METROPOLIS the act of falling down, from the pushing of the short anns of the machine. from the steady resistance of the gleaming body, terror welled up in him-terror, even to the certainty of Death. He felt-and saw, too-how, from out the S}Vatbes of vapour, the long soft elephant's trunk of the god Ganesha loosened itself from the head, sunken on the chest. and gently, with unerring finger, felt for his, Freder's forehead. He felt the touch of this sucker, almost cool, not in the least painful, hut horrible. Just in the centre, over the bridge of the nose, the ghostly trunk sucked itself fast; it was hardly a pain, yet it bored a fine, dead·sure gimlet, towards the centre of the brain. As though fastened to the clock of an infernal machine the heart began to thump. PateI-noster. . . . Pater;. noster. ... Pater·noster. ...
"I will not," said Freder, throwing back his head to break the cursed contact: "I will not.... I will.... 1 will not...." He grOl2ed for he felt the sweat dropping from his temples like drops of blood in all pockets of the strange uniform which he wore. He felt a rag in one of them and drew it out. He mopped his fore-head and, in doing so, felt the sharp edge of a stiff piece of paper, of which he had taken hold together with the cloth. He pocketed the cloth and examined the paper. It was no larger than a man's hand, bearing neither print nor script. being covered over and over with the tracing of a strange symhol and an apparently half-destroyed plan. Freder tried hard to make something of it but he did not succeed. Of all the signs marked on the plan he did not know one. Ways seemed to be indicated. seeming to be false ways. but they all led to one destination; to a place which was filled with crosses. A symbol of life? Sense in nonsense? As Joh Fredersen's son, Freder was accustomed swiftly and correctly to grasp anything called a plan. He pocketed the plan though it remained before his eyes. The sucker of the elephant's trunk of the god Ganesha glided down to the occupied unsubdued brain which reBected, analysed apd sought. The head, not tamed, sank
39
