Part 34 (2/2)

The Cones towered above htless How I knew I cannot say--but now, al them, I did know Nebulous, yet solid, were they; coain the thought cayfor the tablet over which the Keeper had hovered; the mechanis shi+elds, thrust the spear of green fire into the side of the wounded sun Hesitantly I touched the crystal base; the edge ar rain which we had just watched build it outward or whether it was a property inherent with the substance itself I do not know

Certainly there was no mark upon it to shohere the molten mists had fallen It was diamond hard and smooth The nearest cones were but a scant nine feet from its rim

Suddenlythe tablet; stood beside it The shape of a great T, gli with a faint and liht have been, in shape and size, the palely shi+ning shadow of the Keeper It was a foot above the floor, and had apparently no connection with the cones

It was onal rods the tops of some of which were cupped, of others pointed; none was estion of wedded crystal and y and matter

The rods were inably complex; a keyboard whose infinite coame I saw that only the swarms of tentacles that were the Keeper's hands and these only could be masters of its incredible intricacies No Disk--not even the Emperor, no Star shape could play on it, draw out its chords of power

But why? Why had it been soCross alone could release its hidden s, made articulate its interwoven octaves?

And hoere its es conveyed? Up to its bases pressed the dormant cubes--that under it they lay as well I did not doubt

There was no visible copula of the tablet with cones; no antennae between it and the circled shi+elds Could it be that the ih the Metal People of the pave on the upthrust Metal People of the crater rim who held the shi+elds?

That WAS unthinkable--unthinkable because if so this mechanism was superfluous

The swift response to the communal will that we had observed showed that the Metal Monster needed nothing of this kind for transht of any of its units

There was sorouped consciousness could not bridge without other means Clearly that was true--else why the tablet, why the Keeper's travail?

Was each of these tiny rods akeys of the wireless; were they transy in which was enfolded co to each responsive cell of the Metal Monster the bidding of those higher units which were to It as the brain cells are to us? That, advanced as the knowledge it iht be, was closer to the heart of the possible

I bent, deter I felt, to touch the tablet's rods

A flickering shadow fell uponochreous and scarlet shadows--

The Keeper glowed above us!

In a life that has had its share of dangers, its need for quick decisions, I recognize that few indeed of my reactions to peril have been eous nor intellectually dissociate fro of the burned hand from the brand, the will-to-live dictated rush of the cornered aniher functioning hen I followed Larry O'Keefe and Lakla, the Hand death in a place ale as this ; another was now Deliberately, detachedly, I studied the angrily fla Shape

See ”The Moon Pool” and ”The Conquest of the Moon Pool”

Compared to it ere as a pair of Hop-o'-my-Thumbs to the Giant; had it been man-shaped ould have come less than a third way up to its knees I focussed my attention upon the twenty-foot-wide square that was the Keeper's foot Its surface was jewel sranulation, of close-packed, innurains whose existence was ht, smoky and sullen At each end of the square, close to the bottoe, cabochon, perhaps a yard in width These were di crystallization Sense organs I set thereat ovals within the Eaze traveled up to the transverse arms They stretched sixty feet froures, not dull but burning angrily with orange-and-scarlet luster In the center of the bea rubrous reflection of the E multicolored rose had each of the petals of the latter been clipped and squared

It deepened toward its heart into a singular pattern of verure ran nuling in interwoven patterns with never a curve nor arching

Set at intervals between theonal rosettes filled with slender silvery flutings, wan striations--like--it came to ray jade

Above towered the gigantic vertical bea criht topaz; two other diamonds stared down upon us froht the striated octagons clustered