The green girl

_At high noon on May 4, 1999, the sun went out!_ It had risen bright and clear. The summer sky had had an unwonted liquid brilliance. The climbing day-star had shone all the mor...

I have said that I am a dreamer, living more truly in my fancy than in the world. Perhaps my imagination is abnormally developed. Always I have had new worlds awaiting me in my...

The coming of the terror was slow and gradual enough--and as silent as the tomb! With all the magic of the quiet woodland beauty throbbing in my being, I was strolling up the na...

The only difference between red and blue light is that the waves of the red are about twice as long as the others. There must have been a sort of screen in the ether that someho...

The next thing I knew, Sam was shaking my shoulder. I sat up, rubbing my eyes, a bit dazed at first, and uncertain whether I could credit what I remembered to be a vivid nightma...

I now come to the Omnimobile, the machine that Sam had designed with a view to use in interplanetary navigation. He had worked on it, of course, more to please me than for any o...

For some time I had felt that Sam was afraid of something, of a danger more personal than the freezing of the earth. He had said little about it, but from his hints I gathered t...

"Well, how was the show?" Sam's voice was a little weak and strained. Suddenly I was conscious of an unpleasant tremor of the knees. I went into the conning-tower and dropped my...

We hurried back into the Omnimobile, climbed into the conning-tower, and started the engines again. Sam turned the bow toward the sea, and the great machine crawled slowly down...

In the deep sea the temperature is just above freezing; the darkness is absolute; the pressure is many tons to the square inch. But still, life has been found, even in the great...

The next thing I knew I was lying on the floor, with a torrent of icy water falling on my face. I sat up, sputtering. Sam was bending over me with a relieved grin on his face.

Leaving to me the visions and the flights of wild hope that his last words induced, Sam went below. In a few minutes he called me to eat. Suddenly I realized that I was very hun...

It was several miles back of the shore to where the green grassland rose from the jungle to slope up to the cliffs of gleaming blue. I had ceaselessly searched the plains and th...

We stopped the machine on the first little eminence of the open space, to survey the vastly different and unfamiliar region that lay before us. It was an open, park-like country...

It was, indeed, the form of a woman--rather, of a girl. The eyelids were closed and still. There was no breathing, and no perceptible beating of the heart. But the body was very...

I went back to the beautiful sleeping girl, and sat down again in my rapt contemplation of the quiet charm of her face. She was breathing quite normally, and the face bore a sli...

I must have stood there many minutes, lost in fearful reverie. Unconsciously I heard Sam and Xenora moving about below, heard faintly the murmur of their conversation. At last m...

We walked off east through the level green meadows, beneath the scattered trees that were bright with purple blooms. For my own part, I was much more interested in the vegetatio...

We climbed up the last few yards to the summit, and gazed across toward the dim blue cliffs that rimmed this world on the north. We stood on a great divide. A vast valley lay be...

"Thank God you did! It saved us! We were lost!" And I told her of the amazing storm of flames, of the Thing that had risen out of them, and of the irresistible spell of terror,...

On the morning--if one may speak of morning in that world of eternal day--after we had slept off the fatigue of our visit to the hill where we had seen the lights of terror, Sam...

For several days longer, Sam continued his labors in the laboratory. During that time "Alexander," the flying plant, developed remarkably. Before we moved, it had a wing-spread...

Sam snapped off the arc as the silver ship fell, and the drumming of the generators stopped. For a little time the world was very still. Xenora stood tense and silent beside me....

For perhaps thirty miles we drove the great machine through the brilliant forest, southward down a broad valley. At last we stopped in a little grove of tall flowering trees, cl...

Our woodland life was happy. We were quite unconscious of the events that were shaping themselves to bring sudden catastrophe. We saw in our simple lives no foreshadowing of the...

Presently we turned and trudged wearily back to the Omnimobile. There was nothing else to do. I was sick with an aching heart. It was incredible that Sam, kind and true friend t...

For half a dozen hours we lumbered eastward through the forest. We wallowed through swamps, and rolled over broad green meadows alight with the crimson day, and broke through ju...

Mighty winds whipped about me. The roaring jets of steam drove the throbbing machine on over the rosy mists, and over the flickering violet flames. And I fell--dropped into the...

I was moved out of the machine like an automaton by the terrible force that controlled me. My body was no longer my own! It was swept along as if by a mighty wind. That force of...

Should I go on, or return and try to save Xenora, as she had rescued me? That question throbbed in my brain. The answer would have been easy enough if I had had her alone to con...

At last, in haste and fear and trembling, I began the task of mixing my chemicals, dumping them into vats of water cooled by evaporation, under a rude shed to cut off the fierce...

Abruptly a green light ran through the rosy haze beneath us, and that dreadful twisting bar of radiance--that living, alien tongue of fire--the serpent-like head of the Lord of...