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Not only did he share the mountain dweller's wariness of question, but he instantly conceived the idea that the stranger had heard gossip and he was in arms to defend his own.
Sparks and flashes of white flame darted from the ring, penetrating the radiant swathings of the Dweller, striking through its pulsing nucleus, piercing its seven crowning orbs. Now the Shining One's radiance began to dim, the seven orbs to dull; the tiny sparkling filaments that ran from them down into the Dweller's body snapped, vanished!
A vision of the Shining One swirling into our world, a monstrous, glorious flaming pillar of incarnate, eternal Evil of peoples passing through its radiant embrace into that hideous, unearthly life-in-death which I had seen enfold the sacrifices of armies trembling into dancing atoms of diamond dust beneath the green ray's rhythmic death of cities rushing out into space upon the wings of that other demoniac force which Olaf had watched at work of a haunted world through which the assassins of the Dweller's court stole invisible, carrying with them every passion of hell of the rallying to the Thing of every sinister soul and of the weak and the unbalanced, mystics and carnivores of humanity alike; for well I knew that, once loosed, not any nation could hold this devil-god for long and that swiftly its blight would spread!
Add to this borders of flowering plants, annuals and perennials, and from spring to late fall such a spot becomes an outdoor living room. Here the family spends most of its time. Real enthusiasts eat many of their meals here. As for the vegetable garden, keep it small. The new country dweller's first garden is usually three times the size needed or that he can take care of.
At the last a ruined planet, a cosmic plague, spinning through the shuddering heavens; its verdant plains, its murmuring forests, its meadows and its mountains manned only by a countless crew of soulless, mindless dead-alive, their shells illumined with the Dweller's infernal glory and flaming over this vampirized earth like a flare from some hell far, infinitely far, beyond the reach of man's farthest flung imagining the Dweller!
There came to me a huge desire to see the destruction they had told us of the Dweller's lair; to observe for myself whether it was not possible to make a way of entrance and to study its mysteries. I spoke of this, and to my surprise both the handmaiden and the O'Keefe showed an almost embarrassed haste to acquiesce in my hesitant suggestion.
The girl rose, and as she did so the trio from the Prescott machine noticed the island dweller's eyes fixed on her in a curious way. "Pardon me," he said, "but is your name Regina?" The girl looked at him in a half-startled way, while Peggy, as she said afterward, felt as if she was watching a drama. "Yes," she said; "why?"
And I knew the girl for Edith, his wife, who in vain effort to save him had cast herself into the Dweller's embrace! "Throckmartin!" I cried. "Throckmartin! I'm here!" Did he hear? I know now, of course, he could not. But then I waited hope striving to break through the nightmare hands that gripped my heart. Their wide eyes never left me.
Reg'lar cave dweller's face, it was; and with his bristly hair growin' down to a point just above his eyes, and the ear tufts, and the mossy-backed paws well, if there ever was a throw-back to the Stone Age he was it. As a rubber in my old trainin' camp outfit, though, Hunk had his good points.
And upon me, lurking behind them. Through me swept a mighty exaltation. It was the end then and I was to meet it with them. Something drew us back, back with an incredible swiftness, and yet as gently as a summer breeze sweeps a bit of thistle-down! Drew us back from those darting misty arms even as they were a hair-breadth from us! I heard the Dweller's bell notes burst out ragingly!
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