Immediately upon going into tele-consciousness Smith became aware of
a decided change in his surroundings. The interior of the study had
been darkened with drawn shades; now he was using eyes that were
exposed to the most intense sunlight. The first sight that he got,
in fact, was directed toward the sky; and he noted with an
engineer's keen interest that the color of the sky was blue,
slightly tinged with orange. This, he knew, meant that the
atmosphere of Sanus contained at least one chemical element which is
lacking on the earth.
For a minute or two the sky remained entirely clear. There were no
clouds whatever; neither did any form of winged life make its
appearance. So Smith took note of sounds.
Presumably his agent--whoever or whatever it might be--was located
in some sort of aircraft; for an extremely loud and steady buzzing,
suggesting a powerful engine, filled the engineer's borrowed ears.
Try as he might, however, he could not identify the sound exactly.
It was more like an engine than anything else, except that the
separate sounds which comprised the buzz occurred infinitely close
together. Smith concluded that the machine was some highly developed
rotary affair, working at perhaps six or eight thousand revolutions
a minute--three or four times as fast as an ordinary engine.
Meanwhile his agent continued to stare into the sky. Shortly
something arrived in the field of vision; a blurred speck, far to
one side. It approached leisurely, with the unknown agent watching
steadfastly. It still remained blurred, however; for a long time the
engineer knew as little about its actual form as he knew about his
mysterious agent.
Then, like a flash, the vision cleared. All the blurring disappeared
instantly, and the form of a buzzard was disclosed. It was almost
directly overhead, about a quarter of a mile distant, and soaring in
a wide spiral. No sound whatever came from it. Smith's agent made no
move of any kind, but continued to watch.
Shortly the buzzard "banked" for a sharper turn; and the engineer
saw, by the perspective of its apparent speed, that the aircraft
whose use he was enjoying was likewise on the move. Apparently it
was flying in a straight line, keeping the sun--an object vastly too
brilliant to examine--on the right.
The buzzard went out of sight. Once more the clear sky was all that
could be seen; that, and the continual roar of the engine, were all
that Smith actually knew. He became impatient for his agent to look
elsewhere; it might be that the craft contained other specimens of
the unknown creatures. But there was no change in the vigilant watch
which was being kept upon the sky.
Suddenly the engineer became exceedingly alert. He had noticed
something new--something so highly different from anything he had
expected to learn that it was some minutes before he could believe
it true.
His borrowed eyes had no eyelids! At least, if they did, they were
never used. Not once did they flicker in the slightest; not once did
they blink or wink, much less close themselves for a momentary rest
from the sun's glare. They remained as stonily staring as the eyes
of a marble statue.
Then something startling happened. With the most sickening
suddenness the aircraft came to an abrupt halt. Smith's senses swam
with the jolt of it. All about him was a confused jumble of blurred
figures and forms; it was infinitely worse than his first ride in a
hoist. In a moment, however, he was able to examine things fairly
well.
The aircraft had come to a stop in the middle of what looked like a
cane brake. On all sides rose yellowish-green shafts, bearing leaves
characteristic of the maize family. Smith knew little about cane,
yet felt sure that these specimens were a trifle large. "Possibly
due to difference in gravitation," he thought.
However, he could not tell much about the spot on which the machine
had landed. For a moment it was motionless; the engine had been
stopped, and all was silent except for the gentle rustling of the
cane in the field. The unknown operator did not change his position
in the slightest.
Then the craft began to move over the surface, in a jerky, lurching
fashion which indicated a very rough piece of ground. At the same
time a queer, leathery squeaking came to the engineer's borrowed
ears; he concluded that the machine was being sorely strained by the
motion. At the time he was puzzled to account for the motion itself.
Either there was another occupant of the craft, who had climbed out
and was now pushing the thing along the ground, or else some form of
silent mechanism was operating the wheels upon which, presumably,
the craft was mounted. Shortly the motion stopped altogether.
It was then that Smith noticed something he had so far ignored
because he knew his own dinner hour was approaching. His agent was
hungry, like himself. He noticed it because, just then, he received
a very definite impression of the opposite feeling; the agent was
eating lunch of some sort, and enjoying it. There was no doubt about
this. All that Smith could do was to wish, for the hundredth time,
that he could look around a little and see what was being eaten, and
how.
The meal occupied several minutes. Not once did the strange occupant
of that machine relax his stony stare at the sky, and Smith tried to
forget how hungry he was by estimating the extent of his vision. He
decided that the angle subtended about a hundred and sixty degrees,
or almost half a circle; and he further concluded that if his agent
possessed a nose, it was a pretty trifling affair, too small to be
noticed. It was obvious, too, that the fellow's mouth was located
much lower in the face than normal. He ate without showing a single
particle of food, and did it very quietly.
At length hunger was satisfied. There was complete stillness and
silence for a moment, then another short lurching journey through
the cane; and next, with an abruptness that made the engineer's
senses swim again, the fellow once more took to the air. The speed
with which he "got away" was enough to make a motorcyclist, doing
his best, seem to stand still.
It took time for Smith to regain his balance. When he did, the same
unbroken expanse of sky once more met his gaze; but it was not long
until, out of the corners of those unblinking eyes, he could make
out bleary forms which shortly resolved themselves into mountain
tops. It was odd, the way things suddenly flashed into full view.
One second they would be blurred and unrecognizable; the next,
sharply outlined and distinct as anything the engineer had ever
seen. Yet, there seemed to be no change in the focus of those eyes.
It wasn't as though they were telescopic, either. Not until long
afterward did Smith understand the meaning of this.
The mountains grew higher and nearer. Before long it seemed as
though the aircraft was entering some sort of a canon. Its sides
were only sparsely covered with vegetation, and all of it was quite
brown, as though the season were autumn. For the most part the
surface was of broken rock and boulders.
Within a space of three or four minutes the engineer counted not
less than ten buzzards. The unknown operator of the machine,
however, paid no attention to them, but continued his extraordinary
watch of the heavens. Smith began to wonder if the chap were not
seated in an air-tight, sound-proof chamber, deep in the hull of
some great aerial cruiser, with his eyes glued fast to a periscope.
"Maybe a sky patrol," thought the man of the earth; "a cop on the
lookout for aerial smugglers, like as not."
And then came another of those terrifying stops. This time, as soon
as he could collect his senses, the engineer saw that the machine
had landed approximately in the middle of the canon, and presumably
among the boulders in its bottom. For all about it were the tops of
gigantic rocks, most of them worn smooth from water action. And, as
soon as the engine stopped, Smith plainly heard the roar of water
right at hand. He could not see it, however. Why in the name of
wonder didn't the fellow look down, for a change?
The craft began to move. This time its motion was smoother arguing
an even surface. However, it had not gone far before, to the
engineer's astonishment, it began to move straight down a slope so
steep that no mechanism with which Smith was familiar could possibly
have clung to it. As this happened, his adopted eyes told him that
the craft was located upon one of those enormous boulders, in the
center of a stream of such absolute immensity that he fairly gasped.
The thing was--colossal!
And yet it was true. The unseen machine deliberately moved along
until it was actually clinging, not to the top, but to the side of
the rock. The water appeared to be about five yards beneath, to the
right. To the left was the sky, while the center of that strange
vision was now upon a similar boulder seemingly a quarter of a mile
distant, farther out in the stream. But the fellow at the periscope
didn't change position one whit!
It was so unreal. Smith deliberately ignored everything else and
watched again for indications of eyelids. He saw not one flicker,
but noticed a certain tiny come-and-go, the merest sort of
vibration, which indicated the agent's heart-action. Apparently it
beat more than twice as fast as Smith's.
But it relieved him to know that his agent was at least a genuine
living being. For a moment he had fancied something utterly
repellent to him. Suppose this Sanusian were not any form of natural
creature at all, but some sort of supermachine, capable of
functioning like an organism? The thought made the engineer shudder
as no morgue could.
Presently the queer craft approached the water closely enough, and
at such an angle, that Smith looked eagerly for a reflection.
However, the water was exceedingly rough, and only a confused
brownish blur could be made out. Once he caught a queer sound above
the noise of the water; a shrill hiss, with a harsh whine at the
end. "Just like some kind of suction apparatus," as he later
described it.
And then, with that peculiar sound fresh in his ears, came the
crowning shock of the whole experience. Floating toward the boulder,
but some distance away, was what looked like a black seed. Next
moment the vision flashed clear, as usual, and the engineer saw that
the object was really a beetle; and in a second it was so near that
Smith's own body, back on the earth, involuntarily shrank back into
the recesses of his chair.
For that beetle was an enormity in the most unlimited sense of the
word. It was infinitely larger than any beetle the engineer had ever
seen--infinitely! It was as large as a good-sized horse!
But before Smith could get over his amazement there was a rush and a
swirl in the water behind the insect. Spray was dashed over the
rock, a huge form showed itself indistinctly beneath the waves, and
next instant the borrowed eyes were showing the engineer, so clearly
as to be undeniable, the most astounding sight he had ever seen.
A fish of mountainous size leaped from the water, snapped the beetle
into its mouth, and disappeared from sight. In a flash it had come
and gone, leaving the engineer fairly gasping and likewise wondering
how he could possibly expect anybody to believe him if he told the
bald truth of what he had seen.
For he simply could not have invented anything half as incredible.
The fish simply could not be described with ordinary language. IT
WAS AS LARGE AS THE LARGEST LOCOMOTIVE.