The Metal Monster Page 5

  CHAPTER IV. METAL WITH A BRAIN

  The eagerness, the relief in his voice betrayed the tension, the anxietywhich until now he had hidden so well; and hot shame burned me for myshrinking, my dread of again passing through that haunted vale.

  "I certainly DO." I was once more master of myself. "Drake--don't youagree?"

  "Sure," he replied. "Sure. I'll look after Ruth--er--I mean MissVentnor."

  The glint of amusement in Ventnor's eyes at this faded abruptly; hisface grew somber.

  "Wait," he said. "I carried away some--some exhibits from the crevice ofthe noises, Goodwin."

  "What kind of exhibits?" I asked, eagerly.

  "Put 'em where they'd be safe," he continued. "I've an idea they're farmore curious than our armored men--and of far more importance. At anyrate, we must take them with us.

  "Go with Ruth, you and Drake, and look at them. And bring them back withthe pony. Then we'll make a start. A few minutes more probably won'tmake much difference--but hurry."

  He turned back to his watch. Ordering Chiu-Ming to stay with him Ifollowed Ruth and Drake down the ruined stairway. At the bottom she cameto me, laid little hands on my shoulders.

  "Walter," she breathed, "I'm frightened. I'm so frightened I'm afraid totell even Mart. He doesn't like them, either, these little things you'regoing to see. He likes them so little that he's afraid to let me knowhow little he does like them."

  "But what are they? What's to fear about them?" asked Drake.

  "See what you think!" She led us slowly, almost reluctantly toward therear of the fortress. "They lay in a little heap at the mouth of thecleft where we heard the noises. Martin picked them up and dropped themin a sack before we ran through the hollow.

  "They're grotesque and they're almost CUTE, and they make me feel asthough they were the tiniest tippy-tip of the claw of some incrediblylarge cat just stealing around the corner, a terrible cat, a cat as bigas a mountain," she ended breathlessly.

  We climbed through the crumbling masonry into a central, open court.Here a clear spring bubbled up in a ruined and choked stone basin; closeto the ancient well was their pony, contentedly browsing in the thickgrass that grew around it. From one of its hampers Ruth took a largecloth bag.

  "To carry them," she said, and trembled.

  We passed through what had once been a great door into another chamberlarger than that we had just left; and it was in better preservation,the ceiling unbroken, the light dim after the blazing sun of the court.Near its center she halted us.

  Before me ran a two-feet-wide ragged crack, splitting the floor anddropping down into black depths. Beyond was an expanse of smoothflagging, almost clear of debris.

  Drake gave a low whistle. I followed his pointing finger. In the wallat the end whirled two enormous dragon shapes, cut in low relief. Theirgigantic wings, their monstrous coils, covered the nearly unbrokensurface, and these CHIMERAE were the shapes upon the upthrust blocks ofthe haunted roadway.

  In Ruth's gaze I read a nameless fear, a half shuddering fascination.

  But she was not looking at the cavern dragons.

  Her gaze was fixed upon what at my first glance seemed to be a raisedand patterned circle in the dust-covered floor. Not more than a foot inwidth, it shone wanly with a pale, metallic bluish luster, as though,I thought, it had been recently polished. Compared with the wall'stremendous winged figures this floor design was trivial, ludicrouslyinsignificant. What could there be about it to stamp that dread uponRuth's face?

  I leaped the crevice; Dick joined me. Now I could see that the ring wasnot continuous. Its broken circle was made of sharply edged cubes aboutan inch in height, separated from each other with mathematical exactnessby another inch of space. I counted them--there were nineteen.

  Almost touching them with their bases were an equal number of pyramids,of tetrahedrons, as sharply angled and of similar length. They lay ontheir sides with tips pointing starlike to six spheres clustered likea conventionalized five petaled primrose in the exact center. Five ofthese spheres--the petals--were, I roughly calculated, about an inch anda half in diameter, the ball they enclosed larger by almost an inch.

  So orderly was their arrangement, so much like a geometrical designnicely done by some clever child that I hesitated to disturb it. I bent,and stiffened, the first touch of dread upon me.

  For within the ring, close to the clustering globes, was a miniaturereplica of the giant track in the poppied valley!

  It stood out from the dust with the same hint of crushing force, thesame die cut sharpness, the same METALLIC suggestion--and pointingtoward the globes were the claw marks of the four spreading star points.

  I reached down and picked up one of the pyramids. It seemed to clingto the rock; it was with effort that I wrenched it away. It gave to thetouch a slight sensation of warmth--how can I describe it?--a warmththat was living.

  I weighed it in my hand. It was oddly heavy, twice the weight, I shouldsay, of platinum. I drew out a glass and examined it. Decidedly thepyramid was metallic, but of finest, almost silken texture--and I couldnot place it among any of the known metals. It certainly was none Ihad ever seen; yet it was as certainly metal. It was striated--slenderfilaments radiating from tiny, dully lustrous points within the polishedsurface.

  And suddenly I had the weird feeling that each of these points was aneye, peering up at me, scrutinizing me. There came a startled cry fromDick.

  "Look at the ring!"

  The ring was in motion!

  Faster the cubes moved; faster the circle revolved; the pyramids raisedthemselves, stood bolt upright on their square bases; the six rollingspheres touched them, joined the spinning, and with sleight-of-handsuddenness the ring drew together; its units coalesced, cubes andpyramids and globes threading with a curious suggestion of ferment.

  With the same startling abruptness there stood erect, where but a momentbefore they had seethed, a little figure, grotesque; a weirdly humorous,a vaguely terrifying foot-high shape, squared and angled and pointed andANIMATE--as though a child should build from nursery blocks a fantasticshape which abruptly is filled with throbbing life.

  A troll from the kindergarten! A kobold of the toys!

  Only for a second it stood, then began swiftly to change, meltingwith quicksilver quickness from one outline into another as squareand triangle and spheres changed places. Their shiftings were like thetransformations one sees within a kaleidoscope. And in each vanishingform was the suggestion of unfamiliar harmonies, of a subtle, atranscendental geometric art as though each swift shaping were a symbol,a WORD--

  Euclid's problems given volition!

  Geometry endowed with consciousness!

  It ceased. Then the cubes drew one upon the other until they formeda pedestal nine inches high; up this pillar rolled the larger globe,balanced itself upon the top; the five spheres followed it, clusteredlike a ring just below it. The other cubes raced up, clicked two by twoon the outer arc of each of the five balls; at the ends of these twinblocks a pyramid took its place, tipping each with a point.

  The Lilliputian fantasy was now a pedestal of cubes surmounted by a ringof globes from which sprang a star of five arms.

  The spheres began to revolve. Faster and faster they spun around thebase of the crowning globe; the arms became a disc upon which tinybrilliant sparks appeared, clustered, vanished only to reappear ingreater number.

  The troll swept toward me. It GLIDED. The finger of panic touched me. Isprang aside, and swift as light it followed, seemed to poise itself toleap.

  "Drop it!" It was Ruth's cry.

  But, before I could let fall the pyramid I had forgotten was in my hand,the little figure touched me and a paralyzing shock ran through me. Myfingers clenched, locked. I stood, muscle and nerve bound, unable tomove.

  The little figure paused. Its whirling disc shifted from the horizontalplane on which it spun. It was as though it cocked its head to look upat me--and again I had the sense of innumerable eyes peering at me. Itdid not seem me
nacing--its attitude was inquisitive, waiting; almost asthough it had asked for something and wondered why I did not let it haveit. The shock still held me rigid, although a tingle in every nerve toldme of returning force.

  The disc tilted back to place, bent toward me again. I heard a shout;heard a bullet strike the pigmy that now clearly menaced; heard thebullet ricochet without the slightest effect upon it. Dick leaped besideme, raised a foot and kicked at the thing. There was a flash of lightand upon the instant he crashed down as though struck by a giant hand,lay sprawling and inert upon the floor.

  There was a scream from Ruth; there was softly sibilant rustling allabout her. I saw her leap the crevice, drop on her knees beside Drake.

  There was movement on the flagging where she stood. A score or more offaintly shining, bluish shapes were marching there--pyramids and cubesand spheres like those forming the shape that stood before me. There wasa curious sharp tang of ozone in the air, a perceptible tightening as ofelectrical tension.

  They swept to the edge of the fissure, swam together, and there, hanginghalf over the gap was a bridge, half spanning it, a weird and fairy archmade up of alternate cube and angle. The shape at my feet disintegrated;resolved itself into units that raced over to the beckoning span.

  At the hither side of the crack they clicked into place, even as had theothers. Before me now was a bridge complete except for the one arc nearthe middle where an angled gap marred it.

  I felt the little object I held pulse within my hand, striving toescape. I dropped it. The tiny shape swept to the bridge, ascendedit--dropped into the gap.

  The arch was complete--hanging in one flying span over the depths!

  Upon it, over it, as though they had but awaited this completion, rolledthe six globes. And as they dropped to the farther side the end of thebridge nearest me raised itself in air, curved itself like a scorpion'stail, drew itself into a closer circled arc, and dropped upon the floorbeyond.

  Again the sibilant rustling--and cubes and pyramids and spheres weregone.

  Nerves tingling slowly back to life, mazed in absolute bewilderment,my gaze sought Drake. He was sitting up, feebly, his head supported byRuth's hands.

  "Goodwin!" he whispered. "What--what were they?"

  "Metal," I said--it was the only word to which my whirling mind couldcling--"metal--"

  "Metal!" he echoed. "These things metal? Metal--ALIVE AND THINKING!"

  Suddenly he was silent, his face a page on which, visibly, dreadgathered slowly and ever deeper.

  And as I looked at Ruth, white-faced, and at him, I knew that my own wasas pallid, as terror-stricken as theirs.

  "They were such LITTLE THINGS," muttered Drake. "Such littlethings--bits of metal--little globes and pyramids and cubes--just littleTHINGS."

  "Babes! Only babes!" It was Ruth--"BABES!"

  "Bits of metal"--Dick's gaze sought mine, held it--"and they looked foreach other, they worked with each other--THINKINGLY, CONSCIOUSLY--theywere deliberate, purposeful--little things--and with the force of ascore of dynamos--living, THINKING--"

  "Don't!" Ruth laid white hands over his eyes. "Don't--don't YOU befrightened!"

  "Frightened?" he echoed. "I'M not afraid--yes, I AM afraid--"

  He arose, stiffly--and stumbled toward me.

  Afraid? Drake afraid. Well--so was I. Bitterly, TERRIBLY afraid.

  For what we had beheld in the dusk of that dragoned, ruined chamber wasoutside all experience, beyond all knowledge or dream of science. Nottheir shapes--that was nothing. Not even that, being metal, they hadmoved.

  But that being metal, they had moved consciously, thoughtfully,deliberately.

  They were metal things with--MINDS!

  That--that was the incredible, the terrifying thing. That--and theirpower.

  Thor compressed within Hop-o'-my-thumb--and thinking. The lightningsincarnate in metal minacules--and thinking.

  The inert, the immobile, given volition, movement,cognoscence--thinking.

  Metal with a brain!