Lovecraft, H P & Sterling, Kenneth - Within The Walls Of Eryx

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Within the Walls of Eryx

by H. P. Lovecraft and Kenneth Sterling

Written Jan 1936

Published October 1939 in Weird Tales, Vol. 34, No. 4, p. 50-68.

Before I try to rest I will set down these notes in preparation for the report I must make.

What I have found is so singular, and so contrary to all past experience and expectations,

that it deserves a very careful description.

I reached the main landing on Venus, March 18, terrestrial time; VI, 9 of the planet's

calendar. Being put in the main group under Miller, I received my equipment - watch

tuned to Venus's slightly quicker rotation - and went through the usual mask drill. After

two days I was pronounced fit for duty.

Leaving the Crystal Company's post at Terra Nova around dawn, VI, 12, I followed the

southerly route which Anderson had mapped out from the air. The going was bad, for

these jungles are always half impassable after a rain. It must be the moisture that gives

the tangled vines and creepers that leathery toughness; a toughness so great that a knife

has to work ten minutes on some of them. By noon it was dryer - the vegetation getting

soft and rubbery so that my knife went through it easily - but even then I could not make

much speed. These Carter oxygen masks are too heavy - just carrying one half wears an

ordinary man out. A Dubois mask with sponge-reservoir instead of tubes would give just

as good air at half the weight.

The crystal-detector seemed to function well, pointing steadily in a direction verifying

Anderson's report. It is curious how that principle of affinity works - without any of the

fakery of the old 'divining rods' back home. There must be a great deposit of crystals

within a thousand miles, though I suppose those damnable man-lizards always watch and

guard it. Possibly they think we are just as foolish for coming to Venus to hunt the stuff

as we think they are for grovelling in the mud whenever they see a piece of it, or for

keeping that great mass on a pedestal in their temple. I wish they'd get a new religion, for

they have no use for the crystals except to pray to. Barring theology, they would let us

take all we want - and even if they learned to tap them for power there'd be more than

enough for their planet and the earth besides. I for one am tired of passing up the main

deposits and merely seeking separate crystals out of jungle river-beds. Sometime I'll urge

the wiping out of these scaly beggars by a good stiff army from home. About twenty

ships could bring enough troops across to turn the trick. One can't call the damned things

men for all their 'cities' and towers. They haven't any skill except building - and using

swords and poison darts - and I don't believe their so-called 'cities' mean much more than

ant-hills or beaver-dams. I doubt if they even have a real language - all the talk about

psychological communication through those tentacles down their chests strikes me as

bunk. What misleads people is their upright posture; just an accidental physical

resemblance to terrestrial man.

Within the Walls of Eryx

I'd like to go through a Venus jungle for once without having to watch out for skulking

groups of them or dodge their cursed darts. They may have been all right before we

began to take the crystals, but they're certainly a bad enough nuisance now - with their

dart-shooting and their cutting of our water pipes. More and more I come to believe that

they have a special sense like our crystal-detectors. No one ever knew them to bother a

man - apart from long-distance sniping - who didn't have crystals on him.

Around 1 P.M. a dart nearly took my helmet off, and I thought for a second one of my

oxygen tubes was punctured. The sly devils hadn't made a sound, but three of them were

closing in on me. I got them all by sweeping in a circle with my flame pistol, for even

though their colour blended with the jungle, I could spot the moving creepers. One of

them was fully eight feet tall, with a snout like a tapir's. The other two were average

seven-footers. All that makes them hold their own is sheer numbers - even a single

regiment of flame throwers could raise hell with them. It is curious, though, how they've

come to be dominant on the planet. Not another living thing higher than the wriggling

akmans and skorahs, or the flying tukahs of the other continent - unless of course those

holes in the Dionaean Plateau hide something.

About two o'clock my detector veered westward, indicating isolated crystals ahead on the

right. This checked up with Anderson, and I turned my course accordingly. It was harder

going - not only because the ground was rising, but because the animal life and

carnivorous plants were thicker. I was always slashing ugrats and stepping on skorahs,

and my leather suit was all speckled from the bursting darohs which struck it from all

sides. The sunlight was all the worse because of the mist, and did not seem to dry up the

mud in the least. Every time I stepped my feet sank down five or six inches, and there

was a sucking sort of blup every time I pulled them out. I wish somebody would invent a

safe kind of suiting other than leather for this climate. Cloth of course would rot; but

some thin metallic tissue that couldn't tear - like the surface of this revolving decay-proof

record scroll - ought to be feasible sometime.

I ate about 3:30 - if slipping these wretched food tablets through my mask can be called

eating. Soon after that I noticed a decided change in the landscape - the bright,

poisonous-looking flowers shifting in colour and getting wraith-like. The outlines of

everything shimmered rhythmically, and bright points of light appeared and danced in the

same slow, steady tempo. After that the temperature seemed to fluctuate in unison with a

peculiar rhythmic drumming.

The whole universe seemed to be throbbing in deep, regular pulsations that filled every

corner of space and flowed through my body and mind alike. I lost all sense of

equilibrium and staggered dizzily, nor did it change things in the least when I shut my

eyes and covered my ears with my hands. However, my mind was still clear, and in a

very few minutes I realized what had happened.

I had encountered at last one of those curious mirage-plants about which so many of our

men told stories. Anderson had warned me of them, and described their appearance very

Within the Walls of Eryx

closely - the shaggy stalk, the spiky leaves, and the mottled blossoms whose gaseous,

dream-breeding exhalations penetrate every existing make of mask.

Recalling what happened to Bailey three years ago, I fell into a momentary panic, and

began to dash and stagger about in the crazy, chaotic world which the plant's exhalations

had woven around me. Then good sense came back, and I realized all I need do was

retreat from the dangerous blossoms - heading away from the source of the pulsations,

and cutting a path blindly - regardless of what might seem to swirl around me - until

safely out of the plant's effective radius.

Although everything was spinning perilously, I tried to start in the right direction and

hack my way ahead. My route must have been far from straight, for it seemed hours

before I was free of the mirage-plant's pervasive influence. Gradually the dancing lights

began to disappear, and the shimmering spectral scenery began to assume the aspect of

solidity. When I did get wholly clear I looked at my watch and was astonished to find that

the time was only 4:20. Though eternities had seemed to pass, the whole experience

could have consumed little more than a half-hour.

Every delay, however, was irksome, and I had lost ground in my retreat from the plant. I

now pushed ahead in the uphill direction indicated by the crystal-detector, bending every

energy toward making better time. The jungle was still thick, though there was less

animal life. Once a carnivorous blossom engulfed my right foot and held it so tightly that

I had to hack it free with my knife; reducing the flower to strips before it let go.

In less than an hour I saw that the jungle growths were thinning out, and by five o'clock -

after passing through a belt of tree-ferns with very little underbrush - I emerged on a

broad mossy plateau. My progress now became rapid, and I saw by the wavering of my

detector-needle that I was getting relatively close to the crystal I sought. This was odd,

for most of the scattered, egg-like spheroids occurred in jungle streams of a sort not likely

to be found on this treeless upland.

The terrain sloped upward, ending in a definite crest. I reached the top about 5:30 and

saw ahead of me a very extensive plain with forests in the distance. This, without

question, was the plateau mapped by Matsugawa from the air fifty years ago, and called

on our maps 'Eryx' or the 'Erycinian Highland.' But what made my heart leap was a

smaller detail, whose position could not have been far from the plain's exact centre. It

was a single point of light, blazing through the mist and seeming to draw a piercing,

concentrated luminescence from the yellowish, vapour-dulled sunbeams. This, without

doubt, was the crystal I sought - a thing possibly no larger than a hen's egg, yet

containing enough power to keep a city warm for a year. I could hardly wonder, as I

glimpsed the distant glow, that those miserable man-lizards worship such crystals. And

yet they have not the least notion of the powers they contain.

Breaking into a rapid run, I tried to reach the unexpected prize as soon as possible; and

was annoyed when the firm moss gave place to a thin, singularly detestable mud studded

with occasional patches of weeds and creepers. But I splashed on heedlessly - scarcely

Within the Walls of Eryx

thinking to look around for any of the skulking man-lizards. In this open space I was not

very likely to be waylaid. As I advanced, the light ahead seemed to grow in size and

brilliancy, and I began to notice some peculiarity in its situation. Clearly, this was a

crystal of the very finest quality, and my elation grew with every spattering step.

It is now that I must begin to be careful in making my report, since what I shall

henceforward have to say involves unprecedented - though fortunately verifiable -

matters. I was racing ahead with mounting eagerness, and had come within a hundred

yards or so of the crystal - whose position on a sort of raised place in the omnipresent

slime seemed very odd - when a sudden, overpowering force struck my chest and the

knuckles of my clenched fists and knocked me over backward into the mud. The splash

of my fall was terrific, nor did the softness of the ground and the presence of some slimy

weeds and creepers save my head from a bewildering jarring. For a moment I lay supine,

too utterly startled to think. Then I half mechanically stumbled to my feet and began to

scrape the worst of the mud and scum from my leather suit.

Of what I had encountered I could not form the faintest idea. I had seen nothing which

could have caused the shock, and I saw nothing now. Had I, after all, merely slipped in

the mud? My sore knuckles and aching chest forbade me to think so. Or was this whole

incident an illusion brought on by some hidden mirage-plant? It hardly seemed probable,

since I had none of the usual symptoms, and since there was no place near by where so

vivid and typical a growth could lurk unseen. Had I been on the earth, I would have

suspected a barrier of N-force laid down by some government to mark a forbidden zone,

but in this humanless region such a notion would have been absurd.

Finally pulling myself together, I decided to investigate in a cautious way. Holding my

knife as far as possible ahead of me, so that it might be first to feel the strange force, I

started once more for the shining crystal - preparing to advance step by step with the

greatest deliberation. At the third step I was brought up short by the impact of the knife -

point on an apparently solid surface - a solid surface where my eyes saw nothing.

After a moment's recoil I gained boldness. Extending my gloved left hands I verified the

presence of invisible solid matter - or a tactile illusion of solid matter - ahead of me.

Upon moving my hand I found that the barrier was of substantial extent, and of an almost

glassy smoothness, with no evidence of the joining of separate blocks. Nerving myself

for further experiments, I removed a glove and tested the thing with my bare hand. It was

indeed hard and glassy, and of a curious coldness as contrasted with the air around. I

strained my eyesight to the utmost in an effort to glimpse some trace of the obstructing

substance, but could discern nothing whatsoever. There was not even any evidence of

refractive power as judged by the aspect of the landscape ahead. Absence of reflective

power was proved by the lack of a glowing image of the sun at any point.

Burning curiosity began to displace all other feelings, and I enlarged my investigations as

best I could. Exploring with my hands, I found that the barrier extended from the ground

to some level higher than I could reach, and that it stretched off indefinitely on both sides.

It was, then, a wall of some kind - though all guesses as to its materials and its purpose

Within the Walls of Eryx

were beyond me. Again I thought of the mirage-plant and the dreams it induced, but a

moment's reasoning put this out of my head.

Knocking sharply on the barrier with the hilt of my knife, and kicking at it with my heavy

boots, I tried to interpret the sounds thus made. There was something suggestive of

cement or concrete in these reverberations, though my hands had found the surface more

glassy or metallic in feel. Certainly, I was confronting something strange beyond all

previous experience.

The next logical move was to get some idea of the wall's dimensions. The height problem

would be hard, if not insoluble, but the length and shape problem could perhaps be

sooner dealt with. Stretching out my arms and pressing close to the barrier, I began to

edge gradually to the left - keeping very careful track of the way I faced. After several

steps I concluded that the wall was not straight, but that I was following part of some vast

circle or ellipse. And then my attention was distracted by something wholly different -

something connected with the still-distant crystal which had formed the object of my

quest.

I have said that even from a great distance the shining object's position seemed

indefinably queer - on a slight mound rising from the slime. Now - at about a hundred

yards - I could see plainly despite the engulfing mist just what that mound was. It was the

body of a man in one of the Crystal Company's leather suits, lying on his back, and with

his oxygen mask half buried in the mud a few inches away. In his right hand, crushed

convulsively against his chest, was the crystal which had led me here - a spheroid of

incredible size, so large that the dead fingers could scarcely close over it. Even at the

given distance I could see that the body was a recent one. There was little visible decay,

and I reflected that in this climate such a thing meant death not more than a day before.

Soon the hateful farnoth-flies would begin to cluster about the corpse. I wondered who

the man was. Surely no one I had seen on this trip. It must have been one of the old-

timers absent on a long roving commission, who had come to this especial region

independently of Anderson's survey. There he lay, past all trouble, and with the rays of

the great crystal streaming out from between his stiffened fingers.

For fully five minutes I stood there staring in bewilderment and apprehension. A curious

dread assailed me, and I had an unreasonable impulse to run away. It could not have been

done by those slinking man-lizards, for he still held the crystal he had found. Was there

any connexion with the invisible wall? Where had he found the crystal? Anderson's

instrument had indicated one in this quarter well before this man could have perished. I

now began to regard the unseen barrier as something sinister, and recoiled from it with a

shudder. Yet I knew I must probe the mystery all the more quickly and thoroughly

because of this recent tragedy.

Suddenly - wrenching my mind back to the problem I faced - I thought of a possible

means of testing the wall's height, or at least of finding whether or not it extended

indefinitely upward. Seizing a handful of mud, I let it drain until it gained some

coherence and then flung it high in the air toward the utterly transparent barrier. At a

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WithintheWallsofEryxWithintheWallsofEryxbyH.P.LovecraftandKennethSterlingWrittenJan1936PublishedOctober1939inWeirdTales,Vol.34,No.4,p.50-68.BeforeItrytorestIwillsetdownthesenotesinpreparationforthereportImustmake.WhatIhavefoundissosingular,andsocontrarytoallpastexperienceandexpectations,thatitdeserv...

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Lovecraft, H P & Sterling, Kenneth - Within The Walls Of Eryx

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