METROPOLIS By Thea von Harbou ace books A Division of Charter Communications Inc. 1120 Avenue of the Americas New York, N.Y. 10036 This Ace edition follows the text of the first English edition, originally published in 1927. _Title-page design by Jack Gaughan._ Printed in U.S.A. THE WORLD OF 2026 A.D. Metropolis is a classic of science-fiction which created an impact on the literary world which reverberates to this day. Its dramatic presentation of the city-world of the next century stirred the minds of readers with an unforgettable vision of a metropolis grown to Gargantuan proportions, of humanity fighting to keep its soul against the monster world of machinery, robots, and complexity that had been spawned in our own century. The book inspired a movie which is possibly the best science-fiction film ever made. This book is not of to-day or of the future. It tells of no place. It serves no cause, party or class. It has a moral which grows on the pillar of understanding: “The mediator between brain and muscle must be the Heart.” —T. vH. CHAPTER I Now the rumbling of the great organ swelled to a roar, pressing, like a rising giant, against the vaulted ceiling, to burst through it. Freder bent his head backwards, his wide-open, burning eyes stared unseeingly upward. His hands formed music from the chaos of the notes; struggling with the vibration of the sound and stirring him to his innermost depths. He was never so near tears in his life and, blissfully helpless, he yielded himself up to the glowing moisture which dazzled him. Above him, the vault of heaven in _lapis lazuli_; hovering therein, the twelve-fold mystery, the Signs of the Zodiac in gold. Set higher above them, the seven crowned ones: the planets. High above all a silver-shining bevy of stars: the universe. Before the bedewed eyes of the organ-player, to his music, the stars of heavens began the solemn mighty dance. The breakers of the notes dissolved the room into nothing. The organ, which Freder played, stood in the middle of the sea. It was a reef upon which the waves foamed. Carrying crests of froth, they dashed violently onward, and the seventh was always the mightiest. But high above the sea, which bellowed in the uproar of the waves, the stars of heaven danced the solemn, mighty dance. Shaken to her core, the old earth started from her sleep. Her torrents dried up; her mountains fell to ruin. From the ripped open depths the fire welled up; the earth burnt with all she bore. The waves of the sea became waves of fire. The organ flared up, a roaring torch of music. The earth, the sea and the hymn-blazing organ crashed in and became ashes.