The moon era
I am glad to be out of sight in this tunnel. Perhaps the Eternal Ones
will lose us again. We must hasten, and hope that we encounter no
rightful user of the path. If one appears, we must hide."
I was placed immediately at a disadvantage upon entering the tunnel,
for I could no longer take the long leaps by which I had been
traveling. My pace became a sort of trot. I had to hold my head down,
to save it from the poisoned thorns above.
The Mother glided easily before me, to my relief not in such haste
as before. Slender and strong and trimly beautiful--for all her
strangeness. I was glad she had let me come with her. Even if peril
threatened.
I found breath for speech.
"Those ghostly bars," I panted. "What were they?"
"The Eternal Ones possess strange powers of science," came the thin,
whistling notes of her reply. "Something like the television you told
me of. But more highly developed. They were able to see us back by the
pool.
"And the shining bars were projected through space by their rays of
force. They meant some harm to us. Just what, I do not know. It is
apparently a new weapon, which they did not use in the war."
We must have gone many miles through the tunnel. It had been almost
perfectly straight. There had been no branches or cross-passages. We
had come through no open space. Roof and walls of yellow thorns had
been unbroken. I was wondering what sort of creature it might be, that
had made a path through the thorns so long and straight.
The Mother stopped suddenly, turned back to face me.
"One of the makers of the trail is approaching," she piped. "I feel it
coming. Wait for me a bit."
She sank in golden coils upon the trail. Her head was raised a little.
The mantles were extended stiffly. Always before they had been white,
except for their fine veining of red. But now soft, rosy colors flushed
them. Her full red lips were parted a little, and her eyes had become
strange, wide, staring. They seemed to look past me, to gaze upon
scenes far-off, invisible to ordinary sight.
For long seconds she remained motionless, violet eyes distant, staring.
Then she stirred abruptly. Rose upon tawny, golden coils. Alarm was in
her great eyes, in her thin, melodious tones.
"The creature comes behind us. Upon this trail. We have scant time to
reach the open. We must go swiftly."
She waited for me to begin my stumbling run, glided easily beside me. I
moved awkwardly. With only the moon's slight gravitational pull to hold
me to the trail, I was in constant danger from the thorns.
For tortured hours, it seemed to me, we raced down the straight
passage, through the unbroken forest of yellow thorns. My heart was
laboring painfully; my breath came in short gasps of agony. My body was
not equipped for such prolonged exertions in the light air.
The Mother, just ahead of me, glided along with effortless ease. I knew
that she could easily have left me, had she wished.
At last I stumbled, fell headlong, and did not have energy to get at
once to my feet. My lungs burned, my heart was a great ache. Sweat was
pouring from me; my temples throbbed; and a red mist obscured my sight.
"Go--on," I gasped, between panting breaths. "I'll try--to stop--it."
I fumbled weakly for my gun.
The Mother stopped, came back to me. Her piping notes were quick,
insistent. "Come. We are near the open now. And the thing is close. You
must come!"
With a soft, flexible mantle she seized my arm. It seemed to me that a
wave of new strength and energy came into me from it. At any rate, I
staggered to my feet, lurched forward again. As I rose, I cast a glance
backward.
A dark, indistinguishable shape was in view. So large that it filled
almost the whole width of the tunnel. A dim circle of the pale light of
the thorn forest showed around it.
I ran on ... on ... on.
* * * * *
My legs rose and fell, rose and fell, like the insensate levers of an
automaton. I felt no sensation from them. Even my lungs had ceased to
burn, since the Mother touched me. And my heart ached no longer. It
seemed that I floated beside my body, and watched it run, run, run with
the monotonously repeated movements of a machine.
My eyes were upon the Mother before me.
Gliding so swiftly through the twilight of the tunnel. Trim, round
golden body. White mantles extended stiffly, wing-like, as if to help
carry her. Delicate head raised, the blue plume upon it flashing.
I watched that blue plume as I ran. It danced mockingly before me,
always retreating. Always just beyond my grasp. I followed it through
the blinding mists of fatigue, when all the rest of the world melted
into a gray blue, streaked with bloody crimson.
I was astonished when we came out into the sunlight. A strip of sand
below the yellow wall of thorns. Cool green foliage beyond, a sea of
green. Sinister purple balloons above it, straining on crimson cables.
Far-off, a scarlet line of mountains, steep and rugged.
The Mother turned to the left.
I followed, automatically, mechanically. I was beyond feeling. I could
see the bright moonscape, but it was strange no longer. Even the threat
of the purple balloons was remote, without consequence.
I do not know how far we ran, beside the forest of thorns, before the
Mother turned again and led the way into a mass of creepers.
"Lie still," she piped. "The creature may not find us."
Gratefully, I flung myself down in the delicate fronds. I lay flat,
with my eyes closed, my breath coming in great, painful, sobbing gasps.
The Mother folded my hand in her soft mantle again, and immediately, it
seemed, I felt relief, though I still breathed heavily.
"Your reserve of vital energy is very low," she commented.
I took the automatic from my pocket, examined it to see that it was
ready for action. I had cleaned and loaded it before we started. I saw
the Mother raising her blue-crested head cautiously. I got to my knees,
peered back along the bare strip of sand, down which we had come.
I saw the thing advancing swiftly along the sand.
A sphere of bright crimson. Nearly five feet in diameter. It rolled
along, following the way we had come.
"It has found us!" the Mother piped, very softly. "And my vital power
cannot reach through its armor. It will suck the fluids from our
bodies."
I looked down at her. She had drawn her slender body into a golden
coil. Her head rose in the center, and the mantles were outspread, pure
white, veined with fine lines of scarlet, and frail as the petals of a
lily. Her great dark eyes were grave and calm; there was no trace of
panic in them.
I raised the automatic, determined to show no more fear than she, and
to give my best to save her.
Now the scarlet globe was no more than fifty yards away. I could
distinguish the individual scales of its armor, looking like plates of
horn covered with ruby lacquer. No limbs or external appendages were
visible then. But I saw dark ovals upon the shell, appearing at the
top and seeming to drop down, as the thing rolled.
I began shooting.
At such a distance there was no possibility of missing. I knelt in the
leaves of the green creeper, and emptied the magazine into the globe.
It continued to roll on toward us, without change of speed. But a
deep, angry drumming sound came from within it. A reverberating roar
of astonishing volume. After a few moments, I heard it repeated from
several points about us. Low and distant rumblings, almost like thunder.
In desperate haste, I was filling the clip with fresh cartridges.
Before I could snap it back into the gun, the creature was upon us.
Until it stopped, it had presented a sphere of unbroken surface. But
suddenly six long, glistening black tentacles reached out of it,
one from each of the black ovals I had seen evenly spaced about the
red shell. They were a dozen feet long, slender, covered with thin
black skin corrugated with innumerable wrinkles, and glistening with
tiny drops of moisture. At the base of each was a single, staring,
black-lidded eye.
One of those black tentacles was thrust toward me. It reeked with an
overpowering, fetid odor. At its extremity was a sharp, hooked claw,
beside a black opening. I think the creature sucked its food through
those hideous, retractable tentacles.
I got the loaded clip into the gun, hastily snapped a cartridge into
the chamber. Shrinking back from the writhing tentacular arm, I
fired seven shots, as rapidly as I could press the trigger, into the
black-lidded eye.
The deep drumming notes came from within the red shell again. The black
tentacles writhed, thrashed about, and became suddenly stiff and rigid.
The sound of it died to a curious rattle, and then ceased.
"You have killed it," the Mother whistled musically. "You use your
machine well, and it is more powerful than I thought. Perhaps, after
all, we may yet live."
As if in ominous answer, a reverberating roll of distant drumming came
from the tangle of yellow thorns. She listened, and the white mantles
were stiffened in her alarm.
"But it has called to its kind. Soon many will be here. We must hasten
away."
* * * * *
Though I was still so tired that movement was torture, I rose and
followed the Mother, as she glided on along the sand.
Only a moment did I pause to examine the very interesting creature I
had killed. It seemed unique, both in shape and in means of locomotion.
It must have developed the spherical shell of red armor through ages
of life in the spiky scrub. By drawing its limbs inside, it was able
to crash through the thorns without suffering any hurt. I supposed it
contrived to roll along by some rhythmic muscular contraction, inside
the shell--such movement being much easier on the moon than it would be
on earth, because of the lesser gravity. Where it could not roll, it
dragged or lifted itself with the long, muscular appendages that I have
called tentacles.
Since we were in the open air again, I was able to resume my
progression by deliberate, measured leaps, which carried me forward as
fast as the Mother could move, and with much less effort than I had
spent in running. I had a few moments of rest as I glided through the
air between leaps, which compensated for the fiercer effort of each
spring.
From time to time I looked back, nervously. At first I could see only
the scarlet shell of the dead creature, there by the green vines where
we had killed it. Always smaller, until it was hardly visible.
Then I saw other spheres. Emerging from the tangle of yellow
thorn-brush. Rolling along the strip of bare soil, to congregate about
the dead being. Finally I saw that they had started in our direction,
rolling along rather faster than we could move.
"They are coming," I told the Mother. "And more of them than I can
kill."
"They are implacable," came her piping reply. "When one of them sets
out upon the trail of some luckless creature, it never stops until it
has sucked the body fluids from it--or until it is dead."
"Anything we can do?" I questioned.
"There is a rock ahead of us, beyond that thicket. A small hill, whose
sides are so steep they will not be able to climb it. If we can reach
it in time, we may be able to scramble to the top.
"It will be only temporary escape, since the creatures will never
leave so long as we are alive upon it. But we shall delay our fate, at
least--if we can reach it in time."
Again I looked back. Our pursuers were rolling along like a group of
red marbles, at the edge of the yellow forest. Gaining upon us--swiftly.
The Mother glided along more rapidly. The white mantles were stiffly
extended from her golden sides, and aglow with rosy colors. The muscles
beneath her furry skin rippled evenly, gracefully.