The Balloon Menace
I studied it closely, trying to see if it had an intelligent pilot or
occupant. But I was unable to settle the point. There was certainly no
basket. But black arms or levers seemed to project in a cluster, from
its lowest part, to manipulate the cables.
Nearly an hour, I waited, watching it. It moved much closer during that
time; until, in fact, it was almost directly overhead, and only a few
hundred feet high. The red cable slanted from it back into the jungle.
It seemed to be loose, dragging.
At last I got a picture that satisfied me. I decided to go on and
examine the tangle of yellow thorn-brush or scrub at closer range.
I had taken my eyes from the purple balloon, and turned to walk away,
when it struck.
A red rope whipped about me.
The first I knew, it was already about my shoulders. Its end seemed to
be weighted, for it whirled about my body several times, wrapping me in
sticky coils.
The cable was about half an inch in diameter and made of many smaller
crimson strands, fastened together with the adhesive stuff that covered
it. I recall its appearance very vividly, even the odd, pungent,
disagreeable odor of it.
Half a dozen coils of the red cable had whipped about me before I
realized that anything was amiss. Then it tightened suddenly, dragging
me across the red moss upon which I had been standing. Toward the edge
of the jungle.
Looking up in horror, I saw that the rope had been thrown from the
purple balloon I had been watching. Now the black arms that I had seen
were working swiftly, coiling it up again--with me caught neatly on the
end.
The great sphere was drawn down a little, as my weight came upon it. It
seemed to swell. Then, having been dragged along until I was directly
beneath it, I was lifted clear of the ground.
I was filled with unutterable terror. I was panting, my heart was
beating swiftly. And I felt endowed with terrific strength. Furiously I
writhed in my gluey bonds, struggled with the strength of desperation
to break the red strands.
But the web had been spun to hold just such frightened, struggling
animals as myself. It did not break.
Back and forth I swung over the jungle, like a pendulum. With a
constantly quickening arc! For the cable was being drawn up. Once more
I looked upward, and saw a sight to freeze me in dreadful stupefaction
of horror.
The whole balloon was a living thing!
I saw its two black and terrible eyes, aflame with hot evil, staring at
me from many bright facets. The black limbs I had seen were its legs,
growing in a cluster at the bottom of its body--now furiously busy
coiling up the cable that it had spun, spider-like, to catch me. I saw
long jaws waiting, black and hideously fanged, drooling foul saliva.
And a rapier-thin pointed snout, that must be meant for piercing,
sucking body juices.
The huge purple sphere was a thin-walled, muscular sac, which must have
been filled with some light gas, probably hydrogen, generated in the
body of the creature. The amazing being floated above the jungle, out
of harm's way, riding free on the wind, or anchored with its red web,
lassoing its prey and hauling it up to feast hideously in the air.
For a moment I was petrified, dazed and helpless with the new horror of
that thin snout, with black-fanged jaws behind it.
Then fear bred superhuman strength in me. I got my arms free, dragging
them from beneath the sticky coils. I reached above my head, seized the
red cable in both hands, tried to break it between them.
It refused to part, despite my fiercest efforts.
Only then did I recall the pistol in my pocket. If I could reach it in
time, I might be able to kill the monster. And the gas should escape
through the riddled sac, letting me back to the surface. I was already
so high that the fall would have been dangerous, had I succeeded in my
desperate effort to break the web.
The viscid stuff on the cable clung to my hands. It took all my
strength to tear them loose. But at last they were free, and I fumbled
desperately for the gun.
A red strand was across the pocket in which I had the weapon. I tore at
it. It required every ounce of my strength to slip it upward. And it
adhered to my fingers again. I wrenched them loose, snatched out the
automatic. It touched the gluey rope, stuck fast. I dragged it free,
moved the safety catch with sticky fingers, raised it above my head.
Though it had been seconds only since I was snatched up, already I had
been lifted midway to the dreadful living balloon. I glanced downward.
The distance was appalling. I noticed that the balloon was still
drifting, so that I hung over a thicket of the yellow scrub.
Then I began shooting at the monster. It was difficult to aim, because
of the regular jerks as the ugly black limbs hauled on the cable. I
held the gun with both hands and fired deliberately, very carefully.
The first shot seemed to have no effect.
At the second, I heard a shrill, deafening scream. And I saw that one
of the black limbs was hanging limp.
I shot at the black, many-faceted eyes. Though I had no knowledge of
the creature's anatomy, I supposed that its highest nervous centers
should be near them.
* * * * *
The third shot hit one of them. A great blob of transparent jelly
burst through the faceted surface, hung pendulous. The thing screamed
horribly again. The black arms worked furiously, hauling me up.
I felt a violent upward jerk, stronger than the regular pulls that
had been raising me. In a moment I saw the reason. The creature had
released the long anchor-cable, which had held it to the jungle. We
were plunging upward. The moon was spinning away below.
The next shot seemed to take no effect. But at the fifth, the black
limbs twitched convulsively. I am sure that the creature died almost at
once. The limbs ceased to haul upon the cable, hung still. But I fired
the two cartridges remaining in the gun.
That was the beginning of a mad aerial voyage.
The balloon shot upward, when the anchor-cable was dropped. And after
it was dead, the muscular sac seemed to relax, expand, so that it rose
still faster.
Within a few minutes I must have been two miles above the surface. A
vast area was visible beneath me; the convexity of the moon's surface,
which, of course, is much greater than that of the earth's, was quite
apparent.
The great valley lay below, between the green mountain ranges.
Splotched with blue and yellow. The white river twisting along it, wide
and silvery. I could see into other misty valleys beyond the green
ranges, and on the curving horizon were more hills, dim and black in
the distance.
The plateau upon which I had landed was like a green-covered table,
many thousands of feet below. I could distinguish upon it a tiny bright
disk, which I knew was the machine that I had left so unwisely.
Though there had been little wind at the surface, it seemed that I
rose into a stratum of air, which was moving quite rapidly into the
northwest. I was carried swiftly along; the floor of the great valley
glided back beneath me. In a few minutes the machine was lost to view.
I was, of course, rendered desperate at being swept away from the
machine. I kept myself oriented, and tried to watch the landmarks that
passed beneath me. It was fortunate, I thought, that the wind was
driving me up the valley, instead of across the red ranges. I might be
able to return to the machine by following down the great river, until
the triple peak, near which I had left the machine, came into view.
Despair came over me, however, at the realization that I was not likely
to be able to traverse so vast a stretch of the unknown jungles of this
world, without my ignorance of its perils leading me into some fatal
blunder.
I thought of climbing the web to that monstrous body, and trying
to make a great rent in the purple sac, so that I should fall more
swiftly. But I could only have succeeded in entangling myself more
thoroughly in the adhesive coils. And I dismissed the scheme when I
realized that if I fell too rapidly, I might be killed upon striking
the surface.
After the first few minutes of the flight, I could see that the balloon
was sinking slowly, as the gas escaped through the bullet-holes in the
muscular sac. I could only wait, and fix in my mind the route that I
must follow back to the machine.
The wind bore me so swiftly along that within an hour the triple peak
that I watched had dropped below the curved horizon. But still I was
above the great valley, so that I should be able to find my way back by
following the river. I wondered if I could build a raft, and float down
it, with the current.
The balloon was carried along less rapidly as it approached the
surface. But, as I neared the jungle, it was evident that it still
drifted at considerable speed.
Hanging helpless in the end of the red web, I anxiously scanned the
jungle into which I was descending. Like that which I had first seen,
it was of dense tangles of the thorny yellow scrub, broken with areas
covered largely with the luxuriant green creeper.
Never would I be able to extricate myself alive, I knew, if I had the
misfortune to fall in the thorn-brush. And another danger occurred to
me. Even if I first touched ground in an open space, the balloon, if
the wind continued to blow, would drag me into the spiky scrub before I
could tear myself free of the web.
Could I cut myself free, within a safe distance of the ground, and let
the balloon go on without me? It seemed that only thus could I escape
being dragged to death. I knew that I could survive a fall from a
considerable height, since the moon's acceleration of gravity is only
about two feet per second,--if only I could land on open ground.
But how could I cut the web? I was without a knife. I thought madly of
attempting to bite it in two, realized that that would be as hopeless
as attempting to bite through a manila rope.
But I still had the pistol. If I should place the muzzle against the
cable and fire, the bullet should cut it.
I reached into my pocket again, past the adhesive coil, and found two
cartridges. Though they clung to my sticky fingers, I got them at last
into the magazine, and worked the action to throw one into the chamber.
By the time I had finished loading, I was low over an apparently
endless jungle of the yellow thorns. Swaying on the end of the web, I
was swept along over the spiky scrub, dropping swiftly. At last I could
see the edge, and a green patch of the great creepers. For a time I
hoped that I would be carried clear of the thorns.
Then they seemed suddenly to leap at me. I threw up my arms, to shelter
my face, still clinging fiercely to the pistol.
In an instant, I was being dragged through the cruel yellow spikes.
There was a sharp, dry, crackling sound, as they broke beneath my
weight. A thousand sharp, poisoned bayonets scratched at me, stabbed,
cut.
* * * * *
Intolerable agony racked me. I screamed. The razor-sharp spikes were
tipped with poison, so that the slightest scratch burned like liquid
flame. And many of the stabbing points went deep.
It seems that I struck near the edge of the thicket. For a moment I
hung there in the thorns. Then, as a harder puff of wind struck it,
the balloon leaped into the air, dragging me free. I swung up like a
pendulum. And down again, beyond the thorny scrub--over a strip of bare
sand beside the thicket.
Bleeding rapidly from my cuts, and suffering unendurable pain from the
poison in my wounds, I realized that I could not long remain conscious.
Moving in a haze of agony, I seized the red cable with one hand, put
the muzzle of the automatic against it, pulled the trigger. The report
was crashing, stunning. My right hand, holding the gun, was flung back
by the recoil--I should have lost the weapon had it not been glued to
my fingers. The cable was jerked with terrific force, almost breaking
my left hand, with which I held it.
And it parted! I plunged downward, sprawled on the sand.
For a few minutes I remained conscious as I lay there on the hard, cold
sand--the first soil, I recall thinking vaguely in my agony, that I had
seen not covered with vegetation.
The clothing had been half stripped from my tortured body by the
thorns. I was bleeding freely from several deeper cuts--I remember how
dark the blood was, sinking into the white sand.
All my body throbbed with insufferable pain, from the poison in my
wounds. As if I had been plunged into a sea of flame. Only my face had
been spared.
Weakly, dizzy with pain, I tried to stagger to my feet. But a coil
of the red web still clung about my legs. It tripped me, and I fell
forward again, upon the white sand.
Fell into bitter despair. Into blind, hopeless rage at my inane lack of
caution in leaving the machine. At my foolhardiness in venturing into
the edge of the jungle. Fell into gentle oblivion....
A curious sound drew me back into wakefulness. A thin, high-pitched
piping, pleasantly melodious. The musical notes beat insistently upon
my brain, evidently originating quite near me.
On first awakening, I was aware of no bodily sensation. My mind was
peculiarly dull and slow. I was unable to recall where I was. My first
impression was that I was lying in bed in my old rooming place at
Midland and that my alarm clock was ringing. But soon I realized that
the liquid piping notes that had disturbed me came from no alarm.
I forced open heavy eyes. What startling nightmare was this? A tangle
of green creepers, incredibly profuse. A wall of yellow thorns. A
scarlet mountain beyond. And purple balloons floating in a rich blue
sky.
I tried to sit up. My body burst into screaming agony when I moved.
And I sank back. My skin was stiff with dry blood. The deeper wounds
were aching. And the poison from the thorns seemed to have stiffened my
muscles, so that the slightest motion brought exquisite pain.
The melodious pipings had been abruptly silenced at my movement. But
now they rose again. Behind me. I tried to turn my head.
Recollection was returning swiftly. My uncle's telegram. The flight
through space and time. My expedition to the jungle's edge, and its
horrible sequel. I still lay where I had fallen, on the bare sand below
the spiky scrub.
I groaned despite myself, with the pain of my stiff body. The thin
musical notes stopped again. And the thing that had voiced them glided
around before me, so that I could see it.
A strange and wonderful being.
Its body was slender, flexible as an eel. Perhaps five feet long, it
was little thicker than my upper arm. Soft, short golden down or fur
covered it. Part of it was coiled on the sand; its head was lifted two
or three feet.
A small head, not much larger than my fist. A tiny mouth, with curved
lips full and red as a woman's. And large eyes, dark and intelligent.
They were deeply violet, almost luminous. Somehow they looked human,
perhaps only because they mirrored the human qualities of curiosity and
pity.
Aside from red mouth and dark eyes, the head had no human features.
Golden down covered it. On the crown was a plume or crest of brilliant
blue. But strange as it was, it possessed a certain beauty. A beauty of
exquisite proportion, of smooth curves.
Curious wing-like appendages or mantles grew from the sides of the
sleek, golden body, just below the head. Now they were stiffened,
extended as if for flight. They were very white, of thin soft membrane.
Their snowy surfaces were finely veined with scarlet.
Other than these white, membranous mantles, the creature had no limbs.
Slim, long, pliant body, covered with golden fur. Small, delicate head,
with red mouth and warm dark eyes, crested with blue. And delicate
wings thrust out from its sides.
I stared at it.
Even at first sight, I did not fear it, though I was helpless. It
seemed to have a magnetic power that filled me with quiet confidence,
assured me that it meant only good.
The lips pursed themselves. And the thin, musical piping sound came
from them again. Was the thing speaking to me? I uttered the first
phrases that entered my mind, "Hello. Who are we, anyhow?"