Chapter 8: 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 this shape of mystery and beauty had revealed.

In front of them swept score upon score of her familiars--no longer dully lustrous, but shining as though cut from blue and polished steel. They--marched--in ordered rows, globes and cubes and pyramids; moving sedately now as units.

I looked behind me; out of the spume boiling at the portal, were pouring forth other scores of the Metal Things, darting through like divers through a wave. And as they drew into our wake and swam into the light, their dim lustre vanished like a film; their surfaces grew almost radiant.

Whence came the light that set them gleaming? Our pace had slackened--I looked about me. The walls of the cleft or tunnel were perpendicular, smooth and shining with a cold, metallic, greenish glow.

Between the walls, like rhythmic flashing of fire-flies, pulsed soft and fugitive glimmerings that carried a sense of the infinitely minute--of electrons, it came to me, rather than atoms. Their irradiance was greenish, like the walls; but I was certain that these corpuscles did not come from them.

They blinked and faded like motes within a shifting sunbeam; or, to use a more scientific comparison, like colloids within the illuminated field of the ultramicroscope; and like these latter it was as though the eyes took in not the minute particles themselves but their movement only.

Save for these gleamings the light of the place, although crepuscular, was crystalline clear. High above us--five hundred, a thousand feet--the walls merged into a haze of clouded beryl.

Rock certainly the cliffs were--but rock cut and planed, smoothed and polished and PLATED!

Yes, that was it--plated. Plated with some metallic substance that was itself a reservoir of luminosity and from which, it came to me, pulsed the force that lighted the winking ions. But who could have done such a thing? For what purpose? How?

And the meticulousness, the perfection of these smoothed cliffs struck over my nerves as no rasp could, stirring a vague resentment, an irritated desire for human inharmonies, human disorder.

Absorbed in my examination I had forgotten those who must share with me my doubts and dangers. I felt a grip on my arm.

“If we get close enough and I can get my feet loose from this damned thing I’ll jump,” Drake said.

“What?” I gasped, blankly, startled out of my preoccupation. “Jump where?”

I followed his pointing finger. We were rapidly closing upon the other cube; it was now a scant twenty paces ahead; it seemed to be stopping. Ventnor was leaning forward, quivering with eagerness.

“Ruth!” he called. “Ruth--are you all right?”

Slowly she turned to us--my heart gave a great leap, then seemed to stop. For her sweet face was touched with that same unearthly tranquillity which was Norhala’s; in her brown eyes was a shadow of that passionless spirit brooding in Norhala’s own; her voice as she answered held within it more than echo of Norhala’s faint, far-off golden chiming.

“Yes,” she sighed; “yes, Martin--have no fear for me--”

And turned from us, gazing forward once more with the woman and as silent as she.

I glanced covertly at Ventnor, at Drake--had I imagined, or had they too seen? Then I knew they had seen, for Ventnor’s face was white to the lips, and Drake’s jaw was set, his teeth clenched, his eyes blazing with anger.

“What’s she doing to Ruth--you saw her face,” he gritted, half inarticulately.

“Ruth!” There was anguish in Ventnor’s cry.

She did not turn again. It was as though she had not heard him.

The cubes were now not five yards apart. Drake gathered himself; strained to loosen his feet from the shining surface, making ready to leap when they should draw close enough. His great chest swelled with his effort, the muscles of his neck knotted, sweat steamed down his face.

“No use,” he gasped, “no use, Goodwin. It’s like trying to lift yourself by your boot-straps--like a fly stuck in molasses.”

“Ruth,” cried Ventnor once more.

As though it had been a signal the block darted forward, resuming the distance it had formerly maintained between us.

The vanguard of the Metal Things began to race. With an incredible speed they fled into, were lost in an instant within, the luminous distances.

The cube that bore the woman and girl accelerated; flew faster and faster onward. And as swiftly our own followed it. The lustrous walls flowed by, dizzily.

We had swept over toward the right wall of the cleft and were gliding over a broad ledge. This ledge was, I judged, all of a hundred feet in width. From it the floor of the place was dropping rapidly.

The opposite precipices were slowly drawing closer. After us flowed the flanking host.

Steadily our ledge arose and the floor of the canyon dropped. Now we were twenty feet above it, now thirty. And the character of the cliffs was changing. Veins of quartz shone under the metallic plating like cut crystal, like cloudy opals; here was a splash of vermilion, there a patch of amber; bands of pallid ochre stained it.

My gaze was caught by a line of inky blackness in the exact center of the falling floor. So black was it that at first glance I took it for a vein of jetty lignite.

It widened. It was a crack, a fissure. Now it was a yard in width, now three, and blackness seemed to well up from within it, blackness that was the very essence of the depths. Steadily the ebon rift expanded; spread suddenly wide open in two sharp-edged, flying wedges--

Earth had dropped away. At our side a gulf had opened, an abyss, striking down depth upon depth; profound; immeasurable.

We were human atoms, riding upon a steed of sorcery and racing along a split rampart of infinite space.

I looked behind--scores of the cubes were darting from the metal host trailing us; in a long column of twos they flashed by, raced ahead. Far in front of us a gloom began to grow; deepened until we were rushing into blackest night.

Through the murk stabbed a long lance of pale blue phosphorescence. It unrolled like a ribbon of wan flame, flicked like a serpent’s tongue--held steady. I felt the Thing beneath us leap forward; its velocity grew prodigious; the wind beat upon us with hurricane force.

I shielded my eyes with my hands and peered through the chinks of my fingers. Ranged directly in our path was a barricade of the cubes and upon them we were racing like a flying battering-ram. Involuntarily I closed my eyes against the annihilating impact that seemed inevitable.

The Thing on which we rode lifted.

We were soaring at a long angle straight to the top of the barrier; were upon it, and still with that awful speed unchecked were hurtling through the blackness over the shaft of phosphorescence, the ribbon of pale light that I had watched pierce it and knew now was but another span of the cubes that but a little before had fled past us. Beneath the span, on each side of it, I sensed illimitable void.

We were over; rushing along in darkness. There began a mighty tumult, a vast crashing and roaring. The clangor waxed, beat about us with tremendous strokes of sound.