Abraham Merritt - Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 9

Then as when first we had seen the phenomenon in the valley of the blue poppies, the ring vanished, hidden by a fog of coruscations—as though the force streaming through the rings became diffused after it had been caught.

Crouching, forgetful of our juxtaposition to these two unhuman, anomalous Things, we watched the play of the tentacles upon the upthrust rods.

But if we forgot, we were not forgotten!

The Emperor slipped nearer; seemed to contemplate us—quizzically, AMUSED; as a man would look down upon some curious and interesting insect, a puppy, a kitten. I sensed this amusement in the Disk's regard even as I had sensed its soul of awful tranquillity; as we had sensed the playful malice in the eye stars of the living corridor, the curiosity in the column that had dropped us into the valley.

I felt a push—a push that was filled with a colossal, GLITTERING playfulness.

Under it I went spinning away for yards—Drake twirling close behind me. The force, whatever it was, swept out from the Emperor, but in it was no slightest hint of anger or of malice, no slightest shadow of the sinister.

Rather it was as though one would blow away a feather; urge gently some little lesser thing away.

The Disk watched our whirlings—with a sparkling, jeweled LAUGHTER in its pulsing radiance.

Again came the push—farther yet we spun. Suddenly before us, across the pave, shone out a twinkling trail—the wakened eyes of the cubes that formed it, marking out a pathway for us to follow.

Immediately upon their gleaming forth I saw the Emperor turn—his immense, oval, metallic back now black against the radiance of the cones.

Up from the narrow gleaming path—a path opened I knew by some command—lifted the hosts of tiny unseen hands; the sentient currents of magnetic force that were the fingers and arms of the Metal Hordes. They held us, thrust us along, passed us forward. Faster and faster we moved, speeding on the wake of the long-vanished metal monks.

I turned my head—the cones were already far away. Over the tablet of limpid violet phosphorescence still hovered the planes of the Keeper; and still was the oval of the Emperor black against the radiance.

But the twinkling, sparkling path between us and them was gone—was fading out close behind us as we swept onward.

Faster and faster grew our pace. The cylindrical wall loomed close. A high oblong portal showed within it. Into this we were carried. Before us stretched a corridor precisely similar to that which, closing upon us, had forced us completely out into the hall.

Unlike that passage, its floor lifted steeply—a smooth and shining slide up which no man could climb. A shaft, indeed, which thrust upward straight as an arrow at an angle of at least thirty degrees and whose end or turning we could not see. Up and up it cleared its way through the City —through the Metal Monster—closed only by the inability of the eye to pierce the faint luminosity that thickened by distance became impenetrable.

For an instant we hovered upon its threshold. But the impulse, the command, that had carried us thus far was not to stop here. Into it and up it we were thrust, our feet barely touching the glimmering surface; lifted by the force that emanated from its floor, carried on by the force that pressed out from the sides.

Up and up we went—scores of feet—hundreds—

THE ENSORCELLED CHAMBER

"Goodwin!" Drake broke the silence; desperately he was striving to keep his fear out of his voice. "Goodwin—this isn't the way to get out. We're going up—farther away all the time from the—the gates!"

"What can we do?" My anxiety was no less than his, but my realization of our helplessness was complete.

"If we only knew how to talk to these Things," he said. "If we could only have let the Disk know we wanted to get out—damn it, Goodwin, it would have helped us."

Grotesque as the idea sounded, I felt that he spoke the truth. The Emperor meant no harm to us; in fact in speeding us away I was not at all sure that he had not deliberately wished us well—there was that about the Keeper—

Still up we sped along the shaft. I knew we must now be above the level of the valley.

"We've got to get back to Ruth! Goodwin—NIGHT! And what may have HAPPENED to her?"

"Drake, boy"—I dropped into his own colloquialism—"we're up against it. We can't help it. And remember—she's there in Norhala's home. I don't believe, I honestly don't believe, Dick, that there's any danger as long as she remains there. And Ventnor ties her fast."

"That's true," he said, more hopefully. "That's true—and probably Norhala is with her by now."

"I don't doubt it," I said cheerfully. An idea came to me—I half believed it myself. "And another thing. There's not an action here that's purposeless. We're being driven on by the command of that Thing we call the Metal Emperor. It means us no harm. Maybe—maybe this IS the way out."

"Maybe so," he shook his head doubtfully. "But I'm not sure. Maybe that long push was just to get us away from THERE. And it strikes me that the impulse has begun to weaken. We're not going anywhere near as fast as we were."

I had not realized it, but our speed was slackening. I looked back— hundreds of feet behind us fell the slide. An unpleasant chill went through me—should the magnetic grip upon us relax, withdraw, nothing could stop us from falling back along that incline to be broken like eggs at its end; that our breaths would be snuffed out by the terrific descent long before we reached that end was scant comfort.

"There are other passages opening up along this shaft," Drake said. "I'm not for trusting the Emperor too far—he has other things on his metallic mind, you know. The next one we get to, let's try to slip into —if we can."

I had noticed; there had been openings along the ascending shaft; corridors running apparently transversely to its angled way.

Slower and slower became our pace. A hundred yards above I glimpsed one of the apertures. Could we reach it? Slower and slower we arose. Now the gap was but a yard off—but we were motionless—were tottering!

Drake's arms wrapped round me. With a tremendous effort he hurled me into the portal. I dropped at its edge, writhed swiftly around, saw him slipping, slipping down—thrust my hands out to him.

He caught them. There came a wrench that tortured my arm sockets as though racked. But he held!

Slowly—I writhed back into the passage, dragging up his almost dead weight. His head appeared, his shoulders; there was a convulsion of the long body and he lay before me.

For a minute or two we lay, flat upon our backs resting. I sat up. The passage was broad, silent; apparently as endless as that from which we had just escaped.

Along it, above us, under us, the crystalline eyes were dim. It showed no sign of movement—yet had it done so there was nothing we could do save drop down the annihilating slant. Drake arose.

"I'm hungry," he said, "and I'm thirsty. I move that we eat and drink and approximately be merry."

He slung aside the haversack. From it we took food; from the canteens we drank. We did not talk. Each knew what the other was thinking; infrequently, and thank the eternal law that some call God for that, come crises in which speech seems not only petty but when against it the mind rebels as a nauseous thing.

This was such a time. At last I drew myself to my feet.

"Let's be going," I said.

The corridor stretched straight before us; along it we paced. How far we walked I do not know; mile upon mile, it seemed. It broadened abruptly into a vast hall.

And this hall was filled with the Metal Hordes—was a gigantic workshop of them. In every shape, in every form, they seethed and toiled about it. Upon its floor were heaps of shining ores, mounds of flashing gems, piles of ingots, metallic and crystalline. High and low throughout flamed the egg-shaped incandescences; floating furnaces both great and small.