THE CITY
THAT WAS ALIVE
Close beside us was one of the cyclopean columns.We crept to it; crouched at its base opposite the drift of the Metal People; strove, huddled there, to regain our shaken poise.Like bagatelles we felt in that tremendous place, the weird luminaries gleaming above like garlands of frozen suns, the enigmatic hosts of animate cubes and spheres and pyramids trooping past.
They ranged in size from shapes yard-high to giants of thirty feet or more.They paid no heed to us, did not stop; streaming on, engrossed in whatever mysterious business was summoning them.And after a time their numbers lessened; thinned down to widely separate groups, to stragglers; then ceased.The hall was empty of them.
As far as the eye could reach the columned spaces stretched.I was conscious once more of that unusual flow of energy through every vein and nerve.
"Follow the crowd!" said Drake."Do you feel just full of pep and ginger, by the way?""I am aware of the most extraordinary vigor," I answered.
"Some weird joint," he mused, looking about him."Wonder if they have any windows? This whole place looked solid to me--what I could see of it.Wonder if we'll get up against it for air? These Things don't need it, that's sure.Wonder--"He broke off staring fascinatedly at the pillar behind us.
"Look here, Goodwin!" There was a tremor in his voice.
"What do you make of THIS?"
I followed his pointing finger; looked at him inquiringly.
"The eyes!" he said impatiently."Don't you see them?
The eyes in the column!"
And now I saw them.The pillar was a pale metallic blue, in color a trifle darker than the Metal Folk.All within it were the myriads of tiny crystalline points that we had grown to know were the receptors of some strange sense of sight.But they did not sparkle as did those others; they were dull, lifeless.I touched the surface.
It was smooth, cool--with none of that subtle, warm vitality that pulsed through all the Things with which Ihad come in contact.I shook my head, realizing as I did so what a shock the incredible possibility he had suggested had given me.
"No," I said."There is a resemblance, yes.But there is no force about this--stuff; no life.Besides, such a thing is utterly incredible.""They might be--dormant," he suggested stubbornly.
"Can you see any mark of their joining--if they ARE the cubes?"Together we scanned the pillar minutely.The faces seemed unbroken, continuous; there was no trace of those thin and shining lines that marked the juncture of the cubes when they had clicked together to form the bridge of the abyss or that had gleamed, crosslike, upon the back of the combined four upon which we had followed Norhala.
"It's a sheer impossibility.It's madness to think such a thing, Drake!" I exclaimed, and wondered at my own vehemence of denial.
"Maybe," he shook his head doubtfully."Maybe--but --well--let's be on our way."We strode on, following the direction the Metal Folk had gone.Clearly Drake was still doubtful; at each pillar he hesitated, scanning it closely with troubled eyes.
But I, having determinedly dismissed the idea, was more interested in the fantastic lights that flooded this columned hall with their buttercup radiance.They were still and unwinking; not disks, I could see now, but globes.
Great and small, they floated motionless, their rays extending rigidly and as still as the orb that shed them.
Yet rigid as they were there was nothing about either rays or orbs that suggested either hardness or the metallic.
They were vaporous, soft as St.Elmo's fire, the witch lights that cling at times to the spars of ships, weird gleaming visitors from the invisible ocean of atmospheric electricity.
When they disappeared, as they did frequently, it was instantaneously, completely, with a disconcerting sleight-of-hand finality.I noted, though, that when they did vanish, immediately close to where they had been other orbs swam forth with that same astonishing abruptness;sometimes only one, larger it might be than that which had gone; sometimes a cluster of smaller globes, their frozen, crocused rays impinging.
What could they be, I wondered--how fixed, and what the source of their light? Products of electro-magnetic currents and born of the interpenetration of such streams flowing above us? Such a theory might account for their disappearance, and reappearance, shiftings of the flows that changed the light producing points of contact.Wireless lights? If so here was an idea that human science might elaborate if ever we returned to--"Now which way?" Drake broke in upon my musing.
The hall had ended.We stood before a blank wall vanishing into the soft mists hiding the roof of the chamber.
"I thought we had been going along the way They went,"I said in amazement.
"So did I," he answered."We must have circled.They never went through THAT unless--unless--" He hesitated.
"Unless what?" I asked sharply.
"Unless it opened and let them through," he said."Have you forgotten those great ovals--like cat's eyes that opened in the outer walls?" he added quietly.
I HAD forgotten.I looked again at the wall.Certainly it was smooth, lineless.In one unbroken, shining surface it rose, a facade of polished metal.Within it the deep set points of light were duller even than they had been in the pillars; almost indeed indistinguishable.
"Go on to the left," I said none too patiently."And get that absurd notion out of your head.""All right." He flushed."But you don't think I'm afraid, do you?""If what you're thinking were true, you'd have a right to be," I replied tartly."And I want to tell you I'D be afraid.Damned afraid."For perhaps two hundred paces we skirted the base of the wall.We came abruptly to an opening, an oblong passageway fully fifty foot wide by twice as high.At its entrance the mellow, saffron light was cut off as though by an invisible screen.The tunnel itself was filled with a dim grayish blue luster.For an instant we contemplated it.
