The Metal Monster

outhful resiliency, lay for long, awake and uneasy. I had

ly that matter which my growing liking

ked. "Where a

free. And I think you ought to have somebody wit

eemed to a

m. "I'm thinking of striking over the range soon to the Ma

say suits me

tern gate; our united caravans stringing along behind us. Mile after mile we trudge

here was no place for mystery nor dread under this floor of brilli

ced chattering overhead to quarrel with the tiny willow warblers, the chi-u-teb-tok, holding fief of the drooping, graceful bower

tion of the extraordinary atmospheric attributes of these highlands, an atmosphere s

s that might have produced just that effect of the captured aurora. I admit it's all possible. I'll even admit it's all probable, but damn me, D

mid-aft

h we must pass, now plain before us. It did not seem as though we could reach it before dusk, and Drake and I were recon

some hundred yards to his

curving breast which sloped down to merge with the valley's floor. Willow and witch alder, stunted birch and poplar had found roothold, clothed it, until

f way up its slopes and stretching down int

of thirty feet wide, two hundred long, the heel faintly curved and from its hither end, like

t-but what thing was there whose tr

at the base of the triangles where, were this thing indeed

and split trees, the white wood of the latter showing wher

into a smooth, microscopically grained, adamantine complex, and in this matrix poppies still bearing traces of their coloring were imbedded like fossils. A cyclone can and does grip

shings in the night, of the weird glow that had flashed

said. "The sounds-it was

ng's voice was tremulous. "The

d for Drake

ll but one foot?" a

the far side is his other footprint. Shin-je it wa

I inte

ulating glance up

rtions that makes it about right. The length of this thing would give him jus

serious?" I asked

ot mark. How could it be? Look at the mathematical nicety

ssible power had been used to press it down. Like-like a

ed. "What could

here," he said. "Look-except for this one place there isn't a mark anywhere. All t

y without leaving any trace but this? Damned if I don't think Chiu-Ming'

or the mark, there was no slightest

mark was

k like a flower in a maiden's book of poems." Just at twilight we drew out of the valley into the pass. We traveled a full mile along it before darkness forced us to make camp. The gor

he air at dawn be what it would. We dined within on bread and tea, and then, tired to the bone, sought each his place upon the rocky floor. I slept well, waking only