Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Astounding Stories September 1932. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
"Wonderful! The World's Unparalleled Upside-DownMan!"
Disowned
By Victor Endersby
The sky sagged downward, bellying blackly with a sudden summer rain,giving me a vision of catching my train in sodden clothing after theshort-cut across the fields, which I was taking in company with mybrother Tristan and his fiancée.
The sullen atmosphere ripped apart with an electric glare; our earsquivered to the throbbing sky, while huge drops, jarred loose from theair by the thunder-impact, splattered sluggishly, heavily, about us.Little breezes swept out from the storm center, lifting the undersidesof the long grass leaves to view in waves of lighter green. Icomplained peevishly.
"Ah, mop up!" said Tristan. "You've plenty of time, and there's thebig oak! It's as dry under there as a cave!"
"I think that'll be fun!" twittered Alice. "To wait out athunder-storm under a tree!"
"Under a tree?" I said. "Hardly! I'm not hankering to furnish myselfas an exhibit on the physiological effects of a lightning stroke—no,sir!"
"Rats!" said Tristan. "All that's a fairy-tale—trees being dangerousin a thunder-storm!"
The rain now beat through our thin summer clothing, as Tristan seizedAlice's hand and towed her toward the spreading shelter. I followedthem at first, then began to lag with an odd unwillingness. I had beenonly half serious in my objection, but all at once that tree exercisedan odd repulsion on me; an imaginary picture of the electric fluidcoursing through my shriveling nerve-channels grew unpleasantly vivid.
Suddenly I knew I was not going under that tree. I stopped dead,pulling my hat brim down behind to divert the rivulet coursing downthe back of my neck, calling to the others in a voice rather crackedfrom embarrassment. They looked back at me curiously, and Alice beganto twit me, standing in the rain, while Tristan desired to knowwhether we thought we were a pair of goldfish; in his estimation, wemight belong to the piscine tribe all right, but not to thatdecorative branch thereof. To be frank, he used the term "suckers."Feeling exceptionally foolish, I planted myself doggedly in thesoaking grass as Alice turned to dash for the tree.
Then the thing happened; the thing which to this hour makes the fabricof space with its unknown forces seem an insecure and eery garment forthe body of man. Over the slight rise beyond the tree, as the aircrackled, roared and shook under the thunder-blasts, there appeared anobject moving in long, leisurely bounds, drifting before the wind, andtouching the ground lightly each time. It was about eighteen inches indiameter, globular, glowing with coruscating fires, red, green, andyellow; a thing of unearthly and wholly sinister beauty.
Alice poised with one foot half raised, and shrieked at Tristan, halfterrified, half elated at the sight. He wheeled quickly, there underthe tree, and slowly backed away as the thing drifted in to keep himcompany in his shelter. We could n