Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 3 — page 99: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE METAL MONSTER. ing. its screaming pierced, that agonizing, terrible lamentation which is of the horse. and the horse alone when the limit of its endurance is reached. I watched Ventnor crouch lower and lower, eyes shielded be- hind arms folded over his brows, straining | for glimpse of Ruth; saw Drake crouching beside him, bracing him, supporting him, bent against ime tempest of our passing even as he. Our line of flight became less abrupt, but the speed increased, the wind-pressure became insupportable. T had looked upon the place I had sensed its immensity; now I began to realize how vast it must really be—for already the por- tal through which we had come glimmered far away on high, shrunk to a hoop of in- candescent brass and was dwindling fast. Nor was it a cavern; staring upward I saw the stars, traced with deep relief the familiar Northern constellations. Pit it might be, wide and deep as that into which from the ramparts of Paradise the legend tells were hurled Lucifer and his armies— but whatever terror, whatever ordeals were before us, we would not have to face them buried deep within earth. There was a curi- ous comfort in the thought! Suddenly stars and sky were blotted out. We had plunged beneath the surface of that radiant’ sea! _ Lying in the position in which I was, I was sensible of a diminution of the cy- clonic force; the blast streamed up and over. the front of the cube. To me drifted only the wailings of our flight and the whimpering terror of the pony. I turned my head, cautiously. Upon the very edge of the flying blocks squatted Drake and Ventnor, grotesquely froglike. I crawled toward then—crawled, literally, like a caterpillar; for wherever my body touched the surface of the cubes the attract- ing force held it, allowed a creeping move- . ment only, surface sliding upon surface— and weirdly enough like a human measur- ing-worm I looped myself over to them. As my bare palms clung to the Things I realized with finality that whatever their activation, their life, they. were metal! T twisted, dropped . upon my right arm, thrust my head against . my shoulder, stared backward. When first . 473 There was no mistaking the testimony of touch. Metal they were, with a hint upon contact of highly polished platinum, or at the least of a metal as finely grained as it. Also they had temperature, a curiously pleasant warmth—the surfaces were, I judged, around ninety-five degrees Fahren- heit. I looked deep down into the little sparkling points that were, I knew, organs of sight; they were like the points of con- tact of innumerable intersecting crystal planes. They held. strangest paradoxical suggestion of being close to the surface and still infinite distances away. And they were like—what was it they were like?—it came to me with a distinct - shock. They were like the galaxies of little aure- ate and sapphire stars in the clear gray heavens of Norhala’s eyes! — I crept beside Drake, struck him with my head. He looked down upon me, curiously ‘“* Can’t move,” I ‘shouted. my hands! Stuck fast—like a fly—just as you said.” ‘“ Drag ’em over your knees,” he cried bending to me. “It slides ’em out of the attraction.” | Acting as he had suggested-I found to my astonishment I could slip my hands free; I caught his belt, tried to lift myself. by it. “No use, Doc,” the old grin lightened © fors-a moment his tense young face, “ youll have to keep praying till the power’s tuned off. Nothing here you can slide your knees on. bP] I nodded, waddling close to his side; then sank back on my haunches to relieve the strain upon aching leg-muscles. “Can you see them ahead, Goodwin— Ruth and the woman?” Ventnor turned his anxious eyes toward me. I peered into the glimmering murk; shook my head. I could see nothing. It was, indeed, as though the clystered cubes sped within a bubble of the now wanly glisten- ing vapors; or rather as though i in our pas- sage—as a projectile does in air—we piled before us a thick wave of the mists which streaming along each side, closing in behind, obscured all that lay around. Yet I had, persistently, the feeling that “ Can’t lift. COMMUC OOOLK (CO