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Disowned By: Victor A. Endersby (1891-1988) |
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This etext was produced from Astounding Stories September 1932.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. [Illustration: " Wonderful! The World's Unparalleled
Upside Down Man !"] Disowned
By Victor Endersby
[Sidenote: The tragic misadventure of a man to whom the sky became an
appalling abyss, drawing him ever upward.]
The sky sagged downward, bellying blackly with a sudden summer rain,
giving me a vision of catching my train in sodden clothing after the
short cut across the fields, which I was taking in company with my
brother Tristan and his fiancée. The sullen atmosphere ripped apart with an electric glare; our ears
quivered to the throbbing sky, while huge drops, jarred loose from the
air by the thunder impact, splattered sluggishly, heavily, about us.
Little breezes swept out from the storm center, lifting the undersides
of the long grass leaves to view in waves of lighter green. I
complained peevishly. "Ah, mop up!" said Tristan. "You've plenty of time, and there's the
big oak! It's as dry under there as a cave!" "I think that'll be fun!" twittered Alice. "To wait out a
thunder storm under a tree!" "Under a tree?" I said. "Hardly! I'm not hankering to furnish myself
as an exhibit on the physiological effects of a lightning stroke no,
sir!" "Rats!" said Tristan. "All that's a fairy tale trees being dangerous
in a thunder storm!" The rain now beat through our thin summer clothing, as Tristan seized
Alice's hand and towed her toward the spreading shelter. I followed
them at first, then began to lag with an odd unwillingness. I had been
only half serious in my objection, but all at once that tree exercised
an odd repulsion on me; an imaginary picture of the electric fluid
coursing through my shriveling nerve channels grew unpleasantly vivid. Suddenly I knew I was not going under that tree. I stopped dead,
pulling my hat brim down behind to divert the rivulet coursing down
the back of my neck, calling to the others in a voice rather cracked
from embarrassment. They looked back at me curiously, and Alice began
to twit me, standing in the rain, while Tristan desired to know
whether we thought we were a pair of goldfish; in his estimation, we
might belong to the piscine tribe all right, but not to that
decorative branch thereof. To be frank, he used the term "suckers."
Feeling exceptionally foolish, I planted myself doggedly in the
soaking grass as Alice turned to dash for the tree. Then the thing happened; the thing which to this hour makes the fabric
of space with its unknown forces seem an insecure and eery garment for
the body of man. Over the slight rise beyond the tree, as the air
crackled, roared and shook under the thunder blasts, there appeared an
object moving in long, leisurely bounds, drifting before the wind, and
touching the ground lightly each time. It was about eighteen inches in
diameter, globular, glowing with coruscating fires, red, green, and
yellow; a thing of unearthly and wholly sinister beauty. Alice poised with one foot half raised, and shrieked at Tristan, half
terrified, half elated at the sight. He wheeled quickly, there under
the tree, and slowly backed away as the thing drifted in to keep him
company in his shelter. We could not see his face, but there was a
stiffness to his figure indicating something like fear. Suddenly
things I had read rose into my memory. This was one of those objects
variously called "fire balls," "globe lightning," "meteors," and the
like. I also recalled the deadly explosive potencies said to be sometimes
possessed by such entities, and called out frantically: "Tristan! Don't touch it! Get away quickly, but don't disturb the
air!" He heard me and, as the object wavered about in the comparative calm
under the tree, drifting closer to him, started to obey... Continue reading book >>
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