CHEMICAL.
Of course, she was following my thoughts. Which were not happy. A chemical bomb would destroy the ship and kill me and everyone on it—every human on it—but a nuke might have a better chance of destroying the Shadow.
Then I realized why they had put tape over her mouth.
THEY BROUGHT ME ABOARD UNCONSCIOUS.
Because he didn’t want the crew to know— “There’s a bomb on board the ship,” I said, “and Oberst can set it off by a switch under his desk.”
Oberst’s thugs were already uneasy, and that news really stirred them up. “Is that true, Mr. Oberst?” one of them said.
“Be sensible! Why would I blow up Mr. Kelly now that I finally have him?”
BECAUSE HE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT YOU COULD DO, EVEN IMMOBILIZED. AND NOW THAT HE’S STARTING TO BELIEVE ABOUT THE SHADOW—
I had been repeating what she had sent to me aloud, as fast as she sent it, but then she stopped and I stopped.
One of the thugs in the back wasn’t there any more, and little unpleasant remnants were falling to the deck. Maxwell had been looking at me, but she had caught my stare and turned around.
“Look behind you,” I yelled. “You’re all in danger.”
They spun around with their guns aimed toward the back of the ship. Of course they saw no possible target.
Long ago, I had wondered if the Shadow knew what guns were. And if guns could hurt it. Maybe they couldn’t, maybe it just didn’t like having the things pointed at it. But it must have known what a gun was.
It didn’t bother with its usual disappearing act. All the bodies were still there, on the deck, but in bloody pieces. Maxwell hadn’t been hurt. Well, she hadn’t been physically injured. Maybe I should have warned her to close her eyes—not because of the carnage—but I didn’t expect what had happened.
I was hoping that Oberst was ready with that switch, and wishing that he had put a nuke on board, but when I looked at the screen, Oberst was gone, except for the usual human blood and confetti. Then the screen went blank.
Other things were gone. I was no longer in a cocoon, and there was no longer a transparent barrier blocking me off from the ship.
I ran forward to the control room, planning to get far away from Earth as quickly as possible, but not expecting that to do any good. Obviously, the Shadow could travel to Earth and back in a fraction of a second, as it had just demonstrated. Then I realized that it could do more than that, when I recognized the blue planet ahead of the ship. It wasn’t Earth. And the Tucker space station was maybe half a kilometer from the ship. I could see where my battered old Dutchman was, docked at the station.
I had thought I was keeping the thing away from Earth. Some protector I had made. It could have gone there anytime, if it had known where to go. And it knew now.
I went back to see about Callie Maxwell, wondering if I ought to find some clothes first. She was sitting on the deck, starting at the bodies, looking as if she needed to cry, but couldn’t, saying softly, repeatedly, “I saw it. I saw it.”
In half a century, I had never seen it. It was just a shadow seen out of the corner of my eye. Even though its victims always reacted as if they had seen something coming at them, something terrifying, still I had wondered if it had any real form. I knew now that it did.
Maxwell had seen it, and she had been sending images to me when she saw it, so I saw it too. I wish I hadn’t.
In the last five decades, I had accessed a lot of databases, even checking fiction, trying to see if something like the Shadow had been encountered before. One of the first things I turned up was a fictional character, from even before the Moon had been reached, called the Shadow, who could hide in darkness, or turn invisible—the text versions differed from the audio versions—but my Shadow didn’t seem to have much else in common with Lamont Cranston. Then another ancient story called “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” turned up, not only pre-spaceflight, but pre-atomic, and that led me to reading other material by the same author. I also found examples of critics ridiculing him for writing stories of things which were not only indescribable, but so horrible that those who saw them went mad.
Mr. Lovecraft, you really knew what you were talking about. I’ve seen it and I wish I could go mad. Or maybe I did a long time ago . . .
The ship had a lifeboat, so I could set the ship’s controls on timer to take it on a long orbit out to the edge of the system, while we left in the lifeboat. No one would find it, or the bodies on board, for a long time.
As we headed for my ship, I asked Callie, “Are you going to be all right?”
She gave me a look that would make liquid helium look warm. “I’ve seen it,” she said again.
I wanted to keep quiet, but I had to find out what she was going to do. “We’re a long way from Earth,” I said. “Do you need funds to get home?”
“He was a fool,” she said. She picked up that I was worried about her mental state, because next she said, “Oberst was a fool. He didn’t know how good I was. How much I picked up from his thoughts. I know his secret account numbers and I.D. codes. With them, I’m a billionaire. I can get home. Even better, I can afford the memory wipe treatment. Wipe out the last few days. I hope it will work.”
Then she started again, saying “I saw it,” a few more times, until she turned to me again and said, “I know what you’re looking for, and I know where it is.”
I hoped I knew what she meant, but I just said, “Where what is?”
“Oberst had people looking for another gate. They found one a week ago. It’s located at—” and she read off numbers which meant nothing to her, but which I memorized. Later, I’d punch them into my ship’s computer.
“Once we dock with my ship, you can go into the station,” I said. Then I almost said, “Will you be all right?” but didn’t because it was a stupid question. But it was also a stupid thought, and of course she had read it without my saying anything.
“Stop saying that!” she said. “Stop thinking it.”
She wouldn’t be all right ever again, unless the memory wipe treatment worked. I hoped it would.
I saw it, too.
I hoped that Oberst didn’t have any more of his thugs guarding the other gate. I hoped it for their sake. It doesn’t seem to want me to be hurt.
And if the gate is there, maybe it would like to go home. If “like” or “want” have any meaning to it. Even if it isn’t homesick, maybe it’ll follow me, as it’s been doing for half a century, when I walk through the gate to whatever’s on the other side.
And stay there.
Clark Ashton Smith
Here’s another gem from the heyday of the pulps, originally appearing in the October, 1932 Wonder Stories under a title not of the author’s choosing, “Master of the Asteroid.” The space explorer was trapped in his wrecked ship on an asteroid which was large enough to hold a thin atmosphere and support a host of odd beings who seemed to think the crashed explorer was a god. Perhaps he should have wondered if they had mistaken him for someone—or something—else . . .
Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961), a poet, sculptor, and painter, was also a prolific author of sf, fantasy, and horror stories, writing close to 300 short stories. He was a star contributor to the great fantasy-horror pulp, Weird Tales, where his stories appeared alongside those of such other luminaries as H.P. Lovecraft (with whom Smith carried on a long and voluminous correspondence), Robert E. Howard, and Seabury Quinn. He also wrote science fiction stories, including such standout classics as “The City of the Singing Flame” and its sequel, “Beyond the Singing Flame.” Some of his sf tales had a horror slant, and when they appeared in Hugo Gernsback’s Wonder Stories they were apparently a bit too intense for the editor, who often published them with cuts to make them less horrific. Thanks to William A. Dorman and Scott Connors, this is the version as Smith originally wrote it, with no cuts and all shivers intact.