THE METAL MONSTER. Abraham Merritt

sides were dark, but it came to me that here were no trees, no verdure of any kind. Its floor was strewn with boulders, fantastically shaped, almost indistinguishable in the fast closing dark.

      Twin monoliths bulwarked the passage end; the gigantic stones were leaning, crumbling. Fissures radiated from the opening, like deep wrinkles in the rock, showing where earth warping, range pressure, had long been working to close this hewn way.

      “Stop,” Norhala’s abrupt, golden note halted us; and again through the clear eyes I saw the white starshine flash.

      “It may be well —” She spoke as though to herself. “It may be well to close this way. It is not needed —”

      Her voice rang out again, vibrant, strangely disquieting, harmonious. Murmurous chanting it was at first, rhythmic and low; ripples and flutings, tones and progressions utterly unknown to me; unfamiliar, abrupt, and alien themes that kept returning, droppings of crystal-clear jewels of sound, golden tollings — and all ordered, mathematical, GEOMETRIC, even as had been the gestures of the shapes; Lilliputians of the ruins, Brobdignagian of the haunted hollow.

      What was it? I had it — IT WAS THOSE GESTURES TRANSFORMED INTO SOUND!

      There was a movement down by the tunnel mouth. It grew more rapid, seemed to vibrate with her song. Within the darkness there were little flashes; glimmerings of light began to come and go — like little awakenings of eyes of soft, jeweled flames, like giant gorgeous fireflies; flashes of cloudy amber, gleam of rose, sparkles of diamonds and of opals, of emeralds and of rubies — blinking, gleaming.

      A shimmering mist drew down around them — a swift and swirling mist. It thickened, was shot with slender shuttled threads like cobweb, coruscating strands of light.

      The shining threads grew thicker, pulsed, were spangled with tiny vivid sparklings. They ran together, condensed — and all this in an instant, in a tenth of the time it takes me to write it.

      From fiery mist and gemmed flashes came bolt upon bolt of lightning. The cliff face leaped out, a cataract of green flame. The fissures widened, the monoliths trembled, fell.

      In the wake of that dazzling brilliancy came utter blackness. I opened my blinded eyes; slowly the flecks of green fire cleared. A faint lambency still clung to the cliff. By it I saw that the tunnel’s mouth had vanished, had been sealed — where it had gaped were only tons of shattered rock.

      Came a rushing past us as of great bodies; something grazed my hand, something whose touch was like that of warm metal — but metal throbbing with life. They rushed by — and whispered down into silence.

      “Come!” Norhala flitted ahead of us, a faintly luminous shape in the darkness. Swiftly we followed. I found Ruth beside me; felt her hand grip my wrist.

      “Walter,” she whispered, “Walter — she isn’t human!”

      “Nonsense,” I muttered. “Nonsense, Ruth. What do you think she is — a goddess, a spirit of the Himalayas? She’s as human as you or I.”

      “No.” Even in the darkness I could sense the stubborn shake of her curly head. “Not all human. Or how could she have commanded those things? Or have summoned the lightnings that blasted the tunnel’s mouth? And her skin and hair — they’re too WONDERFUL, Walter.

      “Why, she makes me look — look coarse. And the light that hovers about her — why, it is by that light we are making our way. And when she touched me — I— I glowed — all through.

      “Human, yes — but there is something else in her — something stronger than humanness, something that — makes it sleep!” she added astonishingly.

      The ground was level as a dancing floor. We followed the enigmatic glow — emanation, it seemed to me — from Norhala which was as a light for us to follow within the darkness. The high ribbon of sky had vanished — seemed to be overcast, for I could see no stars.

      Within the darkness I began again to sense faint movement; soft stirring all about us. I had the feeling that on each side and behind us moved an invisible host.

      “There’s something moving all about us — going with us,” Ruth echoed my thought.

      “It’s the wind,” I said, and paused — for there was no wind.

      From the blackness before us came a succession of curious, muffled clickings, like a smothered mitrailleuse. The luminescence that clothed Norhala brightened, deepening the darkness.

      “Cross!”

      She pointed into the void ahead; then, as we started forward, thrust out a hand to Ruth, held her back. Drake and Ventnor drew close to them, questioningly, anxious. But I stepped forward, out of the dim gleaming.

      Before me were two cubes; one I judged in that uncertain light to be six feet high, the other half its bulk. From them a shaft of pale-blue phosphorescence pierced the murk. They stood, the smaller pressed against the side of the larger, for all the world like a pair of immense nursery blocks, placed like steps by some giant child.

      As my eyes swept over them, I saw that the shining shaft was an unbroken span of cubes; not multi-arched like the Lilliputian bridge of the dragon chamber, but flat and running out over an abyss that gaped at my very feet. All of a hundred feet they stretched; a slender, lustrous girder crossing unguessed depths of gloom. From far, far below came the faint whisper of rushing waters.

      I faltered. For these were the blocks that had formed the body of the monster of the hollow, its flailing arms. The thing that had played so murderously with the armored men.

      And now had shaped itself into this anchored, quiescent bridge.

      “Do not fear.” It was the woman speaking, softly, as one would reassure a child. “Ascend. Cross. They obey me.”

      I stepped firmly upon the first block, climbed to the second. The span stretched, sharp edged, smooth, only a slender, shimmering line revealing where each great cube held fast to the other.

      I walked at first slowly, then with ever-increasing confidence, for up from the surface streamed a guiding, a holding force, that was like a host of little invisible hands, steadying me, keeping firm my feet. I looked down; the myriads of enigmatic eyes were staring, staring up at me from deep within. They fascinated me; I felt my pace slowing; a vertigo seized me. Resolutely I dragged my gaze up and ahead; marched on.

      From the depths came more clearly the sound of the waters. Now there were but a few feet more of the bridge before me. I reached its end, dropped my feet over, felt them touch a smaller cube, and descended.

      Over the span came Ventnor. He was leading his laden pony. He had bandaged its eyes so that it could not look upon the narrow way it was treading. And close behind, a band resting reassuringly upon its flank, strode Drake, swinging along carelessly. The little beast ambled along serenely, sure-footed as all its mountain kind, and docile to darkness and guidance.

      Then, an arm about Ruth, floated Norhala. Now she was beside us; dropped her arm from Ruth; glided past us. On for a hundred yards or more we went, and then she drew us a little toward the unseen canyon wall.

      She stood before us, shielding us. One golden call she sent.

      I looked back into the darkness. Something like an enormous, dimly shimmering rod was raising itself. Higher it rose and higher. Now it stood, upright, a slender towering pillar, a gigantic slim figure whose tip pointed a full hundred feet in the air.

      Then slowly it inclined itself toward us; drew closer, closer to the ground; touched and lay there for an instant inert. Abruptly it vanished.

      But well I knew what I had seen. The span over which we had passed had raised itself even as had the baby bridge of the fortress; had lifted itself across the chasm and dropping itself upon the hither verge had disintegrated into its units; was following us.

      A bridge of metal that could build itself — and break itself. A thinking, conscious metal bridge! A metal bridge with volition — with mind — that was following us.

      There