Part 49 (1/2)

Mile high as when I had first beheld it was the inexplicable body that held the great heart of the cones into which had been drawn the netic cataracts from our sun; that held too the smaller hearts of the lesser cones, the workshops, the birth chauessed and unseen By a full fourth had its base been shrunken

Ranged in double line along the side turned toward us were hundreds of dread forms--Shapes that in their intensity bore down upon, oppressed with a nightular, upon their outlines no spike of pyraly ponderous, they upthrust Upon the tops of the first rank were enore shaped--like those metal fists that had battered down the walls of Cherkis's city but to them as the human hand is to the paw of the dinosaur

Conceive this--conceive these Shapes as aniious h the treht pistons; that as closely as I can present it in is

Behind theular Froirdered ar cruciforry flares of reds and s ireat cones

And as the sledges beat, ever over their bent heads poured fros Out of the concave depths of the shi+elds whipped lashes of blinding flaes struck, the sullen crimson levins blasted

Now I could see the Shapes that attacked Grotesque; spined and tusked, spiked and antlered, wenned and breasted; as chih they were the superangled, supercornute Gods of the cusped and angled Gods of the Javanese, they strove against the sledge-headed and sh as thee as they, inco for City stood ranged like sharpshooters a host of solid, bristling-legged towers Upon their tops spun gigantic wheels Out of the centers of these wheels shot the radiant lances, hosts of spears of intensest violet light The radiance they volleyed was not continuous; it was broken, so that the javelin rays shot out in rhyth fast upon the shafts of the others

It was their i They struck and splintered against the walls, dropping froh before they broke they pierced the wall, the Monster's side, bled fire

With the crashi+ng of broadsides ofattackers Under the awful iments, rocket bursts of blue and azure and violet flame, flames rainbowed and irised

The ha showers of sulphurous yellow and scarlet meteors But ever other cubes swar tips And alhere a tusked and cornute shape had been battered down, disintegrated, another arose as huge and as fors, tearing at it with colossal spiked and hooked claws, beating it with incredible spiked and globular fists that were like the clenched hands of so Shapes swayed and wrestled, gave way or thrust forward, staggered or fell, the bulk of the Monster stumbled and swayed, advanced and retreated--an unearthly motion wedded to an a consciousness with a deathly nausea

Unceasingly the hail of radiant lances poured fro upon Towered Shapes and City's wall alike There arose a prodigious wailing, an unearthly thin screa bursts of incandescence--like those which had heralded the flight of the Flying Thing dropping before Norhala's house

Unlike the sapphire brilliancies; they were ochreous, suffused with raging vermilion Nevertheless they were factors of that sahts leaped thousands of gigantic square pillars; uni mouths of earth-hidden, titanic h, swerved and swooped upon the lance-throwers Beneath their onslaught those chiet fuse where they s

But not all There were those that tore great gaps in the horned giants--wounds that instantly were healed with globes and pyra out from the Cyclopean trunk Ever the incredible projectiles flashed and flew as though froe against the s rays

Now to check theers clouds of countless horned dragons, iing tetrahedrons They struck the cubed projectiles head on; aion and hurtling pillar stuck and fused or burst with intolerable blazing They fell--cube and sphere and pyramid--soe flainable pyrotechnics

Now I became conscious that within the City--within the body of the Metal Monster--there raged a strife colossal as this without Fro Up from its top shot tortured flas that looped and struggled, writhed over its edge, hurled the heavens traced lu Up frolobes Thousands of palely azure,inbattle pennons of violet flah back of the Monster; they dropped upon it

Arose to ainst the spheres; swept them over and down into the depths Hundreds fell, broken--but thousands held their place I saw the colu liketheir coils the open disks and crosses ss

In the wall of the City appeared a shi+ning crack; from top to bottom it ran; it widened into a rift froushed Out of this rift poured a thousand-foot-high torrent of horned globes

Only for an instant they flowed The rift closed upon the in a colossal vise It CRUNCHED the roar

Down froments that flashed and flickered--and died And now in the as no trace of the breach