LITMIR.BIZ

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bore us.

      “I was swept back; looked again upon it from afar. And a fantastic notion came to me — fantasy it was, of course, yet built I know around a nucleus of strange truth. It was”— his tone was half whimsical, half apologetic —“it was that this jeweled world was ridden by some mathematical god, driving it through space, noting occasionally with amused tolerance the very bad arithmetic of another Deity the reverse of mathematical — a more or less haphazard Deity, the god, in fact, of us and the things we call living.

      “It had no mission; it wasn’t at all out to do any reforming; it wasn’t in the least concerned in rectifying any of the inaccuracies of the Other. Only now and then it took note of the deplorable differences between the worlds it saw and its own impeccably ordered and tidy temple with its equally tidy servitors.

      “Just an itinerant demiurge of supergeometry riding along through space on its perfectly summed-up world; master of all celestial mechanics; its people independent of all that complex chemistry and labor for equilibrium by which we live; needing neither air nor water, heeding neither heat nor cold; fed with the magnetism of interstellar space and stopping now and then to banquet off the energy of some great sun.”

      A thrill of amazement passed through me; fantasy all this might be but — how, if so, had he gotten that last thought? He had not seen, as we had, the orgy in the Hall of the Cones, the prodigious feeding of the Metal Monster upon our sun.

      “That passed,” he went on, unnoticing. “I saw vast caverns filled with the Things; working, growing, multiplying. In caverns of our Earth — the fruit of some unguessed womb? I do not know.

      “But in those caverns, under countless orbs of many colored lights”— again the thrill of amaze shook me — “they grew. It came to me that they were reaching out toward sunlight and the open. They burst into it — into yellow, glowing sunlight. Ours? I do not know. And that picture passed.”

      His voice deepened.

      “There came a third vision. I saw our Earth — I knew, Goodwin, indisputably, unmistakably that it was our earth. But its rolling hills were leveled, its mountains were ground and shaped into cold and polished symbols — geometric, fashioned.

      “The seas were fettered, gleaming like immense jewels in patterned settings of crystal shores. The very Polar ice was chiseled. On the ordered plains were traced the hieroglyphs of the faceted world. And on all Earth, Goodwin, there was no green life, no city, no trace of man. On this Earth that had been ours were only — These.

      “Visioning!” he said. “Don’t think that I accept them in their entirety. Part truth, part illusion — the groping mind dazzled with light of unfamiliar truths and making pictures from half light and half shadow to help it understand.

      “But still — SOME truth in them. How much I do not know. But this I do know — that last vision was of a cataclysm whose beginnings we face now — this very instant.”

      The picture flashed behind my own eyes — of the walled city, its thronging people, its groves and gardens, its science and its art; of the Destroying Shapes trampling it flat — and then the dreadful, desolate mount.

      And suddenly I saw that mount as Earth — the city as Earth’s cities — its gardens and groves as Earth’s fields and forests — and the vanished people of Cherkis seemed to expand into all humanity.

      “But Martin,” I stammered, fighting against choking, intolerable terror, “there was something else. Something of the Keeper of the Cones and of our striking through the sun to destroy the Things — something of them being governed by the same laws that govern us and that if they broke them they must fall. A hope — a PROMISE, that they would NOT conquer.”

      “I remember,” he replied, “but not clearly. There WAS something — a shadow upon them, a menace. It was a shadow that seemed to be born of our own world — some threatening spirit of earth hovering over them.

      “I cannot remember; it eludes me. Yet it is because I remember but a little of it that I say those drums may not be — taps — for us.”

      As though his words had been a cue, the sounds again burst forth — no longer muffled nor faint. They roared; they seemed to pelt through air and drop upon us; they beat about our ears with thunderous tattoo like covered caverns drummed upon by Titans with trunks of great trees.

      The drumming did not die; it grew louder, more vehement; defiant and deafening. Within the Thing under us a mighty pulse began to throb, accelerating rapidly to the rhythm of that clamorous roll.

      I saw Norhala draw herself up, sharply; stand listening and alert. Under me, the throbbing turned to an uneasy churning, a ferment.

      “Drums?” muttered Drake. “THEY’RE no drums. It’s drum fire. It’s like a dozen Marnes, a dozen Verduns. But where could batteries like those come from?”

      “Drums,” whispered Ventnor. “They ARE drums. The drums of Destiny!”

      Louder the roaring grew. Now it was a tremendous rhythmic cannonading. The Thing halted. The tower that upheld Ruth and Norhala swayed, bent over the gap between us, touched the top on which we rode.

      Gently the two were plucked up; swiftly they were set beside us.

      Came a shrill, keen wailing — louder than ever I had heard before. There was an earthquake trembling; a maelstrom swirling in which we spun; a swift sinking.

      The Thing split in two. Up before us rose a stupendous, stepped pyramid; little smaller it was than that which Cheops built to throw its shadows across holy Nile. Into it streamed, over it clicked, score upon score of cubes, building it higher and higher. It lurched forward — away from us.

      From Norhala came a single cry — resonant, blaring like a wrathful, golden trumpet.

      The speeding shape halted, hesitated; it seemed about to return. Crashed down upon us an abrupt crescendo of the distant drumming; peremptory, commanding. The shape darted forward; raced away crushing to straw the trees beneath it in a full quarter-mile-wide swath.

      Great gray eyes wide, filled with incredulous wonder, stunned disbelief, Norhala for an instant faltered. Then out of her white throat, through her red lips pelted a tempest of staccato buglings.

      Under them what was left of the Thing leaped, tore on. Norhala’s flaming hair crackled and streamed; about her body of milk and pearl — about Ruth’s creamy skin — a radiant nimbus began to glow.

      In the distance I saw a sapphire spark; knew it for Norhala’s home. Not far from it now was the rushing pyramid — and it came to me that within that shape was strangely neither globe nor pyramid. Nor except for the trembling cubes that made the platform on which we stood, did the shrunken Thing carrying us hold any unit of the Metal Monster except its spheres and tetrahedrons — at least within its visible bulk.

      The sapphire spark had grown to a glimmering azure marble. Steadily we gained upon the pyramid. Never for an instant ceased that scourging hail of notes from Norhala — never for an instant lessened the drumming clamor that seemed to try to smother them.

      The sapphire marble became a sapphire ball, a great globe. I saw the Thing we sought to join lift itself into a prodigious pillar; the pillar’s base thrust forth stilts; upon them the Thing stepped over the blue dome of Norhala’s house.

      The blue bubble was close; now it curved below us. Gently we were lifted down; were set before its portal. I looked up at the bulk that had carried us.

      I had been right — built it was only of globe and pyramid; an inconceivably grotesque shape, it hung over us.

      Throughout the towering Shape was awful movement; its units writhed within it. Then it was lost to sight in the mists through which the Thing we had pursued had gone.

      In Norhala’s face as she watched it go was a dismay, a poignant uncertainty, that held in it something indescribably pitiful.

      “I am afraid!” I heard her whisper.

      She

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