by Paul Ernst
everything here a man could wish for--provided hecould win it! Loosening his ray-pistol in its holster, he started towalk slowly around the lake to choose a site for the house he intendedto build. On the opposite shore he found a place that looked suitable.
A few yards back from the water's edge, curling in a thick crescent likea giant sleeping on its side, was a precipitous outcropping of rock;curious stuff, rather like granite, that gleamed with dull opalescencein the brilliant sunlight. With that as a sort of natural buttressbehind the house, and with the beautiful lake as his front dooryard,he'd have a location that any man might envy.
He returned to his Dart, hopped back across the lake in it, and unloadedhis Sco drill[1]. With this he planned to sink a shaft that would servein the future as the cellar for his villa, and in the present as anentrenchment against danger.
But now the swift night of Z-40 was almost upon him. The low slant ofthe descending sun warned him that he had less than ten minutes of lightleft, until the next three-hour day should break over the eastern rim.He placed the drums and the flexible hose of the Sco drill so that hecould begin operations with it as soon as the dawn broke, and started towalk toward the precipitous outcropping of quartziferous stoneimmediately behind the home-site he had picked. He would climb to thetop of this for a short look around, and then return to the Dart--inwhich double-hulled, metal fortress he thought he would be safe fromanything.
* * * * *
He had almost reached the rock outcropping when the peculiarities of itsoutline struck him anew. He'd already observed that the craggy moundrather resembled a sleeping, formless giant. The closer he got to it themore the resemblance was heightened and the greater grew his perplexity.
It sprang straight up from the carmine underbrush, like a separate heapof stone cast there by some mighty hand. One end of it tapered down in athick ridge; and this ridge had a deep, horizontal cleft running alongit which made it appear as though it were divided into two leglikemembers. In the center the mound swelled to resemble a paunchy trunkwith sagging shoulders. This was topped by a huge, nearly round ballthat looked for all the world like a head. There were even rudimentaryfeatures. It was grotesque--one of those freak sculptures of nature,Harley reflected, that made it seem as though the Old Girl had a mindand artistic talent of her own.
He scrambled through the brush till he reached that part of the longmound that looked like a head. There, as the sun began to stream the redlines of its descent over the sky, he prepared to ascend for his view ofthe surrounding landscape.
He'd got within twenty feet of the irregular ball, and had adjusted hisgravity regulator to enable him to leap to its top, when he stopped asabruptly as though he had been suddenly paralyzed. Over the two deeppits that resembled nostrils in the grotesque mask of a face he thoughthe had observed a quiver. The illusion had occurred in just the properplace for an eyelid. It was startling, to say the least.
"I'm getting imaginative," said Harley. He spoke aloud as a man tends todo when he is alone and uneasy. "I'd better get a tighter grip on mynerves, or--good God!"
Coincident with the sound of his voice in the thin, quiet air, the hugestumps that looked like legs stirred slightly. A tremor ran through theentire mass of rock. And directly in front of Harley, less than twentyfeet from where he stood, a sort of half-moon-shaped curtain of rockslid slowly up to reveal an enormous, staring eye.
Frozen with a terror such as he had never felt before in a life filledwith adventure, scarce breathing, Harley glared at the monstrousspectacle transpiring before him. A hill was coming to life, A granitecliff was growing animate. It was impossible, but it was happening.
The half-moon curtains of rock that so eerily resembled eyelids, blinkedheavily. He could hear a faint rasping like the rustle of sandpaper, asthey did so. One of the great leg stumps moved distinctly, independentof the other one. Three columnar masses of rock--arms, or tentacles,with a dozen hinging joints in each--slowly moved away from the parentmass near the base of the head, and extended toward the Earth man.
Still in his trance, with his heart pounding in his throat till hethought it would burst, Harley watched the further awful developments.The eyelids remained opened, disclosing two great, dull eyes like poorlypolished agates, which stared expressionlessly at him. There was aconvulsion like a minor earthquake, and the mass shortened andheightened its bulk, raising itself to a sitting posture. The threehinged, irregular arms suddenly extended themselves to the full in athrust that barely missed him. They were tipped, those arms, withimmense claws, like interlocking, rough-hewn stone fingers. They crashedemptily together within a few feet of Harley. Then, and not till then,did the paralysis of horror loose its grip on the human.
He tore his ray-pistol from its holster and pointed it at the incrediblebody. An angry, blue-green cone of light leaped from the muzzle, andplayed over the mighty torso. Nothing happened. He squeezed the triggerback to the guard. The blue-green beam increased in intensity, and acrackling noise was audible. Under that awful power the monster shouldhave disappeared, dissolved to a greasy mist. But it didn't.
The light beam from the ray-gun died away. The power was exhausted. Itwas only good for about ten seconds of such an emergency, full-forcedischarge, after which it must be re-charged again. The ten seconds wereup. And the gigantic creature against which it had been directed hadapparently felt no injury from a beam that would have annihilated tenthousand men.
The now useless ray-pistol slipped from his limp fingers. Stupefied withhorror at the futility of the deadly Randchron ray against this terribleadversary, he stood rooted to the spot. Then the thing reached for himagain; and his muscles were galvanized to action--to instinctive,stupid, reasonless action.
Screaming incoherently, mad with horror of the stone claws that hadclutched at him, he turned and ran. In great leaps he bounded away fromthe accursed lake and made for the taller trees and thicker vegetationat a distance from the shore. It was the worst thing he could have done.There was a chance that he could have reached his Dart, had he thoughtof it, and soared aloft out of reach. But he thought of nothing. All hewanted to do, in that abysmal fear that can still make a mindless animalout of a civilized man, was to run and hide--to get away from thefearful monster that had risen up to glare at him with those stony,pitiless eyes, and to reach for him with two-fingered bands likegrinding rock vises.
* * * * *
Just as the sun fell below the rim of the asteroid, plunging it into adarkness only faintly relieved by the light of the stars, he crashedinto the deeper underbrush. A trailing creeper tripped him in his madflight. He fell headlong, to lie panting, sobbing for breath, in thethick carpet of blood-colored moss.
Behind him, from the direction of the lake, he heard a sudden clangor asof rock beating against metal. This endured only a short time. Then thesolid ground beneath him shook slightly, and an appalling crash of treesand underbrush to the rear told him that the stone colossus was on histrail.
He leaped to his feet and continued his great bounds over the sharplycurved surface of the asteroid, banging against tree trunks, bruisinghimself against stones, falling in the darkness to rise again and fleeas before in a mad attempt to distance the crashing sound of pursuitbehind him.
Then he felt himself writhing in thin air as his flying course took himover the edge of a cliff. Down, down he fell, to land in a dense bed offoliage far below. Something hit his head with terrific force. Pinwheelsof light flashed before his eyes, to fade into velvety nothingness....
* * * * *
Slowly, uncertainly he wavered back to consciousness. For a moment hewas aware of nothing save that he was lying on some surface that wasjagged and uncomfortable, and that it was broad daylight. He opened hiseyes, and saw that he was reclining, across a springy bed formed of thetop of a tree. Ahead of him loomed a cliff about a hundred feet high.
Remembrance suddenly came to him. The unreasoning rush through theunde
rbrush. The nightmare creature lumbering swiftly after him. The fallover the cliff into the top of this tree.
With a cry, he sat up, expecting to see the stone giant nearby andpoised to leap. But it was nowhere in sight; nor, listen as intently ashe would, could he hear the sounds of its crashing path through thebrush. Somehow, for the moment at least, he had been saved. Perhaps hisdisappearance over the cliff edge had thrown it off his track.
He became aware of the fact that it was difficult for him to breathe.His lungs were heaving in a vain effort to suck in more oxygen, and histongue felt thick as though he were being strangled. Then he saw thathis oxygen concentrator had been knocked from his head when he fell, andwas dangling from a limb several feet away. It was almost out ofbreathing range. Had it fallen on through the branches to the ground hewould have died, in his unconsciousness, in the rarified atmosphere. Hereached for it; settled the band around his head again.
After once more listening and peering around to make sure the