by LEIGH BRACKETT
An eerie story of a silver land beneath the
black Venusian seas. A grim tale of brooding
terror whirling out of space to drive men mad,
of a menace without name or form, and of the man,
Lundy, who fought the horror, his eyes blinded by
his will. For to see the terror was to become its
slave--a mindless automaton whose only wish was to
see behind the shadowed mysterious eyelids of "_IT_".
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Lundy was flying the aero-space convertible by himself. He'd been doing
it for a long time. So long that the bottom half of him was dead to the
toes and the top half even deader, except for two separate aches like
ulcerated teeth; one in his back, one in his head.
Thick pearly-grey Venusian sky went past the speeding flier in
streamers of torn cloud. The rockets throbbed and pounded. Instruments
jerked erratically under the swirl of magnetic currents that makes the
Venusian atmosphere such a swell place for pilots to go nuts in.
Jackie Smith was still out cold in the co-pilot's seat. From in back,
beyond the closed door to the tiny inner cabin, Lundy could hear
Farrell screaming and fighting.
He'd been screaming a long time. Ever since the shot of _avertin_ Lundy
had given him after he was taken had begun to wear thin. Fighting the
straps and screaming, a hoarse jarring sound with no sense in it.
Screaming to be free, because of _It_.
Somewhere inside of Lundy, inside the rumpled, sweat-soaked black
uniform of the Tri-World Police, Special Branch, and the five-foot-six
of thick springy muscle under it, there was a knot. It was a large
knot, and it was very, very cold in spite of the sweltering heat in
the cabin, and it had a nasty habit of yanking itself tight every few
minutes, causing Lundy to jerk and sweat as though he'd been spiked.
Lundy didn't like that cold tight knot in his belly. It meant he was
afraid. He'd been afraid before, plenty of times, and he wasn't ashamed
of it. But right now he needed all the brains and guts he had to get
_It_ back to Special headquarters at Vhia, and he didn't want to have
to fight himself, too.
Fear can screw things for you. It can make you weak when you need to be
strong, if you're going to go on living. You, and the two other guys
depending on you.
Lundy hoped he could keep from getting too much afraid, and too
tired--because _It_ was sitting back there in its little strongbox in
the safe, waiting for somebody to crack.
Farrell was cracked wide open, of course, but he was tied down. Jackie
Smith had begun to show signs before he passed out, so that Lundy had
kept one hand over the anaesthetic needle gun holstered on the side of
his chair. And Lundy thought,
_The hell of it is, you don't know when_ It _ starts to work on you.
There's no set pattern, or if there is we don't know it. Maybe right
now the readings I see on those dials aren't there at all...._
Down below the torn grey clouds he could see occasional small patches
of ocean. The black, still, tideless water of Venus, that covers so
many secrets of the planet's past.
It didn't help Lundy any. It could be right or wrong, depending on
what part of the ocean it was--and there was no way to tell. He hoped
nothing would happen to the motors. A guy could get awfully wet, out in
the middle of that still black water.
Farrell went on screaming. His throat seemed to be lined with
impervium. Screaming and fighting the straps, because _It_ was locked
up and calling for help.
Jackie Smith stirred slightly, groaned, and opened his pale green eyes.
"I'm cold," he said. "Hi, Midget."
Lundy turned his head. Normally he had a round, fresh, merry face, with
bright dark eyes and a white, small-boyish grin. Now he looked like
something the waiter had swept out from under a table at four A.M. on
New Year's Day.
"You're cold," he said sourly. He licked sweat off his lips. "Oh, fine!
That was all I needed."
Jackie Smith stirred slightly, groaned, to joggle himself. His black
tunic was open over his chest, showing the white strapping of bandages,
and his left hand was thrust in over the locked top of the tunic's
zipper. He was a big man, not any older than Lundy, with big, ugly,
pleasant features, a shock of coarse pale hair, and a skin like old
leather.
"On Mercury, where I was born," he said, "the climate is suitable for
human beings. You Old-World pantywaists...." He broke off, turned white
under the leathery burn, and said through set teeth, "Oi! Farrell sure
did a good job on me."
"You'll live," said Lundy. He tried not to think about how nearly both
he and Smith had come to not living. Farrell had put up one hell of a
fight, when they caught up with him in a native village high up in the
Mountains of White Cloud.
* * * * *
Lundy still felt sick about that. The bull-meat, the hard boys, you
didn't mind kicking around. But Farrell wasn't that kind. He was just a
nice guy that got trapped by something too big for him.
A nice guy, crazy blind in love with somebody that didn't exist. A
decent hard-working guy with a wife and two kids who'd lost his mind,
heart, and soul to a Thing from outer space, so that he was willing to
kill to protect It.
_Oh, hell!_ thought Lundy wearily, _won't he ever stop screaming?_
The rockets beat and thundered. The torn grey sky whipped past. Jackie
Smith sat rigid, with closed eyes, white around the lips and breathing
in shallow, careful gasps. And Vhia was still a long way off.
Maybe farther off than he knew. Maybe he wasn't heading toward Vhia
at all. Maybe _It_ was working on him, and he'd never know it till he
crashed.
The cold knot tightened in his belly like a cold blade stabbing.
Lundy cursed. Thinking things like that was a sure way to punch your
ticket right straight to blazes.
But you couldn't help thinking, about _It_. The Thing you had caught in
a special net of tight-woven metal mesh, aiming at something Farrell
could see but you couldn't. The Thing you had forced into the glassite
box and covered up with a black cloth, because you had been warned not
to look at _It_.
Lundy's hands tingled and burned, not unpleasantly. He could still feel
the small savage Thing fighting him, hidden in the net. It had felt
vaguely cylindrical, and terribly alive.
Life. Life from outer space, swept out of a cloud of cosmic dust by the
gravitic pull of Venus. Since Venus had hit the cloud there had been a
wave of strange madness on the planet. Madness like Farrell's, that had
led to murder, and some things even worse.
Scientists had some ideas about that life from Out There. They'd had
a lucky break and found one of The Things, dead, and there were vague
stories going around of a crystalline-appearing substance that wasn't
really crystal, about three inches long and magnificently etched and
fluted, and supplied with some odd little gadgets nobody would venture
an opinion about.
But the Thing didn't do them much good, dead. They had to have one
alive, if they were going to find out what made it tick and learn how
to put a stop to what the telecommentators had chosen to call The
Madness from Beyond, or The Vampire Lure.
One thing about it everybody knew. The guys who suddenly went sluggy
and charged off the rails all made it clear that they had met the
ultimate Dream Woman of all women and all dreams. Nobody else could see
her, but that didn't bother them any. They saw her, and she was--_She_.
And her eyes were always veiled.
And _She_ was a whiz at hypnosis and mind-control. That's why _She_, or
_It_, hadn't been caught alive before. Not before Lundy and Smith, with
every scientific aid Special could give them, had tracked down Farrell
and managed to get the breaks.
The breaks. Plain fool luck. Lundy moved his throbbing head stiffly on
his aching neck, blinked sweat out of his bloodshot eyes, and wished to
hell he was home in bed.