Ray Cummings

“ He was aware of Glora pulling at him, and his father rushing past him with a bottle of liquid, shouting:
"Alan! Run! You and the girl, get out of here! Into the other room—"
Then Alan saw the things on the floor! His foot crushed one with a slippery squash! Nameless, hideous, noisome things grown monstrous, risen from their lurking invisibility in the drops of water! Sodden, gray-black and green-slimed monsters of the deep; palpitating masses of pulp! One lay rocking, already as large as a football with streamers of ooze hanging from it, and squirting a black inky fluid. ”

“ A nightmare with only the horrible vision of this goggled helmet always before my eyes.
It seemed that we were rolling on the ground, back on the summit. The unshadowed Earthlight was clear and bright. The abyss was beside me. Coniston, rolling, was now on top, now under me, trying to shove me over the brink. It was all like a dream—as though I were asleep, dreaming that I did not have enough air.
I strove to keep my senses. He was struggling to roll me over the brink. Ah, that would not do! But I was so tired. One cannot fight without oxygen! ”

“ With his hands to his mouth, the Very Young Man shouted up: "It's too far away. We can't make it—we're too small." They waited. Suddenly, without warning, a great wooden oval bowl fifteen or twenty feet across came at them with tremendous speed. They scattered hastily in terror.
"Not that—the ring!" shouted the Very Young Man, as he realized it was the spoon in the Banker's hand that had frightened them.
A moment more and the ring was before them, lying at the edge of the handkerchief—a circular pit of rough yellow rock breast high. They ran over to it and climbed upon its top. ”

“ Soon Rax had dwindled small and dim in the water below. But I could see Nona’s forces—the girls mounted on dolphins—as they too were starting. Then Rax, now so far beneath me, blurred and was lost in the gray-green haze of water; and I turned my attention ahead.
The backbone of my army was the line of young men swimming five abreast behind me. Five hundred of them there were—young, powerful swimmers—youths at the height of their physical strength. Each was by nature capable of shocking into insensibility with an electric discharge, any opponent he could touch by head and heels simultaneously. ”

“ I could see the house shifting on its foundations; a corner of it tilted downward.
"Brett! Father! Try it now. One last try." Martt and Frannie had the pole again in position. With a last despairing effort we raised it; slid it up over the giant table-edge; caught the wide flaring side of the giant switch. Pushing—despairingly; five of us, pigmies struggling there at that giant threshhold. The switch moved. Our pole held its place; the switch moved farther, clicked with a tremendous snap that reverberated about us. The growth of the monster was checked. ”

“ A cry from Aura interrupted him.
"My brother, see, they come," she exclaimed.
Before them, out of several of the smaller passageways, a crowd of little figures was pouring. There were no shouts; there was seemingly no confusion; just a steady, flowing stream of human forms, emptying from the tunnels into the amphitheater and spreading out over its open surface.
The fugitives stared a moment in horror. "Good God! they've got us," the Doctor muttered, breaking the tenseness of the silence. ”

“ Nona stared into the girl’s pathetic little face.
“Go,” she said. “You speak truth, Maaret. You belong there with the man you love, no matter for what cause he fights. Go!”
Her gaze followed as Maaret dropped away, down into the recesses of the forest.
It was a terrible moment as we saw those black fishes, with Og in their midst, dashing at us. Atar and I shouted to our men—shouted encouragement. We could not avoid this new enemy; and so we had to plunge at it with a will. A hundred electric men, no more, and all of them were exhausted by the combat they had left but a moment before. ”

“ A woman swam hurriedly into the apartment—a serving woman to the Queen. “My King, the people are arriving from the forests and the mudbanks. They are crowding into Rax—they do not know where to go or what to do.”
The rural population! Coming into the city for protection.
“I will speak to them,” the King repeated—he said it numbly, as in a daze. “I must tell them something. . . . Atar, my son, we must plan something, you and I. But there is no time—the Maagogs are coming so soon.”
It was then that my Nona whispered to me. Vehemently, with her soft arms entwined about my neck. Inspiring words! ”

“ So it now seemed to be from Elza to me. Georg, out of bed now beside me, urged me to greater efforts of concentration, that I might understand what message Elza was sending.
"Elza! Elza dear! Where are you? What is it?"
I murmured the words to myself as with all my power, I thought them over and over, flinging out the thoughts like radio waves into the night. Mysterious vibrations! In an instant, from here—everywhere in the universe. Who knows their character? Their speed? The speed of light a laggard perhaps beside the flash of a thought! ”

“ It was English, curiously and quaintly intoned. "Are you real? Where do you come from?" The lad was recovering rapidly. "You speak English, but not like the traders or my teacher. What are you?"
Alan tried to smile. "I won't hurt you," he repeated. "I'm a friend. A visitor, from—from a far-off place," he floundered. It would never do to say that he came from 1942. Already they were staring at him as though he were mad, huddled back against the wall of the cave.
Abruptly behind Alan there was a whiz; a thud; and the cave was lighted by a flickering, yellow-red glare. ”

“ The changing, lightening gravity on the incline caught them. Dr. Frank bounded up to the rail under the impetus of his step; caught and held himself. Drew himself back. The line swayed. In the dim, blue lit glare it seemed unreal, crazy. A grotesque dream of men descending a plank.
They reached the forest glade. Stood swaying, afraid at first to move. The purple night crowded them; they stood gazing at this strange world, their new prison.
"Now the women."
Miko was shoving the women to the head of the incline. I could feel Moa's gaze upon me. Her knife gleamed in the turret light. ”

“ Ahead of us, to the right within the line of oleanders, the glowing white figure of an apparition was visible. We stopped, out of breath from the climb, and stood by the roadside.
“See it there?” Don murmured. “Let’s wait and watch it a moment.”
One may get used to anything. We were not frightened. The figure, no more than twenty feet ahead of us, stood partly within a tree-trunk. It could not materialize there. It was the figure of a man, with helmet and looped wires.
“Not that fellow who called himself Tako,” I whispered.
This one was smaller, no larger than Jane, perhaps. ”

“ He stared at himself. His trusted companion. His face, thin-lipped, was grim with its power. His eyes gleamed with it—eyes at which everyone shivered with fear. The banked rows of his television tuning knobs were within reach of his hand. And he decided that it would be amusing to look and to listen from some of the newscasters' vantage points at what was transpiring down in the city streets. He chose one in the factory district, over by the river. They were the people who had least. ”

“ Way back in the days when he was mule-boy Jimmy could remember sitting alone in the great dark silences of the mine, listening to its vague, distant, muffled sounds, and thinking of the great world outside—the world of light and air and color, the world he knew so little about, was in so seldom, and dreamed of so constantly.
Jimmy Rand was by nature a dreamer. He had imagination, which, to one who mines coal, is neither necessary nor desirable. ”

“ Alan switched off the current. Night was here, deep and silent, enshrouding the forest. No warwhoops; no glare of flaming arrows and burning brush. That had been last night. From the empty cave Alan walked slowly out into the woods. A northward vista of the broad river for a moment was visible. A little blob was out there in the river—an English frigate awaiting the outcome of the parley of Nichols, emissary of the Duke of York, with Governor Stuyvesant. ”

“ We know the location of the Grantline camp, its Weapons, its defense, the amount and location of the ore. I warn you, if you do not play us fair...."
He laughed heartily. He seemed to like us. He spread his huge legs as he lounged in his settle, and drank of the bowl which one of his men set before him.
"Little tigress! Fear me not—I play fair!" He pushed two of the bowls across the table. "Drink, Haljan. All is well with us, and I am glad to hear it. Miss Prince, drink my health as your leader."
I waved it away from Anita. "We need all our wits; your strong Martian drinks are dangerous. ”

“ As we stepped out into view of the people a louder murmur arose, mingled with a ripple of applause. Three or four girls, hovering only a few feet in front of us, clapped their hands and laughed. The king placed Mercer and me on either side of him, and, standing with his hands on our shoulders, leaned over the balcony rail and began to speak.
A silence fell over the crowd; they listened quietly, but with none of that respect and awe with which a people usually faces its king.
Miela whispered to me. "He is telling them about your earth, and that you came here to visit us in friendly spirit." ”

“ If they were left there—if evil came to them—then evil would fall upon all this forest.
He listened. Abruptly he stood up and flung his gray braids with a toss of his head; and wound his vivid blanket around him. Dignified, venerable figure. But he was afraid of Lea. Her curse upon these, his forests—his people—
"It shall be as you command. You shall have thirty of my braves. In a moment they will be ready."
The little blockhouse stood in the trees on a rise of ground. Lea, with her Indians about her, moved silently through the underbrush. ”

“ At the tunnel-mouth those squat black fishes circled back and forth on guard. Occasionally two or three would enter the cave. Poised before us, their eyes seemed gauging us. Uncanny eyes! Eyes almost like those of an intelligent dog whose master has set him to guard an enemy and who is watching suspiciously, expectantly, that enemy’s every move. We lowered our voices subconsciously, as though fearing that the black fishes would hear us and understand.
At first we had little to say. It was all so hopeless. We could not allow Og to return us to Rax and yield up Nona to him. ”

“ Nona and I watched, breathless, confused, but like children at your circus, eager to see everything which simultaneously was going on.
Presently, several young men swam to different parts of the arena, and clung to the foliage. A young girl—one of the Marinoid beauties—swam to the center of the open water. She hung poised; and as the music suddenly stopped, she unbound her coiled hair and dropped the garland of seaweed which had been adorning it. The garland drifted downward. The girl uttered a sudden sharp command. At the signal, the young men dove for the prize. A sharp scuffle. ”

“ Soon we were speeding out across the cool, sweet Marinoid waters. They were dim with twilight. Peaceful, beautiful, a Garden of Paradise to us, returning now from that foul Water of Wild Things.
It was still the Time of Sleep in Rax when we arrived. Quietly, unobtrusively, we slipped unnoticed into the city.
And Nona was again with Boy! The joy of it! I am a mere man; I cannot describe—I know I cannot even appreciate—how my Nona felt to hold Boy again to her breast; to feel his baby arms about her neck; to hear his gleeful, welcoming cries. Only a mother can understand ”

“ There were many half-breeds in the crowd—lurking in secluded spots, eying the King with their huge, solemn eyes. They began slinking away; and most of the crowd let them go. Except the Marinoid girls. Perversely feminine, the girls swam around them—taunting, laughing, jeering.
The King looked down anxiously at Atar and me. Then, with sudden dominance, his roaring voice stilled the confusion.
“Silence all! Your King speaks! Are you Maagogs that you defy the majesty of your King? You are unjust to the half-breeds. The half-breeds are loyal. ”

“ We thrust our hands and forearms into their loops. The shields extended from a few inches beyond our fingers to the elbow.
Snap had slid the window blind. I bent over the prone form of Meka. "Don't try to move. Molo will release you when he comes back."
We gathered on the starlit balcony. The city stretched around us. There was as yet no alarm. No swimming figures near here; but a distance away we saw the towering conclave globe, with its audience just beginning to emerge, like bees coming from a hive.
"Let me go first." I held Anita and Venza at the rail. "It's like swimming. ”

“ The black fishes were swarming about him—fawning upon him with their grewsome whines of pleasure. He stopped to stroke one of them.
“You have decided?” he said to us.
“Yes,” said Atar.
Fear seemed to have dropped from our young prince. For the first time since we left Rax, he dominated Caan and me. He stood now fronting Og unflinching—his face white and set, his eyes smouldering.
But his lips were smiling. “We do not desire death,” he said. “We will return to Rax, and she will give the promise you ask.”
He turned to Nona, signing her to speak. “You will trust him to send us safely to Rax?” ”