I view the silken stars tonight with loathing. HE sought to master their inscrutable secret meaning, and succeeded. He imagined, he dreamed; and he fed his sleep with potions, so that he might learn where his mind might be during sleep, and himself probe into the mind that wandered from space into his resting body-shell. I am no scientist, no bio-chemist, so I learned little of his methods. Only that he did succeed in removing his mind from Earth, and soaring to some remote world over and beyond this universe--where THEY dwell. And THEY knew him to be a mind of Earth, he told me. He but hinted of the evil he beheld, so potent with dread that it shattered his mind. And THEY cured him, and sent him back to earth.... "They are waiting!" he shrieked, in his grating skeleton of a voice. "They are contemptuous of man and his feeble colonies. But they fear that some day, like an overgrown idiot child, he may do them harm. But before this time--when Man has progressed into a ripeness--THEY will descend! Then they will come in hordes to exploit the world as THEY did before!" Of his return, and his assuming the role of a man, the Alien spoke evasively. It was to be assurred that this talk of his was not some repulsive caprice; to know that all of it was true, that I gripped him and beheld him. To my everlasting horror, I must know. Little in itself, what I saw, but sufficient to cause me to sink down on the stone bench in a convulsive huddle of fear. Never again in life can I tear this clutching terror from my soul. Only this: That when I looked into his staring eyes in the dimness of murky twilight, and before he understood and quickly avaunted, I glimpsed with astoundment and repugnance that between the muffling of his coat and black scarf _the INTRUDER wore a meticulously painted metal mask--to hide what I must not see_.... [Illustration] ASPHODEL: by E. T. PINE Down where skies are always dark, Where is ever heard the bark Of monstrous ebon hounds of hell, In a dreadful fearsome knell, Never fading, ever bright, With a weird and spectral light, Blooms a flower of ancient days, Shining in a crimson maze; When the black bat shrilly screams Asphodel, you haunt my dreams-- From the lands of distant death Steals the perfume of your breath: Some night soon the wind will blow Saffron seeds to fall and grow By my casement window, where, Sleeps my loved one, still and fair; Then, the night you are to bloom I shall creep from out my room, From your blossom by the wall Shall I hear her dear voice call: Mournfully the wind will cry, And shadows cover all the sky-- My lips will touch the loved dead When where you nod I lay my head.... MARMOK by Emil Pataja