GODS OF SPACE-5
1045 Words
QUEER INDEED. HOW COULD he even attempt to explain it to her! These genes—hideous monsters here on this little world, held in check, destroyed by the Xarite radiance. And on Earth, the dread sub-microscopic spores of poliomelitus—his father had killed them with Xarite radiance. As though here might be not only the original source of the terrible spores, but the cure for them as well. Nature striking a balance here; and failing to do it on Earth. Did the spores, the genes drift through the immensity of space? Young Atwood well remembered that even a hundred years ago, physicians had advanced some such theory. Spores, landing on Earth, where conditions would not allow them to grow in size, but where they could only multiply themselves in the bodies of human victims.
“I was thinking,” Atwood began again. And then he shrugged hopelessly and gave it up. “Ah-li, listen. Take me to your people now. They will know I’m friendly?”
“Friendly? Why, of course. A god—to help them—”
And he would get his cylinder full of Xarite in its pure state, and then go back to Earth. And take the girl with him? The thought occurred to him suddenly and sent a queer vague thrill through him....
She was helping him to his feet. “We will go,” she said. “The God—Roh-ee—Oh, they will welcome you!”
“We’re supposed to go up here over the tree-tops?”
With a faint smile she regarded him. “Well, it is not very far. But you are clumsy.”
“I think I’d feel better on the ground,” he agreed.
A leap down, for him from this hundred-foot height, could have been dangerous. It was different with the girl. On Earth she might have weighed not much over a hundred pounds; and with her slight weight here, the pressure of her spread grass-cloak against this heavy air was sufficient. She fluttered down; and like a clumsy monkey he half dropped, half fell, clinging to the vine-ropes.
They started over the rocks. “We’ll take it slow,” he said. “Until I get used to it.”
They followed the open spaces between the patches of forest. The weird scene was dim in the night-glow. Occasionally now, through breaks in the patches of lush vegetation, Atwood could see that the radiance of the Xarite-glow ahead of them was growing.... Strange progress, this half walking, half leaping advance. It was hard for Atwood to keep his feet; almost impossible to gauge the distance a leap would carry him. Many times he fell. Muscles that he had seldom used before were beginning to ache.
“Let’s rest a minute,” he protested presently.
They were in a rocky defile, like a little gully descending. Atwood dropped to the ground and drew up the girl beside him. More than ever now, the idea of taking her to Earth was in his mind. How could he ever have imagined leaving her here, an Earthgirl, suffering from amnesia. And he was thinking. Dr. Georg Johns, his father’s friend, had left the Earth, presumably to come here.
“Listen, Ah-li,” he said. “I don’t want to confuse you too much. Don’t think I’m crazy or anything. In this place where I just came from there used to be someone called Dr. Georg Johns. Doesn’t that mean something to you? Think back.”
He stared at her; and on her face, at mention of the name, there came a queer, startled puzzlement.
“Why—why—” she could only stammer. Puzzled, with some vague consciousness of memory stirring within her. And then it was gone. “Why—what is that?” she murmured. “You speak so strangely. The words I understand, but the things you say—”
“Forget it, Ah-li. I don’t want to worry you. There are things you used to know, and that you’ll remember sometime. They’ll come back to you.”
“My life in the God-Heaven?”
“Yes, sure. Call it that.”
During all this time with the girl, Atwood had been conscious of that weird, gruesome undercurrent of humming which seemed a sinister background to this little world. And now, as momentarily they were silent here in the small rocky recess, abruptly he was aware that the humming had greatly intensified. Ah-li at the same instant noticed it. Terror leaped to her face as her hand gripped his arm.
“That humming—” he murmured.
“Yes. Oh, evidently this is the time for the genes to come out! I thought so; that is why I was out in the tree-tops tonight—to see if any were around.”
The genes. On Earth they might remain always as sub-microscopic spores, multiplying in human nerve and brain tissue to cause the ghastly poliomelitus. But here they were merely lurking monsters, seasonally growing into visible things of horror. Things with a voice. Countless billions of them, with their blended tiny voices faintly audible.
The rock recess here was dark. It was like a little cave, with an open, narrow front. Atwood and the girl were seated several feet back from the entrance. And now, as the tiny humming suddenly was increasing, in the grotto entrance close before them, a little spot was visible on the rocks. A spot, like a dot of saffron glow. For that stricken second numbly Atwood stared at it; an inch-long blob of glow, with a tiny solid nucleus.
Only a second or two Atwood and Ah-li sat transfixed with horror. The glow was expanding. A swift expansion—so swift that it was like a saffron balloon being blown up into size tremendous. As though hideous forces of nature, held in check, now abruptly were released. A tentacled thing, big as a football. But before Atwood and the girl could more than struggle to their feet, it was a monstrous saffron thing of horror—a round, glowing, luminous pulpy mass, big as Atwood now. Its bulk blocked the cave-entrance.
“Good God—” Atwood muttered. “We’re penned in here!”
There was no chance for them to leap away. In terror Ah-li was clinging to him. The dark narrow confines of the recess were lurid now with the monster’s ghastly yellow light. Its hideous voice was a humming throb. For another second it stood blocking the opening, apparently its full size now, with long tentacles weaving like tongues of yellow fire; and a ring of clustered eyes in its center, balefully glowing.
And then, with a rolling lunge, it hurled itself forward!
- - - -
- Writer
