第3章

He stopped abruptly; rose from his chair, gazed intently toward the north.I followed his gaze.Far, far away the moon had broken through the clouds.Almost on the hori-zon, you could see the faint luminescence of it upon the smooth sea.The distant patch of light quivered and shook.

The clouds thickened again and it was gone.The ship raced on southward, swiftly.

Throckmartin dropped into his chair.He lighted a cigar-ette with a hand that trembled; then turned to me with abrupt resolution.

"Goodwin," he said."I do need help.If ever man needed it, I do.Goodwin--can you imagine yourself in another world, alien, unfamiliar, a world of terror, whose unknown joy is its greatest terror of all; you all alone there, a stranger! As such a man would need help, so I need--"He paused abruptly and arose; the cigarette dropped from his fingers.The moon had again broken through the clouds, and this time much nearer.Not a mile away was the patch of light that it threw upon the waves.Back of it, to the rim of the sea was a lane of moonlight; a gigantic gleaming ser-pent racing over the edge of the world straight and surely toward the ship.

Throckmartin stiffened to it as a pointer does to a hidden covey.To me from him pulsed a thrill of horror--but horror tinged with an unfamiliar, an infernal joy.It came to me and passed away--leaving me trembling with its shock of bitter sweet.

He bent forward, all his soul in his eyes.The moon path swept closer, closer still.It was now less than half a mile away.From it the ship fled--almost as though pursued.

Down upon it, swift and straight, a radiant torrent cleaving the waves, raced the moon stream.

"Good God!" breathed Throckmartin, and if ever the words were a prayer and an invocation they were.

And then, for the first time--I saw--IT!

The moon path stretched to the horizon and was bor-dered by darkness.It was as though the clouds above had been parted to form a lane-drawn aside like curtains or as the waters of the Red Sea were held back to let the hosts of Israel through.On each side of the stream was the black shadow cast by the folds of the high canopies And straight as a road between the opaque walls gleamed, shimmered, and danced the shining, racing, rapids of the moonlightFar, it seemed immeasurably far, along this stream of silver fire I sensed, rather than saw, something coming.It drew first into sight as a deeper glow within the light.On and on it swept toward us--an opalescent mistiness that sped with the suggestion of some winged creature in arrowed flight.Dimly there crept into my mind memory of the Dyak legend of the winged messenger of Buddha--the Akla bird whose feathers are woven of the moon rays, whose heart is a living opal, whose wings in flight echo the crystal clear music of the white stars--but whose beak is of frozen flame and shreds the souls of unbelievers.

Closer it drew and now there came to me sweet, insistent tinklings--like pizzicati on violins of glass; crystal clear;diamonds melting into sounds!

Now the Thing was close to the end of the white path;close up to the barrier of darkness still between the ship and the sparkling head of the moon stream.Now it beat up against that barrier as a bird against the bars of its cage.It whirled with shimmering plumes, with swirls of lacy light, with spirals of living vapour.It held within it odd, un-familiar gleams as of shifting mother-of-pearl.Coruscations and glittering atoms drifted through it as though it drew them from the rays that bathed it.