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Updated: May 17, 2025
Rick crowded close behind him, then moved out from the wall a little so that he, too, could hear directly through the door. From almost under his foot came a strident, warning buzz, and an icy ripple moved down his back. A snake! And he couldn't even see it! He froze where he was, muscles tense for the shock of needle-sharp fangs. He waited an eternity, not even daring to breathe.
He found it a quarter of a mile back from the needle-sharp prow, exactly in the longitudinal axis of the hull, protected from any possible damage by bulkhead after massive bulkhead of impregnable inoson. Satisfied upon that point, he went in search of the others, who were exploring their vast new space-ship.
There was a bulk-cargo ship, with no emergency rockets at all and crews' quarters in long blisters built outside the gigantic tank which was the ship itself. There was a needle-sharp space yacht. More freighters, with streaks of rust on their sides where they had lain aground for tens of years.... The fleet was an anomaly, and each of its component parts was separately a freak.
Helen's, but of steadfast mountain hues and of magnificent forms, buttresses and spires; crags whose bases were lost in untrodden forests; needle-sharp pinnacles like the Swiss Aiguilles. The morning was just making its way into the canyon; and the loftier tops flashed with yellow sun, while the rest were still in cold shadow.
In all details of equipment he was a riverman complete: the narrow-brimmed black felt hat, pushed back from a tangle of curls; the flannel shirt crossed by the broad bands of the suspenders; the kersey trousers "stagged" off a little below the knee; the heavy knit socks; and the strong shoes armed with thin half-inch, needle-sharp caulks.
Long pliant twigs thickly studded with needle-sharp thorns constantly protruded across the path, menacing their faces and tenaciously grappling their clothing, so that they had to halt at almost every other step to free themselves; and frequent quick rustlings among the long tangled herbage underfoot warned them of the presence of many hidden creeping things, some at least of which, as Dyer grimly suggested, were certain to be snakes or some other kind of venomous creature.
And unseen hands held my arms in a mighty clutch fast to my sides, another gripped my throat and I felt a needle-sharp poniard point pierce my shirt, touch the skin just over my heart! "Larry!" I cried, despairingly. I twisted my head; saw that he too was caught in this grip of the invisible. But his face was calm, even amused. "Keep cool, Doc!" he said. "Remember she wants to learn the language!"
Between his red puffed lips his teeth showed needle-sharp and ivory-white; his eyes were as evil as a caricature from Simplicissimus, and set deep in his head, while his ears and nose were monstrous with fold upon fold of skinny flaps. It was not a living face, but a mask of frightful mobility.
"All right," grudgingly assented the physicist, and held the Sirius upright, with her needle-sharp stern buried a few feet deep in the ground. He watched the wreckage jealously while Crowninshield and forty helmeted men issued from the service door in the lower ultra-light compartment and advanced upon the two halves of the enemy vessel.
Then a lean, brown hand was laid on the sill. It still seemed to hesitate. Something gleamed vaguely in that hand a crooked jambiyeh, needle-sharp at the point, keen-edged and balanced for the stroke that silently slays. Motionless, unbreathing even, the shadow waited a long minute. Then all at once over the sill it writhed, quick, lithe as a starved panther.
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