_Joy_ was the last to go, and its departure became an eternity of
pain. It was like swimming through an endless sea of broken glass. I
wanted to scream, but something wouldn’t let me. Hours flew by like the
passing of seconds.
Dawn came, and I still sat in the chair, staring at the woman on the
bed.
The paralysis of my legs ended abruptly. Almira arose, dressed and
smiled at me as she started for the door. I followed her.
“Will you explain?” I begged, clutching desperately at her arm.
She turned and studied my face while a smile trembled at the corners
of her mouth. Then the smiled vanished. Her face changed visibly, and
tears glistened on her smooth cheeks. I thought: _She looks like a
woman who has shot a rabbit and is glad. Glad. And then, she goes to
the rabbit, and looks into its large, tormented eyes ... and cries._
She explained but not with words. We stood by the door and in my mind,
I saw a majestic city. Shining structures of metal thrust their towers
high above the clouds and their foundations deep into the ground. The
buildings were thronged with radiantly-garbed men and women, and,
everywhere in the city, there were massive, audibly droning machines a
hundred times more complex than an atomic generator.
I saw _farms_ filled with strange pink animals, and as I watched
in horror I saw the inhabitants of the great city devour them
with a sickening greediness. It was not the animals’ flesh which
they devoured. _With their minds, they feasted on the creatures’
multitudinous emotions, drawing them into their own coldly inhuman
minds, and digesting them with relish._
The last telepathic picture: A ship that traveled through space with a
speed incalculable. I saw it flash through dark, empty dimensions and
land on Earth. A woman left the strange ship....
“You see,” Almira whispered, “on my native planet, I _am_ a princess.
I came here to _hunt_.” She cried out ecstatically and raised her
arms. “Your planet is a jungle and your race are beasts in the jungle.
I hunt them and I trap them. And I eat their emotions as I consumed
yours.” She pressed slender fingers against her temples. “And I do it
because it gives me a rapturous satisfaction which you could not even
comprehend.”
Her arms dropped and she stared at me pleadingly through tear-filled
eyes. “Do you understand?”
I nodded. I felt exactly like a dying rabbit staring up in hopeless
torment at a victorious hunter.
She opened the door and left. The room was empty--and so was I.