Miss Davis had gotten the President of Nicaragua on the room visiphone.
“President Monteiro will see you in ten minutes,” she said. “He is in Parlor L.”
I went into the next room, where Pat was busy developing his films. He had taken his small metal captive from his binocular case and confined it in a stout bird cage with a small padlock on the door. It was leaning against the bars, watching him with its round, headlight eyes, as I entered.
“Get your stuff in shape so you can leave it, Pat,’' I said. “We’re going to call on President Monteiro in ten minutes, and take the prisoner with us.”
Ten minutes later I knocked on the door of President Monteiro’s suite. Pat stood behind me with his caged prisoner. We were ushered in by an attendant. The president, a small dark man with a carefully trimmed iron gray beard, was seated behind a large mahogany table. Beside him, with her hand on his shoulder, stood a slender, brown-eyed girl, apparently about twenty years of age. I recognized her instantly from the photographs I had seen of her, as Dolores Monteiro, daughter of the president, and the most famous beauty in the two Americas.
The president greeted me cordially. I introduced my assistant, and he presented us to his daughter. An attendant placed chairs.
Selecting a long, thin cigar from a humidor, and pushing it toward me with a gesture of invitation, the president said:
“And now, Senor Stuart, what is this important message you have for me?”
Briefly I told him of our strange experience—the astounding sights we had witnessed, and our narrow escape. He smoked with countenance unruffled until the end. Then he said:
“Understand me, senor, I am not doubting your word. But a story so strange as yours needs substantiation. You will not mind if I—ah—investigate further?”
“That is precisely what I hope you will do,” I replied. “We have brought an exhibit, however, which I believe will convince you—a miniature specimen of the strange race of metal creatures we saw.”
I lifted the cage, and put it on the table. The little creature inside it focused its huge headlight eyes inquiringly on each of us in turn, as if wondering what to expect next.
“Looks like a man-made automaton,” commented the president.
“True,” I replied, “yet it, and its larger fellows which we encountered, acted as if endowed with intelligence.”
“You think these creatures will be—hostile?”
“Judging by their past actions, yes.”
“Hum. We’ll try them a little further.”
He pressed a button on the table. A buzzer sounded in the next room and a uniformed aide came in.
“Dispatch three combat ships, fully armed and manned, to the crater Coseguina at once,” he ordered. “Tell them to be on the lookout for flying globes and strange metal beings, but to make no hostile move unless attacked. Have one descend as far as possible into the crater while the other two stand by to guard it. If attacked, they are to defend themselves to the best of their ability. And let me hear their reports.”
The aide bowed and withdrew.
“Perhaps you would like to see some photographs,” I suggested.
“With pleasure,” replied the president.
“I’ll make some quick prints and bring them up,” said Pat, rising. “Shall I leave the prisoner here?”
" Yes, leave him,” said Monteiro. “I want to examine him further.”
Pat went out and closed the door. The president poked an inquiring finger through the bars at the little creature in the cage, then withdrew it hastily with an exclamation of surprise as it struck at the encroaching digit with one of its tentacle arms.
"Per Dios!” he exclaimed. “This one, at least, is hostile. We shall soon find out about the others.”
We did not have long to wait. The radiovisiphone hummed, and the face of the squadron commander’s operator appeared in the disc.
“We are hovering over the southern rim of Coseguina. RX-337 hang? over the northern rim. RN-339 is above the shaft. It descends. A huge sphere has come out to meet it. They collide. The 339 falls, a mass of wreckage. Our machine gunners are spraying the globe with bullets, as are those of the 337. It darts for the 337, which tries to elude it, but is brought down with one side torn off. It is coming at us. Our commander has ordered a retreat. It is too swift for us. It is almost upon us.
We are d-”
There was a terrific crash, and the disc went blank. Tensely, we waited in front of the disc—the president, the girl and I. It continued blank. Monteiro rushed into the next room. I could hear him volleying orders.
Suddenly I was aware that my wrist was tingling. Someone was trying to call me. I pressed the connection of my wrist radiophone.
"Mr. Stuart Mr. Stuart!" It was the voice of Reeves.
"Art Reeves!" I exclaimed, "where are you?”
"Not much tine. Called to warn you. That little metal man guided them to you. Keep him in darkness. Leave at once. They're coming for me. Must-”
“Quick!" I said. "We must get out of here!”
Stripping the scarf from the table, I was about to muffle the cage when something struck the window-screen —ripped it away. A huge tentacle whipped into the room. Clinging to it were four of the globular metal creatures. One picked up the cage, a second seized the girl, and the other two pounced upon me, gripping my arms with their powerful tentacles. As helpless as if I had been held in a steel vise, I saw girl and cage jerked out of the window and upward. Then the big tentacle returned, wrapped around my waist, and dragged me after them.
CHAPTER III The City of Metal
I WAS thrown into a small, brilliantly lighted room. A heavy metal door clanged shut behind me. To all appearances the floor, walls and ceiling were constructed of seamless brown metal, without windows or doors. Even the source of the light was invisible. It seemed to radiate from the six metal surfaces that surrounded me.
On the floor lay the girl, a look of terror in her eyes.
Bending over, I lifted her to a sitting posture. The floor lurched suddenly, and I sprawled beside her. Recovering my balance, I asked:
“Are you hurt, senorita?”
“No, senor, but I am very frightened. Where are we?”
“If I'm not mistaken,” I replied, “we’re riding in one of the swift flying globes of the metal people.”
In a few minutes there was a second lurch, followed by a sudden jolt that threw us both flat. Then a door opened in the apparently solid wall, and four of the metal creatures came in. Helping us to our feet, they hustled us out upon a platform constructed from brown metal. It was part of an extensive system of docks, along which hundreds of the globes rested. Countless others were arriving and leaving, from and for all points of the compass. Far above these flying globes I could see, through a dim haze, a great self-luminous dome—the ceiling of this tremendous underground world.
But most amazing of all was the immense city of gleaming white metal which surrounded the docks—a city of glistening towers, walls and battlements, all metal.
But conductors led us to a queer brown-metal vehicle —flat, with a hand-rail traversing the center longitudinally. In lieu of wheels, it traveled on four spheres, which supported it on idling bearings. There were no seats. Our captors, after bundling us aboard, indicated that we must stand, gripping the rail in the center.
The vehicle started smoothly, accelerating with great rapidity. I was unable to see any controls, and none of our captors seemed to be driving or steering it. Emerging from the dock, we rolled out on a broad, smooth street, paved with brown metal. Many vehicles like that we occupied were traversing this street, some of them at terrific rates of speed. Some had passengers, some carried materials of various kinds, and some were empty.
Moving in and out among the vehicles, and often traveling at even greater speeds, were thousands of silvery metal globes of divers sizes. I noticed some of them no larger than buckshot, while others were easily ten feet in diameter. I saw them, from ti
me to time, stop at the entrances of buildings, put forth arms, legs and heads, and enter. Others, coming out of the buildings, retracted their limbs and heads and rolled swiftly away. I judged them to be factories, and afterward confirmed this belief.
We passed a building under construction, and I saw that it was being put together in the same manner as the metal shaft I had seen rising in Coseguina—the bodies of thousands of these strange creatures being utilized as building material.
Presently we drew up before a metal wall about fifty feet in height. Two massive gates, which had previously appeared as part of the wall itself, swung back, revealing a winding metal roadway which led to an immense building that stood in the center of the most unusual garden I have ever seen.
Instead of grass, flowers, shrubs and trees, it was filled with mosses, moulds, fungae, lichens and other thallophytic growths. Short velvety gray moss carpeted the lawn. There were clumps of huge mushrooms and morels, of many shapes, sizes and colors. But the most striking of all were the varieties of gigantic slime moulds.
The leocarpus fragilis with its gleaming golden spore cases shaped like elongated eggs, a mycetozoan on the borderland between the animal and vegetable kingdoms, grew to a height of ten feet. Globe-shaped physariums attained a diameter of three to four feet. And the dusky plumes of the stemonitis, massed in large clumps, waved twenty feet above our heads. Not so pleasing to look upon were the slimy, gelatinous plasmodia of the various species, flowing sluggishly about in the areas to which they had been confined, questing the food which they must have in order to produce the beautiful plumes, globes, baskets and ovoid spore cases of mature ones.
They were all creatures of the darkness—conceived and developed without sunlight—unable even to exist in the direct rays of the lord of the solar system, but multiplying and growing prodigiously, here in this weird, pale light of the nether world.
We came to a stop before what looked like the unbroken wall of the building, but here again a previously invisible door opened, revealing a circular doorway about fifteen feet in diameter.
Here we left our strange vehicle, and walked between our guards along a narrow corridor until we came to a great central foyer which evidently reached to the top of the building. Looking up, I could see galleries encircling it at each level, clear to the top. On the floor of this room near its center was a ring of black discs, each about ten feet in diameter, encircled by a narrow railing. Our captors led us out on one of these and directed us to grip the railing, whereupon it shot up into the air with considerable speed, then slanted over toward one of the higher balconies.
Peering over the railing, I saw that we were being lifted by a gigantic segmented tentacle emerging from the floor where the disc had been. After we had been deposited on the balcony the disc swiftly returned to its original position.
MANY round doors opened on the balcony, and we were conducted through one of these along a corridor to a second, much larger doorway, on each side of which stood two guards carrying metal tubes. They paid no attention to us as we were ushered into a magnificently furnished room which contrasted oddly with the plain brown metal corridors and foyer. The foyer was thickly and richly carpeted, the walls were decorated with murals near the bottom and bas reliefs above, and the ceiling was of luminous yellow metal, which shed a soft, amber light over the whole scene.
At the far end of the room a figure reclined beneath a green and gold canopy, upon a luxuriously cushioned dais raised about three feet above the level of the floor. As we drew near the throne, the figure sat up. I gazed aghast at the thing that confronted us.
At first I thought it a living human skeleton, but as we drew closer, I saw that its flesh and skin were transparent, its bones and teeth translucent, and its viscera and nervous system opaque. Its immense head, fully twice as large in proportion to its size as that of any earthly man, was encircled by a jewel-encrusted gold band, which supported an immense emerald at the center of the forehead. It wore no clothing, but its waist was encircled by a belt of golden links from which a dagger with a jeweled hilt, and several other instruments or weapons, I knew not which, depended. Its feet were enclosed in pointed golden slippers.
The horrible creature arose as our conductors brought us to a halt, and stepped forward to examine us. It poked me in the midriff with an inquisitive, gelatinous finger, pulled down my chin to look into my mouth, and felt my arms and legs. Wherever it touched me, it left prints of slime very much like those left by a garden slug. Its fingers felt cold and clammy.
Having completed its examination of me, the thing returned to its dais and reclined. Then, to my surprise, it addressed, or seemed to address me in English.
“I am disappointed in you, Walter Stuart. Although my other prisoner, Arthur Reeves, looked up to you as a leader, you are one of the creatures of the lower order. And your cranial capacity precludes the possibility of a brain large enough to receive and retain the higher training. Are there no creatures of the higher order upon the outer crust of the earth ?”
“I take it,” I replied, “that you consider yourself a creature of the higher order.”
“I rule the creatures of the higher order,” was the reply.
“These men of metal?”
“No, small-brained one. They are machines of my invention. I rule the people of my race—the higher order of creatures—the Snals. With the aid of my metal creatures, my Teks, I conquered the inner world —brought every Snal nation under my rule. They are irresistible, my Teks, when I direct them. I am Zet, conqueror and emperor of the inner world.”
“I am puzzled to know,” I said, “how you learned English.”
“Your brain is even more deficient than I suspected,” said Zet. “Our conversation is one of thoughts, not words.”
“But I am speaking, and you seem to speak,” I insisted. “I can hear you.”
“You can speak and hear in a dream,” said Zet, “yet you actually do neither. Call this a dream if you like. Or bring up, if you wish, those other words in your mind—telepathy or clairaudience. Our subjective minds are conversing without the employment of physical means. The conversation is instantly transferred to the objective consciousness.
“But who are you to question Zet, ruler of the inner world ? Answer my question.”
“There are no Snals on the outer crust of the earth,” I said. “It is dominated by creatures called men, of which I am a specimen.”
“That is unfortunate,” said Zet. “I had hoped to find creatures of a higher order to conquer. But the outer crust will make a mighty empire—and I can set my Snals to rule over these inferior animals called men. It may be, too, that we can improve the race. Perhaps my nobles will take some of your females into their seraglios, thus founding a new race. Our bodies are more fragile than yours. Your brains are inferior to ours. A fusion of the races may prove of great benefit to both. It is worth trying.”
“I’m not so sure that our brains are inferior,” I retorted. “On the outer crust people born with heads as large as yours are usually imbeciles.”
“And in the inner world, people born with heads as small as yours are invariably microcephalous idiots,” he said, apparently unruffled. “But it may be that I can use you. I’ll have you examined by my scientists. I couldn’t use your assistant, Reeves. He disobeyed my first order and communicated with you. To disobey is death.”
“You mean you killed him?”
“I did not slay him in anger, as you seem to think. He was turned over to my scientists for a thorough physical examination which they were very anxious to make. He was the first man they had ever seen, and they desired to take him apart.”
“And they did this while he lived?”
“Partly. I understand that he died shortly after the examination began.”
Vivisection! Poor Art Reeves cut open alive! And at the order of this big-headed, slimy monstrosity before me. Furious anger fired me—quadrupled my strength for the moment. With a sudden jerk, I twisted my arms fr
ee of the metal tentacles that held them, and leaped for the dais. My fingers ached to clutch the gelatinous throat of the thing that had ordered his death.
With lightning quickness, the hand of Zet jerked a small tube from his belt—pointed it at my breast. I felt a terrific shock, as if a powerful electric current were passing through my body. My muscles grew rigid —immobile. I seemed rooted to the floor. Then the two Teks leaped forward, seized my arms and dragged me back to my original position.
Zet replaced the tube in his belt.
“So,” he said, “you are even more of an animal than I suspected. In one instant, you permitted your emotions to completely overthrow your reason. I doubt if I can use you. But my scientists will find out while I examine this other creature, which appears to be a female.”
I saw the girl shudder as Zet arose and walked toward her. Then, struggling futilely, I was dragged away by the two Teks.
CHAPTER IV The Battle
MY TWO metal captors took me down the corridor and out upon the balcony. Here they placed me on a railed black metal disc similar to that which had lifted us from the first floor, and we were hoisted to the second balcony above. Then they led me down another corridor, and through a circular door into a large room in which more, than a hundred Snals were working, some seated at tables, others standing before high benches on which were flasks, tubes, retorts, immense magnifying glasses, and much other paraphernalia I did not recognize.
I was conducted to a square, glassed-in room in the center of this vast laboratory, where a Snal with a head even larger than that of Zet, sat at a metal table. This room, with its glass partitions, was so situated that he could look into any corner of the laboratory without leaving his seat.
Fastened to a metal band that encircled his head was an immense lens that covered both eyes and most of his nose, so magnifying those hideous features that they were out of proportion with the others, and creating a most grotesque effect.
The Metal Monster Page 2