Collected Short Fiction, page 25
Again, I had to admit that Sam had advanced a most plausible explanation for an amazing thing, but still I prefer my plants fastened to the ground.
It soon became evident that the monsters had discovered us. They approached and circled close above, green wings slowly beating the air, and the great blooms that were like heads seeming to flicker with varied colors. The thick, red tentacles coiled below the great brown shark-like bodies, with terrible talons drawn back threateningly.
“The things may be feeling unpleasant,” Sam suggested. “It might be a good thing to fix ’em a hot welcome.”
That had already occurred to me. I let Sam have the controls, and ran out and loaded the little cannon. Through the thick windows of the little conning-tower I watched the monsters flying above us. They followed as we kept up our deliberate advance toward the jungle-covered shore.
Suddenly one of them dived down upon us. The impact of its heavy, shark-like body shook the machine, and its great claws grated over the metal plates with an unpleasantly suggestive sound, as it strove vainly to rip them open. I felt some alarm. For sheer fighting power I would match one of those flying plants against any animal that ever walked on earth. In wing-spread it was fully as long as the Omnimobile, though the machine was, of course, many times heavier.
I slipped into gear the machinery that revolved the turret, and as soon as a portion of that rough, armored brown body was fairly before the gun, I let fire with an explosive shell. The whole machine rocked with the force of the explosion, and the side of that vast scaly brown body was tom off. A viscid green fluid gushed out, dying the deck and tinting the water alongside. The terrible grasp of the thing relaxed, and it slipped off into the sea.
The others were hovering low, but in a moment Sam had submerged the machine, and we made for the shore under water. In five minutes we struck a soft, muddy bank. He shifted the caterpillar tread into gear. The machine waddled up the muddy slope through the fringe of strange plants, and broke into the weird jungle.
The unearthly radiance of the sky filtered through the jungle roof in a dull crimson light. In the vague, ominous twilight, huge and monstrous tree-trunks rose all about us, as much like great fungoid growths as like normal trees. We pushed through thickets of weird purples and strange metallic hues, under vast masses of hanging green vines, all hung with gigantic incredible blooms that were so bright they seemed to light the dusky forest with their vivid flames of crimson and yellow and blue!
For perhaps three miles the Omnimobile smashed her deliberate way like a gigantic reptilian monster through that strip of weird rotting jungle. Then we emerged on higher ground of a different vegetation.
CHAPTER XIV
The Prey of the Plant
WE stopped the machine on the first little eminence of the open space, to survey the vastly different and unfamiliar region that lay before us. It was an open, park-like country. There were broad meadows and low hills covered with a fine turf of luxuriant green grass. There were scattering small groves and great solitary trees so profusely laden with vast purple blossoms that they seemed afire with purple flame.
It was a strange landscape, and not without a certain unearthly beauty. The rich, green plains and hills lay all about before us, scattered with clumps of brilliant purple woodland, and stretching up to the great blue cliffs in the misty distance. A lurid, melancholy weirdness was given to the scene by the awful scarlet glare of the sky.
Presently we rolled on again, across the broad level meadow, and over a little stream, and through a copse of flaming purple trees. We had gone another mile when Sam, still at the controls, shouted above the beating of the engine and the clatter of the machinery. “Look, Mel! Get it! Shoot! North of us!”
Still behind the gun, I looked out quickly. To the north was an open green field of several acres extent. Beyond, the scattering purple trees rose, dotting the green hills until at last they merged in the slope that reached up to the cliffs in the misty distance beneath the amazing sky.
For a moment my eyes searched that strange scene in vain, and then I saw the huge green wings of one of the terrible flying plants, flapping deliberately above the brilliantly purple trees a hundred yards to our right. Sam was already swinging the machine about in that direction. Without waiting to see the cause of his frantic appeal, I trained the gun and depressed the firing pin.
The little gun roared sharply, slid quickly back and forward again in its recoil cylinders, and the mechanism clicked smoothly as another shell was thrown into the breech. For a moment my vision was obscured by the thick white cloud of smoke. Peering intently, I saw the unearthly monster flying more slowly—sinking. In a moment it was out of sight behind the purple trees. “Did you hit it?” Sam cried anxiously.
“I think so. But why all the fuss about that one? There are plenty more back in the jungle.”
“Oh, didn’t you see? It was carrying something!”
“Carrying something?”
“Mel, one of those red tentacles was wrapped around a man!”
He had brought the lumbering machine about in the direction of the place where we had last seen the monster. We went at a reckless pace. The machine rocked and banged, and we were shaken up unmercifully when we crossed a dry watercourse. Two or three of the trees went down before our undeviating and irresistible advance, filling the air with purple clouds of petals from the great bright flowers.
Then I saw before us, thirty yards away, the great strange creature lying flat on the ground, with wings outspread. Beneath it, in the coils of one of the thick tentacles, I saw the gleam of a naked human body.
The machine jerked to a halt and I threw open the manhole and sprang out on the deck. In a moment Sam was beside me. He had buckled on an automatic pistol of the latest design and the heaviest caliber. He handed me a duplicate weapon, with ammunition belt and holster, with the warning, “We’ve got to expect the unexpected, and must be quick on the draw!”
I fastened on the gun, and led the way down the ladder to the ground. In a few seconds we stood by the dead monster. Seen at close range, it was an appalling thing, indeed. It was very strange, and even the dead body of it showed cruel strength. The green wings were like tough green leather stretched over a metal frame. The body was armored with thick, rough brown scales. The tough scarlet skin of the tentacular limbs was smooth and rubber-like. Already the weird flower at the forward end was withered and black. The ground about the thing was stained with a flood of green liquid from the terrible wound the shell had torn.
I hurried around it. Only the shoulder and arm of the human prey were in sight. Yes, it was a human being, and the skin had the clear smoothness of youth. I bent closer and perceived, with an odd admixture of feelings that made my heart beat wildly and then pause until I reeled, that the skin had a soft greenish tan. I saw that the body, lying under the wing alone, had not been crushed by the fall of the monster.
“We’ll be able to tell what manner of mankind we have to deal with here,” Sam said, though I scarcely heard him. “If our man was at all civilized, there ought to be ornaments, or remnants of clothing. I hardly expected human life here. But it may be a human science that is threatening our world!”
He stumbled over the end of one of the thick red tentacles. It moved uncertainly, and he stopped in a sort of fascinated horror. “God!” he muttered. Indeed, it was a terrible thing. The slick red limb, four inches thick, ended in a suction cup, with a hideous claw, a good twelve inches long, fastened at the side. It made one’s flesh creep to think of that terrible claw ripping and tearing flesh, or of the cupped end of the tube sucking blood from it.
I pulled at the still white form beneath the wing. One of the crimson tentacles still clung closely about the young body. I tried to pull it free; but at my touch it seemed to tighten with a sort of aimless reflex action. Sam got out his sheath knife and cut at it. It was very tough, and the viscid green slime flowed from the abrasions in its rubber-like membrane, but presently we cut it in two. I drew the body from under the wing.
I echoed Sam’s exclamation. “It’s the body of a woman!”
CHAPTER XV
The Green Girl
IT was, indeed, the form of a woman—rather, of a girl. The eyelids were closed and still. There was no breathing, and no perceptible beating of the heart. But the body was very beautiful. The hair was soft and dark; the skin, white with just a hint of the green coloration. The features were regular, classic—perfect! The lips were still very red.
That form was familial to me—it was the dearest shape of my dreams! It was the Green Girl! There could be no mistake. This was the flesh and blood reality of the delightful vision that had been the joy of my life. At last, my supreme wish was granted! I had found the Green Girl! But too late! She was so white and still!
As Sam remarked, his words reaching me faintly through a gray daze of despair, she seemed to have belonged to a rather highly-developed race of people. In fact, so far as physical perfection goes, she was without parallel; and physical and mental endownents usually go hand in hand. The wide white forehead betokened a keen intellect.
Sam had expected to find ornaments on the body, but no such things as we did find! There was a thin band of metal about the waist! The twisted fragments of a strange metal object were upon the back, fastened to the white shoulders with metal clamps that gripped them cruelly!
It was evident that something, recently torn away, had been fastened to the back of the girl!
Sam brought a file from the machine. I helped aimlessly, mechanically, and we cut that metal frame off. As we worked over that white body, with its soft tints of green, I saw strange, livid marks upon the back, that stood out sharply from the warm hue of the skin! I had never seen anything like them. They were splotches of a dull violet color! They looked like burns, or stains, that must have been caused by the thing that had been fastened to her body.
“Radium bums?” I questioned Sam in apathetic curiosity.
“No. Something similar, perhaps. Radium emanations whiten the hair, but the color of the skin is not affected except by inflammation. This is the effect of atomic radiation of a shorter wave-length, I think. My hands were oddly stained for months while I was making my initial experiments with the artificial generation of the cosmic ray, which led to the hydrodyne. I found the cause and developed an effective treatment. I imagine that bum is the chief cause of her coma.”
“Coma! Then she isn’t——” My heart beat madly, and a mist came before my eyes.
“I think there is hope. She seems not to have been injured by the monster, or to have been seriously hurt by the fall. She is in a profoundly comatose state, due to the electronic burns, and also to physical exhaustion and the terrible hardships of which her appearance gives evidence.”
“If you can save her——” I fell on my knees and raised that delicate head in my arms.
“Let’s get her to the machine. It’s cooler in there. We’ll do what we can.”
I picked up the silent body, still warm and limp, and carried it to the machine, up to the deck, and down into the cabin. I gently placed it on the divan, and nervously urged Sam to haste.
He deliberately began his work. He had included medical supplies in our equipment; and he was a doctor of considerable skill, whose special knowledge of the effects of etheric vibration was of greatest value here. I could do little except stand and watch hint, or stride impatiently up and down the room.
First he quickly prepared a thick red liquid, with which he bathed the violet-colored burns. Then he made a hypodermic injection, and next administered a small quantity of some kind of gas—a mixture of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, with something else that I did not recognize. In a few minutes the beating of the heart had become normal, and the breathing was resumed. He had me cover the patient up, and it soon became evident that she had passed into a deep but natural sleep.
I sat by the couch, feasting my sight on the reality of the vision that had been mine so long, in a fever of impatience for the time the beautiful sleeper might awake, so that I could speak to her, yet fearful of making a sound that would disturb her.
Sam had gone out to examine the dead monster more fully. In half an hour he came back in the cabin, carrying a queer writhing green thing in his hand. He held it up silently for me to see. With a sickening sensation, I perceived that it was a miniature replica of the great flying monster!
It was no bigger than a dove! The madly fluttering wings were a bright rich green, very delicate and soft. The thin, slender tentacles that clutched Sam’s hand, or scratched harmlessly at it with undeveloped claws, were a pale rose color. The thin, fish-like body was almost white, and the little bloom at the end of it was now an intense violet in color, while the little black sense organs were thrust stiffly out of it.
“Quite a find!” Sam said. “We ought to learn no end of things from studying it, if we can keep it alive.”
“Quiet!” I whispered. “Don’t wake her! But where did you get it?”
“Tore it out of a curious pouch on the back of the old one. A cunning little creature, isn’t it?”
“Not to my way of looking at it!”
“I wonder what it eats? Most likely it’s carnivorous. The claws would suggest as much. And that assumption would demand that there must be large game of some kind to support the winged plants.”
Sam carried the little monster on into the galley. In half an hour, since he had not come out, I left the sleeping girl and went in to see him, fearing that he had been bitten or stung by the thing. I found him with the grotesque little creature perched contentedly on his finger, sucking with the thin pink tentacles at a wisp of cotton he had soaked in condensed milk. An odd thing I noticed about it. The little bloom on the end of the body, which had been purple a short time before, was now white, flushed only with a pale pink glow.
“It’s as friendly as a kitten,” Sam said. “I’m going to name it Alexander. No reason why it should not develop into a young conqueror.”
“Keep it, and give me a pet rattlesnake!”
And it was well he did keep it.
CHAPTER XVI
Xenora of Lothar
I WENT back to the beautiful sleeping girl, and sat down again in my rapt contemplation of the quiet charm of her face. She was breathing quite normally, and the face bore a slight smile of pleasure. Suddenly she moved, and the eyelids were raised. Clear violet eyes looked straight into mine—they were those eyes that have haunted me always.
“Melvin Dane!” she breathed in a voice that was low and musical and wholly delicious. She knew me! She spoke my name! Truly, it was the Green Girl! She was aware of the meeting of our minds upon the ether! “My chieftain of dreams!”
From beneath the light covers she reached a slender rounded arm, white, with just a hint of green tan. I took her hand in my own, feeling a strange thrill at the touch. After a moment of hesitation, when I struggled fiercely with that thrill, relaxing to it briefly, I put her hand quickly to my lips, and then released it.
I did not feel capable of speech. For all the hours since we had found the girl, I had been undergoing a storm of emotions—alternate joy and despair. Now, when the Green Girl actually smiled upon me, I forgot all my old dreams of how I would cross oceans and voyage through space to take her in my arms. I sat still, with a curious lump in my throat, in incredulous joy, not daring even to surrender to the delicious thrill of her touch.
She laughed softly, and questioned, “From whence did you come, chieftain of my dreams, or am I dreaming still?”
“It’s no dream.” I began awkwardly. “Though I can hardly feel that it isn’t. I came from a land above the red sky. I have always dreamed of you! And now I find you real—living! What is your name? Do you have people?”
“I am Xenora. My father was the last prince of the old city of Lothar. My people now are few.”
“You spoke my name! You already knew it?”
“Yes, Melvin Dane, I have dreamed of you since I was a child. Even now, before I awoke. I had a curious dream of you—I thought you were coming to me through the sky in a ship of fire.” The poor girl had raised herself on her elbow. Now she lay back on the pillows again as if she were very weak.
“So you have known me always, too!”
“Since one day when I was a child. The old lost city was my playground, and even when I was very small I wandered alone through the great palaces of old Lothar. dreaming of the ancient time when her warriors were great. One day I found a strange machine in a ruined tower room. Curious sounds came out of it when I put it to my ears. And then came the vision of you—of the white prince of my dreams. Day after day I slipped back, to dream of you. But even when I could go back no longer, you still came to me in dreams.”
“But now they are dreams no longer! You are mine!” I exulted.
I thought there was something wistful in her smile, a hint of sadness in her sparkling violet eyes. “Yes,” she breathed, “even for a little time, it is real. A little time, before the end.”
She rose a little, resting on her elbow. I took her hand again. How slender and small it was! She still smiled, a little wanly.
“Don’t speak of the end!” I said, unconsciously lapsing into the strange tongue in which I had so often conversed with her. “I have found you. You are safe. The flying thing is dead!”
