THE SERPENT RIVER
By Don Wilcox
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Other Worlds May 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Code was rigid—no fraternization with the
peoples of other planets! Earth wanted no
"shotgun weddings" of the worlds of space!
"Split" Campbell and I brought our ship down to a quiet landing on the summit of a mile-wide naked rock, and I turned to the telescope for a closer view of the strange thing we had come to see.
It shone, eighteen or twenty miles away, in the light of the late afternoon sun. It was a long silvery serpent-like something that crawled slowly over the planet's surface.
There was no way of guessing how large it was, at this distance. It might have been a rope rolled into shape out of a mountain—or a chain of mountains. It might have been a river of bluish-gray dough that had shaped itself into a great cable. Its diameter? If it had been a hollow tube, cities could have flowed through it upright without bending their skyscrapers. It was, to the eye, an endless rope of cloud oozing along the surface of the land. No, not cloud, for it had the compactness of solid substance.