Spawn of the Comet E-Book

Otis Adelbert Kline

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Silently, without warning they came, those fishermen of deep space who spread their net for man – living flying saucers the Earth must destroy – yet who multiplied by dying! „Spawn of the Comet” is a short alien invasion story by Otis Adelbert Kline. Otis Adelbert Kline (1891–1946) born in Chicago, Illinois, USA, was an adventure novelist and literary agent during the pulp era. He is best known for his interplanetary adventure novels set on Venus and Mars, which instantly became science-fiction classics. Much of his work first appeared in the magazine „Weird Tales”. Kline was an amateur orientalist and a student of Arabic, like his friend and sometime collaborator, E. Hoffmann Price. Recommended for lovers of the offbeat.

Leseprobe

Contents

I. THREADS OF DEATH

II. BLEACHED BONES

III. THE THING IN THE LABORATORY

IV. BESIEGED WORLD

V. THE ATTACKING MEDUSA

I. THREADS OF DEATH

I WAS spending the week-end in the country with Sue.

To me, Dick Perry, one of the cave-dwelling desk slaves in Chicago’s busy Loop, that was the height of bliss. Sue Davis, the eminent biologist and biochemist, was my fiancee. We were at the Davis country home.

The comet had come and gone, and the earth, as well as all earthly creatures, had settled down to its former more or less well-ordered existence.

It was Saturday forenoon–one of those drowsy, peaceful, pleasant mornings in late July so characteristic of the verdant Mississippi Valley. Sue and I had gone for a stroll on the farm, had crossed a field of nodding, fragrant clover, and had paused where a single huge hackberry tree cast its speckled shade over a small grass plot.

I was lying on my back in the grass and gazing dreamily up into the clear blue sky, while Sue, seated beside me, wove a garland of clover blossoms. Feeling poetic–I was but twenty-two and Sue nineteen–I began to compare the blue eyes with that of the heavens, and the spun gold of her hair with the sunbeams that danced down through the gently waving hackberry leaves, and to compose a verse suited to my mood. But there came a droning sound, louder than that made by the thousands of bees in the clover.

“The mail plane is coming in,” said Sue. “Sit up, lazybones, and watch it land. The field is only a mile from here.”

As I sat up the unmistakable droning of an airplane grew louder. Looking skyward, I could not see it at first. But I did see something which I had- not noticed before–a small, wispy white cloud scudding rapidly northward. Then I saw the plane coming from the west.

It appeared to me that cloud and plane were traveling at about the same speed, and if either changed its velocity or direction, they would meet. Nothing phenomenal in that, of course. I have often seen planes fly through the clouds. But here were the only cloud and the only plane in sight, and it would be interesting, I thought, if they should meet when each had so much open space in which to travel.

As they drew closer together I saw that the cloud was considerably higher than the plane.

“They won’t meet, after all,” I said, half to myself, half to my fair companion.

But scarcely had the words left my lips ere a strange thing happened. It appeared to me that the cloud, which was roughly disk-shaped with a few ragged streamers beneath, tilted and glided downward toward the level of the plane.

It came to me in the next instant that from our viewpoint the motions of all heavenly objects near the zenith must necessarily be relative–that the plane might have ascended toward the cloud. And yet this would not account for the apparent tilting of the cirrus disk.

Plane and cloud met. For a moment the airplane was completely concealed. But as it emerged once more into view I noticed that it was beginning a steep climb.

“He must be going to loop the loop,” I said, but the words had scarcely left my lips when the motor died. It appeared that the pilot had misjudged the amount of speed necessary for the climb and had not opened the throttle enough. The plane appeared to stop for a moment–then fell backward and downward, went into a sideslip, and hurtled groundward, out of control.

Sue gripped my arm and uttered a little scream of terror. We both leaped to our feet just as the ship crashed in a pasture not more than a half mile from where we stood, and about an equal distance from the landing field.

“Oh, how terrible!” Sue exclaimed. “Let’s run over and see what we can do. The pilot may not be dead.”

“Not one chance in a thousand for that,” I answered, “the way he crashed. But we’ll hurry over anyway.”

We ran across the clover field and climbed the pasture fence.

AS WE neared the wreck we saw three men, evidently from the airport, coming from the other direction. They arrived at the spot when we did.

The plane had struck with one wing down. That wing was partly crumpled by the shock of the collision. The nose was buried in the soft, boggy ground of the pasture, and the fuselage was a twisted wreck. Hanging about it like an invisible aura was a sickening, musty odor–a revolting, charnel scent, as if some ancient grave had been desecrated.

Fearing the effect on Sue of the horrible sight which I felt positive would be revealed, I suggested to her that she look the other way when two of the men from the airport went into the wreck for the remains of the pilot.

But the cries of horror which I expected to Lear from the two men did not materialize. Instead, they uttered exclamations of astonishment.

The man who was standing outside the wreck called to one of them:

“What’s the matter, Bill?”

“We can’t find no sign of a body here,” was the reply. “This crate must have been flying without a pilot.”

“Maybe Jackson fell out before the crack-up,” said the man outside.

“Must have been a long time before, if he did,” was the answer, “because I was watching the ship come in, and I’d have seen him if he fell out. Besides, she behaved all right until she passed through the cloud:”

“He might have fallen out in the cloud,” said the man outside.

“And then flew away with it? Don’t talk foolish.”

“Well, anyway, he’s not here. Whew! What a smell! Notice it?”

“Notice it! I’m strangling!”

The three men dragged out the mail sacks, shouldered them, and moved off in the direction of the landing field.