Amazing Stories — page 34: what you’re looking at

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

32 iar looking naked men were at the boundary gate trying to enter the country. Suspecting a trap, the Lieutenant at once called his entire force to arms and personally investigated the matter. When he approached the barricade, he was astonished to see a number of grayish white creatures, six feet high, moving aimlessly on the other side of the gate. They had heads without features, bodies without legs, arms without fingers. Cautiously, he touched one and shivered at the peculiar soft sensation that was im- parted by the animal’s skin. Realizing that his men were watching him closely and that any sign of nervousness on his part would be communicated to them, and feeling certain, too, that each of the peculiar shapes was but a mask and cloak for a Moronian soldier, he drew his revolver and shot one of the odd things several times through the heart section. The bullet holes closed and tere was no blood. The thing kept on with its curious Shuf- fling movement. “Attention, men,” he commanded. “Open the gates and we will take them all prisoners. God knows what they are, but they cannot hurt us any- way, and we will hold them till to-morrow and then send them in trucks to the General-in-Chief.” His men obeyed the command but there were many more of the new creatures than there were soldiers and thus while over seventy were captured, several hundred passed the barricade and started moving down the road. : In the guard-house the telephone was ringing violently. Headquarters wanted to know if any- thing new had developed and whether Lieut. Kraut and his command were safe. Disquieting messages were being received from the other outposts and they wanted an immediate report. Lieut. Kraut started to tell about the peculiar things he had cap- tured, and the Major at the other end of the line reprimanded him for being drunk again. The Lieu- tenant protested that he was perfectly sober. The Major demanded an exact description of the new animal. The Lieutenant had one brought into his office and held near his desk while he gave a verbal description over the telephone. Even while he was talking, the animal softened and started to melt. The Lieutenant described the process as long as he could talk. Even while writhing on the floor in deadly nausea and vomiting, he tried to tell what had hap- pened, but his retching only convinced the Major at Headquarters that the Lieutenant was beastly drunk. Finally the Lieutenant was dragged out of the office by two of his men, who waded through pools of indescribable filth to rescue him. He was too sick to realize that his entire command had fled from the Post, though here and there one of the soldiers lay on the road too sick to move. Outside, the road was impassable on account of the puddles of slime which dotted it. Cursing and vomiting, the Lieutenant staggered through the dark woods, seeking pure air and freedom from the stench, which even in memory produced a recurrence of the pros- trating nausea. Meantime those of the novel creatures who still lived were shuffling slowly down the broad highway, every few minutes losing one of their number by death and decay. In the dark hours of the night they died unseen and unmourned, but each of them left behind a horrible evidence that they had once lived. Over the pools of slime others of their kind eee ° — Pat ae F AMAZING STORIES walked, some three feet high, others a foot high and here and there could be seen midgets only a few inches high but resembling their larger brothers in every detail. When the sun rose, there also arose from every road between the two kingdoms, the smell of death a million times magnified. It was as though Moronia were surrounded by a circle of decay three miles deep. Meantime the smaller, younger Yeast Men were advancing into Eupenia, through the woods and meadows, tumbling into ravines, catching fast in trees and bushes, falling into streams and being swept away in the current, and yet ever with a sound like soft snow falling, the little ones, new born, were floating down through the air like goose down, and on and‘on the machines along the border of Moronia kept up their gentle thump-thump-thump and with each thump was cre- ated one more new life, one more soldier, brainless, fearless, bloodless, filled with the urge to keep on moving till dissolution came. And they all moved downhill, from the mountainous Moronia, into the enemies’ more level country. They were perfect soldiers. All the Eupenian out-posts had experienced the same novel sensations and made the same report that was made by Lieutenant Kraut as soon as he was able to talk. None of the officers who came to head- quarters to report could produce any proof that they really had seen such massive monstrosities. Every officer had to periodically stop his verbal re- port till another period of vomiting had passed. The Commander-in-Chief thoroughly believed that they had gone drunk and insane through the effects of cheap whiskey and put them all under arrest. At the same time he sent several spies on motor-cycles to make a thorough investigation. These returned babbling hysterically of an army of creatures of all sizes, and every spy was vomiting with the same enthusiastic persistency that the officers had shown. The Commander-in-Chief began to curse the morals of his army and went and started to get “drunk” himself. Even then Eupenia might have saved herself, though it is a question as to just how efficacious any campaign of shrapnel, or any building of fences or digging of ditches, would have proved. What really happened was no doubt inevitable, yet the fact re- mains, and it is of historical importance, that twenty- four hours passed before any offensive was started. Data was gathered and observations and lengthy re- ports were made. Otherwise nothing was done. These reports, especially from the border regions, were of such a varied and fantastic nature that little value could be placed on them. INALLY Premier Plautz decided to personally investigate the situation. He took with him the Chief-of-Staff and a group of scientists from the University. They found the new creatures by the hundreds of thousands and of all sizes. They also- came as near as they could to several of the puddles of end-slime. An effort to observe these carefully with the aid of gas masks was useless. Even when some of the foetid material was gathered at the end of a long pole, it could not be brought close enough to make any observations of value. Several of the things were carefully studied, both chemically and anatomically, but not a single observer connected the a = ~~ ae ie mee J ee eee Oe * moving oddities with LN eOMmiGbooks:com