Adventure Magazine Cover — page 153: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Fire Brat Occasions scratched at it, but could not touch it, nor get it out, and finally turned away and vanished as soundlessly and “spookishly”’ as it had come, lifting its feet rather high, for the hot tiles burned them. They were hot enough to burn any living creature and the heat in the crack must have been terrific, but it did not trouble the fire brat. After all, what is the good of owning -aname like that, if you can not live up to it? Suddenly another silver flash appeared behind the first, seen and gone again in a jiff, but there none the less. Another fire brat was in the crack between the tiles, approaching the first, creeping upon it from behind. Yes, there could be no mistaking the surreptitiousness of the movement. It is strange indeed that even among these lowly creatures—the lowest of*all insects— evil intent almost invariably carries a stamp with it which few can misinterpret. The second fire brat crept on, inch by careful.inch, the first one, by reason of his position, the fact that he could not turn, and the slope of his rounded shoulders, being apparently quite unable to see the danger. Something seemed about to happen; and it did. Almost invisible, the first fire brat’s three thread-like feelers from his tail end had been lying out along the crack well behind him, and the approaching one touched—only touched—one of these. The result was curious. Instantly, as if touched by electricity, the first fire brat lashed his three tails like unto a mad thing, and as he lashed he ran on an inch or two. The second fire brat instantly “froze,” if one may use the term in connec- tion with a creature of such a warm name. And this, it seemed, was the meaning of those three tail feelers and the long head ones—to prevent surprize from’ directly ahead or astern in the dark, and in confined spaces where there might be no room to move quickly. After a minute, the maneuver was re- peated; the slow, cautious crawl forward, the warning telegraphed by the long tail feelers, the wild lashing, and the little run ahead. Three times this happened, and then, suddenly, on the fourth time, the first fire brat, being now in a wider spot—any width of a quarter of an inch is a thoroughfare to these dwellers in cracks—whipped round, spun about right-about-face, with such 147 incredible instantaneousness that the enemy, running in for a strangle-hold, found that his victim’s back was not there, but his fighting front was—almost touching his own nose. For about the length of two long breaths they remained there as motionless and emo- tionless as stone fish. Then they backed away, right-about turned, and started run- ning along the crack between the tiles. Now, the tiles were squares, and the cracks, therefore, also. Wherefore the two, naturally, found themselves soon face to face again, and the impasse, and the only possible way of getting out of it, was re- peated. Then again they ran, and again they met, and this time the first fire brat—who, since we must give him a name, we'll call Thermoby—ran out upon the tiles, where, so utterly instantly that it would seem to have been impossible for any living crea- ture—especially one completely unwarned as he was unwarned—to escape it, a house cricket, goggle-eyed, pantomime-masked, lobster-jawed, squat and gnome-like, darted upon him. But if the fire brat possessed no wings to fly with, and no long grasshopper-like legs to jump with, and if he owned no heavy armament, no sting, no great fangs to en- gage a great foe with, nor tested armor to face a siege in; if, in fact, he was only a crawler, lightly, almost tinily armed, and so fragile that it was almost impossible to touch without damaging him, he neverthe- less had something up his dainty salmon- pink sleeve that was not a bad substitute. Fact may say that Thermoby merely dodged that cricket of the hearth as much as fact likes; but to the eye, he became a good imitation of an electric sparking dis- play. Every time he turned sidewise his silver tummy flashed like a speck of light, and since he seemed to turn a dozen times a second, the result was surprizing. You did not so much see him as see his flashes. Nor could any person tell at any given moment where he was. No human eye could follow him. He simply created a maze of himself, at a speed so great that he seemed to vanish. As for the cricket, it—well, it looked foolish. Its own rush had been something remarkable in the matter of instantaneous darts, but this here-there-and-everywhere- ‘ at-once act, in the space of a few inches, of the fire brat was beyond even the cricket. CoOnmmiclboooks C©