past Ruth, perhaps, absorbed in her watch over her brother; perhaps through some hidden opening in this room of hers.
Yuruk let drop the curtains, sidled back to the first room, we after him. The two there had not moved. We drew the saddlebags close, propped ourselves against them.
The black eunuch squatted a dozen feet away, facing us, chin upon his knees, taking us in with unblinking eyes blank of any emotion. Then he began to move slowly his tremendously long arms in easy, soothing motion, the hands running along the floor upon their talons in arcs and circles. It was curious how these hands seemed to be endowed with a volition of their own, independent of the arms upon which they swung.
And now I could see only the hands, shuttling so smoothly, so rhythmically back and forth—weaving so sleepily, so sleepily back and forth —black hands that dripped sleep—hypnotic.
Hypnotic! I sprang from the lethargy closing upon me. In one quick side glance I saw Drake's head nodding—nodding in time to the movement of the black hands. I jumped to my feet, shaking with an intensity of rage unfamiliar to me; thrust my pistol into the wrinkled face.
"Damn you!" I cried. "Stop that. Stop it and turn your back."
The corded muscles of the arms contracted, the claws of the slithering paws drew in as though he were about to clutch me; the ebon pools of eyes were covered with a frozen film of hate.
He could not have known what was this tube with which I menaced him, but its threat he certainly sensed and was afraid to meet. He scuttered about, wrapped his arms around his knees, crouched with back toward us.
"What's the matter?" asked Drake drowsily.
"He tried to hypnotize us," I answered shortly. "And pretty nearly did."
"So that's what it was." He was now wide awake. "I watched those hands of his and got sleepier and sleepier—I guess we'd better tie Mr. Yuruk up." He jumped to his feet.
"No," I said, restraining him. "No. He's safe enough as long as we're on the alert. I don't want to use any force on him yet. Wait until we know we can get something worth while by doing it."
"All right," he nodded, grimly. "But when the time comes I'm telling you straight, Doc, I'm going the limit. There's something about that human spider that makes me itch to squash him—slowly."
"I'll have no compunction—when it's worth while," I answered as grimly.
We sank down again against the saddlebags; Drake brought out a black pipe, looked at it sorrowfully; at me appealingly.
"All mine was on that pony that bolted," I answered his wistfulness.
"All mine was on my beast, too," he sighed. "And I lost my pouch in that spurt from the ruins."
He sighed again, clamped white teeth down upon the stem.
"Of course," he said at last, "if Ventnor was right in that—that disembodied analysis of his, it's rather—well, terrifying, isn't it?"
"It's all of that," I replied, "and considerably more."
"Metal, he said," Drake mused. "Things of metal with brains of thinking crystal and their blood the lightnings. You accept that?"
"So far as my own observation has gone—yes," I said. "Metallic yet mobile. Inorganic but with all the qualities we have hitherto thought only those of the organic and with others added. Crystalline, of course, in structure and highly complex. Activated by magnetic-electric forces consciously exerted and as much a part of their life as brain energy and nerve currents are of our human life. Animate, moving, sentient combinations of metal and electric energy."
He said:
"The opening of the Disk from the globe and of the two blasting stars from the pyramids show the flexibility of the outer—plate would you call it? I couldn't help thinking of the armadillo after I had time to think at all."
"It may be"—I struggled against the conviction now strong upon me —"it may be that within that metallic shell is an organic body, something soft—animal, as there is within the horny carapace of the turtle, the nacreous valves of the oyster, the shells of the crustaceans —it may be that even their inner surface is organic—"
"No," he interrupted, "if there is a body—as we know a body —it must be between the outer surface and the inner, for the latter is crystal, jewel hard, impenetrable.
"Goodwin—Ventnor's bullets hit fair. I saw them strike. They did not ricochet—they dropped dead. Like flies dashed up against a rock —and the Thing was no more conscious of their striking than a rock would have been of those flies."
"Drake," I said, "my own conviction is that these creatures are absolutely metallic, entirely inorganic—incredible, unknown forms. Let us go on that basis."
"I think so, too," he nodded; "but I wanted you to say it first. And yet —is it so incredible, Goodwin? What is the definition of vital intelligence—sentience?
"Haeckel's is the accepted one. Anything which can receive a stimulus, that can react to a stimulus and retains memory of a stimulus must be called an intelligent, conscious entity. The gap between what we have long called the organic and the inorganic is steadily decreasing. Do you know of the remarkable experiments of Lillie upon various metals?"
"Vaguely," I said.
"Lillie," he went on, "proved that under the electric current and other exciting mediums metals exhibited practically every reaction of the human nerve and muscle. It grew weary, rested, and after resting was perceptibly stronger than before; it got what was practically indigestion, and it exhibited a peculiar but unmistakable memory. Also, he found, it could acquire disease and die.
"Lillie concluded that there existed a real metallic consciousness. It was Le Bon who first proved also that metal is more sensitive than man, and that its immobility is only apparent.*
[* Le Bon, Evolution Of Matter, 11. ]
"Take the block of magnetic iron that stands so gray and apparently lifeless, subject it to a magnetic current lifeless, what happens? The iron block is composed of molecules which under ordinary conditions are disposed in all possible directions indifferently. But when the current passes through there is tremendous movement in that apparently inert mass. All of the tiny particles of which it is composed turn and shift until their north poles all point more or less approximately in the direction of the magnetic force.
"When that happens the block itself becomes a magnet, filled with and surrounded by a field of magnetic energy; instinct with it. Outwardly it has not moved; actually there has been prodigious motion."
"But it is not conscious motion," I objected.
"Ah, but how do you know?" he asked. "If Jacques Loeb* is right, that action of the iron molecules is every bit as conscious a movement as the least and the greatest of our own. There is absolutely no difference between them.
"Your and my and its every movement is nothing but an involuntary and inevitable reaction to a certain stimulus. If he's right, then I'm a buttercup—but that's neither here nor there. Loeb—all he did was to restate destiny, one of humanity's oldest ideas, in the terms of tropisms, infusoria and light. Omar Khayyam chemically reincarnated in the Rockefeller Institute. Nevertheless
