Stalked by the Purple Beast
So weak was I after that terrible experience that it was noon before I
felt able to go on. The thing, as I have said, continued to hang in the
sky all day, and to drop regularly its burden of the silver liquid. But
presently I became accustomed to it, and realized that it threatened us
with no immediate danger.
After a light lunch of the yellow fruit, and a deep draught of water
from a little stream that seemed almost parallel to our route of march
for a mile or two, we retired to the higher ground where the scrub was
not so dense as in the bottom of the valley, and set out for the north
again. Still I was feeling mentally limp--dully indifferent to what was
passing about--and physically exhausted as well. I was not as much on
my guard against the weird perils of the place as I should have been.
Several times Naro stopped and listened, declaring that something
was following us, keeping in the cover of waist-high brush in the
bottom of the little valley along the side of which we were traveling.
But I could hear nothing. Melvar, for once, had ceased her eager
interrogation, and was entertaining me with the legendary account
of the past great heroes of Astran. She sang me a few passages from
the epic in her native tongue. Her voice was clear and pure and very
beautiful. And though the words were strange to me, their sound was
noble and suggestive, and there was a powerful, compelling rhythm in
the lines. She translated the story into English. It was about such
an epic poem as might have been expected, dealing with the adventures
of an immortal hero, who had once conquered the Purple Ones, set up
the vast palaces of Astran, and at last lost his life on an expedition
across the Silver Lake to battle the Krimlu.
Suddenly her sweet voice was interrupted by a low, tense cry from
Naro, who had fiercely gripped my arm. I turned in time to see a weird
figure, gnarled and stooped, with long white hair, slink swiftly and
furtively from a great rock to the shelter of the red brush. Squat and
bent as it was, there was no mistaking that it was human in shape, and
that the skin was purple.
In the dull apathy in which I was sunken, I could not realize the
danger. "I guess a rifle bullet will fix it," I said.
"The Purple Ones have more power than you know," cried Melvar. "Let us
try to get on more open ground before it attacks. Then it will have to
leave its cover."
So we turned and ran away from the stream, to a rocky hillside, where
the red scrub grew low and scant. As we ran I heard a crashing behind
us. Once I turned quickly, and raised my rifle. The strange figure
darted abruptly into view, and I fired on the instant. I think I hit
it, for it spun around quickly, and fell to the ground. But in a moment
it was up, and running toward us with an agility that was incredible,
springing over the red brush in great bounds, with a motion more like
that of a monstrous hopping insect than of a human being. His white
hair was flying in wild disorder, his shrunken limbs plainly flashing
purple. And a terrible sound came from it as it bounded along--not
a scream of rage or of pain, but a weird uncanny laugh, that rang
strangely over the red plain, and somehow made us pause in our race,
and tremble with alien terror.
* * * * *
A Narrow Escape
But we broke the icy fingers of fear that gripped our hearts, and ran
on until we reached a great flat rock that lay at the upper edge of
the bare space, in the edge of the thickets again. I lifted Melvar in
my arms until she could reach the top and scramble up. Then I looked
back and saw the purple man leaping across the clearing with incredible
speed, not two hundred yards away.
Then Naro and I got up on that rock--I have never been able to remember
just how we did it. I dropped to my knees, seized the rifle that I had
pushed up before me, and began to pump lead at the beast as fast as
I could work the bolt. The recoils of the gun seemed almost a steady
thrust. I heard the bullets thud into the purple body. I saw it checked
or driven back by the impacts. One bullet took it off its balance
and it fell. But in a moment it was racing on again, empowered by
super-human energy.
When my rifle was empty it was not twenty feet away. One arm was gone.
One side of the body was fearfully torn. The purple face was a hideous
mangled thing. It did not bleed, but the wounds were covered with a
purple viscous slime. One of the eyes was gone, and the other glared
at us with a wild red light. Anything of ordinary life must long since
have been dead. But it gathered itself, and leapt for the top of the
boulder.
On the day before I had showed Melvar how to use my guns, merely by
way of proof that there was nothing supernatural in the working of
the weapon that had slain so many of the Astranians in the temple.
Now I pushed one of the pistols toward her. She was standing there
motionless, calmly even. There was no panic in her face, and I knew
that she would have the courage to use the weapon to save herself from
the terrible brute, if things came to the worst. She smiled at me, even
as she picked up the gun. Then, looking at the safety, she gripped it
in a business-like way.
As the purple monster sprang upon the boulder, I emptied my automatic
into it. Great wounds were torn in the dark flesh, and half the face
was shot away, but the thing seemed immune to death by ordinary means.
As the last shot was fired it stood before us on the rock, a terrible
mangled thing, the red eye blazing with demonic inhumanity.
Naro sprang out before me, his crystal sword drawn high. As the beast
sprang at him, he cut at it with a mighty sweep of the razor-edged
weapon. But the stroke, which would have decapitated an ordinary human,
was parried by a terrific blow of the claw-like hand of the thing, and
the boy was sent spinning back against me. We fell together on the rock.
Then it hurled itself toward Melvar. It all happened in the briefest of
moments, before I could even begin to rise. She swung up the automatic
with a quick, sure, graceful movement. She was like a beautiful goddess
of battle, with blue eyes shining brightly, and golden hair gleaming
in the sun. Again that mad laugh was ringing out, with a choking sob
in it, for the thing's vocal organs were injured. It leapt at her, its
lacerated limbs working like machines. Calmly she stood, with automatic
raised. The muzzle of the gun was not an inch from the throat of the
beast when she fired. The strange head was blown completely off the
body, and fell rolling and bouncing to the red brush below. The body
collapsed, writhing and convulsed. It was not quiet for many minutes.
The girl dropped the gun, suddenly trembling, and threw herself into
my arms, sobbing uncontrollably. Her courage and coolness had saved us
all, and I admit that I was quite as much unstrung as she after the
danger had passed. What a wonderful being she was!
* * * * *
The Red Ship
It was so late in the day, and we were so completely exhausted that we
decided to go no farther. Naro was not hurt, save for a few scratches;
and I suppose he was the least excited of the three. In a few minutes
he threw the quivering purple body off the boulder and carried it and
the head back across the clearing to dispose of them. When he returned
we found an overhanging shelf on the north side of the boulder that
would afford some shelter from the flying lights. We gathered some of
the yellow fruit for supper, cleaned and reloaded the weapons, and
prepared to spend the night there.
Naro called me aside and showed me a curious, much-worn silver
bracelet, with a singular design upon it. He told me, in his imperfect
English, that it had belonged to his father, who had been taken by the
flying lights many years before. That was a curious development. It
showed that there was some connection between the dreaded Purple Ones,
and the terrible, pillaging red lights. But the full significance of
it did not dawn upon me until later.
By that time I was in a measure accustomed to the passage of the
rushing, whistling needles of crimson fire, and during the first part
of the night I was able to sleep, while Naro sat up to keep watch. At
midnight he awakened me, and we changed places. The sky was crossed
and recrossed by the faint and flickering tracks of red, and the night
was weirdly lit by the torpedo-shapes of scarlet flame that sped upon
them. With a fatuous sense of security, I was leaning back against the
boulder, smoking my pipe and caressing the cold metal of the rifle in
my hand, dreaming of what Melvar and I might do if ever we were to
emerge into the world alive.
The red thing was upon me before I knew it. The light of my pipe must
have been visible to it. In my accursed thoughtlessness, that danger
had never occurred to me. The thing came plunging down, flooding the
landscape with its lurid crimson radiance, while the earth vibrated to
its whistling, hissing scream. There was no need to waken my companions
for they sprang to their feet in alarm. We all cowered back against the
rock in the hope of escaping observation. But the thing had already
seen us.
I put my arm about the warm, throbbing body of Melvar, and drew her
close to my breast. Her own cool white hand grasped mine as silently we
waited.
The red object came down swiftly, paused just above the crimson
thickets before us, then settled deliberately to earth. It was the
first opportunity I had had for a close examination of these things.
The shape was plainly cylindrical, tapering toward the ends. It was
perhaps ten feet in diameter, and a hundred long. Set on the forward
end was a bright green globe, perhaps three feet in diameter.
A clump of brush about the end of the cylinder burst into flame. As
the bright crimson hue began to dull, I grasped suddenly the fact that
the red color was due to the red heat generated by friction with the
air, which was very great at the meteor pace the thing attained. It lay
there, not fifty yards away, with the fire blazing and crackling about
the end on our right, and eating its way into the thickets. The green
sphere on the other end seemed to stare at us like a great intent eye.
The red color slowly faded. Suddenly Melvar gripped my arm.
"Why wait?" she whispered. "Perhaps it does not see us after all. Let
us slip around the boulder."
But on the instant we moved a great oval space swung out of the
side of the cylinder. We saw that the door and walls were of a
bluish white metal, and were very thick. It was very dark inside. A
blood-congealing, eerie laugh sounded out of that darkness, and I
shuddered. Quickly five human-like figures leaped one by one out of
the oval doorway. With heart-chilling fear, I saw, by the flickering
light of the burning thicket, that long white hair hanging about faces
wrinkled and hideously aged, with toothless gums, red glaring eyes, and
skin that was purple. Without a moment's hesitation, the five naked
monsters rushed down upon us.
The fire was fast blazing higher and burning rapidly into the brush
between us and the cylinder, and we could see the purple beasts
quite plainly in its light. And they were hideous to look upon. They
came toward us with monstrous springing bounds, actuated by some
extraordinary force. Their muscles must have been far stronger than
those of men, perhaps as strongly constructed as those of insects.
Or, since muscular force depends on the intensity of nerve currents,
perhaps their nerves were extraordinarily excited. And there was
something insect-like in the way life had lingered in the body of the
one we had killed, when it had already many wounds that should have
been mortal.
I leveled my rifle, drew a bead on the neck of the foremost one, and
fired. I must have had the luck to shatter the bones, for the head
dropped limply to the side. The thing stopped abruptly, groping blindly
about with its talon-like fingers. It seemed very strange that it
did not fall. In an instant one of the others ran close by it. The
crippled monster sprang savagely at the other, and in a moment they
were writhing and struggling in the brush, tearing at one another with
tiger-like ferocity. The others passed by them for a moment, while I
finished emptying the rifle, without visible results.
* * * * *
Saved by Fire
BY that time the crackle of the swiftly spreading fire had grown to a
dull roar. It swept fast across the brush, red flames flaring high,
and dense smoke rolling up into the night. The purple beasts did not
appear to see it. They made no effort to avoid the flames. Were they
invulnerable to fire? Or was fire merely unknown to them as to the
people of Astran?
The three rushed straight on toward us, disregarding the rushing wall
of flame not a dozen yards to the right of them. I kept firing madly.
The leg of one went limp, but he leapt on with scarcely diminished
speed, laughing terribly, with the white hair flying about the awful
face, and the purple limbs moving frenziedly. The flames rushed over
the fallen two and hid them. In another instant the curtain of fire had
rolled over the others, and even the ship was hidden from our view.
Suddenly I realized that we were in quite as much danger from the fire
as from the monsters. Already we were shrinking from the hot wind that
blew before the flames, and half choked by the acrid fumes. For the
second time we made a mad retreat to the top of the boulder, and lay
flat. I heard a terrible laugh from the flames, and in a moment one of
the things dashed out. His hair was gone, and the purple flesh burnt
black. I shot as it showed itself, and it fell. In another instant the
flames had raced over it again. None of the others appeared.
We lay on the rock for several minutes, gasping in the cooler air that
lingered near its surface. For a time the heat was stifling, but the
scanty vegetation had burned off quickly, and soon a cool breeze came
up from the south and lifted the smoke. We saw that the cylinder still
lay where it had been, although the heavy body was closed. The green
light still shone in the forward end. About it the earth lay black and
smoking, and a low line of flame lay below the pall of smoke in a great
ring all about us. Between us and the ship I saw in the darkness the
black shadows that were the five dead beasts.
I was just beginning to wonder if all the crew of the ship were dead,
so that we might enter and examine it, when the great oval door in the
side swung open again, and something sprang out of it into the night. I
heard a strange hissing, and a clatter of metal. In the semi-darkness
I could see nothing plainly, but there was a floating shape of
greenish mist, with a vague form beneath. I strained my eyes to try to
distinguish its shape, while it stood motionless.
Abruptly a narrow, intensely bright beam of orange light shot out of it
and impinged upon the rock. There was a dull thud from the rock, and
the ray was dead in a moment. But the granite where it had struck was
cut away--obliterated! The beam had shone straight through the boulder,
carrying away, or resolving into primary electrons, the matter on which
it had struck! The smooth edges of the cut were glowing with a soft
violet radiance.
My rifle was at hand, and on recovering from my surprise, I fired. I
aimed just below the greenish patch. Something must have been exploded
by the bullet, for there was a vivid flash of white fire, and a loud,
sharp report. The spot of green was visible no longer, and we saw no
motion about the cylinder. At the time I had no idea what it was that
I had shot. I supposed that it had been another of the purple beasts
armed with a strange ray weapon. I imagined that the bullet had struck
the weapon and caused an explosion.