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Read Ebook: Subjectivity by Spinrad Norman Summers Leo Illustrator
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Ebook has 97 lines and 4942 words, and 2 pages
"They're getting stronger and bolder."
"Maybe some day they'll break through, and...." Lin Pey let the sentence hang. Everyone supplied his own ending.
"Maybe we should stop taking the Omnidrene?" suggested Vera, without very much conviction.
"You're right," said Vera.
"Yes," the crew whispered in a tiny, frail voice, "they aren't real...."
The garden was covered with a gloomy gray cloud layer. Even the "weather" was getting harder and harder to control.
The crew of starship Number Thirteen huddled around the fountain, staring into the water, trying desperately to ignore the snufflings, flappings, wheezes and growls coming from outside the walls. But occasionally, a scaly head would raise itself above the wall, or a pterodactyl or bat would flap overhead, and there would be violent shudders.
"I still think we should stop taking the Omnidrene," said Vera Galindez.
Vera grimaced. "But we've got to do something," she said. "We can't even make them disappear at all, any more. And it's becoming a full time job just to keep them outside the walls."
"The snake! The snake!" screamed Marsha. "It's coming in again!"
The huge black head was already through a portal.
"Stop the snake, everyone!" yelled Brunei. Eyes were riveted on the ugly serpent, in intense concentration.
After five minutes, it was obviously a stalemate. The snake had not been able to advance, nor could the humans force it to retreat.
Then smoke began to rise behind the far wall.
"The dragon's burning down the wall!" shrieked Lazar. "Stop him!"
They concentrated on the dragon. The smoke disappeared.
But the snake began to advance again.
"They're too strong!" moaned Brunei. "We can't hold them back."
They stopped the snake for a few moments, but the smoke began to billow again.
"They're gonna break through!" screamed Donner. "We can't stop 'em!"
"What are we gonna do?"
"Help!"
Creakings, cracklings, groanings, as the walls began to crack and blister and shake.
Suddenly Bram Daker stood up, his dark eyes aflame.
"The Spaceport!" shouted Brunei. "The Spaceport! We all remember the Spaceport."
"We're back on Earth! The Spaceport!"
"Earth!"
"EARTH! EARTH!"
The garden was beginning to flicker. It became red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, invisible; then back again through the spectrum the other way--violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, invisible.
Back and forth, like a pendulum through the spectrum....
Light was flickering, mind was flickering, time, too, seemed to flicker....
Earth! EARTH!
Now all the flickerings, of color, time, mind and dimensions, were coalescing into one gigantic vortex, that was a thing neither of time, nor space, nor mind, but all three somehow fused into one....
They're screaming! Brunei thought. Listen to the horrible screams! Suddenly he noticed that he, too, was screaming.
The vortex was growing, swirling, undulating, and it, too, began to flicker....
There was an unbearable, impossible pain, and....
The sight of starship Number Thirteen suddenly appearing out of nowhere, and sitting itself calmly down in the middle of the Spaceport was somewhat disconcerting to the Spaceport officials. Especially since at the very moment it appeared, and even afterward, they continued to have visual and laser contact with its image, over three light-months from Earth.
Therefore.... You idiots, throw a security cordon around that ship!
In such matters, the long-conditioned reflexes of the Solar Government worked marvelously. Before the air-waves had cooled, two hundred heavily armed soldiers had surrounded the ship.
Two hours later, the Solar co-ordinator was on the scene, with ten Orders of Sol to present to the returning heroes, and a large well-armored vehicle to convey them to laboratories, where they would be gone over with the proverbial fine-tooth comb.
An honor guard of two hundred men standing at attention made a pathway from the ship's main hatch to the armored carrier, in front of which stood the Solar Co-ordinator, with his ten medals.
They opened the hatch.
One, two, five, seven, ten dazed and bewildered "heroes" staggered past the honor guard, to face the Co-ordinator.
He opened his mouth to begin his welcoming speech, and start the five years of questioning and experiments which would eventually kill five of the crew and give Man the secret of faster-than-light drive.
But instead of speaking, he screamed.
So did two hundred heavily armed soldiers.
Because, out of starship Thirteen's main hatch sauntered a twelve-foot green dragon, followed by a Tyrannosaurus Rex, a pterodactyl, a vampire bat with a five-foot wingspan, an old-fashioned red, spade-tailed demon, and finally, big as a horse's, the pop-eyed head of an enormous black serpent....
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