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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78737 ***
+
+
+
+
+ The Huntress
+
+ by Richard R. Smith
+
+
+
+
+_We have read a good many vampire tales by reading-lamp radiance, with
+the wind whistling eerily in the eaves, and a steeple bell tolling from
+afar. But seldom have we read such a vampire thriller as this, with its
+aura of billboards, weather, hitchhiking and quite realizable future
+science. This is Mr. Smith's third story for us, and with each new yarn
+his stature has grown._
+
+=She was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, and in her eyes was
+a promise of paradise. But to live in paradise a man must die.=
+
+
+
+
+My headlights silhouetted her against the dark-surfaced billboard and
+even at sixty miles an hour, I could see she had curves and a thumb in
+the traditional position of a hitch-hiker.
+
+I passed her, wonderingly. Then, on a sudden impulse, I stopped the car
+and backed up.
+
+She opened the door, threw a suitcase on the back seat, slid across the
+front seat until she bumped against my arm and said, “Thanks.”
+
+It was too dark to see her face, so I mumbled something and started
+down the highway again.
+
+“Where are you going?” I asked.
+
+“No place special.” Her voice was soft, warm and joyous as if ready to
+burst into laughter at any moment.
+
+“Where are _you_ going?” she asked.
+
+“No place special.” It was a lie, but it sounded good. Actually, I had
+a very special destination: my home, wife and kids were approximately
+fifty miles down the highway.
+
+I broke open a pack of cigarettes and thrust it toward her. She
+accepted the offer. She lit my cigarette, then her own.
+
+“Are you a salesman?” It was meant to be a question but some inflection
+in her voice made it sound like a statement.
+
+“How did you know?” I asked.
+
+“A guess. I saw your briefcase and papers on the back seat. What do you
+sell?”
+
+Her perfume thrilled me. It was different than any I’d ever smelled.
+Would _exotic_ describe it? It was as if the most exciting scents
+from a hundred types of flowers had been mingled in just the right
+proportions.
+
+“I sell paints,” I told her. “Not door to door, but to big businesses
+and factories that need a lot of paint.”
+
+We talked for the next two hours. Some people talk about the weather,
+politics and sports. She and I talked about destiny, the ecstasies of
+life, space travel and alien civilizations. We talked about how it
+feels to kill something, to fear the unknown, to die, to love and to be
+drunk. We even discussed jungles, work, pain and types of people.
+
+It was the most interesting conversation of my life. It was so
+interesting that I drove fifty-four miles in the wrong direction before
+I realized where I was.
+
+I stopped the car and glanced in the rear-view mirror. My house was
+only a few miles from the highway. A small side-road leads directly to
+the front porch. That side-road was now fifty-four miles behind the car.
+
+“What’s the matter?” she asked in a soft voice.
+
+“I was so busy talking to you that I drove fifty miles out of my way!”
+
+“I’m sorry.”
+
+I turned to stare at her. The headlights of an approaching car
+illuminated her face and for the first time, I got a good look at my
+companion. She was beautiful. It was the kind of beauty that makes men
+abandon all caution. For a full minute I stared into her fathomless
+blue eyes.
+
+“What’s your name?” I whispered.
+
+“Almira. It’s Arabic. It means: a princess.”
+
+“You are a _princess_.”
+
+She laughed. “I am.”
+
+We continued to stare into each other’s eyes, neither of us moving or
+speaking. We said a lot without saying a word ... Messages and replied.
+Offers and acceptances. It was the first time in my life that I had
+carried on a long conversation with my eyes.
+
+I drove to the nearest motel.
+
+The modern log cabins clustered at the edge of a forest, but although
+the small buildings were close together the surrounding trees and
+bushes gave each an appearance of isolation and serenity. Only the
+brightly-lighted brick office building struck an incongruous note.
+
+The clerk was bald, unshaven and engrossed in a pin-up girl magazine.
+He looked up as we entered the office, hid the magazine, took the cigar
+from his thick lips and asked, “Can I help you?”
+
+“Got a cabin?” I inquired.
+
+He replied with a little speech of three dozen words that said in
+effect, “Yes.”
+
+While I fumbled for my wallet, I saw him glance at Almira’s left hand
+and the wedding ring that wasn’t there. He looked at me and smiled. One
+of _those_ smiles. Then he looked at Almira ... really _looked_ at her
+for the first time. He had difficulty taking his eyes from her.
+
+He gave me a key and I clutched it in my palm as if it were a key to
+paradise. He pronounced a number and I memorized it as if it were a
+password to eternal ecstasy.
+
+As we walked to the cabin, I was acutely conscious of every surrounding
+detail, as if inner excitement had sharpened my senses abnormally. My
+ears registered the crunch of our feet on gravel, the hum of tires on
+the distant highway, the whispering of the wind in the trees and even
+the chatter of invisible crickets. Each sound seemed distinct, almost
+thunderous.
+
+It was a small cabin.
+
+I turned on the lights, locked the door and sat down. My knees felt
+weak.
+
+She undressed with majestic poise, and without a trace of shyness. She
+was not ashamed, though I never took my eyes from her. She acted as if
+it was the most natural thing in the world for her to undress before an
+audience.
+
+When she was undressed, she turned and smiled at me. The smile seemed
+to say, _You may look but I’ll never let you touch me_. Her body was
+unbelievably beautiful, white and voluptuously formed. My temples
+started pounding.
+
+I found myself thinking, _I don’t want you. I love my wife. I don’t
+know why I came here_....
+
+She smiled again, turned out the lights and reclined on the bed.
+
+And then it began.
+
+Something left my mind and with it went _desire_. All desire for all
+women. The erotic ardor drained from my mind, floated away and vanished
+completely. Somehow, I knew the emotion had departed forever. I would
+never be attracted to a woman again as long as I lived.
+
+Compassion vanished as well. For a brief moment, I had felt sorry for
+myself but even as I experienced the emotion, I could feel it draining
+from my body like water through a sieve. All compassion for the
+living--and the dead.
+
+Sadness departed next and I knew I could never feel sad about
+_anything_ again. I would be incapable of sorrow. My wife and children
+could die and I would not grieve.
+
+It rained--beat against the roof and windows and splashed on the
+driveway outside the cabin.
+
+Fear drifted away from my brain. Fear of all things--even of pain and
+death. Fear of the unknown. I would never again be afraid of anything.
+
+And because of that, for the briefest instant, I felt _proud_. Then
+pride itself slipped from my mental fingers, and a numbness took its
+place.
+
+One by one, my human emotions slipped away into the dark night to some
+unknown, unimaginable destination. I could feel them going one by one:
+little emotions, and big, overpowering ones, and some so elusive they
+seemed scarcely emotions at all.
+
+I tried to rise from the chair and discovered that my legs had become
+paralyzed, useless. Hate grew within me like a raging inferno. Anger at
+the unknown thing that was stealing my most precious possessions.
+
+The rain stopped.
+
+I wasn’t angry anymore.
+
+_Joy_ was the last to go, and its departure became an eternity of
+pain. It was like swimming through an endless sea of broken glass. I
+wanted to scream, but something wouldn’t let me. Hours flew by like the
+passing of seconds.
+
+Dawn came, and I still sat in the chair, staring at the woman on the
+bed.
+
+The paralysis of my legs ended abruptly. Almira arose, dressed and
+smiled at me as she started for the door. I followed her.
+
+“Will you explain?” I begged, clutching desperately at her arm.
+
+She turned and studied my face while a smile trembled at the corners
+of her mouth. Then the smiled vanished. Her face changed visibly, and
+tears glistened on her smooth cheeks. I thought: _She looks like a
+woman who has shot a rabbit and is glad. Glad. And then, she goes to
+the rabbit, and looks into its large, tormented eyes ... and cries._
+
+She explained but not with words. We stood by the door and in my mind,
+I saw a majestic city. Shining structures of metal thrust their towers
+high above the clouds and their foundations deep into the ground. The
+buildings were thronged with radiantly-garbed men and women, and,
+everywhere in the city, there were massive, audibly droning machines a
+hundred times more complex than an atomic generator.
+
+I saw _farms_ filled with strange pink animals, and as I watched
+in horror I saw the inhabitants of the great city devour them
+with a sickening greediness. It was not the animals’ flesh which
+they devoured. _With their minds, they feasted on the creatures’
+multitudinous emotions, drawing them into their own coldly inhuman
+minds, and digesting them with relish._
+
+The last telepathic picture: A ship that traveled through space with a
+speed incalculable. I saw it flash through dark, empty dimensions and
+land on Earth. A woman left the strange ship....
+
+“You see,” Almira whispered, “on my native planet, I _am_ a princess.
+I came here to _hunt_.” She cried out ecstatically and raised her
+arms. “Your planet is a jungle and your race are beasts in the jungle.
+I hunt them and I trap them. And I eat their emotions as I consumed
+yours.” She pressed slender fingers against her temples. “And I do it
+because it gives me a rapturous satisfaction which you could not even
+comprehend.”
+
+Her arms dropped and she stared at me pleadingly through tear-filled
+eyes. “Do you understand?”
+
+I nodded. I felt exactly like a dying rabbit staring up in hopeless
+torment at a victorious hunter.
+
+She opened the door and left. The room was empty--and so was I.
+
+I wanted to be afraid and could not.
+
+I wanted to cry and couldn’t.
+
+I couldn’t even be angry.
+
+I opened the door. She was standing beside the highway, waiting.
+
+I wanted to run and scream a warning to everyone but my legs refused to
+move and my mouth wouldn’t shout. She had done something to my mind.
+As long as I lived, I would _never_ be able to tell anyone about the
+strange huntress from another world.
+
+My lips were forever sealed.
+
+She signalled a bus to stop.
+
+I watched her as she boarded the bus, and wondered how many disguises
+she would use, and had used in the past. How many men would she meet in
+bars, and hotels, on roads and beaches--_everywhere?_
+
+_How long had she been on Earth?_
+
+The bus hurtled down the busy highway.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s note:
+
+
+ This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe, May 1955 (Vol. 3, No.
+ 4.). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
+ copyright on this publication was renewed.
+
+ Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version, but minor
+ inconsistencies have been retained as printed.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78737 ***
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+<html lang="en">
+<head>
+ <meta charset="UTF-8">
+ <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
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+ The Huntress | Project Gutenberg
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+/* Transcriber's notes */
+.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA;
+ color: black;
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+ </style>
+</head>
+
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78737 ***</div>
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp53" id="cover" style="max-width: 114.4375em;">
+ <img class="w20" src="images/cover.jpg" alt="">
+ <figcaption>
+ <p>Transcribed from Fantastic Universe, May 1955 (Vol. 3, No. 4.).</p>
+ </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"></div>
+
+
+<h1>
+The Huntress
+</h1>
+
+<p class="f15 center">by <strong>Richard R. Smith</strong></p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"></div>
+<blockquote>
+<p><i>We have read a good many vampire tales by reading-lamp radiance, with the
+wind whistling eerily in the eaves, and a steeple bell tolling from afar.
+But seldom have we read such a vampire thriller as this, with its aura of
+billboards, weather, hitchhiking and quite realizable future science. This is
+Mr. Smith's third story for us, and with each new yarn his stature has grown.</i></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><b>She was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, and in her eyes
+was a promise of paradise. But to live in paradise a man must die.</b></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"></div>
+<p>My headlights silhouetted her against the dark-surfaced billboard and
+even at sixty miles an hour, I could see she had curves and a thumb in
+the traditional position of a hitch-hiker.</p>
+
+<p>I passed her, wonderingly. Then, on a sudden impulse, I stopped the car
+and backed up.</p>
+
+<p>She opened the door, threw a suitcase on the back seat, slid across the
+front seat until she bumped against my arm and said, “Thanks.”</p>
+
+<p>It was too dark to see her face, so I mumbled something and started
+down the highway again.</p>
+
+<p>“Where are you going?” I asked.</p>
+
+<p>“No place special.” Her voice was soft, warm and joyous as if ready to
+burst into laughter at any moment.</p>
+
+<p>“Where are <i>you</i> going?” she asked.</p>
+
+<p>“No place special.” It was a lie, but it sounded good. Actually, I had
+a very special destination: my home, wife and kids were approximately
+fifty miles down the highway.</p>
+
+<p>I broke open a pack of cigarettes and thrust it toward her. She
+accepted the offer. She lit my cigarette, then her own.</p>
+
+<p>“Are you a salesman?” It was meant to be a question but some inflection
+in her voice made it sound like a statement.</p>
+
+<p>“How did you know?” I asked.</p>
+
+<p>“A guess. I saw your briefcase and papers on the back seat. What do you
+sell?”</p>
+
+<p>Her perfume thrilled me. It was different than any I’d ever smelled.
+Would <i>exotic</i> describe it? It was as if the most exciting scents
+from a hundred types of flowers had been mingled in just the right
+proportions.</p>
+
+<p>“I sell paints,” I told her. “Not door to door, but to big businesses
+and factories that need a lot of paint.”</p>
+
+<p>We talked for the next two hours. Some people talk about the weather,
+politics and sports. She and I talked about destiny, the ecstasies of
+life, space travel and alien civilizations. We talked about how it
+feels to kill something, to fear the unknown, to die, to love and to be
+drunk. We even discussed jungles, work, pain and types of people.</p>
+
+<p>It was the most interesting conversation of my life. It was so
+interesting that I drove fifty-four miles in the wrong direction before
+I realized where I was.</p>
+
+<p>I stopped the car and glanced in the rear-view mirror. My house was
+only a few miles from the highway. A small side-road leads directly to
+the front porch. That side-road was now fifty-four miles behind the car.</p>
+
+<p>“What’s the matter?” she asked in a soft voice.</p>
+
+<p>“I was so busy talking to you that I drove fifty miles out of my way!”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m sorry.”</p>
+
+<p>I turned to stare at her. The headlights of an approaching car
+illuminated her face and for the first time, I got a good look at my
+companion. She was beautiful. It was the kind of beauty that makes men
+abandon all caution. For a full minute I stared into her fathomless
+blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“What’s your name?” I whispered.</p>
+
+<p>“Almira. It’s Arabic. It means: a princess.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are a <i>princess</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>She laughed. “I am.”</p>
+
+<p>We continued to stare into each other’s eyes, neither of us moving or
+speaking. We said a lot without saying a word ... Messages and replied.
+Offers and acceptances. It was the first time in my life that I had
+carried on a long conversation with my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>I drove to the nearest motel.</p>
+
+<p>The modern log cabins clustered at the edge of a forest, but although
+the small buildings were close together the surrounding trees and
+bushes gave each an appearance of isolation and serenity. Only the
+brightly-lighted brick office building struck an incongruous note.</p>
+
+<p>The clerk was bald, unshaven and engrossed in a pin-up girl magazine.
+He looked up as we entered the office, hid the magazine, took the cigar
+from his thick lips and asked, “Can I help you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Got a cabin?” I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>He replied with a little speech of three dozen words that said in
+effect, “Yes.”</p>
+
+<p>While I fumbled for my wallet, I saw him glance at Almira’s left hand
+and the wedding ring that wasn’t there. He looked at me and smiled.
+One of <i>those</i> smiles. Then he looked at Almira ... really
+<i>looked</i> at her for the first time. He had difficulty taking his
+eyes from her.</p>
+
+<p>He gave me a key and I clutched it in my palm as if it were a key to
+paradise. He pronounced a number and I memorized it as if it were a
+password to eternal ecstasy.</p>
+
+<p>As we walked to the cabin, I was acutely conscious of every surrounding
+detail, as if inner excitement had sharpened my senses abnormally. My
+ears registered the crunch of our feet on gravel, the hum of tires on
+the distant highway, the whispering of the wind in the trees and even
+the chatter of invisible crickets. Each sound seemed distinct, almost
+thunderous.</p>
+
+<p>It was a small cabin.</p>
+
+<p>I turned on the lights, locked the door and sat down. My knees felt
+weak.</p>
+
+<p>She undressed with majestic poise, and without a trace of shyness. She
+was not ashamed, though I never took my eyes from her. She acted as if
+it was the most natural thing in the world for her to undress before an
+audience.</p>
+
+<p>When she was undressed, she turned and smiled at me. The smile seemed
+to say, <i>You may look but I’ll never let you touch me</i>. Her body
+was unbelievably beautiful, white and voluptuously formed. My temples
+started pounding.</p>
+
+<p>I found myself thinking, <i>I don’t want you. I love my wife. I don’t
+know why I came here</i>....</p>
+
+<p>She smiled again, turned out the lights and reclined on the bed.</p>
+
+<p>And then it began.</p>
+
+<p>Something left my mind and with it went <i>desire</i>. All desire for
+all women. The erotic ardor drained from my mind, floated away and
+vanished completely. Somehow, I knew the emotion had departed forever.
+I would never be attracted to a woman again as long as I lived.</p>
+
+<p>Compassion vanished as well. For a brief moment, I had felt sorry for
+myself but even as I experienced the emotion, I could feel it draining
+from my body like water through a sieve. All compassion for the
+living—and the dead.</p>
+
+<p>Sadness departed next and I knew I could never feel sad about
+<i>anything</i> again. I would be incapable of sorrow. My wife and
+children could die and I would not grieve.</p>
+
+<p>It rained—beat against the roof and windows and splashed on the
+driveway outside the cabin.</p>
+
+<p>Fear drifted away from my brain. Fear of all things—even of pain and
+death. Fear of the unknown. I would never again be afraid of anything.</p>
+
+<p>And because of that, for the briefest instant, I felt <i>proud</i>.
+Then pride itself slipped from my mental fingers, and a numbness took
+its place.</p>
+
+<p>One by one, my human emotions slipped away into the dark night to some
+unknown, unimaginable destination. I could feel them going one by one:
+little emotions, and big, overpowering ones, and some so elusive they
+seemed scarcely emotions at all.</p>
+
+<p>I tried to rise from the chair and discovered that my legs had become
+paralyzed, useless. Hate grew within me like a raging inferno. Anger at
+the unknown thing that was stealing my most precious possessions.</p>
+
+<p>The rain stopped.</p>
+
+<p>I wasn’t angry anymore.</p>
+
+<p><i>Joy</i> was the last to go, and its departure became an eternity of
+pain. It was like swimming through an endless sea of broken glass. I
+wanted to scream, but something wouldn’t let me. Hours flew by like the
+passing of seconds.</p>
+
+<p>Dawn came, and I still sat in the chair, staring at the woman on the
+bed.</p>
+
+<p>The paralysis of my legs ended abruptly. Almira arose, dressed and
+smiled at me as she started for the door. I followed her.</p>
+
+<p>“Will you explain?” I begged, clutching desperately at her arm.</p>
+
+<p>She turned and studied my face while a smile trembled at the corners
+of her mouth. Then the smiled vanished. Her face changed visibly, and
+tears glistened on her smooth cheeks. I thought: <i>She looks like a
+woman who has shot a rabbit and is glad. Glad. And then, she goes to
+the rabbit, and looks into its large, tormented eyes ... and cries.</i></p>
+
+<p>She explained but not with words. We stood by the door and in my mind,
+I saw a majestic city. Shining structures of metal thrust their towers
+high above the clouds and their foundations deep into the ground. The
+buildings were thronged with radiantly-garbed men and women, and,
+everywhere in the city, there were massive, audibly droning machines a
+hundred times more complex than an atomic generator.</p>
+
+<p>I saw <i>farms</i> filled with strange pink animals, and as I watched
+in horror I saw the inhabitants of the great city devour them with
+a sickening greediness. It was not the animals’ flesh which they
+devoured. <i>With their minds, they feasted on the creatures’
+multitudinous emotions, drawing them into their own coldly inhuman
+minds, and digesting them with relish.</i></p>
+
+<p>The last telepathic picture: A ship that traveled through space with a
+speed incalculable. I saw it flash through dark, empty dimensions and
+land on Earth. A woman left the strange ship....</p>
+
+<p>“You see,” Almira whispered, “on my native planet, I <i>am</i> a
+princess. I came here to <i>hunt</i>.” She cried out ecstatically and
+raised her arms. “Your planet is a jungle and your race are beasts in
+the jungle. I hunt them and I trap them. And I eat their emotions as I
+consumed yours.” She pressed slender fingers against her temples. “And
+I do it because it gives me a rapturous satisfaction which you could
+not even comprehend.”</p>
+
+<p>Her arms dropped and she stared at me pleadingly through tear-filled
+eyes. “Do you understand?”</p>
+
+<p>I nodded. I felt exactly like a dying rabbit staring up in hopeless
+torment at a victorious hunter.</p>
+
+<p>She opened the door and left. The room was empty—and so was I.</p>
+
+<p>I wanted to be afraid and could not.</p>
+
+<p>I wanted to cry and couldn’t.</p>
+
+<p>I couldn’t even be angry.</p>
+
+<p>I opened the door. She was standing beside the highway, waiting.</p>
+
+<p>I wanted to run and scream a warning to everyone but my legs refused to
+move and my mouth wouldn’t shout. She had done something to my mind. As
+long as I lived, I would <i>never</i> be able to tell anyone about the
+strange huntress from another world.</p>
+
+<p>My lips were forever sealed.</p>
+
+<p>She signalled a bus to stop.</p>
+
+<p>I watched her as she boarded the bus, and wondered how many disguises
+she would use, and had used in the past. How many men would she meet in
+bars, and hotels, on roads and beaches—<i>everywhere?</i></p>
+
+<p><i>How long had she been on Earth?</i></p>
+
+<p>The bus hurtled down the busy highway.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter"></div><div class="transnote">
+ <h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcribers_note">
+ Transcriber’s note:
+ </h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p> This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe, May 1955 (Vol. 3, No.
+4.). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
+copyright on this publication was renewed.</p>
+
+<p> Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version, but minor
+inconsistencies have been retained as printed.</p>
+</blockquote>
+</div>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78737 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+
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+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #78737
+(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78737)