CHAPTER XVI. CONSCIOUS METAL!
"Granted," I acquiesced. "We now come to their means of locomotion. Inits simplest terms all locomotion is progress through space againstthe force of gravitation. Man's walk is a series of rhythmic stumblesagainst this force that constantly strives to drag him down to earth'sface and keep him pressed there. Gravitation is an etheric--magneticvibration akin to the force which holds, to use your simile again,Drake, the filing against the magnet. A walk is a constant breaking ofthe current.
"Take a motion picture of a man walking and run it through the lanternrapidly and he seems to be flying. We have none of the awkward fallingsand recoveries that are the tempo of walking as we see it.
"I take it that the movement of these Things is a conscious breaking ofthe gravitational current just as much as is our own movement, but by arhythm so swift that it appears to be continuous.
"Doubtless if we could so control our sight as to admit the vibrationsof light slowly enough we would see this apparently smooth motion as aseries of leaps--just as we do when the motion-picture operatorslows down his machine sufficiently to show us walking in a series ofstumbles.
"Very well--so far, then, we have nothing in this phenomenon which thehuman mind cannot conceive as possible; therefore intellectually westill remain masters of the phenomena; for it is only that which humanthought cannot encompass which it need fear."
"Metallic," he said, "and crystalline. And yet--why not? What are we butbags of skin filled with certain substances in solution and stretchedover a supporting and mobile mechanism largely made up of lime? Out ofthat primeval jelly which Gregory * calls Protobion came after untoldmillions of years us with our skins, our nails, and our hair; came, too,the serpents with their scales, the birds with their feathers; the hornyhide of the rhinoceros and the fairy wings of the butterfly; the shellof the crab, the gossamer loveliness of the moth and the shimmeringwonder of the mother-of-pearl.
* J. W. Gregory, F.R.S.D.Sc., Professor of Geology, University of Glasgow.
"Is there any greater gap between any of these and the metallic? I thinknot."
"Not materially," I answered. "No. But there remains--consciousness!"
"That," he said, "I cannot understand. Ventnor spoke of--how did he putit?--a group consciousness, operating in our sphere and in spheres aboveand below ours, with senses known and unknown. I got--glimpses--Goodwin,but I cannot understand."
"We have agreed for reasons that seem sufficient to us to call theseThings metallic, Dick," I replied. "But that does not necessarily meanthat they are composed of any metal that we know. Nevertheless, beingmetal, they must be of crystalline structure.
"As Gregory has pointed out, crystals and what we call living matter hadan equal start in the first essentials of life. We cannot conceive lifewithout giving it the attribute of some sort of consciousness. Hungercannot be anything but conscious, and there is no other stimulus to eatbut hunger.
"The crystals eat. The extraction of power from food is consciousbecause it is purposeful, and there can be no purpose withoutconsciousness; similarly the power to work from such derived energy isalso purposeful and therefore conscious. The crystals do both. And thecrystals can transmit all these abilities to their children, just as wedo. For although there would seem to be no reason why they should notcontinue to grow to gigantic size under favorable conditions--yet theydo not. They reach a size beyond which they do not develop.
"Instead, they bud--give birth, in fact--to smaller ones, which increaseuntil they reach the size of the preceding generation. And like thechildren of man and animals, these younger generations grow on preciselyas their progenitors!
"Very well, then--we arrive at the conception of a metallicallycrystalline being, which by some explosion of the force of evolutionhas burst from the to us familiar and apparently inert stage into theseThings that hold us. And is there any greater difference between theforms with which we are familiar and them than there is between us andthe crawling amphibian which is our remote ancestor? Or between that andthe amoeba--the little swimming stomach from which it evolved? Or theamoeba and the inert jelly of the Protobion?
"As for what Ventnor calls a group consciousness I would assume thathe means a communal intelligence such as that shown by the bees and theants--that in the case of the former Maeterlinck calls the 'Spiritof the Hive.' It is shown in their groupings--just as the geometricarrangement of those groupings shows also clearly their crystallineintelligence.
"I submit that in their rapid coordination either for attack or movementor work without apparent communication having passed between the units,there is nothing more remarkable than the swarming of a hive of beeswhere also without apparent communication just so many waxmakers,nurses, honey-gatherers, chemists, bread-makers, and all the variedspecialists of the hive go with the old queen, leaving behind sufficientnumber of each class for the needs of the young queen.
"All this apportionment is effected without any means of communicationthat we recognize. Still it is most obviously intelligent selection.For if it were haphazard all the honeymakers might leave and the hivestarve, or all the chemists might go and the food for the young bees notbe properly prepared--and so on and so on."
"But metal," he muttered, "and conscious. It's all very well--but wheredid that consciousness come from? And what is it? And where did theycome from? And most of all, why haven't they overrun the world beforethis?
"Such development as theirs, such an evolution, presupposes aeons oftime--long as it took us to drag up from the lizards. What havethey been doing--why haven't they been ready to strike--if Ventnor'sright--at humanity until now?"
"I don't know," I answered, helplessly. "But evolution is not theslow, plodding process that Darwin thought. There seem to beexplosions--nature will create a new form almost in a night. Then comesthe long ages of development and adjustment, and suddenly another newrace appears.
"It might be so of these--some extraordinary conditions that shapedthem. Or they might have developed through the ages in spaces withinthe earth--there's that incredible abyss we saw that is evidently one oftheir highways. Or they might have dropped here upon some fragment of abroken world, found in this valley the right conditions and developed inamazing rapidity. * They're all possible theories--take your pick."
* Professor Svante Arrhenius's theory of propagation of life by means of minute spores carried through space. See his "Worlds in the Making."--W.T.G.
"Something's held them back--and they're rushing to a climax," hewhispered. "Ventnor's right about that--I feel it. And what can we do?"
"Go back to their city," I said. "Go back as he ordered. I believe heknows what he's talking about. And I believe he'll be able to help us.It wasn't just a request he made, nor even an appeal--it was a command."
"But what can we do--just two men--against these Things?" he groaned.
"Maybe we'll find out--when we're back in the city," I answered.
"Well," his old reckless cheerfulness came back to him, "in every crisisof this old globe it's been up to one man to turn the trick. We're two.And at the worst we can only go down fighting a little before the restof us. So, after all, whatEVER the hell, WHAT the hell."
For a time we were silent.
"Well," he said at last, "we have to go to the city in the morning."He laughed. "Sounds as though we were living in the suburbs, somehow,doesn't it?"
"It can't be many hours before dawn," I said. "Turn in for a while, I'llwake you when I think you've slept enough."
"It doesn't seem fair," he protested, but sleepily.
"I'm not sleepy," I told him; nor was I.
But whether I was or not, I wanted to question Yuruk, uninterrupted andundisturbed.
Drake stretched himself out. When his breathing showed him fast asleepindeed, I slipped over to the black eunuch and crouched, right handclose to the butt of my automatic, facing him.