Tons of sinuous muscle, buried in fetid
Venusian slime, he knew how to survive.
Equipped with an ageless brain and lightning
instincts, he also knew how to die!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1946.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He stirred slightly, the ponderously long, yet smoothly-flowing linesof his body, trembling vaguely with the undulating rhythm of the tallpale watergrass. Dim and monstrous shadows floated past, then suddenlyspurted in frenzied speed to devour or be devoured. And the dark bluetint of the swamp water browned in wavering veins of blood.
An alien organism had come to his world. Its strange radiations piercedhis brain in waves of bizarre beauty. Its uniqueness was disturbingthe long sleep he was enjoying in the warm soft slime. A being from afar world, which he read symbolized in her confused mind as EARTH. Andfacing certain death, she was utterly disoriented with terror.
She reacted mentally to his world. The name she applied to it wasVenus, Planet of the Morning and that was beauty of expression. Shewas beauty and so were her thoughts; her world must have been of thatnature, too. His world had no beauty anywhere in it; beauty would bealien here, yet he was tired of ugliness.
His massive brain circuit contacted hers in its subtle supersonicway, knowing everything she had known or could know, thinking as shethought, reacting as she reacted far above him where she wanderedalone along the vaporous fringe of his swamp. And he suddenly realizedhow alien she really was, for here on his world she was like a bubblefloating beneath the surface of his lake, on the edge of countlessdangers, confronted by a thousand deaths, but completely unaware oftheir nearness or exact nature. This was not her world. It would neverbe a world for her species. And abruptly he wanted to see her, touchher. Touch this beautiful bubble before it burst. For he had neverknown beauty before, and he was hungry for it.
One giant flipper moved softly, and the ponderously sleek form, longand pointed and glistening through the water, lanced upward, streakingthe depths in a silent blurring arc.
He studied her with curious and new emotions through the thick,heavy-hanging mists, his long serpentine form curled out along theglobal swamp, undulating between the spongy swaying trunks of twobulbous trees, half-buried in the thick iridescent mud, and effectivelyhidden from her alien eyes by interlocking crinoids and gigantictowering ferns.
Monstrous insects droned broodingly through the sultry vapors andventured to light on his gleaming hide. A quick twitch of long steelytendons blotted them out in lightning grips. But his thickly liddedeyes remained fixed on the girl who had come from Earth.
He was not disappointed in her beauty of form. It had a soft, rhythmicsmoothly-flowing curvature. It seemed to him a perfect aestheticcreation of its kind. The contrast, too, impressed him—her frail,delicate form treading so fearfully among gigantic flora and fauna ofendless varieties, each vying with the others in size and ferocity.Because of this contrast she seemed more beautiful here, perhaps, thanshe might on her own world. But she should not be here; she would findonly death here. She did not understand this world, and she never would.
He felt the pangs of an emotion utterly strange to him. He plungedthe supersonic fingers of his brain deeply into hers and found anexpression there that would vaguely define that emotion. LOVE. It wasan abstract symbol that on her own world meant the crystallizat