purpose behind it.
It was like a migraine in that it was in his head. It was more like the flaying of skin from a body already raw with burning in its savage intensity. He tried to fight it, knowing that others were doing the same, but there was only one way to obtain relief. Act as the monster desired.
Lights sprang up on the dusky shore. Men and women, both those from the liner and those who had been in ambush, staggered about as though blind. And they were screaming, in high, inhuman voices. The weakest stopped screaming first, and set to work on the tasks that did not displease their master.
It was not easy to find what he wanted them to do, for no instructions were given; simply a continued torment until by chance the victim fell on the desired action. Then it was lifted a little, and as a child racked by stomach pains will lie frozen for hours in the position that causes least suffering, so they went frenziedly to work to avoid a return of the lashing.
Many died. The gunners who had dared to open fire on the creature sprayed their weapons at each other until they were ragged and bloody heaps beside their ruined guns. Some of the watchers, driven into the open, were struck down in this way. Most of them, though, survived.
Hating himself, unable to bear the agony, wishing that a shell had ripped through his guts during the firing, Peter found he was walking towards the water. Another crack of the mental whip and he was running, with hundreds of others, into the sea, and swimming towards the damaged lifeboat.
Coldly, from his improvised palanquin, the creature drove his subjects. That they should have attempted his life—and come so close to succeeding—both angered and alarmed him. It was alarming because it implied that his precautions had not been sufficient. They had found out where he was due to land, and been waiting for him. It made him angry because it was intolerable for inferior creatures to treat him thus.
But they would learn! He would show them their true status; show them that to him, they were no more than tools, to be used until they broke and then thrown away.
Since they had damaged his boat, let them repair it! He whipped and goaded and lashed, and into the ragged hole in the boat’s bow a fat woman from the liner jammed her body, crying with the pain of it that was still less frightful than the pain of the master’s displeasure. The hole was caulked. He urged the swimmers to drag the boat towards shore.
When it grounded on the beach, he gave them no respite. They must carry him on their shoulders, all the tons of him, and if they stumbled they must be taught better. If one was weak, let another take his place. They were expendable, theplanet was crawling with them, there were millions and millions of them! He would take them, teach them, grind them down.
Now he would appropriate his first land-based city. He forced his new subjects forward, and as the caravan progressed he summoned others to join it.
By midnight, the train was thousands strong.
“But this is insanity!” said the President of the United States.
“Of course it is!” snapped Dr. Gordon, irritably shoving his glasses back on his nose. “We’re dealing with a creature whose mind works differently from ours. It doesn’t think as we do. It treats us like dirt!”
“That’s so, Mr. President,” confirmed an army psychologist. The atmosphere of the White House seemed to impress him less than most of the other hastily summoned outside delegates. He retained an armored calmness while others fidgeted and moved in their chairs. “We’ve picked up some of the poor so-and-so’s who got left behind. They’re exhausted, half-starved because they haven’t been given time to feed themselves. Their minds are beaten down to the moron level and in some cases to total blankness. They’re filthy, they are mostly covered with untreated sores or vermin. Or both. They’ve just been used to their maximum endurance and left to
It was like a migraine in that it was in his head. It was more like the flaying of skin from a body already raw with burning in its savage intensity. He tried to fight it, knowing that others were doing the same, but there was only one way to obtain relief. Act as the monster desired.
Lights sprang up on the dusky shore. Men and women, both those from the liner and those who had been in ambush, staggered about as though blind. And they were screaming, in high, inhuman voices. The weakest stopped screaming first, and set to work on the tasks that did not displease their master.
It was not easy to find what he wanted them to do, for no instructions were given; simply a continued torment until by chance the victim fell on the desired action. Then it was lifted a little, and as a child racked by stomach pains will lie frozen for hours in the position that causes least suffering, so they went frenziedly to work to avoid a return of the lashing.
Many died. The gunners who had dared to open fire on the creature sprayed their weapons at each other until they were ragged and bloody heaps beside their ruined guns. Some of the watchers, driven into the open, were struck down in this way. Most of them, though, survived.
Hating himself, unable to bear the agony, wishing that a shell had ripped through his guts during the firing, Peter found he was walking towards the water. Another crack of the mental whip and he was running, with hundreds of others, into the sea, and swimming towards the damaged lifeboat.
Coldly, from his improvised palanquin, the creature drove his subjects. That they should have attempted his life—and come so close to succeeding—both angered and alarmed him. It was alarming because it implied that his precautions had not been sufficient. They had found out where he was due to land, and been waiting for him. It made him angry because it was intolerable for inferior creatures to treat him thus.
But they would learn! He would show them their true status; show them that to him, they were no more than tools, to be used until they broke and then thrown away.
Since they had damaged his boat, let them repair it! He whipped and goaded and lashed, and into the ragged hole in the boat’s bow a fat woman from the liner jammed her body, crying with the pain of it that was still less frightful than the pain of the master’s displeasure. The hole was caulked. He urged the swimmers to drag the boat towards shore.
When it grounded on the beach, he gave them no respite. They must carry him on their shoulders, all the tons of him, and if they stumbled they must be taught better. If one was weak, let another take his place. They were expendable, theplanet was crawling with them, there were millions and millions of them! He would take them, teach them, grind them down.
Now he would appropriate his first land-based city. He forced his new subjects forward, and as the caravan progressed he summoned others to join it.
By midnight, the train was thousands strong.
“But this is insanity!” said the President of the United States.
“Of course it is!” snapped Dr. Gordon, irritably shoving his glasses back on his nose. “We’re dealing with a creature whose mind works differently from ours. It doesn’t think as we do. It treats us like dirt!”
“That’s so, Mr. President,” confirmed an army psychologist. The atmosphere of the White House seemed to impress him less than most of the other hastily summoned outside delegates. He retained an armored calmness while others fidgeted and moved in their chairs. “We’ve picked up some of the poor so-and-so’s who got left behind. They’re exhausted, half-starved because they haven’t been given time to feed themselves. Their minds are beaten down to the moron level and in some cases to total blankness. They’re filthy, they are mostly covered with untreated sores or vermin. Or both. They’ve just been used to their maximum endurance and left to
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