guess the world -
sixth series
entries 501 -

[ + 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  - 
Guess The World entries 401-500  -  Scene-counts ]

The thin, cold air of [..........] was like wine to Avery’s lungs after his long confinement in the space suit. He gazed about him, searching for possible places of hiding. The terrain was bleak, rugged, covered with great rocks and boulders. Strange, gnarled trees and twisted shrubs grew from occasional patches of soil. At one point, close in the distance, a line of hills rose.
    Buttons returned with the pack, and they were ready to move. Avery swung into the lead, setting out for the hills. They seemed to offer the best place of refuge. Valerie hurried up beside Avery, her small features intent as she fought to keep her balance. In the lighter gravity of [..........], there was a constant tendency to rise with each step and sway toward the direction of motion. Buttons brought up the rear, grumbling to himself.
    (…)
    The hills slowly drew nearer. The stretch of scattered rocks and boulders and occasional, trees gradually thinned out. Before them spread a bare and level area which promised easier going. But as they approached, Avery stopped, frowning. The ground ahead seemed to be covered with mud. Scattered profusely about were small pools of what seemed to be thick, dirty water. It wasn’t water, however, Avery realized a moment later, but oil, or some substance greatly resembling it in general appearance. He glanced uneasily at the sky, said:
    “I think we’d better go around this stuff. It doesn’t look deep or sticky, but I’d rather not take any chances with the crazy physical properties these satellites often show.”
    Parts of the detour lay through moss-covered gulleys and along the tops of rocky ridges, which made their progress necessarily slow.
    (...)
    They had been moving parallel to the oil-spread area, and now they reached ift end. The hills were still a good distance away. The ground gradually rose to break into a froth of tumbled rocks and boulders at the base of the hills.
    (...)
    It was almost impossible to run in the real sense of the word. They bounded along in leaps of fifteen feet, and each time they came down it was more often than not on hands and knees. The fact that the ground was rising and covered with rubble didn’t help matters any...

entry 539      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

The rocks on which the ship had gutted itself, he noted, were like frozen waves; thrown up in the molten state, they had hardened before collapsing.  And in the absence of any weather at all, they were as they had hardened.  While the walking was hard in consequence, and the footing treacherous, it did have the advantage of making every slope a mass of foot and hand-holds.  There was hard work but no trouble scaling down to the edge of the plain.  When after some effort he finally found himself on a ledge about eight feet above the plain, he stood for a moment to recover his strength and to savour the fact that the hard work was over.  Then he jumped out and, in the light gravity, floated down to the plain.

Instinctively he bent his knees as he was about to hit.  He was not going fast enough to make it really necessary, but he did it anyway.  It was an appreciable moment before he realized that he should have hit and had not; and it was another moment before he was swallowed up in blackness…

entry 538      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

    "I'd rather go alone.  Is there any danger?"
    "No, none that I know of.  Except - "
    "Except the Pipers," Harris finished.  “I know.  Well, there’s only one way to find them, and that’s it.  I’ll have to take my chances.”
    “If you walk in a straight line,” Chief Watts said, “you’ll find yourself back at the Garrison in about six hours.  [..........]  There’s a couple of streams and lakes, so don’t fall in.”
    “How about snakes or poisonous insects?”
    “Nothing like that reported.  We did a lot of tramping around at first, but it’s grown back now, the way it was.  We never encountered anything dangerous.”
    “Thanks, Chief,” Harris said.  They shook hands.  “I’ll see you before nightfall.”
    “Good luck.”  The Chief and his two armed escorts left and went back across the rise, down the other side towards the Garrison.  Harris watched them go until they disappeared inside the building.  Then he left and started into the grove of trees.
    The woods were very silent around him as he walked.  Trees towered up on all sides of him, huge dark-green trees like eucalyptus.  The ground underfoot was soft with endless leaves that had fallen and rotted into soil.  After a while the grove of high trees fell behind and he found himself crossing a dry meadow, the grass and weeds burned brown in the sun.  Insects buzzed around him, rising up from the dry weed-stalks.  Something scuttled ahead, hurrying through the undergrowth.  He caught sight of a grey ball with many legs, scampering furiously, its antennae waving…

entry 537      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

… A smile crossed Talbot’s face as he recalled that night in the [..........] beer hall. He was sitting at a table with one of his father’s friends, a roving miner, discussing his plans, when in walked a Kwang, as drunk as ever a Kwang could be. The miner nudged Talbot.
    “Want to have a little fun?” he asked. Grant Talbot didn’t know exactly what kind of fun the miner had in mind. But he soon found out.
    The miner suddenly cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted: “Hi! Look out! A Swaxzi!”
    Talbot knew that a Swaxzi was a dread [..........] monster. He had heard tales of the Kwang’s ability to create an equally dreadful monster as self-protection. But he had never seen one. Few people had. The Swaxzi were to the Kwang what the bogey-man is to an Earthman. But with the Kwang it was different.
    When the miner yelled out, the Kwang wheeled about drunkenly, his slit eyes now wide with fear. It was apparent that he was visualizing one of the dread creatures that periled his race. For a few seconds the Kwang glanced wildly about him. Then he let out a screech of terror. One of his taloned hands pawed the air before him. And Talbot suddenly grew tense.
    Out of the air in the beer hall there materialized a thing. It was hideous, monstrous, an utterly damnable thing. It was as huge as a locomotive and about as meek. It pawed the floor with hoofs that set the rafters to shaking, and suddenly charged.
    As Grant Talbot thought of it now it seemed ridiculous. But it hadn’t seemed so at the time. Uttering a sharp cry of warning, he flung the first thing he could lay his hands on, a half empty bottle, at the Swaxzi. The bottle passed right through it, hitting instead, with a resounding whack, the Kwang’s head. The Kwang folded like a wet rag. The Swaxzi vanished instantly.
    Talbot had vowed he’d never have anything to do with a crazy Kwang. He didn’t like the idea of seeing monsters coming out of thin air at him. Real or not. It was bad on the nerves.

entry 536      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

entry 535      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

...By day the city was an imposing sight. Great flatroofed buildings covering many acres each and rising sixty stories from the ground, stretched miles in every direction. Tall trees grew on the roofs, and we could see people walking about on shaded lawns.
    On top of our building there were no roof gardens. The space was taken by a number of great steel cradles like the ways of a shipyard. In one of these rested the airship of last night; by daylight we could examine it more closely.
    Imagine a submarine without the conning tower, some eighty feet long. Imagine it lined with portholes and with big square windows in front — of a light grayish color and with stout runners underneath — and you have a picture of a Zongainian airship or prolo, as they are called there. Of wings or propellers we saw not a sign; their method of propulsion is based upon an entirely different principle, that of the little known action of high frequency current upon certain kinds of crystals.
    Later we were to learn much more about these wonderful prolos, but just now time pressed — at least it pressed our conductors for they hustled us into the open door of the craft at once, followed us in and made it fast.
    One took his place in a seat at the front windows, made a number of adjustments with dials and levers, and the next instant we silently left the steel ways and sailed into the morning air.
    If the city had been impressive from the ground it was marvellous from above. Through the crystal-clear atmosphere we could see its streets extending mile after mile, up to the very foot of the mountain now hidden in mist. To the north the range we had crossed yesterday blocked the view, but southwest another wonder was unfolding itself.
    As we arose I glimpsed over a buttress of the mountain, a wide expanse of blue water, a lake, and on its west edge directly opposite the peak another city.
    But such a city! Seen through the haze of some seventy miles we did not at first grasp its full immensity. We could not realize that that dark mass of buildings extended thirty miles along the lake and the buildings in the center — how could we know that their spires soared a half mile into the sky!
    NUDGING one of the crew I pointed in mute questioning at the vast scene now lying eight thousand feet below. His eyes lighted with something like pride and he replied “Imperium.”

entry 534      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

Pressing the little lever-like arrangement at the lower end of the case as my companion directed, the picture flicked out of sight revealing another view of the planet. A series of such views gave details of every portion of the planet's surface and then I came to a different type of picture.
    It was an illustration showing a gigantic engineering undertaking. A low range of hills formed the background and down their slope ran a great scar. At the foot was a vast building under construction, and leading from it to the foreground was an immense excavation at the bottom of which were what I took to be excavating machines, whose apparent size was enhanced by the diminutive, human-like figures I could see here and there among them.
    Translating the legend below, Hargraves informed me that this illustrated one of [..........] under construction and that the building at the foot of the hill housed the pumping mechanism which was to raise the water to its new level. This particular piece of work was at what we call the northern point of the [..........].
    Page after page flicked before me on the pressing of the lever. Great engineering works, maps and plans of districts and cities, and last of all views of the cities themselves. These latter illustrations are well worth describing. Unlike our canyon-like streets the ways received sunlight in abundance, for the buildings were pyramidal in form, each story being smaller than the one below, with a broad open apace running around it. A reddish stone seemed to be used in their construction, with a trimming of dull green, well suiting the style of architecture, which had a Babylonian cast about it. Fancy carving or ornamentations were wholly absent.
    A number of torpedo-shaped objects were evidently moving through the air above the ways between these massive piles, a host of others were "parked" on the broad galleries of the buildings, over which were what I supposed to be long windows which lighted their interiors.
    This, Hargraves told me, was the metropolis of the planet, and these were the executive offices from which the affairs of this far-off world were directed. A symbol mounted on a staff at the top of each building marked the department to which it belonged. A flaming Sun, crossed parallel lines, a square and compass, and a cluster of fruits were among some of those I saw. I will leave it to the reader's imagination to solve the meanings of these symbols.
    Another view showed the stages from which great aerial liners left for distant cities, or to which they came to discharge their living cargo. A few were resting upon their cradles, taking aboard freight and passengers, or discharging the products of distant districts into conveyors which took it rapidly underground. All heavy traffic was carried underground in the cities, I was informed, and came to the surface only at its destination.
    "To think that this was taking place half-a-million years ago," I said to my companion. "I wonder what it is like there now."

entry 533      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

He sauntered over to the quartz viewplate, stared at the fetid swamp that was dimly visible through the steamy fog. The scenery was pretty uninspiring, being nothing better than a steam-shrouded tangle of vegetation, mostly dull greying white. All [..........] landscapes were much alike; all revoltingly wet and unpleasantly hot. "What a place to blow a rocket-tube," he muttered, less than half to Wing.

(…)

"Hey!" Henderson's cry broke in on Wing's absorbed reverie. "Who's pounding on the lock?"
    Certain enough, there was someone scratching on the airlock, obviously desirous of attracting attention. Wing refocused his gaze, saw, just visible at an angle through the quartz port, a hideously furred, troll-like creature, manlike in face, resembling most nearly a web-winged caricature of a kangaroo in body.
    "It's one of Ch'mack's boys," said Wing. "Suppose we're in trouble again?"

(…)

He tossed a wire-coiled sort of helmet at Wing, who caught it deftly and slipped it over his head. Henderson donned one also, and stepped into the airlock. The wire helmets were preceptors—what you might call telepathy-radios, allowing the explorers to converse mentally with the [..........]. No human could have spoken the [..........] native tongue.
    A touch on a button closed the inner door, sealing off the ship; as soon as that was closed, the outer door of the lock opened automatically. Henderson and Wing grabbed at their nostrils, and stepped out on to [..........] soil.
    Humans could breathe [..........] air indefinitely, providing they didn't overexert themselves. The CO2-rich atmosphere contained enough oxygen for life, though not as much as did Earth's. But it also contained a variety of rank, hot odors, most of which resembled decaying fish.
    Wing marvelled at the fact that so disgusting a smell wasn't actually poisonous, and turned to the [..........] waiting.

entry 532      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

“...The next act was a beautifully rendered concert by some fifty young male [..........]. It was a ‘vocal’ concert, no instruments being used. Nor did they open their mouths! Yet they sang — by thought transference! This, of course, sounds violently impossible. Just the same, I assure you it was the best ‘singing’ I ever had the pleasure of ‘hearing.’

“I am equally certain that our lack of experience and training caused us to miss most of the beauty of the concert, for our mental capacity of receiving all of the impulses is of necessity much lower than that of a [..........].

“We probably heard the concert in the same manner as an intelligent monkey hears a Beethoven Symphony. He hears it perfectly — as perfectly as a human being — but he cannot understand its full meaning, because his mind cannot grasp it. Exactly so with us. Our minds were filled with the beautiful music, and while we caught much of the rhythm, the full meaning was necessarily lost upon us.

“The next act was also mostly lost upon us. From what I could grasp from our host, it was a wonderful symphony of odors. It is well known to you that every smell or odor or scent causes a certain mind reflex or association; thus you are aware of the fact that certain perfumes or scents produce certain emotions upon our nerve centers. Certain scents will immediately impress a definite trend of thought upon you, all depending upon the intensity of your feelings. In the present day humans, this faculty of correctly associating thoughts with certain scents is still but little developed. In the [..........], however, it seems very highly developed; each scent, every modification of scent has a certain well-defined meaning.

“This is how the ‘symphony of scents’ was enacted. Perforated pipes were placed on top of the railing of all the tiers. This piping ran continuously through the entire house, while large supply mains led to a mixing and generating plant behind the scenes. The scents and perfumes were led into large mixing chambers, here to be blended scientifically by accomplished artists performing the ‘symphony.’ By means of pumps, the scents were driven into the perforated pipes, only a few feet away from the audience, which simultaneously became enveloped in clouds of invisible scents and perfumes. The ‘clouds’ came at times in puffs, at times they were sustained, sometimes they were long drawn-out, changing from one scent into another. We could detect a certain rhythm throughout, and from the ecstatic expressions on the [..........] faces we understood how deep their feelings were during the performance, which lasted well over half an hour.

“Upon us, of course, the full meaning was lost, for we did not understand it all, nevertheless our sensations were delightful in the extreme, and exceedingly pleasant. Just exactly what the feelings of the [..........] were, and just what mental pictures or emotions the various scents produced upon their nerve centers, we have no means of knowing, but we did know that their systems responded powerfully to the performance..."

entry 531      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

There was a long procession winding through the silvery streets of Nealoma, accompanied by the deep booming sound of Anathryptic drums, the sweet, sharp tones of the nantigore played with a muted bell, and the ripple of many feet moving rhythmically on the hard surfaces; and there was, too, the rustle of broad wings. Bravely-uniformed guards, beribboned like pages in an Ardathian court, passed and repassed overhead. On either side of the line of march — their wings folded but ready, and in their hands the short sythus which had done such mighty work in the campaigns against the Helvae — stood the proud legionaries of Pleida, keeping back the crowds who pressed too close in seeking a glimpse of the daring travelers.

The air was close and singularly hot, despite the distance of the sun; the ground was warm. Heat seemed to come outward from the core of this world, turning the moisture of the soil to vapor as it came, and filling the atmosphere with quivering waves. Great as was their distance from the sun, the streets were filled with a brilliant light, of peculiar blue-green intensity, greatly unlike that which played upon the face of Tellus. It was the quality and nature of the Pleidan atmosphere which changed the sunlight, straining out many of the red rays, and emphasizing the blues and greens. In addition, there penetrated to the surface much more of the actinic rays than reached the surface of the dead planet; and the bleaching effect of these rays was everywhere apparent.

It was not noticed, however, by the race of short, squat phlegmatic people who inhabited the major portion of the planet. Even the great weight of every common thing, more than two and half times as great as it would have been on Tellus, did not seem to trouble these beings. With the aid of gravity nullifiers, they flitted to and fro, either in the air or on the ground, with little apparent effort where a Tellurian man would have been made helpless by his own weight.

The procession moved through a carnival of little multi-colored balloons and bright paper discs between the ranks of cheering gaily-clad citizens who lined the route on either side. The chief streets of the city shone with pageantry. Crowds upon the high rooftops shouted welcoming cries through megaphones. Bands played and accented the rhythms of the march. But an observer might have perceived that such emotion as the people showed was simulated; that, between their exclamations, their faces relaxed into that stony gloomy mold for which Pleidans are noted.

Ahead marched the Bala, lifting their arms rhythymically above their heads, and indicating that an event of importance to the whole universe were about to occur. The special guards came next, marching three deep before and after the jeweled guests of honor, who moved in double file, looking neither to the left nor right; for it was improper to acknowledge the plaudits of the crowd until respect had been paid to the Emperor.

Straight ahead, before the marching lines, stretched the great avenue; and at its end, upreared against the green-gold sky, stood the broad, blocky palace of Dolmician. The terraced steps ran upward to portals guarded on either side by tawny zelinx in precious metal, the symbol at once of authority and cruelty. Beyond the portal opened the hallway, nearly as wide as the street, and at the far end of it was the auditorium where sat the mighty Dolmician himself. Enrobed with garments signifying his power and degree, he awaited in the Emperor’s box, the marchers. His receiving ring gleamed upon his fat third finger, the jewel out; and a smile of welcome was enforced upon his countenance. His short, squat figure seemed more a block of carved stone than a living man...

entry 530      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

"...Arming ourselves with our large caliber guns we set out to follow the tracks. Buster, who ran ahead of us with his nose to the ground, had become excited and within ten minutes’ walk we entered an immense canyon with almost perpendicular walls several thousand feet high. This canyon was nearly closed at the top and it was probable that the sun never reached the bottom. There was little light and we had to advance cautiously, guided by Buster.
    “The temperature was rather comfortable — about 50° Fahrenheit, as our subsequent investigation proved.
    “As we walked on, the canyon seemed to become lighter, but we soon observed that it was not sunlight. The color of the light was of a pale green. We were very much puzzled at this and not a little excited, so we pressed on forward. We finally rounded a projecting corner and beheld a sight such as no humans had ever seen before.
    “The canyon, which by this time had become entirely closed at the top, suddenly widened out into a colossal cave of immense proportions. We found out later that the cave was roughly 12 miles in length and 8 miles in breadth. Although entirely closed at the top it was almost as light as day inside, the light, however, being of a vivid green. Almost the entire bottom of the cave was taken up with a lake and the light came from the lake itself. Within a few minutes we had reached the edge of the water and we saw immediately why the lake gave forth such a strong light.
    “We stood fascinated for some time at the sight which presented itself to our eyes. The lake was crowded as far as the eye could reach with a sort of eel fish — and each fish was luminous.
    “You have, of course, seen the common firefly during a hot summer evening. Take your firefly, extend it about four feet, to the size of an eel, put it under a clear limpid water, and you have a good idea of our lunar luminous fishes.
    “The sight of these strongly illuminated eels darting back and forward under the water with lightning speed is magnificent. You can follow each fish to a considerable depth, for the light which they emit is very powerful. We found out that each fish produces some 60 candlepower of light. Here ‘at last we are face to face with an exceedingly practical application of “cold” light, for which our terrestrial scientists have been searching for decades. We also observed that the fishes are luminous only while in motion. We have since observed that the light is produced by the friction of the fish’s body against the water. Flitternix is not sure yet whether the action is electric or chemical.
    “It is marvelous how nature always finds a way to favor life, even under the most difficult surroundings. As life was manifestly not possible on [..........'s] surface on account of the blistering heat (and the extreme cold following) nature promptly produced it under the surface. As the higher forms of life require light for their existence and as there is no light under [..........’s] surface, nature saw to it that its life carriers were themselves equipped with light!

(…)

“....During the next few days (by this I mean a day of 24 hours’ duration) we explored the entire cave and we came across many queer animals, mostly of the turtle type. We found few hairy or feathered types and nothing that approached, even distantly, the human form, as, for instance, the monkey type of our earth. We found that there was quite a little vegetation inside of the cave, mostly of the fungus type; there were also low shrubs and some dwarf forms of a peculiar bread tree. This bread tree is very similar in many respects to the terrestrial bread tree (Artocarpus communis) as grown in some of the Pacific Ocean islands. We found its fruit, after baking it, highly nutritious as well as exceedingly tasty. The turtle meat was excellent and the fish tasted somewhat like eel, with a fresh-water trout flavor. We found many varieties of mushrooms, some of enormous size, and mostly edible. There was, furthermore, an abundance of various curious nut bushes and, with a few exceptions, all were very tasty...

entry 529      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

....He saw that the cave was high up on the side of one of the more prominent cliffs. There were many such hollowed places, indicating that the sloping shelf on which he now lay had once been the beach of a vast sea which at some time must have covered all but the higher peaks of the Gray Mountains. It was, of course, the sea that had deposited the scanty soil which here and there covered the rocks. During geologic ages it shrunk until it all but disappeared, leaving only a few small and bitter lakes in unexpected pockets.
    There was a succession of prehistoric beaches below Murray's vantage point, marking each temporary sea level, giving the mountain a terraced appearance. A thousand feet below was the white lake, sluggish and dead.

(...)

    The skitties proved to be a species of quasi-shellfish, possessing hemispherical houses. In lieu of the other half of their shell they attached themselves to sedimentary rocks. They were the only form of life that had been able to adapt themselves to the chemicalization of the ancient sea-remnant. The [..........] had left them thin flakes of rock. Now he placed the shells in the red-hot coals, and in a very short time the skitties were turning out, crisp and appetizing. Following his host's example, Murray speared one with the point of his stiletto, blew on it to cool it. It proved to be delicious, although just a trifle salty.
    "Drink plenty water with it," the [..........] advised him. "Plenty more about five hundred feet down. Artesian spring there. Fact is, that's all that keeps that lake from drying up. You ought to see the mist rise at night."

entry 528      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

   ...Now she looked with even greater intensity into his nightmare-twisted face, probed far behind the lids covering his black Tellurian eyes. The cold light from the captured still-living Shnug-fly which dangled from the low raftered ceiling molded a weird shadow on the walls of the tiny hut. Joha's red eyes blazed brighter, brighter still. Her slightly webbed hands gripped together with a tremendous tension of mental effort...

entry 527      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

    Ted was just about to doze off some minutes later when Jill’s scream blasted into his radio and brought him springing to his feet.
    “There!” Jill said, pointing.
    Randy too was wide awake now, and the three of them stared, fear-stricken, across the dark drifts at a giant creature which stood at a distance looking at them. The light of [..........] and the stars was bright enough to show his awesome outline.  
    “What is it?” Ted whispered to Randy.
    “It’s an elephant ant,” Randy whispered softly. “See that trunklike sucker on its head? Get the gun, Ted. These things are mean.”
    Ted caught up the atomic rifle and set it for fire, thinking all the while how Mr. Garland had missed his guess about their not being troubled by animals. Slowly the enormous insect approached the opening in the rocks. It was indeed the height of an elephant. Ted could hear the rustle of its hard-shelled body as it walked nearer.
    The [..........] animal’s slowness up until now deceived Ted, for, without warning, the insect broke into a rapid run. Bravely Ted tried to take careful aim and protect the two unarmed ones with him. But even as he fired the gun, Jill bumped him in her mad dash to escape the oncoming horror.   
    Ted saw a blinding glare that lit up the scene for a moment as brightly as noonday. In that shocking instant Ted got a vivid view of the elephant ant, its brown spindly legs and antenna shining glossily, its curling trunk out-thrust at them menacingly. But as the blast of the rifle died out and the ant continued to charge, Ted knew he had missed his mark...

entry 526      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

The sun had dropped behind the [..........] plateau, although for a day twilight would linger over the [..........]. The sky was a hazy blue, and out over the deeper tinted waves the full [..........] swung. All the long half-month it had hung there above the horizon, its light dimmed by the sunshine, growing from a thin crescent to its full disk three times as broad as that of the sun at setting. Now in the dusk it was a great silver lamp hanging over Nardos, the Beautiful, the City Built on the Water. The light glimmered over  the tall white towers, over the white ten-mile-long adamantine bridge running from Nardos to the shore, and lit up the beach where we were standing, with a brightness that seemed almost that of day.

entry 525      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

....Down below, he could see the blue-white ammonia ice that was the frozen atmosphere of [..........]. Shimmering gently amid the whiteness was the transparent yellow of the Dome beneath whose curved walls lived the [..........] Colony. Even forewarned, Preston shuddered. Surrounding the Dome was a living, writhing belt of giant worms.
    "Lovely," he said. "Just lovely."
    Getting up, he clambered over the mail sacks and headed toward the rear of the ship, hunting for the auxiliary fuel-tanks.
    Working rapidly, he lugged one out and strapped it into an empty gun turret, making sure he could get it loose again when he'd need it.
    He wiped away sweat and checked the angle at which the fuel-tank would face the ground when he came down for a landing. Satisfied, he knocked a hole in the side of the fuel-tank.
    "Okay, [..........]," he radioed. "I'm coming down."
    He blasted loose from the tight orbit and rocked the ship down on manual. The forbidding surface of [..........] grew closer and closer. Now he could see the iceworms plainly.
    Hideous, thick creatures, lying coiled in masses around the Dome. Preston checked his spacesuit, making sure it was sealed. The instruments told him he was a bare ten miles above [..........] now. One more swing around the poles would do it...

entry 524      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

CURT SANDERS climbed wearily up the last steep passage from the city below. Space-suited and helmeted, he emerged from the low line of cliffs and looked out upon the desolate surface of [..........].
    For the past week he had worked hard in the underground laboratories. Occasionally he came to the surface where he could see the dark sky, and the pin-points of stars, and the dying Sun once more. That alone gave him incentive to go on. He, with the several thousand others, were working out the problem which might save them from extinction. It was slow work, damnably slow and hard, and Curt knew in his heart they would not be in time.
    He raised his face to the red orb whose heat scarcely touched here. Again he marvelled that disaster had come so suddenly. Solar radiation was not supposed to end like that! It should have gone on for millennia. That’s what the scientists had preached. But it had ended — scarcely five hundred years ago. Curt had never known Earth, only the city here far within [..........], where there was meager warmth and light. And now even the internal heat of [..........] was fast cooling.
    Curt turned at the sound of footsteps behind him. That would be Olana. She, too, came here each week.
    She stopped beside him, raised her helmeted face to Sun and stars with infinite longing. For a moment neither of them spoke. Then Olana clicked on her helmet radio.
    “Each time. Curt... each time I come here I imagine the Sun has grown dimmer. Is it really only my imagination?”
    “Yes. It becomes dimmer, but not perceptibly...  The sun spots of hundreds of years ago must have been the beginning of the end…”

entry 523      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

   ...The air outside was lower in pressure than that inside the cargo nose of the rocket, which had been sealed at Earth level. But it was air and it was breathable. Robin drew in several deep lungfuls, savoring it.
    It was oddly exhilarating, as if highly charged with oxygen. At the same time there was a smell of mold and dampness and a definite taste of sulfur and phosphorus like that just after a kitchen match has been lighted. Even so, the air was breathable.
    Robin worked his head and shoulders through the narrow opening, slid forward and landed on hands and knees on the rocky surface. He got to his feet, looked around.
    He was standing on the bank of a rushing stream of water, which was pouring out of a large gap in the side of a cliff. The cliff ran straight up, gently curving to form part of the ceiling several hundred feet overhead. The extent of this ceiling was impossible to determine—it was dark and obscure—but it seemed to Robin almost at once that he was in some sort of gigantic enclosed space—a vast cavern beneath the surface of [..........], probably several miles beneath it.
    The water coming from the underground falls rushed out to form a wide, shallow river which flowed along one side of the cavern and widened out to a few hundred feet clear across to the farther wall. On Robin's side the floor of the cavern rose in a slow slope until it reached its wall perhaps three hundred feet away. Robin could not estimate the length of the cavern. Looking along the river bank, the cave seemed to become veiled in a general mistiness and gathering darkness.
    The light itself came from no definite source, but seemed to emanate from the rocky walls and ceiling, from the clayey ground, and from the general atmosphere. Robin supposed that the source was a natural phosphorescence which he knew was not too uncommon even in Terrestrial caverns.
    All around on the soil bordering the flowing water was a forest, a forest with the weirdest vegetation Robin had ever seen. Plants growing in clumps and clusters, plants whose large treelike stalks resembled a whitish-blue bamboo, and which burst into globular blue bulbs which seemed to serve as leaves. Among these tree-sized growths was a rich undergrowth of tight balls of varying yellow and green and purple, growing like thick, squat mushrooms. And everywhere else a thick, lush carpet of green, not grasslike but rather like some oversize moss.
    In this forest there were no sounds of birds or animals, but only that of plants swaying in the river breeze, the rushing of the waters, and from somewhere distant in the unseen end of the cavern a strange, steady hissing sound.

(...)

    ...After a few minutes Robin saw a slight motion in the vegetation at the other side of the cave entrance. He watched, and a moment later saw a head thrust itself out, and then a figure emerge and silently stalk to the cave and look in. It was manlike, walking on two feet and it had two arms. It was oddly misty, seeming naked and semi-transparent like the other animal life.
    In one hand the creature carried a long stick to which something sharp and glassy was attached—clearly a type of spear. The creature paused at the cave mouth, then seeing no one within and unable to resist the tantalizing curiosity of cooking meat and a small fire, it went inside.
    Immediately Robin dashed out of hiding, ran across the small space and blocked the entrance of the cave with his body. The creature within was bending over the meat, but on hearing Robin, it turned, and made a wild dash for the cave mouth.
    It collided with Robin. For a moment there was a wild scramble of arms and legs and then Robin's greatly superior Earth muscles overpowered the other's and the creature was caught. Robin held it tightly in his arms, carried it into the cave, and sat it down.
    The spear had been knocked aside in the tussle and Robin looked at it with a glance. One glance was enough to make the young man realize that he had had a narrow escape. Its tip was bright and as sharp as a piece of broken glass. If the creature had thought to jab that spear, it might have been deadly.
    But now the captured being was sitting quietly in a sort of resignation, merely looking at Robin with the same curiosity that Robin bestowed upon it. It was very much like a human being, perhaps some four feet tall. But its head was somewhat triangular in shape, having only one eye (Robin never found any [..........] creatures with two), and was topped with a large yellow light bulb that extended a foot above...   

entry 522      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

    As Alf shot into the sky beside him, Mick noted that the ground was still dark, and that the terminator line that delineated night and day, still was a mile or so to the eastward, floating rapidly toward them.
    There were other things about this weird planet that also struck Mick's eyes. It was filled with growing things. Most of these were single stalks, crowned with a bluish bud. But there was a terrestrial note to some of the plants that clung to the rocks and sand of [..........].
    To the south was a huge tree, with gnarled branches and leaves. Tucked away in a small gully were reddish flowers that looked like roses in the distance. There were vines clinging to the rocks. The corn that had first attracted attention of the spacemen, occupied a small, rectangular patch and the stalks were so evenly spaced that the field suggested artificial cultivation.
    Slowly they came back toward the ground. Below was one of the budded stalks which slowly nodded its tip toward the terrestrials as their feet came in contact with the soil.
    Mick was ready this time. His gun was in his hand as the little white bead emerged from the tip of the bud. The gun sent a streak of flame into the middle of the stalk, and the plant was sliced as neatly as a knife could have cut through a stem.
    "It's not nearly as pleasant here as I expected," Alf panted into the phone of his space suit. "Who ever thought we'd have to fight plants on [..........]?"

entry 521      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

    The scene was weird beyond all imagining—weird and unutterably terrifying.
    "Rawley, they are moving the ship. They are using magnetic tow lines and making a mighty good job of it."
    "Where—where are they taking us?" I gasped.
    The frog's reply was utterly bewildering. "We'll label it terrestrial fauna—habitat group. We'll take the ship right into the museum. Large-brained bipeds from the third planet, stooping above their artifacts in perfectly natural attitudes. Magnificent.
    "Mustn't let sunlight touch them. It's curious I didn't think of this when I absorbed their energies. My one thought was to warm myself, but necessity is the mother of invention. They'll honor me for this. I'll head the next expedition. My instructions were imbecilic. 'Observe all their habits and then mummify them.'
    "What good are shriveled specimens? So long as sunlight doesn't touch them they'll keep this way for a thousand years. This one has been—helpful. Oh, enormously. Just as well I didn't tap him.
    "I mustn't let him suspect that I couldn't—can't. I've absorbed too much radiance as it is. My energies are brimming over. He thinks I can still diminish his mass. Might have to kill him if he knew.
    "Kill him. I could do that, of course. But I'd hate to lose one of these specimens."
    It hit me all at once, with the force of a physical blow. There was something that the frog didn't know. It didn't know that I could listen in on its private thoughts. It thought it could shut off its mind from me. Hitting me also with force was the sudden realization that when in close proximity to it I had telepathic powers which were first rate, as good as its own.
    Wait a minute—better. Because it didn't seem aware of what I was thinking now. So we were just animals to it, eh? Big-brained bipeds—specimens. I was edging away from it and toward the control panel, very cautiously...

entry 520      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

...Falken yelled, in sharp, wild warning.
    The thing was almost on him. A colossus with burning eyes set on footlong stalks, with fanged jaws agape and muscles straining.
    Falken grabbed for his blaster. The quick motion overbalanced him. Sheila slid down on him and they fell slowly together, staring helplessly at destruction, charging at them through a rainbow swirl of light.
    The creature rushed by, in utter silence.
    Paul Avery landed, his blaster ready. Falken and Sheila scrambled up, cold with the sweat of terror.
    “What was it?” gasped Sheila.
    Falken said shakily, “God knows!” He turned to look at their surroundings.
    And swept the others back into the shadow of the cleft.
    Riders hunted the colossus. Riders of a shape so mad that even in madness no human could have conceived them. Riders on steeds like the arrowing tails of comets, hallooing on behind a pack of nightmare hounds...
    Cold sweat drenched him. “How can they live without air ?” he whispered. “And why didn’t they see us?”
    There was no answer. But they were safe, for the moment. The light, a shifting web of prismatic colors, showed nothing moving.
    They stood on a floor of the glassy black rock. Above and on both sides walls curved away into the wild light — sunlight, apparently, splintered by the shell of the planet. Ahead there was a ebon plain, curving to match the curve of the vault…
...They went a long way across the plain in the airless, unechoing silence, slipping on glassy rock, dazzled by the wheeling colors.
    Then Falken saw the castle.
    It loomed quite suddenly — a bulk of squat wings with queer, twisted turrets and straggling windows. Falken scowled. He was sure he hadn’t seen it before. Perhaps the light. . . .
    They hesitated. Icy moth-wings flittered over Falken’s skin. He would have gone around, but black walls seemed to stretch endlessly on either side of the castle.
    “We go in,” he said, and shuddered at the thought of meeting folk like those who hunted the flaming-eyed colossus...

entry 519      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

…the flying cloaks… might be sensitive to a relatively slight amount of heat.
   …The free cloak was still in sight, approximately where it had been before, in so far as she could judge against this featureless snowscape – which was fortunate, since it might well be her only flag for the source of the thermal, whatever it was.
   …The cause of the thermal, when she finally reached it, was almost bathetic: a pool of liquid.  Placid and deep blue, it lay inside a fissure in a low, heart-shaped hummock, rimmed with feathery snow.  It looked like nothing more or less than a spring, though she did not for a moment suppose that the liquid could be water.  She could not see the bottom of it; evidently, it was welling up from a fair depth.  The spring analogy was probably completely false; the existence of anything in a liquid state on this world had to be thought of as a form of vulcanism.  Certainly the column of heat rising from it was considerable; despite the thinness of the air, the wind here nearly howled.  The free cloak floated up and down, about a hundred feet above her, like the last leaf of along, cruel autumn…                        

entry 518      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

Where the Avalon Trail bends across Annihilation Range, a thousand icy miles from [..........]'s northern stem, Nolan stopped and closed the intake valve of his helmet. Count five seconds, and he unhooked the exhausted tank of oxygen; count ten more and it was spinning away, end over end over [..........]'s frozen surface, and a new tank was already in place. He slipped the pressure valve and inhaled deeply of the new air.
    He'd come ten miles by the phosphorescent figures on the nightstone markers beside the trail. Fifteen more miles to go.
    His cold black eyes stared absently at the east, where the pseudo-life of the great [..........] crystals rolled in a shifting, tinkling sea. He noted the water-avid crystals, and noted the three crablike crawlers that munched a solitary clump of metallic grass. You don't walk, talk and breathe after a Tri-planet Lawman has declared you dead unless you note everything around you and react to what may be dangerous.
    But he was looking beyond the familiar [..........] drear, to the eastern horizon where faint lights gleamed in the dark. That was Port Avalon. That was where Steve Nolan was bound.
    (...)
    Then he slammed the inner door, sealed his helmet, pushed his way out.
    The crawler was even bigger than he'd thought. Standing within ten feet of it, he felt tiny and weak, a toy before this massive brute. Like ancient Earth dinosaurs, the crawlers kept growing as long as they lived. Tiny as the palm of a man's hand, foot-high creatures like those Nolan had kicked out of his way an hour before or monstrosities like the one before him—all three types existed side by side. Only seldom did they grow as great as this. Invulnerable though they were, they perished of starvation, when their bulk grew too much for their thousands of tiny legs to carry.
    Out of the ebon hulk of the thing came poking a minute head, goggle-eyed, with a luminous halo of green tendrils surrounding it. It blinked weakly at Nolan. He waited patiently. If the thing was convinced he was harmless.
    It was. Recovering from the shock of the skid's arrival it began to prepare for motion again. The head poked out toward the skid on a long, scrawny neck, examined it minutely. The big carapace shivered and rose slightly off the ground as the multitude of tiny legs took up the task of carrying it forward.
    Nolan stood motionless. The creature moved ponderously toward him, ignoring him. In the dull mind of the creature an object as tiny as a man was nothing. Even the skid was merely another sort of boulder, against which it could lean, send it hurtling over to destruction, out of its way.
    It moved forward till the hard horn almost touched him. Then Nolan leaped.
    This was the moment of decision. He circled the long neck with one lashing arm, clamped on it all the pressure he could bring to bear. It was the one sensitive spot the creature had—and protected, normally, by armor battleship-thick.
    Nolan strained the muscles of his arm, cursing the cushion of air inside his suit that made a pillow for the beast. The slippery flesh coiled and writhed in his grip; the beast exhaled a great, whistling screech of agony and the snakelike neck curved around. The popeyed head darted in at him, tiny mouth distended to show raw, red flesh inside. It battered ineffectually against the heavy plastic faceplate of his suit.
    The crawler vented its whistling sigh again and staggered drunkenly away. Away from the remorseless pressure on its sore spot, away from the agonizing weight of him. Its tiny legs carried it rocking sidewise.
    Then abruptly they tried to halt it, gave sharp warning to the tiny brain. It was too late.
    The scrambling legs flailed for a foothold and found vacuum. Nolan gave a final heave, felt the thing slide away from him, leaped back. Just in time. He himself was teetering on the brink of the chasm as the crawler, tiny head darting frantically, soundlessly around, slid over and disappeared.
    He didn't look down. The clattering and crashing vibrations from below told what happened. He turned, shook himself and headed for the skid...

entry 517      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

…The great groans that were rising through the tornado-riven mists from the caissons were becoming steadily, spasmodically deeper; their hinges were already overloaded.  And the deck of the Bridge was beginning to rise and fall a little, as though slow, frozen waves were passing along it from one unfinished end to the other.  The queasy, lazy tidal swell made the beetle tip first its nose into the winds, then its tail, then back again, so that it took almost all of the current Helmuth could feed into the magnet windings to keep the craft stuck to the rails on the deck at all.  Cruising the deck seemed to be out of the question; there was not enough power left over for the engines – almost every available erg had to be devoted to staying put.  
    But there was still the rest of the Grand Tour to be made.  And still one direction which Helmuth had yet to explore:
    Straight down.
    Down to the ice; down to the Ninth Circle, where everything stops, and never starts again…
    …The meters on the ghost board had already told him that the wind velocity fell off abruptly at twenty-one miles – that is, eleven miles down from the deck – in this sector, which was in the lee of The Glacier, a long rib of mountain-range which terminated nearby.  He was unprepared, however, for the near-calm itself…  the worst gusts were little more than a few hundred miles per hour, and occasionally the meter fell as low as seventy-five…
    …At fifteen miles, something white flashed in the fan-lights, and was gone.  Then another; three more.  And then, suddenly, a whole stream of them…  ten-ribbed, translucent, ranging in size from that of a closed fist to one as big as a football…

entry 516      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

He was in the native quarter, at [..........]'s core, where the [..........] were as thick as red dust on Mars—and for the first time Mac saw a Kiddie policeman.  He was wearing no more clothing than the rest of his kind, just carried a staff of office, like the old Bow Street Runners.
    An idea suddenly made contact in MacCauley's mind. He signaled the officer and dragged out a notebook and pencil, unnecessarily, as it happened. The Kiddie, in sinuous gestures, signified that he could understand English, partly by lip-reading, partly by picking up the sound in some weird fashion through rock-conduction and the sensitive soles of his splay feet.
    Mac, enunciating carefully, spoke.
    "One of your people has robbed me. I want him arrested. Where do I go?"
    The Kiddie bobbed his head, and from the manner in which his luminiferous glands sparkled balefully, it was evident where he thought MacCauley should go. Nevertheless, he snapped out his little pad and stylus, and scrawled: "Commi wih me tu Offic he wil arange arest."
    MacCauley deciphered the scribble. He shrugged and said, "Okay. Hop to it, sonny." He walked beside the diminutive policeman for a few hundred feet, glancing incuriously at the small burrows which pierced the rock walls and kicking away chunks of the queer, spongy rock on which the Kiddies subsisted, the equivalent of Earthly garbage...

entry 515      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

    Dr. Hardt stopped suddenly, as though he had come across some unexpected discovery.
    “What's the matter, Uncle Alex?” inquired Hardt.
    “Look! Look!”
    Involuntarily he lowered his voice, though no sound could come out of his helmet. “These dark spots are plant life; broad, fern-like weeds, stunted in their development...”
    “I expected to find some sort of plant life here,” calmly answered Hardt.
“Something has just moved among the leaves. There it is again...” Dr. Hardt advanced a few steps in his excitement.
    “Stop! Stay where you are!” commanded Hardt abruptly, noticing the movement at the same instant. “We can talk as much as we like, for no sound can go outside our microphones. But don't anybody move!”
    Again the plants wavered. Almost immediately a gleaming grey streak came toward the observers from the obscurity. It was a snake, something with life. [..........] was not as dead as people thought. The strange, slimy reptile lay motionless for a time, very near the men. “It is an amphibian, like a proteus”, whispered Dr. Hardt. “It is almost colorless, and has no eyes, as it the case with the grotto proteus, which lives in perpetual darkness in the subterranean caves of the Dalmatian mountains. Such a large proteus does not exist in our realm, however. This animal is almost two yards long.”
    As Dr. Hardt bent nearer to examine the large wormlike body, with short, finlike legs which gave it a ludicrous appearance, the reptile lifted up the fore part of its body, and with head waving from side to side, instinctively opened and closed its jaws.
    “The beast must have a telepathic sense of our presence, despite its lack of vision,” said Dr. Hardt, grasping his staff more firmly.
    Simultaneously the proteus clapped its strong, pointed tail to the ground, and gave a sudden leap upward. Its undulating body flew through the mist in broad, spiral curves, and finally disappeared from the astounded gaze of the explorers...

entry 514      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

... Anyway, as I was saying, this creature is much like an ianthina, or snail, of earth. It breathes through a siphon, or tubular proboscis. It uses this siphon to suck in air with which it builds these rafts for itself, to keep its heavy body and shell afloat. It's an adventurer like you, Moljar. It spends its life floating or sailing about like a ship."
    Moljar grunted. He moved one corded arm behind her. She shifted a little.
    "Very interesting thing," she said. "Biology. When this ianthina decides to build its raft, it exudes a sticky mucous over the surface of the sea, layer after layer of it. Then it draws air into its siphon and permits the bubbles to escape beneath the mucous to which they cling. These air sacks imprison the air as the mucous hardens. And we have this very strong raft, a life boat with air tanks. Aren't we lucky?"
    The raft jolted violently. "Are we?" said Moljar. "Maybe it does not want to share its raft."
    A number of tentacles slithered up and over the edge of the raft. Two antenna with slimy knobs stood up and quivered at Moljar.
    The girl tried to ignore the sight. "But this raft is better than any man has ever been able to build." Her voice tightened as more of the ianthina surged into view. "This snail can make more bubbles at will, and it can enlarge its raft whenever it wants to."
    There was a sudden upsurging height of gigantic pink-fleshed bulk. It rose up until it towered over its raft. A little above the level of the water they could see its brilliantly colored spiral shell-house gleaming olive-green with streaks and spots of purple, violet and black.
    The body of the ianthina continued to exude outward from its shell. From it a thick tendon of flesh spread out to either side to form the frame work of its raft, an integral part of its giant body.
    "We've got to get this craft moving someway toward Anghore," said Moljar...

entry 513      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

Tall and graceful stood the buildings, the essential delicacy of their design possible only on a low-gravity planet.  Glass and stone and glittering metal filigree, the materials blended in a harmony that, although alien, was undeniably beautiful…  The sweeping catenaries of gleaming cables strong between the towers, some of which supported bridges, but most of which were ornamental only or filling some unguessable function…  Green parks with explosions of blue and yellow and scarlet, and all the intermediate shades, that were flowering trees and shrubs…  The emerald green of the parks, and the diamond spray of the fountains, arcing high and gracefully in shimmering rainbows…  Surely, thought Grimes, an extravagance on this world of all worlds!  The people, walking slowly along their streets and through their gardens, even from this foreshortened viewpoint undeniably humanoid, but with something about them that was not quite human…  

entry 512      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

…For the first time, he viewed the colony of the ovoids, the green canopy of luminous organisms [..........], the welter of infernal activity, the protoplasmic battery sparking on its isolated knoll, the moving shadows of robot beings, and the alert fighters that patrolled the outskirts of the city, where light and darkness met, like enemies holding each other in deadlock.
   And the greatest of these miracles was this devil who called himself The Student, and who had now backed off in revulsion at Cliff’s approach.
   But there were matters still to be investigated more closely.  Dimly visible against the outer walls of the dome was a great shapeless mass that expanded and contracted as if it were breathing.  Above the thing, and projecting from the dome like a canopy, was a curious curved shell of pearly, vitreous material…

entry 511      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

As he spoke, we had come into proximity to our new game, a large and very powerful animal, about four feet high at the shoulders, and about six feet from the head to the root of the tail. The latter carries, as that of the lion was fabled to do, a final claw, not to lash the creature into rage, but for the more practical purpose of striking down an enemy endeavouring to approach it in flank or rear. Its hide, covered with a long beautifully soft fur, is striped alternately with brown and yellow, the ground being a sort of silver-grey. The head resembles that of the lion, but without the mane, and is prolonged into a face and snout more like those of the wild boar. Its limbs are less unlike those of the feline genus than any other Earthly type, but have three claws and a hard pad in lieu of the soft cushion. The upper jaw is armed with two formidable tusks about twelve inches in length, and projecting directly forwards. A blow from the claw-furnished tail would plough up the thigh or rip open the abdomen of a man. A stroke from one of the paws would fracture his skull, while a wound from the tusk in almost any part of the body must prove certainly fatal. Fortunately, the kargynda has not the swiftness of movement belonging to nearly all our feline races, otherwise its skins, the most valuable prize of the [..........] hunter, would yearly be taken at a terrible cost of life. Two of these creatures were said to be reposing in a thick jungle of reeds bordering a narrow stream immediately in our front. The hunters, with Ergimo, now dismounted and advanced some two hundred yards in front of their birds, directing the latter to turn their heads in the opposite direction. I found some difficulty in making my wish to descend intelligible to the docile creature which carried me, and was still in the air when one of the enormous creatures we were hunting rushed out of its hiding-place. The nearest hunter, raising a shining metal staff about three and a half feet in length (having a crystal cylinder at the hinder end, about six inches in circumference, and occupying about one-third the entire length of the weapon), levelled it at the beast. A flash as of lightning darted through the air, and the creature rolled over. Another flash from a similar weapon in the hands of another hunter followed. By this time, however, my bird was entirely unmanageable, and what happened I learned afterwards from Ergimo. Neither of the two shots had wounded the creature, though the near passage of the first had for a moment stunned and overthrown him. His rush among the party dispersed them all, but each being able to send forth from his piece a second flash of lightning, the monster was mortally wounded before they fairly started in pursuit of their scared birds, which—their attention being called by the roar of the animal, by the crash accompanying each flash, and probably above all by the restlessness of my own caldecta in their midst—had flown off to some distance. My bird, floundering forwards, flung me to the ground about two hundred yards from the jungle, fortunately at a greater distance from the dying but not yet utterly disabled prey. Its companion now came forth and stood over the tortured creature, licking its sores till it expired. By this time I had recovered the consciousness I had lost with the shock of my fall, and had ascertained that my gun was safe. I had but time to prepare and level it when, leaving its dead companion, the brute turned and charged me almost as rapidly as an infuriated elephant. I fired several times and assured, if only from my skill as a marksman, that some of the shots had hit it, was surprised to see that at each it was only checked for a moment and then resumed its charge. It was so near now that I could aim with some confidence at the eye; and if, as I suspected, the previous shots had failed to pierce the hide, no other aim was likely to avail. I levelled, therefore, as steadily as I could at its blazing eyeballs and fired three or four shots, still without doing more than arrest or rather slacken its charge, each shot provoking a fearful roar of rage and pain. I fired my last within about twenty yards, and then, before I could draw my sword, was dashed to the ground with a violence that utterly stunned me. When I recovered my senses Ergimo was kneeling beside me pouring down my throat the contents of a small phial; and as I lifted my head and looked around, I saw the enormous carcass from under which I had been dragged lying dead almost within reach of my hand. One eye was pierced through the very centre, the other seriously injured. But such is the creature's tenacity of life, that, though three balls were actually in its brain, it had driven home its charge, though far too unconscious to make more than convulsive and feeble use of any of its formidable weapons. When I fell it stood for perhaps a second, and then dropped senseless upon my lower limbs, which were not a little bruised by its weight. That no bone was broken or dislocated by the shock, deadened though it must have been by the repeated pauses in the kargynda's charge and by its final exhaustion, was more than I expected or could understand. Before I rose to my feet, Ergimo had peremptorily insisted on the abandonment of the further excursion we had intended, declaring that he could not answer to his Sovereign, after so severe a lesson, for my exposure to any future peril. The Camptâ had sent him to bring me into his presence for purposes which would not be fulfilled by producing a lifeless carcass, or a maimed and helpless invalid; and the discipline of the Court and central Administration allowed no excuse for disobedience to orders or failure in duty. My protest was very quickly silenced. On attempting to stand, I found myself so shaken, torn, and shattered that I could not again mount a caldecta or wield a weapon; and was carried back to Askinta on a sort of inclined litter placed upon the carriage which had conveyed our booty.

entry 510      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

…The two had been returning Mars-ward from [..........], after a successful season among the aborigines of that [..........].  They had traded bangles and other cheap trinkets for the gorgeous and precious flame-sapphires found in the soft marls of [..........].  The simple natives, having no conception of money values, were well satisfied with such traffic…

entry 509      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

 ...The weird perspectives of Aryl were constantly changing, magnifying and minimizing everything seen; making distant objects seem near and near objects seem distant. They conjured up non-existing lakes in the valley bottom or standing at sharp angles in the sky; they created rock barriers across their path that melted as they walked through them. Or the illusion of clear, flat plains that resolved themselves eventually into tumbled seas of volcanic rocks, glass-sharp and cruel, precluded any possibility of their forming an accurate idea of the distance they had traversed.
    The endless cliffs themselves sometimes disappeared, to be replaced by a shimmering, outrageous parody of the sky. Then they could only wait until the kaleidoscopic meteorological changes should bring them back into view again.
    Henley’s belt chronometer showed that ten terrestrial hours had passed.  In the brief day of Aryl it was now midnight, but the light, refracted from the day side, was stronger than ever, and the heat was oppressive.
    They were chronically short of water, and longed for another of the tempestuous showers of rain which, though unpalatable, could quench thirst. Henley was weak from hunger, and so, when they encountered one of the Arylian sludges, an animal resembling a very dull and heavy antelope with great, flat, shovel-edged horns. Chuck stalked it patiently for half an hour. Just as he was about to leap out of the shelter of a rock to deliver the fatal stroke, it vanished into thin air. But the officer walked ahead to where he had last seen it, lunged with Henley’s spear. There was a strangled cough and the dying sludge fell at his feet.
    Guided by his calls, for Chuck himself had vanished, Henley clambered over the rocks. They made a fire of the drooping, thick-leaved vegetation, in the seed-cycle, which they found nearby, and attacked the rather tough meat, supplemented with hardtack and vitamin tablets. They abandoned the remains of the sludge to the insistent, 12-inch needle flies that lurk everywhere on Aryl...

entry 508      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

In a basin of porphyry, at the summit of a pillar of serpentine, the thing has existed from primeval time, in the garden of the kings that rule an equatorial realm of the planet [..........]. With black foliage, fine and intricate as the web of some enormous spider; with petals of livid rose, and purple like the purple of putrefying flesh; and a stem rising like a swart and hairy wrist from a bulb so old, so encrusted with the growth of centuries that it resembles an urn of stone, the monstrous flower holds dominion over all the garden. In this flower, from the years of oldest legend, an evil demon has dwelt- a demon whose name and whose nativity are known to the superior magicians and mysteriarchs of the kingdom, but to none other. Over the half-animate flowers, the ophidian orchids that coil and sting, the bat-like lilies that open their ribbèd petals by night, and fasten with tiny yellow teeth on the bodies of sleeping dragonflies; the carnivorous cacti that yawn with green lips beneath their beards of poisonous yellow prickles; the plants that palpitate like hearts, the blossoms that pant with a breath of poisonous perfume - over all these, the Flower-Devil is supreme, in its malign immortality, and evil, perverse intelligence- inciting them to strange maleficence, fantastic mischief, even to acts of rebellion against the gardeners, who proceed about their duties with wariness and trepidation, since more than one of them has been bitten, even unto death, by some vicious and venefic flower. In places, the garden has run wild from lack of care on the part of the fearful gardeners, and has become a monstrous tangle of serpentine creepers, and hydra-headed plants, convolved and inter-writhing in lethal hate or venomous love, and horrible as a rout of wrangling vipers and pythons.
And, like his innumerable ancestors before him, the king dares not destroy the Flower, for fear that the devil, driven from its habitation, might seek a new home, and enter into the brain or body of one of the king's subjects- or even the heart of his fairest and gentlest, and most beloved queen!

entry 507      [contributed by Zendexor]

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The pilot sighted the landing platform, checked with Control Tower, and eased up for the final descent. He was a skillful pilot, with many landings on [..........] to his credit. He brought the ship up on its tail and sat it down on the landing platform for a perfect three-pointer as the jets rumbled to silence.
    Then, abruptly, they sank—landing craft, platform and all.
    The pilot buzzed Control Tower frantically as Kielland fought down panic. Sorry, said Control Tower. Something must have gone wrong. They'd have them out in a jiffy. Good lord, no, don't blast out again, there were a thousand natives in the vicinity. Just be patient, everything would be all right.
    They waited. Presently there were thumps and bangs as grapplers clanged on the surface of the craft. Mud gurgled around them as they were hauled up and out with the sound of a giant sipping soup. A mud-encrusted hatchway flew open, and Kielland stepped down on a flimsy-looking platform below. Four small rodent-like creatures were attached to it by ropes; they heaved with a will and began paddling through the soupy mud dragging the platform and Kielland toward a row of low wooden buildings near some stunted trees.
As the creatures paused to puff and pant, the back half of the platform kept sinking into the mud. When they finally reached comparatively solid ground, Kielland was mud up to the hips, and mad enough to blast off without benefit of landing craft...

entry 506      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

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    ...The Shadow deepened imperceptibly into night.  The rolling rusty clouds of the dayside had become the greyer clouds of storm and fog.  The men toiled through dimming mist and falling snow that turned at last to utter darkness.
    Lannar turned a lined and haggard face to Fenn.  “Madmen!” he muttered.  And that was all.
    They passed through the belt of storm.  There came a time when the lower air was clear and a shifting wind began to tear away the clouds from the sky.
    The pace of the men slowed, then halted altogether.  They watched, caught in a stasis of awe and fear too deep for utterance.  Fenn saw that there was a pallid eerie radiance somewhere behind the driving clouds.  Arika’s hand crept into his and clung there.  But Malech stood apart, his head lifted, his shining eyes fixed upon the sky.
    A rift, a great ragged valley sown with stars.  It widened, and the clouds were swept away, and the sky crashed down upon the waiting men, children of eternal day who had never seen the night…

entry 505      [contributed by Zendexor]

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    Olear's little ship passed through the ringstorms, and he did not take over the controls until he recognized the familiar mark of the trading company, a blue comet on the aluminum roof of one of the larger buildings. Visibility was good that day, but despite the unusual clarity of the atmosphere there was a suggestion of the sinister about the lifeless scene—the vast, irresistible river, the riotously colored jungle roof. The vastness of nature dwarfed man's puny work. One horizon flashed incessantly with livid lightning, the other was one blinding blaze of the nearby sun. And almost lost below in the savage landscape was man's symbol of possession, a few metal sheds in a clear, fenced space of a few acres.
    Olear cautiously checked speed, skimmed over the turbid surface of the great river, and set her down on the ground within the compound. With his pencil-like ray-tube in his hand he stepped out of the hatchway.
    A [..........] native came out of the residence, presently, his hands together in the peace sign. For the benefit of Earthlubbers whose only knowledge of [..........] is derived from the teleview screen, it should be explained that [..........] are not human, even if they do slightly resemble us. They hatch from eggs, pass one life-phase as frog-like creatures in their rivers, and in the adult stage turn more human in appearance. But their skin remains green and fish-belly white. There is no hair on their warty heads. Their eyes have no lids, and have a peculiar dead, staring look when they sleep. And they carry a peculiar, fishy odor with them at all times.

entry 504      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

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    …He kept hearing the weird screams of the Loathi echoing inside him; he kept seeing their long, keen beaks, and their batlike bodies swooping crazily out of the [..........] night…
    …Pictures appeared in the screen – bleak, rolling desert and tortured gorges.  Then an oasis where there was water, and where the radioactive ores underground provided enough heat to permit the growth of vegetation.  At its center was a little rough city under a crystal dome.  Joraanin, the [..........] colony!
    Around it men and loyal Loathi were entrenched, fighting off hordes of rebel Loathi that circled on batlike wings above, their long beaks gleaming.  The revolt was still in progress…

entry 503      [contributed by Zendexor]

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The [..........] sea was dotted with many shallow puddles and lakes of salty water.  But low ridges still provided ample camping ground for the Earthians.  A few had erected tents, but most of them still preferred the comfort of the cabins of their ships.  Some were now busy fabricating machinery – steam engines several of those devices seemed to be, their boilers flanked by huge mirrors, which, when the unsettled weather, incident upon the influx of air and moisture from Earth, came to an end, and the Sun shone once more, would collect and concentrate the solar rays.
    Still other colonists were attempting to plant gardens in the ashy soil – efforts which were almost certain to be abortive under the new conditions.  But by now countless pale-green shoots were peeping through the snow everywhere, promising soon to develop into a lush growth that would provide nourishment for such livestock as had been brought to [..........], and at the same time offering a source of cellulose from which by synthesis, a nourishing diet for human beings could be made.  The green shoots were the sprouts of the ancient [..........] vegetation, whose seeds or spores had remained quiescent in the waterless soil for countless ages…

entry 502      [contributed by Zendexor]

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    “I’m fed up with squirting my beer out of a bulb,” he explained.  “I want to pour it properly into a glass now we’ve got the chance again.  Let’s see how long it takes.” 
    “It’ll be flat before it gets there,” warned Mackay.  “Let’s see – g’s about half a centimetre a second squared, you’re pouring from a height of…”  He retired into a brown study.
    But the experiment was already in progress.  Scott was holding the punctured beer-tin about a foot above his glass – and, for the first time in three months, the word “above” had some meaning, even if very little.  For, with incredible slowness, the amber liquid oozed out of the tin – so slowly that one might have taken it for syrup.  A thin column extended downwards, moving almost imperceptibly at first, but then slowly accelerating.  It seemed an age before the glass was reached: then a great cheer went up as contact was made and the level of the liquid began to creep upwards…

entry 501      [contributed by Zendexor]

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