Collected Short Fiction, page 90
But this, he thought, was merely a foolish idea. It came to him again as he tramped back through the strangely shining snow to his hiding place; and he tried resolutely to thrust it from his mind.
He reached his crevice between two boulders, repaired his little bulwark of snow, and lay down behind it, letting his eyes rove over the endless ocean of shimmering green snow to northward, stretching away desolate and dead to the black rim of the gloomy sky.
Hundreds of miles across that ocean of snow were the “cities” of the beings that ruled this planet. Those mountains, and the cones of blue flame they had seen upon them, were below the line of Dick’s vision. Even the sky above them was dark; there were none of the moving lights he had seen before—not, at least, for several hours.
He lay there in his covert, waiting. Three times Thon called him on the television disk, having grown anxious about him. He assured her, each time, that he was safe—and prolonged the conversation until the demands of her experimental work called her away.
He had been there many hours when he first saw the thing.
First it was a tiny point of light. It drifted up from the point on the horizon where he knew the alien “city” was; it arched in swift flight above the rim of the green snow.
It did not drop from sight as others had done. It continued toward him, obliquely. It became a bright speck of fire, driving through the obscurity of the sky.
Dick watched for several minutes. First in interest and wonder—then with numbing fear, as it came nearer over the endless expanse of gleaming snow.
Suddenly he thought of the little telescope that Midos Ken had given him—it seemed to be no more than a pair of simple lenses, which could be adjusted to vary the power of magnification. Quickly he raised the little instrument, and adjusted it.
The thing must have been flying rapidly, but it was still so far away that he was able to keep it in focus with ease. And it was a thing so astounding, so alien, that he fell into a sort of paralysis of wonder and fear. He was so astounded that he quite forgot the little television disk in his hand, over which he should have reported the coming of the thing to Midos Ken.
The difficulty I mentioned above begins with the description of that thing. It was like nothing that has ever existed on earth; but Dick, in his notes, could describe it only in terms of earthly experience. We have only his description.
The body of it, he says, was like a worm or snake. It was slender, long and writhing. And transparent, or at least semitransparent. And it was green. The surface of it was glittering, somehow granular or crystalline and sparkling with green light. Dick says that a worm moulded of green, translucent jelly, and rolled in powdered emerald would present the same appearance—though that seems a rather clumsy comparison.
And green lights were pulsing through this transparent body, he says, like blood in a living animal. Its rhythm was, he says, like that of the blood in the translucent membrane of a frog’s foot, seen through the microscope.
The thing had wings—or delicate structures that resembled wings. They were gauzy and transparent, glistening with cold iridescent lights. They were so delicate that they looked unreal like lacy webs of frozen rainbow. And they did not beat as the thing flew; they remained stiffly extended. The thing seemed to glide along.
There was a head or face of a sort. Two eyes, high at the upper corners, red and malignant. Their fire was strangely cold and malevolent. Dick found it unpleasant even to look at those scarlet orbs through the telescope.
Between the eyes and below them was a strange organ, a sort of flat disk of the green, semitransparent substance of the thing.
And on each side of the face was a bright oval spot that glowed with purple light.
THAT completes Dick’s first physical description of the thing. He says himself that it is unsatisfactory, that it gives no real idea of the monster that he saw bearing down upon him. He adds comments.
The substance of it did not look exactly like real matter, it seems—not like the matter of our universe. It was bright, and luminous, and semitransparent, with strange colors pulsing through it. And it seems that it gave Dick the impression of being very cold—cold as the absolute zero.
Frozen flame is the best phrase Dick found to describe the body of that alien being. It had the brilliance of flame, in its glistening green body, and shining, malignant red eyes, in its shimmering iridescent wings, and the ovals of vivid purple at the sides of what Dick called a head. And the transparency of it, as well as other qualities more illusive, made it as different from any matter of our universe as flame is different from red-hot iron. It was real and substantial enough, however. And there was something about it that made it seem frigidly cold, colder than the frosty air of the sunless planet of its abode.
Dick refers to it subsequently as the Thing of Frozen Flame.
It was flying toward him very rapidly.
In a few minutes the image of it filled the lens through which he looked. It blurred suddenly, and he lowered the little telescope.
To his consternation and horror, the creature was no more than a mile away, flying swiftly toward him, above the shimmering ghostly desert of snow. Its brilliant colors were very bright against the gloomy green-black dome of the sky.
He could see it very plainly, at that distance. The writhing snake-like body, green, glistening, and the motionless gauzy wings, glinting with flashes of cold iridescence. The red eyes were hard and cold and malignant as frozen rubies. There were strange, oval spots of purple light on the sides of its head.
Though it was moving very rapidly, the wings did not beat. Dick somehow got the impression that it moved through the agency of some invisible force. The frail wings seemed merely to guide it.
He knew that it had seen him, that it was coming toward him. Cold sweat of fear bathed his body. Horror claimed him for a moment; it took all his will to shake off the numbing paralysis.
He snatched up the little television disk.
“Something is coming toward me!” he gasped into it, when Thon’s face appeared, nervously questioning. “It’s seen me! It’s coming after me! See!”
He held the disk a moment so that she could see the weird entity rushing down upon him at such appalling speed. Then he flung it aside, and sprang to his feet.
He started over the snow, back up the canyon toward the flier, running with stumbling steps. Despite his utmost efforts, it seemed that he could not exceed a snail’s pace.
Panic overcame him. Wild fear surged through his mind. Heart pounding wildly, he bent forward and ran at the limit of his speed. And it seemed that he was hardly moving. He muttered curses, and breathless gasps of fear.
Then he stumbled over a boulder, and sprawled on his face in the luminous green snow.
He scrambled breathlessly to his feet, looking back. Some of his self-possession was restored.
“Damn fool, to lose my nerve and run like that!” he muttered. “If it gets me, I can die like a man, anyhow!”
Though he had run only a score of yards, the amazing being of frozen flame had covered fully half the distance between them. It was now not over a half a mile away. The frozen red eyes, glittering and cold, were fixed upon him in a bright, hypnotic stare.
Dick’s atomic pistol was in a belt at his side. Now, with a quick, instinctive motion, he snatched it out, threw it up.
Trying to hold it on the incredible thing before him, he pressed the trigger as rapidly as he could. The weapon made no sound; there was no recoil. But a faint spark of purple fire seemed to leap from it with each stroke of the trigger.
His target was too far away, and moving too swiftly, to be an easy mark. Anyone who has practised with an automatic will realize the difficulty of hitting a comparatively small object, half a mile away and moving rapidly, with such a weapon. And Dick’s atomic pistol, while its amazingly destructive projectiles carried many times farther than a pistol bullet, was no more accurate than an ordinary automatic.
He had little hope of scoring a hit with those first shots, except by a freak of luck. But he knew that his aim would be deadly within a hundred yards or so.
He did not get to try his skill, however, at such a range.
He had pressed the trigger hardly half a dozen times when a writhing, tentacular shape of luminosity was suddenly extended from one of the curious ovals of purple light at the sides of the monster’s head. A twisting bar of purple flame was thrust out.
And it became detached from the creature. A bar of misty luminosity, of frozen purple flame, floating free. It straightened, and came toward Dick in swift, arrowed flight.
A straight bar of cold, red-blue fire darted at him like a lance of flame hurled from the purple oval on the head of the Thing of Frozen Flame.
It struck him. And it seemed alive. Snake-like, it coiled about his body. A rope of cold purple fire, it wrapped itself about his feet, entwined his body, drew down his pistol arm.
It is hard for us to imagine it. A living rope of flame, thrown about a man from a distance of half a mile. Dick says it was some two inches in diameter, and several yards long—long enough to wrap itself about him several times. It was almost completely transparent—there was a bright, hard line of purple fire down the center, with a shining red-blue mist about it, brighter toward the core. And little pulsing fluctuations of brilliancy seemed to throb along it, as if it were an artery pulsing with blood of fire.
It is almost inconceivable to our minds that those weird beings of the Green Star should be able to separate such living matter from their bodies, and control the motions of it at great distances from them. The control of mind over material things is familiar enough to us. It is nothing amazing when a man’s hand closes in response to a message from his brain. But, with us, a man’s control over his hand ceases if that hand is severed from his body.
The Thing of Frozen Flame, as Dick called it, was of a different kind of matter from that found in our universe. And its mind—for it was intelligent, in an alien, dreadful sort of way—controlled the matter of its weird body. But that control, apparently, was not over physical nerves, but by the agency of some force, probably some form of etheric or electromagnetic vibration, that is independent of a material medium.
DICK’S rather lengthy speculations about the matter!
will appear in full in “A Vision of Futurity.” Space does not permit me to go into this interesting question at greater length, here.
However it may have been done, the monster was able to hurl a part of itself at Dick, across a distance of half a mile, which it coiled around his body, holding him helpless until the weird being—or the rest of it—arrived.
As he waited, Dick’s sensations were peculiarly unpleasant. He strained every muscle in his body in a furious attempt to break free of the thick rope of red-blue fire that held him. But it seemed to have the strength of steel. And there was alert intelligence in the way it took instant advantage of his every motion to entwine him more securely.
The thing was bitterly cold, inconceivably cold. Cold seemed to be part of its nature, as warmth is of the higher animals. Dick supposes that the strange substance of it is chemically stable only at temperatures near the absolute zero. The piercing, numbing cold of it penetrated his heavy garments; he shivered with its strange chill.
There was horror unutterable in waiting there. Alone. In a strange world, frozen and barren. A planet outside our universe, where the sky was black, and the rugged mountains and the barren wastes of snow shone with eldritch emerald light. He was held helpless by a rope of pulsating purple flame. And bearing swiftly down upon him was an entity so strange, so inconceivable, that he found no better name for it than the Thing of Frozen Flame.
Dick trembled, shivering as much from ungovernable horror as from the intense, penetrating cold radiated from the luminous coils that bound him; he was breathing swiftly; his heart was pounding. And a cold sweat had broken out upon his body.
After his first wild and frenzied struggle, he realized that physical strength would avail him nothing against the terrible, living energy of the red-blue rope of fire entwined about him. He forced himself to relax his desperate, panic-stricken efforts to break loose. He tried to calm his dazed brain, to consider, to think.
His time was all too short. The amazing creature was not half a mile away, over the desolate plain of shimmering green snow. It was gliding down toward him at the speed of an airplane. He had no idea what its intentions were—but he knew that it was malignant, alien to humanity; and he was terribly afraid.
What was the chance of rescue? He thought of the Ahrora, the wonderful flier a few hundred yards behind him, with Midos Ken aboard, and Don Galeen—and Thon. And he was suddenly sorry that he had told them of this creature, over the television. What could they do against such a thing as this? He hoped that they remained hidden, that they made no attempt to save him.
The atomic pistol was still in his hand, held against his side by the luminous coils about him. He must cling to the weapon. He might have a chance to use it, if he were cautious. It was his only hope.
Then he relaxed completely. He dropped his head, let his eyes half close. His shoulders sagged. But he kept the muscles of his right arm tense, kept the weapon firmly grasped. The strange coils of purple fire about him supported his weight; they did not let him fall.
He dropped back, inert, relaxed. And he kept in such a position that he could watch the weird entity gliding so swiftly toward him.
Long, snake-like body, green and glittering. Slender wings glistening with iridescence, like wisps of frozen rainbow, like lace of diamond needles. Cold crimson eyes, lidless, unwinking, utterly alien and malignant. Strange ovals of purple light at the sides of its head—from one of them had come the rope of frigid fire that bound Dick so securely.
It glided swiftly toward him. The wings were motionless. It seemed to move by mere will, as the part of it that had come to seize Dick had moved. The mind of it seemed to move matter by forces unknown to us.
Dick recoiled from it, trembling with utter loathing, with horror that, he says, is inconceivable. Chills traversed his spine; icy sweat seemed to congeal upon his limbs. It took all his will to keep from making another mad struggle. But he waited, relaxed.
The thing reached him, it hovered over him, fifty yards high.
A winged serpent, green, semitransparent, shining, with glistening wings and malevolent red eyes, bright and luminous as crystal—as flame. And cold—inconceivably cold—a thing of frozen flame.
Abruptly, he was snatched up toward it.
The rope of purple fire lifted him in its frozen embrace, carried him toward that thing of nightmare hanging above.
Dick struck as it swung him off the earth. He moved as swiftly as he could, trying to catch the monster unawares. The coils of fire about him had relaxed a bit. With a sudden twisting motion, he slipped his pistol arm from under the coil that held it, flung up the weapon, and fired at the glistening thing of cold fire above him.
The concussion was terrific, deafening. He was flung to the ground. And he was, he thinks, unconscious for an instant.
Then he was lying on snow that shone with pale cold green.
He was free. The rope of purple light was rapidly uncoiling from around his body.
And the thing he had fired at lay on the snow not far from him.
It was shattered.
The body of it was crushed. It lay scattered about the snow like great blobs of jelly, translucent and crystalline. The frail iridescent wings were shattered into a thousand prismatic fragments, glistening like diamonds. The red eyes were in a mangled fragment of the green body, half buried in the snow.
But the thing was not dead.
Dick saw the part that had been the head lift itself out of the snow, rise a few feet into the frozen, gloomy air. It hung there. At first it was a mangled, hideous thing. But swiftly it changed; it resumed its former appearance.
The strange, unwinking red eyes shone malignantly again.
And the rope of purple fire that had coiled about Dick writhed quickly toward the head, through the gleaming green snow. It leapt from the ground, toward one of those luminous violet patches at the sides of the head. It struck the oval, streamed swiftly into it, vanished.
The part of the monster that had come to bind Dick had returned to it.
And one by one the shattered parts of the body glowed with strange throbbing fire of life, lifted themselves from the ground and leapt up to it. Swiftly, all was put back together, as it had been before.
It was incredible, uncanny.
It was inconceivable to the human point of view, to the human mind familiar only with the life of this universe.
Dick stood staring at it, in dazed wonder, and horror.
He was uncertain what to do. If he tried to run away, he knew the creature would be complete, ready to pursue him again, before he had gone fifty yards. He thought of trying to blow it to pieces again. But he feared that the fragments might be about as dangerous as the entire being.
HE hoped that it would go away, and leave him alone.
Tense and alert, he stood there, staring at the alien entity that was so weirdly reassembling its shattered fragments. He kept the weapon on it.
At first his mind had been dazed with incredulity and horror. Now he was himself again. He could admit the reality of the monster. And it was not wholly invincible. He had blown it to pieces, and secured at least temporary freedom—even if the thing were putting itself together again.
“What do you say?” he called challengingly at it. “Want another dose?”
The thing was watching him. Those red eyes were inches across, deep and glowing with cold crimson fires.
Two feet of the glistening, translucent green substance of the thing separated them. They had no pupils, no lids. They did not wink. They were steady, bright, intensely malignant.
