bits of black appeared on the blue-and-white disk. They spread from points to irregular blots. More of them appeared, and more, until they began to run together.
For a moment the planet disappeared against the solid black background of space. Then points appeared again, became blots, multiplied and grew until Earth was a red disk. Like Yuggoth, it began to pulse, to pulse like a malevolent heart. Now Chen Jing-kuo understood what she was seeing. The Yuggothi, she realized, had devised a means to convert the normal matter of Earth, contact with which would have been instantly, disastrously fatal to them, into contraterrene matter. Antimatter.
Now they could live on Earth, and now there remained no other life to compete with them.
But Yuggoth itself was also contraterrene. The Yuggothi had erected no shield against a potential plunging space station of terrene matter. For all Chen Jing-kuo could tell, the Yuggothi were as unaware of the station as a human would be of a single fatal bacterium.
Earth was dead. Chen Jing-kuo knew that now. The Yuggothi had wiped it clean. The atmosphere was gone. The oceans, the forests. The ice caps were gone. The planet had been wiped clean. It now had new owners. Octopus-bat-man-machine things that even now were walking or slithering or flying across the black, dead surface of the once blue-green, beautiful world. The black surface that was now pulsing with a red, evil beat.
The oblate globe of Yuggoth spun beneath Beijing 11-11. Chen Jing-kuo set the controls, activated the verniers, sent Beijing 11-11 plunging toward Yuggoth. This time, the sequence of events was reversed. The host had killed the virus, but the virus retained enough vitality for one final act. The virus would kill the host.
Tee Shirts
Cynics will tell you that no good deed goes unpunished but of course the opposite is true, at least sometimes.
I was walking down Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco with my ultra-married friends Laura and Gordon Tomkins, when I saw an old woman in a wheelchair trying to cross the thoroughfare. Van Ness, in case you're unfamiliar with this city, is a wide street with a center divider. There are traffic lights, but a lot of drivers seem to think it fun to use Van Ness as a raceway, and scampering across is dangerous even for able-bodied pedestrians to attempt.
And this old woman didn't even have one of those modern electric-powered chairs. She was pumping away with arms no thicker than sticks, and it looked as if she was likely to die of overexertion if some superannuated hot-rodder in a monster SUV didn't first grind her into flinders.
To add to the old woman's peril, it was early evening, just the time when visibility is worst. And it was starting to rain.
I told Laura and Gordon, "I'll be right back." I ran after the old woman and grabbed the handles of her wheelchair. Got her onto the island in the middle of Van Ness. I asked where she was going and she gave an address nearby. As soon as I could get her across the rest of the avenue and to her home, I did.
She looked up at me and her eyes were not at all what I expected. Not the rheumy, faded eyes of a feeble old woman. They looked young and bright and a color that I would call emerald green except that description is totally inadequate.
I asked if she needed help getting into the house and she said No. Then she added, "You will be rewarded." And that was that.
Five minutes later I was back with Laura and Gordon. "You know, you took a serious risk," Gordon said.
"What?"
Laura said, "This is a dangerous neighborhood. We're on the edge of the Tenderloin. That woman could have been a decoy working with muggers."
I said, "Oh, I didn't think of that." Nobody said anything for a minute so I said, "You see somebody needs help, you help her. It's not complicated."
We stopped at the office of Rock! Rock! Rock! to see if there were any messages, then on to the Civic Auditorium. Joe Cocker was performing that night. I run the West Coast
For a moment the planet disappeared against the solid black background of space. Then points appeared again, became blots, multiplied and grew until Earth was a red disk. Like Yuggoth, it began to pulse, to pulse like a malevolent heart. Now Chen Jing-kuo understood what she was seeing. The Yuggothi, she realized, had devised a means to convert the normal matter of Earth, contact with which would have been instantly, disastrously fatal to them, into contraterrene matter. Antimatter.
Now they could live on Earth, and now there remained no other life to compete with them.
But Yuggoth itself was also contraterrene. The Yuggothi had erected no shield against a potential plunging space station of terrene matter. For all Chen Jing-kuo could tell, the Yuggothi were as unaware of the station as a human would be of a single fatal bacterium.
Earth was dead. Chen Jing-kuo knew that now. The Yuggothi had wiped it clean. The atmosphere was gone. The oceans, the forests. The ice caps were gone. The planet had been wiped clean. It now had new owners. Octopus-bat-man-machine things that even now were walking or slithering or flying across the black, dead surface of the once blue-green, beautiful world. The black surface that was now pulsing with a red, evil beat.
The oblate globe of Yuggoth spun beneath Beijing 11-11. Chen Jing-kuo set the controls, activated the verniers, sent Beijing 11-11 plunging toward Yuggoth. This time, the sequence of events was reversed. The host had killed the virus, but the virus retained enough vitality for one final act. The virus would kill the host.
Tee Shirts
Cynics will tell you that no good deed goes unpunished but of course the opposite is true, at least sometimes.
I was walking down Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco with my ultra-married friends Laura and Gordon Tomkins, when I saw an old woman in a wheelchair trying to cross the thoroughfare. Van Ness, in case you're unfamiliar with this city, is a wide street with a center divider. There are traffic lights, but a lot of drivers seem to think it fun to use Van Ness as a raceway, and scampering across is dangerous even for able-bodied pedestrians to attempt.
And this old woman didn't even have one of those modern electric-powered chairs. She was pumping away with arms no thicker than sticks, and it looked as if she was likely to die of overexertion if some superannuated hot-rodder in a monster SUV didn't first grind her into flinders.
To add to the old woman's peril, it was early evening, just the time when visibility is worst. And it was starting to rain.
I told Laura and Gordon, "I'll be right back." I ran after the old woman and grabbed the handles of her wheelchair. Got her onto the island in the middle of Van Ness. I asked where she was going and she gave an address nearby. As soon as I could get her across the rest of the avenue and to her home, I did.
She looked up at me and her eyes were not at all what I expected. Not the rheumy, faded eyes of a feeble old woman. They looked young and bright and a color that I would call emerald green except that description is totally inadequate.
I asked if she needed help getting into the house and she said No. Then she added, "You will be rewarded." And that was that.
Five minutes later I was back with Laura and Gordon. "You know, you took a serious risk," Gordon said.
"What?"
Laura said, "This is a dangerous neighborhood. We're on the edge of the Tenderloin. That woman could have been a decoy working with muggers."
I said, "Oh, I didn't think of that." Nobody said anything for a minute so I said, "You see somebody needs help, you help her. It's not complicated."
We stopped at the office of Rock! Rock! Rock! to see if there were any messages, then on to the Civic Auditorium. Joe Cocker was performing that night. I run the West Coast
Similar Books
