A man raced toward the city desk, waving a sheet of paper in his hand. Sensing something unusual the others in the room crowded about as he laid the sheet before the editor.
“Just came in,” the man gasped.
The paper was a wire dispatch. It read:
“Rome—The Black Horror is in full retreat. Although still apparently immune to the weapons being used against it, it is lifting the siege of this city. The cause is unknown.”
The editor ran his eye down the sheet. There was another dateline:
“Madrid—The Black Horror, which has enclosed this city in a ring of dark terror for the last two days, is fleeing, rapidly disappearing. …”
The editor pressed a button. There was an answering buzz.
“Composing room,” he shouted, “get ready for a new front! Yes, another extra. This will knock their eyes out!”
A telephone jangled furiously. The editor seized it.
“Yes. What was that? … White says he must have help. I see. Woods and the others are weakening. Being badly beaten, eh? … More men needed to go out to the other plane. Wants reinforcements. Yes. I see. Well, tell him that he’ll have them. If he can wait half an hour we’ll have them walking by thousands into that light. I’ll be damned if we won’t! Just tell White to hang on! We’ll have the whole nation coming to the rescue!”
He jabbed up the receiver.
“Richards,” he said, “write a streamer, ‘Help Needed,’ ‘Reinforcements Called’—something of that sort, you know. Make it scream. Tell the foreman to dig out the biggest type he has. A foot high. If we ever needed big type, we need it now!”
He turned to the telephone.
“Operator,” he said, “get me the Secretary of War at Washington. The secretary in person, you understand. No one else will do.”
He turned again to the reporters who stood about the desk.
“In two hours,” he explained, banging the desk top for emphasis, “we’ll have the United States Army marching into that light Woods walked into!”
The bloody sun was touching the edge of the weird world, seeming to hesitate before taking the final plunge behind the towering black crags that hung above the ink-pot shadows at their base. The purple sky had darkened until it was almost the color of soft, black velvet. Great stars were blazing out.
Ouglat loomed large in the gathering twilight, a horrible misshapen ogre of an outer world. He had grown taller, broader, greater. Mal Shaff’s head now was on a level with the other’s chest; his huge arms seemed toylike in comparison with those of Ouglat, his legs mere pipestems.
Time and time again he had barely escaped as the clutching hands of Ouglat reached out to grasp him. Once within those hands he would be torn apart.
The battle had become a game of hide and seek, a game of cat and mouse, with Mal Shaff the mouse.
Slowly the sun sank and the world became darker. His brain working feverishly, Mal Shaff waited for the darkness. Adroitly he worked the battle nearer and nearer to the Stygian darkness that lay at the foot of the mighty crags. In the darkness he might escape. He could no longer continue this unequal fight. Only escape was left.
The sun was gone now. Blackness was dropping swiftly over the land, like a great blanket, creating the illusion of the glowering sky descending to the ground. Only a few feet away lay the total blackness under the cliffs.
Like a flash Mal Shaff darted into the blackness, was completely swallowed in it. Roaring, Ouglat followed.
His shoulders almost touching the great rock wall that shot straight up hundreds of feet above him, Mal Shaff ran swiftly, fear lending speed to his shivering legs. Behind him he heard the bellowing of his enemy. Ouglat was searching for him, a hopeless search in that total darkness. He would never find him. Mal Shaff felt sure.
Fagged and out of breath, he dropped panting at the foot of the wall. Blood pounded through his head and his strength seemed to be gone. He lay still and stared out into the less dark moor that stretched before him.
For some time he lay there, resting. Aimlessly he looked out over the moor, and then he suddenly noted, some distance to his right, a hill rising from the moor. The hill was vaguely familiar. He remembered it dimly as being of great importance.
A sudden inexplicable restlessness filled him. Far behind him he heard the enraged bellowing of Ouglat, but that he scarcely noticed. So long as darkness lay upon the land he knew he was safe from his enemy.
The hill had made him restless. He must reach the top. He could think of no logical reason for doing so. Obviously he was safer here at the base of the cliff, but a voice seemed to be calling, a friendly voice from the hilltop.
He rose on aching legs and forged ahead. Every fiber of his being cried out in protest, but resolutely he placed one foot ahead of the other, walking mechanically.
Opposite the hill he disregarded the strange call that pulsed down upon him, long enough to rest his tortured body. He must build up his strength for the climb.
He realized that danger lay ahead. Once he quitted the blackness of the cliff’s base, Ouglat, even in the darkness that lay over the land, might see him. That would be disastrous. Once over the top of the hill he would be safe.
Suddenly the landscape was bathed in light, a soft green radiance. One moment it had been pitch dark, the next it was light, as if a giant searchlight had been snapped on.
In terror, Mal Shaff looked for the source of the light. Just above the horizon hung a great green orb, which moved up the ladder of the sky even as he watched.
A moon! A huge green satellite hurtling swiftly around this cursed world!
A great, overwhelming fear sat upon Mal Shaff
