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seventh series
entries 601 - 700

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entry 663      [contributed by Zendexor]

... The little globe of [..........], looking more and more like a miniature moon without its craters, drew near. The Professor turned the Spacemaster and began to check the fall. Watching, Rex thought he saw the “harbour” for which the Professor was making – a flat, sandy-looking basin surrounded by low rounded hills, destitute of any forms of vegetation. But as he stared he saw something else, something that caused him to take a new interest. “I can see houses!” he cried.
    For a minute no one answered. Then Tiger said: “I can see what you mean, and they do look like dwellings of a sort.”
    “Probably just curious rock formations,” interposed the Professor. “If they were houses the people would be out by now, to look at us.”
    “If there were any people to come out,” said Tiger. “The existence of dwellings doesn't necessarily mean they're occupied.”
    In a rising atmosphere of excitement the Spacemaster continued its descent until it must have been evident to all that there was a village in the hollow. But there was still no sign of life.
    A few minutes later, with dust swirling away from its jets, the landing legs of the Spacemaster grated in the sand some fifty yards or so from the nearest houses. They were small square structures, the same colour as the hills, with open doors and square windows.
    (…)
    The Professor proceeded to the doorway. There was no actual door. He went in and the others followed, to find themselves in a small square room with an earth floor. There were three articles of furniture; a bed, a table and a chair. All were fashioned in the same way and of the same material; coarse plaited rushes. Several earthenware pots of simple design stood on the floor.
    “Now what are we to make of this?” murmured the Professor. “Observe, there is no wood anywhere. Obviously they had no wood, or it would have been used. You may say, neither they had any rushes, for rushes need water, and there is certainly no water on [..........]. Very well. The answer must be, the rushes, or the pieces of furniture already fabricated, must have come from Mars. (…)”
    (…)
    The next house revealed the same furniture. So did the next, and the next.
    “What did these people use for food?” asked Tiger. “There is obviously none here.”
    “There may have been some at one time, when there was air, although that must have been a long time ago,” replied the Professor. “As I read the story these people died of starvation, and that must have been before the air disappeared entirely. They may have been supplied with food from Mars for a time, but when supplies ended, as obviously they did, the people here perished. Impossible though it may seem now, in view of what we can see, there must have been a time when life on [..........] was possible, or this settlement could never have come into existence. The conditions are not very unlike those we found on our own Moon, but the Moon being so much larger, life lingered on. [..........] is finished, and, as I believe, our own Moon is on its way to final extinction.”

entry 662      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

… And Gleason is a resourceful collector. We didn't even know wobblies existed on [.......] until he hoisted three adult specimens out of a mountain crevice, and sent me that space-ogram.
    (...)
    "How many times must I tell you that wobblies are not flesh-eaters," he said chokily. "They hurl nettles to protect themselves from their natural enemies, but otherwise they're harmless. When Gleason observed them on the mountains he took copious notes. They're freakish, but harmless perambulating plants."
    (…)
    ...Hideously manlike they seemed, with their gray and eroded-looking body-roots writhing against the sheets.
    Tall they were, at least seven feet in height, and proportionately broad of shoulder. The fact that they had three tendrils on each side of their torso-like bodies in lieu of arms, and that they moved, when erect, on stumpy legs which caused them to wobble grotesquely did not detract from the illusion of humanness which their appearance conveyed.
    Staggeringly weird they seemed when they used their nettles, for the flabby sacks in which the prickly "strawberries" grew resembled the belly pouches of kangaroos, and the nettles had to be plucked out, and hurled. Jocularly, Gleason had called Carstairs' attention to the fact that a wobbly with its tendril arm extended, and its body twisted sharply in the act of hurling a nettle looked not unlike a pitcher in the old Earth game called baseball.
    (...)
    Wobblies feast on a substance which is rare on [..........]. Being perambulating plants, they have to suck it in from the nearly airless vacuum which is [..........]'s atmosphere through their body roots, and it costs them a tremendous effort. Ordinarily their blood pressure remains low because they have adapted themselves to an environment in which nourishment is scarce…
    …BENEATH him stretched the foothills of the mightiest mountain range on [..........]. Coruscating in the light of brittle stars, they arose precipitously from an ash-strewn plain, and though the smallest of them would have dwarfed a full-fledged mountain on Earth they seemed of pygmy dimensions when his gaze swept upward over the Gargantuan peaks beyond.
    (…)
    Carstairs looked down, his spine congealing. Sheer height, when viewed from a solid structure, is seldom terrifying, but it is quite otherwise when the observer is clinging to the thrumming struts of a circling plane.
    Beneath him yawned a dizzying gulf of emptiness, walled with darkness and substructured with peaks which looked like stalactites in reverse, each one of which seemed capable of impaling him, and rotating him in squirming agony till the end of time.
    "Maybe it wasn't such a good idea," he muttered between clenched teeth, tightening his grip on the strut.
    Down the plane swooped and down. It had ceased to descend gracefully, had begun to gyrate. Like a wounded bladder-bird, it swooped to right and left and quivered from beak to stern.
    Carstairs' nerves were shrieking when it settled to the ground in a deep gulch between two peaks and glided to a halt with a barely perceptible jolt...

entry 661      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

The colossal marching images traverse a broad area toward the zones of eternal twilight and night. Crossing a sort of mountain-range, they descend toward a shadowed sea of dark purplish-red water. Strange lights glimmer far out in the sea, as if illumined in the under-surface depths—like the lights of a sunken city. When the colossi reach the shore, many monstrous and enormous beings emerge from the sea to meet them. These beings are perhaps images—perhaps living behemoths; and all indescribably terrible and evil. A battle ensues, in which the warrior and animal images vanquish the creatures from the dark sea. Most of these latter, however, are not destroyed but merely flee into the depths; and it seems that some power of sorcery or exorcism used by the white goddess has served greatly in defeating them. Hespire feels that the war he has witnessed is of immemorial origin and will go on until the annihilation of one or both armies of participants. (It is like a struggle between good and evil, between darkness and light?) It serves to deepen the unreadable mystery of Ascharia, which neither Hespire nor any earth-being can penetrate...

entry 660      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

    ...The Professor beckoned, and at a curious bouncing gait began to walk stiffly towards the nearest patch of green, some thirty or forty yards away. Even before they reached it Rex saw that it was vegetation of a sort. So, apparently, did the Professor, for he let out a little cry of delight. “Life” he exclaimed. “How wonderful!”
    At first sight there was nothing particularly wonderful about it, thought Rex. But still, as the Professor had said, it was life; vegetable life; and there was a world of difference between life, in a form no matter how primitive, and death.
    The growth turned out to be a low-growing, vicious-looking form of cactus, each plant consisting of a small rosette of thick, stiff, bayonet-like leaves, pointing outwards and upwards. Some of the plants bore a small, vivid scarlet flower. Another, similar, fleshy plant, flat on the ground, bore minute white flowers. They reminded Rex of a picture he had once seen of plants growing in a desert somewhere – he couldn't remember where.
    “A vegetable hedgehog”, said the Professor. “Notice how the leaves shine. That means there's a varnish to save the water stored in them from excessive evaporation. That form of protection is usual in desert countries, and just what one could expect to find in these conditions. There must be some water available, sometimes, even if it is only a very little at rare intervals. This alone is a discovery of outstanding importance. Why those horrid spines, I wonder? There are, of course another form of protection, normally against grazing animals. But against what were they developed here? Can there be something, a form of rodent perhaps, in these holes I see about?”
    Rex had seen the holes. They might have been rat holes, except that instead of entering the ground at an angle they seemed to plunge straight down, with excavated earth piled neatly round the top. He also noticed something else, something that gave instant weight to the Professor's suggestion that the holes might have be the retreat of creatures of some sort. Several of the plants had been nibbled. In one case the fibrous flesh was still oozing sap, showing that the wound was recent. He pointed it out to the others. Then, as his eyes roved over the scene he saw a movement; and there, sure enough, was one of the creatures. The others saw it too, and with exclamations they moved towards it, taking care not to step on the bristling plants; but just as they drew near to it, although it moved slowly, it disappeared in one of the holes. However, there had been time to have a good look at it, although had it remained still, so much did the colour and texture of the skin resemble the soil, it might easily have been overlooked.
    Rex would have described the thing as an enormous worm. It was not a snake; or at all events, not an ordinary snake. It didn't look like a snake. For one thing it had no discernible head. It was nearly a yard long and about three inches thick. Both ends tapered, and were apparently identical. In fact, the only ways in which it differed from an ordinary worm were its size and the coarse texture of its skin.
    “Another adaptation to highly specialized conditions,” said the Professor, in a voice vibrant with excitement. “My friends, the age-old question is answered. There is life on [..........], both animal and vegetable. What a splendid day we are having!”

entry 659      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

    “Snapdragon?” echoed McGuire, blinking.
    “Not the familiar garden perennial. Inspector, but a real snapdragon — from [..........].” (…) On the curator’s outstretched palm a perfectly formed little dragon sat placidly.
    “It bears a striking resemblance to the traditional conception of a dragon, doesn’t it?” Carstairs asked. “St. George’s dragon.”
    “I’ll say it does !”
    “The resemblance is entirely coincidental. By some freakish twist of natural selection this hard-shelled, voracious plant has developed dragon-like characteristics in its battle for survival on [..........].” (…) “It is the product of a lush, tropical environment filled with beaked enemies — fling catchers — capable of piercing a steel disk two inches thick. Like the fume slugs. Snapdragon has learned how to protect itself. But instead of giving off fumes, it has built up a protective shell to thwart its natural enemies, extremely massive in front and curving out from its segmented body like the wings of a dragon.
    “You will notice that it has teeth-rimmed jaws. I would not wish my worst enemy to receive a frontal assault from this agile little monster, Inspector. In a very few minutes it could tear a man to ribbons.” (…) Snapdragon comes from a world without oxygen. The soil of [..........] is impregnated with nitrogen in a peculiar combination. Snapdragon feasts on diazo compounds and nothing else; get it?”
    “No,” stated McGuire bluntly.
    “All right, put it this way. There isn’t much friction, percussion or heat on [..........], so the soil doesn’t go off with a bang every time Snapdragon feasts. But the entire upper crust of [..........] is a modified diazo compound.”

entry 658      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

It seemed only a moment before Carstairs felt all the life leaving his hands. Vera’s pale face receded and he seemed to be grasping emptiness, to be poised on the brink of a precipice that overhung a vast, glimmering void. Although he seemed to be standing on a solid surface, his body felt unnaturally buoyant. He was not even sure that he had a body. When he looked down, all he could see was a wavering grayness where his legs should have been. A fearful tension was growing within him, a sense of impending disaster.
    The long, squid-like shape emerged obscurely from shivering haze. There was something about it which filled him with nightmare terror, but irresistibly he was drawn toward it through the grayness. Gradually the obscuring mist fell away. He saw that the shape was resting on a crater-pitted plain that stretched out endlessly in all directions.
    The thing was unmistakably squid-like, but there was a suggestion of the human in its stare. There were waving tentacles up there. Two limpid eyes gazed down at him out of wrinkled flesh. As Carstairs stared in sick revulsion, a voice seemed to whisper in his brain:
    “Thinking cap. On your head. I put it there.”
    Carstairs knew then. The cups were mind cups of the monstrous growth! His brain was throbbing with the plant’s own despairing homesickness, its black and hopeless dreams of a [..........] landscape...

entry 657      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

… the cold blackened sun witnessed a spectacle that harkened back to its youth. At the apex of slow-growing civilization, the culmination of aeons of material and scientific advancement, men were again fighting with weapons little better than the crude spears of primitive savages. Strange and deadly weapons had the world known. Bows and arrows had supplanted swords, had in turn been replaced by guns firing chemically propelled leaden pellets. And these, in turn, had gone into oblivion before the immensely more deadly ray weapons. And these, to complete the cycle, were useless without catalyte. So men trained in the transcendent sciences issued out of the gates with blades with which to hack other men’s bodies. Over it all, the glow of the burning Treasury streamed silently, the funeral pyre of a dying civilization.
    The palace guards, large, truculent men, came on methodically. They wore armor of small, flexible, overlapping plates, with conical helmets that had protective extensions over the backs of their necks. They carried long, heavy swords with which they were wont to drive through all opposition, all defensive armor.
    The technics, with no protection whatever, except their blades with which they parried blows with nice precision, proved unexpected stern opposition...

entry 656      [contributed by Zendexor]

Note: from this point on (GTW 656) answers will be placed at the head of the appropriate "What to see on..." pages, instead of at the end.  

>>  here's where this is

…And then, less than twenty miles from the far side of the sea, the steady throbbing of our rockets was interrupted. The firing tubes began to stutter uncertainly. I was with Captain Toft when the chief engineer rang through and reported that it would be necessary to descend for repairs. The hasty glance which Toft gave through the control dome windows told me that he had conceived the same distaste for the locality as had the rest of us. He decided swiftly to make for the cliffs now looming ahead at the sea’s edge. There could be no better landing surface than the level, grey sand beneath us, but he preferred to stop near its confines. With some anxiety, he inquired the extent of the failure, but was told that this could not be ascertained while in flight. The Scintilla continued to forge lamely ahead, gradually sinking. She took the sand at length some two hundred yards from those high perpendicular cliffs which once had stood like the ramparts of giants against a beating sea.
    The Captain left the dome to interview the engineer, and I made my way to the central saloon. A deal of chatter greeted me as I opened the door. My colleagues were peering excitedly at the cliffs; all signs of their depression had vanished. Robson, the leader of the scientific side of the expedition, drew me forward and thrust a pair of field glasses into my hands.
    “Look at those cliffs, man. Just look at them.”
    I focused eagerly. The sand in the immediate foreground was dotted with rocks of all sizes which had fallen from the heights, and beyond them was a line of darkness which hid the cliff-face in deep shadow. The meager, reflected light was just enough to show regular markings of some kind. I fancied that I could make out the carved figure of a man.
    “Wait a minute,” cried Robson as he turned and dashed from the room.
    A moment later, a searchlight was playing a flood of brilliance onto a scene which caused us to gasp incredulously. The surface of the granite-like rock to the height of some seventy or eighty feet was covered with carvings in high relief — an involved, ingenious ordering of the figures of men, animals, and conventional forms. The first astonished silence was succeeded by a babel of excited talk. Everyone spoke at once, and no one listened. And no wonder; compared to this revelation, our earlier discoveries dwindled to mere nothings. [..........]...

entry 655      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

When the fifteenth day had arrived, [..........] showed a large disc, and this grew rapidly larger. Then it became a huge ball on which continents, seas, islands, rivers, and mountain ranges could easily be seen. The propelling power was shut off on board all the ships, and the engines were reversed. A few days later the whole of the fleet plunged into the atmosphere of [..........] at a speed of some hundreds of miles an hour.
    As soon as the speed was low enough, the hatchways were opened and the men were allowed to go out on to the outer deck. Many of the vessels bore on their exteriors the ghastly traces of the collision. Arms, legs, strips of skin, and heads, often so burnt and bruised as to be hardly recognisable, were hanging on to the torpedo-nets or wedged up between the rods and wires. These were quickly removed, and the blood was washed away from the windows and the other parts of the hulls where it had been splashed. The masts were set up and flags run up on to them, so that the fleets might have as fine an appearance as possible. The ships kept on rushing through the air at a great speed, as was testified by the rate at which the objects beneath flashed past. They careered over villages, towns, cities, and mountains, the admirals carefully examining maps all the time to see their way to the capital. When they passed over the great towns, they saw crowds of people standing out in the open air and gazing up at the huge fleet, but they were come and gone like a flash of lightning. At last a dull booming was heard in the distance. The speed was slackened, and gradually the houses thickened together and became more large and splendid. Everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, the roads seemed to be converging together as if to some centre, while numerous small craft plying about in the air announced the vicinity of a great city. Then they crossed a ridge of mountains, and Makouffon, the capital of [..........], lay stretched out at their feet, and in the distance the allied fleets appeared anchored in lines within a few yards of the ground. The latter fired a salute as soon as the fleet from the earth had come to a stop...

entry 654      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

TOM CLARK stared at the sword he held in his hand. It should have been in a museum, for it was a rare specimen. The steel was bright and the hilt was an example of workmanship in which the ancients had excelled.
    It had been centuries since a sword had been used in battle. But on this day, in the atmosphere plant which supplied oxygen to the great quartz dome on [..........], a naked blade had leaped and flashed, a weapon again. It was no longer a relic doomed to be regarded with curiosity by a race that had forgotten its use.
    The blade had belonged to Ben Jacobs, an heirloom which had been handed down, in the name of sentiment, from father to son, for many generations. Undoubtedly it was worth a small fortune, for the museums of the Earth held only a few such weapons.
    But now Ben Jacobs lay in a heap on the floor of the plant, struck down by a burly Selenite.
    To Jacobs the sword had been a symbol. He had carried it from the Earth to this forsaken planet, where the only evidence of life was ten huge domes of quartz set over as many mines…
    …Tom lifted the sword again and ran his fingers along its edge. They came away red and sticky.
    He laughed grimly. The sword, ancient weapon as it may have been, had another tale added to the long list which had started, said legends, in the year 1815, in the Napoleonic Wars. For century upon century the blade had been regarded as a heirloom, a thing of sentiment.
    On this day, however, it had come again into its own. It had leaped and flashed, bitten deeply into flesh and bone, drunk blood…
    …“It’s those damn Martians,” Hal Eaton, young time keeper, only six weeks from the Earth, had screamed as a huge Selenite struck him down with a blow of his mighty pick.
    Tom, jerking his atomic pistol from its holster, knew that what young Eaton had just screamed was true. The Martians were the trouble-makers and the traitors of the solar system. Once an insolent people, who had regarded themselves as the most advanced in culture and erudition in the universe, they still, even after hundreds of years, resented the bondage in which it had been necessary to place them to curb their diabolic cunning and haughty egotism. They were forever forming secret societies, always cooking up local revolutions. Where there was trouble, one would usually find a scheming Martian…

entry 653      [contributed, with some misgivings, by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

“...and now they were sending him to [..........], to take his place with those marooned, bestial outcasts of three planets whose luck had fallen down on them when they needed it. (…) Sometimes he thought of that living tomb ahead, where he must fight for food and shelter and life itself among the dregs of three planets — hairy brutes like himself from Earth and the Moon, tall gods without emotion from Venus, little fragile Martians that had run amuck under the strain of conditions on other planets than their own. Once, only once, police landed there to take off a man who had been pardoned, and it was nip and tuck for a while!”

entry 652      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

 ...Bruce strove desperately to pierce the darkness that was settling upon them at an alarming rate.
    “What's happened to the sun? I can't see a thing anymore.”
    His father was gazing awestruck at the sky.
    “Bruce, it's an eclipse. An eclipse!”
    “Not on [..........]!” Bruce cried. Even with a wild beast about to leap at his throat, he could remember that much. “There can't be an eclipse on [..........]. [..........] hasn't got a moon to make an eclipse.”
    “Then what's going on up there?” his father demanded, pointing overhead.
    “It is an eclipse!” Bruce gasped.
    Through a break in the clouds the sun had appeared as if by magic. But what a sun! Instead of a bright shining disc there was only the merest sliver of light. And that sliver was shrinking rapidly. Now but a single gleaming point lingered, as if the sun were reluctant to be blotted out completely. Then while they watched, the last bit of light vanished, plunging the world in total darkness. Simultaneously, the pale corona flashed out around the black disc of the [..........] moon.
    So absorbed were they in the eclipse, they momentarily forgot the peril which threatened them in the jungle. It was almost upon them now. In their bewildered state, its heavy breathing seemed to come from all directions. They were surrounded by it. Bruce felt a hot blast of air upon his back. He spun around.
    Facing him not five feet away was a monster such as he supposed existed only in medieval folklore and legend. A monster with the head of a dragon attached by a long neck to a bloated body set on thick, powerful legs. And like a dragon, its mouth was dripping with fire. Liquid fire was splashed over the creature's chest and forelegs – its entire body was covered with glowing phosphorescent patches.
    As Bruce raised his rifle to fire he got another shock. He himself was all lighted up like a neon sign!
    While Bruce stood staring at the apparition before him the sky lightened. Through the driving clouds a brilliant crescent of sun appeared, growing rapidly larger. The eclipse was over. It had lasted scarcely a minute.
    The monster stood motionless regarding the two men with a quizzical look in its eye. Its mouth turned up a little at the corners giving its face a self-satisfied expression. After a brief inspection the animal wagged its head, heaved a long sigh, and scooped up a mouthful of leaves. Bruce noticed how the white sap, drooling from its mouth, left a trail of fire wherever it dropped. So that was the source of the glowing marks upon his clothes. The phosphorescent sap from the vine was not bright enough to show in the ordinary dim twilight, but came out with startling luminosity during the darkness of the eclipse...

entry 651      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

[..........] was covered with rolling green plains, and seemed a peaceful, inviting place.  Yet Captain Future was the only person in the whole system who ever dared to land on that innocent-seeming world!
    “There’s the [..........] city,” Curt said soon, pointing.  “Land just outside it, Otho.”
    “The queerest city in the System,” growled Otho.  “A city without buildings.”
    “The [..........] are too far advanced mentally to have need of material buildings,” commented the Brain in his rasping voice, his lens-eyes peering keenly.
    The [..........] “city” was nothing but a great smooth metal platform of circular shape, several miles across.  The Comet landed nearby.  Curt and the Futuremen emerged, Grag carrying the Brain.  As they stood in the thin sunlight, they became conscious of a tingling force pervading them.
    “We’re inside the [..........] zone of ‘creation force’!” warned Captain Future.  “Watch your thoughts!”
    “That’s the devil of this place!” complained Otho.  “You think of something like a Plutonian ice-tiger, and right away – ”
    “Look out – you’ve done it now!” Curt shouted.
    For as Otho spoke the words, the very beast he had mentioned appeared suddenly out of thin air beside him, miraculously solid and real.
    A Plutonian ice-tiger, a great, hairy, snarling beast that reared up furiously to attack the android!
   “Think him away, quick, Otho!” yelled Captain Future.  “Think him into something else!”
    Desperately, Otho thought of the snarling monster changing into a harmless rodent.  And, immediately, the ice-tiger changed miraculously into just such a scared little rodent...

entry 650      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

    [..........] subcellar gardens are startling to outsiders. In the air was the bitter tang of narcotic incense. Smoke distorted vision. Nightmarish fantasies of mobile murals in rich colors writhed on the walls. The ceiling was an illusion of sky and stars, complete with intricacies of celestial mechanics, and the flooring resembled grassy sward, set with miniature pools and cool, gurgling streams, crossed by arching bridges of carved and tined ivory. Singing birds and trilling winged serpents filled the air with sound and motion. Luminous bubbles rose and burst above lighted, musical fountains. Musicians toyed with the acrid melodies of ancient [..........], and only close inspection proved the dancing girls 3-d projections.
    It was a painstaking reproduction, pitiful and exquisite, of the richly barbaric and luxuriant youth of a now-dying planet. To a [..........], it would have been nostalgic and lovely. To Torry, fresh from the scent of blood and death, it was a garish mockery, like a painted corpse.
    (…)
    Metallic decking became raw stone floor, and an endless tunnel unwound before them. Torry lost all track of direction, even the primary up and down. They went through underground workings like city streets lined with open front factories. Gray, barren vistas of workrooms were relieved by the stark symmetries of sleek machines, shielded atomic converters, and patiently revolving turbines. Here was the marvelously efficient underground economy of the old [..........] civilization, still functioning and serving the remnants of a great race of builders and scientists.
    On soaring cantilevered balconies and in alcoves, Torry glimpsed cliff like structures of offices and dwellings. Giant compressors labored to force a mighty pulse of breakable air—but the atmosphere was warm, dry and stifling. Runnels of sweat ran down Torry's body and vanished in quick evaporation; fever and exertion alternated in him; he blew hot and cold as energy burned away too quickly, and as drying sweat produced intense, quick chills. Temperatures dropped. Air seemed denser and was poisonously clouded with dust, but it was cool. Slowly it became chill and depressing with a hint of dampness in it. They came into a maze of galleries and pits, tunnels and vaults, less used and uninhabited portions of the deep-workings.
    It was like a world apart, a place of dim storage bins with natural refrigeration, of packing sheds piled high with mountains of commercial molds, bales of dry, compressed and packed mushrooms. It smelled stale and foul, the air hideous with a powdery mist of mold dust and spores, and the incredible mustiness of mushroom spoilage. These caverns were empty of life, as if the troglodyte [..........] had long ago joined their mummied dead.
    (…)
    They moved steadily onward, faster than before, into a still more shadowy region. Light itself seemed to exist only at long intervals where age-old radilumes performed a feeble service. The spongy floor of rotten bedrock was scummed over with moss to make for slippery footing. Formations of natural rock seemed like stage furniture designed by elves and gnomes, in which stone mimicked monstrosities of the vegetable world. Fat, knotted stalagmites suggested tree trunks, and the darkness overhead appeared like shadowy densities of foliage. Seepage had fretted the walls into lacy limestone traceries like a fern forest. They went on, with tense silence savage between them...

entry 649      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

[...............]—was a vast mirage with many facets. Atmosphere was as dense and still as water in ocean deeps. Sky was cloudless, but not clear, apparently built up of different layers of gases, and the light was both glaring and erratic. At a distance of over three and a half billion miles from the Sun, most of the light was not sunlight, and the little that came through the air ocean was filtered and absorbed into curious colors and intensities. Other illumination sources were auroral displays, radioactive hotspots that glowed like eery ghosts, and volcanic outbursts of crimson or gold.
    Surface pressure of the atmospheric ocean was extreme, and the gas densities and weird light gave an uncanny submarine illusion. Venturing onto the surface of [..........], Torry felt like a diver in that long-past period when man's last frontier on Earth had seemed the ocean deeps. Gravity, greater than on Mars, but less than Earth's, gave a sense of buoyancy; the spacesuiting was not unlike ancient diving costume; and the thickness of the atmosphere itself suggested deep, still water.
    Most disturbing of all were the mirages. All the familiar effects of Earth mirages were present but magnified and even multiplied into infinite complexities. To a scientist of optics or meteorology, [..........] would be a superb laboratory. To Torry, it was—
    Near madness...!
    Mirages by hundreds and thousands floated between surface and zenith, or hugged the ground like captive nightmares. Pinnacled dream mountains rose from bases of empty air. Phantom battlements and mock castles stormed upward from nothing. Magnified rockeries became goblin cities, looming near or far in equal scale. Water glittered in the sky and on the ground, and floating debris became fleets of fairy argosies. Lateral mirages played eery jokes with distance. All images seemed unreal, and diffraction haloed them with misty, rainbow coloring.
    [..........] itself was bleak, savage, merciless, nearly windless but for vagrant currents of slow-moving dense air, like currents in an ocean.
    By levels, temperatures were absurdly high or low, depending upon location or freak circumstances. It was a lifeless world, inhospitable to man. But it wore a mask and costume of exotic, lying beauty, and masquerade was hard to distinguish from the harsh reality. Anything definite was hard to distinguish...

entry 648      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

 ...Our pace, hindered as we now were, was slow — barely as fast as a man could run on earth. And then they came, those creatures of the Mekal. They popped up from various points of cover about us, and darting this way and that, they rushed toward us. Each brandished a small electronic pistol. Insects, huge insects, resembling the tiny Ledi, which are the only living creatures native to [..........]! The sight of them astounded me, and yet it did not spoil my aim. One disappeared in a spurt of sparks from my weapon, another and another. I sent the gun swinging this way and that, seeking victims.
    The minions of the Mekal were close now, and I saw that they were not insects but men — men who peered through strange slant-eyed goggles with which their fantastic space suits were fitted. It was evident that the resemblance of their queer costumes to the Ledi was intuitional and not accidental.
    What was the reason for this outlandish kind of horseplay? I had no time to ponder the question, for the task of defending the caterpillar completely occupied me. And it looked as though I was going to fail. I had accounted for half a dozen of the scattered attackers, but the others had come so close now that they were out of range of my weapon. They were directing flaming blasts from their pistols at the treads and  undercarriage of our vehicle.
    The heavy insulating material that coated all external parts of the machine would resist the electronic streams for maybe a minute; then the undercarriage would melt away and we would be wrecked. Our foes feared to puncture the airtight cabin for they did not know that we all wore space armor; they had no desire to cause the death of their Mekal by exposing him unprotected to the vacuum of the void...

entry 647      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

 ...Some hours later a whistling noise awoke him. He rolled over, awake instantly, for in past months his ears had saved his life as often as had his eyes. High in the sky he picked out a cannibal fish from the Acid Sea. It had set its great wings in a dive.
    He raised his heat-gun, fired once, saw the feathers burst into blue flame, saw it falling; then he rolled over and went back to sleep. Not even the thud of its heavy body on the sand disturbed him, but an hour later he heard another warning—a rasping sound—and through the stench of the ancient swamp he smelled a fetidness that meant danger.
    This time as he turned he rolled to his feet. He saw the huge coils of the [..........] water-constrictor. One lidless phosphorescent eye gleamed evilly at him, but its great jaws were spread and the dead fish was half-way down its bone-plated throat.
    Grant Russell relaxed. Ordinarily he would have been scared to death to be within miles of the big saurian. But now for a few hours, with the fish in its throat it would be comparatively harmless.
    Grant rubbed his eyes and stretched. How wonderful sleep could be! For six weeks he had been in the swamp where he never had dared to take off his diving-suit even when he was resting on a clump of floating grass, for fear it would suddenly sink and drop him into a hundred feet of brown water; six weeks walking through mud sometimes over his head, with the brown, infested water above that; six weeks pitting all his swamp lore against sudden death in a thousand forms, with only the light gravity of [..........] to aid him, and his indomitable determination to keep him going. But now he felt like a million.
    (...)
    The stone had a fair polish. He looked at its surface and shut out all the normal sounds from his ears. The stone seemed to be in motion on the inside, and presently that motion communicated itself to his mind. He had a picture of a constrictor, lying sleepily in a pool of brown water surrounded by heavy, deep grass that hung over the banks and grew down into the water.
    He heard now the distant bellow of a swamp-ox, the buzzing of aquatic bees. Slowly he turned the stone on its edge and revolved it carefully. When the picture was clearest in his mind he picked out an orientation point in the distant mountains. Then, well pleased, he put the stone in his pocket, got into his diving-suit, screwed on the helmet, adjusted the oxygen, and stepped off into the brown water of the swamp.
    The bottom here was steep but it was good. It was hard and not more than knee-deep in mud. He travelled carefully, freezing on occasion when huge shadows moved above him. He was in fifty feet of water and he liked that better because it was easier to go unnoticed. He avoided a patch of electric cactus, for the spines would have electrocuted him even through the suit, and he went far around an area of white bull-root, shaped like women's legs, because he knew the bull-root was always infested with swamp-razors that would cut through the seams of his diving-suit.
    When he came out of the water he found his orientation point and kept going. He came to a wide stretch of water, and with the wind at his back, made fast time by climbing on an island of floating grass and going straight across...

entry 646      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

 ...Vickers drove savagely. In the television screen set in front of the controls he saw his fog lamps cutting deep swaths of light into the fury of the slashing, howling elements.
    The liquid ammonia rain, whipped by the shrieking wind, was a blinding maelstrom. Jagged lightning streaked across the clouds and ripped around the top of Mount Bellow. Weird vegetative formations seemed like gray ghosts in the driving rain, while ahead of the tractor rolled four metal machines, four robots to help get at the shattered [..........].
    Scurrying gray and red things scuttled out of the path of the light. Once one of them hurled itself in a streaking charge at one of the robots, slammed hard against the metal of the machine, rolled to the ground and charged again, retreating into the dimness of the rain only after its fury had worn out.
    Vicious little things. Poison mean. Intelligent, too, many of them — but just how intelligent it was almost impossible to know.
    No big life on [..........], for big life simply couldn’t live under the awful pressure. Here life had to be small and quick, life built to hug the ground…
    …He skirted a mighty cliff, a white, chalky cliff, composed of stuff that on Earth would have been water, but on [..........], because of the terrible cold, the crushing atmosphere, was a solid instead. A blue waterfall of liquid ammonia spewed over the cliff, rushing down the mountainside in a swirling torrent. The waterfall was shrouded in a steamy vapor…

entry 645      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

BARELY THREE HOURS had passed since the Rook’s capture. Now, with a skillful rover pilot at its controls, it quartered the dim, desert face of [........]. A vast, shadowy gorge yawned below. Into this the craft dropped.
    Down it went, down, while long minutes passed. Tarrant, wandering back and forth among the instruments in the control room, saw rovers anxiously checking gauges that showed the rate and extent of the journey. At length the pilot struck a quick combination of the keys of his control board and the ship halted. Simultaneously its bottom settled on a solid surface.
    The lock panels flew open and some of the rovers emerged, flashing lights. Other flashes, seemingly far away, answered. Tarrant, following Jahree into the open, looked upward. The top of the gorge, which from above had seemed so great, now appeared as a tiny rift, through which a scrap of starry sky peeped. Apparently this retreat was well toward the center of the satellite. It was warm — internal heat, he guessed — and the air was as good as on Earth’s surface.
    More and brighter lights flickered up here and there, on stands in the open and in doorways. With their aid Tarrant could make out the interior of a vast, dim cavern, the walls of which soared up into lofty darkness beyond the range of the brightest beams. On the smooth rocky floor rested several war craft and among them sauntered armed men.  The freighter had landed near one of the walls, and into this wall, he saw, small caves ran, their mouths emitting warm glows…
    … “An ape!’’ cried Tarrant, half in alarm.
    The Martian snickered. “In a manner of speaking, yes,” he agreed. “In reality, he’s of the once-ruling class of [..........] — an apelike generation. Kamba, this is Captain Tarrant.”
    The great, shaggy creature, seven feet tall and tremendously muscled, bowed solemnly.
    Tarrant stared in growing amazement. “He understands?”
    “Perfectly.” Gorgol’s sardonic smile grew. “As you saw at first glance, he does resemble the terrestrial ape. Note his strong, ungainly lines, his bestial face, his great fangs. Once his brain was apish, too. It took Gorgol, the scientist, to change that, with surgery and chemical injections — eh, Kamba?” The [..........] gazed at Gorgol with deep-set, lustrous eyes.
    “He doesn’t thank me,” went on the Martian mockingly. “If he could speak he’d curse me — no, he wouldn’t. He’d be afraid.”
    “If you’ve given him human understanding,” said Tarrant, a little harshly, “why don’t you treat him as a human?”
    “But I bought him for a slave,” said Gorgol nastily…

entry 644      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

 ...They were riding along a high rocky ridge. Here the wind blew, strong and with a faint trace of coolness, but it could not entirely dispel the scorching hear of the mid-day sun burning like a bloated red eye from the pale blue heavens of the [..........] heat belt.
    Their horses picked a leisurely path around the scattered boulders. Above them, sharp slopes rose to the mountains standing naked in the wind. Below, the hillside dropped away to the floor of the great circular Valley of Nomoon.
    (…)
    There lay the city of Nomoon, a pile of yellow towering stone. The streets were cloaked in dim shadows, and empty. Beyond the city were large buildings made entirely of pale blue glass. Within them, tiny dots of men could be seen hurrying, tending waving frond-like things.
    (…) Shannon turned to where the second rider sat atop his horse. He was a native of [..........], with traditional pale blue skin, an almost triangular head, and faint wisps of blue hair lying straight back on his blue skull. Hardly more than a boy, he was nevertheless a noble personage among the people of the valley: Kersten XI Borne, son and heir to old Kersten, ruler of Nomoon...

entry 643      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

 ...The atmosphere of [..........] was sufficiently thin to allow the ship to respond, and I soon had it under full control. Now no more than eighty miles from the [..........] surface, I could see what appeared to be a vast forest.
    That forest presupposed hard ground, and was the obvious place to land, since I knew nothing of the conditions on the remainder of this shining world. As I dipped still lower, it became clear that it was indeed a massive growth of trees that towered a full mile above the ground. These ranged in color from a light blue to a deep purple.
    I picked a clearing some fifty yards in diameter and soon had the little ship down to rest in a natural amphitheatre.
    It was daytime—although hardly the daytime of earth. The sun’s light seemed somehow diffused, giving the [..........] day the aura of a pastel wonderland. Various multi-hued foliage gave immediate evidence that [..........]'s flora was very much alive, despite what our scientists may claim.
    My attention was suddenly captured by a swift movement behind one of the giant trees. It ceased almost as abruptly as it had begun, and I wrote the incident off to nerves.
    The ship sat on some matted brown vegetation which extended as far as the eye could scan. (Later I discovered that this brown, grass-like substance covers most of [..........]'s surface, which doubtless accounts for the [little moon’s] brownish appearance in our telescopes.) I thought I could see a stream running in among the trees about a mile distant, but my attention was soon diverted by an increasing sensation of warmth.

entry 642      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

    “At this time of the year — or day — you can never be certain what the currents will be,” declared Dillon.
    He, with young Lacon, was standing aft, on the poop. It was dark. It was blowing a gale from the eastward. The sky was overcast, but there was no fog. Instead there were frequent flurries of hail and sleet. A big floe, thin, brittle, breaking up still further with every sea, slid by, gleaming pallidly in the glow from the stern light.
    Lacon turned up the collar of his greatcoat, pulled the attached hood more securely over his head. He complained, “I never thought that [..........] was like this.”
    “You’re seeing a side of [..........] that very few people do see. Not every Master likes making a voyage to the edge of the night — even when it means cutting off a couple of hundred miles, But this Old Man loves it. Says it reminds him of Cape Horn ...”
    “Me too,” agreed the Fourth, shivering. “But I still don’t like it.”
    “This’ll thicken your blood, man! I believe that if some of you young fellows really lived here, and had no means of transport, you’d do what some of the more backward tribes and most of the Day Side animals do — hibernate... And that reminds me — one thing you must see is the Day People migrating away from the sunset. There’s a couple of reels of film in the ship’s library — I took ’em myself with the infra-red camera. Whacking great twin canoes, decked over, with big square matting sails, scudding before the gale . . . One thing I’ve never got yet, although I’m still hoping, is the people of the thirty fourth parallel on the move. They don’t go in for sail. They have big, fish-lizard things, sort of marine draught horses, to tow their boats for them...”
    “And the people round our settlements ?”
    Dillon spat over the rail.
    “They’ve had it,” he said flatly. “They’re fast becoming no more than parasites, hangers on. If they want to shift — or if the Powers That Be want to shift ’em — the likes of us get the job...” He continued, after a pause, “It’s a pity. They hadn’t a bad sort of culture — for their world. And now, whether we’re humane or not, that culture is dying. But this isn’t buying the baby a new frock!”

entry 641      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

entry 640      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

… They awoke with a start when bright daylight hit their closed eyelids like a blow.
    Astern of them, black against a wall of ice and snow, was the circular mouth of the tunnel from which they have been spilled. Ahead of them and all around them was a vast lake, extending to the horizon. Their speed had diminished but the current still curried them along at a good seven knots; they were keeping to what must be a deep water channel, marked by long, straight, parallel lines of pile beacons.
    The time of the day seemed to be late afternoon. The sun was close to the western horizon, sinking almost visibly, and a shimmering golden path ran from its ruddy disc, across the calm water to the boat. And around the setting sun were the towering castellations of gilded cumulus clouds. It was wrong, all wrong – but the water was real enough and so was the air, the air that carried the faint scent of vegetation, the subtle hint of wood smoke, that they were breathing.
    (…)
    Suddenly, it seemed, the sun was gone.
    The sun was gone, and low in the still luminous west hung a bright star, a planet, shining with a steady, green-blue radiance. Earth, of course. Home. (But what was Earth like on this Coil of Time?)
    The sun was gone, and the darkness was sweeping in from the east, and overhead the twinkling points of light that were making their appearance. From the surface of the water a silvery mist was rising, condensing in clammy droplets on the metal deck and on the garments of the man and the woman... []

entry 639      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

Seventy-five feet was all the distance he’d been from the instrument tripod. Only a hundred and fifty feet from the shelter, itself. But here, mere shortness of distance was mockery. The blackness of a sealed tomb. And the fuddling chaos of a caldron — not hot, but fearsomely cold. And still Jan Viborg battled on, trying to spiral...
    [..........] ...the Arctic and Antarctic regions covered most of the planet. Polar nights and days thus became decades long. And in the night, as now, the snows of frozen methane fell, until it was scores of miles deep. In the summer — the day — the temperature would shift upward a little from its three-quarters approach to absolute zero. The Sun would shine dimly through the clouds, and some of the snow would melt. But that time was still Earth years away, here... 

entry 638      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

 ...At first he thought that he had been transported to Earth, to one of the few remaining untamed areas of the mother planet. But this, he came to realize slowly, was no world that he had ever known. It was not Earth, and it was not Venus, and it certainly was not Mars. Fantastically lush was the vegetation; great fleshy fronds, huge blossoms that were explosions of scarlet and orange, green-and-purple-mottled ribbons and streamers that undulated lazily in the breeze.
    But was there a breeze?
    Wilkinson cursed the immobility of his armor, and then discovered that he could, at least, move his helmet —slowly and painfully, but enough to extend his field of vision. He bore down on the chin pad and the helmet tilted, the neck joints complaining. He was standing, he discovered, in what appeared to be an almost dry watercourse. There was a bed of stones, large and small, waterworn, all covered with an unpleasant grey slime that steamed in the heat. (He knew, somehow, that it was hot, even though the temperature control of the suit was functioning perfectly.)
    Little things like crabs, hard to see because of their protective coloration, scurried, over the pebbles and boulders, darting into the crevices. And there drifted into the spaceman's field of view a larger creature, a thing with a long, spindly body, striped orange and black supported between Bickering gauzy wings. It hovered before his helmet, staring at him with its great, many-faceted eyes, and then, suddenly, it was gone...

entry 637      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

Spiny cactiform crystals, shimmering with an inner luminescence of their own, were all about him, breast-high, covering the floor of the crevasse like a thicket of grotesque jewels. They broke with brittle, tinkling sounds as he forced his way through their ranks. Long, slender, furry parts of them groped through the gloom, and touched him in a way that was half hungry, half inquisitive. They were neither plant nor animal nor the inanimate creation of a purely physical process. They lived, and in a dim way they were intelligent ! Yet they were not composed of protoplasm, but of ice, and of liquefied and frozen gases which on Earth would have been a permanent part of the atmosphere. Their vital processes were electrical…

entry 636      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

At last came the first, faint streamers of light in the east. Silhouetted against the paling sky was what appeared to be the rim of an enormous crater, along which were black shapes, pylons and low, squat buildings, far too regular in appearance to have been the work of natural forces.
    Abruptly, the sun’s rim topped the crater wall. A long beam of golden light streamed across the level, grey-green plain, scintillating on the hoar frost crystals that spangled the fronds of the tall, feathery vegetation. To the westward, in the direction in which they had seen the lights before their landing, half seen buildings loomed huge and mysterious through the morning mist.
    “This side of [..........] must be one, huge crater,” said Stornsen. “Think of it, an atmosphere, vegetation, intelligent life! Get your gear, both of you, and we’ll explore!”    
    (…)
    The explorers had been prepared for all kinds of alien monstrosities, but what they saw was far more amazing than any glorified reptile or insect would have been. Advancing over the plain in single file came a long line of what were, indubitably, human beings. As they came on through the last, fast dissipating wraiths of mist it was hard to tell whether they were marching or dancing. The three men fought for a place at the high-powered, mounted telescope. When, at last, Taberner got his turn, he saw that they were indeed dancing, advancing slowly with some kind of rhythmic shuffle that impressed him, somehow, as having a ritual significance.
    The [..........], he saw, were indeed human, rather taller, perhaps, than the average by Earth standards. Their skin was of a coppery colour, as he could judge with ease, as their only garments appeared to be a very abbreviated apron and an elaborate, feathered headdress. And there was something wrong about them. No, not physically, for all were almost perfectly proportioned. Just something wrong. He took his eye from the eyepiece, thinking that, perhaps, the powerful lenses had induced some subtle distortion. But the sense of wrongness persisted.
    (…)
    It seemed, said Taberner, that, before they reached the city, the level plain became rocky and uneven. But there was a road leading them through the distorted rocks, the jagged boulders, until they entered the city itself.
    He had a fleeting impression of low, stone houses, of wide streets bordered with strange, exotic plants. Then Stornsen was leading them up flight after flight of stone stairs to the top of what must have been the largest building, a huge, truncated pyramid.
    On its flat top was an altar, and three chairs, or thrones...

entry 635      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

…I sat back and looked at Karn.  There was much in the document I had not understood, but the main outlines were clear enough.
    “Yes,” I said, “this is it!  Where’s that photograph?”
    He handed it over.  The quality was poor, for it had been copied many times before reaching us.  But the pattern was unmistakable and I recognized it at once.
    “They were good scientists,” I said admiringly.  “That’s Callastheon, all right.  So we’ve found the truth at last, even if it has taken us three hundred years to do it.”
    “Is that surprising,” asked Karn, “when you consider the mountain of stuff we’ve had to translate and the difficulty of copying it before it evaporates?”
    I sat in silence for a while, thinking of the strange race whose relics we were examining.  Only once – never again! – had I gone up the great vent our engineers had opened into the Shadow World.  It had been a frightening and unforgettable experience.  The multiple layers of my pressure suit had made movement very difficult, and despite their insulation I could sense the unbelievable cold that was all around me…

entry 634      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

We were reposing peacefully at the bottom of what appeared to be an immense valley, shut in by mountains and cliffs of the most fantastic hue. Never had Nature displayed such lavish colours before the eyes of startled man. The blinding rays of blue, purple and gold, seemed to strike the sky itself, which was of a bright rose colour, overhead, softening down at the horizon to a deep greyish purple, through which the sun's disc (Was it the sun?) shone like a mirror of polished sapphire. Not a cloud, not a streak of vapour was visible in this strange heaven, and the layers of light softened off into each other in a way which no painter, however skilful, could have adequately rendered. From the lofty crests above us, covered in places with white patches of what appeared to be snow, a perfect deluge of fantastic vegetation poured down into the depths, cascades of scarlet creepers, fields of white and blue grass, mottled like Dresden china plates, trees with orange tops that blossomed out like opening roses, swaying gently to and fro in the warm breeze, their slender stems hidden under bushels of light, purple passion flowers (if I may be allowed to institute a comparison with earthly flowers), magnolias, lotuses, water-lilies of uncouth size, golden-leaved ferns, scarlet-blossomed groves of hibiscus—
    (…)
    I rushed to the other side of the deck. From the depths of the sombre valley came a sound of roaring water, and a pyramidal cone of fine steam rose nearly five hundred feet into the air. My eyes roamed impatiently over the sky in all directions. A large star of the first magnitude, of a pale greenish colour, shone resplendently near the eastern horizon, but no moon was visible. I uttered a cry.
    'We are on [..........]!' I exclaimed.
    (...)
    Night overtook us before we reached the valley. Overhead the azure peaks vanished into thin air, leaving only a vague starlight to guide our steps. As I stumbled along, forcing my way through the tangled mass of shrubs, whose aromatic perfume became intenser as we descended lower, I saw a bright light shining among the pendant bells of giant convulvuli. The captain had lit his electric lamp, an example which was speedily followed by his companion. A dark tunnel of overhanging trees opened before us, ending, as far as we could in an open plateau, feebly lit by the diffused starlight.
    A sting of fluid in my face made me start. Ned uttered a cry.
    'It's raining!'
    Overhead the dark, thick leaves formed a perfectly impenetrable covering, water-tight as a galvanised iron roof.
    'It must come from the trees,' said I.
    As I spoke a second deluge of drops fell. We were enveloped in a shower-bath of thin spray, warm and aromatic like a mist of chloroform. I felt my brain growing curiously stupid.
    'Run for it if you value your life!' shouted someone in front, and I saw myself scudding away through that deadly spray, while the gaunt branches on either side writhed horribly, like a nest of serpents.
    In less time than it takes to tell, we were standing in the open air, panting like stranded fish. Behind us those ghostly trees kept up an incessant rustling.
    'They are the vampire-trees of the equator,' said the captain. 'Had we stopped a moment longer, we would have been eaten alive—look!'
    The electric lamps threw a clear light back into the foggy mist, which sprung in a myriad tiny fountains from the long sickle-shaped leaves. Presently the shower ceased and a curious thing happened, that sent a shiver of fear through us.
    Slowly, slowly, like living arms outstretched to grasp their prey, the long spiny branches, twisting and sliding like the tentacles of a mammoth jellyfish, descended across the path we had traversed, in the moist soil of which our footsteps were still visible. Crossing and intercrossing like threads in a weaving-mill, they swept the soil with an even swaying movement, reminding one of the action of a scythe in the hands of an experienced reaper. These fearful arms were endowed with human senses—they lingered over our footprints, turning the earth over with their long spikes, kneading it as though they craved, from the dull clay, the satisfaction of a giant hunger. Then they rose again slowly, while a shudder passed across the darkness of the forest, a shudder that seemed half groan, half howl, a cry of wild-beast fury that struck terror to our hearts, so mournful and weird was it.
    (...)
    We soon rejoined the rest of our party, who were standing at some distance on a knoll, reconnoitring this singular landscape. Half-a-mile farther on, a roaring curtain of spray rose vertically upwards, like the breath from a volcano's smouldering mouth. Beyond, through the mists of the morning, loomed the forms of gaunt mountains, their crests of snow slightly tipped by the first rays of sunlight—not a warm, yellow light such as we are accustomed to, but a cold, greenish-blue colour, like luminous sea-water.
    Presently, the sun rose—what a sun! Separated from us by only twenty-six million leagues of space, the boiling orb appeared nearly double the size of our earthly luminary, and our thick, white parasols hardly granted an efficient protection against its consuming fires. As we advanced, the roaring became louder. Then, as we reached the edge of the great valley, a sight was unveiled to our startled eyes, more terrible, in its grandeur and loneliness, than even the awful plains of Saturn, beside which the lunar solitudes, the chasm of Mount Archimedes sank into perfect insignificance.
    Half a league farther on, an entire ocean of water seemed to be falling from the sky.
    Above, where the thick mists hung in opaque layers, the forerunners of the cataract (equal in size to nearly twenty Niagaras) were visible, descending evenly in a gigantic wall of water that must have been quite a hundred miles broad, and so deep that it ended, some thousands of feet below us, in total blackness, darker and more opaque than the night that hangs above the legendary Styx.
    The solar rays, acting on this shifting mass, produced here and there magnificent rainbows, which the peculiar chemical properties of the atmosphere tinted with blueish-violet. The noise was dreadful —we did not shout, we roared at each other...

entry 633      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

 ...Right and left, as far as the eye could reach was a perfect chain of fire-crowned mountains, burning in jets and cascades of scarlet, green and blue, sending up columns and spirals of black smoke, across which, as they intermingled, pale lightnings played incessantly. Nor was this all. High up, above the drifting vapours, the sky seemed to be in flame. Lambent streamers, of a pale golden colour, wavered and undulated in a broad arch over this continent of fire, throwing a soft twilight over the farthest limits of the dark sea. The inflammable gases, lighter than the surrounding atmosphere, rose of their own accord into higher regions, igniting in their passage across the boiling lava-flows and curving upwards to join the flaming sea above. Sometimes the clouds parted, and a clear white light shone through, mingling weirdly with the lurid red of the smouldering volcanoes. [..........]. The sea, flecked in places by patches and puffs of steam, undulated peacefully round the Astrolabe.
    We were anchored in what appeared to be a shallow bay, shut in by two protruding peninsulas, formed by glowing lava-streams. The hissing and roaring was indescribable. Everywhere fire and water were in conflict. At times masses of incandescent rock, hurled aloft by one of the hundred craters, fell with a roar like thunder into the sea, which boiled furiously at the contact—rings of white steam, similar to those produced by an expert smoker with a tobacco-pipe, floated away to condense on the colder rocks, and run back oceanwards in gleaming cascades and rivulets.
    A boat was fastened alongside, into which we descended. Four men sat at the oars, and we flew along over the glassy water, which I noticed was boiling in several places. The air under these circumstances could hardly be cool. It was intolerably hot owing not so much to the proximity of the spouting lava-streams as to the glare from the burning sky above. We rapidly neared the shore of this dreadful continent, which I could see was overgrown here and there by some kinds of trees—firs and larches for the most part. Cone-bearing plants flourish in places where no other varieties can exist, and the carbonic gases from the volcanoes aided rather than checked their growth. It was two in the afternoon when we set foot on solid ground. The men drew up the boat, and deeming our wraps unnecessary, we left them behind, only taking our weapons and belts.
    For half-an-hour we toiled up a gentle slope, composed almost entirely of old lava-flows, and seamed with a million fissures. Surprises greeted us at every turn. Geysers of salt water, larger than the Icelandic ones, roared into the air, breaking and foaming into rainbow-crossed sheets of spray. On reaching the summit of the incline, an exclamation from Ned made me start.      A curious and wonderful sight greeted us. Disporting themselves harmlessly in a shallow arm of the sea were a score of strange animals, with long necks and pointed heads. The red light gleamed along their wet scales as they dived and plunged about, rolling among the pink foam like giant porpoises.
    'We've struck a shoal of antediluvian dragons! cried Ned.
    'Very nearly. They are plesiosauruses.'
    The sight was one that would have convulsed a naturalist with delight. Instinctively I wondered what my revered old professor at the university would not have given to be able to share my impressions for a few moments. I was lost in admiration at the symmetrical beauty of these creatures, equally adapted for swimming under the water or on its surface, their smooth, undulating necks, curved like a swan's, writhed to and fro like serpents. It seemed to me that I could even distinguish the double row of gleaming teeth and the flashing green eyes, armed with thick lenses of horn to protect them from the pressure of the watery strata when diving after their prey.
    (…)
    We continued our walk. A low copse of strange trees confronted us, their branches standing out gaunt and black against the glare behind. In height they were about a hundred feet, broader at the top than at the bottom, which was only a long trunk, covered with diamond-shaped scales like those on a pine-apple. In the centre of this coppice, which the lava had spared till now, was a small clearing.
    'Hallo, what's that?' queried Ned.
    A curious jagged object lay on the ground at some distance, like a gigantic bat, with wings outstretched. One of the men took up a stone and threw it.
    A horrible cry burst on the stillness, and a great shadow rose from the ground, beating the air with its giant wings, and soaring high above the trees.
    'It is a flying dragon!' I cried.
    The monster resembled a lizard in shape, or better still, a crocodile. Its long head, armed with a formidable row of teeth, resembled that of a large bird rather than of a reptile. It flew anxiously round in circles, uttering fearful cries, like the shrieking of a pencil across a slate, or the creaking of a carriage-wheel...

entry 632      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

    ...The Astrolabe was still revolving. I waited till the circular disc, elongated and converted into an oval by the angle, touched the centre of the scarlet carpet. Then I rose on my elbow and looked out of the window.
    I uttered a cry of surprise. The boundless abyss of space was gone. Under the keel of the Astrolabe stretched an acre or two of solid ground, sandy and yellowish in colour, covered here and there by patches of moss—we seemed to be on the rounded summit of a mountain, a mountain which commanded a view of the stellar universe —we must have landed on some planet while I was sleeping.
    (...)
    'Where are we?' was the first question I asked.
    'On the back of a wandering star, professor,' was the answer. ' A mere mass of rock floating lazily round the sun in a fixed orbit; to the earth an invisible nothing, to us a resting-place in the midst of immensity...  It has a slight atmosphere, so you will not need your diving-dresses.'
    'But this atmosphere must be horribly rarefied, captain,' I said.
    'It is not very dense, sir, in point of fact,' answered the commander, 'and what is more, the actual surface of the globe is covered to a depth of two feet or so with a layer of almost pure carbonic acid gas—so take care not to sit or lie down, as in the event of your doing so you will run a great risk of being abruptly smothered, like a dog in the Grotto del Cane at Naples.'
    (...)    
    As I have already said, the ground sloped away in a gently – rounded incline, like the top of a mountain. In spite of the light envelope of oxygen, the air was fearfully cold—the sun glaring above us at the zenith, being apparently unable to communicate much heat to this cold remnant of some broken-up world. The soil, of yellowish clay, with here and there a splinter of blackish basaltic rock, was covered with a thick growth of untidily-matted algae, whose vigorous development I was unable to explain till a sudden occurrence enlightened me. We were walking along slowly, turning from time to time to look back at the shining decks of the Astrolabe, which were disappearing from view behind the rounded circle, when my lungs experienced a choking feeling, as though a warm aromatic fluid were being forced down into them. At the same moment my feet began to sink in the soft soil. Captain Chlamyl, seizing me firmly by the shoulders, dragged me aside.
    'Look where you're walking!' he said severely; 'you nearly went head foremost into a mudvolcano!'
    I gazed round me. Ned was coughing and laughing by turns. At my feet was a stretch of black soil, sparkling and bubbling under the light of the sun. It was a spring of poisonous gas—of carbonic acid, similar to the ones in Java, only on a far smaller scale.
    'There is some chemical operation going on under the surface, perhaps near the centre of this globe,' explained Captain Chlamyl, 'which gives rise to these bubbles of gas. Most of it goes to feed the plants, the rest hangs about over the surface of the soil, especially over the lower parts.'
    'How long do you suppose, captain, is it since this planet was in a state of fusion?'
    'Some thousands of years only,' answered the captain ; 'small bodies take a very short time to cool. What's Master Ned looking at?'
    'Hallo!' exclaimed the individual addressed, 'the sun's going to set!'
    I turned abruptly, and witnessed a curious sight.
    The glowing disc was sinking towards the horizon with a regular motion like clockwork. Ned's shadow lengthened yard by yard, till it vanished, so to speak, 'over the edge' into space. There was hardly any sunset worth speaking of in that rarefied atmosphere. I could hardly notice any change in the colour of the burning disc as it approached the irregular line of hillocks that bounded our view.
    Slowly it sank. The shadow crept rapidly up from our feet to our waists, then I saw it run up Ned's tall form, the reflection and diffusion being so insignificant that he appeared to vanish away into nothing, like a ghost. For a second or so his head, vividly illumined, hung between earth and heaven, the way I have sometimes seen the peak of Chimborazo hanging some hours before the dawn, then it vanished and we were left in total darkness, only set off and toned down by the feeble glimmering of the stars... 

entry 631      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

 ...We were nearly two miles beneath the surface of [..........]—any atmosphere that there was must perforce linger in the depths on account of its weight alone. Thus, in this dark tunnel, we were once more surrounded by life-giving air.
    'Place your dresses and helmets on this rock,' remarked the captain, indicating a table-like formation of granite, ' we shall not need them for some hours, torches will be sufficient to light our way.'
    The air in this place was dull and singularly warm. Captain Chlamyl's companion produced several long sticks of some resinous substance which, on being lit, burned with a clear bright flame.
    'Now forward into the City of the Dead,' said the commander.
    (…)
    We passed on. A broad street of stone, flat and level as the pavement of a Paris boulevard, shone under the light of the torches. Above our heads was intense blackness—the cavern must have been at least a hundred and fifty feet high, if not more. Shadows loomed at the side of the road. They were the ruins of [..........] buildings, yellow and crumbling with age. At first I thought they were built of stones united with mortar or superimposed in the Egyptian fashion. I soon discovered my mistake. There was no attempt at building, the houses were hewn bodily out of the solid rock, resembling in their rough simplicity a series of caverns rather than an agglomeration of human dwellings. They were windowless for the most part, for of what use would windows have been in that deep gloom? and their walls were in some places covered with cuneiform writing. I asked Captain Chamyl whether he had ever discovered the key to this strange alphabet.
    (…)
    We continued our examination of these [..........] dwellings, the doors of which, hewn squarely out of the light rock, were some of them nearly ten feet high, and broad in proportion, thus seeming to endorse the theory of certain astronomers, who, arguing from the standpoint of gravity, maintain that the dwellers on [..........] surpassed those of the earth in physical stature.
    In the open space outside, resembling a public square, were several wells, enclosed in the remnants of ruined circular walls. Captain Chlamyl pointed to them and looked at me without speaking. Presently a gigantic building confronted us, its vast pillars looming through the darkness like spectres.
    'A palace,' said Ned to me.
    It was indeed a dwelling worthy of a king. Steps of lava, forty in number, and rather exceeding the height of our steps on the earth, led up to a row of Titanic columns, twenty feet broad at the base and at least two hundred feet high. The torchlight failed to reach their tops, but our sturdy engineer produced a roll of magnesium wire, and in an instant the whole building, with the silent square in front of it, was enveloped in blinding white radiance. The imposing edifice was evidently some public building—perhaps a cathedral. The stone had decayed in places, leaving unsymmetrical gaps and holes. In some of the chinks I perceived lichens growing—dull, colourless plants, not differing much from their earthly representatives. An exclamation from Ned attracted me.
    'A statue!' he said.
    The figure of a man was visible, standing erect in the centre of this vast temple, his arms crossed on his breast.
    Come now! thought I, we are on [..........], not on the earth, and this figure looks singularly human!
    The statue was about thirty feet high. It had the head of a monkey, and was dressed in a gown not unlike the Roman toga. To my surprise, I noticed that the ears were totally absent—at its feet was a circular ball, about five feet in diameter.
    'A geographer!' suggested Ned.
    'An astronomer,' corrected Captain Chlamyl, 'that globe represents the earth!'

entry 630      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

    …The slopes were vertical now, polished surfaces that slanted upward, glinting darkly.  The tiny arc-white sun glared between two heights that loomed overhead like cliffs…
    Far above a mighty river poured over a high cliff, thundering down into mist: its roar was  steady rumble underfoot.
    …There was a sudden heavy tremor…  far above, a vast fragment detached itself from the wall, seeming to float downward with dreamlike grace, surrounded by a convoy of lesser rubble.  Great chunks smashed against the cliffsides, cascaded downward; the main mass of the avalanche shattered, dissolved into a cloud of ice crystals…

entry 629      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

    …For close on a hundred million years this aerial society endured with little change.  On many of the islands throughout this period stood even yet a number of the ancient pylons, though repaired almost beyond recognition.  In these nests the men and women of the seventh species slept through the long [..........] nights, crowded like roosting swallows.  By day the same great towers were sparsely peopled with those who were serving their turn in industry, while in the fields and on the sea others laboured.  But most were in the air.  Many would be skimming the ocean, to plunge, gannet-like, for fish.  Many, circling over land or sea, would now and then swoop like hawks upon the wild-fowl which formed the chief meat of the species.  Others, forty or fifty thousand feet above the waves, where even the plentiful atmosphere of [..........] was scarcely capable of supporting them, would be soaring, circling, sweeping, for pure joy of flight.  Others, in the calm and sunshine of high altitudes, would be hanging effortless upon some steady up-current of air for meditation and the rapture of mere percipience.  Not a few love-intoxicated pairs would be entwining their courses in aerial patterns, in spires, cascades, and true love-knots of flight, presently to embrace and drop ten thousand feet in bodily union.  Some would be driving hither and thither through the green mists of vegetable particles, gathering the manna in their open mouths.  Companies, circling together, would be discussing matters social or aesthetic; others would be singing together, or listening to recitative epic verse.  Thousands, gathering in the sky like migratory birds, would perform massed convolutions…  

entry 628      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

As we penetrated more and more deeply into the marine forest, the vast skeletons became more and more frequent until, by the third hour of the morning, we found ourselves in a veritable mammoth boneyard, a maze of white shafts glimmering upward to meet the canopy of undersea wilderness.      (…)
    We had come to a place in the labyrinth, where we were able to continue the march only by crashing through the confusion of brittle debris with our axes, when our attention was attracted by a gradual brightening of the strange coral gloom. By one accord we stopped and looked aloft. High overhead, a colossal shape, faintly luminous, faintly iridescent, appeared vaguely in its descent toward the lacy vaulting of our wilderness.
    Slowly it drifted down; slowly its outlines sharpened until the monstrous fish – for such it was – came to rest above the scarlet flowers that sprang orchid-like from above the fronds.
    With vast diaphanous fins fanning in slow rhythm, it hung poised, a monster beyond the wildest dreams of men; elusive, iridescent lights playing subtly along its dead white belly. Floating leisurely, it browsed through the gargantuan garden under whose fronds we crouched, fearfully watching. And even as we looked, the behemoth, as though drugged by its mere proximity to flowers, stiffened. It quivered convulsively, then relaxed and sank slowly to the sea floor through the tangled fronds. Here it came to rest, pierced through in a dozen places by the bones on the white sea floor.
    Startled by the suggestiveness of the incident, I stopped for a handful of sand, and examined it as it sifted through my fingers. It was almost pure calcium. The very sea-bottom, we trod, had been formed from the decay and attrition of these creatures' bones!
    Absorbed in my discovery, I had for the moment lost sight of the tragedy taking place so near us, until the sharp pressure of Halliday's fingers on my arm directed my attention to its final grisly stage. The long, mossy filaments that draped the trunks of what we thought were trees, had begun to move, Sinuously, as though stirred by some gradual current, perhaps by the downwash drawn in the wake of the great fish as it sank, they floated; unwinding to surprising lengths, and fastened upon the body of the prey, growing stationary with horrid, suggestive stillness.
    I wondered no longer at the lifelessness of the area through which we were passing. It was no forest we were in, but a vast colony of enormous sea-anemones – so we should name them on earth – animals that attracted their prey by deceptive likeness to harmless vegetable forms. As he hastened forward, I prayed feelingly that the druggy emanations from swaying blossoms would take an upward direction, and that we should be spared the slow paralysis and the lash-like tentacles, armed with their myriad tiny suckers.

entry 627      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

…Twelve hours later my journey was practically finished as I hovered over the northern hemisphere about a hundred miles from the surface of the planet, but well within its atmosphere shell.
    From a great height the continent of Elysia looked like a green carpet spotted with patches of white and brown. Below me I recognized the contours of a large peninsula which my map showed to be about 200 miles east of the mouth of the Holmes River. Before setting out for that point I dropped lower to view the surface of the planet at close range.
    The green carpet was a forest of trees which I estimated to be all of 200 feet high, and it stretched inland as far as the eye could reach. Their tops were waving in a breeze hardly perceptible otherwise, and above them there was no sign of bird life or life of any sort. When I swooped down close to the water, however, I saw a group of large reptilian animals slither into a marshy backwater from the bank, where they have been sunning themselves. I mounted to an elevation of about 1,000 feet and headed westward toward the destination of my long journey. After 45 days spent alone in the small space ship I had the strongest desire to set my foot on solid ground again and to find someone of my own kind to talk to.
    After half an hour, about the time I had allowed myself to cover 200 miles, I saw that I was approaching a wide indentation in the coast line, which I judged to be the mouth of the Holmes River. Two miles upstream I should find Commander Jones' camp...

entry 626      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

 ...Tentatively I reached forward a hand to the gravity-nullifiers. Would they work? Or had the plates of the ship's hull also become magnetized? I switched on the lower hull connections, waited. And behold, the mists were clearing. Soon we'd see the sun, the blessed sun. I was retreating.    
    But there was no sun! Instead, above us was lying a land, a land tinted a copperish red, a rolling country, a country of low-lying hills clothed in verdure, trees. The gleam of a lake shone in the far distance, a river meandered through a pretty country. That some of it was cultivated country was evident by the alternate patches of bare earth and blocks of growing things, geometrically straight lines between the blocks, low rock fences! But for a difference in coloring it might have been an Earthly scene, only here the verdure was for the most part purple, although I saw patches of red, blue, orange; and soil was pale lavender.   
    So! This was [..........].   
    When I thought we were hull downward, we were really upside down, and the nullifiers had forced us toward the surface!   
    (…)    
    Below us lay a city!   
    It wasn't the sort of city men of Earth build on their far-flung possessions, but its collection of low buildings was enough to warrant the name. They were hardly more than round huts with conical roofs, set between narrow streets with plan and foresight, and there was a rude-stone fence encircling the village. Beyond were the well-cultivated fields of this native people. A herd of some sort of bovines were grazing in a field. But what sort of creatures the people were we could not guess; not a single inhabitant was in sight. Most likely all had fled for cover at the appearance of our ship.   
    (…)   
    I had noticed the strange effect Small mentioned. It was as if our eyes refused to focus properly. A scene near at hand inexplicably changed its relation with us and the ship, and slid into distance. The trouble seemed to lay [sic] with the quality of the copperish light that filled this world as if it were denser in one place that in another. It was very disconcerting. (…) According to my calculations, and the relative size of the landscape below us, we should have been from seven to eight hundred feet up, but what with that unsettled appearance of everything, and the distance of the horizon it didn't seem to agree at all.

entry 625      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

 ...My curiosity drove me to locate first of all the deep pool I had seen from the mountain two days ago. This was less than a mile away, according to my sketch, and in fact proved less distant. I soon arrived at the edge of the trees, which were so clothed in leaves as to be difficult to see through and still damp enough to make muddy walking. There was a opening before me several hundred feet across and I found myself gazing into a sunken dell, circular and with sloping sides. The banks were steep and slimy and enclosed a deep pool of water. At the edge of the pool I could observe some rocks and I made my way carefully down to examine them. They were of a uniform size and quite evidently formed the top layer of a wall that enclosed the water before me. Here was no handicap of Nature, but a well – created by the same intelligence, perhaps, that have hewn the caves in the mountain-top! I tasted the water and founded sweet and pure and I rejoiced that the problem of a water-supply had been finally solved to us. If we had only chanced upon this spot on our first landing, I thought!    
    I stood there musing a moment upon these further traces of a vanished civilization and suddenly felt a curious impression that someone was watching me. It was a genuine feeling; the hairs at the back of my neck bristled slightly and the flesh shivered along my back-bone. I turned about quickly and stared up that smooth slope to the edge of the woods above. A row of dozen faces peered down on me! I caught my breath sharply and had reached for my revolver before I finally realized that they were our friends, the chickenpork. Then I laughed aloud and climbed up at them, making threatening sounds and gestures, whereupon they vanished.   
    (…)   
    We passed by one side of the well and kept hidden and quiet as we passed hoping to see something of our friends the chickenpork. We saw two or three of them wandering aimlessly over the ground and half a dozen were at the water's edge drinking. (I saw one which scooped up water with two fore-paws and drank like a human!) Out of almost every hole protruded their soft black muzzles. It was a peaceful and interesting scene, but as we looked the aspect changed suddenly. There was a quick desperate scurrying and the clay bank was empty in a flash. A moth at least four feet from wing-tip to wing-tip fluttered silently down over the hollow. It was curiously marked with white on black wings, somewhat suggestive of a bat though it had none of the latter's dexterity in flight. The body was cylindrical and covered with black velvety fur.   
    Just then two smaller “moths”, as I shall call them, came floating over the well and one, catching sight of us perhaps, flew close overhead and Mason struck at it with a branch he had picked up from the ground. All three hovered around us awhile as we proceed through the woods, which only partially restricted their flying – so nearly bare had the trees been stripped by the voracious insect life all about us. In half an hour he walk proved so unpleasant that we turned about and started back to camp. I had noticed and called my companion's attention to the thing which finally proved too much for our peace of mind. It was a chrysalis near the top of a tree. The dirty white sheet measured five feet in length! In all directions were to be seen similar shroud-like cocoons of various sizes and in many different positions, and on the way back I spied several caterpillars that had not even yet begun to pupate. They were the size of monsters in nightmares – as big around as a man's thigh, and as long...

entry 624      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

Mason was holding his head in a strained listening attitude, Haworth was holding his finger to his lips and I strained my ears expectantly. Unconsciously we drew together close to the trunk of one of the tree-ferns.        I saw something move. It was just a shadow at first. Then I could see that it walked on two legs. As it came still closer I could distinguish arms and claw-like hands. It was about three feet high. Its face was mostly snout and teeth, but in one of the hands it held a tree branch crudely broken off to form a club!    
    Curious sliding steps it took — straight toward us. At about fifty yards distance it stopped suspiciously and stared in our direction, as if hesitating whether or not to come further.   
    Haworth pressed my shoulder warningly and then slowly advanced out of the shelter of the trees. He moved with the utmost precaution "to avoid frightening it," as he afterwards explained. But he need not have worried had he known as much about the courage of these animals as we did a little later on.   
    The creature remained motionless until he had advanced twenty feet. Then it stirred nervously. Haworth came to a halt and raised his right arm slowly over his head. There was no motion from the other and Haworth started to talk to it in a quiet tone of voice. I could see the head twitch suddenly at the sound, but there was no other response.   
    Then Haworth took another step forward and like a flash the creature spun about and fled in great leaping.   
    Our leader shouted at it excitedly and followed. We, in turn, followed Haworth. We ran about a hundred yards when we came in sight of a dense growth of trees. We were panting painfully and absolutely saturated with sweat in that hot-house atmosphere.   
    "Did you see the club? That means an opposing thumb on the hand! There isn't any doubt the beast is intelligent to at least some extent!"   
    "This is the most important thing we have seen yet."   
    But I had seen something of a different sort when the beast had turned to flee.   
    "It has a tail," I reminded them. "A real large tail, almost as big as kangaroo's. And that snout strongly suggests the reptile, if ever I saw one!”       We walked slowly toward the dark shadow of the forest, mopping our brows and endeavoring to recover our breath. The ground here was possibly fifty feet higher in elevation than the swamps at the water's edge and the growth of vegetation was not nearly so rank as it was down there. Openings were visible here and there between the tree-trunks.   
    We were within fifty feet of one opening when we all three stopped uncertainly, as though we had realized that danger might lie hidden just behind that screen of foliage. And as we stood there I saw a movement in the shadows, close to the ground. Out from the woods stepped the animal we had been pursuing and beside him stood half a dozen more of the same kind. Slowly they came out into the open. Still more of then. Followed and spread out on each side until nearly fifty of the beasts were visible.   
    We all three had dropped our bundles of stakes and had our rifles ready for action.   
    "Don't shoot until we have to," whispered Haworth and stepping forward a pace he raised his rifle in the air and gestured with his free arm.   
    "There, there, there," he said in a soothing tone, "We'd like to be friends if you'd let us."   
    They seemed undecided as to how they would take this. They cocked their heads sideways, some of them, for all the world like a dog that has been spoken to. Two or three of them uttered curious little croaks and shifted uneasily on their feet. I was beginning to believe we might establish some sort of understanding with them after all when one of the beasts began leaping up and down and uttering wild chattering squeals.  At that they all seemed to get excited and started to advance upon us.    
    I raised my rifle and pulled he trigger, aiming at the foremost of the creatures, who slumped to the ground and lay there thrashing his tail and biting savagely at the rocky ground.   
    The shot stopped them...

entry 623      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

 ...Its skin was of an oily smooth grayness.  Its motions were slow, as became a creature who burrowed in stone and was more than half stone itself.  There was no writhing of muscles beneath that skin; instead it moved in slabs as thin layers of stone slid greasily over one another.
    It had a general ovoid shape, rounded above, flattened below, with two sets of appendages.  Below were the “legs”, set radially.  They totaled six and ended in sharp flinty edges, reinforced by metal deposits.  Those edges could cut through rock, breaking it into edible portions.
    On the creature’s flat undersurface, hidden from view unless the silicony were overturned, was the one opening into its interior.  Shredded rocks entered that interior.  Within, limestone and hydrated silicates reacted to form the silicones out of which the creature’s tissues were built.  Excess silica re-emerged from the opening as hard white pebbly excretions. 
    How extraterrologists had puzzled over the smooth pebbles that lay scattered in small hollows within the rocky structure of [..........] until the silicones were first discovered.  And how they marveled at the manner in which the creatures made silicones – those silicon-oxygen polymers with hydrocarbon slide chains – perform so many of the functions that proteins performed in terrestrial life…  

entry 622      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

…The rough terrain of [..........] lay below. A cold, bluish radiance, almost invisible, seemed to flicker here and there. Duncan set the ship down with trained skill, landing on a broad plateau at the base of a high range of alps.

He was on [..........], shunned and feared by Earthmen for a hundred and fifty years. He was in the very lair of the mind-vampires.

And nothing happened.

Slowly Duncan rose and turned the valves on the oxygen tanks. He divested himself of his spacesuit and made a careful examination of the two bodies. Both Olcott and Hartman had been killed, apparently, by the [..........]. They had the stigmata.

But Duncan was thinking a rather impossible thought—that there were no [..........].

With half of his mind he made tests. There was atmosphere, almost pure chlorine. Nor was it unduly cold. An electroscope gave him the answer. [..........] was a radioactive planet, warmed from within by the powerful radiations of the ore.

Duncan took the dead Olcott’s helmet and adjusted it upon himself. Turning on the power made the intertron knob glow, but there was no other result. The Varra, of course, could not safely venture within the Heaviside Layer of any planet, and [..........] had a Layer, since it had an atmosphere. Chlorine—radium—Duncan shook his head, trying to fit the puzzle together…

entry 621      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

 ...I noticed that the sky had a sickly, greenish-yellow tint, due to the presence of the chlorine; but because of the atmosphere’s tenuosity the color was vague, wraith-like. The sun was a great yellowish globe resting on the horizon; bilious-yellow, rather. Its light but faintly illuminated this portion of the planet. Opposite the sun the blackness was tinged with yellow, the stars were dim and faded. Only high above were there any features of note. One was the blue-white light of Venus likewise yellowed— a lamp hung there to give light to this morose land. The other feature was Tellus, smaller, more distant, a golden luminary vying with Venus for beauty.    
    It was the landscape that held most of my attention. There was just light enough to make out the bleak, dirty-white terrain of broken, rough-pitted rock in which there was nothing to break the utter monotony of ugliness. Hills, valleys, plains were all tumbled together in a hodge-podge — colorless, uninviting...

entry 620      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

entry 619      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

For two hours they drifted in the breeze while they attended to the bruised men and set the ship in order. While the men were at work, the captain and Grigson repaired the slight damage to their telescope and made some observations. They concluded that they had splashed into what astronomers call the “Dawes Ocean” at a point near the mouth of “Kaiser Sea.”    
    “‘Dawes Continent’ is probably the largest body of land on the planet,” said Masters. "Perhaps we should go there first.”   
    "It seemed to be thickly populated,” Grigson agreed.   
    (…)   
    “Land ahead!” someone shouted.   
    All eyes strained to make out the land, but it was still a mere streak on the horizon. It came out of the water rapidly, however, and in the crystal-clear air they could soon distinguish the buildings built along the shore.   
    At last they flew over the land. Hundreds of small black buildings with red tiled roofs were scattered everywhere, skirting the crooked streets. They could see that the soil was of a peculiar yellowish red or light brown color and even the vegetation was more brown than green.   
    (…)   
    Masters watched the little [..........] ships dart away in fright from the flame at the dissipating plate.   
    Gently as a feather they touched the ground, but they remained in the ship to study their surroundings before emerging. The guns had been loaded and were now manned by the gunners in readiness for any hostile move that might be made on the part of the [..........]. For several hours they watched the ships dart about. Presently one of them landed and a tiny man stepped out. He was only three feet high, with queer, short legs and small feet that seemed deformed. Masters was reminded of the Brownie pictures in the children’s books. The [..........] stood beside his ship for a long time before he ventured any nearer. Instead of walking he advanced in quick jumps like a bird.   
    “The attractive force of their gravity is so slight that they can jump easier than walk,” Masters remarked, thoughtfully.   
    The little man came up close to the ship and then went around it, eyeing it curiously. Presently, when they saw that the monster was apparently harmless, other ships landed and in a short time the field was crowded with gesticulating people. Masters hung a microphone out of one of the port-holes so that they could hear over the amplifier and loudspeaker despite the thick walls of the ship. They listened for a while to the crowd jabbering away in short sentences, which were broken as though the speakers had not sufficient lung capacity for longer ones. Their voices were disagreeably high pitched, some of them ranging almost above audibility.   
    “Evidently their lungs are very small,” Masters said. "Notice how flat their chests are. I suppose that that is due to the almost pure oxygen of their atmosphere.”   
    One of the little men, perhaps bolder than the others, came up to a port-hole and stared into the ship. His green eyes were large, and they now opened wide with surprise when he saw the huge men inside. He hopped back and gesticulated wildly to the others and a wave of excitement billowed through the crowd. Others now came close and pressed their faces against the lowest port-holes. Their tiny noses and wide, square jaws lined with flat teeth were hideous. But their high foreheads indicated intelligence...

entry 618      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

The building, the bedroom, seemed to be on a hillside overlooking a valley. Not too high a hillside, because through the lower edge of the window he could see a wide, badly discolored river. It was beyond the river that the giant trees began.    
    There was instantly no question but that he was not on Earth. Cyclopean were those trees! One, two, three thousand feet they towered into the misty heavens. They started about a mile away; and each tree was as thick at the base as a normal city block. The branches began low down; and the trees tangled with each other in a fantastic intertwining of gigantic limbs and endless foliage.   
    It was impossible to see for sure, but Gosseyn had the impression that the forest of titans stretched away into the remote and verdant wilderness.   
    (…)
    Gosseyn estimated an atmosphere twice as thick as Earth’s, a thousand miles or more of air — the clouds of [..........] that made the [..........] planet the dazzling spectacle of Earth's night sky.   
    Thinking about it, he felt more alive, excited. Felt himself in a timeless world.   
    Gosseyn descended the stately steps to a green velvety soil; and, turning, looked at the building. It stood alone in a natural-looking, gardenlike setting. It was constructed entirely of a shiny gray stone. Behind it, a hill rose steeply, as much as four hundred feet in places, a long, wavy green ridge, thick with gigantic shrubs and flowering plants.   
    (...)   
    He looked down, down, down into distance. Gray-blue haze of distance. The hill on which the hospital was built was not really a hill at all, but a lower peak of a mountain, dipping down behind him past the hospital into a smaller valley before curving past the titan trees towards the higher peaks beyond.   
    Now that he was four hundred feet above the building, Gosseyn could see the peaks. They rose above the trees; they were snow-capped; they must be miles higher to be visible at all beyond that barrier of trees.   
    There were more trees in the greater valley down which Gosseyn gazed. But even they were dwarfed by the appalling depths to which the mountainside receded. Far down in that depth, Gosseyn caught a gleam of water, and, shocked, remembered the discolored river.   
    He turned to stare at it. And now that he was looking for it, he could see the sharp tilt of the water. No wonder it looked dark and ugly; no wonder it was so silent in its course: it was racing down a mountainside with an oily velocity that long ago had worn a smooth bed.   
    Somewhere farther along must be cataracts that would make Niagara tiny so far as height of fall was concerned; only thus could this swollen river hope to get down so swiftly to the deeper reaches of the great valley, where its gleam was so faintly visible.   
    (...)
    He stared with a more calculating intensity into the gulf of distance below him. He could see where the valley down there levelled off. For several miles it seemed to be a flat plain; and then the mists of remoteness closed in, and hid what lay beyond.

entry 617      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

 ...All this while the ship and ourselves had been drifting towards [.........]. The little world was as prominent as Mars in the sky now. The ship was clearly still making for [..........].    
    "Ancient Martian history tells of colonies on [..........], of cities, air-plants and supplies left intact when the place was evacuated," Usulor told us. "Many thousands of years ago, of course. But most of it is probably still usable."    
    "Why was the world evacuated?" I asked.    
    "Because of radiations, the old books say. That might mean cosmic rays, or ultra-violet or radium emanations. It might mean almost anything."    
    (...)   
    AS WE got nearer to [..........] we saw that what looked like disks of pale green glass were dotted about the surface of the tiny world, some of them miles in diameter.    
    "Air and temperature traps," Usulor explained. "Former Martian colonies. Radiant heat goes in through the glassite readily but seeps out only very slowly."    
    I could easily understand that. I have grown tomatoes in a hothouse or greenhouse. On [..........] men had tried to live in giant greenhouses. Without much success, it appeared.    
    (…)   
    After a long, long journey we reached [..........]. A desert, uninviting world, apart from the hothouse colonies. Jagged mountains, thin air, polar ice-caps, no extensive seas, some stunted vegetation in the valleys. No place for a honeymoon...

entry 616      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

Through the smoky yellow veil they made out a strange moving thing that, as they peered, revealed itself as a dark disc, its edge inclined toward them, slowly turning. It was as large around as a tea-tray, and was thickest in the middle, so that its shape was like that of two saucers, placed with concave faces together. Its spinning motion increased and it drew nearer. They could see now that it was composed of living tissue.    
    Closer it came, and closer. It spun out of sight to the left, coming up against the ship, and a moment later came into view again, but a few inches from the port. There it hovered, almost within arm’s length of them, while they stood silent, fearing that a sound or a motion might cause it to go away.   
    Slowly it revolved, and nowhere upon it could they see the slightest trace of a visible organ. Yet it quite patently sensed their presence, their attitude, as it hovered there. After a little time, it suddenly went spinning away again, to be swallowed by the enveloping vapors.   
    (…)   
    THE spinning creatures ranged in size from soup-plate to cartwheel, and in color from soft tan to deep purplish brown. All were in motion, whether merely bobbing up and down as if floating on a quiet stream or skimming and whirling here and there like leaves in a high wind. Yet none of them left the vicinity of the ship.   
    Suddenly a larger disc floated into view — one as large as a round table-top, and almost black in hue. It went straight from bow to stern of the Nonpareil, as if making an inspection. Then it drew away. The smaller discs fell back, too, ranging themselves in a sort of curtain formation beyond the big one.

entry 615      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

SLOWLY, as if wearied by eight unbroken months in space, the Nonpareil settled down upon a gently rolling plain, while three faces appeared at the ports to look out at the strange landscape.    
    Around them lay stretches of mossy turf that gleamed, now violet, now green, like changeable silk. Here and there it was tufted with clumps of strange bushes. In the middle distance a silvery stream wound its way, and farther on were wooded hills. In the blue sky above drifted fleecy clouds, and two lights gleamed — the great banded globe of [..........] and the smaller but much more brilliant sun. The expedition had reached [..........].   
    (…)   
    The trio set out, finding and discussing new wonders at every step. From the bushes they gathered fleshy leaves and particolored flowers of great size. The stir of small life was all about them. Once a rose-colored creature, the size of a squirrel and walking upon many legs, scuttled away from under their very feet and darted into a hole. They approached a bush-clump to see a larger thing peering interestedly at them from the branches to which it clung, but it withdrew to some hiding place before they could get a good glimpse of it. Overhead they saw floating specks that might be large birds. Nowhere, however, did they see cultivation or other sign of human works.   
    (…)   
    They returned to the ship, and the next several days were spent in making brief hops here and there about the little world. Once they paused on the shore of an ocean and gathered strange shellfish for their collection of specimens. Another time they perched high on a mountain top while Bromburg and Duvelskoe poked into what looked like metal deposits. At last they returned to the very spot where they first landed...

entry 614      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

Crash! There was a vivid flash! Our ship lurched, rushed mightily through space; entered a mad falling arc of acceleration! I was dazed; for a moment I could not believe my senses. We had survived!    
    “Saved!” ejaculated Professor D Four-Ten delightedly. “Saved! The charge of electricity neutralized by jumping across in a spark! Don’t you see, the rarefied air of this little planet enabled the surplus electrons of the electric charge to jump through space! Saved!”   
    “I’m not so sure of that, Professor,” I put in, noticing something below the ship. He followed my pointing finger. From the rocky surface of the planet below the weird metallic inhabitants of [..........] were floating upward — creatures with a tiny ring of eyes about the upper portion of the cylindrical body. A vast squadron of the creatures were materializing from a series of what looked like ant mounds, and they maneuvered swiftly upward.   
    “I can’t understand!” murmured Professor D Four-Ten in perplexity. “The metal people of [..........] have always been so peaceful!”   
    For almost half a century the Earth-Mars Space Line had maintained a refuelling station on [..........], unhindered by the peaceable metal men, who went their own way quietly. Now, however, they looked decidedly vicious and the little eyes in the strange shapes changed to angry colors like semaphores. Never before had they been known to offer battle!   
    (…)   
    As the long flight of metal figures approached from below, the tentacles from their middles unwrapped and stretched forward in anticipation!   
    (…)   
    The bodies of dully scintillant metal approached swiftly and their tentacles wrapped about our sphere. The malevolent eyes glared in at us. Soon the twining metal-sheathed tentacles were wound about the ship as more and more of the creatures added their weight to our vessel. Through the spaceports their thickly twining tentacles were visible, shutting so much light out that we were in partial shadow. Then our sphere began once more to sink.   
    We were being dragged down to [..........], by a cloud of passing meteorites...

entry 613      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

 ...They had come halfway around the sun to meet it, and now [..........] lay in quadrature to them, its first quarter, showing them half its illuminated side. At most it was but 1200 miles in diameter, a small world whose mass was surprisingly great in proportion to its size. Wendell had already explained to Beale that [..........]’s surface gravity was in excess of that felt by men of Earth when upon the moon. That was because it was made tip of the heaviest of metals. Now the captain wanted to know if Wendell knew where they were to land.    
    In half an hour the little world looked like a bowl with its upturned edges. They were circling it, passing from the light into the darkness twice. They saw it had no really large areas of water. There were innumerable lakes and rivers, but nothing that could be rightfully called a sea. There were mountains in one hemisphere, but for the most it was flat or slightly rolling country. One thing was particularly noticeable about the night side, the fact that the vegetation gave off a ghostly light, glowed of itself like phosphorus. The lakes were molten silver, the jungles a riot of wild color.   
    (…)   
    With wondering eyes the men stared at the queer life about them, for it was even stranger than it had appeared from above. The trees were for the most part a hundred feet high, straight, slender with trunks that resembled those of a palm tree: smooth, glistening, barkless; but the branches that jutted from their crowns were unlike anything they had ever seen. They were long, stiff, needlepointed spikes with a feathery lacy froth of needles. The branches were no more than three to four feet in length, solitary and uncrowded. The only shade cast by the whole tree was the straight unvarying image of its polelike length.   
    Vines clung somehow to the unyielding trees, vines that dropped festoons of needles from their length linking the jungle trees together. Around the trees was growing a veritable mat of stiff-stalked young trees; bushes, stocky plants, all with underdeveloped spiky leaves and branches. Only on the ground was there a growth with a fleshier leaf — broad and flat, prone to the soil. The bushes mostly resembled palmettos and cacti.   
    Nature, at first lavish, had turned about-face and with niggardly hand finished her work, stinting the land of her natural abundance. Then she had remembered and was more prolific, for on each tree, weighing down the vines, bending the backs of the shrubs, palmettos and cacti were the fruit clusters. Red, yellow, blue, orange, green they were; long banana-shaped fruit, globulars of all sizes, berries, melons — round, oval, cylindrical, every shape and form; luscious peaches, over-sized pears, mouth-watering berries, scarlet cherries, purple grapes, juicy plums, golden oranges ... all were here in wild profusion, in wild fecundity.   
    “It’s the sun,” explained Wendell. “Were the leaves of the trees broad they would absorb too much vitality beside that already partaken of from the radioactive soil, hence they would shrivel and die under the glare of the white-hot sun. Nature can be more prodigal with the fruit because there are enough to make use of it . . . See...” He pointed out flocks of tiny birds, no larger than humming birds darting among the fruit, the swarms of insects feeding in armies, the dainty head of some animal feeding on fruit fallen to the ground.   
    Another creature that looked like a cross between a bear and a monkey was climbing a tall tree toward an especially appetizing cluster of fruit hanging by a slender cord from a vine. The fruit proved just out of reach of the animal, but with infinite patience the bear angled for the prize with long forelegs. At last, unable to gain the fruit by that means, it let go its hold upon the tree-trunk to make a lunge for the fruit cluster, and landed upon it with all four feet. The vine held and the animal went about the prosaic business of harvesting its dinner without a care as to what would happen when it ate away its support.   
    A shadow fell against the trees and ground. Glancing up the men saw an unusually large, brightly-plumaged bird plunging downward. Through the thick walls of the ship they could not hear its cry, but they could see its paralyzing effect upon the flock of humming birds which for the nonce seemed suspended on quivering wings unable to move forward or backward. The killer had time to swoop down, gobble a third of their number before their brains began to function properly again, and they could escape. The big fellow made no attempt to follow. He simply turned to the fruit nearest at hand and commenced to gorge himself.   
    Beale and Jimson, standing with Wendell, grew aware of even more life in the jungle. Birds of every size and description flew through the trees, creatures lurked among the vines, snakes and tiny furred things raced up and down tree trunks and vines, flinging themselves through the air. There was life on the ground, peering from between the heavy, thick leaves of the vines that crawled upon the earth’s bosom. Suddenly Wendell was pointing out a strange apparition to his companions.   
    It stood staring back at them from between two tree trunks, a creature five feet tall, upright on two legs. It had a small pointed face that was fox-like, yet faintly resembled a human face! The head was round, bulging upward from heavy beetling brows. The ears that came to a point at the top were set on the side of the head slightly below the level of the large black eyes. The nose was long, pointed — the cheeks and jowls sloped forward adding to its animal-like appearance. The mouth was wide, the chin rather heavy-set, incongruous looking to the rest of the face, giving it its humanness that was otherwise lacking except in the rather intelligent set of the large beady black eyes.   
    The face and body were bare of hair, the skin a slate brown. The body was proportionately slender to its height, in repose it leaned forward so that the thin arms dangled below the knee. Hands like the face were free of fur, delicately-boned, almost claws...

entry 612      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

[........] the lava vent opened into a weird underworld. Headfirst, mittened hands vainly clawing for a hold on the glassy walls of the tube. Red Tonti shot from a little hole halfway up the cavern-wall and crashed to the rocky floor. Stunned, he lay for a moment gasping, staring about him. Twenty years since he was here last!    
    Above, the roof is hidden in blackness, but walls and floor are alive with wan white luminescence, greentinged and feeble. Down the ledged wall trickle streams of moisture, and where they wet the soft rock grow colonies of lichens, flat and pulpy, with great white spore-cups that glow eerily. The floor is wet with glowing slime, where soft, flabby monsters writhe and wriggle hungrily. For perhaps ten seconds Red has lain there, and now as he struggles dizzily to his feet his groping hands sink wrist-deep in the avid mass of life that has been creeping to him, eager to feed! One clings to his arm — a great, pale slug-thing, oozing green light, that mouths the joints of his armor and spatters with his angry blow, leaving thick slime that drips slowly from his fingers! Another of the damn things is on his helmet, sucking with flabby lips at the quartz. He can see right through it, into its belly — see the horrid writhing of its gut as it sucks at him! God! How can such things live? Give him space, and the planets!   
    Here in the festering bowels of [..........] there was sound again, and Red’s boots squelched sickeningly in the luminous morass of foul life as he hurried to the low corridor opening from the cavern wall. A pale white glow lit the whole length of the tunnel, to where it opened into darkness, high on the wall of a great underground vault, cleaving the body of [..........] for mile on mile. A viscid trickle of glowing ooze lipped over the ledge where the tunnel opened, and fell into eternal darkness, down, down God knows where or into what Hell's paradise of living light!

entry 611      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

… They cut down some of the huge, pulpy plants, and with the aid of some tougher material Stetson procured somewhere, succeeded in rigging a substantial and remarkably tight little dwelling in some five hours.    
    (…)   
    Bates had been astounded to see Stetson hurling small boulders a quarter of a mile. Then he had tried it and found that the combination of mass and small weight made it possible to push the stone harder as it left the hand, use a stone whose mass was really greater than the arm, and still not have it so heavy it couldn’t be thrown. Stetson had been able to direct them unerringly after a few tries and had crushed a thing that looked like a large jackrabbit with black armor on. Stetson brought three of them back. Also he had some violently colored growths. He called them [.......... stentius], and claimed it was the correct name. Bates had his doubts. Also he doubted the edibility of mushrooms with colors so flamingly brilliant.   
    “We can eat ’em, all right. They are good, too,” promised Duke.   
    “Well, I never saw anything good to eat advertising itself so promiscuously,” replied Bates doubtfully.   
    “Apparently the things here can’t eat them. They contain a thing unusual in Terrestrial mushroom growths, a true sugar. Sugars are alcohols, and apparently alcohols are poisonous to the animals here. Also, we can thank luck that no large animals, dangerous to man, have ever been discovered here,” explained Stetson.   
    When they reached the camp. Stetson started a fire. Then he took a small knife, and opened the armorlike legs of the oversize cricket he had found. Inside was solid flesh, and despite stories he had told Parker, the meat was very good and quite tender. Its flavor was not strong, but quite different from anything they were accustomed to. However it gave out an odor, when cooking, that was detectable for amazing distances. Something like the odors of frying fish or bacon, or onions, it had the power of bringing the presence of an appetite acutely before the conscious mind.   
    (…)   
    “Ah — that smells good. I see you found something to eat, didn’t you?” he said delightedly, waddling up in a most extraordinary way on this lighter planet. His face was colored a deep green by [..........].

entry 610      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

Now the clouds drift up and [..........] lies far below the scudding ship — desolation rampant. Crags, deserts, great ranges and wind-carved, time-worn plateaus — all of the blue-green ice of the outer planets, ice that has lain hidden for ages under the cloud-drift that men see. But it is not barren ice that he seeks, but another thing by far, and as the rocket sinks slowly he sees his goal rising above the curve of the planet — the great [..........].   
    The ice has nearly all vanished, and harsh black rock juts in its stead in a chaotic wilderness where no ship can land unwrecked. He is uneasy, the controls are unfamiliar, do not respond as he would like. He is close to the crags now, too close, closer than he has ever been. He can see great rivers, torrents of ice and water, flowing in the heat of the [..........]. The great mass of the planet, too, is making itself felt, and he reacts to stimuli sluggishly. But the [..........] is close now, and the great updraft of hot air that will hurl them above the clouds, to safety. Like a crimson mountain it looms ahead, and already great winds are sweeping them into the maelstrom. But it is hot, and his feet and hands feel heavy — it is hard to think and act. No, he has never been so low— he can see the region about the base of the [..........], cloaked in rising vapor that is torn to shreds by the gales. It is like a deep bowl all around the great oval of the [..........], deep and green with rank vegetation. There are swamps, where the waters of the great rivers fester and rise to mist in the frozen clouds. There are great forests, and long, low plains — all gleaming strangely in the lurid glare of the [..........].

(…)

The air was thick, stifling and unbearably hot and humid, trying to burst into his body and strangle him. His ears throbbed with a dull thunderous roar, from the greater air-pressure, and an awful weight was bearing him down. Slowly, painfully he rolled over on his face, pressed down into the thick, springy moss [..........]. Inch by inch he gathered his limbs beneath him, struggling against the weight of his space-suit — five hundred pounds of matter crushing him into the ground. His head rose above the moss; he looked about him.
    Above the forest the [..........] loomed through the rising mists — a huge mountain of molten rock, oval, raised from the planet’s face by the whirling centrifuge and tidal drag that will some day rip it free and give it birth [..........]. Then the forest — a matted tangle of unearthly olive-green tree-ferns, glossy and uncannily still — at its edge the rocket, by Fate’s whim unharmed in its fall…

entry 609      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

The valley floor was a flat expanse of gray pumice, dust deposited here by the action of swift, tenuous winds. A huge, jagged rock, gaunt and black and fanglike, projected upward from its center, a low' ridge of solid ground leading to it. Dotting the valley were spiny gray spheroids, half-embedded. Within their thick shells, moisture, which was absorbed during the rare times that a little of it seeped into the desiccated soil of the place, was sealed up. Those spheroids might have been called plants, though their metabolism differed considerably from that of any terrestrial flora. And they were not actively alive now ; the water in them was frozen solid, for this was clearly not a warm season.
    [...]
    There was a sickly, whitish yellow haze over the valley. The air was extremely thin, but the speed of its currents, combining with a feeble gravity, enabled it to support such fine debris blown from [..........]. From a deep mountain gorge a creamy wisp, looking like a discolored cirrus cloud, projected. But it was only the path of the incoming wind, made visible by the dust and other solid material it bore…

entry 608      [contributed by Zendexor]

>>  here's where this is

The astroship arrived at the beginning of evening twilight.
    Sophie Kasvin was given the privilege of stepping out first. Her gaze eagerly scanned the vast greyish plain bordered on its surroundings by gigantic rock formations that defined the horizon.
    The temperature was rather warm. However, inhaling the air gave her lungs a pleasant
refreshing sensation, due to the high oxygen saturation.
    A distant murmur could be heard like a prolonged rumble of thunder. The rumble, contrasting with the sepulchral silence of the landscape, added a disturbing, awe-inspiring note.
    "The Black Sea!" said Charles Javin, straining his ears. "Don't you hear the roar of its waves?"
    Ted shuddered and looked at Sophie. At that moment, a dense chain of reddish clouds obscured the radiant semicircle of the sun. A strange gloom fell upon the Earthlings who, astonished, gazed at the inhospitable [..........] region.
    Unconsciously, Sophie turned up the collar of her sweater in an instinctive gesture of protection.
    "It's cold," she said, her teeth chattering.
    Atartuk consulted the tiny thermometer attached to the face of his watch.
    "Twenty-six degrees," he replied. "The cold we feel is a mere nervous reflection of our thoughts."
    Ted Drummond set off toward a nearby rise in the terrain. A few minutes later, he stood atop a promontory overlooking a spectacle breath-taking in its grandeur and sinister significance.
    In the iridescent light of twilight, the polished surface of an ebony-black sea shimmered. It stretched to infinity on the horizon. At Ted's feet, more than two hundred meters deep, a gentle swell broke against the cliffs, producing a rhythmic murmur with a steady frequency and thick resonances.
    Drummond picked up a large pebble and threw it forcefully. A shiver of horror ran down his spine as he watched the indescribable whirlpool that formed when the stone hit. A raging jet of water erupted, spraying in all directions. For a few seconds, that small area of the sea seemed to boil and crackle. Then came the calm.
    His soul shrinking with terror, Ted Drummond turned around and bumped into Sophie Kasvin, who was standing behind him.
    "Did you see it?" he asked hoarsely. The girl nodded.
    "A living sea...!" —The words spilled from her lips as if propelled by a hallucinating mind—. "My father was right."

entry 607      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

"On the planet [..........]… where we were exiled, the three-brained beings are… how shall I tell you?—like a 'karoona,' that is to say, they have a long broad trunk, amply provided with fat, and a head with enormous protruding and shining eyes. On the back of this huge planetary body of theirs are two large wings, and on the underside two comparatively small feet with very strong claws…     
    “…the three-brained beings breeding on that planet can see freely everywhere, however great the 'kldatsakhti,' ["Kldatsakhti" means "darkness"] and can move about not only on the planet but also in its atmosphere, and occasionally some of them even manage to travel beyond its limits.    
    (…)   
    "… the planet [..........] … has a 'keskestasantnian firm surface,' that is to say, one half of its surface consists of land presence and the other of 'saliakooriapnian' masses or, as your favorites would say, one half of it is land in one continuous continent, and the other half is covered with water.    
    “…I was told that the 'toof-nef-tef very much wished to see me.    
    "'Toof-nef-tef is the name given on the planet [..........] to the chief of all the three-brained beings breeding there, that is, he corresponds to the being who, on your planet, is called 'king. '    
    "I had known this toof-nef-tef, or king, in his youth, when he was only a 'plef-perf-noof' A plef-perf-noof is almost the same as a zirlikner on our planet and a physician on your planet Earth.    
    (…)   
    “… I was informed that the toof-nef-tef of the planet wished to see me personally…
    "This [..........] toof-nef-tef was already...an extremely old being, by the time-calculation of the planet [..........], he was about twelve thousand years old..."

entry 606      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

"During the period I am speaking of, I visited most of the planets of that solar system, those already populated and those still unpopulated.
    "Personally I liked best of all the three-centered beings dwelling on the planet ['……….']. Their outer form is quite unlike ours, resembling that of the bird-being, 'raven. '
    (…)
    "The verbal intercourse of these raven-beings of the planet [……….] is somewhat like our own. But their way of speaking is the most beautiful I have ever heard.
    "It can be compared to the music of our best singers when with all their being they sing in a minor key.
    "And as for the quality of their relations with each other—I don't even know how to describe it. It can be known only by existing among them and having the experience oneself.
    "All that can be said is that these bird-beings have hearts exactly like those of the angels nearest our Endless Maker and Creator.
    "They exist strictly according to the ninth commandment of our Creator: 'Consider everything belonging to another as if it were your own, and so treat it.'
    "Later, I must certainly tell you in more detail about those three-brained beings who arise and exist on the planet [……….], since one of my real friends during the whole period of my exile in that solar system was a being of that planet, who had the exterior coating of a raven and whose name was Harharkh."
    (...)
    "On the planet [……….] 'harakhrakhrookhry' is the name given to the sole chief of all the other beings on that planet... on the Earth such a chief is called a 'king.'
    (…)
    "No sooner had we arrived on the planet [……….] than the chief of our tribe there came to communicate to us the contents of an etherogram he had just received, announcing that the big intersystem ship Omnipresent would not land on the planet [……….] until early in the next 'khreh-khree-khra. '
    " 'Khreh-khree-khra,' on the planet [……….], means a period of time determined by a certain position occupied by this planet in relation, on the one hand, to the sun of its system, and on the other, to another planet of this system called 'Neptune.'
    "In one [……….]ian year there are seven of these definitely established periods, and each of them has its own name.
    "As there still remained... almost half a 'fooss' before the next 'khreh-khree-khra' or, by the time-calculation of your favorites, about a month and a half, we decided to organize our ordinary being-existence in the meantime in a more or less suitable manner...”

entry 605      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

"There is still another planet in that solar system, my dear boy, quite a small one, bearing the name ['..........']     
    (...)   
    "Though the beings of this planet have very frail planetary bodies, they have an indomitable spirit, which gives them an extraordinary perseverance and capacity for work.    
    "Their external form is like that of large ants, and like them they are always bustling about, working both on and within their planet.    
    "The results of their ceaseless activity are already plainly visible.    
    "I once happened to notice that in two of our years they had 'tunneled' the whole of their planet. They were obliged to undertake this task on account of the abnormal 'climatic conditions' there, caused by the fact that this planet arose unexpectedly, and therefore the regulation of its climatic harmony had not been prearranged by the Higher Powers.   
    "The climate of this planet is truly 'mad,' and in its variability could give points to the most high-strung, hysterical women existing on another planet of that solar system, which I shall also tell you about.    
    "Sometimes the cold is so intense on this [..........] that everything is frozen through and through, and it becomes impossible for beings to breathe in the open atmosphere, and then suddenly it gets so hot that you could fry an egg in a jiffy.    
    "There are only two short periods on that peculiar little planet, namely, before and after it completes its orbit around a neighboring planet, when the weather is so glorious that for several rotations the whole planet is in bloom, and yields the various products for the first being-food of its inhabitants—even greatly in excess of what they need for existence in that strange intraplanetary kingdom they have devised, where they are sheltered from the vagaries of this mad climate and all the inharmonious changes in the state of the atmosphere..."

entry 604      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

We stared for a long time at that wall of scarlet plant-life, lacking the vocabulary to express our reactions to it.     
    The higher part of the weed-bank had the appearance of being smooth and rounded, especially towards its visible crest. Here it looked like a gentle, undulating hill, although by looking in more detail at its surface we could see that what appeared to be an unbroken face was in fact made up of thousands or millions of branches.    
    Lower down, in the part of the growth where we had lain, its appearance was quite different. Here the newer plants were growing, presumably from seeds thrown out from the main bulk of vegetation. Both Amelia and I remarked on a horrible feeling that the wall was inexorably advancing, throwing out new shoots and piling up its mass behind. Then, even as we looked aghast at this incredible weed-bank, we saw that the impact of the sun's rays was having an effect, for from all along the wall there came a deepthroated groaning, and a thrashing, breaking sound. One branch moved, then another... then all along that living cliff-face branches and stems moved in a semblance of unthinking animation.    
    (...)   
    As we moved along the weed-bank we came across more and more of the peasants, all of whom seemed to be working without supervision. Their conditions of work were atrocious, as in the more crowded areas the spilled sap created large swamps, and some of the poor wretches were standing in muddy liquid above their waists. As Amelia observed, and I could not help but agree, there was much room for reform here.    
    We walked for about half a mile until we reached a point where the wooden trough came to a confluence with three others, which flowed from different parts of the weed-bank. Here the sap was ducted into a large pool, from which it was pumped by several women using a crude, hand-operated device into a subsidiary system of irrigation channels. From where we were standing we could see that these flowed alongside and through a large area of cultivated land. On the far side of this stood two more of the metal towers.    
    Further along we saw that the peasants were cutting the weed on the slant, so that as we had been walking parallel to their workings we eventually found what it was that lay beyond the bank of weeds. It was a water-course, some three hundred yards wide. Its natural width was only exposed by the cropping of weeds, for when we looked to the north, in the direction from which we had walked, we saw that the weeds so choked the waterway that in places it was entirely blocked. The total width of the weed-bank was nearly a mile, and as the opposite side of the waterway was similarly overgrown, and with another crowd of peasants cutting back the weed; we realized that if they intended to clear the entire length of the waterway by hacking manually through the weeds then the peasants were confronted with a task that would take them many generations to accomplish.    
    Amelia and I walked beside the water, soon leaving the peasants behind. The ground was uneven and pitted, presumably because of the roots of the weeds which had once grown here, and the water was dark-coloured and undisturbed by ripples. Whether it was a river or a canal was difficult to say; the water was flowing, but so slowly that the movement was barely perceptible, and the banks were irregular. This seemed to indicate that it was a natural watercourse, but its very straightness belied this assumption...

entry 603      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

   ...The smoke and steam cleared. The explorers pressed their faces to the windows.    
    Fog rolled in, darkness approached. Alien nature seemed to hide from prying eyes.   
    Gigantic reddish trunks, bare and smooth, branchless, stretched upward in columns. There they blossomed into dark tents. There was no grass beneath them. Instead, serpentine roots intertwined in knots. And between the trunks stretched... nets?   
    Alyosha froze. Nets! Intricately woven nets!
    But the scientist suppressed the dreamer in him. These were vines, tenacious, twining around the trunks, woven in an intricate pattern. The thicket seemed impenetrable.
    Alyosha peered until his eyes ached, trying to spot any movement.
    But darkness approached. Soon everything disappeared... Lights began to flicker in the forest and in the swamp. If it weren't for them, the darkness would be total. The inhabitants of [..........] never see the stars or the sun...      Alyosha looked expectantly at Ilya Yuryevich.
    "Wait," Bogatyrev immediately understood. "Roman, turn on the external microphones."
    Alyosha froze. Blood pounded in his ears.
    And suddenly, without interruption, a wave of sound burst into the cabin, a terrifying symphony, brutally capturing, overwhelming...
    The receding, galloping rumble of a rumbling chariot or an avalanche of rocks gave way to a close howl. Then came a piercing squeal and a cry of pain, heartbreaking, hoarse. And suddenly the wings flapped...
    Pulka screeched desperately and scraped the bulkhead.
    Dobrov wanted to turn on the searchlight, but Ilya Yuryevich stopped him.
    Now a steady, measured hooting could be heard. Alyosha grabbed the back of the chair. Could it really be a machine?
    There was a cracking sound, as if fabric was being torn apart, and immediately—a rising whistle, dying at the highest pitch.
    Then a melodic note, then another, then a third... Singing? Alyosha looked at Ilya Yuryevich with wide eyes.
    He shook his head.
    Dobrov turned on the spotlight.
    And suddenly everything fell silent, as if the microphone had been turned off, froze, crouched.
    Only the dog whined piteously in its compartment.   
    A blinding light tore the nearby trunks of giant ferns and the network of vines, now somehow white, from the darkness. The serpentine roots seemed frozen in their struggle, frozen.
    In the thicket, angry little stars sparkled with reflected lights... And not a movement...

entry 602      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is

 ...Lost in such thoughts, he tripped over a small black rock that was almost invisible in the deep shadow of a larger boulder. He caught himself in time to keep from falling, then noticed that Dorn had stopped walking and was staring at an advancing object. At the same time, the ground began to tremble. Carson, looking up, thought at first that a mountain had begun to move.
    It was not a mountain, however, but a living creature somewhat like a dinosaur, as a second glance showed him. Its dull, scaly covering gave it a rock-like appearance. The thing was about fifty feet in length, and about a third that in width and height.
    Except for an elongated neck and a relatively tiny topknot, such as the human-appearing [..........] possessed, the major portion of the creature’s body appeared to be a single undifferentiated mass of what Carson supposed to be flesh.
    There were six short legs that could hardly have supported the weight of so huge an animal on Earth, but were quite sufficient here because of the lesser gravity. And set in the topknot’s forehead were hideous eyes, four of them in a semi-circle, glaring viciously...
    (…)
    ...From the edge of the desert on, the pace of the expedition slowed down to a crawl. Carson, staring out at the barren rocks that stretched mile after mile in front of them, found it difficult to believe that this was an expanse of wasteland greater than any on Earth.
    At the horizon something seemed to rise in the air, ascend to the sun, and then come plummeting down. Carson called the attention of the leader of the [..........], a member of the purple race, to the unexpected phenomenon. It seemed impossible that any creatures should be able to make their homes in this desolate waste.
    The [..........] raised his topknot cautiously, uncovering his eyes, and stared. Again the object rose in the air, shimmering like a prism of glass in the bright sunlight, and again it swept down.
    “It is a flyer,” the [..........] said uneasily.
    “Is it alive?”
    “Very much alive.”
    It seemed incredible to Carson. A bird or a plane needed air in which to fly. There wasn’t enough air here to support a mosquito.
    The flyer was coming closer. A third time it soared upward, and then sank to the ground once more. Apparently it did not possess the ability to stay up very long. Apparently—
    Carson’s eyes were glued to the creature. It did not really fly— it leaped. That was the secret of its travel through the air. Carson imagined what a large creature possessing the leaping ability of a flea would do on this planet of low gravity, and knew he had the answer.
    The flyer shimmered like a piece of glass, because it reflected the sun’s light and heat almost completely. That was one of the best ways to keep cool on this overheated desert. Simply not to absorb heat...
    (…)
    ...Presently, a few feet ahead of Nora, in the space between two enormous rocks, there was a darker patch on the ground, several inches across, like a small hole dug by a miniature meteor. The girl flashed her lights at it, but the black patch reflected no light at all.
    She approached until she was almost above it. Then she saw with astonishment that the object was moving, inching along the ground at a snail’s pace toward her.
    One of the [..........] noticed her surprise.
    “They are alive, but not dangerous. All the same, it is well to keep away from them.”
    “How can they live here?”
    “There is in their bodies a liquid that never freezes, no matter how cold.”
    Haines touched her shoulder, making contact between his suit and her own, so that the sound of his voice would carry.
    “Sounds like liquid air to me,” he said.
    Nora was dubious. She turned to the [..........].
    “Is it the gas we breathe?”
    “That freezes. This does not.”
    “Maybe it’s liquid helium,” Haines ventured. "Unless the temperature got closer to absolute zero than I can imagine it could, helium would stay liquid.”
    “These creatures absorb radiations of all sorts,” the [..........] went on. “They knew we were approaching because of the radiations of heat from our suits. The light attracts them also, but it is too much for them. They can’t stand a sharp light.”
    As Nora stared at it, the black patch suddenly exploded. Where it had been, there was nothing whatever left.
    “It absorbed too much heat,” the [..........] explained. “The liquid turned into gas, the pressure inside became too great, and there was an explosion.”

entry 601      [contributed by Lone Wolf]

>>  here's where this is