The Metal Monster Page 2

  CHAPTER I. VALLEY OF THE BLUE POPPIES

  In this great crucible of life we call the world--in the vaster one wecall the universe--the mysteries lie close packed, uncountable as grainsof sand on ocean's shores. They thread gigantic, the star-flung spaces;they creep, atomic, beneath the microscope's peering eye. They walkbeside us, unseen and unheard, calling out to us, asking why we are deafto their crying, blind to their wonder.

  Sometimes the veils drop from a man's eyes, and he sees--and speaks ofhis vision. Then those who have not seen pass him by with the liftedbrows of disbelief, or they mock him, or if his vision has been greatenough they fall upon and destroy him.

  For the greater the mystery, the more bitterly is its verity assailed;upon what seem the lesser a man may give testimony and at least gain forhimself a hearing.

  There is reason for this. Life is a ferment, and upon and about it,shifting and changing, adding to or taking away, beat over legions offorces, seen and unseen, known and unknown. And man, an atom in theferment, clings desperately to what to him seems stable; nor greets withjoy him who hazards that what he grips may be but a broken staff, and,so saying, fails to hold forth a sturdier one.

  Earth is a ship, plowing her way through uncharted oceans of spacewherein are strange currents, hidden shoals and reefs, and where blowthe unknown winds of Cosmos.

  If to the voyagers, painfully plotting their course, comes one who criesthat their charts must be remade, nor can tell WHY they must be--thatman is not welcome--no!

  Therefore it is that men have grown chary of giving testimony uponmysteries. Yet knowing each in his own heart the truth of that vision hehas himself beheld, lo, it is that in whose reality he most believes.

  The spot where I had encamped was of a singular beauty; so beautifulthat it caught the throat and set an ache within the breast--until fromit a tranquillity distilled that was like healing mist.

  Since early March I had been wandering. It was now mid-July. And for thefirst time since my pilgrimage had begun I drank--not of forgetfulness,for that could never be--but of anodyne for a sorrow which had held fastupon me since my return from the Carolines a year before.

  No need to dwell here upon that--it has been written. Nor shall I recitethe reasons for my restlessness--for these are known to those who haveread that history of mine. Nor is there cause to set forth at length thesteps by which I had arrived at this vale of peace.

  Sufficient is to tell that in New York one night, reading over what isperhaps the most sensational of my books--"The Poppies and Primulas ofSouthern Tibet," the result of my travels of 1910-1911, I determined toreturn to that quiet, forbidden land. There, if anywhere, might I findsomething akin to forgetting.

  There was a certain flower which I long had wished to study in itsmutations from the singular forms appearing on the southern slopes ofthe Elburz--Persia's mountainous chain that extends from Azerbaijanin the west to Khorasan in the east; from thence I would follow itsmodified types in the Hindu-Kush ranges and its migrations along thesouthern scarps of the Trans-Himalayas--the unexplored upheaval, higherthan the Himalayas themselves, more deeply cut with precipice and gorge,which Sven Hedin had touched and named on his journey to Lhasa.

  Having accomplished this, I planned to push across the passes to theManasarowar Lakes, where, legend has it, the strange, luminous purplelotuses grow.

  An ambitious project, undeniably fraught with danger; but it iswritten that desperate diseases require desperate remedies, and untilinspiration or message how to rejoin those whom I had loved so dearlycame to me, nothing less, I felt, could dull my heartache.

  And, frankly, feeling that no such inspiration or message could come, Idid not much care as to the end.

  In Teheran I had picked up a most unusual servant; yes, more than this,a companion and counselor and interpreter as well.

  He was a Chinese; his name Chiu-Ming. His first thirty years had beenspent at the great Lamasery of Palkhor-Choinde at Gyantse, west ofLhasa. Why he had gone from there, how he had come to Teheran, I neverasked. It was most fortunate that he had gone, and that I had found him.He recommended himself to me as the best cook within ten thousand milesof Pekin.

  For almost three months we had journeyed; Chiu-Ming and I and the twoponies that carried my impedimenta.

  We had traversed mountain roads which had echoed to the marching feet ofthe hosts of Darius, to the hordes of the Satraps. The highways of theAchaemenids--yes, and which before them had trembled to the tramplingsof the myriads of the godlike Dravidian conquerors.

  We had slipped over ancient Iranian trails; over paths which thewarriors of conquering Alexander had traversed; dust of bones ofMacedons, of Greeks, of Romans, beat about us; ashes of the flamingambitions of the Sassanidae whimpered beneath our feet--the feet of anAmerican botanist, a Chinaman, two Tibetan ponies. We had crept throughclefts whose walls had sent back the howlings of the Ephthalites, theWhite Huns who had sapped the strength of these same proud Sassanidsuntil at last both fell before the Turks.

  Over the highways and byways of Persia's glory, Persia's shame andPersia's death we four--two men, two beasts--had passed. For a fortnightwe had met no human soul, seen no sign of human habitation.

  Game had been plentiful--green things Chiu-Ming might lack for hiscooking, but meat never. About us was a welter of mighty summits. Wewere, I knew, somewhere within the blending of the Hindu-Kush with theTrans-Himalayas.

  That morning we had come out of a ragged defile into this valley ofenchantment, and here, though it had been so early, I had pitched mytent, determining to go no farther till the morrow.

  It was a Phocean vale; a gigantic cup filled with tranquillity. A spiritbrooded over it, serene, majestic, immutable--like the untroubled calmwhich rests, the Burmese believe, over every place which has guarded theBuddha, sleeping.

  At its eastern end towered the colossal scarp of the unnamed peakthrough one of whose gorges we had crept. On his head was a cap ofsilver set with pale emeralds--the snow fields and glaciers that crownedhim. Far to the west another gray and ochreous giant reared its bulk,closing the vale. North and south, the horizon was a chaotic sky land ofpinnacles, spired and minareted, steepled and turreted and domed, eachdiademed with its green and argent of eternal ice and snow.

  And all the valley was carpeted with the blue poppies in wide, unbrokenfields, luminous as the morning skies of mid-June; they rippled mileafter mile over the path we had followed, over the still untrodden pathwhich we must take. They nodded, they leaned toward each other, theyseemed to whisper--then to lift their heads and look up like crowdingswarms of little azure fays, half impudently, wholly trustfully, intothe faces of the jeweled giants standing guard over them. And when thelittle breeze walked upon them it was as though they bent beneath thesoft tread and were brushed by the sweeping skirts of unseen, hasteningPresences.

  Like a vast prayer-rug, sapphire and silken, the poppies stretchedto the gray feet of the mountain. Between their southern edge andthe clustering summits a row of faded brown, low hills knelt--likebrown-robed, withered and weary old men, backs bent, faces hiddenbetween outstretched arms, palms to the earth and brows touching earthwithin them--in the East's immemorial attitude of worship.

  I half expected them to rise--and as I watched a man appeared on one ofthe bowed, rocky shoulders, abruptly, with the ever-startling suddennesswhich in the strange light of these latitudes objects spring intovision. As he stood scanning my camp there arose beside him a ladenpony, and at its head a Tibetan peasant. The first figure waved itshand; came striding down the hill.

  As he approached I took stock of him. A young giant, three good inchesover six feet, a vigorous head with unruly clustering black hair; aclean-cut, clean-shaven American face.

  "I'm Dick Drake," he said, holding out his hand. "Richard Keen Drake,recently with Uncle's engineers in France."

  "My name is Goodwin." I took his hand, shook it warmly. "Dr. Walter T.Goodwin."

  "Goodwin the botanist--? Then I know you!" he exclai
med. "Know allabout you, that is. My father admired your work greatly. You knewhim--Professor Alvin Drake."

  I nodded. So he was Alvin Drake's son. Alvin, I knew, had died about ayear before I had started on this journey. But what was his son doing inthis wilderness?

  "Wondering where I came from?" he answered my unspoken question. "Shortstory. War ended. Felt an irresistible desire for something different.Couldn't think of anything more different from Tibet--always wanted togo there anyway. Went. Decided to strike over toward Turkestan. And hereI am."

  I felt at once a strong liking for this young giant. No doubt,subconsciously, I had been feeling the need of companionship with my ownkind. I even wondered, as I led the way into my little camp, whether hewould care to join fortunes with me in my journeyings.

  His father's work I knew well, and although this stalwart lad was unlikewhat one would have expected Alvin Drake--a trifle dried, precise,wholly abstracted with his experiments--to beget, still, I reflected,heredity like the Lord sometimes works in mysterious ways its wonders toperform.

  It was almost with awe that he listened to me instruct Chiu-Ming as tojust how I wanted supper prepared, and his gaze dwelt fondly upon theChinese busy among his pots and pans.

  We talked a little, desultorily, as the meal was prepared--fragments oftraveler's news and gossip, as is the habit of journeyers who come uponeach other in the silent places. Ever the speculation grew in his faceas he made away with Chiu-Ming's artful concoctions.

  Drake sighed, drawing out his pipe.

  "A cook, a marvel of a cook. Where did you get him?"

  Briefly I told him.

  Then a silence fell upon us. Suddenly the sun dipped down behind theflank of the stone giant guarding the valley's western gate; the wholevale swiftly darkened--a flood of crystal-clear shadows poured withinit. It was the prelude to that miracle of unearthly beauty seen nowhereelse on this earth--the sunset of Tibet.

  We turned expectant eyes to the west. A little, cool breeze raced downfrom the watching steeps like a messenger, whispered to the noddingpoppies, sighed and was gone. The poppies were still. High overhead ahoming kite whistled, mellowly.

  As if it were a signal there sprang out in the pale azure of the westernsky row upon row of cirrus cloudlets, rank upon rank of them, thrustingtheir heads into the path of the setting sun. They changed from mottledsilver into faint rose, deepened to crimson.

  "The dragons of the sky drink the blood of the sunset," said Chiu-Ming.

  As though a gigantic globe of crystal had dropped upon the heavens,their blue turned swiftly to a clear and glowing amber--then as abruptlyshifted to a luminous violet A soft green light pulsed through thevalley.

  Under it, like hills ensorcelled, the rocky walls about it seemed toflatten. They glowed and all at once pressed forward like giganticslices of palest emerald jade, translucent, illumined, as though by acirclet of little suns shining behind them.

  The light faded, robes of deepest amethyst dropped around the mountain'smighty shoulders. And then from every snow and glacier-crowned peak,from minaret and pinnacle and towering turret, leaped forth a confusionof soft peacock flames, a host of irised prismatic gleamings, an orderedchaos of rainbows.

  Great and small, interlacing and shifting, they ringed the valley withan incredible glory--as if some god of light itself had touched theeternal rocks and bidden radiant souls stand forth.

  Through the darkening sky swept a rosy pencil of living light; thatutterly strange, pure beam whose coming never fails to clutch the throatof the beholder with the hand of ecstasy, the ray which the Tibetansname the Ting-Pa. For a moment this rosy finger pointed to the east,then arched itself, divided slowly into six shining, rosy bands; beganto creep downward toward the eastern horizon where a nebulous, pulsingsplendor arose to meet it.

  And as we watched I heard a gasp from Drake. And it was echoed by myown.

  For the six beams were swaying, moving with ever swifter motion fromside to side in ever-widening sweep, as though the hidden orb from whichthey sprang were swaying like a pendulum.

  Faster and faster the six high-flung beams swayed--and then broke--brokeas though a gigantic, unseen hand had reached up and snapped them!

  An instant the severed ends ribboned aimlessly, then bent, turned downand darted earthward into the welter of clustered summits at the northand swiftly were gone, while down upon the valley fell night.

  "Good God!" whispered Drake. "It was as though something reached up,broke those rays and drew them down--like threads."

  "I saw it." I struggled with bewilderment. "I saw it. But I never sawanything like it before," I ended, most inadequately.

  "It was PURPOSEFUL," he whispered. "It was DELIBERATE. As thoughsomething reached up, juggled with the rays, broke them, and drew themdown like willow withes."

  "The devils that dwell here!" quavered Chiu-Ming.

  "Some magnetic phenomenon." I was half angry at myself for my own touchof panic. "Light can be deflected by passage through a magnetic field.Of course that's it. Certainly."

  "I don't know." Drake's tone was doubtful indeed. "It would take a whaleof a magnetic field to have done THAT--it's inconceivable." He harkedback to his first idea. "It was so--so DAMNED deliberate," he repeated.

  "Devils--" muttered the frightened Chinese.

  "What's that?" Drake gripped my arm and pointed to the north. A deeperblackness had grown there while we had been talking, a pool of darknessagainst which the mountain summits stood out, blade-sharp edges faintlyluminous.

  A gigantic lance of misty green fire darted from the blackness andthrust its point into the heart of the zenith; following it, leaped intothe sky a host of the sparkling spears of light, and now the blacknesswas like an ebon hand, brandishing a thousand javelins of tinseledflame.

  "The aurora," I said.

  "It ought to be a good one," mused Drake, gaze intent upon it. "Did younotice the big sun spot?"

  I shook my head.

  "The biggest I ever saw. Noticed it first at dawn this morning. Somelittle aurora lighter--that spot. I told you--look at that!" he cried.

  The green lances had fallen back. The blackness gathered itselftogether--then from it began to pulse billows of radiance, spangled withinfinite darting swarms of flashing corpuscles like uncounted hosts ofdancing fireflies.

  Higher the waves rolled--phosphorescent green and iridescent violet,weird copperous yellows and metallic saffrons and a shimmer ofglittering ash of rose--then wavered, split and formed into gigantic,sparkling, marching curtains of splendor.

  A vast circle of light sprang out upon the folds of the flickering,rushing curtains. Misty at first, its edges sharpened until they restedupon the blazing glory of the northern sky like a pale ring of coldflame. And about it the aurora began to churn, to heap itself, torevolve.

  Toward the ring from every side raced the majestic folds, drewthemselves together, circled, seethed around it like foam of fire aboutthe lip of a cauldron, and poured through the shining circle as thoughit were the mouth of that fabled cavern where old Aeolus sits blowingforth and breathing back the winds that sweep the earth.

  Yes--into the ring's mouth the aurora flew, cascading in a columnedstream to earth. Then swiftly, a mist swept over all the heavens, veiledthat incredible cataract.

  "Magnetism?" muttered Drake. "I guess NOT!"

  "It struck about where the Ting-Pa was broken and seemed drawn down likethe rays," I said.

  "Purposeful," Drake said. "And devilish. It hit on all my nerves likea--like a metal claw. Purposeful and deliberate. There was intelligencebehind that."

  "Intelligence? Drake--what intelligence could break the rays of thesetting sun and suck down the aurora?"

  "I don't know," he answered.

  "Devils," croaked Chiu-Ming. "The devils that defied Buddha--and havegrown strong--"

  "Like a metal claw!" breathed Drake.

  Far to the west a sound came to us; first a whisper, then a wildrushing, a prolonged wailing, a crackling. A
great light flashedthrough the mist, glowed about us and faded. Again the wailing, the vastrushing, the retreating whisper.

  Then silence and darkness dropped embraced upon the valley of the bluepoppies.