WEBVTT

1
00:00:01.159 --> 00:00:05.639
<v Speaker 1>Chapter thirty one of The Metal Monster. This is a

2
00:00:05.679 --> 00:00:10.839
<v Speaker 1>LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.

3
00:00:11.519 --> 00:00:18.039
<v Speaker 1>For more information all to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.

4
00:00:18.760 --> 00:00:25.120
<v Speaker 1>This reading by Lucy Burgoyne The Metal Monster by Abraham Merritt,

5
00:00:26.039 --> 00:00:32.759
<v Speaker 1>chapter thirty one Slag. That night we slipped well. Awakening,

6
00:00:33.000 --> 00:00:36.920
<v Speaker 1>we found that the storm had grown violent again, the

7
00:00:36.960 --> 00:00:41.000
<v Speaker 1>wind roaring and the rain falling in such volume that

8
00:00:41.119 --> 00:00:45.799
<v Speaker 1>it was impossible to make our way to the pit. Twice,

9
00:00:46.079 --> 00:00:49.479
<v Speaker 1>as a matter of fact, we tried, but the smooth

10
00:00:49.640 --> 00:00:54.479
<v Speaker 1>roadway was the torrent, and drenched even through our oils

11
00:00:54.520 --> 00:00:59.560
<v Speaker 1>to the skin. We at last abandoned the attempt. Ruth

12
00:00:59.600 --> 00:01:04.000
<v Speaker 1>and Drake drifted away together among the other chambers of

13
00:01:04.120 --> 00:01:08.560
<v Speaker 1>the globe. They were absorbed in themselves, and we did

14
00:01:08.599 --> 00:01:13.599
<v Speaker 1>not thrust ourselves upon them. All the day the torrents fell.

15
00:01:14.439 --> 00:01:17.200
<v Speaker 1>We sat down that night to what was well nigh

16
00:01:17.239 --> 00:01:23.519
<v Speaker 1>at the last of Ventnor's stores. Seemingly Ruth had forgotten Norhala.

17
00:01:23.599 --> 00:01:28.959
<v Speaker 1>At least she spoke no more of her Martin. She said,

18
00:01:29.359 --> 00:01:33.040
<v Speaker 1>can't we start back tomorrow? I want to get away,

19
00:01:33.560 --> 00:01:37.040
<v Speaker 1>I want to get back to our own world as

20
00:01:37.079 --> 00:01:41.599
<v Speaker 1>soon as the storm ceases, Ruth, he answered, we start,

21
00:01:42.200 --> 00:01:45.439
<v Speaker 1>little sister, I too want you to get back quickly.

22
00:01:46.280 --> 00:01:50.439
<v Speaker 1>The next morning, the storm had gone. We awakened soon

23
00:01:50.799 --> 00:01:55.120
<v Speaker 1>after dawn into clear and brilliant light. We had a

24
00:01:55.239 --> 00:01:59.560
<v Speaker 1>silent and hurried breakfast. The saddle bags were packed and

25
00:01:59.640 --> 00:02:04.519
<v Speaker 1>strapped upon the pony. Within them were what we could

26
00:02:04.560 --> 00:02:09.960
<v Speaker 1>carry of souvenirs from Norhala's home, a suit of lacedama,

27
00:02:10.360 --> 00:02:15.680
<v Speaker 1>a pair of cloaks and sandals, the jeweled combs. Ruth

28
00:02:15.719 --> 00:02:19.319
<v Speaker 1>and Drake at the side of the pony, Ventnor and

29
00:02:19.360 --> 00:02:24.520
<v Speaker 1>I leading, we set forth toward the pit. We'll probably

30
00:02:24.759 --> 00:02:28.560
<v Speaker 1>have to come back, Walter, he said, I don't believe

31
00:02:28.599 --> 00:02:33.080
<v Speaker 1>the place is passable. I pointed. We were then just

32
00:02:33.199 --> 00:02:37.639
<v Speaker 1>over the threshold of the Elfin globe. Where the veils

33
00:02:37.879 --> 00:02:42.400
<v Speaker 1>had stretched between the perpendicular pillars of the cliffs was

34
00:02:42.479 --> 00:02:47.280
<v Speaker 1>now a wide and ragged edged opening. The roadway, which

35
00:02:47.280 --> 00:02:51.280
<v Speaker 1>had run so smoothly through the scarps, was blocked by

36
00:02:51.319 --> 00:02:55.960
<v Speaker 1>a thousand foot barrier over it. Beyond it, I could

37
00:02:56.000 --> 00:03:00.919
<v Speaker 1>see through the crystalline clarity of the air. Using mauls,

38
00:03:02.000 --> 00:03:06.039
<v Speaker 1>we can climb it. Ventnor said. We passed on and

39
00:03:06.120 --> 00:03:10.400
<v Speaker 1>reached the base of the barrier. An avalanche had dropped there.

40
00:03:10.840 --> 00:03:15.360
<v Speaker 1>The barricade was the debris of the torn cliffs, their dust,

41
00:03:15.840 --> 00:03:21.360
<v Speaker 1>their pebbles, their boulders. We toiled up, we reached the crest.

42
00:03:21.759 --> 00:03:26.080
<v Speaker 1>We looked down upon the valley. When first we had

43
00:03:26.120 --> 00:03:29.479
<v Speaker 1>seen it, we had gazed upon a sea of radiance,

44
00:03:29.599 --> 00:03:36.199
<v Speaker 1>pierced with lanced forests, swept with gigantic gonfalons of flame.

45
00:03:37.120 --> 00:03:40.800
<v Speaker 1>We had seen it emptied of its fiery mists, a

46
00:03:40.919 --> 00:03:45.199
<v Speaker 1>vast slate covered with the choreography of a mathematical god.

47
00:03:45.680 --> 00:03:48.719
<v Speaker 1>We had seen it filled with the symboling of the

48
00:03:48.759 --> 00:03:54.080
<v Speaker 1>metal hordes, and dominated by the colossal integrate hieroglyph of

49
00:03:54.120 --> 00:03:58.039
<v Speaker 1>the living City. We had seen it as a radiant lake,

50
00:03:58.400 --> 00:04:02.719
<v Speaker 1>over which brooded we d suns, a lake of yellow

51
00:04:02.800 --> 00:04:07.680
<v Speaker 1>flame froth, upon which a sparkling hail fell, within which

52
00:04:07.800 --> 00:04:12.840
<v Speaker 1>reared island towers and a drowning mount running with cataracts

53
00:04:12.879 --> 00:04:16.800
<v Speaker 1>of sun fires. Here we had watched a goddess woman,

54
00:04:17.480 --> 00:04:22.040
<v Speaker 1>a being half of Earth, half of the unknown immuood,

55
00:04:22.360 --> 00:04:27.480
<v Speaker 1>within a living tomb, a dying tomb of flaming mysteries.

56
00:04:27.920 --> 00:04:33.079
<v Speaker 1>Had seen across shaped metal satan, a sullen, flaming crystal.

57
00:04:33.319 --> 00:04:38.480
<v Speaker 1>Judas betrayed itself. Where we had peered into the unfathomable,

58
00:04:38.959 --> 00:04:44.160
<v Speaker 1>had glimpse the infinite, had heard and had seen the inexplicable,

59
00:04:44.720 --> 00:04:49.800
<v Speaker 1>now was slag. The amethyst steene ring from which had

60
00:04:49.839 --> 00:04:54.800
<v Speaker 1>been streamed the circling vales was cracked and blackened, like

61
00:04:54.879 --> 00:04:58.079
<v Speaker 1>a seam of coal. It had stretched around the pit

62
00:04:58.839 --> 00:05:03.399
<v Speaker 1>a crown of more. The vales were gone. The floor

63
00:05:03.480 --> 00:05:08.800
<v Speaker 1>of the valley was fissured and blackened, its patterns, its writings,

64
00:05:08.879 --> 00:05:12.680
<v Speaker 1>burned away. As far as we could see stretched a

65
00:05:12.759 --> 00:05:18.920
<v Speaker 1>sea of slag, cold, black, vitrified and dead. Here and there,

66
00:05:19.120 --> 00:05:25.319
<v Speaker 1>black kellocks sprawled. Huge pillars arose, bent and twisted, as

67
00:05:25.360 --> 00:05:29.600
<v Speaker 1>though they had been jettings of lava, cooled into ridgity

68
00:05:29.759 --> 00:05:34.639
<v Speaker 1>before they could sink back or break. These shapes clustered

69
00:05:34.720 --> 00:05:40.120
<v Speaker 1>most thickly around an immense calcified mound. They were what

70
00:05:40.439 --> 00:05:44.439
<v Speaker 1>were left of the battling Hordes, and the mound was

71
00:05:44.519 --> 00:05:49.279
<v Speaker 1>what had been the Metal Monster. Somewhere there were the

72
00:05:49.319 --> 00:05:53.519
<v Speaker 1>ashes of Norhala, sealed by fire in the urn of

73
00:05:53.560 --> 00:05:57.800
<v Speaker 1>the Metal Emperor. From side to side of the pit,

74
00:05:58.399 --> 00:06:04.120
<v Speaker 1>in broken beaches, and waves and hammocks in blackened, distorted

75
00:06:04.160 --> 00:06:10.120
<v Speaker 1>tusks and warped towerings, reaching with hideous pathos in thousands

76
00:06:10.160 --> 00:06:16.600
<v Speaker 1>of forms. Toward the charred mound was only slag from

77
00:06:16.759 --> 00:06:21.680
<v Speaker 1>rifts and highs, still filled with water. Little reefs of

78
00:06:21.800 --> 00:06:27.120
<v Speaker 1>steam drifted in those futile wrafts of vapor. Was all

79
00:06:27.160 --> 00:06:32.360
<v Speaker 1>that remained of the mite of the metal monster catastrophe.

80
00:06:32.720 --> 00:06:37.920
<v Speaker 1>I had expected tragedy, I knew we would find, But

81
00:06:38.079 --> 00:06:41.680
<v Speaker 1>I had looked for nothing so filled with the abomination

82
00:06:42.120 --> 00:06:48.800
<v Speaker 1>of desolation, so frightful as was this burned out, muttered drake,

83
00:06:49.480 --> 00:06:53.759
<v Speaker 1>short circuited and burned out like a dynamo, like an

84
00:06:53.759 --> 00:07:00.720
<v Speaker 1>electric light. Destiny, said Ventnor Destiny. Not yet was the

85
00:07:00.800 --> 00:07:06.839
<v Speaker 1>hour struck for man to relinquish his sovereignty over the world. Destiny,

86
00:07:07.759 --> 00:07:11.480
<v Speaker 1>We began to pick our way down the heaped debris

87
00:07:11.519 --> 00:07:15.480
<v Speaker 1>and out upon the plain. For all that day and

88
00:07:15.639 --> 00:07:19.199
<v Speaker 1>part of another we searched for an opening out of

89
00:07:19.240 --> 00:07:25.879
<v Speaker 1>the pit. Everywhere was the incredible calcification. The surfaces that

90
00:07:26.000 --> 00:07:30.759
<v Speaker 1>had been the smooth metallic carapaces, with the tiny eyes

91
00:07:31.160 --> 00:07:36.720
<v Speaker 1>deep within them, crumbled beneath the lightest blow. Not long

92
00:07:36.839 --> 00:07:41.519
<v Speaker 1>would it be until under wind and rain they dissolved

93
00:07:41.839 --> 00:07:46.839
<v Speaker 1>into dust and mud, and it grew increasingly obvious that

94
00:07:47.040 --> 00:07:52.160
<v Speaker 1>Drake's theory of the destruction was correct. The monster had

95
00:07:52.199 --> 00:07:59.879
<v Speaker 1>been one prodigious magnet, or rather a prodigious dynamo by magnetism,

96
00:08:00.160 --> 00:08:06.199
<v Speaker 1>by electricity. It had lived and had been activated. Whatever

97
00:08:06.279 --> 00:08:09.800
<v Speaker 1>the force of which the cones were built, and that

98
00:08:09.959 --> 00:08:14.279
<v Speaker 1>I have likened to energy made material, it was certainly

99
00:08:14.439 --> 00:08:21.399
<v Speaker 1>akin to electromagnetic energies. When in the cataclysm that force

100
00:08:21.800 --> 00:08:26.120
<v Speaker 1>was diffused, There had been created, a magnetic field of

101
00:08:26.160 --> 00:08:34.559
<v Speaker 1>incredible intensity, had been concentrated, an electric charge of inconceivable magnitude.

102
00:08:35.080 --> 00:08:40.320
<v Speaker 1>Discharging it had blasted the monster, short circuited it, and

103
00:08:40.440 --> 00:08:43.840
<v Speaker 1>burned it out. But what was it that had led

104
00:08:43.919 --> 00:08:47.519
<v Speaker 1>up to the cataclysm? What was it that had turned

105
00:08:47.519 --> 00:08:52.840
<v Speaker 1>the metal monster upon itself? What disharmony had crept into

106
00:08:52.879 --> 00:08:57.000
<v Speaker 1>the supernal order to set in motion the machinery of

107
00:08:57.080 --> 00:09:03.120
<v Speaker 1>disintegration we could only injector the cruciform shape I have

108
00:09:03.320 --> 00:09:07.679
<v Speaker 1>named the Keeper was the agent of destruction of what

109
00:09:07.840 --> 00:09:13.279
<v Speaker 1>there could be no doubt in the ngramatic organism, which,

110
00:09:13.320 --> 00:09:18.200
<v Speaker 1>while many still was one, and which retaining its integrity

111
00:09:18.440 --> 00:09:23.559
<v Speaker 1>as a whole could disassociate manifold parts, yet still as

112
00:09:23.600 --> 00:09:28.759
<v Speaker 1>a whole maintain an unseen contact and direction over them

113
00:09:29.279 --> 00:09:34.399
<v Speaker 1>three miles of space. The Keeper had its place, its work,

114
00:09:34.759 --> 00:09:40.600
<v Speaker 1>its duties. So too had that wondrous disc which visible

115
00:09:40.840 --> 00:09:46.200
<v Speaker 1>and concentrate power, whose manifest leadership had made us name

116
00:09:46.480 --> 00:09:51.559
<v Speaker 1>its emperor, and had not Norhala called the disk ruler.

117
00:09:52.600 --> 00:09:56.799
<v Speaker 1>What were the responsibilities of these twain to the mass

118
00:09:56.840 --> 00:10:00.039
<v Speaker 1>of the organism of which they were such imp I

119
00:10:00.039 --> 00:10:04.960
<v Speaker 1>coughtant units? What were the laws they administered? The laws

120
00:10:05.200 --> 00:10:11.080
<v Speaker 1>they must obey? Something certainly of that mysterious law which

121
00:10:11.159 --> 00:10:15.960
<v Speaker 1>Materlink had called the spirit of the hive, and something

122
00:10:16.159 --> 00:10:24.279
<v Speaker 1>infinitely greater like that which governs the swarming sunbeas of Hercules, Clustard, orbs.

123
00:10:25.080 --> 00:10:29.519
<v Speaker 1>Had there evolved within the Keeper of the Cones, guardian

124
00:10:29.759 --> 00:10:34.240
<v Speaker 1>and engineer, as it seemed to have been ambition, had

125
00:10:34.279 --> 00:10:39.200
<v Speaker 1>there risen within it a determination to wrest power from

126
00:10:39.240 --> 00:10:43.879
<v Speaker 1>the Disk to take its place as ruler? How Else

127
00:10:44.120 --> 00:10:48.360
<v Speaker 1>explained that conflict I had sensed when the Emperor had

128
00:10:48.399 --> 00:10:52.519
<v Speaker 1>plucked Drake and Me from the Keeper's grip that night

129
00:10:52.679 --> 00:10:57.960
<v Speaker 1>following the orgy of the Feeding. How Else explained that

130
00:10:58.159 --> 00:11:01.799
<v Speaker 1>duel in the shattered hall of the Cones, whose end

131
00:11:02.039 --> 00:11:06.320
<v Speaker 1>had been the signal for the final cataclysm. How else

132
00:11:06.639 --> 00:11:11.639
<v Speaker 1>explain the alignment of the cubes behind the Keeper against

133
00:11:11.639 --> 00:11:15.879
<v Speaker 1>the globes and pyramids, remaining loyal to the will of

134
00:11:15.960 --> 00:11:22.320
<v Speaker 1>the disk. We discuss this vent not an eye. This world,

135
00:11:22.639 --> 00:11:26.639
<v Speaker 1>he mused, is a place of a struggle. Air and

136
00:11:26.799 --> 00:11:30.600
<v Speaker 1>sea and land, and all things that dwell within and

137
00:11:30.759 --> 00:11:35.360
<v Speaker 1>on them must battle for life. Earth, not Mars, is

138
00:11:35.399 --> 00:11:39.519
<v Speaker 1>the planet of war. I have a theory, he hesitated,

139
00:11:40.039 --> 00:11:43.840
<v Speaker 1>that the globe magnetic currents, which are the nerved forths

140
00:11:43.840 --> 00:11:48.320
<v Speaker 1>of this globe of ours, were what fed the metal things.

141
00:11:49.480 --> 00:11:53.960
<v Speaker 1>Within those currents is the spirit of Earth, and always

142
00:11:54.159 --> 00:12:00.240
<v Speaker 1>they have been supercharged with strife, with Hatred's warfare. These

143
00:12:00.360 --> 00:12:04.039
<v Speaker 1>drawn in by the things as they fed. Did it

144
00:12:04.159 --> 00:12:08.519
<v Speaker 1>happen that the Keeper became tuned to them, that it

145
00:12:08.799 --> 00:12:13.440
<v Speaker 1>absorbed and responded to them, growing even more sensitive to

146
00:12:13.559 --> 00:12:20.519
<v Speaker 1>these forces, until it reflected humanity? Who knows? Goodwin? Who

147
00:12:20.559 --> 00:12:27.559
<v Speaker 1>can tell? Enigma? Unless the explanations I have hazarded be accepted,

148
00:12:28.120 --> 00:12:34.759
<v Speaker 1>must remain that monstrous suicide and enigma, save for inconclusive theories,

149
00:12:35.320 --> 00:12:40.559
<v Speaker 1>must remain the question of the monster's origin. If answers

150
00:12:40.600 --> 00:12:44.799
<v Speaker 1>there were, they were lost forever in the slag we trod.

151
00:12:45.639 --> 00:12:48.879
<v Speaker 1>It was afternoon of the second day that we found

152
00:12:49.039 --> 00:12:52.960
<v Speaker 1>a rift in the blasted wall of the valley. We

153
00:12:53.080 --> 00:12:56.519
<v Speaker 1>decided to try it. We had not dared to take

154
00:12:56.559 --> 00:13:00.559
<v Speaker 1>the road by which Norhala had led us into the city.

155
00:13:01.600 --> 00:13:06.120
<v Speaker 1>The giant slide was broken and climbable, But even if

156
00:13:06.159 --> 00:13:10.039
<v Speaker 1>we could have passed safely through the tunnel of the Abbyss,

157
00:13:10.559 --> 00:13:14.200
<v Speaker 1>there still was left the chasm over which we could

158
00:13:14.240 --> 00:13:18.240
<v Speaker 1>have thrown no bridge. And if we could have bridged it,

159
00:13:18.440 --> 00:13:22.360
<v Speaker 1>still at that road's end was the cliff whose sharp

160
00:13:22.480 --> 00:13:26.960
<v Speaker 1>Norhala had sealed with her lightnings. So we entered the

161
00:13:27.039 --> 00:13:32.240
<v Speaker 1>rift of our wanderings thereafter, I need not write. From

162
00:13:32.279 --> 00:13:35.840
<v Speaker 1>the rift, we emerged into a maze of the valleys,

163
00:13:36.440 --> 00:13:40.559
<v Speaker 1>and after a month in that wilderness, living upon what

164
00:13:40.759 --> 00:13:44.000
<v Speaker 1>game we could shoot, we found a road that led

165
00:13:44.080 --> 00:13:47.960
<v Speaker 1>us in to Guyancy. In another six weeks we were

166
00:13:48.039 --> 00:13:53.919
<v Speaker 1>home in America. My story is finished there in the

167
00:13:53.960 --> 00:13:59.360
<v Speaker 1>trans Himalayan wilderness is the blue globe that was the

168
00:13:59.360 --> 00:14:03.720
<v Speaker 1>weird home of the lightning which, and looking back, I

169
00:14:03.799 --> 00:14:08.120
<v Speaker 1>feel now she could not have been all woman. There

170
00:14:08.200 --> 00:14:12.519
<v Speaker 1>is the vast pit, with its coronet of fantastic peaks,

171
00:14:13.159 --> 00:14:18.879
<v Speaker 1>its symboled calcined floor, and the crumbling body of the inexplicable,

172
00:14:19.519 --> 00:14:24.840
<v Speaker 1>the incredible thing which alive was the shadow of extinction,

173
00:14:25.639 --> 00:14:31.159
<v Speaker 1>an her elation, hovering to hurl itself upon humanity. That

174
00:14:31.360 --> 00:14:37.559
<v Speaker 1>shadow is gone, that Paul withdrawn. But to me till

175
00:14:37.600 --> 00:14:41.840
<v Speaker 1>each of us four who saw those phenomena, their lesson

176
00:14:42.120 --> 00:14:47.679
<v Speaker 1>remains ineradicable, giving a new strength and purpose to us,

177
00:14:48.279 --> 00:14:53.519
<v Speaker 1>teaching us a new humility. For in that vast crucible

178
00:14:53.759 --> 00:14:56.919
<v Speaker 1>of life of which we are so small a part,

179
00:14:57.480 --> 00:15:02.480
<v Speaker 1>what other shapes may even now be rising to submerge us?

180
00:15:02.919 --> 00:15:07.159
<v Speaker 1>In that vast reservoir of force, that is the mystery

181
00:15:07.240 --> 00:15:12.559
<v Speaker 1>fuelled infinite through which we roll, What other shadows may

182
00:15:12.639 --> 00:15:21.279
<v Speaker 1>be speeding upon us? Who knows? End of Chapter thirty one,

183
00:15:21.759 --> 00:15:25.679
<v Speaker 1>End of The Metal Monster by Abraham Merrick