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PROLOGUE
PROLOGUE
Before the narrative which follows was placed in my hands, I had never seen Dr. Walter T. Goodwin, its author. When the manuscript revealing his adventures among the pre-historic ruins of the Nan-Matal in the Carolines (The Moon Pool) had been given me by the International Association of Science for editing and revision to meet the requirements of a popular presentation, Dr. Goodwin had left America. He had explained that he was still too shaken, too depressed, to be able to recall experiences t
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CHAPTER I. VALLEY OF THE BLUE POPPIES
CHAPTER I. VALLEY OF THE BLUE POPPIES
In this great crucible of life we call the world—in the vaster one we call the universe—the mysteries lie close packed, uncountable as grains of sand on ocean's shores. They thread gigantic, the star-flung spaces; they creep, atomic, beneath the microscope's peering eye. They walk beside us, unseen and unheard, calling out to us, asking why we are deaf to their crying, blind to their wonder. Sometimes the veils drop from a man's eyes, and he sees—and speaks of his vision. Then those who have not
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CHAPTER II. THE SIGIL ON THE ROCKS
CHAPTER II. THE SIGIL ON THE ROCKS
Dawn came. Drake had slept well. But I, who had not his youthful resiliency, lay for long, awake and uneasy. I had hardly sunk into troubled slumber before dawn awakened me. As we breakfasted, I approached directly that matter which my growing liking for him was turning into strong desire. “Drake,” I asked. “Where are you going?” “With you,” he laughed. “I'm foot loose and fancy free. And I think you ought to have somebody with you to help watch that cook. He might get away.” The idea seemed to
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CHAPTER III. RUTH VENTNOR
CHAPTER III. RUTH VENTNOR
The dawn, streaming into the niche, awakened us. A covey of partridges venturing too close yielded three to our guns. We breakfasted well, and a little later were pushing on down the cleft. Its descent, though gradual, was continuous, and therefore I was not surprised when soon we began to come upon evidences of semi-tropical vegetation. Giant rhododendrons and tree ferns gave way to occasional clumps of stately kopek and clumps of the hardier bamboos. We added a few snow cocks to our larder—alt
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CHAPTER IV. METAL WITH A BRAIN
CHAPTER IV. METAL WITH A BRAIN
The eagerness, the relief in his voice betrayed the tension, the anxiety which until now he had hidden so well; and hot shame burned me for my shrinking, my dread of again passing through that haunted vale. “I certainly DO.” I was once more master of myself. “Drake—don't you agree?” “Sure,” he replied. “Sure. I'll look after Ruth—er—I mean Miss Ventnor.” The glint of amusement in Ventnor's eyes at this faded abruptly; his face grew somber. “Wait,” he said. “I carried away some—some exhibits from
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CHAPTER V. THE SMITING THING
CHAPTER V. THE SMITING THING
Silently we looked at each other, and silently we passed out of the courtyard. The dread was heavy upon me. The twilight was stealing upon the close-clustered peaks. Another hour, and their amethyst-and-purple mantles would drop upon them; snowfields and glaciers sparkle out in irised beauty; nightfall. As I gazed upon them I wondered to what secret place within their brooding immensities the little metal mysteries had fled. And to what myriads, it might be, of their kind? And these hidden horde
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CHAPTER VI. NORHALA OF THE LIGHTNINGS
CHAPTER VI. NORHALA OF THE LIGHTNINGS
We looked upon a vision of loveliness such, I think, as none has beheld since Trojan Helen was a maid. At first all I could note were the eyes, clear as rain-washed April skies, crystal clear as some secret spring sacred to crescented Diana. Their wide gray irises were flecked with golden amber and sapphire—flecks that shone like clusters of little aureate and azure stars. Then with a strange thrill of wonder I saw that these tiny constellations were not in the irises alone; that they clustered
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Mutely we faced each other, white and wan in the ghostly light.
Mutely we faced each other, white and wan in the ghostly light.
The valley was very still; as silent as though sound had been withdrawn from it. The shimmering radiance suffusing it had thickened perceptibly; hovered over the valley floor faintly sparkling mists; hid it. Like a shroud was that silence. Beneath it my mind struggled, its unease, its forebodings growing ever stronger. Silently we repacked the saddlebags; girthed the pony; silently we waited for Norhala's return. Idly I had noted that the place on which we stood must be raised above the level of
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CHAPTER VIII. THE DRUMS OF THUNDER
CHAPTER VIII. THE DRUMS OF THUNDER
Upon that threshold the mists foamed like breaking billows, then ceased abruptly to be. Keeping exactly the distance I had noted when our gaze had risen above the fog, glided the block that bore Ruth and Norhala. In the strange light of the place into which we had emerged—and whether that place was canyon, corridor, or tunnel I could not then determine—it stood out sharply. One arm of Norhala held Ruth—and in her attitude I sensed a shielding intent, guardianship—the first really human impulse t
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CHAPTER IX. THE PORTAL OF FLAME
CHAPTER IX. THE PORTAL OF FLAME
It was as though we were on a meteor hurtling through space. The split air shrieked and shrilled, a keening barrier against the avalanche of the thunder. The blast bent us far back on thighs held rigid by the magnetic grip. The pony spread its legs, dropped its head; through the hurricane roaring its screaming pierced thinly, that agonizing, terrible lamentation which is of the horse and the horse alone when the limit of its endurance is reached. Ventnor crouched lower and lower, eyes shielded b
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CHAPTER X. “WITCH! GIVE BACK MY SISTER”
CHAPTER X. “WITCH! GIVE BACK MY SISTER”
How long we were within that glare I do not know; it seemed unending hours; it was of course only minutes—seconds, perhaps. Then I was sensible of a permeating shadow, a darkness gentle and healing. I raised my head and opened my eyes. We were moving tranquilly, with a curious suggestion of homing leisureliness, through a soft, blue shimmering darkness. It was as though we were drifting within some high borderland of light; a region in which that rapid vibration we call the violet was mingled wi
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CHAPTER XI. THE METAL EMPEROR
CHAPTER XI. THE METAL EMPEROR
We stood at the edge of a well whose walls were of that same green vaporous iridescence through which we had just come, but finer grained, compact; as though here the corpuscles of which they were woven were far closer spun. Thousands of feet above us the mighty cylinder uprose, and in the lessened circle that was its mouth I glimpsed the bright stars; and knew by this it opened into the free air. All of half a mile in diameter was this shaft, and ringed regularly along its height by wide amethy
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CHAPTER XII. “I WILL GIVE YOU PEACE”
CHAPTER XII. “I WILL GIVE YOU PEACE”
In our concentration upon Ventnor none of us had given thought to the passing of time, nor where we were going. We stripped him to the waist, and while Ruth massaged head and neck, Drake's strong fingers kneaded chest and abdomen. I had used to the utmost my somewhat limited medical knowledge. We had found no mark nor burn upon him, not even upon his hands over which had run the licking flame. The slightly purplish, cyanotic tinge of his skin had given way to a clear pallor; the skin was itself
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CHAPTER XIII. “VOICE FROM THE VOID”
CHAPTER XIII. “VOICE FROM THE VOID”
Helplessly we looked at each other. Then called forth perhaps by what she saw in Drake's eyes, perhaps by another thought, Ruth's cheeks crimsoned, her head drooped; the web of her hair hid the warm rose of her face, the frozen pallor of Ventnor's. Abruptly, she sprang to her feet. “Walter! Dick! Something's happening to Martin!” Before she had ceased we were beside her; bending over Ventnor. His mouth was opening, slowly, slowly—with an effort agonizing to watch. Then his voice came through lip
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CHAPTER XIV. “FREE! BUT A MONSTER!”
CHAPTER XIV. “FREE! BUT A MONSTER!”
The peculiar ability of the human mind to slip so readily into the refuge of the commonplace after, or even during, some well-nigh intolerable crisis, has been to me long one of the most interesting phenomena of our psychology. It is instinctively a protective habit, of course, acquired through precisely the same causes that had given to animals their protective coloration—the stripes, say, of the zebra and tiger that blend so cunningly with the barred and speckled shadowings of bush and jungle,
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CHAPTER XV. THE HOUSE OF NORHALA
CHAPTER XV. THE HOUSE OF NORHALA
Her eyes closed, her body relaxed; the potion had done its work quickly. We laid her beside Ventnor on the pile of silken stuffs, covered them both with a fold, then looked at each other long and silently—and I wondered whether my face was as grim and drawn as his. “It appears,” he said at last, curtly, “that it's up to you and me for powwow quick. I hope you're not sleepy.” “I am not,” I answered as curtly; the edge of nerves in his manner of questioning doing nothing to soothe my own, “and eve
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CHAPTER XVI. CONSCIOUS METAL!
CHAPTER XVI. CONSCIOUS METAL!
“Granted,” I acquiesced. “We now come to their means of locomotion. In its simplest terms all locomotion is progress through space against the force of gravitation. Man's walk is a series of rhythmic stumbles against this force that constantly strives to drag him down to earth's face and keep him pressed there. Gravitation is an etheric—magnetic vibration akin to the force which holds, to use your simile again, Drake, the filing against the magnet. A walk is a constant breaking of the current. “
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CHAPTER XVII. YURUK
CHAPTER XVII. YURUK
“Yuruk,” I whispered, “you love us as the wheat field loves the hail; we are as welcome to you as the death cord to the condemned. Lo, a door opened into a land of unpleasant dreams you thought sealed, and we came through. Answer my questions truthfully and it may be that we shall return through that door.” Interest welled up in the depths of the black eyes. “There is a way from here,” he muttered. “Nor does it pass through—Them. I can show it to you.” I had not been blind to the flash of malice
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CHAPTER XVIII. INTO THE PIT
CHAPTER XVIII. INTO THE PIT
High was the sun when I awakened; or so, I supposed, opening my eyes upon a flood of daylight. As I lay, lazily, recollection rushed upon me. It was no sky into which I was gazing; it was the dome of Norhala's elfin home. And Drake had not aroused me. Why? And how long had I slept? I jumped to my feet, stared about. Ruth nor Drake nor the black eunuch was there! “Ruth!” I shouted. “Drake!” There was no answer. I ran to the doorway. Peering up into the white vault of the heavens I set the time of
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CHAPTER XIX. THE CITY THAT WAS ALIVE
CHAPTER XIX. THE CITY THAT WAS ALIVE
Close beside us was one of the cyclopean columns. We crept to it; crouched at its base opposite the drift of the Metal People; strove, huddled there, to regain our shaken poise. Like bagatelles we felt in that tremendous place, the weird luminaries gleaming above like garlands of frozen suns, the enigmatic hosts of animate cubes and spheres and pyramids trooping past. They ranged in size from shapes yard-high to giants of thirty feet or more. They paid no heed to us, did not stop; streaming on,
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CHAPTER XX. VAMPIRES OF THE SUN
CHAPTER XX. VAMPIRES OF THE SUN
It was a crater; a half mile on high and all of two thousand feet across ran the circular lip of its vast rim. Above it was a circle of white and glaring sky in whose center flamed the sun. And instantly, before my vision could grasp a tithe of that panorama, I knew 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, vernal green, enormous. They were like a border of gigantic, upthrust shields; and within eac
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CHAPTER XXI. PHANTASMAGORIA METALLIOUE.
CHAPTER XXI. PHANTASMAGORIA METALLIOUE.
Wearily I opened my eyes. Stiffly, painfully, I stirred. High above me was the tremendous circle of sky, ringed with the hosts of feeding shields. But the shields were now wanly gleaming and the sky was the sky of night. Night? How long had I lain here? And where was Drake? I struggled to rise. “Steady, old man,” his voice came from beside me. “Steady—and quiet. How are you feeling?” “Badly battered,” I groaned. “What happened?” “We weren't used to the show,” he said. “We got all fed up at the o
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CHAPTER XXII. THE ENSORCELLED CHAMBER
CHAPTER XXII. THE ENSORCELLED CHAMBER
“Goodwin!” Drake broke the silence; desperately he was striving to keep his fear out of his voice. “Goodwin—this isn't the way to get out. We're going up—farther away all the time from the—the gates!” “What can we do?” My anxiety was no less than his, but my realization of our helplessness was complete. “If we only knew how to talk to these Things,” he said. “If we could only have let the Disk know we wanted to get out—damn it, Goodwin, it would have helped us.” Grotesque as the idea sounded, I
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CHAPTER XXIII. THE TREACHERY OF YURUK
CHAPTER XXIII. THE TREACHERY OF YURUK
Was it true that Time is within ourselves—that like Space, its twin, it is only a self-created illusion of the human mind? There are hours that flash by on hummingbird wings; there are seconds that shuffle on shod in leaden shoes. Was it true that when death faces us the consciousness finds power through its will to live to conquer the illusion—to prolong Time? That, recoiling from oblivion, we can recreate in a fractional moment whole years gone past, years yet to come—striving to lengthen our
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CHAPTER XXIV. RUSZARK
CHAPTER XXIV. RUSZARK
Smoothly moved the colossal shape; on it we rode as easily as though cradled. It did not glide—it strode. The columned legs raised themselves, bending from a thousand joints. The pedestals of the feet, huge and massive as foundations for sixteen-inch guns, fell with machinelike precision, stamping gigantically. Under their tread the trees of the forest snapped, were crushed like reeds beneath the pads of a mastodon. From far below came the sound of their crashing. The thick forest checked the pr
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CHAPTER XXV. CHERKIS
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 un
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CHAPTER XXVI. THE VENGEANCE OF NORHALA
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
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CHAPTER XXVII. “THE DRUMS OF DESTINY”
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
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CHAPTER XXVIII. THE FRENZY OF RUTH
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, undisturb
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CHAPTER XXIX. THE PASSING OF NORHALA
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, clusteri
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CHAPTER XXX. BURNED OUT
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 overwhel
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CHAPTER XXXI. SLAG!
CHAPTER XXXI. SLAG!
That night we slept well. Awakening, we found that the storm had grown violent again; the wind roaring and the rain falling in such volume that it was impossible to make our way to the Pit. Twice, as a matter of fact, we tried; but the smooth roadway was a torrent, and, drenched even through our oils to the skin, we at last abandoned the attempt. Ruth and Drake drifted away together among the other chambers of the globe; they were absorbed in themselves, and we did not thrust ourselves upon them
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