Things Pass By: Five Uncollected Novellas by Murray Leinster

Author:Murray Leinster [Leinster, Murray]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom's eBooks
Published: 2021-08-17T21:00:00+00:00

DAWN and a booming uproar came together. It was raining, a teeming downpour through which he could see only that the ruins of Bennett’s house still sent up thin little wisps of steam. The leaves of the shrub under which he lay were shaking violently from the impact of raindrops. On their undersides he saw mosquitos clinging for refuge from the rain.

He uncovered himself and went tentatively to the edge of his shelter. A dripping fell upon him—about a tumblerful of liquid in one huge drop. The impact was definite but cushioned. The water spread and bounced. He ventured out. The direct impacts were harder but he still wore his leafy armor. The drops were buffets but they did not sting.

He abandoned his shelter. Rain would keep most creatures close. Cats would not prowl. Dogs would curl up contentedly and sleep indoors. Humans would not be about and at ten yards’ distance no human would see him in any case.

He set out doggedly along the seashore. The island to which he must return was six miles up the coast and four miles out at sea—the equivalent of sixty miles by land and forty by water. He possessed for equipment a wooden penholder with a penpoint attached and a certain amount of cotton thread now holding leafy armor about his body.

But in six miles of seacoast there is bound to be some flotsam and jetsam. Scraps of wood, empty bottles, corked—nobody knows why—and thrown overboard. Scraps of cloth no longer useful and reaching the beaches no one knows how. In six—or sixty—miles of shoreline there would surely be materials he could somehow twist into a craft that would sail and could be steered.

He trudged along through the downpour. Big droplets struck him and splashed. There was a very torrent of sound all about. When he passed the edge of Bennett’s property and unkempt woodland came down to the beach the sounds of living things were more frequent still.

The oily sands, here behind the sand-spit were pockmarked by the falling water. A mist of rain hid everything a mere few yards away. It was a time of almost complete safety for a creature like Larry. Even hawks, which to him would be deadly, would not be hunting in such weather.

The water’s edge curved eastward and the shoreline turned to sand. This was the sandbar which formed a harbor for the summer colony. Larry doggedly followed its edge, peering here and there in rain which constantly and irritatingly pelted him.

He thought of Anne. He could not guess the ultimate effects of the stings she had received. The stuff might be sheer poison—and so she might be dead—or it might be essentially an anaesthetic, normally keeping the mosquito’s victim from feeling anything until the creature drank its fill.

Or, of course, Anne and her aunt might be far out at sea on the ship made of a packing-case, hopeless of ever seeing land again.

Once Larry passed through a colony of fiddler crabs. They were rusty-brown creatures, the males with one gigantic claw apiece, running up to two feet in size.

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