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diff --git a/78737-h/78737-h.htm b/78737-h/78737-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..19b0ce9 --- /dev/null +++ b/78737-h/78737-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,393 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <title> + The Huntress | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .51em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .49em; +} + +.p2 {margin-top: 2em;} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: 33.5%; + margin-right: 33.5%; + clear: both; +} + + +hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} +@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} } + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} +h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} + + +blockquote { + margin-top: 0; + margin-bottom: 0; + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +.center {text-align: center;} + +figcaption {font-weight: bold;} +figcaption p {margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: .2em; text-align: inherit;} + +/* Images */ + +img { + max-width: 100%; + height: auto; +} + + +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; + page-break-inside: avoid; + max-width: 100%; +} + + +/* Transcriber's notes */ +.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA; + color: black; + font-size:small; + padding:0.5em; + margin-bottom:5em; + font-family:sans-serif, serif; +} + +.f15 {font-size: 1.5em;} +img.w20 {width: 20em;} + +/* Illustration classes */ +.illowp53 {width: 53%;} +.x-ebookmaker .illowp53 {width: 100%;} + </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> |