The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Planetoid Of Peril, by Paul Read online

  his first direction. Perhaps this deviation heralding the short night before he shook his would throw the rock terror off.

  head somberly and gave the fatal riddle up.

  It didn't. He heard the steady smashing

  He rose to his feet, intending to make

  noise stop. For an instant there was a silence his way back to the concealment—such as it in the darkness of the asteroid that was

  was—of the forest. It might be that he could painful. Then the crashing was resumed, this find safety in some lofty treetop till day time drawing straight toward where he was dawned again. Then he stopped, and listened.

  hidden. Somehow the thing had learned of his What was that?

  change of direction.

  From far away to the left he could hear

  He continued his flight into the night,

  faint sounds of some gargantuan stirring. And, his eyes staring glassily into the darkness, his coincident with the flickering out of the last expression the ghastly one of a condemned

  scrap of sunlight, a distant crashing came to man. And as he fled the crashing behind him his ears as an enormous body smashed like an told how he was followed—easily infallibly, armored ship through trees and thorn bushes in spite of all his twisting and turning and and trailing vines. The rock thing had found efforts at concealment. What hellish

  his trail and was after him again.

  intelligence the monster must possess!

  A SECOND time Harley fled through the dim-

  HE RAN for eternities. He ran till his chest lighted night, stumbling over boulders and was on fire, and the sobbing agony of his

  tripping on creepers. But this time his flight breathing could be heard for yards. He ran till was not that of panic. Frightened enough, he spots of fire floated before his eyes and the was; but his mind was working clearly as he blood, throbbing in his brain, cut out the noise leaped through the forest away from the of the devilish pursuit behind him. At long last source of the crashing.

  his legs buckled under him, and he fell, to rise The first thing he noted was that no more.

  though—as far as his ears could inform him—

  He was done. He knew it. His was the

  he was managing to keep his lead, he wasn't position of the hunted animal that lies panting, outdistancing his horrible pursuer by a yard.

  every muscle paralyzed with absolute

  Dark though the night was, and far away as he exhaustion, and glares in an agony of

  contrived to keep himself, the colossus helplessness at the hunter whose approach seemed to cling to his trail as easily as though spells death.

  following a well-blazed path.

  The crashing grew louder. The tremor

  He climbed a tree, faced at right angles

  of the ground grew more pronounced as the

  to the course he had pursued, and swung for vast pursuer pounded along with its tons and

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  12

  tons of weight. Harley gazed into the hastened its ground-shaking pace. With one blackness back along the way he had come,

  last stride, it came to Harley's side and loomed his eyes sunk deep in the hollows fatigue had far above, the unwinking eyes glaring down at carved in his face, and waited for the end. The him.

  dark night darkened still more with the

  The three arms, hinged at equidistant

  approach of another swift, inexorable dawn.

  points at the base of the horrible head, slowly There was a terrific rending of tree

  lowered toward his prostrate form. There was trunks and webbed creepers. Dimly in the

  a grating noise as the creature hinged in the darkness he could see something that towered middle and bent low, bringing its enormous, on a level with the tallest trees, something that staring eyes within two yards of his face.

  moved as rapidly and steadily as though

  One of its hands closed over his leg,

  driven by machinery. Fear so great that it tentatively, experimentally, as though to

  nauseated him, swept over him in waves; but ascertain of what substance he was made. He he could not move.

  cried aloud as the rock vise, like a gigantic The first grey smear of dawn appeared

  lobster claw, squeezed tight. The thing drew in the sky. In the ghostly greyness he got a back abruptly. Then the chasm of its mouth clearer and clearer sight of the monster. He opened a little, for all the world as though groaned and cowered there while it giving vent to soundless, demoniac laughter.

  approached him—more slowly now, eyeing

  All three of the vise-like hands clamped over him with staring, stony orbs in which there him—lightly enough, considering their vast was no expression of any kind, of rage or bate, size, and intimating that the colossus did not of curiosity or triumph.

  mean to kill him for a moment or two—but so Great stumps of legs, with no joints in

  cruelly that his senses swam with the pain of them, on which the colossus stalked like a it.

  moving stone tower—a body resembling an

  He felt the grip relax. The vast stone

  enormous boulder carved by an amateurish

  pincers were lifted from him; slithered to the hand to portray the trunk of a human being—a ground beside him.

  craggy sphere of rock for a head, set directly The first blinding rays of the sun were

  atop the deeply riven shoulders—a face like beating straight on the colossal figure, which the horrible mask of an embryonic gargoyle—

  glittered fantastically, like a huge splintered a mouth that was simply a lipless chasm that opal, in their brilliance.

  opened and closed with the sound of rocks

  It glared down at Harley. The abyss of

  grinding together in a slow-moving glacier—

  a mouth opened as though again giving vent to the whole veiled thinly by trailing lengths of silent, infernal laughter. Then, with the noise snapped vines, great shattered tree boughs, of a landslide, the giant form settled slowly to bushes, all uprooted in its stumping march the ground. The rock half-moons of curtains through the forest! Harley closed his eyes to dropped over the expressionless, dull eyes.

  shut out the sight. But in spite of himself they The whole great figure quivered, and grew

  flashed open again and stared on, as though still. It lay without movement, stretched along hypnotized by the spectacle they witnessed.

  the ground like a craggy, opalescent hill.

  THE GREY of dawn lightened to the first rose DAZED, stunned by such fantastic behavior, tint of the rising sun. As though stung to Harley struggled wearily to his feet. He had action by the breaking of day, the thing been a dead man as surely as though shot with

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  13

  a ray-gun. One twitch of those terrible rock covering, it was impervious to his wildest pincers would have broken him in two pieces.

  attempts at destruction. And it knew it, too; It had seemed as though that deadly twitch hadn't it laughed just before sinking down to were surely forthcoming. And then the thing slumber through the asteroidal day?

  had released him—and had lain down to go to With his Sco drill he might have

  sleep! Or was it asleep?

  pierced that silicon dioxide armor till he He took a few slow steps away from it,

  reached the creature's gritty flesh. Then he expecting to see the three great tentacles flash could have used his ray-pistol, possibly

  out to capture him as a cat claws at a mouse disintegrating all its vitals and leaving only an that thinks it is escaping. The arms didn't empty rock shell sprawling hugely there in the move. Astounding as it was, Harley was free trampled underbrush.

  to run away if he chose. Why was that?

  But he had neither drill nor pistol. The

  A hint of a clue to the creature's action

  one had been wrecked by the monster; the

  began
to unfold in his mind. When he had first other he had dropped in his madness of fright, laid eyes on it, in daylight, it was asleep. It after completely exhausting its power

  had not pursued him during the preceding day, chamber.

  which argued that again it was asleep. And Half crazed by the hopelessness of his

  now, with the first touch of dawn, it was once plight, he paced up and down beside the great more quiet, immobile.

  length of animated stone. Trapped on an

  The answer seemed to be that it was

  asteroid—utterly unarmed—alone with the

  entirely nocturnal; that for some obscure, most pitiless, invulnerable creation Nature had unguessable reason sunlight induced in it a placed in a varied universe! Could Hell itself state of suspended animation. It seemed an have devised a more terrible fate?

  insane theory, but no other surmise was

  Shuddering, he turned away. He had

  remotely reasonable.

  some two and a half hours of grace, before the But if it were invariably sunk in a

  sun should set again and darkness release the coma during daylight, why had it delayed

  colossus from its torpor. There was only one killing him just a moment ago? Its every act thing he could do: place the diameter of the indicated that it possessed intelligence of a sphere between the thing and himself, and try high order. It was more than probable that it to exist through another night of terror.

  realized its limitation—why hadn't it acted in His hands went to his belt to adjust the

  accordance with that realization?

  gravity regulator strapped about his waist. By On thinking it over, he believed he had

  reducing his weight to an ounce or two, he the answer to that, too. He remembered the could make the long journey possible for his way the gaping mouth had seemed to express fatigue-numbed muscles—

  devilish mirth. The thing was playing with His hands clenched into fists, and his

  him. That was all. It had saved him for breath whistled between his set teeth as a wild another night of hopeless flight and infallible hope came to him. The touch of the regulator trailing through the forests of Z-40.

  had brought inspiration. A way to defeat the gigantic creature stretched on the ground

  HE GAZED at the monster in a frenzy of

  beside him! A way to banish it forever from impotent rage and fear. If only he could kill it the surface of this lovely little world where all somehow in its sleep! But he couldn't. In no was perfect but the monstrous thing with

  way could he harm it. Secure in its silicate which it was cursed!

  Astounding Stories

  14

  toward the Dart, to return with the heavy bow TREMBLING with the reaction wrought in

  and stern bed-plates from its hull.

  him by the faint glow of hope, he began to race toward the lake and his wrecked Blinco ONCE more the orange ball of the sun was

  Dart. It wasn't hard to find the way; the rock sinking low. The terrible brevity of those giant had left a trail as broad as a road; trees three-hour days! He had less than ten minutes, broken off like celery stalks, bushes smashed Earth time, in which to work.

  flat, tracks that looked like shallow wells sunk One of the thing's arms, or tentacles,

  into the firm ground. Fifty yards to a step, he was pointing out away from the parent mass.

  leaped along this path, praying that one object, It was twice the diameter of his body, and was just one bit of machinery in the Dart had

  ponderously heavy; but by rigging a fulcrum escaped the general wreckage.

  and lever device, with a stone as the fulcrum Arrived at the little shell at last, he was and a tough log as the lever, he managed to forced to pause a moment and compose raise it high enough to thrust one of the bed-himself before he could step into the battered plates under it. The other massive metal sheet interior. Everything hinged on this one final he laid across the top.

  chance!

  The lower rim of the sun touched the

  Drawing a long breath, he entered the

  horizon. A tremor ran through the colossus. In cabin and made his way to the stern repellor.

  frantic haste, racing against the flying

  A groan escaped his lips. It was ruined. seconds, Harley clamped the two plates tight Evidently the thing had reached in the man-against the columnar tentacle with four long hole opening with one of its three mighty

  hull-bolts from the Dart. He set the repellor in tentacles, and, with sure instinct, had fastened position on the top bed-plate, and began to its stone claws on the repellor housing. At any fasten it down.

  rate, it was ground to bits. But—there was the He felt another tremor run through the

  bow repellor.

  stone column on which he was squatting. With He went to that, and the flame of hope

  a rasping sound, one of the half-moon rock-came back to his eyes. It was untouched! He curtains the thing had for eyelids blinked open threw back the housing to make sure. Yes, the and shut. He shot the last bolt into place and inter-sliding series of plates, that reversed or tightened it.

  neutralized gravitational attraction at a touch, The stone claws, just behind which he

  were in alignment.

  had fastened the repellor, ground savagely He bent to the task of disconnecting it

  shut. The great tentacle began to lift, and from the heavy bed-plate to which it was

  carried him with it—toward the chasm of a

  bolted, his fingers flying frenziedly. Then mouth. That chasm opened wide....

  back to the torpid colossus he hurried,

  Harley straightened up and jumped for

  clutching the precious repellor tight in his the ground. As he jumped, he kicked the

  arms lest he should drop it, walking carefully repellor control bar hard over.

  lest he should fall with it.

  There was a shrieking of wind as

  There he was faced by a new difficulty

  though all the hurricanes in the universe were that at first seemed insurmountable. How battling each other. He felt himself turned could he fasten the repellor to that great, over and over, buffeted, torn at, in a mad impenetrable, opalescent bulk?

  aerial whirlpool. The whirlpool calmed as the A second time he bounded back abruptly created vacuum, caused by the

  The Planetoid of Peril

  15

  monster's rapid drive upward, passed after it since I let you have Z-40, Mr. 2Q14N20," he into space. Far overhead there was one concluded. "I was sure we'd get here only to fleeting glimpse of a pinpoint of dull find you'd been killed. But I see you've opalescence reflecting the rays of the dying managed to escape from the creature so far—

  sun. Then the pinpoint disappeared in though by the look of you, it must have been a fathomless space. With his gravity regulator narrow shave."

  adjusted to the point where it almost

  At this Harley shook off some of the

  neutralized his weight, he fell slowly back gathering dizziness that hazed his mind. He toward the ground....

  threw back his shoulders. "Managed to escape? I did better than that. I got rid of the ALMOST immediately after he had landed in

  thing forever! Yes, I'll return to Earth with the darkness that blanketed the surface of the you, but only because I need a new Blinco

  planetoid, a big space yacht settled down near Dart. I'm coming back to Z-40 at once. Perfect him. A searchlight bored a hole in the little paradise, now that I've got rid of that—

  blackness, to bathe him in cold light. Down animated—rock pile—"

  the beam came a band of men from Earth,

  The belated rescuers caught him as he

  pushing atomic cannon and gazing collapsed.

  apprehensively about them. In the lead was an elderly man with the six-bar dollar-mark [Endnote} This implement, invented by insignia of a business executive on his purple Blansco 9X247A in
2052, is not so much a

  tunic.

  "drill" as a compressor. It is somewhat He hastened to Harley's side. Harley

  superficially defined in the Universal

  only dimly heard what he said. Something to Dictionary, 2061 edition, as "a portable the effect that the man had been worried after mechanism which, by alternating gaseous

  selling the fatal asteroid. Had got in touch blasts of extreme heat and cold, breaks down with the Radivision Corporation and learned the atoms of inorganic matter, causing them to that this call number was dead. Had come

  collapse together in dense compression." Thus with men and big guns to rescue him, if it a cubic yard of earth can be reduced in size, in wasn't too late, and take him back to Earth.

  a few moments, to a pebble no larger than a Had cruised for half an hour before locating pea; which pebble would weigh, on Earth,

  him. "I've been calling myself a murderer ever close to a ton.