LITMIR.BIZ

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come from the immense hall. And when the last rank had passed from under us we were dropped softly to our feet; stood swaying in their wake.

      A curious frenzy of helpless indignation shook me, a rage of humiliation obscuring all gratitude I should have felt for our escape. Drake’s eyes blazed wrath.

      “The insolent devils!” He raised clenched fists. “The insolent, domineering devils!”

      We stared after them.

      Was the passage growing narrower — closing? Even as I gazed I saw it shrink; saw its walls slide silently toward each other. I pushed Drake into the newly opened way and sprang after him.

      Behind us was an unbroken wall covering all that space in which but a moment before we had stood!

      Is it to be wondered that a panic seized us; that we began to run crazily down the alley that still lay open before us, casting over our shoulders quick, fearful glances to see whether that inexorable, dreadful closing was continuing, threatening to crush us between these walls like flies in a vise of steel?

      But they did not close. Unbroken, silent, the way stretched before us and behind us. At last, gasping, avoiding each other’s gaze, we paused.

      And at that very moment of pause a deeper tremor shook me, a trembling of the very foundations of life, the shuddering of one who faces the inconceivable knowing at last that the inconceivable — IS.

      For, abruptly, walls and floor and roof broke forth into countless twinklings!

      As though a film had been withdrawn from them, as though they had awakened from slumber, myriads of little points of light shone forth upon us from the pale-blue surfaces — lights that considered us, measured us — mocked us.

      The little points of living light that were the eyes of the Metal People!

      This was no corridor cut through inert matter by mechanic art; its opening had been caused by no hidden mechanisms! It was a living Thing — walled and floored and roofed by the living bodies — of the Metal People themselves.

      Its opening, as had been the closing of that other passage, was the conscious, coordinate and voluntary action of the Things that formed these mighty walls.

      An action that obeyed, was directed by, the incredibly gigantic, communistic will which, like the spirit of the hive, the soul of the formicary, animated every unit of them.

      A greater realization swept us. If THIS were true, then those pillars in the vast hall, its towering walls — all this City was one living Thing!

      Built of the animate bodies of countless millions! Tons upon countless tons of them shaping a gigantic pile of which every atom was sentient, mobile — intelligent!

      A Metal Monster!

      Now I knew why it was that its frowning facade had seemed to watch us Argus-eyed as the Things had tossed us toward it. It HAD watched us!

      That flood of watchfulness pulsing about us had been actual concentration of regard of untold billions of tiny eyes of the living block which formed the City’s cliff.

      A City that Saw! A City that was Alive!

      No secret mechanism then — back darted my mind to that first terror — had closed the wall, shutting from our sight Norhala at play with the Little Things. None had opened the way for, had closed the way behind, the coursing spheres. It had been done by the conscious action of the conscious Things of whose living bodies was built this whole tremendous thinking pile!

      I think that for a moment we both went a little mad as that staggering truth came to us. I know we started to run once more, side by side, gripping like frightened children each other’s hands. Then Drake stopped.

      “By all the HELL of this place,” he said, solemnly, “I’ll run no more. After all — we’re men. If they kill us, they kill us. But by the God who made me I’ll run from them no more. I’ll die standing.”

      His courage steadied me. Defiantly we marched on. Up from below us, down from the roof, out from the walls of our way the hosts of eyes gleamed and twinkled upon us.

      “Who could have believed it?” he muttered, half to himself. “A living city of them! A living nest of them; a prodigious living nest of metal!”

      “A nest?” I caught the word. What did it suggest? That was it — the nest of the army ants, the city of the army ants, that Beebe had studied in the South American jungles and once described to me. After all, was this more wonderful, more unbelievable than that — the city of ants which was formed by their living bodies precisely as this was of the bodies of the Cubes?

      How had Beebe phrased it —“the home, the nest, the hearth, the nursery, the bridal suite, the kitchen, the bed and board of the army ants.” Built of and occupied by those blind and dead and savage little insects which by the guidance of smell alone carried on the most intricate operations, the most complex activities. Nothing here was stranger than that, I reflected — if once one could rid the mind of the paralyzing influence of the shapes of the Metal Things. Whence came the stimuli that moved THEM, the stimuli to which THEY reacted?

      Well then — whence and how came the orders to which the ANTS responded; that bade them open THIS corridor in their nest, close THAT, form this chamber, fill that one? Was one more mysterious than the other?

      Breaking into my current of thoughts came consciousness that I was moving with increased speed; that my body was fast growing lighter.

      Simultaneously with this recognition I felt myself lifted from the floor of the corridor and levitated with considerable rapidity forward; looking down I saw that floor several feet below me. Drake’s arm wound itself around my shoulder.

      “Closing up behind us,” he muttered. “They’re putting us — out.”

      It was, indeed, as though the passageway had wearied of our deliberate progress. Had decided to — give us a lift. Rearward it was shutting. I noted with interest how accurately this motion kept pace with our own speed, and how fluidly the walls seemed to run together.

      Our movement became accelerated. It was as though we floated buoyantly, weightless, upon some swift stream. The sensation was curiously pleasant, languorous — what was that word Ruth had used? — ELEMENTAL— and free. The supporting force seemed to flow equally from walls and floor; to reach down to us from the roof. It was slumberously even, and effortless. I saw that in advance of us the living corridor was opening even as behind us it was closing.

      All around us the little eye points twinkled and — laughed.

      There was no danger here — there could be none. Deeper and deeper dropped my mind into the depths of that alien tranquillity. Faster and faster we floated — onward.

      Abruptly, ahead of us shone a blaze of daylight. We passed into it. The force holding us withdrew its grip; I felt solidity beneath my feet; stood and leaned back against a smooth wall.

      The corridor had ended and — had shut us out from itself.

      “Bounced!” exclaimed Drake.

      And incongruous, flippant, colloquial as was that word, I know none that would better describe my own feelings.

      We were BOUNCED out upon a turret jutting from the barrier. And before us lay spread the most amazing, the most extraordinary fantastic scene upon which, I think, the vision of man has rested since the advent of time.

      Chapter XX.

       Vampires of the Sun

       Table of Contents

      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

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