The God Next Door

By BILL DOEDE
Illustrated by IVIE
The sand-thing was powerful, lonely and strange. No doubt it was a god—but who wasn't?
Stinson lay still in the sand where he fell, gloating over the success of his arrival.
He touched the pencil-line scar behind his ear where the cylinder was buried, marveling at the power stored there, power to fling him from earth to this fourth planet of the Centaurian system in an instant. It had happened so fast that he could almost feel the warm, humid Missouri air, though he was light years from Missouri.
He got up. A gray, funnel-shaped cloud of dust stood off to his left. This became disturbing, since there was scarcely enough wind to move his hair. He watched it, trying to recall what he might know about cyclones. But he knew little. Weather control made cyclones and other climatic phenomena on earth practically non-existent. The cloud did not move, though, except to spin on its axis rapidly, emitting a high-pitched, scarcely audible whine, like a high speed motor. He judged it harmless.
He stood on a wide valley floor between two mountain ranges. Dark clouds capped one peak of the mountains on his left. The sky was deep blue.
He tested the gravity by jumping up and down. Same as Earth gravity. The sun—no, not the sun. Not Sol. What should he call it, Alpha or Centaurus? Well, perhaps neither. He was here and Earth was somewhere up there. This was the sun of this particular solar system. He was right the first time.
The sun burned fiercely, although he would have said it was about four o'clock in the afternoon, if this had been Earth. Not a tree, nor a bush, nor even a wisp of dry grass was in sight. Everywhere was desert.
The funnel of sand had moved closer and while he watched it, it seemed to drift in the wind—although there was no wind. Stinson backed away. It stopped. It was about ten feet tall by three feet in diameter at the base. Then Stinson backed away again. It was changing. Now it became a blue rectangle, then a red cube, a violet sphere.