Woman from another planet

by Frank Belknap Long

Janice shuddered and looked at him, fear rising in her eyes again. "But we'll be at its mercy anyway. How can we get out? We couldn't be more hopelessly trapped."

"There may be another entrance. We've got to look for it. We've got to keep moving."

Janice made no reply. She had turned and was staring back at the shadowed columns just inside the entrance through which they had passed. Something huge and long-legged was emerging into the hall, its bulk blending with the shadows, and making it seem even larger than it actually was.

For an instant it hovered just inside the entrance-way, swaying hideously back and forth, a shape of nightmare horror with many-faceted eyes, its bloated scarlet abdomen half-raised, its rapier-sharp stinger darting in and out.

Then it was advancing toward them, slowly at first and then more rapidly, with a violent quivering of its entire bulk. Loring looked around him in search of a weapon, but saw nothing that he could clasp and hurl. The bones of the skeleton reptiles were embedded in mountings and were too massive to dislodge. No weapon-shaped fragment could be chipped from them without making use of a knife or saw, and there were no cutting instruments in the vast hall. He had thought for an instant there might be paleontological tools left scattered about. But it was an insane thought and he put it quickly from him.

Vain hopes now could be dangerous, could result in a lessening of his alertness, a lowering of his guard. He was unarmed and defenseless, completely at the swift-moving creature's mercy. He only knew that it had to be stopped. It could not be allowed to attack and destroy him first and be free to turn about and attack Janice, sinking its cruel stinger deep in her flesh.

She saw it coming, and screamed in utter panic. It had bypassed Loring and was darting straight toward her, as if a female of the human species had aroused in it some instinctive awareness of how much better nourishment a more rounded, full-fleshed body would provide for its grubs.

It was instinct solely which prompted Loring to strip himself naked at that instant. Not to convince the fly that his own body was in any way comparable as a source of nourishment, but solely to protect the woman he loved. He needed a weapon. And the strange, sash-like garment which engirdled his loins was a weapon of a sort. It was not a weapon which could save them for long. But if he used it as a net, hurling it directly at the fly and entangling the creature in its folds—

The fly was almost upon Janice when the skillfully flung garment swirled above it, descended upon its head and wrapped itself around the rearing insect's upraised forelegs.

Loring had not completely let go of the garment, and he jerked back on it relentlessly, so that it became both a net and a strangling whipcord. It cut cruelly into the fly's substance and tightened in a quite terrible way.