Murray Leinster

“ The Weddington was squat and clumsy and unhandy. Here, where any trace of air remaining was as thin as the substance of the ghost-ships themselves, the little ship went in what seemed an abstracted, yet somehow defiant circling within the ring of gossamer-thin unsubstantial spheres which watched it.
"If they think we're daring them—" said Tom suddenly, "they think we could attack them but are holding back. For the love of St. Peter! Don't you see what we're doing? We're assuming they're like men! That they'll get into wars they don't want because they're led by fools!" ”

“ Bud Gregory had actually sat up at night to make the outfit for his own protection and the mass of tangled wiring Murfree carried.
They reached a spot where they could look into the valley beyond. It was literally a valley of death. There was nothing alive in it. Not one blade of grass, not one shrub, not one bird or insect, not even a bacterium. Everything was dead.
And a swirling, humming column of heated air rose skyward, snatching up deadly dust from a quarter-mile patch of earth that was quite red-hot, now. Every grain of that dust was the most deadly stuff known to men. ”

“ Tommy was traversing the little gun with the trigger pressed down. His lips were set tightly. And suddenly it seemed as if the solid earth burst asunder! There had been an instant in which the bullet-bursts were visible. They tore and shattered the howling mob of Ragged Men. But then they struck the golden weapon. A sheet of blue-white flame leaped skyward and round about. A blast of blistering, horrible heat smote upon the beleaguered pair. The moisture of the ooze between them and the jungle flashed into steam. A section of the jungle itself, a hundred yards across, shriveled and died. ”

“ Two hundred yards from them the most formidable fighting force the world had ever seen littered the earth with gossamer-seeming cellate wings and streamlined bodies at all angles to each other. And it was completely useless. The least of the weapons of the air-fleet would have been a godsend to Thorn and Sylva. To have had one ship, even the smallest, where they were would have been a godsend to the fleet. But two hundred yards, with the dome of force between, made the fleet just exactly as much protection for Sylva as if it had been a million miles away. ”

“ They stood on the hull of the Space Platform, waiting in the incredible harsh sunshine of emptiness. The bright steel plates of the hull swelled and curved away on every hand. There were myriads of stars and the vast round bulk of Earth seemed farther away to a man in a space suit than to a man looking out a port. Where shadows cut across the Platform's irregular surface, there was utter blackness. Also there was horrible frigidity. Elsewhere it was blindingly bright. The men were specks of humanity standing on a shining metal hull, and all about them there was the desolation of nothingness. ”

“ Burl was an ignorant savage, and to him Saya's deathlike unconsciousness was like death itself, but dumb misery smote him, and he laid her down gently, while tears came to his eyes and he called her name again and again in an agony of grief.
For an hour he sat there beside her, a man so lately pleased with himself above all creatures for having slain one huge beetle and put another to flight, as he would have looked upon it, now a broken-hearted, little pink-skinned man, weeping like a child, hunched up and bowed over with sorrow. ”

“ Twelve men, from Earth and hundreds of lightyears from home, sealed in a cave that had been a tomb for eight thousand years. Unknown stars made speckles of light in the thin blue sky above the rain-clouds, at one place a nearby star-cluster made a mottled illumination brighter than the local sun. They were on a planet of water with but a single continent, and that was empty of moving life. There was life only in that hopeless cavern underground, and high in the air overhead, hovering until more hovering things should come to drop more death. ”

“ A rocket-ship doesn't burn its rocket-engines all the time. It runs them to get started, and it runs them to stop, but it does not run them to travel. This ship was floating above the Earth, which might be a vast sunlit ball filling half the universe below the rocket, or might be a blackness as of the Pit. Cochrane had lost track of time, but not of the shattering effect of being snatched from the job he knew and thought important, to travel incredibly to do something he had no idea of. He felt, in his mind, like somebody who climbs stairs in the dark and tries to take a step that isn't there. ”

“ Colby stood still, with thinning smoke coming out of the gun barrel, while the echoes died away to a dimming murmur among the trees, until even that sound was lost in the noise of the breeze in the bare branches overhead and the dry rustling of lingering brown leaves.
It was very peaceful, here among the trees. The brown clothing of the crumpled figure on the earth blended in color with the carpet of leaves. Any living creatures that might have been within hearing had been startled into immobility and silence by the shot. Colby had not yet moved even his feet after pulling the trigger. ”

“ Huyghens snapped off the light. The bears crunched and fed busily in the darkness.
"Those things are carnivores and blood-suckers, Bordman," said Huyghens calmly. "They drain their victims of blood like vampire-bats—they've some trick of not waking them—and when they're dead the whole tribe eats. But bears have thick fur, and they wake when they're touched. And they're omnivorous. They'll eat anything but sphexes, and like it. You might say that those night-creatures came to lunch. They are it, for the bears, who are living off the country as usual." ”

“ From behind him came fluting signals like the messages that would later come from space. In the dream he was full-grown and he saw trees with extraordinary, ribbony leaves like no trees on Earth. They wavered and shivered in a gentle breeze, but he ignored them as he did the fluting sounds behind him.
He was searching desperately for someone. A child knows terror for himself, but not for anybody else. But Burke, then aged eleven, dreamed that he was in an agony of fear for someone else. To breathe was torment. ”

“ The treetops were dancing from the heat. The sun beat down with fierce intensity. Blasts of hot, humid wind blew upon us and scorched us, but we paid no attention. And always, from the mysterious, unknown and unknowable bush all around us, drums beat and beat and beat tirelessly and ominously.
When one of us went back to get food for the rest, he went with an automatic held ready in his hand, and the other two were prepared at any instant to hear a shot or the snarl that would mean the reappearance of the gorilla. We were doubly besieged, by the natives without and by the gorilla within. ”

“ It made its way toward Burl, tiny clickings coming from its limbs.
A little wisp of vapor swirled toward the ant. It was the vapor that had gathered over the whole range of hills as a thin, low cloud. It enveloped the ant which seemed to be thrown into a strange convulsion, throwing itself about, legs moving aimlessly. If it had been an animal instead of an insect, it would have choked and gasped. But ants breathe through air-holes in their abdomens. It writhed helplessly on the spongy stuff across which it had been moving. ”