Before me lay a valley. Blue-white moss carpeted it except where
reddish boulders broke the blueness. Here and there were trees--at
least I assumed they were trees, despite their unfamiliar outline.
They were like banyans, having dozens of trunks narrow as bamboo.
Blue-leafed, they stood like immense bird-cages on the pallid moss.
The fog closed in behind the valley and above it. It was like being in
a huge sun-lit cavern.
I turned my head, saw a gray wall behind me. Beneath my feet the snow
was melting and running in tiny, trickling rivulets among the moss.
The air was warm and stimulating as wine.
A strange and abrupt change. Impossibly strange! I walked toward one
of the trees, stopped at a reddish boulder to examine it. And surprise
caught at my throat. It was an artifact--a crumbling ruin, the remnant
of an ancient structure whose original appearance I could not fathom.
The stone seemed iron-hard. There were traces of inscription on it,
but eroded to illegibility. And I never did learn the history of those
enigmatic ruins.... They did not originate on Earth.
There was no sign of the native girl, and the resilient moss retained
no tracks. I stood there, staring around, wondering what to do now. I
was tense with excitement. But there was little to see. Just that
valley covering perhaps a half-mile before the fog closed in around
it.
Beyond that--I did not know what lay beyond that.
I went on, into the valley, eyeing my surroundings curiously in the
shadowless light that filtered through the shifting roof of fog.
Foolishly, I expected to discover Incan artifacts. The crumbled red
stones should have warned me. They were, I think, harder than metal,
yet they had been here long enough for the elements to erode them into
featureless shards. Had they been of earthly origin they would have
antedated Mankind--antedated even the Neanderthaler man.
Curious how our minds are conditioned to run in anthropomorphic lines.
I was, though I did not know it, walking through a land that had its
beginnings outside the known universe. The blue trees hinted at that.
The crimson ruins told me that clearly. The atmospheric
conditions--the fog, the warmth high up in the Cordilleras--were
certainly not natural. Yet I thought the explanation lay in some
geological warp, volcanic activity, subterranean gas-vents....
My vision reached a half-mile, no farther. As I went on, the misty
horizon receded. The valley was larger than I had imagined. It was
like Elysium, where the shades of dead men stroll in the Garden of
Proserpine. Streamlets ran through the blue moss at intervals, chill
as death from the snowy plains hidden in the fog. "A sleepy world of
streams...."
The ruins altered in appearance as I went on. The red blocks were
still present, but there were now also remnants of other structures,
made by a different culture, I thought.
The blue trees grew more numerous. Leafy vines covered most of them
now, saffron-tinted, making each strange tree a little room, screened
by the lattice of the vines. As I passed close to one a faint clicking
sounded, incongruously like the tapping of typewriter keys, but
muffled. I saw movement and turned, my hand going to the pistol in my
belt.
The Thing came out of a tree-hut and halted, watching me. I _felt_ it
watching me--though _it had no eyes_!
It was a sphere of what seemed to be translucent plastic, glowing with
shifting rainbow colors. And I sensed sentience--intelligence--in its
horribly human attitude of watchful hesitation. Four feet in diameter
it was, and featureless save for three ivory elastic tentacles that
supported it and a fringe of long, whip-like cilia about its
diameter--its waist, I thought.
It looked at me, eyeless and cryptic. The shifting colors crawled over
the plastic globe. Then it began to roll forward on the three
supporting tentacles with a queer, swift gliding motion. I stepped
back, jerking out my gun and leveling it.
"Stop," I said, my voice shrill. "Stop!"
It stopped, quite as though it understood my words or the gesture of
menace. The cilia fluttered about its spherical body. Bands of lambent
color flashed. I could not rid myself of the curious certainty, that
it was trying to communicate with me.
Abruptly it came forward again purposefully. I tensed and stepped
back, holding the gun aimed. My finger was tightening on the trigger
when the Thing stopped.
I backed off, nervously tense, but the creature did not follow. After
I had got about fifty yards away it turned back and retreated into the
hut-like structure in the banyan tree. After that I watched the trees
warily as I passed them, but there were no other visitations of that
nature.
Scientists are reluctant to relinquish their so-called logic. As I
walked I tried to rationalize the creature, to explain it in the light
of current knowledge. That it had been alive was certain. Yet it was
not protoplasmic in nature. A plant, developed by mutation? Perhaps.
But that theory did not satisfy me for the Thing had possessed
intelligence, though of what order I did not know.
But there were the seven native girls, I reminded myself. My job was
to find them, and quickly, too.
I did, at last, find them. Six of them, anyway. They were sitting in a
row on the blue moss, facing one of the red blocks of stone, their
backs toward me. As I mounted a little rise I saw them, motionless as
bronze statues, and as rigid.
I went down toward them, tense with excitement, expectancy. Odd that
six native girls, sitting in a row, should fill me with such feeling.
They were so motionless that I wondered as I approached them, if they
were dead....
But they were not. Nor were they--in the true sense of the
word--alive.
I gripped one by the bare shoulder, found the flesh surprisingly cold
and the girl seemed not to feel my touch. I swung her around to face
me, and her black, empty eyes looked off into the far distance. Her
lips were tightly compressed, slightly cyanosed. The pupils of her
eyes were inordinately dilated, as if she was drugged.
Indian style, she squatted cross-legged, like the others. As I pulled
her around, she toppled down on the moss, making no effort to stop
herself. For a moment she lay there. Then with slow, puppet-like
motions, she returned to her former position and resumed that blank
staring into space.
I looked at the others. They were alike in their sleep-like
withdrawal. It seemed as if their minds had been sucked out of them,
that their very selves were elsewhere. It was a fantastic diagnosis,
of course. But the trouble with those girls was nothing a physician
could understand. It was psychic in nature, obviously.
I turned to the first one and slapped her cheeks. "Wake up!" I
commanded. "You must obey me! Waken--"
But she gave no sign of feeling, of seeing. I lit a match, and her eyes
focused on the flame. But the size of her pupils did not alter....
A shudder racked me. Then, abruptly I sensed movement behind me. I
turned....
Over the blue moss the seventh Indio girl was coming toward us.
"Miranda!" I said. "Can you hear me?" Fra Rafael had told me her name.
Her feet, I saw, were bare and white frost-bite blotches marked them.
But she did not seem to feel any pain as she walked.
Then I became aware that this was not a simple Indio girl. Something
deep within my soul suddenly shrank back with instinctive revulsion.
My skin seemed to crawl with a sort of terror. I began to shake so
that it was difficult to draw my gun from its holster.
There was just this young native girl walking slowly toward me, her
face quite expressionless, her black eyes fixed on emptiness. Yet she
was not like other Indios, not like the six other girls sitting behind
me. I can only liken her to a lamp in which a hot flame burned. The
others were lamps that were dead, unlit.
The flame in her was not one that had been kindled on this earth, or
in this universe, or in this space-time continuum, either. There was
life in the girl who had been Miranda Valle--but it was not _human_
life!
Some distant, skeptical corner of my brain told me that this was pure
insanity, that I was deluded, hallucinated. Yes, I knew that. But it
did not seem to matter. The girl who was walking so quietly across the
blue yielding moss had wrapped about her, like an invisible,
intangible veil, something of the alienage that men, through the eons,
have called divinity. No mere human, I thought, could touch her.
* * * * *
But I felt fear, loathing--emotions not associated with divinity. I
watched, knowing that presently she would look at me, would realize my
presence. Then--well, my mind would not go beyond that point....
She came forward and quietly seated herself with the others, at the
end of the line. Her body stiffened rigidly. Then, the veil of terror
seemed to leave her, like a cloak falling away. Abruptly she was just
an Indio girl, empty and drained as the others, mindless and
motionless.
The girl beside her rose suddenly with a slow, fluid motion. And the
crawling horror hit me again.... The Alien Power had not left! It had
merely transferred itself to another body!
And this second body was as dreadful to my senses as the first had
been. In some subtly monstrous way its terror impressed itself on my
brain, though all the while there was nothing overt, nothing _visibly_
wrong. The strange landscape, bounded by fog, was not actually
abnormal, considering its location, high in the Andes. The blue moss,
the weird trees; they were strange, but possible. Even the seven
native girls were a normal part of the scene. It was the sense of an
alien presence that caused my terror--a fear of the unknown....
As the newly "possessed" girl rose, I turned and fled, deathly sick,
feeling caught in the grip of nightmare. Once I stumbled and fell. As
I scrambled wildly to my feet I looked back.
The girl was watching me, her face tiny and far away. Then, suddenly,
abruptly it was close. She stood within a few feet of me! I had not
moved nor seen her move, but we were all close together again--the
seven girls and I....
Hypnosis? Something of that sort. She had drawn me back to her, my
mind blacked out and unresisting. I could not move. I could only stand
motionless while that Alien being dwelling within human flesh reached
out and thrust frigid fingers into my soul. I could feel my mind laid
open, spread out like a map before the inhuman gaze that scanned it.
It was blasphemous and shameful, and I could not move or resist!
I was flung aside as the psychic grip that held me relaxed. I could
not think clearly. That remote delving into my brain had made me
blind, sick, frantic. I remember running....
But I remember very little of what followed. There are vague pictures
of blue moss and twisted trees, of coiling fog that wrapped itself
about me, trying futilely to hold me back. And always there was the
sense of a dark and nameless horror just beyond vision, hidden from
me--though I was not hidden from its eyeless gaze!
I remember reaching the wall of fog, saw it loomed before me, plunged
into it, raced through cold grayness, snow crunching beneath my boots.
I recall emerging again into that misty valley of Abaddon....
When I regained complete consciousness I was with Lhar.
A coolness as of limpid water moved through my mind, cleansing it,
washing away the horror, soothing and comforting me. I was lying on my
back looking up at an arabesque pattern of blue and saffron;
gray-silver light filtered through a lacy, filigree. I was still weak
but the blind terror no longer gripped me.
I was inside a hut formed by the trunks of one of the banyan-like
trees. Slowly, weakly I rose on one elbow. The room was empty except
for a curious flower that grew from the dirt floor beside me. I looked
at it dazedly.
And so I met Lhar.... She was of purest white, the white of alabaster,
but with a texture and warmth that stone does not have. In
shape--well, she seemed to be a great flower, an unopened tulip-like
blossom five feet or so tall. The petals were closely enfolded,
concealing whatever sort of body lay hidden beneath, and at the base
was a convoluted pedestal that gave the odd impression of a ruffled,
tiny skirt. Even now I cannot describe Lhar coherently. A flower,
yes--but very much more than that. Even in that first glimpse I knew
that Lhar was more than just a flower....
I was not afraid of her. She had saved me, I knew, and I felt complete
trust in her. I lay back as she spoke to me telepathically, her words
and thoughts forming within my brain....
"You are well now, though still weak. But it is useless for you to try
to escape from this valley. No one can escape. The Other has powers I
do not know, and those powers will keep you here."