LITMIR.BIZ

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hundred yards, perhaps, we had gone in silence before we stopped, gazing stupidly at an opening in the wall beside us. The portal had not been there when we had passed — of that I was certain.

      “It’s opened since we went by,” whispered Drake.

      We peered through it. The passage was narrow; its pave led downward. For a moment we hesitated, the same foreboding in both our minds. And yet — among the perils that crowded in upon us what choice had we? There could be no more danger there than here.

      Both ways were — ALIVE, both obedient to impulses over which we had no more control and no more way of predetermining than mice in some complex, man-made trap. Furthermore, this shaft also ran downward, and although its pitch was less and it did not therefore drop as quickly toward that level we sought and wherein lay the openings of escape into the outer valley, it fell at right angles to the corridor through which we had come.

      We knew that to retrace our steps now would but take us back to the forges and thence to the hall of the Cones and the certain peril waiting for us there.

      We stepped into this opened way. For a little distance it ran straightly, then turned and sloped gently upward; and a little distance more we climbed. Then suddenly, not a hundred yards from us, gushed out a flood of soft radiance, opalescent, filled with pearly glimmerings and rosy shadows of light.

      It was as though a door had opened into some world of luminescence. From it the lambent torrent poured; billowed down upon us. In its wake came music — if music the mighty harmonies, the sonorous chords, the crystalline themes and the linked chaplet of notes that were like spiralings of tiny golden star bells could be named.

      Toward source of light and sound we moved, nor could we have halted nor withdrawn had we willed; the radiance drew us to it as the sun the water drop, and irresistibly the sweet, unearthly music called. Closer we came — it was a narrow alcove from which sound and light poured — into it we crept — and went no further.

      We peered into a vast and columnless vault, a limitless temple of light. High up in it, strewn manifold, danced and shone soft orbs like tender suns. No pale gilt luminaries of frozen rays were these. Effulgent, jubilant, they flamed — orbs red as wine of rubies that Djinns of Al Shiraz press from his enchanted vineyards of jewels; twin orbs rosy white as breasts of pampered Babylonian maids; orbs of pulsing opalescences and orbs of the murmuring green of bursting buds of spring, crocused orbs and orbs of royal coral; suns that throbbed with singing rays of wedded rose and pearl and of sapphires and topazes amorous; orbs born of cool virginal dawns and of imperial sunsets and orbs that were the tuliped fruit of mating rainbows of fire.

      They danced, these countless aureoles; they swung and threaded in radiant choral patterns, in linked harmonies of light. And as they danced their gay rays caressed and bathed myriads of the Metal Folk open beneath them. Under the rays the jewel fires of disk and star and cross leaped and pulsed and danced to the same bright rhythm.

      We sought the source of the music — a tremendous thing of shimmering crystal pipes like some colossal organ. Out of the radiance around it great flames gathered, shook into sight with streamings and pennonings, in bannerets and bandrols, leaped upon the crystal pipes, and merged within them.

      And as the pipes drank them the flames changed into sound!

      Throbbing bass viols of roaring vernal winds, diapasons of waterfall and torrents — these had been flames of emerald; flaming trumpetings of desire that had been great streamers of scarlet — rose flames that had dissolved into echoes of fulfillment; diamond burgeonings that melted into silver symphonies like mist entangled Pleiades transmuted into melodies; chameleon harmonies to which the strange suns danced.

      And now I saw — realizing with a clutch of indescribable awe, with a sense of inexplicable profanation the secret of this ensorcelled chamber.

      Within every pulsing rose of irised fire that was the heart of a disk, from every rubrous, clipped rose of a cross, and from every rayed purple petaling of a star there nestled a tiny disk, a tiny cross, a tiny star, luminous and symboled even as those that cradled them.

      The Metal Babes building like crystals from hearts of radiance beneath the play of jocund orbs!

      Incredible blossomings of crystal and of metal whose lullabies and cradle songs were singing symphonies of flame.

      It was the birth chamber of the City!

      The womb of the Metal Monster!

      Abruptly the walls of the niche sparkled out, the glittering eye points regarding us with a most disquieting suggestion of sentinels who, slumbering, had been caught unaware, and now awakening challenged us. Swiftly the niche closed — so swiftly that barely had we time to spring over its threshold into the corridor.

      The corridor was awake — alive!

      The power darted out; gripped us. Up it swept us and on. Far away a square of light appeared, grew quickly larger. Framed in it was the amethystine burning of the great ring that girdled the encircling cliffs.

      I turned my head — behind us the corridor was closing!

      Now the opening was so close that through it I could see the vast panorama of the valley. The wall behind us touched us; pushed us on. We thrust ourselves against it, despairingly. As well might flies have tried to press back a moving mountain.

      Resistingly, inexorably we were pressed forward. Now we cowered within a yard-deep niche; now we trembled upon a foot-wide ledge.

      Shuddering, gasping, we glared down the sheer drop of the City’s wall. The smooth and glimmering scarp fell thousands of feet straight to the valley floor. And there were no merciful mists to hide what awaited us there; no mists anywhere. In that brief, agonized glance every detail of the Pit was disclosed with an abnormal clarity.

      We tottered on the brink. The ledge melted.

      Down, down we plunged, locked in each other’s arms, hurtling to the shattering death so far below!

      Chapter XXIII.

       The Treachery of Yuruk

       Table of Contents

      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 existence, stretching out our apperception beyond the phantom boundaries, overdrawing upon a Barmecide deposit of minutes, staking fresh claims upon a mirage?

      How else explain the seeming slowness with which we were falling — the seeming leisureness with which the wall drifted up past us?

      And was this punishment — a sentence meted out for profaning with our eyes a forbidden place; a penalty for touching with our gaze the ark of the Metal Tribes — their holy of holies — the budding place of the Metal Babes?

      The valley was swinging — swinging in slow broad curves; was oscillating dizzily.

      Slowly the colossal wall slipped upward.

      Realization swept me; left me amazed; only half believing. This was no illusion. After that first swift plunge our fall had been checked. We were swinging — not the valley.

      Deliberately, in wide arcs like pendulums, we were swinging across the City’s scarp; three feet out from it, and as we swung, slowly sinking.

      And now I saw the countless eyes of the watching wall again were twinkling, regarding us with impish mockery.

      It was the grip of the living wall that held us; that rocked us from side to side as though giving greater breadths of it chance to behold us; that was dropping

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