guess the world -
fifth series
entries 401 -

[ + links to:   Guess The World entries 1-100  -  Guess The World entries 101-200  - 
Guess The World entries 201-300  -  Guess The World entries 301-400  -  Scene-counts ]

It is open to anyone to set the quiz entries.  Email your mystery-snippets of OSS literature or OSS-related illustrations to me at heritageofdreams@aol.com, with the answer for each question, "Which world was this scene on?", plus the relevant details i.e. name of the author and the tale, and the issue of the magazine in which it appeared or, in the case of a novel, the date it was published, or, in the case of a picture, a reference to its source. 

Make it easy or hard - I don't mind!  Just don't send excerpts that are too obvious, such as in, "I was ambling along the canal bank under the light of the two moons..." or "We camped beside the Great Red Spot and toasted our supper on the fringe of the lava..." 

If a passage is almost right except for some tell-tale element, you can simply elide that part of it [.......], which has been done many times for previous entries.

One final consideration, as we embark on this fifth GTW series, concerns the choice of sources. 

Up to this point I have striven to ensure that the story/world match in any one extract has not already been used for another GTW entry.  That's to say, although many tales are multi-world (think of the Captain Future novel Magic Moon from which I've obtained GTW entries for Jupiter, Neptune and Styx), I've tried to make sure that no single world has had more than one GTW extract from the same tale.

So for example, as write this (on 14 May 2024), if you look through the 56 scenes on the What to see on Mars page you should find that each and every one is from a different story.  If there has been duplication of source, it will have been due to an oversight.  As a matter of fact I believe that there has been at least one such GTW oversight (though not for Mars) but in general the uniqueness rule has held true for the whole gamut of 400 entries ranging over the Solar System - so far. 

I expect, however, that eventually I'll have to relax this rule, as it becomes harder to mine the literary trove, which is vast but not infinite, without some source/world duplication. 

Besides, if you consider the way a story may provide us with greatly differing scenes on the same world (think of the contrast between the floating islands and the fixed lands on Perelandra), you may agree that in such a case it would be quite acceptable for the quiz to derive more than one GTW entry from the same tale.

Still, if you're thinking of sending an entry in to me and you wish to ensure its source-uniqueness, you can easily check: just have a look at the relevant "what to see on..." page to ascertain whether the tale has already been cited.

I hope you have as much fun as I have had in choosing material.  The field is open wide!

After perhaps half a minute the creamy blankness outside thinned away and through its last wisps Resken beheld the panorama which he had waited out his millennia to see.

No human eyes would have been able to judge its distance or its scale, but Resken’s hard orbs, with their inbuilt equivalent of radar, ascertained that the planet lay spread out fifty miles below him.  He was permitted to gaze his fill – which made good sense, for why not let him see everything since his likelihood of return to his Terran fortress was zero?

[..........]’s surface, diffusely bathed in its orange glow, undulated with enormous but shallow gradients, mottled with grey-hazed patches which he guessed (setting his gaze to highest magnification) to be jungle.  Five or six locations showed higher topography, with what resembled steeper volcanoes at the summits of lazier cones, as if Earth’s Mount Fuji had been placed atop Mars’ Olympus Mons.  Valleys and swales were streaked with phosphorescent orange rivers (or roads?) which must supply some of the illumination, while the rest of the available light either spilled up from molten vents or filtered down through the clouds, or both.  Resken wondered whether the darkness of night ever came to the surface of this world.  Perhaps some areas knew blackness, but this one might be a sleepless capital district.  “Guess on, guess on,” he encouraged himself; “there’s naught else to do.”

entry 444      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

[..........] is a cold ocean world, its watery surface kept liquid by the tidal energy imparted by its massive moon [..........], so landing a conventional rocket on [..........]’s surface (or blasting off again) is problematic.  [..........] does have numerous floating “islands” made of accreted biological matter on which the snake-like natives live, but these pseudo-islands have been deemed too ecologically delicate for rocket launchings or landings.  Instead, rockets dock at the space station, and aerospace shuttles (with special pontoons to let them take off from and alight upon the water, like seaplanes) ferry visitors from orbit to [..........] and back again…

…The space-station’s hatch irised open.  I jumped, startled.  A huge snake-man was standing right there in the shadows on the other side.  From where its body/tail rested on the floor to the top of its three-eyed head, it stood eight feet tall, easy.  The snake-man wore only a utility belt, from which dangled a ray-gun, a truncheon, and some other, less readily identifiable, implements.

“Greetings,” whispered the three-armed snake-man…

entry 443      [contributed by Zendexor]

…Everywhere were great cliffs of jagged rock, huge solitary boulders eroded into twisted crazy shapes by the thin atmosphere of partially ionised gasses.  The ground, if one could call it that, was littered with millions of rock splinters cracked from the cliffs and boulders… Treacherous ponds of powdered rock alternated with pits of molten lead…

Duntov lead his men through a narrow defile between two sheer cliffs, sidestepping a pool of lead that bubbled torpidly just beyond the mouth of the canyon…

The [……….] surface, Duntov thought, the most inhospitable place in the Solar System that men could walk on.  Only the surface of a gas giant could be more deadly…

…He reached the far end of the canyon, and looked down and across a broad, saucerlike plain – perhaps what was left of some huge impact crater.  In the center of the huge depression, amidst giant eroded boulders, pits of molten lead, millions of rock splinters, like a great pearl in a garbage heap, sat the hemispherical permaglaze environment that was the sole habitation of men on [……….]…

entry 442      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

The crater seemed endless in length. I had plumbed its depth for miles when suddenly I shot down into a vast, spherical cavern. My body bobbed back and forth across this subterranean cavity like a pendulum, finally coming to rest in the very center. I floated free, as if in space. The crater had brought me into the very center of [..........]. I shouted my discovery to Rourke. He replied — then his voice was cut off by a sharp click.

Shadowy forms closed in upon me. Something seized my neck in a tight grip. Raising my atomic pistol, I fired into a hideous face which stared into mine. Dismal creatures on leathern wings flew all about me. Once again I fired my atom gun, this time over my shoulder. The clutch on my neck was released. I became aware of a strange atmosphere about me. A horny beak snapped at me as a dark form flapped past.

With the reaction attachment on my suit, I propelled myself back in the direction of the shaft. The bat creatures attacked me viciously so that often I was hard set. My blazing atomic pistol cleared a way for me, and I shot up the shaft, the winged terrors of [..........] in pursuit. They followed only a short distance, however. In the upper reaches of the crater, the atmosphere in which they lived became thin, eventually dying away into vacuum.

entry 441      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

…Out there on the barren plain stood a city.  A city of white buildings, completely enclosed and roofed and bounded by the great shimmering bubble of a transparent dome.

They looked and looked, savoring the exquisite delight of relief.  They could see no movement in that domed city at this distance, but just to see it was enough.

Then, slowly, Hubble said, “There are no roads.  No roads across the plain.”

“Perhaps they don’t need roads.  Perhaps they fly.”

Instinctively both men craned their necks to examine the bleak heavens, but there was nothing there but the wind and the stars and the dim Sun with its Medusa crown of flames.

“There aren’t any lights, either,” said Hubble.

“It’s daytime,” said Kenniston.  “They wouldn’t need lights.  They’d be used to this dusk.  They’ve had it a long time…”

entry 440      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

The [..........] had created the Vortex for human settlement.

Within the limits of what was possible on [..........], with a 10.5 hour day, the [..........] had created the perfect environment.  The atmosphere, the oxygen, the gravity, had all been adjusted to provide optimal human living conditions.  Plants and vegetables were provided or modified to flower and fruit in the shorter daylight environment. 

And although the plants that could be grown on [..........] and most details of the growing conditions were different from Earth’s, it was all adaptable to human requirements, with effort and experience.

The [..........] surreptitiously helped the humans in their cultivation endeavors.  They were the invisible hand that assured a successful planting and harvest.  They wanted to ensure that the isolated humans on [..........] thrived.  They believed isolation would allow these humans to evolve more quickly and perceive the [..........], while at the same time retaining their ability to communicate with Earth humans, when Earth eventually reconnected…

entry 439      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

An idea occurred to Mansonby. “Professor Mella, these peoples of the Hot Lands — the Vulnos: I don’t quite locate them. Where do they come in? They surely cannot be descended from - ”

“No. I understand you, Mr. Mansonby. You are right. They are not from the common father people. They are the inhabitants who were here when the father people came. They were never quite overcome, but were driven north into the Hot Lands, which were unfit for the use of the father people, and they were left there to themselves.”

Mara Mella said these Vulnos, the dread creatures of the Hot Lands, were as much animal as human. They walked erect, were immensely powerful, and covered with hair like gorillas. They possessed a strange, crude language, made up of howls, barks, screams, and wails, and were of frightful aspect. Beasts in the matter of mating, any male took possession of any female he could muster the force to take, and carried her away to his cave or other rude shelter, where he kept her until he tired of her, or some stronger one came and took her away from him. No offspring seemed ever to result from contact with the human females they abducted, marking them as of a separate and distinct genus, and not human at all. Even their blood was of a different chemical composition, as had been learned by examination of those slain in their battles.

Yet they were shrewd enough to see the value of the inventions of the higher races, and had enough intelligence to use to some extent what they could not evolve or make for themselves. This they contrived mostly by compelling their male prisoners to operate them for them. He had been told there were a few instances where they had been known to operate an air or ether vessel themselves, but personally seemed to be skeptical about it. At any rate, they had not enough wit to achieve any advancement for their own race, if indeed they desired any. In short, while possessing a modicum of human mentality, and some human or near-human traits, they were for the most part downright animals — beasts.

MANSONBY reminded the [..........] of the urgency of their mission and was advised to go to the capital to start his campaign against the Vulnos…

entry 438      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

“I am serious, Sheriff!”

“Right, right, I believe you,” Gilma waved.  “A big monster would interest an animal person like you – only, you’re not from here, are you?  [..........], I mean?”

The Ringmaster eyed her quizzically.  “I hail from New Memphis, on Ganymede.”

The sheriff nodded.  “I thought so.  Look, Mikkel, sounds like someone’s got your rocket.  The Colossus isn’t real.”

“Not real?”

“I’m afraid not.  The only things apart from people on [..........] are fish.  Now, I’ll admit, some of those fish get pretty colossal…  But a great, ten-foot-tall, fish-stealing, snow-white beast with fangs and claws and glowing eyes – it’s an icefisher’s tale.  Admittedly, it’s a new one, I hadn’t even heard it ‘til a month ago, so you can’t really be blamed for falling for it.”

“But it’s not a myth, ma’am.  I’ve seen it.”

entry 437      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

…he walked towards a silent watcher, a humanoid figure, one of a half-dozen visible on the sides of the pass.

The figure looked not much different from a tall, strangely-attired Earthman.  He wore a black-green leathery suit, a dark shapeless hat, and what looked like boxing gloves.  The air pressure up at this height was far too low for Seth Hurst to breathe, yet the [..........] wore no helmet, his face open to the sky.

As he approached, Seth scrutinised the man’s neck but saw no translator tube.  But it hardly seemed worth the trouble to worry about communication – was not everything being taken care of?

The problem was indeed resolved when Seth halted two yards from the [..........] who then spoke in Tsvairp, the harsh though splendid tongue of the Titanic blowpots, which – minus the whistle – had acquired currency as the lingua franca of the Saturnian moons.

High-pitched due to the thinness of the air, yet projected with sufficient force to be clear, the meaning of the greeting was unmistakable.  Seth like the first word – pity about the rest of the sentence.

“Welcome!  Another Earthman-volunteer from the Great World, sent here to the summits of Khurrn, to participate in our experiments…”

entry 436      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

In an eldritch twilight a smooth plain extended, visibly curved to conform to the outer contour of the tiny planet. The ground was covered with heaps and drifts of a white substance, which on a warmer world would have been the constituent oxygen and nitrogen of an atmosphere. From the aurora-illumined sky, snow sifted down swiftly. It was congealed hydrogen. The remote Sun was little more than a great star, shining mistily through the thick atmospheric blanket of [..........].

And yet in this incredibly desolate landscape, there still was life. At the edge of the smooth plain was a narrow valley hemmed in by fantastically formed crags of ice, which were as permanent and unchangeable as the mountains of Earth. At the bottom of the valley were twisted shapes formed like great frosty crystals. Their long, glassy stems swayed gently with a ghoulishly animate motion, and from some proceeded an intermittent green light that flickered eerily on the ice crags.

Far down the valley was a city. Like monster beehives the buildings loomed up, constructed from roughhewn blocks of ice. The architecture was solid and strong, for, because of the enormously heavy core of neutronium, the gravity of [..........] was half again as great as that of Earth, in spite of its small size.

In the topmost chamber of one of these buildings, two members of the dominant race were in heated argument. The room was domed by a huge hemisphere of crystalline ice, through which shone the aurora and the foggy stars. In the center of the floor a big engine, wrought from tempered mercury, worked steadily, its pistons pushed by the pressure of expanding hydrogen.

The pair of [..........] crouched before a black cabinet to which various pieces of apparatus were attached. They were like the vegetation of their world. Their bodies were roughly cylindrical, and from them projected queer, crystalline limbs.

Elfin tinklings, like fairy bells, proceeded from one of the creatures. His accompanying gestures were slow and deliberate.

The other responded with the quick comeback of youth. There was a sharp note of renunciation and reproof in what he said. Without more ado he opened the door of the cabinet and entered. There was a humming sound and a sudden rush of purple light.

Far up in the foggy sky a gigantic meteor blazed suddenly; but like all meteors passing through the thick atmosphere of [..........], it was burned to nothingness many miles above the ground.

The older creature turned wearily away.

entry 435      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

“Now!” breathed Oul Vorn. “All together!”

Young Stephen Drew obeyed the command. He hurled his thought at the rearing rock-dragon, as powerfully as he could.

This was [..........] hunting. It was hunting by hypnotism. On faraway Earth there were snakes that could conquer a prey by hypnotism. That faculty had been developed by Nature to a far greater degree in almost every [..........] animal.

This rock-dragon trapped sand-cats by hypnotism, and sand-cats in turn caught small rodents and moon-owls by hypnotic attack.

The rearing rock-dragon resisted their combined hypnotic assault with all its faculties. The beast could probably have opposed one or even two of them. But the simultaneous hypnotic attack of the five youths so distracted it that it could not concentrate.

“Relax! Sleep!” vibrated the mental command in Stephen Drew’s mind, hurled at the red-eyed, hissing creature before them.

Drew had developed his hypnotic hunting technique until he was almost as good as his [..........] comrades. He had practiced it since childhood with them. For Stephen Drew had been born here in southern [..........].

The rock-dragon’s gray head was sagging, its red eyes beginning to shut. Its massive, leathery body settled to the sand. The combined hypnotic assault was beating down its fierce will.

The five young hunters advanced nearer the beast, their nooses and swords raised.

“Sleep—sleep—” thought Stephen Drew, over and over.

Then came disastrous interruption. From the desert behind them echoed a distant, shrill voice.

“Ark Avul!” it called faintly. “Your father needs you—Avul Kan sends for you!”

Stephen Drew half turned, then too late remembered the rock-dragon. The interruption had momentarily broken his concentration and had weakened the hypnotic attack of the hunting band.

The rock-dragon, temporarily freed from the full power of that mental attack, uncoiled its full length and charged. Drew realized instantly that his startled comrades could not regain control in time…

entry 434      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

Twisted, tumbled, tom and shattered rocks met his eye. Mosses, lichens, a few tough, low-growing plants. It looked like a picture of hell, but it was a prospector’s paradise, for the rocks of [.......] were shot through with veins of gold, silver, platinum, iridium, not to mention the more common iron and copper, which were not sought for because transportation back to earth was too expensive to pay profits.

“Off to the right,” Oscar whispered.

The glint of Jove-glow on a polished sight up the ravine gave Andy an aiming point and he snapped the blaster in that direction. He over-estimated the weak gravity of [.......] and the pellet hit on top of a high ridge beyond. A most satisfactory explosion took place there. Rocks split and tumbled in every direction. Andy lowered his sights and blasted again. Another brilliant explosion illuminated the landscape, far to the left this time…

entry 433      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

..."How come this gravity, Brain? I weigh about a hundred right now, I figure, and that’s too much, by plenty.  [..........] isn’t a quarter the size of our moon.”

"It’s supposed to have a core of heavy radioactive metals,” said Morley, thoughtfully, "and a corresponding high density. Keeps it warm anyway, instead of a big icicle, like Phoebe.”

"Phoebe!” Madsen laughed. "I remember, back in ’89 — ” He stopped abruptly at a rattling from the ledge. A green, little lizard-like creature was scrambling frantically over the granite, while hot in pursuit were three — spiders? Black, they were, a black like living velvet, and incredibly fast as they closed in, beady stalked eyes fastened on their prey. They were deliberately herding the desperate lizard toward a cleft in the rock. As the creature leaped into the opening, another spider dove at it from the recess. The others closed in…

...In a matter of minutes Spaceboat 6 was out of sight. With Madsen leading, they threaded their way through the scant undergrowth. Underfoot the dry, broadbladed grass rustled through a morning that had no beginning or end. Farther away were other and less easily explained rustlings, and once both men froze as a half-dozen of what looked like baby dragons arrowed past within yards of them.

"Formation flying, like ducks,” muttered Morley, watching from the corner of his eye.

When the whispering of scaled wings had died away, the castaways resumed their steady plodding into the south. Twice they crossed small fresh water brooks, providing a welcome opportunity to drink their fill, and replenish the canteens. The going was easy, since the footing was in fairly dense soil, and the scrub was not so thick as to provide any difficulties. After eight hours of nearly continuous travel, they reached the banks of a third stream. Here Madsen stopped, and dropped his knapsack to the ground…

entry 432      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

They used the elevator to the top of the big building. A lieutenant, his face serious, was waiting for them at the landing. He led them into the top dome.

Above them, through the plastic cover, a million stars sparkled. Seen through airless space, the stars were so brilliant they seemed to be just outside the dome. [..........] Station itself was set in the middle of a vast valley, with low hills surrounding it. On the left, were frozen runways extending the length of the valley. Then ended in the vast hump of the huge dome that served as a hangar for the space ships landing on [..........]. The hangar itself was part of the cluster of buildings that made up the station.

Up above the rocky surface of [..........], slanting downward toward the runways, was a pale blue glow.

"Hell, that’s not a meteor!” Craig gasped. "That’s a ship coming in from deep space for a landing here.”

entry 431      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

Owing to the slightness of the gravity given the Martians by their apparatus, progress was slow. Extreme care had to be taken to avoid dangerous falls among the giant boulders and cliffs. Crevices, wide and apparently bottomless, were everywhere. It was necessary to keep out of the shadows, for everything in them was as black as Erebus. They spread out and made a wide circle, keeping in touch with each other constantly. But to all appearances the planet was as virgin as at it birth. It was hard to believe it to be inhabited, and they began to wonder if they had not been the dupes of a cleverly arranged optical illusion.

They moved with extreme caution, and rather slowly and awkwardly, owing to the impeding cumbersomeness of the envelopes. The slightness of the gravity of [..........], combined with that added by their apparatus, did not trouble the Martians, for it was about normal to them. They held themselves constantly alert for signs of the enemy, picking their way around the pits and holes made by falling aerolites. At times they had to leap across great bottomless fissures. At last they found their progress barred by a precipitous gorge, several hundred feet in depth, and apparently miles in length. Its depths lay in profound blackness. They halted on an overhanging ledge and spent some time examining this magnified crack in [..........], for it was little more than a wide cleft between rock walls, with nearly perpendicular sides. At length Maltapa signed to Orala that he wished to talk.

He came close to his assistant, took up a small tubelike appendage hanging from the headpiece of his ether envelope, and clamped it with great care to a similar one in Orala’s envelope, forming a hermetically sealed passage between the two headpieces.

“Don’t appear to notice, Orala,” he cautioned, “as we are probably watched, but take a good look well down the opposite side there on the left just in the edge of the shadow. I thought I saw some sort of movement.”

Orala could not make out anything, and they were just about concluding that Maltapa had been mistaken, when, without warning flash or sound there was a terrific jar like a small earthquake, and a cloud of dust and pulverized rock enveloped them. The Martian Chief and his assistant leaped back instinctively from the edge, almost tearing asunder their speakers.

When they had recovered themselves and the dust cloud had cleared, they saw that a part of the ledge on which they had been standing had been clipped off sharply and precipitated down the wall of the gorge. Where there had been five Martians on the lip of the declivity, there were now but four.

“Damn that cursed aerolite!” exploded Maltapa. “It's lost us a good man!”

Detaching the speaking tubes, Maltapa waved the others farther back. He examined the ledge with care, selected a solid portion, and crawled forward on all fours to the very edge. Long and earnestly he swept the declivity below with his glass, until it came to rest on a particular spot. He signed Orala to him and attached the speakers.

“He’s lying about half way down there, poor devil! See him? He’s lying sprawled out in a sort of hollow just above that great pile of boulders. See him? Evidently the aerolite did not hit him. If it had, there wouldn’t be anything left to see.”

entry 430      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

The sun made long shadows of two ludicrous figures that went leaping and racing across the rocks. Their strength was prodigious, and they were filled with an upwelling joy of living and the combined urge of an eternity of spring-times. The very air tingled with life; there was overpowering intoxication in this potent, exhilarating breath from a world new-born.

The ground that they crossed so recklessly was a vast honeycomb of caves. Between the rocks the soil was soft with the waters from melting ice, and the men laughed as they floundered at times in the oozing mud. Beyond was a lake, and it was blue with a depth of color that was almost black, a reflection of the deep, velvet blackness of the sky overhead. And beyond that was the sloping side of an extinct volcano.

"Up—up!" Jerry shouted. "From up there we will see the whole world—the whole [..........]!" He laughed as he repeated the exultant phrase: "The [..........]!"

…Despite their strength which carried them in wild bounds across impassable chasms, their laboring lungs checked them in the ascent. The joyous inebriation was wearing off. Winslow met his companion's eyes sheepishly as they stopped where a sheer cliff of basalt above caught and held the warmth of the sun's rays. Behind them it rose a straight hundred feet, and before stretched a vast panorama. The sun was mounting now in the sky. It brought into strong relief the welter of volcanic waste that extended in bold detail through the clear air far out to the horizon, where, misty and dim, the first vaporous clouds were forming from the steaming earth.

And as they watched, the depressing bareness and emptiness of that gray-black expanse was changing. Far to the east a pink flush was spreading on the hills. It wavered and flowed, and it changed, as they watched, to deep areas of orange and red. The delicate pink swept in waves over valleys and hills, a vast kaleidoscopic coloration that rioted over a strange world.

In silence it spilled into the valley below. The slope they had traversed was radiant with color.

At their feet the ground was in motion: it heaved and rolled in countless places. Rounded shapes in myriads were emerging. Plants—mushroom growths—poured up from the earth to drink in the sunshine of their brief summer. They burst the earth to show unfolding leaves or blunted, rounding heads, that grew before the men's incredulous eyes.

entry 429      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

“Down there should be the terminal of the [……….] Canal,” said Phil.

Instead was a roiling lake that filled the rock-rimmed valley and spilled over the edges into the valley next, where the water boiled away against the hot rocks and produced the clouds of vapor.

The [……….] Canal was not properly a canal ; a real canal is a channel cut out of the face of a planet by man. Nor was the [……….] Canal a natural waterway, for if [……….] had ever had any water, it had boiled away and gone elsewhere sometime within a few minutes after the first day of creation. Instead, the [………..] Canal meandered along what might have been a natural waterway, following a couple of thousand miles of normal declivities in the rocky surface of [……….]. It collected in broad pools here and there and dropped magnificently in a couple of waterfalls, spreading out to collect the heat from Sol as it flowed from Inlet to Outlet.

Here at Outlet Station it should have been a pleasant sight.

The rim of the Canal had been cooled by the water, just as the water had been heated by the planet and the sun. So the combination of water and sun and the general hardiness of life in general had produced a rather lush rain-forestry growth along this end of the [……….] Canal. None of this was visible now. The Outlet Station was immersed completely, too, in the vast lake that churned and tossed.

The tropical sea in a typhoon or the North Atlantic lashing at the rock-bound coast of Maine in a Nor’easter or the Mississippi on a rampage were nearly as violent as this lake below.

entry 428      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

He saw now a great plain, on which vugs, unmoving, rested at fixed spaces.  Or was it that they moved incredibly slowly?  There was an anguish to their situation; the vugs strained, but the category of time did not move and the vugs remained where they were.  Is it forever?  Joe Schilling wondered.  There were many of the vugs; he could not see the termination of the horizontal surface, could not even imagine it.

This is [..........], a voice said inside his head.

Weightless, Joe Schilling drifted down, wanting desperately to stablilize himself but not knowing how.  Dammit, he thought, this is all wring; I shouldn’t be here, doing this.  “Help,” he said aloud.  “Get me out of this…”

No one answered.

More rapidly now he fell.  Nothing stopped him in the usual sense and yet all at once he was there; he experienced it.

Around him formed the hollowness of a chamber, a vast enclosure of some nebulous sort, and across from him, facing him across a table, were vugs.  He counted twenty of them and then gave up; there vugs were everywhere in front of him, silent and motionless but somehow doing something.  They were ceaselessly busy and at first he could not imagine what they were doing.  And then, all at once, he understood.

Play, the vugs thought-propagated.

The board was so enormous that it petrified him.  Its sides, its two ends, faded, disappeared into the understructure of the reality in which he sat.  And yet, directly before him, he made out cards, clear-cut and separable.  The vugs waited; he was supposed to draw a card…

entry 427      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

The ship dropped lower as it cruised above the surface of [..........], and now those within the observatory of the interplanetary flyer could view the more minute details of the planet.

Gigantic forms lumbered ungainly through the yellow forests, raising their huge snouts to bellow defiance at the space ship.

"Oh, look, daddy !" exclaimed Sue suddenly. "Down there!" the girl pointed her finger at a small clearing in the forest of yellow, swaying branches.

"It is a battle of monsters!" exclaimed Clarkford.

Below them in the forest, two nightmarish engines of flesh and blood were preparing to tear one another asunder with the mighty weapons which nature had bestowed upon them! One of the creatures was formed like a great snake with a long body some five feet in diameter, having a series of some eight or ten sets of long legs which held it above the ground. The great, glittering rows of teeth which lined the terrible jaws of the animal were outstretched to a span of some twelve feet ready to close upon the anatomy of its equally fearsome adversary at the first opportunity! Its opponent was just as large, though of a more compact build, being of towering proportions mounted on three sets of legs. From all sides huge, curling tentacles waved nervously as the other beast approached. Four little eyes gleamed wickedly from the squat, diminutive head which, devoid of any neck, sprouted from the upper forepart of the creature's colossal bulk. The tail of the animal curled and switched as it stood, waiting defensively for the charge of the other snakelike creature. The later, its wide jaws distended, was rushing forward madly.

"What terrible things!" breathed the girl excitedly as she viewed the grotesque creations which roamed the forests of [..........].

AND now there broke forth upon the ears of the space ship passengers the most terrifying, blood-curdling roars, howls, mouthings and screams they had ever heard, the radio phones upon the outside of the craft conducting the sounds of conflict to the ears of those within.

The first animal leaped forward and seized a goodly portion of the second creature within its wide jaws which closed tightly in a vise-like grip! The bulky animal writhed and roared in the terrible grasp of the attacker. As its powerful tentacles closed upon the long, twisting body of the other in a death-hold, a large section of the animal was torn loose. And now the witnesses to the primitive, mortal combat saw the effects of the tightening tentacles upon the body of the wide jawed animal. The edges of the tentacles were lined with razor-edged segment, and as the tentacles closed tightly, working back and forth in a rapid motion, the body of the attacking beast was cleaved into three or four sections which continued to wriggle and twist separately in their death throes! The head of the disgusting creature released its mouthful of living flesh and seized upon the huge animal in a new spot!

The second beast, with victory within his grasp, though bleeding to death, stiffened spasmodically at this second onslaught, while the great jaws crunched together for the last time and froze, the bodily remains of the animal still squirming, the long legs kicking!

"How terrible!" shuddered the girl as she shrank back from the grisly sight.

As if by prearranged signal, there broke forth from the surrounding forest below a pack of animals as large as horses, running swiftly forward on ten legs. They appeared to be a cross between an animal and insect, for a series of antennae arose from their heads, while the covering on their backs was such as one sees on beetles. Their jaws were those of an animal, and from between them there issued dismal howls as the dozen or more of these denizens of the yellow forest broke forth into the clearing from the surrounding verdure. They had been impatiently awaiting the outcome of the conflict between the forest giants. They leaped, fought and howled, their weird cries wailing in concert as they viciously attacked and devoured the remains of the two great beasts who had fought and died within the short space of a few minutes.

entry 426      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

Headley checked his radi-compass bearings, then braced the full force of the wind, Caxton pressing forward at his side. They struggled toward the ice-sheathed cliff a hundred yards away, each step an agony of effort, clumsily dodging a huge boulder that rolled a lazy path of death toward them.

Snow smashed at them, made vision difficult, went whirling away. Even through the radi-heated layers of their suits, they could feel the implacable cold plucking at their lives with skeletal fingers of death. Minutes passed, as they fought through the drifting snow, each minute an age of effort; and when Headley glanced back, he felt a vague surprise to find that they had travelled so short a distance. He grinned at Caxton.

“Like trying to run in a slow-motion dream,” he said, frowned slightly when he heard his partner’s sullen growl of acknowledgment.

They struggled forward again, approaching the cliff of ice and rock that towered overhead. Headley splashed heedlessly through a small pool of semi-liquid, halted with a tiny cry of excitement.

“Look!” he said. “That rock’s alive.”

Bart Caxton tilted his gaze to where several clay-colored rocks lay at the edge of the pool.

“You’re nuts,” he said. “They’re just rocks.”

“I’ll swear I saw one move out of the way of my foot,” Headley insisted stubbornly, bent and lifted the first of the rocks.

It was heavy in his hands, and he had the uncanny sensation that it squirmed impatiently as he lifted it. He examined it carefully, ignoring Caxton’s impatient words for them to hurry. And even as he watched, he saw the living rock split in his hands, opening down the side, disclosing gill-like fringed flesh that looked like slivers of whitish ice.

“It is alive!” he exclaimed excitedly, then dropped the stone as sudden giddiness clutched at his senses.

Caxton caught at his drooping body. “What’s wrong?” he snapped.

Headley blinked his eyes. “Nothing!” he disclaimed. “Just a combination of pressure and lack of oxygen.” He reached for his suit’s panel, opened the oxygen valve another quarter turn.

He shook his head slightly, then bent to study the rock he had dropped. It had not moved, nor had its mouth-like opening closed. It lay at his feet in the shallow liquid, resembling nothing more than a ruptured rock.

“To hell with it!” Caxton said disagreeably. “Let’s find the kronalium.”

Headley nodded, stumbled after Caxton. But jubilation was in his heart. When he and Caxton returned, they would take back several of the rock-creatures as living proof of the success of their mission.

He glanced back, saw squat legs flick from the opening in the rock, saw the creature scurry back to the few others of its kind that rested at the side of the semifrozen pool of liquid. He grinned again, then pressed forward to lead the way to the cliff…

entry 425      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

“PANADUR!” Mark Lynn breathed softly as he glanced at the stark grandeur of [..........] from one of the glassite ports. It was night. The macabre glow of Jupiter’s Red Spot enveloped the satellite in a red opaline haze that made the vari-colored cliffs gleam with twisted flames in deep crimson and orange and purple. Over all, an eternal mantle of snow lay like frozen spume. Mark opened his hand and looked at the jewel he held. It was pulsing now with a fiery radiance.

The great spacer was lying in the cupshaped hollow of the immense valley, resting on the blanketing snow, just as once before, a tiny cruiser had rested crippled in the fantastic [..........] night. But it was different then. Mark remembered his chilling awe at the Dantesque panorama, and his shock when Jim Brannigan had found life on [..........], the strange, exquisitely furred bipeds with slender arms and six-fingered hands. He had thought them animals then, despite the bright intelligence shining in the beryl-eyes of the creatures. But he’d learned differently in time, when Jim had crushed his skull from behind, and the Panadurs had saved him by absorbing Jim’s life-energy and transferring it to him while he lay unconscious. That was the miracle, that the metabolism of the Panadurs could absorb energy from any source and transfer it at will. They were telepathic, and their leader had given him the jewel to facilitate communication if Mark ever returned.

entry 424      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

IT WAS as though they stood upon a great, smoothly-curved mountain top.

Overhead showed the black of space’s night, with the hard glow of all the myriad stars, like spangles sewn haphazard in strings and clusters upon black velvet. At twenty degrees from zenith glowed the little orb of Venus, a silver farthing shedding soft white light upon them, and farther away and almost overhead the green dab that was Mother Earth. By Venus-light they made out the flat gray uniformity on which they stood and which extended around them and their craft on every hand —shaping into a smooth arc as it gained distance, without a dint or hummock to relieve. Away and away it curved, for furlongs that seemed small for the clearness of vision and lack of surface-modification, until it was lost in light. 

Light—an unbroken circle of it, pinky-red as blazing coals upon a home hearth. The mountain in space on which they seemed to stand was ringed about with that pink radiance. It was as if the sun were about to rise, no matter which way you looked—rather an unbroken ring of suns, ready to move forward and upward as one around the full sweep of the horizon.  

(...)

...“What’s that little patch of light, sir?”

“Eh?” said Jeffords, and then he, too, saw it—a moving shimmer of orange that seemed to play around their feet like a beam from a colored lamp.

FOR a moment, it paused at Paul’s toe and they made out its shape—a sort of luminous tadpole, a little oval the size of a pigeon’s egg with a vibrating steak like a tail. Then it was sliding quickly around the entire metal sole of the shoe, and finally away.

“It’s alive, intelligent,” exclaimed Jeffords. “Follow it.”

They ran, light and sure-footed on their magnetized boots, but the beam easily kept ahead, taxing their utmost powers to keep up. More moving lights seemed to break out ahead.

“Look, a whole swarm,” panted Paul, and a moment later their little guide was lost among its mates. Pausing on the edge of the bright, dancing array, the two Terrestrials stared in uncomprehending wonder.

There were scores, perhaps hundreds, of the bright little tadpoles, each moving independently of the others. Paul stooped and tried to pick up the nearest of them. It struggled under his pressing fingers, then slipped away as if greased.

“It hasn’t any substance,” reported the youth. “It’s like light, or a moving stain of color. What are they?”

“Living, intelligent beings,” repeated Jeffords, also genuinely excited. “Look at those diagrams yonder.”

He pointed. Several steps away stretched a row of rectangular figures, like sketches or geometrical designs. Each was perhaps three feet long by two wide, and each had one or more breaks in its boundaries. Through these breaks as through doors, the little tadpole-creatures flickered in and out. Carefully skirting the excited throng of beams, Paul and Jeffords approached the rectangular delineations.

Beyond the first row, they now saw, were other rows, drawn in purple, lavender, green, red—all colors, some shining as with phosphorescence, others reflecting the soft radiance of Venus overhead, still others flat and dull.

(...)

“Steady, sir,” said Paul at the same moment. “Something’s coming—something big and three-dimensional.”

Both he and Jeffords looked away across the little diagram-city. It was in the middle distance, a great moving lump like a legless elephant in size, and shining as with brick-red inner flame.

“The fire-thing,” came the quick, worried warning through the thought-interpreter. “It feeds upon our lives—we must flee. You say you are friends. Take friendly warning, then.”

Paul’s hand slid to his belt and caught the handle of his holstered automatic. His young eyes were fearless as they watched the approach of the new creature. Jeffords gazed also, the contemplatic scientist as usual.

The details of the shining shape were clearer now as it came humping and hurrying closer. It had no head or legs, unless the sheeny rippling of its underside was a succession of limb-motions too fast for eye to follow. Its bulk swelled upward, like a fiery tortoise-shell, but seemed to bend and quiver like jelly. The inner light waxed and waned as if to the pulse of a powerful heart. The glow it shed lighted up the gray, smooth plain for many yards around.

“Look,” said Paul tensely. “It’s at the other edge of the city—eating those poor little bugs!”

IT WAS. A scurrying little pool of colors showed where some of the tadpole-people had been overtaken. The front of the blister-like nemesis swelled and elongated, like the pseudopod of an amoeba. The extension wiped an end across the muddle of tiny fugitives, and they were no more.

entry 423      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

The stars winked at him, the soft waves explored his face-plate with curious, white fingers of spray. Pretty soon there was sand scraping his boots . . . a long, smooth beach with rolling hills beyond.

…In the sudden scarlet of dawn, it was impossible to believe the night had even been frightening. Throughout the night, the Moseley clan huddled together there on the beach, waiting, silent, wondering. But when the sun burst over the horizon like a clamoring, brazen gong, they looked upon this land which was their new home — and found it good.

The night did not last long. But Pop had told them it would not.

“[..........] rotates on its axis,” he explained, “in about ten hours, forty minutes. Earth time measurement. Therefore we shall have ‘days’ and ‘nights’ of five hours; short dawns or twilights. This will vary somewhat, you understand, with the change of seasons.”

Dick asked, “Isn’t that a remarkably slow rotation ? For such a tiny planet, I mean ? After all, [..........] is only one hundred and eighty odd miles in circumference — "

“[..........] has many peculiarities...”

entry 422      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

Peter seized the oars and rowed swiftly toward the spot from whence the bullets had come. He did not know who had fired the shots, but he was certain that the man he sought was up there behind the jungle bush. With swift strong strokes, the boat shot shoreward, toward a slight indention in the river’s bank, over which hung a jungle giant bearing huge crimson flowers. Peter, intent upon grounding the light craft, paid no heed to the huge tree. Then suddenly he discerned a swift movement above. He saw a huge crimson belllike flower turning rapidly. A coiled liana within the gorgeous golden mouth darted downward. Other huge flowers also were turning down their gaping maws.

An agonized instant — for Peter. His eyes, for a horrible second, had turned to something else, swinging in the twining lianas above. It was a skeleton, bleached and white, hanging high on a limb like a scarecrow.

It was a trap ! These were carnivorous plants ! Above him, doubtlessly, hung the remains of one of the three who had preceded him, and perhaps somewhere along the river were the bones of the other two. Lured by a shot from the shore they had turned their craft into the gaping jaws of death.

Peter’s vocal chords were trying to scream, but he was paralyzed with sheer terror...

entry 421      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

“…Brute strength isn’t enough, nor agility. A tiger or a deer wouldn’t last long here. In the Forest, the survival of the fittest means the plant or animal that can get the most food. That sort of thing has been going on here for a million years. The beasts developed super-quick reactions. They could smell danger a mile away. So they had to have strength, agility, and something else — to get close to their prey.”

Brown stared. “What?”

“Invisibility. Or its equivalent. Ever heard of protective coloration? Camouflage? Well, the creatures of the Forest are the most perfect camouflage experts that exist. They don’t simply trick your eyes, either. They trick the other senses. If you smell perfume, take it easy, or you’ll find yourself asleep, while your head’s being chewed off by a lizard that looks as nasty as it smells good. If you see a path and it feels solid, don’t walk too far on it. Things have made that path. A carnivorous moss that feels exactly like smooth dirt underfoot — till their digestive juices start working. If you hear me yelling your name, take it easy. There are birds like harpies here that imitate sounds the way parrots do.”  Garth’s grin was tight. “You’ll find out. It’s camouflage carried to the last degree, for offense and defense. I know the Forest pretty well ; you don’t. You haven’t developed a sort of sixth sense — an instinct — that tells you when something smells bad, even though it looks like a six-course dinner.”

“All right,” the Captain said. “This is your territory, not mine. It’s up to you.”

It was. Garth decided later as he led the way through the black columns of the trees, very much up to him. Brown and the others were tough, hard fighters, but they didn’t know the subtleties of this hell-hole, where death lurked everywhere disguised...

It was warmer in the Forest; the trees seemed to exhale heat and moisture, and there was no snow on the ground. Great ebony pillars of giant trees, rising hundreds of feet into the air, made the place a labyrinth. And the deceptive reddish twilight made walking difficult, even to Garth’s trained senses...

entry 420      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

Lucky jumped recklessly into the exposed river, drifting gently downward under the pull of [..........]’s weak gravity.  He was angry at the slowness of his fall, at Bigman for the childish enthusiasms that seized him so suddenly, and – unpredictably – at himself for not having stopped Bigman when he might.

Lucky hit the stream, and ammonia sprayed high in the air, then fell back with surprising quickness.  [..........]’s thin atmosphere could not support the small droplets even at low gravity.

There was no sense of buoyancy to the ammonia river.  Lucky had not expected any to speak of.  Liquid ammonia was less dense than water and had less lifting power.  Nor was the force of the current great under [..........]’s weak pull.  Had Bigman not damaged his air hose, it would have been only a matter of walking out of the river and through any of the drifts that might have packed it around.

As it was…

Lucky splashed downstream furiously.  Somewhere ahead the small Martian must be struggling feebly against the poisonous ammonia…

entry 419      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

... He was possessed with the same overmastering curiosity as to what lay below the barrier of illusion that had driven the others to dare its mystery.

He descended step by step. When he touched the shaking mist-mirror a peculiar thrill ran along his nerves. It was like s faint electrical charge - numbing, a slight, chilling shock. Nothing painful, but more than a bit startling.

The mist came up and drowned him. For a moment he felt himself completely blind; but the smooth stone steps were still there beneath his feet. He felt his way down, step by step, descending into complete darkness.

Out of darkness, light blossomed.

A dim, dreamy haze of light, soft and faintly golden.

As he descended beneath the barrier, a vision of strange marvels appeared, it was like a bit of stage legerdemain, or one of the miraculous transitions the old-time moviemakers knew how to work. The scene was transformed, instantly and completely, as by some mighty magician.

He stood on a steep slope of rock overgrown with a carpet of soft moss. Sapphire-blue was that moss, and it deepened to metallic indigo and brightened to lucent azure as the shifting light played across it.

A warm, humid gust of air met him, dampening his face and filling his lungs with the perfume of strange, unearthly flowers.

entry 418      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

…A dark ragged terrain was spreading out below them.  Then, Curt saw the place at last.  A deep gorge, with cliffs towering up on either side.  He’d only been here twice before in his life but he knew the place well.

He maneuvered into place, and the cruiser descended slowly on the under-hull repulse beam.  Even Kraaz was puzzled now, as they went deep into this tiny world.  Suddenly the scene widened.  The terrain spread out again and lights leaped into view.  They were in a vast hollow where a complete town nestled, concealed by the sheering black cliffs.  They settle down onto a spaceport where a hundred ships rested. 

“Welcome to [..........],” Curt spoke dryly.  “But I hope we won’t be staying long.”

…They stepped down into the thin atmosphere of [..........] depths.  Ships of all sizes and designs rested there in the vast hollow; for this was an outlaw base for pirates of all planets…

…They saw spacers of every description… but they failed to meet the description Curt was after.  But suddenly, as they neared the edge of the hollow – he saw one…

…Kraaz had seen.  Now he strode purposefully toward the side locks.  It took all of Curt’s strength on his arm to stop him.

“Careful, man.  Remember you’re on [..........] now.”  Curt jerked his head toward the lights of the town.  “The owner must be around somewhere – let’s go find him.”

Kraaz nodded.  They walked toward the single sprawling street of [..........].  Sounds of revelry reached them, guttural laughter and curses and the click of gambling wheels.  Once they saw a thin, blue flash of an electro-pistol.  That was the only law here, and life was cheap among these cutthroat pirates…

entry 417      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

…To the East, as I stood there in the quietness of the Sleeping-Time on the One Thousandth Plateau, I heard a far, dreadful sound, down in the lightless East; and, presently, again – a strange, dreadful laughter, deep as a low thunder among the mountains.  And because this sound came odd whiles from the Unknown Lands beyond the Valley of the Hounds, we had named that far and never seen Place “The Country Whence Comes The Great Laughter.”  And though I had heard the sound, many and oft a time, yet did I never hear it without a most strange thrilling of my heart, and a sense of my littleness, and of the utmost terror which had beset the last millions of the world.

Yet, because I had heard the Laughter oft, I paid not overlong attention to my thoughts upon it; and when, in a little time it died away into that Eastern Darkness, I turned my spy-glass upon the Giants’ Kilns.  And these same Kilns were tended by the giants, and the light of the Kilns was red and fitful, and threw wavering shadows and lights across the mouth of the pit; so that I saw giants crawling up out of the pit; but not properly seen, by reason of the dance of the shadows…

entry 416      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

…The entities were aglow with a deep inner light.  They raised heavy appendages.  Tiny crystals slid forward to become tentacles, grasping the three visitors by the arms.  Those tentacles were heavy and strong and cold, cold as outer space.  Kraaz struggled, lashing out with his Jovian strength.  But mere protoplasmic strength was nothing.  His great muscles bulged, veins stood out – then he collapsed.

They were dragged roughly forward, through street after street in which other crystalline forms moved.  But not all were in human semblance.  They seemed able to take on any shape at will.  A tingling din was set up, as these crystal-shapes moved in their peculiar cohesive locomotion.

An entire city seemed to exist here far beneath the [..........] rock.  They came at last into another grotto, vaster than any they’d seen.  Their captors led them to a great blank wall of rock, extending far above their heads.  But it wasn’t entirely blank, hundreds of crystal forms clustered there, scattered in profusion across the perpendicular expanse.

As they stood there uncertainly, these crystal-forms began to move…

entry 415      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

…They crossed the end of that blackened strip, Curt and Otho hastening over the hot rocks, Grag plodding stolidly, Simon gliding ahead.

Before them the fern jungle rose into barren olive-colored hills, growing dark as the dusk deepened.  Almost at once Newton noticed something on the slope of the nearest hill.  It was a raw lumpy scar where a landslide had recently occurred.

“Simon, look at that landslide!  Notice anything?”

The Brain hovered, his lens-eyes surveying the dusky hillside.  “Yes, the outline.  Definitely unnatural.”

Otho and Grag were staring now, too.  “I don’t see anything unnatural about it,” boomed the metal giant.

“It covers a building that stood on that hillside,” Newton informed him.  “Look at the symmetry of it, even masked by soil – the contral cupola, the two wings.”

Otho’s bright eyes flashed.  “The citadel Carlin mentioned?”

“Perhaps.  Let’s have a look.”

They moved on.  In a brief time they were climbing the slope to that great lumpy scar of new soil.

Newton looked back down at the jungle.  No one had followed them out of it onto the bare slope.  The giant ferns stretched far away and he could catch the tawny gleam of Yellow Lake in the distant dusk…

entry 414      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

Ten days later, Earth time, he was circling [..........], while he searched the grim, forbidden terrain beneath. After days of studying and speculation he had decided that the Caves must be situated in the Inferno Range, a place so particularly vicious that no man, so far as was known, had ever explored it. During the day the heat would boil eggs, and at night the sub-zero cold cracked great scales off the granite boulders. And here, too, lay the Trap-Door City of the monster spiders!

The grim, fantastic range soon appeared over the horizon, stabbing its saw-tooth peaks far into the sky. Dawn was still lighting the world, and a great snow-storm, a howling, furious blizzard, concealed the lower slopes of the mountains. Penrun knew that presently the driving snow-flakes would change to rain-drops, and the shrieking, moaning voice of the gale would give way to the crashing, rolling thunder of the tempest. As the day advanced the storm would die abruptly and the clouds vanish under the deadly heat.

Then the Trap-Door City, which covered the slopes above the plateau at the three-thousand-foot level like a checker-board of shimmering, silken circles, would spring to febrile life as the spider monsters went streaking and leaping across the barren, distorted granite on the day's business, the hunt for food in the lowlands, and the opening of the trap-doors to gather in the heat of the day in the silken tunnel homes set in the gorges and among the boulders. At sunset the doors would all be closed, for then the rain and the electrical storm would return, and at night the blizzard. The storm-and-heat cycle was the deadly weather routine of the Infernos.

entry 413      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

This wasn’t the information he wanted. “Addison, is there any life on [……….]?”

“The night life never ends.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Sorry, just a joke to lighten the mood. [……….] It is theorized that some life may dwell in the deep oceans, protected by a layer of ice, but to date none has ever been found.” 

Amir considered this. No fish could have knocked him from the docking arm. “Anything else?”

“Some residents and guests claim to have seen a creature locally called the ‘gaunt.’ Descriptions vary, but most agree its a fast, elusive being that avoids light. Disappearances are sometimes blamed on the gaunt. No solid evidence has ever surfaced to support the possibility of its existence.”

“...Disappearances?”

"Yes. Many who vanish are sadly never found, even if they went missing within just a few miles of the colony. One of the difficulties of living on such a rugged world without sunlight."

entry 412      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

"That crazy android!  I might have known he’d pull something like this!  When I get my hands on him – "

Curt was already donning a space-suit.  He screwed its helmet tight, grasped his proton-pistol, and strode into the water.

The head soles of his suit held him on the sea floor as he marched down an oozy slope.  Flame-fish and hydras swam past him in the green deeps.  The space-suit was a perfect diving suit for his purpose.  He strode deeper and deeper until he glimpsed a bright gleam of light ahead.

It came from the Futuremen’s diving bell.  The improvised bell was an upright cylinder of transparent metal, that stood now amid crumbling black ruins which were half covered by ooze.  Curt glimpsed Otho, Grag and Joan clearly inside the bell, which had a makeshift rocket tube for ascending.

The diving bell had been fastened tightly to the ocean’s slippery floor.  Chains attached the the bell’s underside had been securely pegged down.  And around it were circling a dozen fiercely excited sub-sea men, of the race long known to inhabit the depths of [..........]’s waters.

The scaled, anthropoidal green monsters glimpsed Curt and rushed toward him, leveling their rude spears…

entry 411      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

The gorge was so deep that the blazing sunlight did not reach its bottom, which was a place of great boulders and shadows.  There were cracks of yawning fissures in the precipitous walls.  And bright streaks of metallic ores gleamed at many places in the rock.

It was these metal ores, Curt knew, that drew the [..........] here.  The strange, non-breathing creatures could ingest metallic elements as their food.  They could sense the presence of such elements from afar.  That was what made them dangerous to men wearing metal space-suits.

“The fissure I noticed when we formerly explored this place is near the west end of the gorge,” Captain Future declared.  “Come on!”

They clambered down into the shadowy bottom of the gorge, and started between the masses of jagged boulders toward its distant west end.

As they came round one looming mass of rock, they suddenly confronted two [..........].  The creatures were big, wolflike beasts with gray silicate flesh, whose curiously filmed eyes glared at the Futuremen…

entry 410      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

… They rose quickly to a moderate altitude and headed for the city of Kir, the walls and towers of which could be discerned in the distance. The visitors experienced a slight sense of discomfort; for it was considerably warmer here than in their own land and the humidity was far higher. But otherwise they observed little difference from conditions on Arin, though the sun was shining less brightly here by reason of their greater distance from the luminary.

“Do you desire to encircle the city before landing at the hotel?” inquired the pilot, who seemed to be friendly enough.

“Yes, that is a good suggestion,” agreed Ronal. “It will give us an opportunity to orient ourselves.”

“You have never visited Voris?”

“Never. And we are looking forward to it with much pleasure.”

“Well, you have arrived at a good time. In the city of Kir the celebration of Matara is now being observed – one of our holidays, you know – and there is much merry-making. We shall pass over the amphitheatre where Olar is now reviewing his mounted guard.”

Ronal translated rapidly to Barlo, who displayed keen interest in the news. This entire trip was more or less of a holiday to the middle-aged man who had left the city of La-dar but three times during his lifetime. But the young prince was not so enthusiastic; for the Andites has told him of some of the orgies of the Keronians when on holiday.

The air was filled with pleasure craft and beneath them spread a city of a size fully as great as La-dar. Its upper moving ways were crowded with people in holiday attire. The high walls surrounding Kir were bedecked with emblems and banners of many colors, as were the myriad aircraft that darted and circled about them on every side. Now they shot past a tall spire, that rose from the upper surface of the city to so great a height that its pointed tip seemed to be but a few feet beneath them. The pilot advised Ronal that this was the spire which surmounted the palace of Olar, ruler of all Keron, and thus, by overlordship of the mightiest nation, the actual dictator of his entire world.

Now they were over the main thoroughfare of the city, a broad central lane of traffic on either side of which rose the larger buildings of Kir. These, unlike the pleasingly-decorated edifices of La-dar, were monotonously uniform in construction, and of neutral hued, non-corrosive metal. Were it not for the holiday decorations, thought Ronal, this city of Kir would indeed present a drab and uninteresting appearance to the eye of the cultured visitor from Arin. Ahead of them, the central roadway terminated in a large circular area which they soon made out as the amphitheatre of which the pilot has spoken. Then they were directly overhead; and the cab dropped still lower and hovered about to permit them to witness the scenes beneath.

In the exact center of the arena was a large dais, upon which sat Olar and his royal party in the midst of his courtiers and ministers. the stands were packed with his subjects, and the gesticulations and flag-waving of the multitude viewed from above produced the effect of a restless body of water. In a circular track, which occupied the entire space between the dais and the stands, paraded the royal guard, several hundred brightly plumed soldiers, mounted on yaraks, those swift-footed striped quadrupeds whose breed had been perpetuated through the ages. The maneuvres of the perfectly-trained troops proved of interest for some little time and then, suddenly very tired, Ronal directed their pilot to convey them to the hotel.

entry 409      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

…With no clouds to hamper them, they could see the horizon, less than a mile away in each direction.  Numerous small gray bushes were the only break in the monotony of the reddish landscape.

A hundred yards or so away from them, a tiny object sprang into the air, and settled rapidly down again.

“Animal life,” remarked the gloomy, white-faced pseudo-android.

Several others of the tiny objects leaped up closer at hand.

“They’re butterflies!” exclaimed Loring.

“I’ve seen their kind on Jupiter,” observed the Jovian.

Blackbeard was staring at the insect-like creatures uneasily.

“I wasn’t expecting this,” he said.  “We’d better return to the ship.”

The pretended robot looked at him with puzzled eyes.  “Why?  They’re no more than a couple of inches long.  They can’t be dangerous!”

“They have wings, but despite the presence of an atmosphere, they can’t fly.  That means that they’re too heavy to be supported by matter of any ordinary kind.  And if their bodies are of heavy matter, we don’t want to tangle with them…”

entry 408      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

It was a well.

Henry Bedrosian and Christopher Luden bent over the lip, peering down into the jet darkness.  Their balloon-tired motorcycle lay forgotten on the talcum sand, fine pink sand that stretched endlessly away to the flat horizon, borrowing its color from the sky.  The sky was the color of blood.  It might have been a flaming Kansas sunset, but the tiny sun was still at the zenith.  The translucent hewn stone of the well-mouth stood like a blasphemy in the poisonous wilderness that was [..........].

It stood four feet above the sand, roughly circular, perhaps three yards across.  The weathered stones were upright blocks, a foot tall by five inches wide by perhaps a foot thick.  Whatever the material of those stones, they seemed to glow with a faintly blue inner light.

“It’s so human!” said Henry Bedrosian.  His voice held a touch of bewildered frustration…

“…Did you notice the shape of the bricks?”

“Yes.  Odd. But they could still be man made.”

“In this air?  Breathing nitric oxide, drinking red fuming nitric acid?  But – “ Chris drew a deep breath.  “Why complain?  It’s life, Harry!  We’ve discovered intelligent life!”

entry 407      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

Seconds flowed into moments, and the moments merged into one another, and still the clouds pressed with a visible strength against the ports. The rockets drummed steadily, holding the ship aloft, dropping it slowly toward the planet below. Then the clouds thinned, and, incredibly, were permeated with a dim and glowing light. A second later, and the clouds were gone, and a thousand feet below tumbled and tossed in a majestic display of ruthless strength an ocean that seemed to be composed of liquid fluorescence.

Kerry Blane heard Splinter's instant sigh of unbelief.

"Good Lord!" Splinter said, "What—"

His voice stilled, and he was silent, his eyes drinking in the weird incredible scene below.

The ocean was a shifting, white-capped wash of silvery light that gleamed with a bright phosphorescence of a hundred, intermingled, kaleidoscopic colors. And the unreal, unearthly light continued unbroken everywhere, reflected from the low-hanging clouds, reaching to the far horizon, bathing every detail of the planet in a brilliance more bright than moonlight.

Splinter turned a wondering face. "But the official reports say that there is no light on [..........]," he exclaimed. "That was one of the reasons given when exploration was forbidden!"

Kerry Blane nodded. "That was merely a pretext to keep foolhardy spacemen from losing their lives on the planet. In reality, the ocean is alive with an incredibly tiny marine worm that glows phosphorescently. The light generated from those billions of worms is reflected back from the clouds, makes [..........] eternally lighted."

He turned the ship to the North, relaxed a bit on the air bunk. He felt tired and worn, his body aching from the space bends of a few hours before.

"Take over," he said wearily. "Take the ship North, and watch for any island."

Splinter nodded, rested his long hands on the controls. The space cruiser lifted a bit in a sudden spurt of speed, and the rocket-sound was a solid thrum of unleashed power.

Kerry Blane lit a cigarette, leaned toward a vision port. He felt again that thrill he had experienced when he had first flashed his single-man cruiser through the clouds years before. Then the breath caught in his throat, and he tapped his companion's arm.

"Take a look!" he called excitedly.

They fought in the ocean below, fought in a never-ending splashing of what seemed to be liquid fire. It was like watching a tri-dim screen of a news event, except for the utter lack of sound.

One was scaly, while the other was skinned, and both were fully three hundred feet long. Great scimitars of teeth flashed in the light, and blood gouted and stained the water crimson whenever a slashing blow was struck. They threshed in a mad paroxysm of rage, whirling and spinning in the phosphorescent water like beings from a nightmare, exploding out of their element time and again, only to fall back in a gargantuan spray of fluorescence.

And then the scaly monster flashed in a half-turn, drove forward with jaws agape, wrenched and ripped at the smooth black throat of the other creature. The second creature rippled and undulated in agony, whipping the ocean to foam, then went limp. The victorious monster circled the body of its dead foe, then, majestically, plunged from sight into the ocean's depths. An instant later, the water frothed, as hundreds of lesser marine monsters attacked and fed on the floating corpse.

entry 406      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

“…It was a jewelled world.  Cities – the great, perfect cities – still glowed.  They glowed in soft, golden light above, and below, the harsher brighter blue of mercury vapour lighted them…

“ ‘We enter’ – he named a city; I cannot reproduce that name – ‘now…’

“…So I entered that city, the living city of machines, that had been when time and the universe were young.

“I did not know then, that, when all this universe had dissolved away, when the last sun was black and cold, scattered dust in a fragment of a scattered universe, this planet with its machine cities would go on – a last speck of warm light in a long-dead universe.  I did not know then.

“ ‘You still wonder that we let man die out?’ asked the machine.  ‘It was best.  In another brief million years he would have lost his high estate.  It was best.

“ ‘Now we go on.  We cannot end, as he did.  It is automatic with us.’

“I felt it then, somehow.  The blind, purposeless continuance of the machine cities I could understand.  They had no intelligence, only functions.  These machines – these living, thinking, reasoning investigators – had only one function, too.  Their function was slightly different: they were designed to be eternally curious, eternally investigating…”

entry 405      [contributed by Zendexor]

Thrice the Jalathadar circled the stone-walled city of the Ku Thad, gaining altitude with each swing around the city.  The streets shrank below us – the palaces and mansions and citadels of Shondakor dwindled.  The mighty throng became a many-colored carpet filling the squares and rooftops.  We could see the glittering curve of the great river that flows by Shondakor, and from our ever-growing height the dark mass of foliage that was the immense jungled tract of the Grand Kumala became dimly visible on the horizon.

When we had ascended to the height of about half a mile, I gave the appropriate commands.  The galleon leveled off and pointed her ornate prow north and west, in the general direction of the mountain country wherein Zanadar rears her castled crest.  The wheel gangs settled down to a steady rhythm, the huge vans beating slowly, the enormous rudder holding the ship of the skies steady on her course.

I leaned against the carven rail, staring down at the broad meadows that slowly passed by far underneath our keel.  Soon we would be beyond the measureless plains and flying above the great jungles…

entry 404      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

…Almost the first moments of that day of recreation afforded me one of those pictures which haunt the memory ever after.  The sun had risen over a burning ocean.  He was not, as you might expect in our remote world, a small and feeble sun; for between your age and ours a collision had increased his bulk and splendour to a magnitude somewhat greater than that with which you are familiar.

Overhead the sky was blue.  But for [..........] eyes its deep azure was infused with another unique primary colour, which your vision could not have detected.  Toward the sunrise, this tincture of the zenith gave place to green, gold, fire-red, purple, and yet another of the hues which elude the primitive eye.  Opposite there lay darkness.  But low in the darkness gleamed something which you would have taken for a very distant snowy horn, whose base was lost in night, though its crest gleamed orange in the morning.  A second glance would have revealed it as too precipitous and too geometrical for any mountain.  It was in fact one of our great public buildings, many scores of miles distant, and nearly one score in height.  In a world where mountains are crushed by their own weight these towering edifices could not stand, were it not for their incredibly rigid materials, wherein artificial atoms play the chief part.  The huge crag of masonry now visible was relatively new, but it could compare in age with the younger of your terrestrial mountains…

entry 403      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

The light wavered, cutting through the intense darkness to settle upon one of the strangest scenes ever destined for Earth-born men to witness — the surface terrain one encounters in the long ten-month darkness periods of [..........].

Each movement sank them knee-deep into the fragile mold growths that covered the ground level; their savage actions crushed the fragile formations and left twisted pits and furrows in their wake; beyond them, on low ridges, the white-limbed X-ray trees of [..........] thrust quivering branches upward, their leafless projections hanging with pale toady flowers; here in the sunless periods a bizarre plant life, independent of sunlight, waxed fertile…

…Perhaps the parlous pass in which we found ourselves will be better understood if I stop to explain a few of the characteristics of [..........]

The daylight period of ten months duration is accompanied by excessive vegetative growth, resulting in a luxuriant jungle bush that mats every available bit of soil. With the coming of the ten-month night, the vegetation perishes almost instantaneously and decomposes rapidly under the action of highly developed parasites that wax fertile in the dark hours.

The poles of [..........] are almost exactly perpendicular to the rays of the sun. Thus there are two seasons, following each other endlessly around [..........]. The vegetation growing in the darker period differs in several particulars from ordinary plant life:

First, it is either parasitic or feeds on tiny particles carried by the wind. Silvery sprays of parasites gather on the blackened stumps of trees that had lived in the daylight, and the result is a weird mimicry of the former plants, which are referred to most often as X-ray trees.

Secondly, normal plant growths function through a system known as photosynthesis, and cannot exist in the absence of the solar rays. The X-ray parasites utilize cosmosynthesis, as do the fungus plants and the blue mold. The cosmic ray, manifested with universal strength in visible light’s spectrum or in total darkness, is a vital essential in the lightless world of the Umbra. Among the vicissitudes afforded by these extremities of plant life, animal life must survive as best it may.

A further obstacle is encountered in the magnetic variations of the planetal body. The polar fluctuations are so continuous as to render a compass a useless bit of added weight. The air is so impregnated with flying umbrella spores and particles of decomposing vegetation as to obscure all starlight, hiding the familiar sign posts of the heavens: the constellations.

entry 402      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

“You peel an old life off and you step forth in a new and shining life,” said Seven, “but you must know the way. There is a certain technique and a certain preparation. If there is no preparation and no technique, the job is often bungled.”

“Preparation,” said Webb. “I have no preparation. I do not know about this.”

“You are prepared,” said Seven. “You were not before, but now you are...  You found humility.”

“I do not know the technique,” said Webb, “I do not…”

“We know the technique,” Seven said. “We take care.”

The hilltop where the dead city lay shimmered and there was a mirage on it. Out of the dead mound of its dust rose the pinnacles and spires, the buttresses and the flying bridges of a city that shone with color and with light; out of the sand came the blaze of garden beds of flowers and the tall avenues of trees and a music that came from the slender bell towers.

There was grass beneath his feet instead of sand blazing with the heat of the [..........] noon. There was a path that led up the terraces of the hill toward the wonder city that reared upon its heights. There was the distant sound of laughter and there were flecks of color moving on the distant streets and along the walls and through the garden paths.

Webb swung around and the seven were not there. Nor was the wilderness. The land stretched away on every hand and it was not wilderness, but a breath-taking place with groves of trees and roads and flowing water courses…

entry 401      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is