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.