But it was not Thone; and this place that was clarifying to my vision
was not the Big-City. The lolos field! I came--was dragged, sucked back
to it! The lolos field--I was standing there where before I had been.
And the menacing shape was Brutar--my captor standing there grimly
confronting me.
But Bee and Eo were gone.
These two, escaping, came upon Thone, Will and Ala as I have related.
Came upon them hovering nowhere in the void. Eo was stricken. Brutar,
with what quickness and evil power of mind I could not conceive, had
struck at Eo. A wound, a derangement not physical, but mental. His
mind now--sick, stricken with disease. Almost wandering; yet not quite
unhinged--for the power of his will was holding it. Bravely he clung to
sanity. Fought for it. Yet those--his friends with him--knew then that
he fought a losing battle.
They hung there in the void. Bee was sobbing, "I don't want him to die!
He is my friend."
He held tightly to her. His eyes were very wistful. "They call you a
girl--and now I know I love you!"
The void was moving. It seemed so to Will; seemed that the blackness
was moving past them. Or was it that they--the little knot of their
hovering shapes--was moving? Then Will realized that it was Eo--his
stricken, wandering mind--dragging them somewhere. The void seemed
moving--for how long Will did not know. And then, far away, in Space
and in eons of Time, something became visible. A faint star-dust glow.
A luminous patch. It broadened; spread to the sides, and up and down
until everywhere before them lay its gleaming radiance.
The realm of disease! Will heard Ala murmur it in accents of sorrow and
apprehension. Eo was rushing for it--and no power that they had could
stop him.
The radiance intensified. A fear--a shuddering horror possessed
Will. With every instinct within him, he recoiled from the approach.
Revolted. But he held tightly to Thone and to Bee; told himself that
they would lead him safely.
Everything was glowing; they were wholly within the glow now. A
silvery glow that shone everywhere about them. But soon to the silver
there came a greenish cast. It deepened. A green, with its sickly
look of death. Green, with the silver turning to a pallid, flat, dead
whiteness. And then a mingled brown; a murk, like a fog pervading
everything.
Abruptly Will became conscious that Eo was no longer with them. His
last despairing cry; and Bee's echo. He was going--floating downward;
while they, uncontaminated, hovered above, at the edge of the realm, to
see it but not to enter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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