The Green Girl
It was, indeed, the form of a woman--rather, of a girl. The eyelids
were closed and still. There was no breathing, and no perceptible
beating of the heart. But the body was very beautiful. The hair
was soft and dark; the skin, white with just a hint of the green
coloration. The features were regular, classic--perfect! The lips were
still very red.
That form was familiar to me--it was the dearest shape of my dreams!
It was the Green Girl! There could be no mistake. This was the flesh
and blood reality of the delightful vision that had been the joy of my
life. At last, my supreme wish was granted! I had found the Green Girl!
But too late! She was so white and still!
As Sam remarked, his words reaching me faintly through a gray daze of
despair, she seemed to have belonged to a rather highly developed race
of people. In fact, so far as physical perfection goes, she was without
parallel; and physical and mental endowments usually go hand in hand.
The wide white forehead betokened a keen intellect.
Sam had expected to find ornaments on the body, but no such things
as we did find! There was a thin band of metal about the waist! The
twisted fragments of a strange metal object were upon the back,
fastened to the white shoulders with metal clamps that gripped them
cruelly!
It was evident that something, recently torn away, had been fastened to
the back of the girl!
Sam brought a file from the machine. I helped aimlessly, mechanically,
and we cut that metal frame off. As we worked over that white body,
with its soft tints of green, I saw strange, livid marks upon the back,
that stood out sharply from the warm hue of the skin! I had never seen
anything like them. They were splotches of a dull violet color! They
looked like burns, or stains, that must have been caused by the thing
that had been fastened to her body.
"Radium burns?" I questioned Sam in apathetic curiosity.
"No. Something similar, perhaps. Radium emanations whiten the hair,
but the color of the skin is not affected except by inflammation. This
is the effect of atomic radiation of a shorter wave-length, I think.
My hands were oddly stained for months while I was making my initial
experiments with the artificial generation of the cosmic ray, which
led to the hydrodyne. I found the cause and developed an effective
treatment. I imagine that burn is the chief cause of her coma."
"Coma! Then she isn't----" My heart beat madly, and a mist came before
my eyes.
"I think there is hope. She seems not to have been injured by the
monster, or to have been seriously hurt by the fall. She is in a
profoundly comatose state, due to the electronic burns, and also to
physical exhaustion and the terrible hardships of which her appearance
gives evidence."
"If you can save her----" I fell on my knees and raised that delicate
head in my arms.
"Let's get her to the machine. It's cooler in there. We'll do what we
can."
I picked up the silent body, still warm and limp, and carried it to the
machine, up to the deck, and down into the cabin. I gently placed it on
the divan, and nervously urged Sam to haste.
He deliberately began his work. He had included medical supplies
in our equipment; and he was a doctor of considerable skill, whose
special knowledge of the effects of etheric vibration was of greatest
value here. I could do little except stand and watch him, or stride
impatiently up and down the room.
First he quickly prepared a thick red liquid, with which he bathed the
violet-colored burns. Then he made a hypodermic injection, and next
administered a small quantity of some kind of gas--a mixture of nitrous
oxide, or laughing gas, with something else that I did not recognize.
In a few minutes the beating of the heart had become normal, and the
breathing was resumed. He had me cover the patient up, and it soon
became evident that she had passed into a deep but natural sleep.
I sat by the couch, feasting my sight on the reality of the vision
that had been mine so long, in a fever of impatience for the time
the beautiful sleeper might awake, so that I could speak to her, yet
fearful of making a sound that would disturb her.
Sam had gone out to examine the dead monster more fully. In half an
hour he came back in the cabin, carrying a queer writhing green thing
in his hand. He held it up silently for me to see. With a sickening
sensation, I perceived that it was a miniature replica of the great
flying monster!
It was no bigger than a dove! The madly fluttering wings were a bright
rich green, very delicate and soft. The thin, slender tentacles that
clutched Sam's hand, or scratched harmlessly at it with undeveloped
claws, were a pale rose color. The thin, fish-like body was almost
white, and the little bloom at the end of it was now an intense violet
in color, while the little black sense organs were thrust stiffly out
of it.
"Quite a find!" Sam said. "We ought to learn no end of things from
studying it, if we can keep it alive."
"Quiet!" I whispered. "Don't wake her! But where did you get it?"
"Tore it out of a curious pouch on the back of the old one. A cunning
little creature, isn't it?"
"Not to my way of looking at it!"
"I wonder what it eats? Most likely it's carnivorous. The claws would
suggest as much. And that assumption would demand that there must be
large game of some kind to support the winged plants."
Sam carried the little monster on into the galley. In half an hour,
since he had not come out, I left the sleeping girl and went in to see
him, fearing that he had been bitten or stung by the thing. I found him
with the grotesque little creature perched contentedly on his finger,
sucking with the thin pink tentacles at a wisp of cotton he had soaked
in condensed milk. An odd thing I noticed about it. The little bloom on
the end of the body, which had been purple a short time before, was now
white, flushed only with a pale pink glow.
"It's as friendly as a kitten," Sam said. "I'm going to name it
Alexander. No reason why it should not develop into a young conqueror."
"Keep it, and give me a pet rattlesnake!"
And it was well he did keep it.