The street was gone. The rest of his house was gone. This room still retained its form.
This room, he knew, would stay the longest. And when the rest of the room was gone, this corner with his favorite chair would remain. For this was the spot where he had lived for twenty years. The bedroom was for sleeping, the kitchen for eating. This room was for living. This was his last stand. These were the walls and floors and prints and lamps that had soaked up his will to make them walls and prints and lamps.
He looked out the window into a blank world. His neighbors’ houses already were gone. They had not lived with them as he had lived with this room. Their interests had been divided, thinly spread; their thoughts had not been concentrated as his upon an area four blocks by three, or a room fourteen by twelve.
Staring through the window, he saw it again. The same vision he had looked upon before and yet different in an indescribable way. There was the city illumined in the sky. There were the elliptical towers and turrets, the cube-shaped domes and battlements. He could see with stereoscopic clarity the aerial bridges, the gleaming avenues sweeping on into infinitude. The vision was nearer this time, but the depth and proportion had changed, as if he were viewing it from two concentric angles at the same time.
And the face, the face of magnitude, of power, of cosmic craft and evil…
Mr. Chambers turned his eyes back into the room. The clock was ticking slowly, steadily. The grayness was stealing into the room. The table and radio were the first to go. They simply faded away and with them went one corner of the room.
Now as he sat there it did not seem queer to be without the table or the radio. It was as if it were something quite normal. Something one could expect to happen. Perhaps, if he thought hard enough, he could bring them back. But, after all, what was the use? One man, alone, could not stand off the irresistible march of nothingness. One man, all alone, simply could not.
He wondered what the elephant ash tray looked like in that other dimension. It certainly would not be an elephant ash tray, nor would the radio be a radio, for perhaps they did not have ash trays or radios or elephants in the invading dimension.
He wondered, as a matter of fact, what he himself would look like when he finally slipped into the unknown. For he was matter, too, just as the ash tray and radio were matter. He wondered if he would retain his individuality, if he still would be a person. Or would he merely be a thing?
There was one answer to all of that. He simply didn’t know.
Nothingness advanced upon him, ate its way across the room, stalking him as he sat in the chair underneath the lamp. He waited for it.
The room, or what was left of it, plunged into dreadful silence.
Mr. Chambers started. The clock had stopped. Funny … the first time in twenty years.
He leaped from his chair and then sat down again. The clock hadn’t stopped.
It wasn’t there.
There was a tingling sensation in his feet.
DEAR DEVIL
Eric Frank Russell
Not all creatures from beyond are invaders, or monsters, or even dangerous … no matter how they may look. Some, like the Martian explorer in the following story, might be poets whose ‘mission on Earth is one of love and understanding. But they may have trouble convincing us of their good intentions, if they look so frightening.
Eric Frank Russell has written many famous science-fiction novels, including Sinister Barrier and Dreadful Sanctuary, but his best-known story of all remains the following warm and moving novelette.
The first Martian vessel descended upon Earth with the slow, stately fall of a grounded balloon. It did resemble a large balloon in that it was spherical and had a strange buoyance out of keeping with its metallic construction. Beyond this superficial appearance all similarity to anything Terrestrial ceased.
There were no rockets, no crimson Venturis, no external projections other than several solaradiant distorting grids which boosted the ship in any desired direction through the cosmic field. There were no observation ports. All viewing was done through a transparent band running right around the fat belly of the sphere. The bluish, nightmarish crew was assembled behind that band, surveying the world with great multifaceted eyes.
They gazed through the band in utter silence as they examined this world which was Terra. Even if they had been capable of speech they would have said nothing. But none among them had a talkative faculty in any sonic sense. At this quiet moment none needed it.
The scene outside was one of untrammeled desolation. Scraggy blue-green grass clung to tired ground right away to the horizon scarred by ragged mountains. Dismal bushes struggled for life here and there, some with the pathetic air of striving to become trees as once their ancestors had been. To the right, a long, straight scar through the grass betrayed the sterile lumpiness of rocks at odd places. Too rugged and too narrow ever to have been a road, it suggested no more than the desiccating remnants of a long-gone wall. And over all this loomed a ghastly sky.
Captain Skhiva eyed his crew, spoke to them with his sign-talking tentacle. The alternative was contact-telepathy which required physical touch.
“It is obvious that we are out of luck. We could have done no worse had we landed on the empty satellite. However, it is safe to go out. Anyone who wishes to explore a little while may do so.”
One of them gesticulated back at him. “Captain, don’t you wish to be the first to step upon this world?”
“It is of no consequence. If anyone deems it an honor, he is welcome to it.” He pulled the lever opening both air-lock doors. Thicker, heavier ah- crowded in and pressure went up a little. “Beware of overexertion,” he warned as they went out.
Poet Pander touched him, tentacles tip to tip as he sent his thoughts racing through their nerve ends. “This confirms all that we saw as we approached. A stricken planet far gone in its death throes. What do you suppose caused it?”
“I have not the remotest idea. I would like to know. If it has been smitten by natural forces, what might they do to Mars?” His troubled mind sent its throb of worry up Pander’s contacting tentacle. “A pity that this planet had not been farther out instead of closer in; we might then have observed the preceding phenomena from the surface of Mars. It is so difficult properly to view this one against the Sun.”
“That applies still more to the next world, the misty one,” observed Poet Pander.
“I know it. I am beginning to fear what we may find there. If it proves to be equally dead, then we are stalled until we can make the big jump outward.”
“Which won’t be in our lifetimes.”
“I doubt it,” agreed Captain Skhiva. “We might move fast with the help of friends. We shall be slow-alone.” He turned to watch his crew writhing in various directions across the grim landscape. “They find it good to be on firm ground. But what is a world without life and beauty? In a short time they will grow tired of it.”
Pander said thoughtfully, “Nevertheless, I would like to see more of it. May I take out the lifeboat?”
“You are a songbird, not a pilot,” reproved Captain Skhiva. “Your function is to maintain morale by entertaining us, not to roam around in a lifeboat.”
“But I know how to handle it. Every one of us was trained to handle it. Let me take it that I may see more.”
“Haven’t we seen enough, even before we landed? What else is there to see? Cracked and distorted roads about to dissolve into nothingness. Ages-old cities, torn and broken, crumbling into dust. Shattered mountains and charred forests and craters little smaller than those upon the Moon. No sign of any superior lifeform still surviving. Only the grass, the shrubs, and various animals, two- or four-legged, that flee at our approach. Why do you wish to see more?”