Life on other planets -- Fiction; Psychological fiction; Quests (Expeditions) -- Fiction; Science fiction
He climbed into the embrasure. His feelings translated themselves into
vision, and he saw a sight that caused him to turn pale. A gigantic,
self-luminous sphere was hanging in the sky, occupying nearly the whole
of it. This sphere was composed entirely of two kinds of active beings.
There were a myriad of tiny green corpuscles, varying in size from the
very small to the almost indiscernible. They were not green, but he
somehow saw them so. They were all striving in one direction—toward
himself, toward Muspel, but were too feeble and miniature to make any
headway. Their action produced the marching rhythm he had previously
felt, but this rhythm was not intrinsic in the corpuscles themselves,
but was a consequence of the obstruction they met with. And, surrounding
these atoms of life and light, were far larger whirls of white light
that gyrated hither and thither, carrying the green corpuscles with them
wherever they desired. Their whirling motion was accompanied by the
waltzing rhythm. It seemed to Nightspore that the green atoms were not
only being danced about against their will but were suffering
excruciating shame and degradation in consequence. The larger ones were
steadier than the extremely small, a few were even almost stationary,
and one was advancing in the direction it wished to go.
He turned his back to the window, buried his face in his hands, and
searched in the dim recesses of his memory for an explanation of what he
had just seen. Nothing came straight, but horror and wrath began to take
possession of him.
On his way upward to the next window, invisible fingers seemed to him to
be squeezing his heart and twisting it about here and there; but he
never dreamed of turning back. His mood was so grim that he did not once
permit himself to pause. Such was his physical distress by the time that
he had clambered into the recess, that for several minutes he could see
nothing at all—the world seemed to be spinning round him rapidly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account