Page:Weird Tales v33n05 (1939-05).djvu/66

the place. It was only a question of time till it had me, if the antennæ were long enough to reach into my niche.

Then, all at once, I thought of the best thing of all: my shoes. Queer how one overlooks the obvious, isn't it? I had them off in a jiffy. By this time, it was a case of all or nothing; so I took off my coat, balanced a shoe in my hand, and ran out toward the last lamp. If I'd waited to think over it. I'd never have been able to screw myself up to that. The cameras came round—snap!—and for a moment I looked into their dark lenses and began to feel almost hypnotized. The thing was so much like a monstrous misshapen animal. I can't convey the impression to you, but the personality of the brute almost did for me. All the machines you've ever met were doing their job quietly, with no interest in your existence; but here was a thing whose sole purpose was my destruction. One couldn't help thinking of it as a gigantic beast.

I had just sense enough to jump aside; and as I did so, a leash of cables coiled out at me. I flung the shoe straight at the lamp—I was only ten feet or so from it—and out went the light. I jumped again, more by instinct than judgment, and a cable swung past me with a hiss. Darkness seemed to have thrown the thing into a panic, for it made no systematic attempt to search the place. If it had done so, my number would have been up. As it was, I'd only the vaguest ideas about the position of the entrance, and to get there I had to risk blundering into some tentacle or other.

However, I moved in what I took to be the right direction, and at last I found a cool draft blowing. Something gripped the coat from my hand—I found I'd forgotten to throw it away—and three hair-like things fell across my neck and cheek. But by that time I was at the entrance—and free. Behind me, I could hear the thing lashing rotmd in fury; then suddenly there was silence. Perhaps it had some means of knowing that I was out of range. I ran down the pitch-dark corridor, blundered into another, and then into a third. Then I collapsed on the floor.

When I came to my senses again, I realized the hole I was in. I'd lost my way in the corridors, I hadn't any matches, and if I stumbled into the den of the machine in the dark, I might expect short shrift. It took me hours to find my way through that labyrinth to the well-head. The tide was in, and I had to wait for the ebb before I could get the launch out. I started the engine and nearly wrecked the damned boat on the way down the sea-cave. All the while I had a nightmare feeling that the machine might come after me. Silly, of course, but my nerves were all to bits, you know.

It was dark—nighttime—when I got out of the cave. As it said in the cutting I showed you, there was a storm. I didn't much care. All I wanted was to get clean away from that infernal cave. I ran the launch for all she was worth through the best part of the night, and once I nearly rammed a fishing-boat. Then I just missed getting piled up on some rocks. Finally, about dawn, a big sea broke over us, and down she went.

I just managed to swim ashore. Then I collapsed. Some people picked me up in a state of what the novelists call brain-fever, and I lay in their house till I got better. When I did come back to a reasonable condition, I saw that if I told the truth, I should be put down as a lunatic—I'd been delirious, you know—so I decided to suppress that for a bit. You're the first person I've told the yarn to. Perhaps you'll believe it. At least it's done me some good to get it out of my mind.

That was the tale Milton told me. When he had finished, I glanced at the cutting again, mechanically, and something in it caught my eye.