remembrance. _I_led one fine division of the Imperial Guards, armored warriors of thefirst magnitude. With them I felt able to conquer planets, not to speakof the trivial-sized Termans.
For many days we trekked, penetrating ever deeper the Red Desert'sheart. But of the abhorred Termans we caught no sight. There was onlythe molten downpour of sun by day, and the desiccating numbness of coldat night. But on the sixth day, as we encamped near an underground poollocated by our experts--we encountered the Termans.
The blue wings of dusk were beating down when suddenly, from everyrampart of sand-dune, every crumbling hillock, out of the very bowels ofthe planet itself, they came like an avalanche. They carried slendermetal tubes that spewed polychromatic death at us! Wherever the deadlydischarge touched, would appear horrible burns that ate away thetissues. But that isn't what paralyzed us. We had known these vermin tobe short of twelve inches tall, but now they reared monstrously _fourfeet into the air_! Their black, hairy limbs lashed in an ecstasy ofmurder-lust, their beady eyes gleamed with fiendish purpose. And theyhad _intelligent leaders_!
The sight of these monsters grown to such awful size struck terror intothe hearts of our legion. Nevertheless, we, who are seven feet tall,towered above them as we fought with the strength and ferocity ofdesperation. Every weapon at our command was brought into play, and theywere blasted and seared by the myriads. Still they came on, blindly,unswervingly, as if driven by a single prodigious force.
How these life-forms had grown to such bestial proportions was not knownuntil later. We captured a few and delicately probed them--while stillalive, of course--dissecting their anatomy until we found that somegenius had managed to control their growth through glandulardevelopment. That genius could only have been our Thid!
Soon the desert was covered by a sea of their dead--and ours! The stenchwas unbearable, for the Termans exude an odor of their own, particularlyin death, which is sheer nausea ... but lest I offend your refinedsensibilities, O Serene Empress, perhaps it were best that I draw a veilof darkness over that shambles of horror. At last it seemed as if onlyutter annihilation of both sides would be the outcome. Already thebattle had lasted for three obeisances of our Diskra to its parent sun.
And then wisely, our glorious Palladin flashed to us the command toretreat.
"Already Estka and Kraaj have fallen, with all the populace wiped out,"said the message. "The Termans are converging upon our capital city!Return here with all haste!"
So it was that we retreated--those who remained of us--to the capitol,and prepared to make a formidable stand. The other armies of our empirehad done likewise. Who would have thought that this despised,destructive form of life could ever become such a menace! We rememberedone of Thid's treatises on the noxious pests, in which he had maintainedthat they had rudimentary intelligence and an interesting, ifsub-primitive, form of social life. How we had laughed at the thought ofimputing a social order to these subterranean aphids!
But we weren't laughing now! A race of malignant monsters had sprung upin the twenty years that Thid had vanished into the desert.
* * * * *
Of Thid, nothing more was seen. But we knew he must still existsomewhere among the Termans. Under that baleful inventive genius theirweapons seemed to multiply, and we were forced to tax our scientists tothe utmost in order to have weapons, of offense--and yes, OBeneficence--defense!
For now, though we had managed to stem their attack on our capital, theywere steadily encroaching on our territory. Underground lakes andstreams were dammed by these fiends. Vast areas of vegetation weredenuded. Precious mines of rare metals were converted by them, underThid's direction, into sources for their ceaseless attacks. Aye! We dieda thousand deaths multiplied a thousand times.
Our ethero-magnum, by which our telepathic vibrations were amplified forplanetary broadcast, became a monotonous recorder of tragedy as cityafter city fell to the hordes. For untold years this savage strugglewent on. How well we realized that this was a war for sole dominance ofthe planet!
Until at last, only our proud capital by the shores of the scarlet sea,and its immense valley was left to us.
"We must evolve the principles of inter-spacial travel," Palladin toldus sadly. "The day may come when we shall need it."
Hitherto, our rare flights to Venia and Mirla had been primitive affairsin which the dangerous rocket principle was employed, with the terrificeffects of acceleration crushing the crews and making landing an evengreater hazard than the flight itself. But now, through inconceivableefforts of thought--aye, through sheer desperation!--our scientistsevolved a system of atomic integration in which free orbital electronswere utilized to create atomic quantities beyond our known table,drawing upon the energy that could be harnessed in the process. It isdifficult to describe otherwise than through pure mathematics--though ifyour Serene Effulgence wishes, I will be happy to describe it to you ata later date; it will take some little effort to recall the exactformulae.
"We must send an expedition to Terra," Palladin told us. "From what wehave been able to gather astronomically, that planet seems habitable.Mirla, we know, is out of the question; it is a holocaust of fire. Andto dwell on the semi-aquatic world of Venia, a new environmentaladaptation would be necessary."
Fantastic, wasn't it, O Exalted Empress, that we the rightful Lords ofDiskra should be compelled to abandon our beloved homes by a horde ofvermin? Indeed it was a tragic day when the first scientific expeditionwas assembled. And I, Braanol, was honored beyond my humble desserts byhis Supreme Magnificence, Palladin. I was assigned as _Recorder_ on theexpedition.
Strapped and cushioned until not an inch of my body was visible, I waslaunched into space together with my fellow scientists, within thespheroid confines of our atomic projectile. The agony of enduring--evenfor seconds--the required acceleration, will forever remain in my mindas the ultimate in torture. But at last the agony was gone, as wetraveled at unimaginable speed toward the planet which we hoped would beour future home.
No, not hoped--because meanwhile on Diskra the experiments with acid gaswere going on, in a sort of last-ditch defense which we hoped might stemthe endless hordes!
* * * * *
It was on the eleventh day that we really saw Terra in its fullprismatic glory. For days it had loomed larger in our three-dimensionalelectro-cone, where we studied its continents and oceans to select thelikeliest spot for a landing. Terra was intensely blue now, rivalling incolor the priceless _zafirines_ of our own Diskra. I hope in thehumblest depths of my mind, O Empress Uldulla, that you shall never knowthe unplumbed abyss of loneliness we all felt.
At last we were forced to use the forward atomic beam to brake ourmeteoric entrance into the heavy atmosphere. We had, of course, turnedon the neutralizing frigi-rectifiers that formed a network on the outershell of our sphere. At last we were through. Dipping lower as wecircled, we discerned majestic oceans; ice-clad peaks crowning the starkglory of the landscape, and then more inviting lands criss-crossed byrivers and studded with shining lakes.
It was to us, O Great Beneficence, a paradise indeed! Entranced, we allbut forgot our landing which would require the utmost skill. Brunoj,our greatest navigator, was at the controls, padded and cushioned beyondthe possibility of injury. The rest of us retired to the specialcrash-room.
I remember we carried in our laboratory, in a special container of_glassaran_, two embalmed specimens of the monstrous Termans. These wewere to show as a warning to whatever race existed here. One glance atthe revolting monsters would have been enough for an intelligent race.
But now that would not be necessary. Terra seemed uninhabited. We hadseen no cities as we circumnavigated the globe. Had intelligentlife-forms failed as yet to materialize on this verdant world? Weassumed that fact, in our joyous eagerness to feel the good earthbeneath us.
"Prepare to land!" came the warning from Brunoj.
* * * * *
To this day I
cannot say what happened. No one knew. For the briefinstant in which I remained conscious, I felt as if Terra had burstasunder under the terrific impact.
Nor do I know when I finally struggled upward from oblivion; it may havebeen hours later, or days. Many among us were dead. _I_ was a hopelesslycrushed horror who still lived somehow, miraculously. For many days weremained within our sphere--disposing of the dead, tending to theinjured, conserving our strength. _I_ might have been destroyed, butwith that frantic will to live which rises within us, I flashed amessage to my companions:
"I still live! Place me in the delocalizer! I will still be of use!"
This was done. The delocalizer, reacting on the thalamic region of mybrain, intercepted pain currents and allowed me to exist without_physical_ feeling. Only my mind, lucid and intensely alive as neverbefore, continued to record the adventure in this world. It was notuntil later that my brain was completely dissevered from my crushedbody....
My