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 wascontinuous; sometimes it faded into a background for clattering stormsas of thousands of machine guns, thousands of riveters at work at onceupon a thousand metal frameworks; sometimes it was nearly submergedbeneath splitting crashes as of meeting meteors of hollow steel.
But always the drumming persisted, rhythmic, thunderous. Through itall Ruth slept, undisturbed, cheek pillowed in one rounded arm, the twogreat pyramids erect behind her, watchful; a globe at her feet, a globeat her head, the third sphere poised between her and us, and, like thepyramids--watchful.
What was happening out there--over the edge of the canyon, beyond theportal 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 theirclamorous runes?
Ventnor stepped by the sentinel globe, bent over the tranced girl.Sphere nor pointed pair stirred; only they watched him--like a palpablething one felt their watchfulness. He listened to her heart, caught upa wrist, took note of her pulse of life. He drew a deep breath, stoodupright, nodded reassuringly.
Abruptly Drake turned, walked out through the open portal, his strainand a very deep anxiety written plainly in deep lines that ran fromnostrils 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 browsknitted; her hands clenched. The sphere that stood before her spun onits axis, swept up to the globe at her head, glided from it to the globeat her feet--as though whispering. Ruth moaned--her body bent upright,swayed rigidly. Her eyes opened; they stared through us as though uponsome dreadful vision; and strangely was it as though she were seeingwith another's eyes, were reflecting another's sufferings.
The globes at her feet and at her head swirled out, clustering againstthe third sphere--three weird shapes in silent consultation. OnVentnor's face I saw pity--and a vast relief. With shocked amaze Irealized that Ruth's agony--for in agony she clearly was--was callingforth in him elation. He spoke--and I knew why.
"Norhala!" he whispered. "She is seeing with Norhala's eyes--feelingwhat Norhala feels. It's not going well with--That--out there. If wedared leave Ruth--could only, see--"
Ruth leaped to her feet; cried out--a golden bugling that might havebeen Norhala's own wrathful trumpet notes. Instantly the two pyramidsflamed open, became two gleaming stars that bathed her in violetradiance. Beneath their upper tips I saw the blasting ovalsglitter--menacingly.
The girl glared at us--more brilliant grew the glittering ovals asthough their lightnings trembled on their lips.
"Ruth!" called Ventnor softly.
A shadow softened the intolerable, hard brilliancy of the brown eyes. Inthem something struggled to arise, fighting its way to the surface likesome drowning human thing.
It sank back--upon her face dropped a cloud of heartbreak, appallingwoe; the despair of a soul that, having withdrawn all faith in itsown kind to rest all faith, as it thought, on angels--sees that faithbetrayed.
There stared upon us a stripped spirit, naked and hopeless and terrible.
Despairing, raging, she screamed once more. The central globe swam toher; it raised her upon its back; glided to the doorway. Upon it shestood poised like some youthful, anguished Victory--a Victory who facedand knew she faced destroying defeat; poised upon that enigmatic orbon bare slender feet, one sweet breast bare, hands upraised, virginallyarchaic, nothing about her of the Ruth we knew.
"Ruth!" cried Drake; despair as great as that upon her face was in hisvoice. He sprang before the globe that held her; barred its way.
For an instant the Thing paused--and in that instant the human soul ofthe girl rushed back.
"No!" she cried. "No!"
A weird call issued from the white lips--stumbling, uncertain, as thoughshe who sent it forth herself wondered whence it sprang. Abruptly theangry stars closed. The three globes spun--doubting, puzzled! Again shecalled--now a tremulous, halting cadence. She was lifted; dropped gentlyto her feet.
For an instant the globes and pyramids whirled and danced beforeher--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 whitebody flashed, speeding toward the Pit. Like fleet-footed Atalanta shefled--and far, far behind us was the blue bower, the misty barrier ofthe veils close, when Drake with a last desperate burst reached herside, 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 thesleeve. Quick!"
Unquestioningly, I drew my knife, ripped the garment at the shoulder. Hesnatched 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. Thegirl's eyes blazed at him, filled with hate.
"Cut that other sleeve," he said; and when I had done so, he kneltagain, pinned Ruth down with a knee at her throat, turned her over andknotted her hands behind her. She ceased struggling; gently now he drewup the curly head; swung her upon her back.
"Hold her feet." He nodded to Drake, who caught the slender bare anklesin 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 ofthose Things down to blast us. And would--if she HAD thought. You don'tthink THAT is Ruth, do you?"
He pointed to the pallid face glaring at him, the eyes from which coldfires flamed.
"No, you don't!" He caught Drake by the shoulder, sent him spinning adozen feet away. "Damn it, Drake--don't you understand!"
For suddenly Ruth's eyes softened; she had turned them on Dickpitifully, appealingly--and he had loosed her ankles, had leaned forwardas though to draw away the band that covered her lips.
"Your gun," whispered Ventnor to me; before I had moved he had snatchedthe automatic from my holster; had covered Drake with it.
"Drake," he said, "stand where you are. If you take another step towardthis 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'mdoing. Can't you see? Can't you see how little of Ruth is in that bodythere--how little of the girl you love? How or why I don't know--butthat it is so I DO know. Drake--have you forgotten how Norhala beguiledCherkis? 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 ofRuth--even as he had said. There was the same cold, awesome wrath thathad rested upon Norhala's as she watched Cherkis weep over the eating upof his city. Swiftly came a change--like the sudden smoothing out of therushing waves of a hill-locked, wind-lashed lake.
The face was again Ruth's face--and Ruth's alone; the eyes were Ruth'seyes--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 wherewe stood the clamor was lessened, muffled. Of course, it came to me, itwas the veils.
I wondere
d why--for whatever the quality of the radiant mists, theirpurpose certainly had to do with concentration of the magnetic flux. Thedeadening of the noise must be accidental, could have nothing to do withtheir actual use; for sound is an air vibration solely. No--it must be asecondary effect. The Metal Monster was as heedless of clamor as it wasof heat or cold--
"We've got to see," Ventnor broke the chain of thought. "We've got toget 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 andlover, we moved forward into the mists; we crept cautiously throughtheir 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 droppedwhile we three stood blinded, deafened, fighting for recovery. Ruthtwisted, rolled toward the brink; Ventnor threw himself upon her, heldher fast.
Dragging her, crawling on our knees, we crept forward; we stopped whenthe thinning of the mists permitted us to see through them yet stillinterposed a curtaining which, though tenuous, dimmed the intolerablebrilliancy that filled the Pit, muffled its din to a degree we couldbear.
I peered through them--and nerve and muscle were locked in the grip ofa paralyzing awe. I felt then as one would feel set close to warringregiments of stars, made witness to the death-throes of a universe, orswept through space and held above the whirling coils of Andromeda'snebula to watch its birth agonies of nascent suns.
These are no figures of speech, no hyperboles--speck as our wholeplanet would be in Andromeda's vast loom, pinprick as was the Pit tothe cyclone craters of our own sun, within the cliff-cupped walls of thevalley was a tangible, struggling living force akin to that whichdwells within the nebula and the star; a cosmic spirit transcending alldimensions and thrusting its confines out into the infinite; a sentientemanation of the infinite itself.
Nor was its voice less unearthly. It used the shell of the earth valleyfor its trumpetings, its clangors--but as one hears in the murmuringsof the fluted conch the great voice of ocean, its whispering andits roarings, so here in the clamorous shell of the Pit echoed thetremendous voices of that illimitable sea which laps the shores of thecountless suns.
I looked upon a mighty whirlpool miles and miles wide. It whirled withsurges whose racing crests were smiting incandescences; it was threadedwith a spindrift of lightnings; it was trodden by dervish mists ofmolten flame thrust through with forests of lances of living light. Itcast a cadent spray high to the heavens.
Over it the heavens glittered as though they were a shield held byfearful gods. Through the maelstrom staggered a mountainous bulk; agleaming leviathan of pale blue metal caught in the swirling tide ofsome incredible volcano; a huge ark of metal breasting a deluge offlame.
And the drumming we heard as of hollow beaten metal worlds, the shoutingtempests of cannonading stars, was the breaking of these incandescentcrests, the falling of the lightning spindrift, the rhythmic impact ofthe lanced rays upon the glimmering mountain that reeled and trembled asthey 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 aswere the cells that formed the skin of its walls, its carapace.
It was the Metal Monster tearing, rending, fighting for, battlingagainst--itself.
Mile high as when I had first beheld it was the inexplicable body thatheld the great heart of the cones into which had been drawn the magneticcataracts from our sun; that held too the smaller hearts of the lessercones, the workshops, the birth chamber and manifold other mysteriesunguessed and unseen. By a full fourth had its base been shrunken.
Ranged in double line along the side turned toward us were hundreds ofdread forms--Shapes that in their intensity bore down upon, oppressedwith a nightmare weight, the consciousness.
Rectangular, upon their outlines no spike of pyramid, no curve of globeshowing, uncompromisingly ponderous, they upthrust. Upon the tops of thefirst rank were enormous masses, sledge shaped--like those metal fiststhat had battered down the walls of Cherkis's city but to them as thehuman hand is to the paw of the dinosaur.
Conceive this--conceive these Shapes as animate and flexible; beatingdown with the prodigious mallets, smashing from side to side as thoughthe tremendous pillars that held them were thousand jointed uprightpistons; that as closely as I can present it in images of things we knowis the picture of the Hammering Things.
Behind them stood a second row, high as they and as angular. From themextended scores of girdered arms. These were thickly studded with theflaming cruciform shapes, the opened cubes gleaming with their angryflares of reds and smoky yellows. From the tentacles of many swungimmense shields like those which ringed the hall of the great cones.
And as the sledges beat, ever over their bent heads poured from thecrosses a flood of crimson lightnings. Out of the concave depths ofthe shields whipped lashes of blinding flame. With ropes of firethey knouted the Things the sledges struck, the sullen crimson levinsblasted.
Now I could see the Shapes that attacked. Grotesque; spined and tusked,spiked and antlered, wenned and breasted; as chimerically angled, cuspedand cornute as though they were the superangled, supercornute gods ofthe cusped and angled gods of the Javanese, they strove against thesledge-headed and smiting, the multiarmed and blasting square towers.
High as them, as huge as they, incomparably fantastic, in dozens ofshifting forms they battled.
More than a mile from the stumbling City stood ranged like sharpshootersa host of solid, bristling-legged towers. Upon their tops spun giganticwheels. Out of the centers of these wheels shot the radiant lances,hosts of spears of intensest violet light. The radiance they volleyedwas not continuous; it was broken, so that the javelin rays shot out inrhythmic flights, each flying fast upon the shafts of the others.
It was their impact that sent forth the thunderous drumming. They struckand splintered against the walls, dropping from them in great gouts ofmolten 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 smasheddown upon the bristling attackers. Under the awful impact globes andpyramids were shattered into hundreds of fragments, rocket bursts ofblue and azure and violet flame, flames rainbowed and irised.
The hammer ends split, flew apart, were scattered, were falling showersof sulphurous yellow and scarlet meteors. But ever other cubes swarmedout and repaired the broken smiting tips. And always where a tusked andcornute shape had been battered down, disintegrated, another aroseas huge and as formidable pouring forth upon the squared tower itslightnings, tearing at it with colossal spiked and hooked claws, beatingit with incredible spiked and globular fists that were like the clenchedhands 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, advancedand retreated--an unearthly motion wedded to an amorphous immensity thatflooded 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 aprodigious wailing, an unearthly thin screaming. About the bases of thedefenders flashed blinding bursts of incandescence--like those which hadheralded the flight of the Flying Thing dropping before Norhala's house.
Unlike them they held no dazzling sapphire brilliancies; they wereochreous, suffused with raging vermilion. Nevertheless they were factorsof that same inexplicable action--for from thousands of gushing lightsleaped thousands of gigantic square pillars; unimaginable projectileshurled from the flaming mouths of earth-hidden, titanic mortars.
They soared high, swerved and swooped upon the lance-throwers. Beneatht
heir onslaught those chimerae tottered, I saw living projectiles andliving target fuse where they met--melt and weld in jets of lightnings.
But not all. There were those that tore great gaps in the hornedgiants--wounds that instantly were healed with globes and pyramidsseething out from the Cyclopean trunk. Ever the incredible projectilesflashed and flew as though from some inexhaustible store; ever uprosethat prodigious barrage against the smiting rays.
Now to check them soared from the ranks of the besiegers clouds ofcountless horned dragons, immense cylinders of clustered cubes studdedwith the clinging tetrahedrons. They struck the cubed projectiles headon; aimed themselves to meet them.
Bristling dragon and hurtling pillar stuck and fused or burst withintolerable blazing. They fell--cube and sphere and pyramid--some halfopened, 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 theMetal Monster--there raged a strife colossal as this without. From itcame 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 whichagainst the glittering heavens traced luminous symbols of agony.
Shrilled a stronger wailing. Up from behind the ray hurling Towers shothosts of globes. Thousands of palely azure, metal moons they soared;warrior moons charging in meteor rush and streaming with flutteringbattle pennons of violet flame. High they flew; they curved over themile high back of the Monster; they dropped upon it.
Arose to meet them immense columns of the cubes; battered againstthe spheres; swept them over and down into the depths. Hundreds fell,broken--but thousands held their place. I saw them twine about thepillars--writhing columns of interlaced cubes and globes straininglike monstrous serpents while all along their coils the open disks andcrosses smote with the scimitars of their lightnings.
In the wall of the City appeared a shining crack; from top to bottom itran; it widened into a rift from which a flood of radiance gushed. Outof this rift poured a thousand-foot-high torrent of horned globes.
Only for an instant they flowed. The rift closed upon them, catchingthose still emerging in a colossal vise. It CRUNCHED them. Plain throughthe turmoil came a dreadful--bursting roar.
Down from the closing jaws of the vise dripped a stream of fragmentsthat flashed and flickered--and died. And now in the wall was no traceof the breach.
A hurricane of radiant lances swept it. Under them a mile wide sectionof the living scarp split away; dropped like an avalanche. Its fallrevealed great spaces, huge vaults and chambers filled with warringlightnings--out from them came roaring, bellowing thunders. Swiftly fromeach side of the gap a metal curtaining of the cubes joined. Again thewall was whole.
I turned my stunned gaze from the City--swept over the valley.Everywhere, in towers, in writhing coils, in whipping flails, in wavesthat smote and crashed, in countless forms and combinations the MetalHordes battled. Here were pillars against which metal billows rushedand were broken; there were metal comets that crashed high above the madturmoil.
From streaming silent veil to veil--north and south, east and west theMonster slew itself beneath its racing, flaming banners, the tempests ofits lightnings.
The tortured hulk of the City lurched; it swept toward us. Before itblotted out from our eyes the Pit I saw that the crystal spans upon theriver of jade were gone; that the wondrous jeweled ribbons of its bankswere broken.
Closer came the reeling City.
I fumbled for my lenses, focussed them upon it. Now I saw that wherethe radiant lances struck they--killed the blocks blackened under them,became lustreless; the sparkling of the tiny eyes--went out; the metalcarapaces crumbled.
Closer to the City--came the Monster; shuddering I lowered the glassesthat 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 overwhelmthem. Before they could strike the City swept closer; had hidden themfrom me.
Again I raised the glasses. They brought the metal scarp not fifty feetaway--within it the hosts of tiny eyes glittered, no longer mocking normalicious, but insane.
Nearer drew the Monster--nearer.
A thousand feet away it checked its movement, seemed to draw itselftogether. Then like the roar of a falling world that whole side facingus slid down to the valley's floor.