me on from unseen clutch to clutch; it was as though up to my hips I moved through a closely woven yet fluid mass of cobwebs. I had the fantastic idea that if I so willed I could slip over the edge of the blocks, crawl about their sides without falling — like a fly on the vertical faces of a huge sugar loaf.
I drew beside Ventnor. He was staring ahead, striving, I knew, to pierce the mists for some glimpse of Ruth.
He turned to me, his face drawn with anxiety, his eyes feverish.
“Can you see them, Walter?” His voice shook. “God — why did I ever let her go like that? Why did I let her go alone?”
“They’ll be close ahead, Martin.” I spoke out of a conviction I could not explain. “Whatever it is we’re bound for, wherever it is the woman’s taking us, she means to keep us together — for a time at least. I’m sure of it.”
“She said — follow.” It was Drake beside us. “How the hell can we do anything else? We haven’t any control over this bird we’re on. But she has. What she meant, Ventnor, is that it would follow her.”
“That’s true”— new hope softened the haggard face — “that’s true — but is it? We’re reckoning with creatures that man’s imagination never conceived — nor could conceive. And with this — woman — human in shape, yes, but human in thought — never. How then can we tell —”
He turned once more, all his consciousness concentrated in his searching eyes.
Drake’s rifle slipped from his hand.
He stooped to pick it up; then tugged with both hands. The rifle lay immovable.
I bent and strove to aid him. For all the pair of us could do, the rifle might have been a part of the gleaming surface on which it rested. The tiny, deepset star points winked up —
“They’re — laughing at us!” grunted Drake.
“Nonsense,” I answered, and tried to check the involuntary shuddering that shook me, as I saw it shake him. “Nonsense. These blocks are great magnets — that’s what holds the rifle; what holds us, too.”
“I don’t mean the rifle,” he said; “I mean those points of lights — the eyes —”
There came from Ventnor a cry of almost anguished relief. We straightened. Our head shot above the mists like those of swimmers from water. Unnoticed, we had been climbing out of them.
And a hundred yards ahead of us, cleaving them, veiled in them almost to the shoulders, was Norhala, red-gold tresses steaming; and close beside her were the brown curls of Ruth. At her brother’s cry she turned and her arm flashed out of the veils with reassuring gesture.
A mile away was an opening in the valley’s mountainous wall; toward it we were speeding. It was no ragged crevice, no nature split fissure; it gave the impression of a gigantic doorway.
“Look,” whispered Drake.
Between us and the vast gateway, gleaming triangles began to break through the vapors, like the cutting fins of sharks, glints of round bodies like gigantic porpoises — the vapors seethed with them. Quickly the fins and rolling curves were all about us. They centered upon the portal, streamed through — a horde of the metal things, leading us, guarding us, playing about us.
And weird, unutterably weird was that spectacle — the vast and silent vale with its still, smooth vapors like a coverlet of cloud; the regal head of Norhala sweeping over them; the dull glint and gleam of the metal paradoxes flowing, in ordered motion, all about us; the titanic gateway, glowing before us.
We were at its threshold; over it.
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