Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 141: what you’re looking at

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

for their mounts; two bolted, bucking wildly, and the third dropped where it stood, its rider tumbling off. With a cry the little man scrambled to his feet, drawing the powerful bow taut. Striker was about to send a fourth Slug smacking into the man’s skull when the gun fell from his hands. His skin was tight and hot as though a sudden fever had come over him, and he was trembling in every fiber. The sun, low in the west, seemed suddenly eclipsed and Striker felt faint and weary. With half an eye he saw the barbarian with the bow had exploded into lumps of flesh scattered over the tundra. Striker looked up and saw little, electric-blue balls of fire, each bearing a similar caricature of a face, clustering above him. He found his tongue as two thinly shining rays of light enveloped him and he was lifted up into the cold air. “Lights,” the man from the past said thickly. “Lights in the Sky.” What happened to Striker then, happened at an inconceivable pace. He had no concept of his motion except that afforded by “persistence of vision.” Just as a lightning flash that seemed to last for a full second actually comes and goes in a millionth of that time so Striker saw beneath him the sweep of a whole continent, followed by a brief flash of blackness, as of space. He thought he saw before him, hanging among the stars, a vast open hall of pure light and color. And the next thing he knew he was standing in that glowing hall. The small, blue soheres that had been carrying him floated before him, then split cleanly in half and, as they disappeared there floated from the spheres luminous points of white, Surrounded by little tangles of viscera, glaring filaments and radiants. Striker knew then what was about to happen to him; and with all the incredible stubbornness of a human mind he braced himself against the shock that was coming. CORniclooo SS CO