hat upheld Ruth and Norhala swayed, bent
over the gap between us, touched the top on which we rode.

Gently the two were plucked up; swiftly they were set beside us.

Came a shrill, keen wailing--louder than ever I had heard before. There
was an earthquake trembling; a maelstrom swirling in which we spun; a
swift sinking.

The Thing split in two. Up before us rose a stupendous, stepped pyramid;
little smaller it was than that which Cheops built to throw its shadows
across holy Nile. Into it streamed, over it clicked, score upon score of
cubes, building it higher and higher. It lurched forward--away from us.

From Norhala came a single cry--resonant, blaring like a wrathful,
golden trumpet.

The speeding shape halted, hesitated; it seemed about to return. Crashed
down upon us an abrupt crescendo of the distant drumming; peremptory,
commanding. The shape darted forward; raced away crushing to straw the
trees beneath it in a full quarter-mile-wide swath.

Great gray eyes wide, filled with incredulous wonder, stunned disbelief,
Norhala for an instant faltered. Then out of her white throat, through
her red lips pelted a tempest of staccato buglings.

Under them what was left of the Thing leaped, tore on. Norhala's flaming
hair crackled and streamed; about her body of milk and pearl--about
Ruth's creamy skin--a radiant nimbus began to glow.

In the distance I saw a sapphire spark; knew it for Norhala's home. Not
far from it now was the rushing pyramid--and it came to me that within
that shape was strangely neither globe nor pyramid. Nor except for
the trembling cubes that made the platform on which we stood, did the
shrunken Thing carrying us hold any unit of the Metal Monster except its
spheres and tetrahedrons--at least within its visible bulk.

The sapphire spark had grown to a glimmering azure marble. Steadily we
gained upon the pyramid. Never for an instant ceased that scourging hail
of notes from Norhala--never for an instant lessened the drumming clamor
that seemed to try to smother them.

The sapphire marble became a sapphire ball, a great globe. I saw the
Thing we sought to join lift itself into a prodigious pillar; the
pillar's base thrust forth stilts; upon them the Thing stepped over the
blue dome of Norhala's house.

The blue bubble was close; now it curved below us. Gently we were lifted
down; were set before its portal. I looked up at the bulk that had
carried us.

I had been right--built it was o