Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930Pelcher, Anthony
Science
Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930
Pelcher, Anthony
Science fiction -- Periodicals; Science fiction, American -- Periodicals
"For a little while conditions stayed the same within that glass. So
thick was the liquid gas in there at first that I could see nothing.
Then it began to clear, and I saw to my surprise that the milky gas was
disappearing because it was being forced in by the rays from the lights
in through the pores into the body itself. As though my form was sucking
it in like a sponge. The scientist and his helper were tense and taut
with excitement. And suddenly my comfortable feeling left me. Until then
it had seemed so smooth and velvety and peaceful drifting around over
their heads, as though lying on a soft, fleecy cloud. But now I felt a
sudden squeezing of my spirit body. Then I was in an agony. Before I
knew what I was doing my spirit was clinging to the outside of that
twisting glass bell, clawing to get into the body that was coming back
to life! The glass now was perfectly clear of the gas, though as yet
there was no sign of life in the body inside to hint to the scientist
that he was to be successful. But I knew it. For I fought desperately to
break in through the glass to get back into my discarded shell of a body
again, knowing I must get in or die a worse death than I had before.
"Then my sharper eyes noted a slight shiver passing over the white thing
before me, and the scientist must have seen it in the next second, for
he sprang forward with a choking cry of delight. Then the lolling head
inside lifted a bit. I--still desperately clinging with my spirit hands
to the outside, and all the time growing weaker and weaker--I saw the
breast of my body rise and fall. The assistant picked up a heavy steel
hammer and stood ready to crash open the glass at the right moment. Then
my once dead eyes opened in there to look around, while I, clinging and
gasping outside, just as I had on the scaffold, went into a deeper,
darker blackness than ever. Just before my spirit life died utterly I
saw the eyes of my body realize completely what was going on, then--from
the inside now--I saw the scientist give the signal that caused the
assistant to crash away the glass shell with one blow of his hammer.
"They reached in for me then, and I fainted. When I came back to
consciousness I was being carefully, slowly revived, and nursed back to
life by oxygen and a pulmotor."
* * * * *
The terrible creature telling us this tale paused again to look around.
My knees were weak, my clothes wet with sweat.
"Is that all?" I asked in a piping, strange voice, half sarcastic, half
unbelieving, and wholly spellbound.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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