Robert Abernathy

“ And minute by minute the angry light crept higher up the sky and assumed new forms, clouds and streamers, for it was a mighty redlit pall of dust that was ever higher and nearer to the rushing terrapin.
Torcred glanced sidelong at the girl beside him. Her face was even whiter under the harsh light of sunset, her eyes closed beneath long lashes. Watching that smooth, tragic face, Torcred realized again how young she was; he shook his head somberly. The air-people were a strange race, who sent their young females on missions fit only for grown men. The terrapins were far more sensible. ”

“ The little creatures swam to and fro as before, growing hazy and dwindling or swelling as they swam out of the narrow focus of the lens; he gazed at those who paused in sharp definition, and saw that, although he had at first seen no visible means of propulsion, each creature bore about its head a halo of thread-like, flickering cilia that lashed the water and drew it forward, for all the world like an airplane propeller or a rapidly turning wheel.
"I know what they are!" exclaimed Henry Chatham, turning to his son with an almost boyish excitement. "They're rotifers! ”

“ For seconds at a time, the walking machine poised motionless, one or more of its clawed limbs groping for footholds. As it clambered painfully upward, it was hopelessly exposed to attack if it should be sighted from the air.
Dworn, the beetle told himself savagely, you are not only a ghost, you are an insane ghost. Only a madman would have undertaken such a journey.
The cabin heeled wildly as the machine grappled a ledge and, its engine panting at full throttle, levered itself upward a few more feet. ”

“ They plunged deeper into the mountain. And the shaking of the mountain increased with every step, its vibrations became sound, and its sound was like that of the terrible city which they had seen in the dream. Through the slow-rolling thunder of the hidden machines seemed to echo the death-cries of a billion slaves, the despair of all flesh and blood before their monstrous and inhuman power.
Without warning, lights went on. Blinking in their glare, Var and Neena saw that fifty paces before them the way opened out into a great rounded room that was likewise ablaze with light. ”

“ It was the end of March, and the wreck of the Dritten Reich lay in colossal ruin across Europe, where people were only beginning to crawl out of their burrows to face the job of rebuilding a world for better or worse. In Germany itself, the Allied Armies, driving forward behind the iron spearheads of their aircraft and their armor, were closing in to smash the still-defiant nucleus of the old world that had been for worse. ”

“ The Terrapin waited only for moments; then he opened his throttle wide and sent the little combat car swerving into the heart of the herd.
All around rolled rumbling iron giants; the clank of couplings, the roaring of unmuffled engines were deafening. A hooting of furious horns arose as the terrapin darted and zigzagged between the moving units of the herd. But there was no blaze of gunfire.
"So we hunt them," Torcred flung over his shoulder at the breathless girl. "They can't shoot when we're in among them; we disable one and shelter behind it until the herd passes on...." ”

“ But a nation at war is a nation afraid.
"And RM4 is a successful mutation," added Euge didactically. "It creates the thing it feeds on. One of the most basic fears in men or mice—the fear of one's own dead. Thanks to that, the plague is independent now of anything you do or leave undone."
The Dictator stared smolderingly. He spoke with bitter irony, "You awe me, doctor. You are a traitor to your country and to all mankind. Yet you seem to consider yourself justified."
Euge shrugged. "I am a scientist; I deal in questions of what can be done. ”

“ Even as Westover began frantically climbing, out of that lightening sky the hopelessness of his effort pressed down on him. With dawn the monster would begin to move, to crawl eastward impelled by the same dim phototropic urge which must guide these things out of the interstellar depths to Sun-type stars. All of them had crept endlessly eastward around the Earth, gutting the continents and churning the sea bottoms, and by now whatever was left of human civilization must be starving beyond the Arctic circle, or aboard ships at sea. ”

“ He checked his instruments, scanned the mirrors which gave him a broad view of moonlit desert to his left. To the right he could see nothing, for his little armored machine lay half-buried, burrowed deep into the sheltering flank of a great dune; all day long it had escaped the notice of prowling diurnal machines of prey. He listened, too, for any sound of danger which his amplifiers might pick up from near or far.
The motor, idling as it had all day while its master slept, responded to testing with a smooth, almost noiseless surge of power. ”

“ Manning wavered, torn by a suicidal impulse to rush the machine gun and get it over with. But despair lamed him. He thought numbly, "Time is immutable after all, and something was sure to stop us from changing what's already happened. The fatalists are right." He bowed his head and slipped off the wired hood; then he could no longer see it or his own hands. He felt still more like a ghost, impotent to stir reality.
"Now the invisibility units," ordered Schwinzog. "Throw them in front of you." ”

“ Ladna had gone up there—she had had plenty of time to reach safety in the buried heart of the eyrie, which even the mightiest explosives could scarcely touch—but without knowing why, Torcred edged out of his shelter and began once more, creeping from rock to rock, to clamber up the steep ravine that the two of them had ascended together.
He had not progressed far—in the dark the uncertain footing was dangerous—when the breeze, sighing down the canyon with cool mountain-top air for the hot plain, brought confirmation of his fear with it. ”

“ When Neena in her terror had flung a dream monster into the Ryzga's way—a mere child's bogey out of a fairy tale—the Ryzga had not recognized it as such, but had taken it for a real being. Var laughed aloud, and with great care, as one communicates with an infant, he projected his thoughts into the other's mind. "There will be no new beginning for you in our world, Ryzga! In two thousand years, we've learned some new things. Now at last I understand why you built so many machines, such complicated arrangements of matter and energy to do simple tasks—it was because you knew no other way." ”

“ He followed the garden path, between the weed-grown beds of vegetables, until he came to the edge of the little pond. It lay there quiet in the sunlight, green-scummed and walled with stiff rank grass, a lone dragonfly swooping and wheeling above it. The image of all the stagnant waters, the fertile breeding-places of strange life, with which it was joined in the end by the tortuous hidden channels, the oozing pores of the Earth. ”

“ Dworn sensed the other spiders watching from the height of their machines; and he guessed something of what must be going on in the mind of the fierce old woman staring down at him. She would be wondering if an alien, a mere beetle, would be so far without honor, so anxious to save his own skin, as to lie in such a matter.
Then he felt Qanya's hand in his, and heard her cry out, her voice vibrant and assured: "It is true, Mother! I have seen them too. The night-fliers, the raiders—they are the evil things our legends tell of!" ”

“ The monsters who have descended on Earth must represent the end result of a long evolution completed in space itself. They are evidently deep-space beings, able to propel themselves from planet to planet and from star to star in search of food, guided by instinct to suns and worlds like ours. Descending on such a planet, they move across its surface systematically ingesting all edible material—all life not mobile enough to avoid their march. They are like caterpillars that overrun a planet and strip it of its leaves, before moving on to the next. ”

“ On the edge of the encampment a space of sand was white in the glare of lights. White too was the face of the girl who swayed, fast in the grip of two men. Others pressed round with flashing knives, and more warriors, half-dressed and sleepy-eyed, appeared to reinforce them. They looked questioningly at one another; somehow the appearance of a lone alien being, with no machine in evidence, was more sinisterly alarming than would have been the onslaught of a horde of armed and armored juggernauts. ”

“ They stood high on the side of the Ryzga mountain, and gazed at the doorway. It was an opaque yet penetrable well of darkness, opening into the face of a lava cliff, closed only by an intangible curtain—so little had the Ryzgas feared those who might assail them in their sleep.
Var sent his thoughts probing beyond the curtain, listened intently, head thrown back, to their echoes that returned. The tunnel beyond slanted steeply downward. Var's hands moved, molding a radiant globe from the feeble sunshine that straggled through the fog-bank. ”

“ Harry glanced up as if startled. He was silent a moment; then he slid reluctantly from his chair and said, "All right."
Mr. Chatham sat down and bent over the microscope. Puzzled and a little hurt, he twirled the focusing vernier and peered into the eyepiece, looking down once more into the green water world of the rotifers.
There was a swarm of them under the lens, and they swam lazily to and fro, their cilia beating like miniature propellers. Their dark eyes stared, wet and glistening; they drifted in the motionless water, and clung with sucker-like pseudo-feet to the tangled plant stems. ”

“ Her slender stem rippled and swayed on its base and her delicate crown of pinkish tentacles trailed disheveled in the pull of the ebbtide.
"Pish, my dear!" said Pater. "There are no sea monsters. At worst," he consoled her stoutly, "Junior may have been trapped in a tidepool."
"Oh, oh," gulped Mater. "He'll be eaten by a land monster."
"There ARE no land monsters!" snorted Pater. He straightened his stalk so abruptly that the stone to which he and Mater were conjugally attached creaked under them. "How often must I assure you, my dear, that WE are the highest form of life?" ”

“ No hope in either flight or fight; on the open ground, they would be run down in no time, and they had no weapons—even the notion of a weapon, as something apart from the fighting machine that carried it, was alien to their thinking.
The enemy vehicle rolled into full view and nosed slowly along the base of the mound; its motor whining questingly, only a few yards of gentle slope between it and the huddled pair. Its vision-ports glinted redly in the sunset glow, and Dworn could almost feel the raking of murderous eyes from behind them.... ”

“ The bird-girl laughed again. "You know so little, you earthbound creatures," she taunted. "You've never known the joy of flight—to climb up and into the clear bright stratosphere, and see the Earth with all its secrets unroll below you.... You creep from place to place and cower in your camps, but we range farther than you dream, and know the world and all its peoples that fly and swim and crawl and burrow. And we are the highest race of all."
"Higher than the buzzards?" asked Torcred. ”

“ Neena screamed.
Between the Ryzga and the control panel a nightmare shape reared up seven feet tall, flapping black amorphous limbs and flashing red eyes and white fangs. The Ryzga recoiled, and the weapon in his hand came up. There was an instantaneous glare like heat lightning, and the monster crumpled in on itself, twitched briefly and vanished.
But in that moment a light of inspiration had flashed upon Var, and it remained. As the Ryzga stretched out his hand again, Var acted. The Ryzga froze, teetering off balance and almost falling, as a numbing grip closed down on all his motor nerves. ”

“ The Spider Mother's face was like iron. She looked from one to the other slowly.
"Then," she said stiffly and formally, leaning over to extend a wrinkled hand to Dworn, "let there be peace between us ... between me and mine and you and yours, and among all living peace ... till the evil is no more!"
Dworn took the hand, and answered, hurriedly recalling ancient custom: "Till the evil is no more!" And heard Qanya echo the words.
All night the desert was stirring, with a feverish hastening of messengers. ”

“ Dworn braced himself. Even as the wall of earth and rock began leaning outward above him, he gave his engine full throttle. The wheels spun for one sickening instant, then the little machine lunged forward from beneath the fresh landslide and was climbing, bucking and slewing, up the slope of loose soil created by the ones before.
The caterpillar loomed black and enormous on his left hand, so close that it could not have brought its guns to bear even if its crew had expected the beetle to take this daring way out. ”

“ The aero wobbled on one wing as the top of a dune slid by scant feet below; then it plowed through the next crest and pancaked into the valley beyond.
The two scrambled, shaken up but undamaged, out of the battered craft, and Torcred caught the disheveled girl in his arms.
"You're a hopelessly bad bird," he growled in mock rage. "Two ships you've smashed up inside a week!"
And he would have touched noses with her, but Ladna evaded the gesture adroitly.
"Don't be a terrapin!" she chided. "You've got to learn civilized ways ... like this...." ”

“ Then he swung his staff up like a weapon, and for the two on the mountainside the world turned upside down, the mountain's black shoulder hung inverted above them and the dizzy gulf of sky was beneath. Var fought for footing with his balance gone, feeling Neena reel against him until, summoning all his strength, he broke the grip of the illusion and the world seemed to right itself. The mist billowed again and Groz was out of sight, but they could hear him exhorting his men to haste. ”

“ The world burst apart into a shower of lights and darkness....
Dworn came awake to a pounding head and blurred light in his eyes. He moved, and sensed that he was bound.
His vision cleared. He saw that he was in a closed, half-darkened chamber—and that discovery alone made him shudder, he who as a free beetle had spent his whole life under desert skies. His feet rested on a floor of hard-packed sand, and his back, behind which his wrists were lashed together was propped uncomfortably against a wall ribbed with metal girders. ”

“ Lying still in a hollow of the sand, its gray paint blending with the drab earth to make it almost invisible from the air—and its radar alarms, no doubt, keeping watch for any moving threat. Encased in armor almost to the ground, over the great treads, and its three rounded turrets astare with guns.
At first glimpse Torcred jerked his head back like the extinct land reptile whose namesake he was. His palms grew sweaty and his insides quivered. If he had been alone, he might have slid quietly down the slope and stolen away, leaving his T-beam behind him. ”

“ Var sighed, shaking his head. "It won't hold them for long, but it's the best I can do now. Come on."
There was no path. Now they were descending the steeper face of the sierra, and the way led over bottomless crevasses, sheer drops and sheer ascents, sheets of traitorous glare ice. Place after place had to be crossed on the air, and both grew weary with the effort such crossings cost. They hoarded their strength, helping one another; one alone might never have won through.
It was starry night already when they saw the light from the Watcher's cave. ”

“ Miles ahead across the desert, a dim encarmined shimmer marked the waters of the Salt Sea.
Nearer, but still far ahead, a black stream was moving across the rippled plain at right angles to the terrapin's course. It was without beginning or end, pouring steadily from north to south. A distant vibration seemed to shake the earth beneath the sway and swoop of the moving vehicle.
"The trailer herd," said Torcred. "Thousands on thousands of them, moving south with the sun that feeds them. ”