normal. The being was affecting my very thought-processes — and even as I stood before the cone, the insect- creature was pouring its memories into me. For as the landscape melted about me, I began to experience visions. I seemed to float above scenes like those of a hashish dream — in a body such as that of the horror from the cone. The worlds swam out of darkness for what seemed an eternity; I saw things of indescribable hideousness, and could not flee from the sight of them. And as the thing gained a hold over me, I began to see actual scenes from the life of the being which occupied me.
There was a place of green mists through which I flapped, over a boundless surface of pitching water. At one point the mists began to roll back, and I rose through them, the green, attenuated film billowing round me. In the distance a long, vague cylinder poked towards the invisible sky, and as I drew closer I saw that it was a stone pillar, protruding from the swaying water, grown with hard shell-like plants and with curiously shaped projections on each side at regular intervals. There seemed to be no reason for the terror which boiled up in me at the sight of that pillar, but I purposely flew around the object at a distance. As the mists began to conceal it again, I saw a huge leathery hand, with long boneless fingers, reach out of the water, followed by a many-jointed arm. I saw that arm's muscles tense, as if whatever owned the arm were preparing to pull itself out of the sea. I turned away and flew into the mist — for I did not want to see what would appear above the surface.
The scene melted into another. I crawled down a path which snaked between translucent, diamond-like rocks. The path entered a valley, at the bottom of which lay a strange black building, inexplicably luminous under the purple night sky of that far planet. The building was of no recognizable architecture, with its deliriously sloping roof and many-sided towers, and I did not know why I was approaching it so purposefully. My claws clattered over the rock-strewn surface which became a black-tiled pavement before the gaping entrance to the ebon building, and I entered. Many passages twisted before I reached that which I sought — that which was spoken of on Shaggai as so powerful — and I did not like what hung from the ceilings in shadowy corners; but at last I came upon the windowless chamber in a high black tower. I took the strangely shaped piece of metal from where it lay on a central slab and turned to leave the chamber. Then a door in the opposite wall crashed open, and I remembered the whispered legend of the guardian of this weapon of a lost race. But I knew how to use the weapon's fullest power, and through it I focused mental waves to blast apart the many-legged furry thing which scuttled from the opened door, its abominably shrunken heads waving on hairy, scrawny necks. Then I flapped from the haunted lightless tower in terror, clutching the metal weapon — for as I looked back I saw the many-headed thing, all the legs on one side of its body burned away, still dragging itself sideways after me.
Again the vision rippled and changed. I stood on a high slab of some beautifully polished plastic, surrounded by lines of the most nauseous beings imaginable. They were oval, two-legged, dwarved things, scarcely two feet high, without arms or head, but with a gaping moist grey mouth at the centre of their bodies, which were of a spongy white pulp. They were all prostrate in an attitude of worship before me on the fungus which appeared to compose the ground in a solid gelatinous sheet on their side of the slab. My side of that slab was bare rock, covered with huge squat dark-emerald buildings of the same material as the slab. These, I knew, had been constructed by a race other than the pulpy white things, and probably antedating them; the beings that worshipped my hardness could not work such material or even touch it, but lived in repulsively moist burrows in the fungus. Indeed, even as I watched, one of them moved too near to the dais upon which I stood, and in so doing ripped away a sponge-wet portion of itself, which speedily putrefied where it lay.
Yet another scene flashed before me. I skimmed over a plain covered with colossi depicting naked humanoid figures in various bestial attitudes, each statue at least a hundred feet tall; and about them all was some hideous detail which I could not quite place. I disliked the vast footprints which led between the leering figures, and still more disliked the disturbingly
As the visions began to overtake me in greater quantity, they acquired more definite connection, and it was not long before I realised what was now being put into my brain was a sort of history of the insect-race. Perhaps the most horrible part of the affair was the way I regarded the events and scenes now presented to me, not with the horror and disgust of a sane human being, but with the exact same impersonal observation of the insect- parasite. As the chronicles of the race were passed through my mind, I
So it was that I learned the history of the insect-race, and so it is that I write now what I learned. And horror can still be provoked in me by thoughts of what the insects from Shaggai may yet do on this earth.
The beings had, I learned, originally come from Shaggai, a globe far beyond the reach of any earthly telescope, which orbited a double sun at the edge of the universe. Upon this planet they built their cities, full of globular domes for their habitations and pylons of that grey metal which composed the cone. The main buildings were almost all globular, entered by a doorless orifice at the top of each, through which the insects could fly — but there was one important building which was not globular, but pyramidical: the temple at the centre of each city. And the thoughts of the being grew oddly reticent on the subject of this temple, whence all the inhabitants would go to worship at ritual times; for never could I tap a memory of what was worshipped inside that grey metal pyramid. The only fact which became apparent was that, incredible as it sounds, the tenant of the temple was one living being, but was somehow the
The life of the beings of the grey cities followed no definite pattern, except for certain observances. They would leave their domes as the blinding emerald light of the two suns rose above the horizon, and while a generally avoided group of priests flew to the temple, the rest went about personal business. None needed to eat — they lived by photo-synthesis of the green rays of the double star — and so they visited other planets, seeking new abnormalities which they, in their perversion, could aesthetically enjoy. At the time of birth of my informant, the race, needing to do no work, had sunk to an abysmal state of decadence. While on Shaggai they would torture slave-races from other worlds for pleasure; and when on other planets, they sought the most terribly haunted localities to view their horrors — with which pastime the early memories of the insect-being had been occupied. There was another practice of the insects which was not then fully revealed — but it was connected, it appeared, with what they practised on the witch-cult at their outpost on earth.
At any rate, the beings had set up outposts and built cities on many of the outer worlds, in case anything should ever make Shaggai uninhabitable; for they had had experience of what might crawl over the rim of the universe and conquer their world before then. So they were to some extent prepared when a catastrophe did indeed devastate their world, many aeons before their advent on earth. Even at the time when I visited their shrine, they had very little idea of what had really destroyed Shaggai; they had seen it happen from the beginning, but could only explain the cause vaguely — and, having viewed a vision of what they saw for myself, I did not wonder at their puzzlement.
It was at the dawning of one of those emerald-lit days that the object was first seen. Above the double disc on the horizon, and slowly approaching their planet, appeared a strange semi-spherical red globe. The edges were indistinct, while the centre was a sharply-defined point of crimson fire. At that time the approach of the sphere was so unnoticeable that few of the city's inhabitants remarked it; but by the third dawn the object was much nearer, so that the race's scientists began to study it. They decided, after much speculation, that it was not a star or planet, but some species of body which was composed of no recognizable substance; the — spectrum was completely unknown, and the substance must have come from a region where conditions were unlike those anywhere in this universe. Because of this vagueness of its identity they were uncertain of its probable effects on their planet — for the body was heading directly for Shaggai, and should reach it before the suns had set thrice more.
On the third day the globe was a huge red glow in the sky, blotting out the green suns and lighting everything with a crimson flame; but no heat emanated from it, and no other evidence of its existence met the insects besides the blood-red light. They were uneasy, for the menacing sphere in the heavens was very disturbing, and therefore many of them visited the triangular temple frequently for private worship. The being in my body had been one of those frequent visitors, and owed its life to being in the temple when the cataclysm struck. It had entered under the
