"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, Iwill!"
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 Inot 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.
