forms, intent upon unknown activities directed toward
unguessable ends, the composite, animate mechanisms labored. And all the
place was filled with a goblin bustle, trollish racketings, ringing of
gnomish anvils, clanging of kobold forges--a clamorous cavern filled
with metal Nibelungens.

We came to the opening of another passage, a doorway piercing the walls
of the workshop. Its incline, though steep, was not dangerous.

Into it we stepped; climbed onward it seemed interminably. Far ahead
of us at last appeared the outline of its further entrance, silhouetted
against and filled with a brighter luminosity. We drew near; stopped
cautiously at its threshold, peering out.

Well it was that we had hesitated. Before us was open space--an abyss in
the body of the Metal Monster.

The corridor opened into it like a window. Thrusting out our heads,
we saw an unbroken wall both above and below. Half a mile away was
its opposite side. Over this pit was a misty sky and not more than a
thousand feet above and black against the heavens was the lip of it--the
cornices of this chasm within the City.

Far, far beneath us we watched the Hordes throw themselves across the
abyss in webs of curving arches and girder-straight bridges; gigantic
we knew these spans must be yet dwarfed to slender footways by
distance. Over them moved hurrying companies; from them came flashings,
glitterings--prismatic, sun golden; plutonic scarlets, molten blues;
javelins of colored light piercing upward from unfolded cubes and globes
and pyramids crossing them or from busy bearers of the shining fruits of
the mysterious workshops.

And as they passed the bridges swung up, coiled and thrust themselves
from sight through openings that closed behind them. Ever, as they
passed, close on their going whipped out other spans so that always
across that abyss a sentient, shifting web was hung.

We drew back, stared into each other's white face. Panic swept through
me, in quick, alternate pulse of ice and fire. For crushingly, no longer
to be denied, came certainty that we were lost within the mazes of this
incredible City--lost in the body of the Metal Monster which that City
was. There was a sick despair in my heart as we turned and slowly made
our way back along the sloping corridor.

A hundred yards, perhaps, we had gone in silence before we stopped,
gazing stupidly at an opening in the wall beside us. The portal had not
been there when we had passed--of