The Metal Monster

as grains of sand on ocean's shores. They thread gigantic, the star-flung spaces; they creep, atomic, beneath the microscope's pee

Then those who have not seen pass him by with the lifted brows of disbelief, or th

verity assailed; upon what seem the lesser a man may g

ns of forces, seen and unseen, known and unknown. And man, an atom in the ferment, clings desperately to what to him seems stable; n

ns of space wherein are strange currents, hidden shoals

omes one who cries that their charts must be remade, n

steries. Yet knowing each in his own heart the truth of that vision h

ful that it caught the throat and set an ache within the breast-u

y pilgrimage had begun I drank-not of forgetfulness, for that could never be-but of anodyne

my restlessness-for these are known to those who have read that history of mine. Nor is

y books-"The Poppies and Primulas of Southern Tibet," the result of my travels of 1910-1911, I determine

tends from Azerbaijan in the west to Khorasan in the east; from thence I would follow its modified types in the Hindu-Kush ranges and its migrations along the southern scarps of the

the passes to the Manasarowar Lakes, where, legen

diseases require desperate remedies, and until inspiration or message how to rejoin tho

inspiration or message could come

l servant; yes, more than this, a compan

Gyantse, west of Lhasa. Why he had gone from there, how he had come to Teheran, I never asked. It was most fortunate tha

neyed; Chiu-Ming and I and the two

rius, to the hordes of the Satraps. The highways of the Achaemenids-yes, and which befor

us; ashes of the flaming ambitions of the Sassanidae whimpered beneath our feet-the feet of an American botanist, a Chinaman, two Tibetan ponies. We had crept through clefts

d Persia's death we four-two men, two beasts-had passed. For a fo

but meat never. About us was a welter of mighty summits. We were, I knew,

ey of enchantment, and here, though it had been so early, I ha

ded over it, serene, majestic, immutable-like the untroubled calm which rests

lds-the snow fields and glaciers that crowned him. Far to the west another gray and ochreous giant reared its bulk, closing the vale. North and south, the hori

hich we must take. They nodded, they leaned toward each other, they seemed to whisper-then to lift their heads and look up like crowding swarms of little azure fays, half impudently, wholly trustfully, into the fac

d the clustering summits a row of faded brown, low hills knelt-like brown-robed, withered and weary old men, backs bent, faces hidd

rtling suddenness which in the strange light of these latitudes objects spring into vision. As he stood scanning my camp there

good inches over six feet, a vigorous head with unruly clus

t his hand. "Richard Keen Drake, rece

ok his hand, shook it warm

d. "Know all about you, that is. My father admired yo

had died about a year before I had started on this j

irresistible desire for something different. Couldn't think of anything more different from Tibe

en feeling the need of companionship with my own kind. I even wondered, as I led the wa

ected Alvin Drake-a trifle dried, precise, wholly abstracted with his experiments-to beget, stil

-Ming as to just how I wanted supper prepared, and his gaze

nd gossip, as is the habit of journeyers who come upon each other in the silent places.

d, drawing

of a cook. Where

y I to

valley's western gate; the whole vale swiftly darkened-a flood of crystal-clear shadows poured within it.

watching steeps like a messenger, whispered to the nodding poppies, sighed and w

ow of cirrus cloudlets, rank upon rank of them, thrusting their heads into the path of

drink the blood of the

ir blue turned swiftly to a clear and glowing amber-then as abruptly sh

glowed and all at once pressed forward like gigantic slices of palest emerald jade,

rom every snow and glacier-crowned peak, from minaret and pinnacle and towering turret, leaped forth

ey with an incredible glory-as if some god of light itself had

eholder with the hand of ecstasy, the ray which the Tibetans name the Ting-Pa. For a moment this rosy finger pointed to the east, then arched itself,

d a gasp from Drake. And

on from side to side in ever-widening sweep, as though the hi

ayed-and then broke-broke as though a giganti

own and darted earthward into the welter of clustered summits at th

though something reached up, broke tho

. "I saw it. But I never saw anything lik

. As though something reached up, juggled with the ra

dwell here!" qu

my own touch of panic. "Light can be deflected by passage

le of a magnetic field to have done THAT-it's inconceivable." He harke

ered the frigh

ckness had grown there while we had been talking, a pool of darkness again

eart of the zenith; following it, leaped into the sky a host of the sparkling spears of light,

rora,"

ed Drake, gaze intent upon it. "

ok my

dawn this morning. Some little aurora lighter

en from it began to pulse billows of radiance, spangled with infinite darti

ous yellows and metallic saffrons and a shimmer of glittering ash of rose-then w

first, its edges sharpened until they rested upon the blazing glory of the northern sky like

like foam of fire about the lip of a cauldron, and poured through the shining circle as though it were the mo

a columned stream to earth. Then swiftly, a mist swept

uttered Drake.

g-Pa was broken and seemed dra

all my nerves like a-like a metal claw. Purposeful

nce could break the rays of the set

know," he

. "The devils that defied B

l claw!" bre

olonged wailing, a crackling. A great light flashed through the mist, glowed a

dropped embraced upon the