Lost

I'm writing this in my log under unbearable conditions, after tonight I'm afraid I won't be here to tell my story. I'm depressed, and at the end of my supply of the drug that makes life bearable, I can't take this torture any more; I will jump out of this window into the street below. But please don't think, my addiction makes me weak or a degenerate.

When you read these pages you may guess, but you will never fully understand, why it is that I must forget or die.

We were in one of the more open parts of the Porpoise Galaxy, or NGC 2936, where we came under attack by the battle cruiser Baylor. Is ship had not been completely disable to their humiliation; so that our vessel was made a legitimate prize, while we were treated with all the fairness and consideration due us as Star Ship prisoners. So slack, was the discipline aboard the Baylor, that five days after we were captured I managed to escape in a small shuttlecraft with Enough water and food to last five days.

I found myself adrift in open Space, with no idea of my location. I could only guess by using an old star map that was aboard the small shuttle. That I was somewhere in the Porpoise Galaxy. I didn't know for sure, I haven't seen, no habitable planets. So, I drifted aimlessly through the vacuum of space; prying to see a passing ship, or to land on some inhabited planet. No ships or planets, and that's when The fear and loneliness sat in.

While I was asleep, something happened. I don't know the details; But when I opened my eyes, it was to discover I was half sucked into a black slimy hell that extended around me in A operative movement. As far as I could see, The shuttlecraft lay grounded some six hundred yards away.

You might think that my first reaction would have been of wonder at such, unexpected change of scenery, in reality I was more horrified than astonished; in the air and rotting soil was as a sinister quality that chilled me to the core.

The air smelled of decaying fish, and other indescribable things that protrude out of the mud. Maybe I shouldn't try to describe the

Unutterable things that can dwell in absolute silence.

There was nothing on the planet, except the black slime, that I could see; it was very still and everything looked the same on the landscape that oppressed me with a nauseating fear.

The sun was blazing down from a cloudless sky which seemed almost black as if it was reflecting the inky marsh beneath me. It took me about two hours to make it to the shuttlecraft walking through that sticky muck. As I crawled and sat beside the shuttle I realized that only one thing could explain my position. A Time Warp, I must have been thrown into another dimension, So big was this new planet which had risen beneath me, that I couldn't even hear nothing, I stood listening for a long time. No sound.

For several hours I sat thinking beside the shuttle, that lay on its side that gave me a little shade from the sun that moved across the sky. As the day progressed, the ground lost some of its stickiness, and seemed like it was drying out enough to travel. That night I slept very little, and the next day I made a pack containing food and water, I'm going to search for life and possible rescue. On the third morning I found dry ground to walk on with ease. The odor of the dead fish was so strong it Makes me sick to my stomach; but I was more concerned with bigger things, so I set out for an unknown goal. All day I travelled west, guided by a ridge which rose higher than any other on this God forsaken planet. That night I camped, and on the following day I travelled toward the ridge, it seemed no nearer than when I had first seen it. By the fourth evening I made camp on a mound which turned out to be much higher than it had looked from a distance, I came upon a deep valley that looked so different from the rest of the planet. Too tired to go on, I slept in a cave on the hillside. I don't know why my dreams were so strange that night; three full moon had risen in the east, when I woke up I was drenched in a cold sweat, I couldn't sleep anymore. The dreams I had experienced was too much for me to go through again. And in the light of the moons I saw how stupid I had been to travel by day. Without the glare of the sun, I would use less energy; At sunset I felt I was able to climb down into the valley that had scared me before. Picking up my pack, I started for the crest.

I have said that the unbroken rolling plain was a horror to me; but I think my horror was realized when I reached the top of the summit and looked down the other side into a very deep dark canyon, that the moons had not left yet. I felt I was on the edge of this new world; peering over the rim into eternal darkness. Through my terror ran curious reminiscences of Paradise Lost, and of Satan's hideous climb through the ungodly realms of darkness.

As the moons climbed higher into the Alien sky, I could see that the slopes of the valley weren't quite as steep as I had thought. Ledges in the rocks maid a easy descent for a while, but after a drop of a few hundred meters, my descent became very tiresome. Pushing on by willpower alone, I moved slowly down the rocks and stood on an incline, looking into the Dark. All at once I noticed a large object on the other side of the valley, about a hundred meters away from where I stood; It was glowing in the moonlight. It's just a large stone, I thought to myself; but I was conscious of its shape and where it sets I wasn't all together convinced that it was the work of Nature. On closer examination filled me with A fear I cannot explain; despite its large size, and its position it had probably laid at the bottom of an Alien seat since this world began, I was sure without a doubt that this strange object was the work of living and thinking creatures.

Dazed and frightened, but, I wanted to examine the thing more closely. The moons, now high enough, that they shined on the towering steeps that hemmed it into the ravine, the light revealed a large body of water that flowed out of the bottom of the large stone, winding out of sight from east to west, it lapped at my feet as I stood on the slope. Across the valley, the waves washed the base of the Cyclopean monolith; I could see inscriptions and crude writing in hieroglyphics unlike anything I had ever seen; consisting of aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels, octopi, crustaceans, molluscs, whales, and the like. Several characters represented marine life that is unknown to the modern world, my world, I should say, but whose decomposing bodies I had seen on the beach where I first found myself.

It was the larger carvings, that held my attention. Clearly Visible across the intervening water because of their enormous size, where an array of bas-reliefs whose subjects would have excited the envy of Doré. I think that these things were supposed to depict men—at least, a certain sort of men; though the creatures were shown disporting like fishes in the waters of some marine grotto, or paying homage at some monolithic shrine which appeared to be under an Alien sea as well. Of their faces and forms I dare not speak in detail; for the mere remembrance makes me grow faint. Grotesque beyond the imagination of Stephen King or a Ray Bradbury, they were damnably human in general outline despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other features less pleasant to recall. Curiously enough, they seemed to have been chiselled badly out of proportion with their scenic background; for one of the creatures was shown in the act of killing a whale represented as but little larger than himself.

I remarked, as I say, their grotesqueness and strange size, but I decided that they were merely the imaginary gods of some primitive spacefaring peoples; some species whose last descendant had perished Millions of years before the first human was born. Awestruck at this unexpected glimpse into a past beyond the conception of the most daring anthropologist, I stood musing while the moons cast strange reflections on the silent channel.

Then I saw it. With only a slight churning to mark its rise to the surface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a giant monster of nightmares to the monolith, it flung its gigantic scaly arms, then it bowed its hideous head and let out Bellowing sounds. I think I went mad then.

Of my frantic ascent of the slope and cliff, and of my delirious journey back to the stranded shuttle, I remember little. I believe I sang a great deal, and laughed oddly when I was unable to sing. I have indistinct recollections of a great storm some time after I reached the shuttle; at any rate, I know that I heard peals of thunder and other tones which Nature utters only in her wildest moods.

When I came out of the shadows I was in a San Francisco hospital; brought thither by the captain of the Federation starship which had picked up my shuttlecraft in mid-Space. In my delirium I had said much, but found that my words had been given scant attention. Of any planets in the Porpoise Galaxy, my rescuers knew nothing; nor did I deem it necessary to insist upon a thing which I knew they could not believe. Once I sought out a celebrated ethnologist, and amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient Verbenali legend of Verbenali, and their God; but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did not press my inquiries.

It is at night, especially when the moon is gibbous and waning, that I see the thing. I tried Dilaftin; but the drug has given only transient surcease, and has drawn me into its clutches as a hopeless slave. So now I am to end it all, having written a full account for the information or the contemptuous amusement of my fellow-men. Often I ask myself if it could not all have been a pure phantasm—a mere freak of fever as I lay sun-stricken and raving in the open after my escape from the Baylors ship. This I ask myself, but ever does there come before me a hideously vivid vision in reply. I cannot think of the deep space without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bellies, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on obelisks of Alien granite. I have nightmares of a day when they may rise to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of war, exhausted mankind—of a day when the land shall be dark night shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium.

The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window!