Donald A. Wollheim

“ There was a rush of air as the ship exhausted its atmosphere. Then, one by one, they stepped onto the bleak surface of the Sun's farthest planet.
"I feel peculiar," whispered Burl. "This planet reminds me of something."
"I have the feeling I've been here before," Russ said slowly.
Burl felt an odd chill. "Yes, that's it!"
Haines grumbled. "I know what you mean. I can make a guess. We've never really been the right weight since we left Earth. Even under acceleration there were differences one way or the other. But I feel now exactly as I did on Earth. ”

“ I realized that some strange gas or mixture of gases chanced to make up the outermost strata of the atmosphere of Midplanet. A gaseous compound that absorbed light one way but would not pass it once it had struck the surface of the planet. So that above the planet remained swathed in lightless mystery, while below the sky seemed to radiate blue and the lighting and warmth was held in to appear as a beautiful spring day on Earth.
This then had been the circumstance which had kept Midplanet veiled from the sight of man until I, Ajax Calkins, tore aside the veil. ”

“ He was hitting near the center of the Moon, a little above it, and the crater whose walls were reaching up ... why he could even name it. He grinned wryly. It would be Theophilus, and it seemed he would miss it, hit somewhere near it in a bay of the so-called Sea of Tranquillity.
Rushing up toward him, Theophilus was no peaceful Greek ancient. It was a barren, toothed, rocky edge, miles up, without the snow that makes our mountains majestic, without a trace of the forests that conceal a mountain's jagged sides, without even the gentle weathering of rain and water. ”

“ As he looked around quickly to select his next means of escape, barking Plutonians erupted from each opening. Burl backed up against the wall, knowing that this time he was trapped.
A blaze of sparks broke over his head as a blast banged across the room. The red-eyed, scrabbling figures charged, their chinless mouths opening to emit barking calls of bestial anger. One aimed a rodlike contrivance at him, and there was another flare of light. ”

“ Yet it was not grass but a curious green hard clay that seemed to make up the soil. Far to the distance low hills rose. The oddest feature of the soil was the fact that it was interminably interlaced with deep sharp cracks like a clay that had been baked improperly and cracks all over.
It seemed to me that there was a strange discoloration far off in the base of the hills from which white and grey plumes of vapor arose as if marking the factories of some hillside city. A city it could well prove to be and if that were so, then I had found a capital and subjects! ”

“ We're lucky to be alive, believe me!"
"Yes," said Robin, beginning to make his way down the last tunnel that led to the open ledge of the great bubble-world where the Glassies lived. "Yes, we're lucky to be alive, but how will we ever get back to the surface now? We're sealed in. Maybe forever."
Peter was silent as they reached the ledge, looked into the vastness of the cleft-world, saw the faint flickering lights of Moonworm and Moonman. "Maybe we'll never get out. Robinson Crusoe lived twenty-eight years on his island before he was rescued. It may be fifty before they find us in here." ”

“ Now, for the first time, they heard the creatures make a noise—a sort of humming and buzzing like angered bees.
"They see us now," muttered Haines. "I don't like it."
"The Sun-tap builders did it," said Burl. "They must have booby-trapped the place against intruders. The globe that got Boulton must have set off some sort of vibration that enrages these creatures. And it looks as if we're the victims."
As they reached their jeep, the encircling mass of Martians moved forward. The humming rose to a higher pitch, and then the mob, with the berserk ferocity of a swarm of bees, lunged toward them. ”

“ The planet was dead ahead now.
"Trapped!" he fumed. "The red planet ahead of us, and those ships behind us. What do they want?"
"It might be well to stop," Dr. Seaward put in. "They may want to look us over and nothing more. Unless we arouse suspicion by resisting now."
"And they might steal the ship under our noses, too," protested Arundell.
Broster shook his head. "There cannot be a question of letting unknown intelligences enter this craft or hold it. We can't afford to take chances, even if the notion that other world dwellers are necessarily enemies is silly. ”

“ If you can do so, you can attain complete control over your own body—for we alone are able to control our own masses by means of will.
"And if you can picture these masses of rock as pools of nothing and yourself as the same, you can pass yourself through these rocks as a whiff of smoke in air. You can revisualize yourself as solid outside this trapping pile." ”

“ We held on for dear life and the air whished past us like mad. Behind us the city of kangaroos sprang to life as they saw their assorted prisoners escaping and very soon I saw over my shoulder that a line of gigantic steam-powered pogos were bounding along after us, each manned by several armed creatures.
The flea was fast but the pogos, powered by terrific steam-boilers, were equally so. And thus we raced across the clay creviced terrain, two humans on the back of a flea-colossus followed by a single-file line of puffing steel pogos, their plumes of smoke leaving a trail behind them. ”

“ The Martians made way for the jeep with unconcern. Never had they seen creatures as large as themselves that were not of their own kind on hive business. Hence, none such could exist. This was a world totally without individualism, a civilization without a spoken language, without names, without banners. Wherever or however the mass knowledge was located or transmitted, no individual of another species could ever hope to know. It would be forever as remote from human explorers as the farthest star on the farthest galaxy.
They drove to where the Sun-tap masts rose from the ground. ”

“ Peter turned, a sharp light in his eye. "And now that you say it, do you know what that current is? It's the one that passes the break in the crater wall—the constant hurricane that we broke through to get in here, which rushes by the break so hard and so fast that it seals this cavern's quiet inner air as perfectly as if it were an air lock. It has to be that very current which passes somewhere lower down and warms this cleft!"
Robin nodded, a sharp excitement stirring him. "I think we have hit on it. The night time is the time to hunt for it. ”

“ As my ship hit the darkness that was the outer atmosphere of Midplanet, I thrilled to the thought that I, Ajax Calkins, had at last achieved my rightful place among the pioneers of space. Even when my ship bounced on the green soil, flew end over end upwards to come down ka-plunk in the wrong side of a gooey thick swamp, I exulted that I was the first in possession of a major planet that had been overlooked by the rest of the interplanetary crowd. ”

“ Now Burl found himself momentarily unhampered, and rapidly he opened exhibit after exhibit. The battle became wilder and fiercer, as star-being after star-being joined in.
The Plutonians swung away in all directions with their wands. Their barking voices were drowned out by a rising chorus of sounds—roaring, inhuman voices, calling curses in languages of worlds that lay many light-years distant—wild, birdlike calls from a winged being whose intelligent eyes and wide brow belied the ferocity of its beaked and taloned attack. ”

“ In a moment, the monkey leaped to the ground, then leaped in one tremendous jump to Robin's shoulder and perched there happy at finding companionship again. The monkey looked none the worse for its experience and evidently was getting along nicely on the Lunar vegetation. Thus encouraged, Robin fed himself, first carefully testing everything on the monkey, who objected to nothing.
But somehow the food was not entirely satisfying to the man, who felt that he needed more than that to recover his full energy. He looked again at the rabbits, looked also for the carcass of the dead one. ”

“ Wherever the burning jet of oxygen touched, the mass shriveled and blackened. Yards and yards of amoeba seemed to writhe, hump upward in agony, and pull away.
There was a ring of burned white along the ground, a sickening smell in the air, but the thing was dead.
Russell Clyde grabbed the ladder as it swung toward him, and climbed up. The soles of his boots were gone and the sides were strings of raw, half-eaten leather. His legs and knees bore ugly patches of red where the slime had touched.
"Well done!" called Boulton to Burl from the cabin. "Come on up before something else comes along!" ”

“ For an instant it seemed as if the pressure had vanished in the rocket, for a split second the rocket stopped accelerating as it waited for the new impact. Then like a blast of lightning newly released from a storm, a shot of energy flashed through the racing metal body. ”

“ Above it, they caught a flicker from the forest of masts and the glint from a dumbbell ship. They moved silently forward, carrying the rocket launcher on their backs and a small load of shells and several hand bombs. These made heavy baggage, but the distance was not far, and the purpose great.
Burl felt like an ant about to creep into a human house. But he reflected that no ant ever had such dangerous intentions. An ant enters a house to steal a crumb of food. But if an ant had intelligence and evil intentions, it could cripple such a house. ”

“ It collided with Robin. For a moment there was a wild scramble of arms and legs and then Robin's greatly superior Earth muscles overpowered the other's and the creature was caught. Robin held it tightly in his arms, carried it into the cave, and sat it down.
The spear had been knocked aside in the tussle and Robin looked at it with a glance. One glance was enough to make the young man realize that he had had a narrow escape. Its tip was bright and as sharp as a piece of broken glass. If the creature had thought to jab that spear, it might have been deadly. ”

“ For he had realized, as he sat in the fast plane transporting him home, that the Earth was itself a planet among planets, and that this might possibly prove to be his last visit to the town where he had been born. He had pondered, as he had gazed out of the ship's windows, just what it could mean to depart from this world and travel among the uncharted reaches of empty and hostile space ... to set foot upon planets where no human foot had ever touched and to meet unguessable perils. ”

“ All men are brothers."
Robin threw the switch.
Outside, the crater suddenly lighted up in a blinding white glare, a blaze that threw wild, dancing black shadows several miles across the floor, that momentarily lighted the great crags and precipices of the mountains, that made an outburst of grandeur in a moonscape of unearthly terror and beauty.
Five minutes later, when the flares had died down, Robin again threw the switch. The second set of magnesium bombs went off and again the crater was brilliantly lighted.
"On Earth that should stand out very sharply. It is nearly a new moon for them. ”