Woman from another planet

by Frank Belknap Long

"Don't shoot, Kenneth," she whispered, her face pale with fear. "They'll kill you too!"

"They'll kill me anyway," the man said, closing his hand tightly over her trembling fingers and gently freeing his arm. "This is one nightmare that seems to be real. They're certain to kill us all. But I'm going to get one of them first."

The rifle was at his shoulder before she could cry out in protest.

There was another sharp crack, not unlike the report which the Martian's complicated weapon had made. The nearest Martian came to an abrupt halt. For an instant his green-fleshed, masklike face remained totally devoid of expression. Then the lineaments seemed to shrivel and darken. The cruel, slitted mouth lost its firmness and the flesh around the eyelids began to sag. Slowly, horribly the entire face changed color, the green fading to an ashen gray, the pinkish hue of the eyelids darkening to a deep crimson which did not fade.

From a ragged cavern in the Martian's chest there came a brighter flood of crimson. It stained the fabric of his dark-textured, tight-fitting garments, dripped from his garments to the ground and formed a widening pool at his feet.

He swayed a little, but he did not totter and fall. He died standing up, with the animation fading slowly from his eyes. The eyes clouded over, became opaque. But still the Martian remained upright, a standing corpse which maintained its equilibrium by the sturdiness of its firmly planted legs and the sheer massiveness of its barrel-shaped torso and dangling arms.

The mannish woman sank to her knees, covered her eyes with her hands, and began to moan. The man with the rifle stood motionless, his lips white, smoke pouring from the barrel of the half-lowered weapon. The stout woman had ceased to scream. Her face looked gray and frozen and her fingers had gone to her throat. She was plucking at the flesh of her throat, as if the sudden tightening of her vocal cords was causing her unendurable torment.

The slain Martian's costly delay in killing the man with the rifle appeared to enrage his companions. With brutal callousness two of them moved forward, and hurled the lifeless body to the ground. Then, they took care not to repeat his mistake. They killed all three men, with such rapid bursts of weapon fire that they were lifted into the air, hurled backwards and were dead before their bodies struck the ground.

The slender woman whom Tragor coveted cried out in anguish and ran toward the crumpled form of the man with the rifle, her eyes shining with a near madness that went far beyond shock and made her waver as she ran. He was still clasping the rifle, his fingers snagged in the trigger frame. There were no visible wounds on his body, but blood stained his left temple and his eyebrows and hair had been singed. His face was ashen, the eyes blankly staring. She knew at once that he was dead and flung herself upon him, weeping, moaning, her body racked by uncontrollable sobs.

She did not hear the slow, heavy tread of a Martian drawing near and if she had heard she would not have cared. She had no desire to go on living, and had ceased to know the meaning of fear. Her life was over. At that moment she realized, as never before, that no one dies alone.