TERROR OUT OF SPACE
by LEIGH BRACKETT
An eerie story of a silver land beneath the black
Venusian seas. A grim tale of brooding terror whirling out of space to
drive men mad, of a menace without name or form, and of the man, Lundy,
who fought the horror, his eyes blinded by his will. For to see the
terror was to become its slave—a mindless automaton whose only wish
was to see behind the shadowed mysterious eyelids of "IT".
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Lundy was flying the aero-space convertible by himself. He'd been doingit for a long time. So long that the bottom half of him was dead to thetoes and the top half even deader, except for two separate aches likeulcerated teeth; one in his back, one in his head.
Thick pearly-grey Venusian sky went past the speeding flier instreamers of torn cloud. The rockets throbbed and pounded. Instrumentsjerked erratically under the swirl of magnetic currents that makes theVenusian atmosphere such a swell place for pilots to go nuts in.
Jackie Smith was still out cold in the co-pilot's seat. From in back,beyond the closed door to the tiny inner cabin, Lundy could hearFarrell screaming and fighting.
He'd been screaming a long time. Ever since the shot of avertin Lundyhad given him after he was taken had begun to wear thin. Fighting thestraps and screaming, a hoarse jarring sound with no sense in it.
Screaming to be free, because of It.
Somewhere inside of Lundy, inside the rumpled, sweat-soaked blackuniform of the Tri-World Police, Special Branch, and the five-foot-sixof thick springy muscle under it, there was a knot. It was a largeknot, and it was very, very cold in spite of the sweltering heat inthe cabin, and it had a nasty habit of yanking itself tight every fewminutes, causing Lundy to jerk and sweat as though he'd been spiked.
Lundy didn't like that cold tight knot in his belly. It meant he wasafraid. He'd been afraid before, plenty of times, and he wasn't ashamedof it. But right now he needed all the brains and guts he had to getIt back to Special headquarters at Vhia, and he didn't want to haveto fight himself, too.
Fear can screw things for you. It can make you weak when you need to bestrong, if you're going to go on living. You, and the two other guysdepending on you.
Lundy hoped he could keep from getting too much afraid, and tootired—because It was sitting back there in its little strongbox inthe safe, waiting for somebody to crack.
Farrell was cracked wide open, of course, but he was tied down. JackieSmith had begun to show signs before he passed out, so that Lundy hadkept one hand over the anaesthetic needle gun holstered on the side ofhis chair. And Lundy thought,
The hell of it is, you don't know when It starts to work on you.There's no set pattern, or if there is we don't know it. Maybe rightnow the readings I see on those dials aren't there at all....
Down below the torn grey clouds he could see occasional small patchesof ocean. The black, still, tideless water of Venus, that covers somany secrets of the planet's past.
It didn't help Lundy any. It could be right or wrong, depending onwhat part of the ocean it was—and there was no way to tell. He hopednothing would happen to the motors. A guy could get awfully wet, out inthe middle of that still