The voluptuous golden civilization of Arron was
doomed. Licentious laughter echoed through the
water-kingdom, unmindful of the relentless,
clanking invasion of the Gorts. What fools, this
handful of warrior-maidens led by a puny Earthman,
to pit their thin strength against Tollgamo's iron army!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1941.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was fishing for tarpon, lolling back in the stern of my small boat.
The outboard motor, running at trolling speed, was a puttering purr in
the drowsing watery silence. It was sunset of a summer evening of 1948.
The Gulf of Mexico, out beyond the mouth of the little Florida bayou
inlet across which I was heading, was a glassy expanse, blood-red in
the light of the huge setting sun.
To the south lightning was playing along the orange sky. I recall that
a vague uneasiness was upon me. Because a storm might be coming? Surely
it was not that. I was within three miles of the small island where
young Jack Allen and I were camping. It was my intention to head for
there presently, especially as there had been no sign of tarpon. Allen
had been too lazy to come fishing; he had said he would loaf and have
supper ready for us at dark.
My name is Kent Fanning. Jack Allen and I were of an age--twenty-four,
that summer. With our business in New York, we were here on vacation,
having a permit to fish and to camp on the small, uninhabited island.
The intermittent lightning at the southern horizon rose higher. Faint
muttering thunder was audible. A massive grey-white cloud was down
there now, a thunderhead, coming northward with the storm behind it. I
had decided to pull in my line and head for the island when suddenly I
had a strike, the big reel humming as the line went out. A tarpon? I
hooked it, shut off the motor, sat erect with my stout rod braced in
the leather socket of my belt. I was prepared for a long struggle.
And then, two hundred yards or so from me, the water broke with a
floundering splash. I gasped, stared numbed. A floundering, oblong
pink-white thing was there at the end of my line. A slim white arm
flailed up as the thing turned, swimming on the surface frantically
away from me. Pink-white limbs gleaming in the moonlight. Streaming
tawny hair, like seaweed--hair in which my hook seemed to be caught.
A girl! I had her at the boat in a moment, floundering in the
moonlight, gasping, still trying to twist around and disentangle my
hook from her long streaming hair. A small, slim figure, white-limbed
yet flushed like moonlit coral. There was a brief dangling robe wetly
clinging to her. It was of gleaming lustrous green as though perhaps it
was a fabric of softly woven metal, painted green by the sea.
An extraordinary yet very human girl.
Just a few seconds of my stricken amazement. I recall that I gasped
inanely.
"Well--why good Heavens--"
Her gasping laugh rippled like the splashing water in the moonlight.
"Sorry! I got some frightened to be confused."
English! Strangely intoned with little rippling liquid syllables. Like
nothing I had ever heard before and yet my own language.
She had pulled my hook from the gleaming tawny tresses of her hair.
Then she flung up a coral-white arm. I bent, seized her wrist, drew her
up and she came with a nimble, skilled little leap and landed on her
feet in the boat beside me!