"Drums?" muttered Drake. "THEY"RE no drums. It"s drum fire. It"s like a dozen Marnes, a dozen Verduns. But where could batteries like those come from?"
"Drums," whispered Ventnor. "They ARE drums. The drums of Destiny!"
Louder the roaring grew. Now it was a tremendous rhythmic cannonading.
The Thing halted. The tower that upheld Ruth and Norhala swayed, bent over the gap between us, touched the top on which we rode.
Gently the two were plucked up; swiftly they were set beside us.
Came a shrill, keen wailing--louder than ever I had heard before. There was an earthquake trembling; a maelstrom swirling in which we spun; a swift sinking.
The Thing split in two. Up before us rose a stupendous, stepped pyramid; little smaller it was than that which Cheops built to throw its shadows across holy Nile. Into it streamed, over it clicked, score upon score of cubes, building it higher and higher. It lurched forward--away from us.
From Norhala came a single cry--resonant, blaring like a wrathful, golden trumpet.
The speeding shape halted, hesitated; it seemed about to return. Crashed down upon us an abrupt crescendo of the distant drumming; peremptory, commanding. The shape darted forward; raced away crushing to straw the trees beneath it in a full quarter-mile-wide swath.
Great gray eyes wide, filled with incredulous wonder, stunned disbelief, Norhala for an instant faltered. Then out of her white throat, through her red lips pelted a tempest of staccato buglings.
Under them what was left of the Thing leaped, tore on. Norhala"s flaming hair crackled and streamed; about her body of milk and pearl--about Ruth"s creamy skin--a radiant nimbus began to glow.
In the distance I saw a sapphire spark; knew it for Norhala"s home. Not far from it now was the rushing pyramid--and it came to me that within that shape was strangely neither globe nor pyramid. Nor except for the trembling cubes that made the platform on which we stood, did the shrunken Thing carrying us hold any unit of the Metal Monster except its spheres and tetrahedrons--at least within its visible bulk.
The sapphire spark had grown to a glimmering azure marble. Steadily we gained upon the pyramid. Never for an instant ceased that scourging hail of notes from Norhala--never for an instant lessened the drumming clamor that seemed to try to smother them.
The sapphire marble became a sapphire ball, a great globe. I saw the Thing we sought to join lift itself into a prodigious pillar; the pillar"s base thrust forth stilts; upon them the Thing stepped over the blue dome of Norhala"s house.
The blue bubble was close; now it curved below us. Gently we were lifted down; were set before its portal. I looked up at the bulk that had carried us.
I had been right--built it was only of globe and pyramid; an inconceivably grotesque shape, it hung over us.
Throughout the towering Shape was awful movement; its units writhed within it. Then it was lost to sight in the mists through which the Thing we had pursued had gone.
In Norhala"s face as she watched it go was a dismay, a poignant uncertainty, that held in it something indescribably pitiful.
"I am afraid!" I heard her whisper.
She tightened her grasp upon dreaming Ruth; motioned us to go within.
We pa.s.sed, silently; behind us she came, followed by three of the great globes, by a pair of her tetrahedrons.
Beside a pile of the silken stuffs she halted. The girl"s eyes dwelt upon hers trustingly.
"I am afraid!" whispered Norhala again. "Afraid--for you!"
Tenderly she looked down upon her, the galaxies of stars in her eyes soft and tremulous.
"I am afraid, little sister," she whispered for the third time. "Not yet can you go as I do--among the fires." She hesitated. "Rest here until I return. I shall leave these to guard you and obey you."
She motioned to the five shapes. They ranged themselves about Ruth.
Norhala kissed her upon both brown eyes.
"Sleep till I return," she murmured.
She swept from the chamber--with never a glance for us three. I heard a little wailing chorus without, fast dying into silence.
Spheres and pyramids twinkled at us, guarding the silken pile whereon Ruth lay asleep--like some enchanted princess.
Beat down upon the blue globe like hollow metal worlds, beaten and shrieking.
The drums of Destiny!
The drums of Doom!
Beating taps for the world of men?
CHAPTER XXVIII. THE FRENZY OF RUTH
For many minutes we stood silent, in the shadowy chamber, listening, each absorbed in his own thoughts. The thunderous drumming was continuous; sometimes it faded into a background for clattering storms as of thousands of machine guns, thousands of riveters at work at once upon a thousand metal frameworks; sometimes it was nearly submerged beneath splitting crashes as of meeting meteors of hollow steel.
But always the drumming persisted, rhythmic, thunderous. Through it all Ruth slept, undisturbed, cheek pillowed in one rounded arm, the two great pyramids erect behind her, watchful; a globe at her feet, a globe at her head, the third sphere poised between her and us, and, like the pyramids--watchful.
What was happening out there--over the edge of the canyon, beyond the portal of the cliffs, behind the veils, in the Pit of the Metal Monster?
What was the message of the roaring drums? What the rede of their clamorous runes?
Ventnor stepped by the sentinel globe, bent over the tranced girl.
Sphere nor pointed pair stirred; only they watched him--like a palpable thing one felt their watchfulness. He listened to her heart, caught up a wrist, took note of her pulse of life. He drew a deep breath, stood upright, nodded rea.s.suringly.
Abruptly Drake turned, walked out through the open portal, his strain and a very deep anxiety written plainly in deep lines that ran from nostrils to firm young mouth.
"Just went out to look for the pony," he muttered when he returned.
"It"s safe. I was afraid it had been stepped on. It"s getting dusk.
There"s a big light down the canyon--over in the valley."
Ventnor drew back past the globe; rejoined us.
The blue bower trembled under a gust of sound. Ruth stirred; her brows knitted; her hands clenched. The sphere that stood before her spun on its axis, swept up to the globe at her head, glided from it to the globe at her feet--as though whispering. Ruth moaned--her body bent upright, swayed rigidly. Her eyes opened; they stared through us as though upon some dreadful vision; and strangely was it as though she were seeing with another"s eyes, were reflecting another"s sufferings.
The globes at her feet and at her head swirled out, cl.u.s.tering against the third sphere--three weird shapes in silent consultation. On Ventnor"s face I saw pity--and a vast relief. With shocked amaze I realized that Ruth"s agony--for in agony she clearly was--was calling forth in him elation. He spoke--and I knew why.
"Norhala!" he whispered. "She is seeing with Norhala"s eyes--feeling what Norhala feels. It"s not going well with--That--out there. If we dared leave Ruth--could only, see--"
Ruth leaped to her feet; cried out--a golden bugling that might have been Norhala"s own wrathful trumpet notes. Instantly the two pyramids flamed open, became two gleaming stars that bathed her in violet radiance. Beneath their upper tips I saw the blasting ovals glitter--menacingly.
The girl glared at us--more brilliant grew the glittering ovals as though their lightnings trembled on their lips.
"Ruth!" called Ventnor softly.