Wider grew the rift. Save for the bridge of our voices it separated us from Ruth as though she stood upon another world.

Higher we rose; the three of us now upon the flat top of a tower upon whose counterpart fifty feet away and facing the homeward path, Ruth and Norhala stood with white arms interlaced.

The serpent shape flashed toward us; it vanished beneath, merging into the waiting Thing.

Then slowly the Thing began to move; quietly it glided to the chasm it had blasted in the cliff wall. The shadow of those walls fell upon us.

As one we looked back; as one we searched out the patch of blue with the black blot at its breast.

We found it; then the precipices hid it. Silently we streamed through the chasm, through the canyon and the tunnel--speaking no word, Drake's eyes fixed with bitter hatred upon Norhala, Ventnor brooding upon her always with that enigmatic sympathy. We pa.s.sed between the walls of the further cleft; stood for an instant at the brink of the green forest.

There came to us as though from immeasurable distances, a faint, sustained thrumming--like the beating of countless m.u.f.fled drums. The Thing that carried us trembled--the sound died away. The Thing quieted; it began its steady, effortless striding through the crowding trees--but now with none of that speed with which it had come, spurred forward by Norhala's awakened hate.

Ventnor stirred; broke the silence. And now I saw how wasted was his body, how sharpened his face; almost ethereal; purged not only by suffering but by, it came to me, some strange knowledge.

"No use, Drake," he said dreamily. "All this is now on the knees of the G.o.ds. And whether those G.o.ds are humanity's or whether they are--G.o.ds of Metal--I do not know.

"But this I do know--only one way or another can the balance fall; and if it be one way, then you and we shall have Ruth back. And if it falls the other way--then there will be little need for us to care. For man will be done!"

"Martin! What do you mean?"

"It is the crisis," he answered. "We can do nothing, Goodwin--nothing.

Whatever is to be steps forth now from the womb of Destiny."

Again there came that distant rolling--louder, now. Again the Thing trembled.

"The drums," whispered Ventnor. "The drums of destiny. What is it they are heralding? A new birth of Earth and the pa.s.sing of man? A new child to whom shall be given dominion--nay, to whom has been given dominion?

Or is it--taps--for Them?"

The drumming died as I listened--fearfully. About us was only the swishing, the sighing of the falling trees beneath the tread of the Thing. Motionless stood Norhala; and as motionless Ruth.

"Martin," I cried once more, a dreadful doubt upon me. "Martin--what do you mean?"

"Whence did--They--come?" His voice was clear and calm, the eyes beneath the red brand clear and quiet, too. "Whence did They come--these Things that carry us? That strode like destroying angels over Cherkis's city? Are they sp.a.w.n of Earth--as we are? Or are they foster children--changelings from another star?

"These creatures that when many still are one--that when one still are many. Whence did They come? What are They?"

He looked down upon the cubes that held us; their hosts of tiny eyes shone up at him, enigmatically--as though they heard and understood.

"I do not forget," he said. "At least not all do I forget of what I saw during that time when I seemed an atom outside s.p.a.ce--as I told you, or think I told you, speaking with unthinkable effort through lips that seemed eternities away from me, the atom, who strove to open them.

"There were three--visions, revelations--I know not what to call them.

And though each seemed equally real, of two of them, only one, I think, can be true; and of the third--that may some time be true but surely is not yet."

Through the air came a louder drum roll--in it something ominous, something sinister. It swelled to a crescendo; abruptly ceased. And now I saw Norhala raise her head; listen.

"I saw a world, a vast world, Goodwin, marching stately through s.p.a.ce.

It was no globe--it was a world of many facets, of smooth and polished planes; a huge blue jewel world, dimly luminous; a crystal world cut out from Aether. A geometric thought of the Great Cause, of G.o.d, if you will, made material. It was airless, waterless, sunless.

"I seemed to draw closer to it. And then I saw that over every facet patterns were traced; gigantic symmetrical designs; mathematical hieroglyphs. In them I read unthinkable calculations, formulas of interwoven universes, arithmetical progressions of armies of stars, pandects of the motions of the suns. In the patterns was an appalling harmony--as though all the laws from those which guide the atom to those which direct the cosmos were there resolved into completeness--totalled.

"The faceted world was like a cosmic abacist, tallying as it marched the errors of the infinite.

"The patterned symbols constantly changed form. I drew nearer--the symbols were alive. They were, in untold numbers--These!"

He pointed to the Thing that bore us.

"I was swept back; looked again upon it from afar. And a fantastic notion came to me--fantasy it was, of course, yet built I know around a nucleus of strange truth. It was"--his tone was half whimsical, half apologetic--"it was that this jeweled world was ridden by some mathematical G.o.d, driving it through s.p.a.ce, noting occasionally with amused tolerance the very bad arithmetic of another Deity the reverse of mathematical--a more or less haphazard Deity, the G.o.d, in fact, of us and the things we call living.

"It had no mission; it wasn't at all out to do any reforming; it wasn't in the least concerned in rectifying any of the inaccuracies of the Other. Only now and then it took note of the deplorable differences between the worlds it saw and its own impeccably ordered and tidy temple with its equally tidy servitors.

"Just an itinerant demiurge of supergeometry riding along through s.p.a.ce on its perfectly summed-up world; master of all celestial mechanics; its people independent of all that complex chemistry and labor for equilibrium by which we live; needing neither air nor water, heeding neither heat nor cold; fed with the magnetism of interstellar s.p.a.ce and stopping now and then to banquet off the energy of some great sun."

A thrill of amazement pa.s.sed through me; fantasy all this might be but--how, if so, had he gotten that last thought? He had not seen, as we had, the orgy in the Hall of the Cones, the prodigious feeding of the Metal Monster upon our sun.

"That pa.s.sed," he went on, unnoticing. "I saw vast caverns filled with the Things; working, growing, multiplying. In caverns of our Earth--the fruit of some unguessed womb? I do not know.

"But in those caverns, under countless...o...b.. of many colored lights"--again the thrill of amaze shook me--"they grew. It came to me that they were reaching out toward sunlight and the open. They burst into it--into yellow, glowing sunlight. Ours? I do not know. And that picture pa.s.sed."

His voice deepened.

"There came a third vision. I saw our Earth--I knew, Goodwin, indisputably, unmistakably that it was our earth. But its rolling hills were leveled, its mountains were ground and shaped into cold and polished symbols--geometric, fashioned.

"The seas were fettered, gleaming like immense jewels in patterned settings of crystal sh.o.r.es. The very Polar ice was chiseled. On the ordered plains were traced the hieroglyphs of the faceted world. And on all Earth, Goodwin, there was no green life, no city, no trace of man.

On this Earth that had been ours were only--These.

"Visioning!" he said. "Don't think that I accept them in their entirety.

Part truth, part illusion--the groping mind dazzled with light of unfamiliar truths and making pictures from half light and half shadow to help it understand.

"But still--SOME truth in them. How much I do not know. But this I do know--that last vision was of a cataclysm whose beginnings we face now--this very instant."

The picture flashed behind my own eyes--of the walled city, its thronging people, its groves and gardens, its science and its art; of the Destroying Shapes trampling it flat--and then the dreadful, desolate mount.

And suddenly I saw that mount as Earth--the city as Earth's cities--its gardens and groves as Earth's fields and forests--and the vanished people of Cherkis seemed to expand into all humanity.

"But Martin," I stammered, fighting against choking, intolerable terror, "there was something else. Something of the Keeper of the Cones and of our striking through the sun to destroy the Things--something of them being governed by the same laws that govern us and that if they broke them they must fall. A hope--a PROMISE, that they would NOT conquer."

"I remember," he replied, "but not clearly. There WAS something--a shadow upon them, a menace. It was a shadow that seemed to be born of our own world--some threatening spirit of earth hovering over them.

"I cannot remember; it eludes me. Yet it is because I remember but a little of it that I say those drums may not be--taps--for us."

As though his words had been a cue, the sounds again burst forth--no longer m.u.f.fled nor faint. They roared; they seemed to pelt through air and drop upon us; they beat about our ears with thunderous tattoo like covered caverns drummed upon by t.i.tans with trunks of great trees.

The drumming did not die; it grew louder, more vehement; defiant and deafening. Within the Thing under us a mighty pulse began to throb, accelerating rapidly to the rhythm of that clamorous roll.

I saw Norhala draw herself up, sharply; stand listening and alert. Under me, the throbbing turned to an uneasy churning, a ferment.