"No, Mr. Rogers. Hear this, men. The shot that fells the beast gets another ten percent of my share. Now, Mr. Rogers. Now I get my eye back, and the men of the Essex, and the right to bring the fruit of this Hell back to Earth. Now is the moment all mankind has waited for. Now. Will you deny me that? Will you, Mr. Rogers?"
I couldn't answer. It was too late. One of the emplacements had brought its weapon to bear and fired at what seemed point blank range. The sound was deafening above the roar of the wind. I felt the wind tear at my clothes and saw the blinding flash and then heard the sound of the detonation. Kingsford stood firm through all this. "Again," he shouted. "Again." Then he fell forward, the wind tearing at him. I fell to my knees then, the wind dragging at me, and felt a mound at my side. It was the base of a projection of stone. I undid my waist clasp and secured myself to the projection and reached out to Kingsford. I grasped his wrist and hung on as I saw the flame and smoke whirled away and sucked into the funnel of the monster as it turned toward the center of the camp. Kingsford was like a limp rag, dragging in the wind against my hand. The animal had veered directly toward the camp site. It was over the ship. It dwarfed the Algonquin, easily ten times its size. I saw solid objects floating toward its funnel mouth. I was deafened by the roar of the wind now, but I saw that the objects were men and equipment. I thought I heard screams, but it must have been the roaring of the wind. Then I saw both its eyes, huge yet blind, and everything about me rushing toward the mouth of the funnel. Then the ship began to come apart and I could see nothing in the devastating clouds of dust and smoke that surrounded me, a solid mass fleeing at unbelievable speed toward a center I could no longer determine. Once, during this horror, I felt a weight lifted from the strain on my body. I did not realize at once that it was Kingsford being torn away from my grasp. After that, I gave myself up to what might be. I could no longer breathe, no longer see, no longer feel, but by some monstrous miracle, the stone projection to which I was clasped held securely and only in semi-consciousness was I aware of the gradual diminution of all sound and wind, and a slow returning to silence of this vast hell of a planet. Some time later, I opened my eyes to the magnificent glare of early morning sunlight in full splendor.
Nothing about me had remained. Of the men, the emplacements, the conveyors, refinery or reactor, indeed of the Algonquin herself I saw nothing more. Only a plain. A vast, arid plain, where once there had been forty some men and myself, a ship that mirrored the pinnacle of human technology, and the semblance of a habitable, arable land. I was alone.
I remember now that I forced myself to stand. I remember that I walked for endless hours, searching but not finding the least sign of a crew, a ship, a life in which I was Executive Officer Philip Rogers. I remember I spoke one word over and over again as I walked, the word vanity, and I cried aloud to myself until I could think and walk and speak and cry no more. Then I fell to the ground and dug my way into a sleep of unconsciousness for I don't know how long. When I wakened, it was night, a night this time with the cool light of two moons casting a double shadow of my hand as I raised it for something that my eyes could see. I stood and walked again. I walked until the night began to fade and I was in a land of greens and warm forest shadows.
I have grown to recognize every sign of the animals. When they come, a desert remains in their path. I must find another oasis. But things grow rapidly here. A desert is replaced by a pasture for their grazing in not too many weeks, or it may be months. I no longer count. Kingsford was wrong, of course. This was not his personification of evil. Nor had his monster grown in his absence. They are the sole specie of this place. After a time you grow to recognize the difference, and I have never seen two the same size, or looking exactly alike. I learned to hide as I have learned to live on this planet. I live, but I wonder whether it can be called a life. I write about what happened, and I tell it to myself aloud. But I prepare no warning for others, for my every waking hour is devoted to the hope that no others will ever come. This is a planet which was never meant for man to discover. Of that, Captain Kingsford was indisputably right.
(Here, the telling of the tale was interrupted. The time of hiding had come again. Philip Rogers retired to the place he had chosen in this forest and bound the clasps he had fashioned and listened for the wind to rise and the sounds that grew louder, and he thought, "This time. Perhaps this time. Yes, perhaps this time.")
THE END