He found himself staggering to his feet, stumbling until he was
by her side. He felt her clutch him, both of them standing there,
numbed and dazed, terrified, with the feeling that the rushing Radaks
would instantly kill them. He remembers that the girl and himself
took a stumbling step forward. To Mack it was like stumbling through
a suddenly appearing black curtain of emptiness. Just an abyss of
soundless nothingness, except that there seemed still to be Vivian's
clutch on his arm. No, it was her hand holding his as they stood
peering at a distant blur of red radiance.
"Viv--where are we? What happened?"
"Pete--I'm frightened--can't--see anything--"
But the red radiance was growing, spreading to dispel the blank empty
darkness so that in a moment he could see the drab, disheveled form
of the girl beside him, her moist, cold hand convulsively clutching
his, and the red light on her pallid, terrified face. And in the
distance now there were outlines--a sort of red line that looked like a
shimmering cliff with jagged spires upstanding in a row.
"Vivian--everything's gone--the Radaks--we're not where we were--Bob
and Shorty--gone--"
The red glow in a moment had brightened to be far more luminous than
they remembered it in the caverns. Obviously there was a sky overhead
now--a lurid, murky, blood-red haze of infinite distance. This was
the outer surface of the little planetoid. The Realm of the Deathless
Monsters! Mack realized it with a shudder of terror. He and Vivian
now could see that they were standing upon a little rise of ground,
in what could have been called a forest. Everywhere great stalks of
spindly blue and grey vegetation towered into the air. Growing things
of fantastic shape, woven in places to be a solid jungle. Or again
there were open glades of rocky ground--buttes and little spires, small
ravines and crevices. All of it bathed in crimson, as though here were
a bloody landscape of unutterable horror. The horror of things not yet
seen ... things lurking--
"Oh Pete, what can we do?" Hungry and faint she swayed against him. But
in the blood-red light she was trying to smile. "You tell us what we
ought to do--I will help us do it, Pete. I'm not--not afraid."
But the terror of despair was clutching at both of them. Mack tried to
gather his wits. Alone here on an alien world. Could they find food and
drink? Wander here, until some ghastly monster engulfed them? Or should
they try to get back underground? Why? To have the murderous Radaks
fall upon them and kill them?
But the will to live in every human is very strong. No one will lie
down and just hopelessly wait for death.
"Viv--those cliffs over there--cliffs with the spires--there ought to
be tunnels maybe at the bottom of them. If we could get back--maybe get
to Bob and Shorty--" His voice trailed away. It all seemed so hopeless.
Then he felt the girl clutch at his arm. "Look! Maybe that's water? I'm
so thirsty--"
"I see it. Maybe it is. Come on."
In a nearby open glade, surrounded by stalks of the towering fibrous
vegetation, what could have been a shallow pool of water was spread on
the open rocks. A little pool, twenty feet or so in diameter. Rivulets
extended off to the sides of it in crevices of the rock-surfaces. It
was quite shallow, seemingly only a few inches deep. The red radiant
glow that suffused everything stained it like blood, but it was
translucent so that the rocks showed through it.
Was it water? As they approached, Vivian stepped over one of the
branching rivulet arms. The translucent red stuff suddenly lifted from
the rocks, the little tentacle arm of it wrapping itself around her
ankle!
* * * * *
The girl screamed. In a panic Mack reached down, plucking at the red
mass. Ghastly horror! It was like quivering, sticky glue. Frantically
he tore at it. Warm, pulsating, protoplasm. It stuck to his fingers,
greedily fastening upon his flesh until he wiped it away. Vivian,
too, was frantically flailing at the stuff. And in that second Mack
was aware that the whole twenty-foot spread of it on the rocks was in
motion now--rolling itself up from the rocks, congealing, gathering
itself into a great circular mass. Huge, eight-foot ball of blood-red,
pulsating protoplasm. Yet now it seemed there was a nucleus, a little
central part, more solid than the rest, suddenly growing to look almost
like a head and face in the center of the mass. Red-gleaming eyes; a
sucking mouth, yawning.
All this Mack saw in a horrified second or two while still he was
flailing to cast away the broken, pulpy arm of the monster. And he saw
now that the great ball of it was rocking. Then it started to roll and
bump toward them!
"Vivian! Run--good Lord, here it comes!"
They fled. But behind them it was coming, gathering speed, bumping and
squishing over the rocks. Mack tried to keep his wits. The monstrous
thing was only twenty feet behind them now. And as it rolled, it was
expanding. A lashing ball twice as high as their heads. Then ahead of
them Mack saw a narrow pass between two huge rocks--a space some three
feet wide. He shoved Vivian into it--a space too small for the monster
to follow. It was a crevice only some ten feet long. They dashed
through it.
Mack turned to see what the crimson Deathless Thing would do. It had
hit the rocks, and now it was oozing through the narrow space--thin red
streamer of protoplasm feeding itself through the crevice. Mack and
Vivian had fled to one side, and as the jet of red pulp came through,
out on the other side it rolled itself again into a ball--ghastly
thing that kept on going down the slope! In a moment it was a hundred
feet away. Panting, Mack clutched his companion and they stared. The
bumping, rolling circular mass had reached a patch of forest. It
slowed; stopped.
"Pete, look!" The girl's terrified, awed voice murmured it. "Look at it
now!"
There in the forest glade the monstrous crimson ball was sagging,
flattening, spreading itself out into a thin, translucent layer on the
rocky ground. Then it was motionless, quiescent, waiting.
"Well!" Mack breathed. "At least we know now what to avoid! We--"
But again Vivian gripped him. "What's that over there?" Her shaking
hand gestured to one side. It was an upright blob moving in a patch of
trees. A tree hid it; then it showed again. It stopped, seemed to turn
upon itself. Still upright. Then again it moved.
Suddenly Mack gasped, "A man! Look--see it now--a man--why--why it's
Blaine!"
Startled relief was in his voice. The figure came to another open
space, where the crimson glow in the air showed it plainly. It was
Blaine. He was moving along, gazing around as though searching.
"Blaine! Blaine!" Mack called.
The banker turned at the voice; saw Mack and Vivian who now were
running toward him. "You Mack--Vivian--you're safe--"
"Yes, sure!" It was a blessed relief to Mack.
"I've been looking for you," Blaine called. He was running to meet
them. "And I've got something--something important! A weapon--"
The three reached each other. Blaine and Mack gripped hands. Then
suddenly Vivian gasped: "Another! Another of those Things--"
Out among the trees beyond where Blaine had been a moment before, a
slithering red shape was visible. Another of the Deathless Things which
soundlessly had been stalking Blaine. Like a huge thirty-foot crimson
python it was sliding through the vegetation. Its neck and head came
up, reared up as for a second it stopped, peering with red-green eyes
seeking its prey. Then it lowered its head and came slithering rapidly
forward!
* * * * *
I must go back now for just a moment to recount what had happened to
Blaine, from that moment when the Radak guards hustled him away from
their shriveled ancient ruler. Ignoring his protests, he was shoved
along a corridor, thrown into a cave-cell and its door-slide closed
upon him. But he wasn't alone there for long. Presently the slide
opened again and a figure came in. It was obviously a Radak, but of
somewhat a different type. The same square, powerful look. But this one
was taller, almost as tall as Blaine. Grey-skinned, lean and muscular.
He seemed fairly young, thirty Earth-years perhaps.
"I have come for to talk to you," the visitor announced. He sat stiffly
on a rock by a wall of the cave. His grey-black woven garment swished
as he motioned Blaine to sit on the ground before him. "You are very
interesting to me. Sit down."
"Thanks. I'll stand," Blaine said. "You speak my language very well."
"That I should." The Radak's smile made his strange face wrinkle into
a grimace. "I am Ratan. Our Great Mind sent me to your Earth. I picked
you Earthmen, and ordered you seized. I will tell you about that. You
can be very helpful to us, I am thinking. Perhaps especially so. I am
commanded to tell you our plans."
Carefully Blaine listened to the strange things this Ratan quite calmly
was telling him. With their weird mechanisms, the Radaks now were
directing their tiny world through Space, toward our Earth. Already
they were bathing Earth with a radiance which was disturbing the
Earth's axial and orbital rotations--that vague, dim purple haze which
Dr. Johns had described to Shorty and me. Then when Zelos was closer to
Earth, the vibratory beam would be intensified.
The Earth would be drawn from its orbit. Engulfed in this weird
gravitational force, it would follow Zelos back from the Sun--out into
Interplanetary Space.... The abduction of the Earth! Blaine knew
little of science, but enough to realize what soon would happen on
Earth....
"Storms--the disturbance of all your atmospheric pressures--" Ratan
was saying with his ironic smile, "that will very soon kill many of
your people. And then will come the congealing cold. Certain it is that
human life on your Earth will not withstand it."