by Paul Ernst
rockcolossus was not about, he descended the tree that had saved his life,and began to walk in the direction he judged the lake to be. He wouldget into his Dart, cruise aloft out of harm's way, and perhaps think upsome effective course of action.
* * * * *
He was thinking clearly, now. And, in the glare of daylight, no longeran unreasoning animal fleeing blindly over a dim-lit foreign sphere, hewas unable to understand his panic of the night. Afraid? Of course hehad been afraid! What man wouldn't have been at sight of that monstrousthing? But that he, Harley 2Q14N20, should have lost his head completelyand gone plunging off into the brush like that, seemed unbelievable. Tothe depths of his soul he felt ashamed. And to his own soul he made thepromise that he would wipe out, in action, that hour of cowardice.
As he wound his way through the squat, carmine forest, he tried tofigure out the nature of the thing that had crashed balefully after himin the black hours.
It had seemed made of rock--a giant, primitive stone statue imbued withlife. But it was impossible that it should really be fashioned of rock.At least it ought to be impossible. Rock is inorganic, inanimate. Itsimply couldn't have the spark of life in it. Harley had seen manystrange creations, on many strange planets, but never had he seeninorganic mineral matter endowed with animation. Nor had anyone else.
Yet the thing _looked_ as though made of stone. Of some peculiar,quartz-suffused granite--proving that the wan, white-haired man he hadtalked to in the sanitarium had not been mad at all, but only tooterribly sane. The creature's very eyes had had a stony look. Itseyelids had rasped like stone curtains rubbing together. Its awful,two-fingered hands, or claws, had ground together like stones rubbing.
Was it akin to the lizards, the cold-blooded life of Earth? Was thisrocky exterior merely a horny shell like that of a turtle? No. Horn ishorn and rock is rock. The two can't be confused.
The only theory Harley could form was that the great beast was in somestrange way a link between the animal and the mineral kingdoms. Itsskeletal structure, perhaps, was silicate in substance, extending toprovide an outside covering that had hardened into actual stone, whileforming an interior support to flesh that was half organic, halfinorganic matter. Some such silicate construction was to be found in thesponge, of Earth. Could this be a gigantic relative of that lowlycreature? He did not know, and couldn't guess. He wasn't a zoologist.All he knew was that the thing appeared to be formed of living,impregnable stone. He knew, also, that this fabulous creature was benton destroying him.
At this point in his reflections, the glint of water came to his eyesbetween the tree trunks ahead of him. He had come back to the lake.
* * * * *
For moments he stood behind one of the larger trees on the fringe andsearched around the shore for sight of the rock giant. It was nowhere inevidence. Rapidly he advanced from the forest and ran for the Dart. Froma distance it appeared to be all right: but as he drew near a cry roseinvoluntarily to his lips.
In a dozen places the double hull of the little space craft was batteredin. The man-hole lid was torn from its braces and bent double. The glasspanels, unbreakable in themselves, had been shoved clear into the cabin;their empty sash frames gaped at Harley like blinded eyes. Never againwould that Blinco Dart speed through the heavens!
He went to the spot where he had left his Sco drill, and a furtherevidence of the thing's cold blooded ferocity was revealed. Theintricate mechanism had been wrenched into twisted pieces. The drumswere battered in and the flexible hose lengths torn apart in shreds. Theinventor himself couldn't have put it in working order again.
He was hopelessly trapped. He had no means of fighting the colossus. Hehad no way of escaping into space, nor of returning to Earth and tryingto raise a loan that would allow him to come back here with men andatomic guns. He hadn't even a way of intrenching himself in the groundagainst the next attack.
For an instant his hair prickled in a flash of the blind panic that hadseized him a few hours before. With a tremendous effort of will hefought it down. This--the destruction of his precious Dart anddrill--was the result of one siege of insensate fear. If he succumbed toanother one he might well dash straight into the arms of death. He sankto the ground and rested his chin on his fist, concentrating all hisintellect on the hopeless problem that faced him.
The surface of Z-40 was many square miles in extent. But, if he tried tohide himself, he knew it was only a question of time before he would behunted down. The asteroid was too tiny to give him indefiniteconcealment. Flight, then, was futile.
But if he didn't try to conceal himself in the sparse forest lands, itmeant that he must stay to face the monster at once--which was insanity.What could he do, bare-handed, against that thirty-foot,three-tentacled, silicate mass of incredible life!
It was useless to run, and it was madness to stay and confront thething. What, then, could he do? The sun had slid down the sky and thered of another swift dusk was heralding the short night before he shookhis head somberly and gave the fatal riddle up.
He rose to his feet, intending to make his way back to theconcealment--such as it was--of the forest. It might be that he couldfind safety in some lofty treetop till day dawned again. Then hestopped, and listened. What was that?
From far away to the left he could hear faint sounds of some gargantuanstirring. And, coincident with the flickering out of the last scrap ofsunlight, a distant crashing came to his ears as an enormous bodysmashed like an armored ship through trees and thorn bushes and trailingvines. The rock thing had found his trail and was after him again.
* * * * *
A second time Harley fled through the dim-lighted night, stumbling overboulders and tripping on creepers. But this time his flight was not thatof panic. Frightened enough, he was; but his mind was working clearly ashe leaped through the forest away from the source of the crashing.
The first thing he noted was that though--as far as his ears couldinform him--he was managing to keep his lead, he wasn't outdistancinghis horrible pursuer by a yard. Dark though the night was, and far awayas he contrived to keep himself, the colossus seemed to cling to histrail as easily as though following a well-blazed path.
He climbed a tree, faced at right angles to the course he had pursued,and swung for the next tree. It was a long jump. But desperation lentabnormal power to his muscles, and the gravity regulator adjusted toextremely low pitch, was a great help. He made it safely. Anotherswinging leap into the dark, to land sprawling in a second tree; athird; a fourth. Finally be crouched in a tangle of boughs, andlistened. He was a quarter of a mile from the point where he had turnedfrom his first direction. Perhaps this deviation would throw the rockterror off.
It didn't. He heard the steady smashing noise stop. For an instant therewas a silence in the darkness of the asteroid that was painful. Then thecrashing was resumed, this time drawing straight toward where he washidden. Somehow the thing had learned of his change of direction.
He continued his flight into the night, his eyes staring glassily intothe darkness, his expression the ghastly one of a condemned man. And ashe fled the crashing behind him told how he was followed--easilyinfallibly, in spite of all his twisting and turning and efforts atconcealment. What hellish intelligence the monster must possess!
He ran for eternities. He ran till his chest was on fire, and thesobbing agony of his breathing could be heard for yards. He ran tillspots of fire floated before his eyes and the blood, throbbing in hisbrain, cut out the noise of the devilish pursuit behind him. At longlast his legs buckled under him, and he fell, to rise no more.
He was done. He knew it. His was the position of the hunted animal thatlies panting, every muscle paralyzed with absolute exhaustion, andglares in an agony of helplessness at the hunter whose approach spellsdeath.
The crashing grew louder. The tremor of the ground grew more pronouncedas the vast pursuer pounded along with its tons and tons of weight.Harley gazed into
the blackness back along the way he had come, his eyessunk deep in the hollows fatigue had carved in his face, and waited forthe end. The dark night darkened still more with the approach of anotherswift, inexorable dawn.
There was a terrific rending of tree trunks and webbed creepers. Dimlyin the darkness he could see something that towered on a level with thetallest trees, something that moved as rapidly and steadily as thoughdriven by machinery. Fear so great that it nauseated him, swept over himin waves; but he could not move.
The first grey smear of dawn appeared in the sky. In the ghostlygreyness he got a clearer and clearer sight of the monster. He groanedand cowered there while it approached him--more slowly now, eyeing himwith staring, stony orbs in which there was no expression of any kind,of rage or bate, of curiosity or triumph.
Great stumps of legs, with no joints in them, on which the colossusstalked like a moving stone tower--a body resembling an enormous bouldercarved by an amateurish hand to portray the trunk of a human