CHAPTER XX. VAMPIRES OF THE SUN
It was a crater; a half mile on high and all of two thousand feet acrossran the circular lip of its vast rim. Above it was a circle of white andglaring sky in whose center flamed the sun.
And instantly, before my vision could grasp a tithe of that panorama, Iknew that this place was the very heart of the City; its vital ganglion;its soul.
Around the crater lip were poised thousands of concave disks, vernalgreen, enormous. They were like a border of gigantic, upthrust shields;and within each, emblazoned like a shield's device, was a blindingflower of flame--the reflected, dilated face of the sun. Below thisdiadem hung, pendent, clusters of other disks, swarmed like the globularhiving of the constellation Hercules' captured stars. And each of theseprisoned the image of our sun.
A hundred feet below us was the crater floor.
Up from it thrust a mountainous forest of the pallidly radiant cones;bristling; prodigious. Tier upon tier, thicket upon thicket, phalanxupon phalanx they climbed. Up and up, pyramidically, they flung theirspiked hosts.
They drew together two thousand feet above us, clustering close aboutthe foot of a single huge spire which thrust itself skyward above them.The crest of this spire was truncated. From its shorn tip radiatedscores of long and slender spokes holding in place a thousand feet widewheel of wan green disks whose concave surfaces, unlike those smoothones girding the crater, were curiously faceted.
This amazing structure rested upon a myriad-footed base of crystal,even as had that other cornute fantasy beside which we had met the greatDisk. But it was in size to that as--as Leviathan to a minnow. From itstreamed the same baffling suggestion of invincible force transmutedinto matter; energy coalesced into the tangible; power made concentratein the vestments of substance.
Half-way between crater lip and floor began the hordes of the MetalPeople.
In colossal animate cheveau-de-frise of hundred-foot girders they thrustthemselves out from the curving walls--walls, I knew, as alive as they!
From these Brobdignagian beams they swung in ropes and clusters--spheresand cubes studded as thickly with the pyramids as ever Titan's mace withspikes. Group after bizarre group they dropped; pendulous. Coppicesof slender columns of thistled globes sprang up to meet the festoonedjoists.
Between the girders they draped themselves in long, stellated garlands;grouped themselves in innumerable, kaleidoscopic patterns.
They clicked into place around the golden turret in which we crouched.
In fantastic arrases they swayed in front of us--now hiding by, nowrevealing through their quicksilver interweavings the mounts of theCones.
And steadily those flowing in below added to their multitudes; glidingup cable and pillar; building out still further the living girders,stringing themselves upon living festoon and living garland, weaving inamong them, changing their shapes, rewriting their symbols.
They swung and threaded swiftly, in shifting arabesque, in Gothictraceries, in lace-like fantasies; utterly bizarre, unutterablybeautiful--crystalline, geometric always.
Abruptly their movement ceased--so abruptly that the stoppage of all theordered turmoil had the quality of appalling silence.
An unimaginable tapestry bedight with incredible broidery, the MetalPeople draped the vast cup.
Pillared it as though it were a temple.
Garnished it with their bodies as though it were a shrine.
Across the floor toward the Cones glided a palely lustrous sphere. Inshape only a globe like all its kind, yet it was invested with power; itradiated power as a star does light; was clothed in unseen garments ofsupernal force. In its wake drifted two great pyramids; after them tenspheres but little smaller than the Shape which led.
"The Metal Emperor!" breathed Drake.
On they swept until they reached the base of the Cones. They paused atthe edge of the crystal tabling. They turned.
There was a flashing as of a meteor bursting. The globe had opened intothat splendor of jewel fires before which had floated Norhala and Ruth.
I saw again the luminous ovals of sapphire, studding its golden zone,the mystic rose of pulsing, petal flame, the still core of incandescentruby that was the heart of that rose.
Strangely I felt my own heart veer toward this--Thing; bowing before itsbeauty and its strength; almost worshiping!
A shock of revulsion went through me. I shot a quick, half frightenedglance at Drake. He was crouching dangerously close to the lip of theledge, hands clasped and knuckles white with the intensity of his grip,eyes rapt, staring--upon the verge of worship even as I had been.
"Drake!" I thrust my elbow into his side brutally. "None of that!Remember you're human! Guard yourself, man--guard yourself!"
"What?" he muttered; then, abruptly: "How did you know?"
"I felt it myself," I answered: "For God's sake, Dick--hold fast toyourself! Remember Ruth!"
He shook his head violently--as though to be rid of some clinging,cloying thing.
"I'll not forget again," he said.
He huddled down once more close to the edge of the shelf; peering over.No one of the Metal People had moved; the silence, the stillness, wasunbroken.
Now the flanking pyramids shot forth into twin stars, blazing withviolet luminescences. And one by one after them the ten lesser spheresexpanded into flaming orbs; beautiful they were, but far less gloriousthan that Disk of whom they were the counselors?--ministers?--what?
Still there was no movement among all the arrased, girdered, pillaredhosts.
There came a little wailing; far away it was and far. Nearer it drew.Was that a tremor that passed through the crowded crater? A quick pulseof--eagerness?
"Hungry!" whispered Drake. "They're HUNGRY!"
Closer was the wailing; again that faint tremor quivered over the place.And now I caught it--a quick and avid pulsing.
"Hungry," whispered Drake again. "Like a lot of lions with the keepercoming along with meat."
The wailing was below us. I felt, not a quiver this time, but anunmistakable shock pass through the Horde. It throbbed--and passed.
Into the field of our vision, up to the flaming Disk rushed an immensecube.
Thrice the height of a tall man--as I think I have noted before--when itunfolded its radiance was that shape of mingled beauty and power I callthe Metal Emperor.
Yet this Thing eclipsed it. Black, uncompromising, in some indefinableway BRUTAL, its square bulk blotted out the Disk's effulgence; shroudedit. And a shadow seemed to fall upon the crater. The violet fires of theflanking stars pulsed out--watchfully, threateningly.
For only an instant the darkening block loomed against the Disk;blackened it.
There came another meteor burst of light. Where the cube had been wasnow a tremendous, fiery cross--a cross inverted.
Its upper arm arose to twice the length either of its horizontals orthe square that was its foot. In its opening it must have turned, forits--FACE--was toward us and away from the Cones, its body hid the Disk,and almost all the surfaces of the two watchful Stars.
Eighty feet at least in height, this cruciform shape stood. It flamedand flickered with angry, smoky crimsons and scarlets; with sullenorange glowings and glitterings of sulphurous yellows. Within its fireswere none of those leaping, multicolored glories that were the MetalEmperor's; no trace of the pulsing, mystic rose; no shadow of jubilantsapphire; no purple royal; no tender, merciful greens nor graciousopalescences. Nothing even of the blasting violet of the Stars.
All angry, smoky reds and ochres the cross blazed forth--and in itslurid glowings was something sinister, something real, something cruel,something--nearer to earth, closer to man.
"The Keeper of the Cones and the Metal Emperor!" muttered Drake. "Ibegin to get it--yes--I begin to get--Ventnor!"
Once more the pulse, the avid throbbing shook the crater. And as swiftlyin its wake rushed back the stillness, the silence.
The Keeper turned--I saw its palely lustrous blue metallic back. I dre
wout my little field-glasses, focussed them.
The Cross slipped sidewise past the Disk, its courtiers, its stellatedguardians. As it went by they swung about with it; ever facing it.
And now at last was clear a thing that had puzzled greatly--themechanism of that opening process by which sphere became oval disk,pyramid a four-pointed star and--as I had glimpsed in the play of theLittle Things about Norhala, could see now so plainly in the Keeper--theblocks took this inverted cruciform shape.
The Metal People were hollow!
Hollow metal--boxes!
In their enclosing sides dwelt all their vitality--theirpowers--themselves!
And those sides were--everything that THEY were!
Folded, the oval disk became the sphere; the four points of the star,the square from which those points radiated; shutting became thepyramid; the six faces of the cubes were when opened the inverted cross.
Nor were these flexible, mobile walls massive. They were indeed,considering the apparent mass of the Metal Folk, most astonishinglyfragile. Those of the Keeper, despite its eighty feet of height, couldnot have been more than a yard in thickness. At the edges I thought Icould see groovings; noted the same appearances at the outlines ofthe Stars. Seen sidewise, the body of the Metal Emperor showed as aconvexity; its surface smooth, with a suggestion of transparency.
The Keeper was bending; its oblong upper plane dropping forward asthough upon a hinge. Lower and lower this flange bent--in a grotesque,terrifying obeisance; a horrible mockery of reverence.
Was this mountain of Cones then actually a shrine--an idol of the MetalPeople--their God?
The oblong that was the upper half of the cruciform Shape extended nowat right angles to the horizontal arms. It hovered, a rectangle fortyfeet long, as many feet over the floor at the base of the crystalpedestal. It bent again, this time from the hinge that held theoutstretched arms to the base. And now it was a huge truncated cross, aT-shaped figure, hovering only twenty feet above the pave.
Down from the Keeper writhed and flicked a tangle of tentacles;serpentine, whiplike. Silvery white, they were dyed with the scarlet andorange flaming of the surface now hidden from my eyes; reflected thosesullen and angry gleamings. Vermiceous, coiling, they seemed to dropfrom every inch of the overhanging planes.
Something there was beneath them--something like an immense and luminoustablet. The tentacles were moving over it--pressing here, thrustingthere, turning, pushing, manipulating--
A shuddering passed through the crowding cones. I saw the tremor shaketheir bristling hosts, oscillate the great spire, set the faceted disksquivering.
The trembling grew; a vibration in every separate cone that became evenmore rapid. There was a faint, curiously oppressive humming--like thedistant echo of a tempest in chaos.
Faster, ever faster grew the vibration. Now the sharp outlines of thecones were dissolving.
And now they were--gone.
The mount of the cones had become a mighty pyramid of pale greenradiance--one tremendous, pallid flame, of which the spire was thetongue. Out from the disked wheel at its shorn tip gushed a flood oflight--light that gathered itself from the leaping radiance below it.
The tentacles of the Keeper moved more swiftly over the enigmatictablet; writhing cloudily; confusedly rapid. The faceted disks wavered;turned upward; the wheel began to whirl--faster--faster--
Up from that flaming circle, out into the sky leaped a thick, pale greencolumn of intensest light.
With prodigious speed, as compact as water, CONCENTRATE, itstruck--straight out toward the face of the sun.
It thrust up with the speed of light--the speed of light? A thought cameto me; incredible I believed it even as I reacted to it. My pulse isuniformly seventy to the minute. I sought my wrist, found the artery,made allowance for its possible acceleration, began to count.
"What's the matter?" asked Drake.
"Take my glasses," I muttered, trying to keep up, while speaking, mytally. "Matches in my pocket. Smoke the lenses. I want to look at sun."
With a look of stupefied amazement which, at another time I would havefound laughable, he obeyed.
"Hold them to my eyes," I ordered.
Three minutes had gone by.
There it was--that for which I sought. Clear through the darkened lensesI could see the sun spot, high up on the northern-most limb of thesun. An unimaginable cyclone of incandescent gases; an unthinkably hugedynamo pouring its floods of electro-magnetism upon all the circlingplanets; that solar crater which we now know was, when at its maximum,all of one hundred and fifty thousand miles across; the great sun spotof the summer of 1919--the most enormous ever recorded by astronomicalscience.
Five minutes had gone by.
Common sense whispered to me. There was no use keeping my eyes fixedto the glasses. Even if that thought were true--even if that pillarof radiance were a MESSENGER, an earth-hurled bolt flying to the sunthrough atmosphere and outer space with the speed of light, even if itwere this stupendous creation of these Things, still between eight andnine minutes must elapse before it could reach the orb; and as manyminutes must go by before the image of whatever its impact might produceupon the sun could pass back over the bridge of light spanning theninety millions of miles between it and us.
And after all did not that hypothesis belong to the utterly impossible?Even were it so--what was it that the Metal Monster expected to follow?This radiant shaft, colossal as it was to us, was infinitesimal comparedto the target at which it was aimed.
What possible effect could that spear have upon the solar forces?
And yet--and yet--a gnat's bite can drive an elephant mad. And Nature'sbalance is delicate; and what great happenings may follow the slightestdisturbance of her infinitely sensitive, her complex, equilibrium? Itmight be--it might be--
Eight minutes had passed.
"Take the glasses," I bade Drake. "Look up at the sun spot--the bigone."
"I see it." He had obeyed me. "What of it?"
Nine minutes.
The shaft, if I were right, had by now touched the sun. What was tofollow?
"I don't get you at all," said Drake, and lowered the glasses.
Ten minutes.
"What's happening? Look at the Cones! Look at the Emperor!" gaspedDrake.
I peered down, then almost forgot to count.
The pyramidal flame that had been the mount of Cones was shrunken. Thepillar of radiance had not lessened--but the mechanism that was itssource had retreated whole yards within the field of its crystal base.
And the Metal Emperor! Dulled and faint were his fires, dimmed hissplendors; and fainter still were the violet luminescences of thewatching Stars, the shimmering livery of his court.
The Keeper of the Cones! Were not its outstretched planes hovering lowerand lower over the gleaming tablet; its tentacles moving aimlessly,feebly--wearily?
I had a sense of force being withdrawn from all about me. It was asthough all the City were being drained of life--as though vitality werebeing sucked from it to feed this pyramid of radiance; drained from itto forge the thrusting spear piercing sunward.
The Metal People seemed to hang limply, inert; the living girders seemedto sag; the living columns to bend; to droop and to sway.
Twelve minutes.
With a nerve-racking crash one of the laden beams fell; dragging downwith it others; bending, shattering in its fall a thicket of thehorned columns. Behind us the sparkling eyes of the wall were dimmed,vacant--dying. Something of that hellish loneliness, that demoniacdesire for immolation that had assailed us in the haunted hollow of theruins began to creep over me.
The crowded crater was fainting. The life was going out of the City--itsmagnetic life, draining into the shaft of green fire.
Duller grew the Metal Emperor's glories.
Fourteen minutes.
"Goodwin," cried Drake, "the life's going out of these Things! Going outwith that ray they're shooting."
Fifteen minutes.
I
watched the tentacles of the Keeper grope over the tablet. Abruptlythe flaming pyramid darkened--WENT OUT.
The radiant pillar hurtled upward like a thunder-bolt; vanished inspace.
Before us stood the mount of cones, shrunken to a sixth of its formersize.
Sixteen minutes.
All about the crater-lip the ringed shields tilted; thrust themselveson high, as though behind each was an eager lifting arm. Below them thehived clusters of disks changed from globules into wide coronets.
Seventeen minutes.
I dropped my wrist; seized the glasses from Drake; raised them to thesun. For a moment I saw nothing--then a tiny spot of white incandescenceshone forth at the lower edge of the great spot. It grew into a point ofradiance, dazzling even through the shadowed lenses.
I rubbed my eyes; looked again. It was still there, larger--blazing withan ever increasing and intolerable intensity.
I handed the glasses to Drake, silently.
"I see it!" he muttered. "I see it! And THAT did it--that! Goodwin!"There was panic in his cry. "Goodwin! The spot! it's widening! It'swidening!"
I snatched the glasses from him. I caught again the dazzling flashing.But whether Drake HAD seen the spot widen, change--to this day I do notknow.
To me it seemed unchanged--and yet--perhaps it was not. It may be thatunder that finger of force, that spear of light, that wound in the sideof our sun HAD opened further--
That the sun had winced!
I do not to this day know. But whether it had or not--still shone theintolerably brilliant light. And miracle enough that was for me.
Twenty minutes--subconsciously I had gone on counting--twenty minutes--
About the cratered girdle of the upthrust shields a glimmering mistinesswas gathering; a translucent mist, beryl pale and beryl clear. In aheart-beat it had thickened into a vast and vaporous ring through whoseswarms of corpuscles the sun's reflected image upon each disk shoneclear--as though seen through clouds of transparent atoms of aquamarine.
Again the filaments of the Keeper moved--feebly. As one of the hosts ofcircling shields shifted downward. Brilliant, ever more brilliant, waxedthe fast-thickening mists.
Abruptly, and again as one, the disks began to revolve. From everyconcave surface, from the surfaces of the huge circlets below them,flashed out a stream of green fire--green as the fire of green lifeitself. Corpuscular, spun of uncounted rushing, dazzling ions the greatrays struck across, impinged upon the thousand-foot wheel that crownedthe cones; set it whirling.
Over it I saw form a limpid cloud of the brilliant vapors. Whence camethese sparkling nebulosities, these mists of light? It was as though theclustered, spinning disks reached into the shadowless air, sucked fromit some unseen, rhythmic energy and transformed it into this visible,coruscating flood.
For now it was a flood. Down from the immense wheel came pouringcataracts of green fires. They cascaded over the cones; deluged them;engulfed them.
Beneath that radiant inundation the cones grew. Perceptibly their volumeincreased--as though they gorged themselves upon the light. No--it wasas though the corpuscles flew to them, coalesced and built themselvesinto the structure.
Out and further out upon the base of crystal they crept. And higher andhigher soared their tips, thrusting, ever thrusting upward toward thewhirling wheel that fed them.
Now from the Keeper's planes writhed the Keeper's tangle of tentacles,uncoiling eagerly, avidly, through the twenty feet of space betweentheir source and the enigmatic mechanism they manipulated. The crater'sdisks tilted downward. Into the vast hollow shot their jets of greenradiance, drenching the Metal Hordes, splashing from the polished wallswherever the Metal Hordes had left those living walls exposed.
All about us was a trembling, an accelerating pulse of life. Colossal,rhythmic, ever quicker, ever more powerfully that pulse throbbed--aprodigious vibration monstrously alive.
"Feeding!" whispered Drake. "Feeding! Feeding on the sun!"
Faster danced the radiant beams. The crater was a cauldron of greenfires through which the conical rays angled and interwove, crossed andmingled. And where they mingled, where they crossed, flamed out suddenlyimmense rayless orbs; palpitant for an instant, then dissolving inspiralling, feathery spray of pallid emerald incandescences.
Stronger and stronger beat the pulse of returning life.
A jetting stream struck squarely upon the Metal Emperor. Out blazed hissplendors--jubilant. His golden zodiac, no longer tarnished and dull,ran with sun flames; the wondrous rose was a racing, lambent miracle.
Up snapped the Keeper; towered behind him, all flickering scarlets andleaping yellows--no longer wrathful or sullen.
The place dripped radiance; was filling like a chrisom with radiance.
Us, too, the sparkling mists bathed.
I was conscious of a curiously wild exhilaration; a quickening of thepulse; an abnormally rapid breathing. I stooped to touch Drake; sparksleaped from my outstretched fingers, great green sparks that crackled asthey impacted upon him. He gave them no heed; but stared with fascinatedeyes upon the crater.
Now from every side broke a tempest of gem fires. From every girderand column, from every arras, pendent and looping, burst diamondglitterings, ruby luminescences, lanced flames of molten emerald andsapphires, flashings of amethyst and opal, meteoric iridescences,dazzling spectrums.
The hollow was a cave of some Aladdin of the Titans ablaze withenchanted hoards. It was a place of gems ensorcelled, gems in whichimprisoned hosts of the Jinns of Light beat sparkling against theircrystal walls to escape.
I thrust the fantasies from me. Fantastic enough was this reality--globeand pyramid and cube of the Metal People opening wide, bathing in,drinking from the radiant maelstrom that faster and ever faster swirledabout them.
"Feeding!" It was Drake's awed voice. "Feeding on the sun!"
The circling shields were raising themselves, lifting themselves higherabove the crater-lip. Into the crowded cylinder came now only the raysfrom the high circlets, the streams from the huge wheel above the stillgrowing cones.
Up and up the shields rose, but by what mechanism raised I could notsee. Their motion ceased; in all their thousands they turned. Over theCity's top and out into the oval valley they poured their torrents oflight; flooding it, deluging it even as they had this pit that was theCity's heart. Feeding, I knew, those other Metal Hordes without.
And as though in answer, sweeping down upon us through the circles ofopen sky, a clamor poured.
"If we'd but known!" Drake's voice came to me, thin and unreal throughthe tumult. "It's what Ventnor meant! If we had got down there when theywere so weak--if we could have handled the Keeper--we could have smashedthat plate that works the Cones! We could have killed them!"
"There are other Cones," I cried back to him.
"No," he shook his head. "This is the master machine. It's what Ventnormeant when he said to strike through the sun. And we've lost thechance--"
Louder grew the hurricane without; and now within began its mate.Through the mists flashed linked tempests of lightnings. Bolt uponjavelin bolt, and ever more thickly; lightnings green as the miststhemselves; lightning bolts of destroying violets, searing scarlets;tearing chains of withering yellows, globes of exploding multicoloredelectric incandescences.
The crater was threaded with the lightnings of the Metal People; wasbroidered with them; was a Pit woven with vast and changing patterns ofelectric flame.
What was it that Drake had said? That if but we could have known wecould have destroyed these--Things--Destroyed--Them? Things that couldthrust their will and power up through ninety million miles of space andsuck from the sun the honey of power! Drain it and hive it within thesegreat mountains of the cones!
Destroy Things that could feed their own life into a machine to drawback from the sun a greater life--Things that could forge of theirstrength a spear which, piercing the side of the sun, sent gushing backupon them a tenfold, nay, a thousandfold strength!
Destroy this City that was one vast and living dynamo feeding upon themagnetic life of earth and sun!
The clamor had grown stupendous, destroying--like armored Gods roaringat sword play in a hundred Valhallas; like the war drums of battlinguniverse; like the smitings of warring suns.
And all the City was throbbing, beating with a gigantic pulse oflife--was fed and drunken with life. I felt that pulsing become my own;I echoed to it; throbbed in unison. I saw Drake outlined in flame; thataround me a radiant nimbus was growing.
I thought I saw Norhala floating, clothed in shouting, flailing fires. Istrove to call out to her. By me slipped the body of Drake; lay flamingat my feet upon the narrow ledge.
There was a roaring within my head--louder, far louder, than that whichbeat against my ears. Something was drawing me forth; drawing me out ofmy body into unimaginable depths of blackness. Something was hurling meout into those cold depths of space that alone could darken the firesthat encircled me--the fires of which I was becoming a part.
I felt myself leap outward--outward and outward--into--oblivion.