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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 ***