The Time Trap by Henry Kuttner

Author:Henry Kuttner
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: FICTION/Science Fiction/General
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2014-07-28T21:00:00+00:00

He dropped to the floor, cradling the girl in his arms. In that blind emerald emptiness they waited, and Mason soothed and calmed Alasa as best he could. In spite of himself his pulses mounted at the nearness of the girl’s warm, satiny body. The weird gas, he knew, was exciting him; yet the madness grew on him. And Alasa, too, felt the intoxicating effect. Her hands crept up, touched Mason’s hair. She drew down his head, guiding his lips in the green blindness till they touched her own. Flame of dark passion blazed up within Mason…

Desperately he fought it down. The girl’s breathing mingled with his own, hoarse and uneven. His fingers touched the silken smoothness of rounded flesh, and the touch was like fire. Suddenly his muscles were weak as water.

“Alasa!” he whispered. “Alasa!”

In a surge of newfound strength he pressed the girl’s form against him, sought her lips. Fantastic visions flashed through his mind. Weird madness of the plant-men’s poisoned gas…

Alasa seemed to slide away, to vanish in a green-lit abyss. She was gone. Mason was alone. The clouds whirled about him, and very faintly he heard a distant throbbing, steadily growing louder. With the portion of his brain that remained sane he knew that this was unreal, a drug-born hallucination, as the deep pounding roared louder in his ears and dark shadows moved slowly down the emerald distances. Clearer the shadows grew, and clearer … Bat-winged horrors that mocked and tittered obscene laughter as they raced down on him … and ever the drumming roar grew deeper, louder, crashing like the tocsin of a demon in his ears…

Faster the green mists swirled. They were a whirlwind of chaotic, blinding brilliance. The devils danced a grotesque saraband, screaming a mocking chant.

It swelled to a frightful crescendo of sound and motion that rocked Mason’s giddy senses. He felt blackness creeping up and overwhelming him.

And it was with gratitude that he sank down into deepest unconsciousness!

Slowly Mason awoke, with a blinding headache and an acrid, unpleasant taste in his mouth. He opened his eyes, stared up at the transparent roof of his prison. He was still imprisoned in the crystal cage, but the green gas had been pumped out. Alasa’s still body lay beside him. Head swimming, Mason tried to revive her. He stripped off his cloak, wrapped it about the girl.

A grating overhead made him look up. The roof of the cage was sliding aside, leaving a gap four feet wide, running the length of the prison. Plant-men were busy with a kind of crane, swinging its burden, an enigmatic metal block, into place so that it could be dropped into the two human’s prison. There came an interruption.

The Gorichen sprang into frenzied activity. Mason could not interpret their thoughts, but he sensed sudden, deadly danger. Frantically the plant-men went racing toward the corridor that led into the upper world. A stray thought-fragment flashed into Mason’s mind.

“The Deathless Ones! They have broken the gateway—”

In five minutes the cavern was deserted.

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