk and Cross began to form fine black mist. It was transparent. It seemed spun of minute translucent ebon corpuscles. It hung like a black shroud suspended by unseen hands. It shook and wavered now toward the Disk, 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—enveloped it. And as the mist covered and clung I saw the sulphurous and crimson flares dim. They were snuffed out.

The Keeper fell!

Upon Norhala's face flamed a wild triumph, banishing despair. The outstretched planes of the Cross swept up as though in torment. For an instant its fires flared and licked through the clinging 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, incredulous horror.

The Mount of Cones shuddered. From it came a single mighty throb of force—like a prodigious heart-beat. Under that pulse of power the Emperor staggered, spun—and spinning, swept Norhala from her feet, swung her close to its flashing rose.

A second throb pulsed from the cones, and mightier.

A spasm shook the Disk—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 eyes, pools of uncomprehending, unbelieving horror, stared into mine.

With a spasmodic, infinitely dreadful movement the Disk closed—

And closed upon her!

Norhala was gone—was shut within it. Crushed to the pent fires 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 in 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 ever faster it poured down into the Pit. And from all the lesser craters of the smaller 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 lightnings 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 tuliped and irised—the jocund suns of the birth chamber and side by side with them hosts of the frozen, pale gilt, stiff rayed suns.

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, in companies, in 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 aureoles within them.

From the Pit came a blinding, insupportable brilliancy. From every rigid tower gleamed out jeweled fires; their clinging units opened into blazing star and disk 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 tensity; a prodigious gathering of force; a panic stirring concentration of energy. Thicker fell the clouds of sparkling atoms—higher rose the yellow flood.

Ventnor 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 Ventnor. "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 Norhala. But its billows were resistless, invincible. Beneath them we fell; 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.

Ventnor 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 levins 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 arose a 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 wind, beaten down by rain, clinging to each other like drowning men, Ventnor 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—awed, marveling, 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!



CHAPTER XXX. 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. Ventnor 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 muscle 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 a silvery, crepuscular light. I heard the murmuring and laughing of running water, the play, I lazily realized, of the fountained pool.

I lay for whole minutes unthinking, 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 Ventnor, as deep in slumber as they. I arose and tip-toed 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 Norhala was a wreckage of uprooted and splintered trees and torn masses of what had been blossoming verdure.

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 reentered the blue globe and paused on the threshold—staring into the wide and wondering eyes of Ruth bolt upright in her silken bed with Norhala'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, leaped 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 throned only that spirit which was Ruth's and Ruth's alone; Ruth's clear unshadowed 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 wakening eyes of Ventnor 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 Ventnor 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 Norhala?"

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 Ventnor 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 been echoed the torments of Norhala's? Had she forgotten? I started to speak—was checked by Ventnor'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 whitened; Ventnor'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 Norhala 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.