Part 13 (1/2)

”Look,” whispered Drake

Between us and the vast gateway, gleah the vapors, like the cutting fins of sharks, glints of round bodies like gigantic porpoises--the vapors seethed with the curves were all about us They centered upon the portal, strea us, playing about us

And weird, unutterably weird was that spectacle--the vast and silent vale with its still, sal head of Norhala sweeping over the, in orderedbefore us

We were at its threshold; over it

CHAPTER VIII THE DRUMS OF THUNDER

Upon that threshold thebillows, then ceased abruptly to be Keeping exactly the distance I had noted when our gaze had risen above the fog, glided the block that bore Ruth and Norhala

In the strange light of the place into which we had eed--and whether that place was canyon, corridor, or tunnel I could not then determine--it stood out sharply

One arm of Norhala held Ruth--and in her attitude I sensed a shi+elding intent, guardianshi+p--the first really human impulse this shape of mystery and beauty had revealed

In front of theer dully lustrous, but shi+ning as though cut from blue and polished steel

They--lobes and cubes and pyra sedately now as units

I looked behindforth other scores of the Metal Things, darting through like divers through a wave And as they drew into our wake and swaht, their direw allea? Our pace had slackened--I looked about me The walls of the cleft or tunnel were perpendicular, slow

Between the walls, like rhythlis that carried a sense of the infinitely minute--of electrons, it careenish, like the walls; but I was certain that these corpuscles did not come from them

They blinked and faded likesunbeam; or, to use a more scientific comparison, like colloids within the illuminated field of the ultrah the eyes took in not the minute particles thes the light of the place, although crepuscular, was crystalline clear High above us--five hundred, a thousand feet--the walls ed into a haze of clouded beryl

Rock certainly the cliffs were--but rock cut and planed, smoothed and polished and PLATED!

Yes, that was it--plated Plated with some metallic substance that was itself a reservoir of luminosity and frohted the winking ions But who could have done such a thing? For what purpose? How?

And the meticulousness, the perfection of these smoothed cliffs struck over ue resentment, an irritated desire for human inharmonies, huotten those who rip on etI'll juasped, blankly, startled out offinger We were rapidly closing upon the other cube; it was now a scant twenty paces ahead; it see forward, quivering with eagerness

”Ruth!” he called ”Ruth--are you all right?”