I saw again the luminous ovals of sapphire, studding its golden zone, the mystic rose of pulsing, petal flame, the still core of incandescent ruby that was the heart of that rose.

Strangely I felt my own heart veer toward this--Thing; bowing before its beauty and its strength; almost worshiping!

A shock of revulsion went through me. I shot a quick, half frightened glance at Drake. He was crouching dangerously close to the lip of the ledge, hands clasped and knuckles white with the intensity of his grip, eyes rapt, staring--upon the verge of worship even as I had been.

"Drake!" I thrust my elbow into his side brutally. "None of that!

Remember you're human! Guard yourself, man--guard yourself!"

"What?" he muttered; then, abruptly: "How did you know?"

"I felt it myself," I answered: "For G.o.d's sake, d.i.c.k--hold fast to yourself! Remember Ruth!"

He shook his head violently--as though to be rid of some clinging, cloying thing.

"I'll not forget again," he said.

He huddled down once more close to the edge of the shelf; peering over.

No one of the Metal People had moved; the silence, the stillness, was unbroken.

Now the flanking pyramids shot forth into twin stars, blazing with violet luminescences. And one by one after them the ten lesser spheres expanded into flaming orbs; beautiful they were, but far less glorious than that Disk of whom they were the counselors?--ministers?--what?

Still there was no movement among all the arrased, girdered, pillared hosts.

There came a little wailing; far away it was and far. Nearer it drew.

Was that a tremor that pa.s.sed through the crowded crater? A quick pulse of--eagerness?

"Hungry!" whispered Drake. "They're HUNGRY!"

Closer was the wailing; again that faint tremor quivered over the place.

And now I caught it--a quick and avid pulsing.

"Hungry," whispered Drake again. "Like a lot of lions with the keeper coming along with meat."

The wailing was below us. I felt, not a quiver this time, but an unmistakable shock pa.s.s through the Horde. It throbbed--and pa.s.sed.

Into the field of our vision, up to the flaming Disk rushed an immense cube.

Thrice the height of a tall man--as I think I have noted before--when it unfolded its radiance was that shape of mingled beauty and power I call the Metal Emperor.

Yet this Thing eclipsed it. Black, uncompromising, in some indefinable way BRUTAL, its square bulk blotted out the Disk's effulgence; shrouded it. And a shadow seemed to fall upon the crater. The violet fires of the flanking stars pulsed out--watchfully, threateningly.

For only an instant the darkening block loomed against the Disk; blackened it.

There came another meteor burst of light. Where the cube had been was now a tremendous, fiery cross--a cross inverted.

Its upper arm arose to twice the length either of its horizontals or the square that was its foot. In its opening it must have turned, for its--FACE--was toward us and away from the Cones, its body hid the Disk, and almost all the surfaces of the two watchful Stars.

Eighty feet at least in height, this cruciform shape stood. It flamed and flickered with angry, smoky crimsons and scarlets; with sullen orange glowings and glitterings of sulphurous yellows. Within its fires were none of those leaping, multicolored glories that were the Metal Emperor's; no trace of the pulsing, mystic rose; no shadow of jubilant sapphire; no purple royal; no tender, merciful greens nor gracious opalescences. Nothing even of the blasting violet of the Stars.

All angry, smoky reds and ochres the cross blazed forth--and in its lurid glowings was something sinister, something real, something cruel, something--nearer to earth, closer to man.

"The Keeper of the Cones and the Metal Emperor!" muttered Drake. "I begin to get it--yes--I begin to get--Ventnor!"

Once more the pulse, the avid throbbing shook the crater. And as swiftly in its wake rushed back the stillness, the silence.

The Keeper turned--I saw its palely l.u.s.trous blue metallic back. I drew out my little field-gla.s.ses, focussed them.

The Cross slipped sidewise past the Disk, its courtiers, its stellated guardians. As it went by they swung about with it; ever facing it.

And now at last was clear a thing that had puzzled greatly--the mechanism of that opening process by which sphere became oval disk, pyramid a four-pointed star and--as I had glimpsed in the play of the Little Things about Norhala, could see now so plainly in the Keeper--the blocks took this inverted cruciform shape.

The Metal People were hollow!

Hollow metal--boxes!

In their enclosing sides dwelt all their vitality--their powers--themselves!

And those sides were--everything that THEY were!

Folded, the oval disk became the sphere; the four points of the star, the square from which those points radiated; shutting became the pyramid; the six faces of the cubes were when opened the inverted cross.

Nor were these flexible, mobile walls ma.s.sive. They were indeed, considering the apparent ma.s.s of the Metal Folk, most astonishingly fragile. Those of the Keeper, despite its eighty feet of height, could not have been more than a yard in thickness. At the edges I thought I could see groovings; noted the same appearances at the outlines of the Stars. Seen sidewise, the body of the Metal Emperor showed as a convexity; its surface smooth, with a suggestion of transparency.

The Keeper was bending; its oblong upper plane dropping forward as though upon a hinge. Lower and lower this f.l.a.n.g.e bent--in a grotesque, terrifying obeisance; a horrible mockery of reverence.

Was this mountain of Cones then actually a shrine--an idol of the Metal People--their G.o.d?

The oblong that was the upper half of the cruciform Shape extended now at right angles to the horizontal arms. It hovered, a rectangle forty feet long, as many feet over the floor at the base of the crystal pedestal. It bent again, this time from the hinge that held the outstretched arms to the base. And now it was a huge truncated cross, a T-shaped figure, hovering only twenty feet above the pave.

Down from the Keeper writhed and flicked a tangle of tentacles; serpentine, whiplike. Silvery white, they were dyed with the scarlet and orange flaming of the surface now hidden from my eyes; reflected those sullen and angry gleamings. Vermiceous, coiling, they seemed to drop from every inch of the overhanging planes.

Something there was beneath them--something like an immense and luminous tablet. The tentacles were moving over it--pressing here, thrusting there, turning, pushing, manipulating--

A shuddering pa.s.sed through the crowding cones. I saw the tremor shake their bristling hosts, oscillate the great spire, set the faceted disks quivering.

The trembling grew; a vibration in every separate cone that became even more rapid. There was a faint, curiously oppressive humming--like the distant echo of a tempest in chaos.

Faster, ever faster grew the vibration. Now the sharp outlines of the cones were dissolving.

And now they were--gone.

The mount of the cones had become a mighty pyramid of pale green radiance--one tremendous, pallid flame, of which the spire was the tongue. Out from the disked wheel at its shorn tip gushed a flood of light--light that gathered itself from the leaping radiance below it.

The tentacles of the Keeper moved more swiftly over the enigmatic tablet; writhing cloudily; confusedly rapid. The faceted disks wavered; turned upward; the wheel began to whirl--faster--faster--

Up from that flaming circle, out into the sky leaped a thick, pale green column of intensest light.