DARK REALITY
By ROBERT MOORE WILLIAMS
Out of a future too dimly discerned
to be comprehensible one was chosen.
Why—no one knew or could know.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Comet March 41.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Slowly, wearily, the yellow sun went down the sky. From the east the night came on, as dark and as deep as the night that has no ending.
The last rays of the sun washed down over the planet, over the low rounded hills and the trees that grew on them, through the shallow valleys where the grass grew rank and luxurious. The last songs of the birds came undisturbed through the dusk. A deer snorted. From somewhere came the bark of another animal, a bark that ended in a howl, long-drawn and mournful.
Dawn world or dusk world?
The night flowed into the valleys, filled them with a mystic darkness. The darkness crept to the tops of the low hills. Slowly it crept around a huge ball that rested on top of the nearer hill. The ball, perhaps fifty feet in diameter, lifted a foot from the ground. It quivered, lifted two feet, then slowly settled back to earth.
The darkness came in around it, touched it, hid it from sight.