Monsters of the Ray

by A. Hyatt Verrill

  Almost instantly the entire top of the dyke began to vanish, to dissolve. and dense billowing clouds of the fumes poured down over the face of the rock. Presently, as before, a light glowed in the vapor; it increased until a fiery globe seemed about to burst through, and then slowly it died out, receded, vanished. An impatient ejaculation came from Harris.

  "That light—that sphere you saw —that we've always seen—is Eros!" he declared, as he readjusted his instruments. "I've proved that—I'll show you later but—confound the thing—Ah!"

  I uttered an involuntary cry myself. Covering the entire curtain of vapor that now completely concealed the dyke, was a scene so marvelous that for a moment I could not overcome the conviction that the dyke had been miraculously destroyed and that I was gazing upon the landscape that had been hidden behind it. I saw a flat, slightly undulating surface—with indescribably rough, jagged and weirdly eroded mountains in the distance. Something about the land, I don't know exactly what, gave it the appearance of a marsh or swamp, and everywhere it was covered with the same grotesque, bizarre and impossible forms of vegetation we had seen in that former fleeting glimpse I have described. I have said that in speaking of it to Harris I compared it to a painting made by a futurist or a lunatic. But such a comparison is wholly inadequate, to say the least.

  No futurist or modernist artist, no lunatic could have conceived such a wholly impossible, topsy-turvy landscape. Not until I had gazed at it for minutes did I realize just what was wrong with it. Then suddenly it dawned upon me that what I had taken for mountains and immense rock masses were vegetable growths; rough, bare, leafless trunks and knobby growths; that what I had at first glance mistaken for spreading shade trees and graceful palms were immensely magnified and exaggerated mosses; that the seeming forests were growths of lichens; that the areas of rough, irregular marshy ground were vast expanses of slimy, gelatinous moulds, and that the low-growing, brushy jungles were composed of dwarfed, pygmy trees. Among them I saw conifers, palms, cicads; trees that had the appearance of oaks and beeches. Everything was reversed The forms of plant life that arc smallest, most insignificant on earth were enlarged to the dimensions of our tallest trees, while the forms that are largest and most impressive on earth were here reduced to tiny shrubs and weeds. And such colors such forms! I am no botanist. I had never studied the lowest forms of plant life through a microscope. No doubt if I had done so I would have been prepared for the strangeness of that scene before me and I might even have identified some of the families, genera or even the species represented. But as it was, it held me dumbfounded, fascinated with its impossible-looking absurdities. Out of thick, furry masses of silver-gray sprang square stalks bearing crowns of vivid scarlet that seemed so hard, so angular that they might have been cut from blocks of wood. From undulating, crinkled, pancake like sheets of sickly white, rose thin, hair-like filaments that supported inverted cones of burnished copper and gold. Mottled, reptilian-looking, contorted vines thrust out feather-dusters of intense blue. Fuzzy-green stalks grew in dense groves, and topping each were a dozen discs of purple.

  There were bare, straight poles covered with immense recurved hooks. There were plants that palpitated and seemed actually to breathe. There were growths that-— ever and again as we watched them —exploded and shot clouds of golden smoke across the weird landscape, and there were others with long cable-like tentacles that coiled and uncoiled and felt about and seized anything within reach as if a giant octopus lay hidden in the foliage,

  Strangest of all, perhaps, were globular things that looked like titanic oranges and immense, leathery, gaudily colored plants that looked like giant starfishes, so symmetrical were their five-pointed rays.

  As my eyes gradually accustomed themselves to the strange scene and I sensed the proportions of things, I realized that the hard, rough, leafless growths that I had at first taken for rocks and mountains were—fungi! Yes, there was no doubt of it. They were titanic, immense, colossal fungus growths, weirdly shaped, dull-red, pink, orange, flesh-colored, black, brown—almost exact counterparts of the fungi we see in northern swamps and woodlands, but here, here in this crazy, impossible landscape, out of all proportions; so huge in comparison to the other vegetation that they loomed like hills peaks against the sky. Hardly had this amazing truth dawned upon me when I saw life. Flitting from one clump of giant mosses to another was a flock of what I took at first to be birds. But as they alighted upon the cubistic, pentagonal branches and folded their gaudy wings, I fairly gasped for they were insects! Moths, soft-winged, thick-bodied, six-legged moths. Moths as large in proportion to their surroundings as parrots or toucans in an ordinary forest. Then I saw tiny winged creatures— flies, bees, I thought, until an instant later one of the little creatures swept buzzing into the foreground and, coming to rest upon a lichen, revealed itself as a bird!

  It was then that I first saw the rhino (I say rhino for it was nearer that than any other earth creature, though perhaps more like an Iguanadon) as it came charging, head down, horns lowered, out of the jungle of dwarf pine trees. So plain, so clear, so real it seemed, that I could almost hear the crackling of branches, as it tore through the thick growth, could almost hear the thud of its feet, as it charged madly at—Was I taking leave of my senses? The beast was charging at a caterpillar! Yes, at a woolly caterpillar half as big as itself that, panic-stricken, was striving madly to climb up a mould-stem to safety! And there was something so inexpressibly ludicrous about that pigmy rhino charging that giant, lumbering, panic-stricken caterpillar that I burst into a guffaw of laughter. But the sounds died on my lips, my merriment changed to amazement and I stared in uncomprehending wonder. From the dark shadows of a forest of pale-gray mosses something emerged. A great, grayish, repulsive-looking thing; a thing that sweated, exuded thick, viscous slime. A thing that seemed to glide rather than walk, yet moved with incredible quickness. Scarcely had it appeared before it had swept across my vision and once more had vanished in the gray forest. A glistening, slimy trail marked its passage, but the charging rhino, the woolly caterpillar had vanished completely, destroyed, swallowed up by the monster!

  A sharp cry from Harris broke the spell. "My God!" he gasped. "Look! They're real! Those birds!"

  Chapter XI

  History Repeats Itself

  My first wonder, the first shock of seeing them take life and wing was increased if such a thing was possible—when I saw them increasing in size with incredible speed. A moment before they had been tiny things—scarcely larger than hummingbirds—perching upon a tiny twig; but now they were as large as pigeons. A moment more and they had become the size of crows! An instant later they were as large as macaws! And now they flew heavily, clumsily, with wearily beating wings, back and forth, uttering strange, terrified cries until having grown to the size of geese they dropped to earth, and after a few feeble efforts to rise, sank exhausted and panting upon the ground.

  The next instant, Harris, with a sharp cry, spring up, leaped from the platform and dashed forward towards the strange birds, creatures from another planet. They fluttered and flopped as he approached, but were too utterly spent to escape, and I saw him stoop and seize one of them with a triumphant cry. It was at this instant that I again turned my gaze upon the picture and the blood seemed to freeze in my veins at what I saw; my heart seemed to cease beating: I was paralyzed with terror.

  Rushing from the vividly realistic forest of giant mosses, straight towards the foreground, came a herd (there is no other word to express it) of those monstrous, gray, slimy things I had seen destroy the charging rhino. But the horror of it, the paralyzing feature of what I saw was that the foremost of the things had left the picture and was rushing directly upon Harris, who, back to the dyke and intent on examining his capture, was utterly oblivious of his peril!

  Never, not even in the most terrible nightmares, have I ever felt such numbing, helpless terror, and never until my dying day, do I want to experience such horror again. Even now I shudder and feel faint
as I recall it, for coupled with the mad fever I had for Harris' life, was the horror of the thing itself, the loathing I felt for the monstrous shape, and the deathly fear that is always inspired by the uncanny, the unknown, the supernatural.

  I tried to shout a warning to Harris, but my tongue refused to utter a sound. I strove to rise to my feet, to dash to Harris' side, but my limbs, my muscles seemed frozen into rigidity. Only my eyes seemed able to function; even my brain seemed numbed, dazed, as if hypnotized by the unthinkable sight before me.

  Then the Indians did what I was powerless to do. Not a sound had escaped them up to now. They had been too awed, too terrified, too utterly overwhelmed to move, to even groan or sigh. But now, as they saw that horrible, terrible thing bearing down upon Harris, a hoarse shriek of mingled warning and dread burst from them and startled Harris into activity. Not knowing what their screams meant, yet sensing peril, he swung about to see— God, how I shudder to think what terror must have been his!—to see that vast, awful thing within a dozen rods of where he stood! No—not thing, but things, for by this time five of the monsters had leaped from the visionary scene and were sweeping across the ground.

  Vast! Yes, bulky as mammoths, for like the birds, they had grown, swollen, increased in size, as they sprang from images into life, like balloons being inflated with air. How can I describe them? How can I convey to my readers an adequate idea of their appearance? They were shapes, yet shapeless; forms, yet formless. We can describe a cube, an ellipsoid, a cone. We can say a thing is elephantine, that it resembles a bird, a reptile, a cat, a human being or an insect. But how picture, how visualize by words something utterly unlike anything we have ever seen, something whose form constantly, ceaselessly changes? Can we describe the form of a drifting cloud, of a wisp of smoke? And these things, these monstrous, awful, supernatural things that had come swarming from out of that pictured scene were as vague, as indescribable, as constantly altering in form as clouds or vapor. Yet they were solid, massive, dense, endowed with sentient life!

  They had neither bodies, heads, legs nor appendages of any sort, yet they seemed to possess all. They drifted, slid, rather than walked or ran—like gigantic slugs or more perhaps like masses of thick smoke-— along the ground. They seemed endowed with intelligence, with purpose, for they hesitated, they gave the impression of peering about, of listening, and then they moved on as if with a definite goal in view. And—the horror of it causes cold chills along my spine even as I think of it now—from time to time, long, writhing, tenuous portions of their masses shot out from their bulks like—like, yes, like nothing so much as the viscous strings that may be drawn out from a mass of glue. Once I saw one of these sticky, adhesive, tentacle-like things touch one of the fallen birds and draw it into the mass itself where it was instantly absorbed, swallowed, like a stone dropped into a pool of tar.

  All this I sensed rather than saw, for my gaze was riveted upon Harris who, having seen what was behind him, dropped the bird he had seized and whipping out his heavy revolver, which he invariably carried and which had been the cause of endless raillery on my part, fired six shots in rapid succession into the formless, lurching bulk of the monstrous thing.

  Even in that horrible tense moment, utterly unable to move or to utter a sound, I crouched there upon the platform. I realized how incongruous it seemed for Harris to be firing a revolver, a man-made weapon, at a thing not of this earth. And I knew instinctively that his soft-nosed bullets would have no more effect upon the nightmarish shape than upon a mass of drifting fog. Harris also must have realized this, and looking back upon it, I feel sure that his action was wholly involuntary, the automatic reaction upon facing an advancing enemy. Yet for a brief instant the thing hesitated, it swerved, it seemed to writhe; its shapeless bulk heaved and altered in form—I can compare the effect only to the contortions of a wounded animal tied in a sack—and the slimy viscid excretion upon its surface fairly sweated. No sound issued from it—the silence of the things was one of their most terrible features and the next second it was again in motion.

  But the momentary respite had enabled Harris to dash away. A long, wavering, gelatinous-looking, sticky streamer shot, forth from the thing and I held my breath, thinking it would capture Harris in its glutinous grasp. But it missed him by the fraction of an inch. The next moment he was close to the platform and to my dying day I shall be haunted by the unspeakable terror, the expression of knowledge of certain death that was on his face as he looked up at me. But he did not shout, did not speak, and I realize now that he feared to do so, that he dared not call to me or attempt to climb to my side, for dread of drawing the attention of the monsters to my presence.

  The next second he had passed below the platform and, dashing into the midst of the assembled Indians—who sat immovable, unable apparently to rise and flee of their own accord—he struck them, kicked them, shouted to them, cursed them. Physical pain, fear of the maniacal white man roused them from their lethargy, from the trance into which they had fallen in their fatalistic awaiting of death. Howling with fear, groaning from his blows and kicks, they scrambled aside, sprang to their feet and scattering, raced off towards their homes.

  Only half-consciously I had seen this, for my mind, my gaze, were still centered upon those awful shapes, those intangible, living fearsome monsters that now—at least a dozen in number—swarmed over the plain.

  Before my horrified eyes I had seen them creep—no, drift, or roll, is better—over the spots where the llamas had been. And each time the frightened animals had vanished completely, had been absorbed like bits of twigs in a rolling snowball. One after the other the llamas had been swallowed up, and in hunting down this prey, the things had been delayed and many of the Indians had had a chance to escape. A chance, I say; but, losing their heads in the stark terror of the catastrophe, many stumbled and fell, many ran in circles, screaming at the top of their lungs, and others turned and ran directly into the paths of the approaching, monstrous forms. I felt nauseated, sick ready to faint as I watched these wretches overtaken, swept down by those silent, slime-coated formless things that passed inexorably on, leaving nothing but bread trails of slime, where a moment before, had been living, terrified men and women.

  It was then, for the first time, that across my benumbed mind flashed memory of the ancient legend, recollection of that fearful scene of desolation of the pre-Incan city. Giants from the sky! These things, these awful beings were the "giants"! These were the enemies that had swept the pre-Incans from the earth! It was one of these things, these living shapes, that had passed over the dead king in the dim twilight of that vision we had seen! It was all clear to me now. Somehow, by some means, perhaps, probably by that same damnable Inti-ray, by which they cut their stones, the pre-Incans, too, had brought these monstrous things from Eros or another planet.

  They had been wiped from existence by them, by these "giants from the skies." But what had become of the things once they had established themselves on earth? How, why had they, too, vanished? Why had they not increased, spread until they had utterly wiped humanity from the face of the earth? Such thoughts, such questions drummed and thrummed in the back of my brain, even while I watched and stood transfixed, as the things moved about, annihilating the few remaining Indians.

  Suddenly Harris' voice aroused me as if from a horrible dream. I peered down. He was racing madly about, dodging, striving to evade two of the now gigantic things that had centered their attentions upon him.

  "The ray” he shouted, as he dashed beneath the platform. "Turn it off! Stop them! They'll destroy the world! I—"

  His words were lost, as with a prodigious leap he sprang aside just in time to avoid the clutch of a waving, out flung tentacle. The next second he was dashing at topmost speed towards the distant buildings, and to my immense relief I saw that in that direction there were few of the things—that he might yet escape them.

  For a fraction of a second I crouched there transfixed, still unable to move. Then, as one o
f the vast, glutinous things rose, billowed, swelled upwards towards the platform. I was galvanized into life and action. Harris' last words still rang in my ears. I understood. I sprang to the machine from which the invisible ray still played upon the cliff.

  With shaking, trembling hands I seized the valves. I was about to turn them when before me one of those impossible monsters reared itself to the level of the platform where I stood.

  I uttered a wild maniacal scream. I grasped at the cylinder for support, my hands clutched at the nozzle, and as I reeled back it swung downwards and to one side.

  Instantly, as though it had been a gigantic balloon that had been pricked, the monstrous, slime-coated form collapsed and vanished before my eyes!

  For a brief instant I gazed uncomprehending, utterly bereft of reason, unable to grasp what had happened, what had caused the destruction of the thing.

  Then suddenly, like a flash of light, like an inspiration, I knew. It was the ray!

  Within my grasp I held the power to slay, to destroy, to annihilate the awful, irresistible monsters from another sphere. Yelling like a madman, shouting, laughing like a maniac, I grasped the nozzle, and sighting along its barrel, aimed it at another of the horrible things. The result was magical. There was a puff of vapor—I could think of nothing so much as the effect when one steps on a puff-ball—a faint pop, and where the gigantic, repulsive thing had been there was— nothing!

  As though I were handling a machine-gun I swung the nozzle to right, to left, up and down, picking off one of the things after another, Each time as that terrible, invisible ray fell, it was as if it had been struck by a sixteen-inch shell. Never was there such hunting! Never such gunnery!