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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Zehru of Xollar, by Hal K. Wells
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Zehru of Xollar
+
+Author: Hal K. Wells
+
+Release Date: October 14, 2008 [EBook #26917]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ZEHRU OF XOLLAR ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: _Blake made a lightning snatch at a tentacle with both
+hands._]
+
+
+Zehru of Xollar
+
+By Hal K. Wells
+
+
+  Three Earthlings are whisked on an
+ inter-dimensional journey to the den
+      of the Scientist Zehru.
+
+
+When the rolling thunder of infra-bass first came to their ears, Robert
+Blake and Helen Lawton were standing on the platform of a New York
+subway station waiting for the arrival of an uptown express to bear them
+to their homes.
+
+They made a strikingly attractive couple as they stood there. New York
+had not had time as yet to remove the bronze tan of an outdoor life from
+Blake's ruggedly good-looking face. His tall athletic figure was still
+conspicuous for the lithe strength that had made him an All-Western
+tackle less than two years ago.
+
+Standing beside Blake's husky figure, Helen Lawton looked like a tiny,
+very perfect, blonde doll, with an exquisitely molded face framed in
+curly bobbed hair that was the clear golden-amber hue of orange honey.
+There was a diamond sparkling on the ring finger of the girl's slim left
+hand, placed there by Blake.
+
+It was well after midnight, and the only other passenger waiting on the
+station was a burly chap leaning against one of the white pillars on the
+other side of the platform. After a casual glance at the fellow, with
+his derby hat shoved far back from a low forehead, his blatantly
+conspicuous clothing, and the suspicious bulge under one arm-pit, Blake
+had mentally set him down as a minor gangster, probably a strong-arm man
+for some beer mob.
+
+Blake and Helen had been standing there but a few minutes when the
+strange sound first became audible. For a moment Blake thought it was
+merely the rumbling roar of an express approaching far down the tunnel.
+Then he realized that no subway train could possibly produce a sound
+effect so oddly disturbing and strangely alien.
+
+It was like no sound that Blake had ever heard before. Vibrant with
+colossal power, it suggested a sustained note struck from a giant organ,
+a note so low in pitch that it seemed a full octave below the lowest
+bass note ever struck. Whatever it was, the thundering vibration of
+infra-bass was coming nearer with startling swiftness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was impossible to locate the source of the mighty pulsing note. It
+seemed to be coming simultaneously from all directions, like a great
+hollow sphere of invisible sound waves closing in with the station
+platform as its central focal point.
+
+Helen's face was white with dread as she shrank closer into Blake's
+embrace. Blake noted that the gangster across the platform was standing
+tensely at bay with his back against the pillar and his right hand
+thrust under his coat as he stared wildly about him in an effort to
+discover the cause of the disturbance.
+
+The rolling thunder closed in upon them with a final rush that brought
+it so near that their very bodies seemed to vibrate in harmony with that
+mighty note of shuddering bass. Then with startling abruptness the green
+net came.
+
+Out from the walls and down from the roof spurted scores of quivering
+ribbons of blinding green flame. Swiftly the radiant tendrils rushed in
+upon the shrinking three from every side, while the infra-bass thundered
+in mighty crescendo.
+
+Blake instinctively swept Helen close within the shelter of his arms in
+an effort to protect her with his own body against the searing menace of
+those onrushing green flames. The next moment the fiery ribbons were
+upon them, lashing about their bodies, crossing and crisscrossing in the
+air above and around them in a great tangled web of interlacing lines of
+flame that filled the entire platform.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With a shock of relief Blake found that there was no heat in those
+strange flames, but his relief was short-lived as the next second
+brought him realization of the real menace of the radiant ribbons. There
+was a solidity and strength in those glowing streamers that held them as
+helplessly captive as though they were gripped in ribbons of steel.
+Dazed and helpless, the three struggled for a moment in the meshes of
+the weird net of flame like fish caught in the strands of some giant
+cosmic seine.
+
+The trembling thunder of infra-bass abruptly changed to a thin whining
+note so high in pitch that it seemed the nearly soundless ghost of a
+metallic scream. With the change in sound Blake became aware of a new
+and astounding change in his surroundings.
+
+The walls and roof of the station seemed closing in upon him as though
+he were growing in size at an incredible rate. The next moment he shot
+through the roof, hurtling on and upward with the velocity of a rocket.
+The sensation was one that his reeling brain could not even grasp. His
+body seemed to be inside every stone, iron bar, and lump of earth, yet
+at the same time every exterior object seemed _within_ his body. It was
+an eery chaos of a dozen different dimensions blending to form a Space
+in which there was no known dimension.
+
+As they flashed on out to the surface Blake had one hazy glimpse of
+Manhattan's glowing lights spread all about them. Then the speed of
+their progress leaped into a new and terrible acceleration that blotted
+out every tangible sensation from Blake's brain.
+
+Time and Space alike seemed to vanish as their hurtling flight sent them
+rocketing on for distances inconceivably vast through a bleak and
+appalling Nothingness, where neither sight nor sound existed.
+
+Then abruptly the speed of their flight seemed to be lessening.
+Sensation returned to Blake. He again heard the thin high-pitched
+metallic wail, now swiftly deepening to the familiar growl of rolling
+bass. He again noted the presence of the glowing green ribbons of the
+net that still encircled them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A blindingly brilliant purple mist was now closing in upon them from
+every direction, bringing with it a nameless and agonizing force that
+seemed to be shaking the very atoms in Blake's body asunder. Then they
+dropped swiftly down out of the purple mists, and the strange agony at
+once vanished. Blake felt their downward progress come to an end with
+the gentle arrival of his feet upon firm ground.
+
+The encircling net of green flame glowed dazzlingly brighter for a brief
+moment, then swiftly vanished into thin air, while the mutter of bass
+vibrations simultaneously died away into silence. Blake staggered and
+nearly fell as the sudden release from the net's strands again left his
+body free.
+
+He looked down at Helen as she stood huddled close beside him, still in
+the shelter of his arms. The girl's face was white with terror as she
+looked back up at him.
+
+"Bob, what happened--and where on earth are we?" Her voice trembled a
+little in spite of her plucky effort to keep it steady.
+
+Blake's bewildered gaze was already roving around them trying to
+comprehend the incredible details of their surroundings. "I've no idea
+what happened, dear," he answered slowly. "As to where we are now, I'm
+very much afraid it's nowhere on Earth!"
+
+"Then where is this hopped-up layout anyway, fellah, if it ain't on
+Earth?" broke in a voice with a decided East Side twang. Blake quickly
+turned and saw that the gangster had remained with them in that eery
+flight in the green net. There was an expression of dumfounded amazement
+upon the man's heavy face, and he was obviously anxious to be friendly
+with the two who now represented the only link with the familiar world
+he had known.
+
+"Gee, for a minute I thought they had me on the spot in some new way,
+sure!" he chattered excitedly as he came quickly over to join Helen and
+Blake. "There's plenty of guys wantin' to turn the heat on me there in
+the Big Town. I'm Gil Mapes, see? But this ain't no frame-up like any I
+ever heard of. What happened anyway, fellah?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the moment Blake did not answer. The three of them were silent as
+they stared about them with eyes that were dazed by the startlingly
+unfamiliar aspect of every detail in their surroundings.
+
+From the twin purple suns that blazed down through the tenuous mists
+overhead to the barren blue-gray ground underfoot, there was not a
+single object familiar to Earthly eyes. The huge enclosure in which the
+three of them stood was obviously the work of intelligent beings of some
+kind, but its mechanical details were products of a science different
+from any known to Blake.
+
+The purpose of the enclosure seemed to be to maintain an area of clear
+air in the midst of the swirling purple vapors that pressed in against
+it from the top and from every side. In shape it was a great oblong
+cell, some fifty feet high, two hundred yards long, and about one
+hundred yards wide. The three captives stood near the center.
+
+Fencing in the enclosure at twenty-yard intervals and reaching upward to
+the ceiling were slender posts of some lusterless black metal. Between
+these posts streamed unbroken, nearly transparent sheets of some unknown
+force, the only visible sign of which was the presence of countless
+millions of tiny shimmering golden flecks which danced like dust motes
+in a ray of sunlight. It was obviously this thin sheet of unknown force
+that was keeping the purple mists at bay, for fan-like antennae at the
+top of each post spread a similar shimmering sheet that formed a ceiling
+for the clear-aired area.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The three Earthlings were facing one of the side walls of the big
+enclosures. The purple mists outside made it hard to see clearly for
+any distance, but Blake had an impression that the surrounding terrain
+was featured by the same barren, nearly desert bleakness that
+characterized the interior of the enclosure, where scattered clumps of
+dead, spiky black branches of shrub-like vegetation were the only sign
+of plant life.
+
+Just within the distant end wall at their right there was a low platform
+surmounted by a wide arch some ten feet in height, both constructed of
+silver-colored metal. There was nothing between them and the end wall to
+their left, but they could see that the ground sloped sharply upward
+from the barrier-sheet, and on the crest of the ridge a gigantic
+cone-shaped structure of solid black could be seen dimly through the
+intervening mists.
+
+The cone-building seemed to be the source of the power that kept the
+enclosure intact. Slender cables of black metal ran down the slope from
+it into the clear-aired space, spreading out over the dusty gray-blue
+ground to the base of each of the tall posts, with a heavier
+copper-colored cable running on the silver arch. From within the
+windowless interior of the cone there was audible a low hum as of
+tremendous power being generated there.
+
+"Gee, what a rummy joint this place is!" There was frank awe in the
+gangster's voice as he at last broke the silence. "That guy with the
+green net sure took us for one sweet ride. Mebbe we're on the Moon now,
+or on Mars, huh?"
+
+Blake shook his head. "No, we're completely out of our entire solar
+system. Those twin purple suns up there prove that. We may even be in
+another universe, or another dimension from our own. A piece of
+apparatus that could whisk us up through fifty feet of earth and masonry
+as that green net did obviously works in dimensions of which we've
+never dreamed. The only thing we're sure of is that we were brought to
+this purple world deliberately and intentionally by an intelligent being
+of some kind, scooped up like tadpoles from a mud-puddle and dumped here
+in this elaborate enclosure It had already prepared for us."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Blake nodded to where the black cone-building loomed through the purple
+mists outside the end wall. "Whoever or whatever the thing was that
+brought us here, I have a hunch It's there in that power-house watching
+us. I'd suggest that we walk down toward that end of the enclosure for a
+closer look. We may at least find out whether we're guests or
+prisoners."
+
+"Listens good to me, fellah," agreed Mapes, sliding a hand up to his
+shoulder holster and bringing out a squat black automatic pistol of
+heavy caliber. "We'll do a prowl, over that way, and if His Nibs tries
+any more funny business mebbe a few slugs outta this rod will change his
+mind for him."
+
+"Better go easy with the gun, Mapes," advised Blake as the three of them
+started slowly toward the cone-building. "From what we've already seen,
+there must be weapons in this world that would make your pistol look
+like a kid's pop-gun. We'd better go easy till--wait, what's that?"
+
+The thin high-pitched whine, followed promptly by the familiar growling
+thunder of infra-bass, had again become audible. At the same moment a
+long pencil-like beam of green light glowed into visibility, extending
+from the tip of the cone to a point high within the enclosure just back
+of them. As they halted abruptly and watched, they saw the interlacing
+meshes of the green flame-net materialize suddenly at the end of the
+beam.
+
+The beam curved into an arc that dropped the net swiftly to the ground
+some thirty yards from them. Its meshes were packed nearly full of dark,
+writhing figures.
+
+"Looks like some more tadpoles arriving for our pond!" Mapes exclaimed.
+"I wonder what part of N' Yawk His Nibs yanked these babies from?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Blake's answer died on his lips as the net and beam glowed blindingly
+brighter for a brief second, then disappeared, leaving the dark figures
+in full view. Helen choked back a gasp of horror. Mapes swore in
+consternation and hurriedly swung his pistol into line with those
+writhing shapes.
+
+The net's latest captives were not from New York, nor were they from any
+other part of the planet Earth. Hideous spawn of some unknown world out
+in the black void of Space, they writhed for a moment in a nightmare
+chaos of countless brown-furred bodies, then swiftly disentangled
+themselves before the staring eyes of the three Earthlings.
+
+The things were apparently too low in the mental scale to have any
+reaction to their situation other than a blind instinct to attack any
+other living being within reach, for they promptly headed for the three
+captives from Earth.
+
+As the creatures came shambling rapidly forward on powerful bowed legs,
+and with the tips of their long hairy arms brushing the ground, they
+looked like grotesquely distorted apes. The crowning horror of those
+shambling figures, however, lay in the fact that they were completely
+headless!
+
+Even when the things approached to a distance of less than ten feet
+before halting in momentary indecision, Blake could detect no sign of
+any normal skull in the blunt space at the top of the powerful hairy
+torso. There was a furry-lipped mouth opening of some kind in the hollow
+between the bulging shoulders, but of eyes, ears, nose, or brain cavity
+there was no discernible trace.
+
+For a long moment the headless ape-things and the three human beings
+stood silently facing each other. Mapes' pistol was leveled pointblank
+at the nearest of the creatures, but their overwhelming numbers made the
+gangster hold his fire.
+
+There were two distinct groups of the things. At least twenty members of
+each group were in the crowd facing the Earthlings. To the rear of these
+attackers two oddly repulsive objects were carried and carefully
+shielded by picked guards of four unusually large and powerful
+ape-things.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The nature of those two guarded objects puzzled Blake. They looked like
+large eggs of dirty-gray jelly, about a yard in length. They were
+obviously alive, for their gelatinous masses quivered and trembled in
+constant activity. Blake noted that there seemed to be a curious
+connection between the ebb and flow of pulsations in the egg-masses and
+the movements of the ape-things.
+
+His attention was abruptly recalled to the headless things in front of
+him as they suddenly began shambling forward again. There was no
+possible mistaking the intention of those advancing horrors. They were
+moving to the attack.
+
+They reached barely to Blake's shoulders, but he realized that their
+enormous numbers and hook-taloned hands would make the result of the
+battle almost a foregone conclusion. The fact that the headless things
+were without eyes was no handicap to them. The swift certainty of their
+movements proved that they had a sense of sight of some kind that was in
+every way as efficient as eyesight.
+
+Blake looked hurriedly around him, seeking a place where they might be
+at the best possible advantage in the impending battle. There was a
+small dense thicket of the spiky dead branches half a dozen yards to
+their right. At Blake's low command, the three made a dash for the
+thicket. Arriving there, they ranged themselves against it, with their
+backs at least partially protected from attack.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The maneuver seemed to puzzle the ape-things for a moment. They stood
+passively watching the retreat of the three until they had reached the
+thicket. Then the creatures again began slowly closing in upon them.
+Blake snatched up a dead branch from the ground near the thicket, and
+was delighted to find that its weight and tough fiber made it an
+excellent club.
+
+He stripped off his topcoat and passed it back to Helen. Its tough
+fabric, heavily rubberized for proof against rain, might guard her head
+and face at least momentarily from those ripping talons if the headless
+attackers came to close quarters. With Helen safely behind them, Blake
+and Mapes turned grimly to face the enemy.
+
+The attack was prompt in coming. Moving with the perfect synchronization
+of a single unit, one of the main groups came shambling in, followed an
+instant later by the other group. Mapes' pistol sent a bullet crashing
+squarely into the nearest attacker. The creature staggered momentarily,
+then came lurching on again, apparently not even crippled. Blake swung
+his heavy club in a whistling arc that sent two of his adversaries
+broken and writhing to the ground.
+
+He heard Mapes' pistol bark four times more as the things closed in.
+Then the gun was knocked from the gangster's grip by a groping
+talon-armed hand. Mapes tried to batter back his assailants with his
+naked fists, but the flailing arms of the horde knocked him from his
+feet. His limp body was promptly tramped into unconsciousness by the
+milling feet of the close-packed group.
+
+Blake lashed the heavy club about him with a burst of savage fury that
+for the moment sent the furred horrors reeling backward. Their retreat
+ended after a scant two yards. Reforming their ranks, they again began
+cautiously shambling forward in a new attack that Blake realized would
+probably mean the end.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was easy enough to batter the things to ground, but it seemed
+impossible to seriously hurt them. Their incredible vitality and their
+overwhelming numbers made them almost invincible. Grimly Blake set
+himself to battle as long as he could in that last desperate effort to
+keep the hordes at bay.
+
+He noticed idly that the two groups still kept their oddly separated
+formation. Behind them the two egg-masses of jelly were now seething in
+new activity after a brief lessening of their gruesome shivering. Blake
+now saw that there was a direct and unmistakable connection between the
+activity of the jelly and the corresponding activity of the ape-things.
+
+Realization of the fact sent a sudden flash of inspiration flaming
+through Blake's weary brain, correlating the real significance of a
+dozen different things he had been subconsciously noting ever since the
+first appearance of the weird beasts.
+
+Those attacking things were not hordes of individual animals. They were
+merely two complete organisms, with the members of each organism
+controlled by its nucleus through invisible lines of nervous force as
+the various individual cells of the human body are linked by nerve
+fibers. No wonder the creatures themselves were blind. The egg-mass that
+was the nucleus of each of the two groups was eyes, brain, and seat of
+life for every ape-thing in the group.
+
+With a swift surge of hope Blake realized the way to conquer the things.
+If he could only shatter those flaccid masses of jelly, he would destroy
+the swarming dozens of beasts at the same time.
+
+Reaching the jelly ovoids seemed at first consideration to be an
+impossible task. They were carefully guarded far in the rear of the
+attacking groups. Blake knew that he had scarcely a chance in a hundred
+of battering his way through the intervening ape-things.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then he remembered the gangster's pistol. His searching eyes found it
+immediately, there on the ground nearly under the feet of the ape-things
+as they again shambled forward to the attack.
+
+Blake staked everything upon a last desperate sortie against the
+advancing things. With his club whistling around his head in crashing
+blows that wrought murderous havoc in the close-packed hordes, he drove
+them back for one breathless moment that gave him time to leap forward
+and snatch up the pistol.
+
+The ape-things were already springing back upon him as he swung the
+pistol into line with one of the jelly-masses. He barely pressed the
+trigger before the charging brutes knocked him from his feet.
+
+As he went down he flung his arms over his head to protect his face from
+the expected attack of those hooked talons, but none came. A body
+thudded down upon him, then slid limply off again without making any
+move to attack. Blake scrambled to his feet.
+
+Writhing upon the ground all around him were ape-things in their death
+agonies. On the ground beyond them, quivering and broken in the midst of
+its dying guards, was a viscid mass of loathsome gray jelly. Blake's
+shot had apparently struck home squarely in the center of that
+vulnerable blob. Even as he watched, the gelatinous mass shuddered in a
+last convulsion, then became quite still. At the same instant the last
+sign of life vanished from the writhing ape-things on the ground.
+
+A good half of the attacking creatures were included in the dead bodies.
+The other half, Blake now saw, had retreated to cluster in wild panic
+about the remaining blob of jelly. Realizing exultantly that his single
+shot had slain one of the two weirdly disassociated organisms, Blake
+with pistol in hand advanced toward the other, trying to get a clear
+shot at the jelly through the furry bodies clustering around it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The group promptly turned and fled in blind panic. Blake sent the
+pistol's last shot crashing into the mass without any appreciable
+effect. Then the things' stampede carried them hurtling on through one
+of the gold-flecked side walls out into the swirling purple mists.
+
+The gold-flecked sheet flowed together again so swiftly behind the
+things that a fraction of a second later there was not even the
+slightest indication in its shimmering unbroken surface to show that it
+had ever been pierced.
+
+For thirty yards the fleeing ape-things sped on into the purple vapors.
+Then disaster struck them with bewildering swiftness. They stopped in
+full flight, shuddered for a moment, then slumped to the ground with
+their limbs writhing in agony. In their center the jelly ovoid quivered
+madly in the same strange torture.
+
+Tiny patches of vivid purple appeared at a hundred different points upon
+the dying creatures. The patches spread and merged with lightning
+rapidity until a solid sheet of livid purple covered the writhing mass.
+Swiftly that mass lost both movement and shape as it melted down into a
+pool of turgid purple slime. Then the slime vaporized into purple mists
+that blended into the surrounding vapors, and all trace of the
+ape-things and their jelly nucleus had vanished.
+
+Stunned by the incredible speed of this general dissolution, Blake
+realized for the first time the real reason for the presence of the
+gold-flecked walls of force. Without those shimmering walls the captives
+would not have lived for a minute in the deadly purple atmosphere of
+this weird world beneath the twin suns. The gold-flecked walls were both
+their protection and their prison. The swirling purple mists outside
+those walls held the Earthlings as effectively and hopelessly prisoners
+in their enclosure as gold-fish in a bowl of water.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Blake turned back to the thicket to see how Helen and Mapes had fared in
+that terrific battle with the headless things. He was relieved to see
+that the girl had apparently escaped without even a scratch. She was
+kneeling beside Mapes' prone figure, doing what she could to revive him.
+The gangster was badly battered, but he seemed to have no serious
+injuries. He was already beginning to stir weakly and show signs of
+returning life.
+
+Blake started to step over to the two. Then he stopped abruptly as he
+heard a sharp metallic clang from the cone-building out in the purple
+mists beyond the end wall. He looked quickly up and saw that an oval
+window had opened in the structure near its tip. Framed in the opening
+was what seemed to be a large concave mirror. At one side of the mirror
+was a living being of some kind, but the intervening mists prevented
+Blake from making out any details beyond a hazy glimpse of a cluster of
+what seemed to be long slender snake-like black tentacles.
+
+The next moment there spurted from the mirror a broad and swiftly
+spreading beam of red light so brilliant that it glowed clearly even in
+the bright purple rays of the twin suns. Before Blake could shout a
+warning to Helen the racing flood of ruddy radiance was upon them. The
+scene reeled in a blurred kaleidoscope of flaming colors before Blake's
+eyes for a brief second, then complete oblivion swept over him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After an interval that seemed hours, consciousness returned to him as
+suddenly as it had left him. His first bewildered look around him
+disclosed the fact that startling changes had occurred in his
+surroundings during the period while he was under the anesthesia of the
+red ray.
+
+His first effort at movement brought realization that he was in the grip
+of a strange paralysis. His head and neck seemed quite normal in every
+way, but from the throat downward his body was completely dead as far as
+any power of voluntary movement was concerned.
+
+He twisted his head stiffly to one side, and saw that Helen was standing
+there beside him. Just beyond her was the motionless figure of Gil
+Mapes. Both the gangster and the girl were in the grip of the same
+strange paralysis. Like Blake, they were standing there rigidly
+motionless, facing the gold-flecked barrier wall just in front of them.
+
+A moment's painful scrutiny of their position showed Blake that the
+posts forming the wall of the enclosure at the end toward the cone had
+been brought in nearly a hundred yards toward them while they slept. The
+shimmering barrier sheet was now scarcely a yard from their faces, yet
+they still stood near the thicket where they had battled the headless
+horrors. Blake saw his coat half-buried in the blue-gray dust near his
+feet where Helen had discarded the garment to minister to Mapes.
+
+Their unseen captor had obviously made definite preparations for
+whatever his next purpose with them was to be, for a long wheeled
+platform had been brought to a position opposite them just outside the
+shimmering gold-flecked sheet. Blake noted the shattered remains of
+Mapes' pistol on the ground at one side of the platform. It had
+apparently been fished from the enclosure and rendered harmless after
+their captor had seen the weapon's efficient use against the headless
+ape-things.
+
+Clustered upon the wheeled platform was an assemblage of intricately
+winding coils, glowing tubes, and other apparatus that conveyed no more
+meaning to Blake's bewildered gaze than a sight of the interior of a
+metropolitan power-house would to a Congo savage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was only one piece of the apparatus regarding whose probable
+function Blake could even guess. This was a pair of long slender arms
+that projected through the shimmering walls into the enclosure,
+supporting at their end a large thin metal plate located just over the
+heads of the three Earthlings. Blake was willing to wager that it was
+this overhead plate that was responsible for the odd paralysis that held
+them helpless.
+
+Then a figure came slowly into view from where it had been concealed by
+the apparatus, and Blake forgot all thought of the strange mechanisms as
+he watched the monstrous thing clamber stiffly from the platform and
+halt squarely in front of the captives to stare at them through the
+transparency of the intervening force sheet.
+
+The thing was a curious blending of human and bestial features. It stood
+barely five feet in height, yet its great scale-armored skull was at
+least three times as large as that of a grown man. There was colossal
+mental power and nameless evil glowing in the dark depths of the two
+abnormally large eyes that stared fixedly out from under the heavy
+forehead. The thing had no nose. The mouth opening, surrounded by a
+rosette of flabby gray skin, was a mere slit. The entire skull and face
+were covered with small, closely overlapping scales of lusterless gray.
+
+The head merged directly into a short black torso nearly as wide as the
+skull itself. From this trunk there writhed a score of long black
+snake-like tentacles, each terminating in a flexible three-fingered
+"hand." The trunk was supported by two short thick legs, armored with
+gray scales, and ending in broad three-toed feet.
+
+"Greetings, Earthlings!" The voice that emanated from the grotesque
+mouth was surprisingly resonant in tone. "Allow me to present myself. I
+am Zehru, imperial scientist of Xollar."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The monstrosity seemed amused at the expressions of blank surprise upon
+the faces of his captives. "I learned your crude language from your
+brain cells while you slept under the red ray," he explained. "Also I
+learned many other things regarding your planet, Earth. I am glad to
+find your world so well adapted to my purpose. Within a few years after
+my arrival there I shall be its unquestioned ruler."
+
+Blake started to voice the many questions that were surging through his
+mind, but an imperious gesture of an outflung tentacle stopped him.
+
+"Silence, Earthling!" There was tolerant contempt in Zehru's ringing
+voice. "I will explain some of the things that puzzle you. There is no
+reason why I should trouble myself to do so, yet it may while away the
+tedium of the short wait yet remaining before my apparatus becomes
+charged to the required point. Listen carefully, Earthling, for at best
+you will find many of my thoughts beyond the feeble limits of the word
+forms with which you have provided me.
+
+"The world of Xollar, where you now are, is a planet in the island
+universe known to your astronomers as the Great Nebula of Andromeda.
+Until a short time ago I was one of its ruling scientists. Then I
+sinned, and so grave was my sin according to the laws of this planet
+that the Council of Three decreed my death. That death sentence upon
+Xollar is irrevocable, and no man has yet escaped it no matter where
+upon the planet he may be when the appointed time for his execution
+comes. I was given the usual period of grace in which to put my affairs
+in order. Instead, I have labored unceasingly here in my laboratory, and
+my labors have borne fruit. I am the first man in Xollarian history to
+find a means of escaping the dread death penalty.
+
+"Briefly, I discovered a way by which I can flee to your far-distant
+universe, where not even the powers of the Council of Three can follow
+me. That way lies through the door of inter-dimensional Space. In Space
+as you know it, the almost unthinkable distance of a million light years
+separates Xollar from the dwarf star you call your Sun. Yet, traveling
+_between_ Space, the two planets nearly touch each other. The same
+situation of being near neighbors in inter-dimensional Space holds true
+with Xollar and at least seven other planets located in widely separated
+parts of your universe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Let me try to illustrate what I mean by traveling between Space. We
+will assume a nearly two-dimensional universe in the form of a circular
+piece of paper three feet in diameter. There is a dot in the exact
+center of each side of this paper. To a two-dimensional creature, forced
+to travel only on the surface of the paper, the distance between the
+two dots can never be less than thirty-six inches. Yet by cutting
+_between_ the two surfaces and going directly through the paper the dots
+are less than one-hundredth of an inch apart.
+
+"Such is the case with Xollar and the planets in your universe which are
+our immediate neighbors in inter-dimensional Space. In order to reach
+those planets I had only to develop a method of using sufficient force
+to cut _between_ the three dimensions of intervening Space. In solving
+this problem I developed both an inter-dimensional net to bring beings
+from your universe to mine, and an inter-dimensional gate to permit
+beings to pass from here back to worlds in your galaxy.
+
+"You have already seen the workings of the net. It was the device of
+green fire that brought you here. The use of the net was a vital part of
+my plans, for without the use of a physical body from some world in your
+universe I could not hope to live longer than a few minutes after
+leaving Xollar via the inter-dimensional gate. The inherent
+characteristics and basic elements of your galaxy and the Andromedan
+universe are so different in every way that an inhabitant of either
+star-group cannot exist in the other. Xollar's purple atmosphere is
+characteristic of Andromedan worlds. Your oxygen-saturated air is
+typical of worlds in your galaxy. Just as Xollar's purple mists would be
+immediately fatal to you, so would your clear oxygen-tainted air be
+quickly fatal to me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Accordingly, my only chance of surviving in one of your worlds is to
+first transfer my Intelligence to the body of one of the dwellers upon
+that planet. Of the seven planets within reach of my net I found only
+two that promised to be at all suitable. One was your Earth, the other
+a minor planet circling the star you call Vega. I brought both you and a
+net-load of Vegans here to this oxygen-filled enclosure I had already
+prepared.
+
+"The Vegans were the headless things with the jelly nuclei. I watched
+your battle with them, and waited to choose as my vehicle the planetary
+type that proved the stronger. You vanquished the Vegans, so it is in
+the body of an Earthling that I shall leave Xollar, and it is to the
+planet Earth that I shall be hurtled through the inter-dimensional gate.
+
+"Aside from the slight difficulty caused by having to keep my body and
+yours each in its proper element during the operation, the matter of
+transfer into one of your bodies is a simple one. It involves none of
+the clumsy brain surgery of your Earthly science. We of Xollar have
+found that the real Intelligence of a being is an invisible force not at
+all dependent for existence upon the protoplasm through which it
+manifests. My Intelligence can function quite as well in your brain
+cells as in my own.
+
+"I require no assistant in the transfer." Zehru indicated an intricate
+piece of apparatus on the platform behind him. It was a massive cylinder
+of fluorescent metal, with two long metallic cables running from its
+center, each cable ending in a saucer-shaped disk.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I have only to thrust one cable through the force-wall into your
+enclosure and place its disk upon one of your heads, then place the
+other disk upon my own head. The apparatus is entirely automatic. Three
+seconds after both disks are in place my Intelligence will course into
+the Earthling brain, driving out his Intelligence and destroying it as
+mine enters.
+
+"I will, of course, remove the selected body from under the paralyzing
+plate before I attach the disks. Then when I am safely transferred to
+the Earthling body I will have only to walk on through the enclosure to
+the silver arch at the far end and leave Xollar forever.
+
+"That silver arch is the inter-dimensional gate to your Earth. Its
+operation is slightly different from that of the net. Where the net was
+capable of reaching under the surface of your planet, a proceeding I
+tried when two attempts upon the surface proved fruitless, the gate is
+so adjusted that it will place its passenger exactly upon the surface of
+your world. It requires no cooperation from this end. When I step under
+the arch I merely close a black lever there. Inter-dimensional force
+immediately catapults me to your Earth. Then the automatic mechanism of
+the gate will within half a minute of my departure release an explosion
+that will shatter everything within a radius of a mile here, and so
+prevent the Council of Three from even guessing the method of my
+escape."
+
+"But what of the two of us whose bodies you do not need?" Blake
+protested. "Can you not at least take them through the arch-gate with
+you back to their home world?"
+
+"Why should I do anything so foolish as that?" Zehru answered callously.
+"They might easily be a menace to my first attempts to establish myself
+upon your planet. Far better to leave them here in their present state
+of paralysis to be safely destroyed in the explosion of the gate."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Zehru now thrust three of his tentacles into a vat of milky fluid, and
+withdrew them coated with a silver sheen on the black flesh. The silver
+glaze seemed to be an insulation against both the oxygen of the
+enclosure and the paralyzing force of the overhead disk, for the
+Xollarian promptly thrust the three silver-coated arms through the wall
+and began handling the bodies of Mapes and Blake in a painstaking
+process of examination.
+
+Again Blake noted that the shimmering gold-flecked wall closed quickly
+in and kept its surface unbroken no matter how often objects were thrust
+through it.
+
+Completely ignoring Helen, Zehru lifted first Mapes, then Blake, his
+tentacles probing, fingering, exploring. There was enormous power in the
+Xollarian's grotesque body. He lifted the men as though they were wooden
+dolls, bringing them close to the shimmering wall to peer at them, then
+setting them carefully down again on their feet under the disk. Blake
+wondered idly why their stiff bodies did not topple over when they were
+left unsupported, then decided that the paralyzing force of the disk
+probably left the automatic muscular balancing movements unimpaired,
+affecting only the powers of voluntary movement.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then, as Zehru set him down after one of the periods of examination,
+Blake noticed a new and startling change the moment his feet touched the
+ground. His right leg and right arm were no longer dead!
+
+He hurriedly glanced down at the ground at his feet, and promptly found
+what seemed to be the reason for his partial freedom from the paralysis.
+In setting his body down the last time Zehru had moved Blake slightly.
+His right foot now rested upon a corner of the discarded topcoat lying
+half-buried there in the blue-gray dust.
+
+The heavily rubberized cloth apparently acted as an insulating sheet
+that prevented the effective grounding of the paralyzing force that
+streamed down through Blake's body from the overhead disk. Consequently
+all portions of his body between the coat and the disk were free from
+the paralysis. For a moment Blake wondered at Zehru's carelessness. Then
+he realized that the insulating qualities of rubber would naturally be
+unknown to a Xollarian.
+
+Noting that Zehru was busy at the moment with his work upon Mapes, Blake
+quickly grasped at the faint chance the presence of the rubberized cloth
+offered him. Working with infinite slowness and caution, he edged his
+right foot over an inch at a time, dragging the rest of his body with
+it.
+
+Luck was with him. Zehru continued, absorbed in his work upon Mapes. The
+Xollarian's telepathic powers apparently functioned only with the aid of
+the red ray, for he remained oblivious of Blake's actions. One final
+cautious dragging movement, and Blake's entire body was upon the cloth,
+with every muscle again vibrantly alive.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Blake stood there motionless, faking paralysis, while his brain raced in
+an effort to figure the best use to make of his present advantage. He
+was still trapped, not daring to reach even a hand beyond the protection
+of the cloth underfoot. The first essential of any effort at escape
+would have to be a lunge of sufficient power to take him safely beyond
+the area of the disk's influence.
+
+Blake's first thought was to hurl himself through the barrier wall upon
+Zehru, trusting to sheer surprise to overwhelm the Xollarian, but he
+quickly dismissed that plan. It left too many elements in Zehru's favor.
+There was a tube-like weapon thrust in a belt around Zehru's middle and
+there were probably a dozen other different weapons lying handy to his
+reach among the apparatus on the platform. The deadly purple mists
+beyond the wall would alone in all probability overcome Blake before he
+could batter Zehru down.
+
+By far the best plan was to stage the battle inside the enclosure where
+Blake would be in his own native element. If he could yank Zehru inside
+the wall he would have him away from contact with his mechanical weapons
+and battling in an atmosphere inherently poisonous to him. Under those
+circumstances, Blake felt that he might have an even chance in a
+hand-to-hand combat with the powerful but slow-footed Xollarian.
+
+Once Zehru was eliminated, escape back to Earth should be a simple
+matter. The silver gate, with its automatic mechanism needing only the
+closing of a lever, was ready and waiting there in the enclosure behind
+them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For long tense minutes Blake forced himself to remain rigidly motionless
+while Zehru labored over Mapes. Then finally the Xollarian turned his
+attention briefly back to Blake, and thrust two tentacles in to grip his
+body. No sooner had the tentacles crossed above the border of the cloth
+than Zehru realized that something was wrong. He tried to whip his arms
+back again but too late.
+
+Blake made a lightning snatch at a tentacle with both hands, and in the
+same lithe movement turned from the barrier wall and flung himself
+headlong toward the center of the enclosure. Zehru had no time to brace
+himself. He was jerked bodily through the shimmering wall and on after
+Blake's lunging body.
+
+One of the Xollarian's waving tentacles grasped wildly at the overhead
+disk in an effort to stay his flight. The only result was to bring the
+entire disk and its supports crashing in ruins to the ground upon the
+struggling figures of Blake and himself.
+
+Blake was upon his feet again instantly. Snatching up a yard-long scrap
+of metal from the wreckage of the disk, he flung himself upon Zehru.
+The Xollarian seemed for the moment too dazed by his fall to fight back.
+With tentacles raised to guard his head, he staggered backward in
+retreat, every step taking him farther away from the wall and the purple
+mists.
+
+Blake was vaguely aware that Helen and Mapes, freed by the wrecking of
+the disk, were scrambling to their feet. Mapes was already running
+toward the combatants. Blake was glad at the prospect of an ally.
+Zehru's dazed condition was swiftly passing. He had now stopped his
+retreat and was already fumbling a tentacle toward the tube-weapon in
+his belt.
+
+Blake flung himself upon Zehru in another effort to beat him down before
+he could draw that weapon, but his metal club glanced harmlessly off the
+tentacles Zehru raised to shield his head. Then beyond Zehru Blake saw
+something that made him stop his assault.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was Mapes, sprinting toward the silver arch-gate at the other end of
+the enclosure. Blake's heart sank as he realized the gangster's
+treachery. If he once reached that arch he could send himself safely
+hurtling back to Earth, while Blake and Helen would be left to perish
+with Zehru in the explosion that would immediately follow. It was too
+late for Blake to head the gangster off. He had already covered half the
+distance to the arch.
+
+Zehru noted Mapes' fleeing figure almost as quickly as did Blake.
+Swiftly the Xollarian swung his tube-weapon into line with the fleeing
+gangster. A thin pencil of dull yellow light of a peculiar density
+spurted from the tube toward Mapes. There was a flash of blinding flame
+as the light beam met the gangster's body; then Mapes' figure seemed to
+literally explode, as though blasted by dynamite from within. So
+devastating was the force of that explosion that nothing remained of
+Mapes' body beyond a few scattered fragments of shoes and clothing.
+
+Blake was still dazed at the cataclysmic suddenness of Mapes' death as
+Zehru swung the tube around to train it upon him. Only a last-minute
+desperate effort upon Blake's part saved him. His wildly thrown metal
+club made a lucky hit on the tube itself, knocking it, shattered and
+useless, out of Zehru's grasp.
+
+Unarmed, Zehru faced Blake with his face contorting in agony. For a
+moment the Xollarian swayed there, apparently trying to gather his
+failing strength for the next move. The deadly air of the enclosure was
+already taking hideous toll. The scaly flesh of his head and face was
+dissolving like melting butter.
+
+Zehru's strength was ebbing too swiftly for him to have any chance of
+gaining safety through either of the distant side walls. His only hope
+of fighting back to the purple mists was to pass Blake and go through
+the nearby end wall through which he had originally been drawn.
+
+He came lunging forward in an attack whose sheer fury made Blake give
+ground before the menace of the lashing tentacles.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Blake took another backward step, then staggered as his foot struck a
+rough spot in the ground. Zehru's tentacles were upon him before he
+could recover himself. His club was jerked from his fingers and sent
+hurtling far out of reach. Half a dozen of the tentacle-arms lashed
+around his throat in a strangling grip.
+
+He clawed wildly at the choking coils, but they failed to loosen even a
+fraction of an inch. Desperately Blake sent his fists smashing into the
+gray face. The scale armor of Zehru's skull, fast weakening in the
+liquefying influence of the oxygen, gave way beneath that battering
+attack. He staggered, and his coiling tentacles relaxed slightly.
+
+Blake tore himself free. A final smashing blow, with every ounce of his
+one hundred and ninety pounds behind it, sent Zehru crashing to the
+ground. The Xollarian tried to rise, then feebly slumped back, his
+strength spent. Blake leaped forward to finish his opponent, but stopped
+as he saw that his efforts were not needed.
+
+The deadly air of the enclosure was now overwhelming Zehru with swift
+and hideous death. He was literally rotting before Blake's horrified
+eyes, the gray-scaled skin sloughing off in streaming rivulets of pallid
+ooze, and the entire body contorting in what was obviously a death
+agony.
+
+Sickened, Blake stepped back a pace or two. Zehru's tentacles feebly
+beat the ground around him, then suddenly one of the writhing arms
+blundered upon a thin cable running along the ground. Before Blake could
+spring forward to stop him, Zehru with a last surge of power ripped the
+fragile metal strand completely in two.
+
+It was the Xollarian's dying effort. He slumped in a motionless, nearly
+liquescent heap. But that last blind blow at the Earthlings threatened
+to be a deadly one. The severed cable led to one of the black posts
+surrounding the enclosure. With the cable's parting an entire section of
+one of the gold-flecked barrier walls vanished. Xollar's deadly purple
+mists were already surging in.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Speed was the Earthlings' only chance now. Helen was as quick to realize
+the danger as was Blake. Side by side they started their mad race toward
+where the silver arch-gate loomed nearly a hundred yards away.
+
+They had covered barely half the distance when the air around them
+began to show a definite tinge of purple. With the appearance of the
+purple hue there came a strange and swiftly increasing agony, a
+torturing vibration that seemed to be tearing every atom in their bodies
+asunder.
+
+They were within ten yards of the arch when Helen fell. Blake grabbed
+her up in his arms and stumbled on. There was no longer enough oxygen in
+the air to even breathe. Blake's lungs were on fire. Every cell in his
+body seemed vibrating in unbearable torment.
+
+It was all that he could do to struggle up on the low platform. He
+staggered across the space and under the arch. It took the last shred of
+strength in his tortured body for him to lift his hand and pull the
+black lever down into place.
+
+Its action was instantaneous. The agony of the purple mists was blotted
+out in a surging wave of mighty force that swept Blake and Helen up and
+away through a Spaceless universe where black chaos reigned awesomely
+supreme. There was a long terrible moment of hurtling through distances
+inconceivably vast. Blake's brain reeled in nausea.
+
+Then suddenly all motion ceased and everything was normal again. There
+was firm grassy ground under his feet and a cool breeze was blowing in
+his face.
+
+He opened his eyes and saw the gray half-light of early dawn. After the
+first swift look around him he sighed in mighty relief. To his left was
+the familiar skyline of Fifth Avenue. To his right was Central Park
+West. They were somewhere in Central Park, safe again in their own
+world.
+
+And somewhere in that other world beneath the twin purple suns, the time
+mechanism of the silver gate should even now be releasing the explosive
+that would forever blot out all trace of the evil handiwork of Zehru,
+cosmic fisher of Xollar.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+    This etext was produced from _Astounding Stories_ February 1932.
+    Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
+    copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
+    typographical errors have been corrected without note.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Zehru of Xollar, by Hal K. Wells
+
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