Lovecraft, H P & Others - The Challenge From Beyond

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The Challenge from Beyond

by H. P. Lovecraft, C. L. Moore, A. Merritt, Robert E. Howard, and Frank

Belknap Long

Written August 1935

[C. L. Moore]

George Campbell opened sleep-fogged eyes upon darkness and lay gazing out of the tent

flap upon the pale August night for some minutes before he roused enough even to

wonder what had wakened him. There was in the keen, clear air of these Canadian woods

a soporific as potent as any drug. Campbell lay quiet for a moment, sinking slowly back

into the delicious borderlands of sleep, conscious of an exquisite weariness, an

unaccustomed sense of muscles well used, and relaxed now into perfect ease. These were

vacation's most delightful moments, after all -- rest, after toil, in the clear, sweet forest

night.

Luxuriously, as his mind sank backward into oblivion, he assured himself once more that

three long months of freedom lay before him -- freedom from cities and monotony,

freedom from pedagogy and the University and students with no rudiments of interest in

the geology he earned his daily bread by dinning Into their obdurate ears. Freedom from -

Abruptly the delightful somnolence crashed about him. Somewhere outside the sound of

tin shrieking across tin slashed into his peace. George Campbell sat up jerkily and

reached for his flashlight. Then he laughed and put it down again, straining his eyes

through the midnight gloom outside where among the tumbling cans of his supplies a

dark anonymous little night beast was prowling. He stretched out a long arm and groped

about among the rocks at the tent door for a missile. His fingers closed on a large stone,

and he drew back his hand to throw.

But he never threw it. It was such a queer thing he had come upon in the dark. Square,

crystal smooth, obviously artificial, with dull rounded corners. The strangeness of its rock

surfaces to his fingers was so remarkable that he reached again for his flashlight and

turned its rays upon the thing he held.

All sleepiness left him as he saw what it was he had picked up in his idle groping. It was

clear as rock crystal, this queer, smooth cube. Quartz, unquestionably, but not in its usual

hexagonal crystallized form. Somehow -- he could not guess the method -- it had been

wrought into a perfect cube, about four inches in measurement over each worn face. For

it was incredibly worn. The hard, hard crystal was rounded now until its corners were

almost gone and the thing was beginning to assume the outlines of a sphere. Ages and

ages of wearing, years almost beyond counting, must have passed over this strange clear

thing.

The Challenge from Beyond

But the most curious thing of all was that shape he could make out dimly in the heart of

the crystal. For imbedded in its center lay a little disc of a pale and nameless substance

with characters incised deep upon its quartz-enclosed surface. Wedge-shaped characters,

faintly reminiscent of cuneiform writing.

George Campbell wrinkled his brows and bent closer above the little enigma in his hands,

puzzling helplessly. How could such a thing as this have imbedded in pure rock crystal?

Remotely a memory floated through his mind of ancient legends that called quartz

crystals ice which had frozen too hard to melt again. Ice -- and wedge-shaped cuneiforms

-- yes, didn't that sort of writing originate among the Sumerians who came down from the

north in history's remotest beginnings to settle in the primitive Mesopotamian valley?

Then hard sense regained control and he laughed. Quartz, of course, was formed in the

earliest of earth's geological periods, when there was nothing anywhere but beat and

heaving rock. Ice had not come for tens of millions of years after this thing must have

been formed.

And yet -- that writing. Man-made, surely, although its characters were unfamiliar save in

their faint hinting at cuneiform shapes. Or could there, In a Paleozoic world, have been

things with a written language who might have graven these cryptic wedges upon the

quartz-enveloped disc he held? Or -- might a thing like this have fallen meteor-like out of

space into the unformed rock of a still molten world? Could it --

Then he caught himself up sharply and felt his ears going hot at the luridness of his own

imagination. The silence and the solitude and the queer thing in his hands were

conspiring to play tricks with his common sense. He shrugged and laid the crystal down

at the edge of his pallet, switching off the light. Perhaps morning and a clear head would

bring him an answer to the questions that seemed so insoluble now.

But sleep did not come easily. For one thing, it seemed to him as he flashed off the light,

that the little cube had shone for a moment as if with sustained light before it faded into

the surrounding dark. Or perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps It had been only his dazzled

eyes that seemed to see the light forsake it reluctantly, glowing In the enigmatic deeps of

the thing with queer persistence.

He lay there unquietly for a long while, turning the unanswered questions over and over

in his mind. There was something about this crystal cube out of the unmeasured past,

perhaps from the dawn of all history, that constituted a challenge that would not let him

sleep.

[A. Merritt]

He lay there, it seemed to him, for hours. It had been the lingering light, the luminescence

that seemed so reluctant to die, which held his mind. It was as though something in the

heart of the cube had awakened, stirred drowsily, become suddenly alert ... and Intent

upon him.

The Challenge from Beyond

Sheer fantasy, this. He stirred impatiently and flashed his light upon his watch. Close to

one o'clock; three hours more before the dawn. The beam fell and was focused upon the

warm crystal cube. He held it there closely, for minutes. He snapped It out, then watched.

There was no doubt about it now. As his eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness, he

saw that the strange crystal was glimmering with tiny fugitive lights deep within it like

threads of sapphire lightnings. They were at Its center and they seemed to him to come

from the pale disk with Its disturbing markings. And the disc itself was becoming larger

... the markings shifting shapes ... the cube was growing ... was it illusion brought about

by the tiny lightnings....

He heard a sound. It was the very ghost of a sound, like the ghosts of harp strings being

plucked with ghostly fingers. He bent closer. It came from the cube....

There was squeaking in the underbrush, a flurry of bodies and an agonized wailing like a

child in death throes and swiftly stilled. Some small tragedy of the wilderness, killer and

prey. He stepped over to where it had been enacted, but could see nothing. He again

snapped off the flash and looked toward his tent. Upon the ground was a pale blue

glimmering. It was the cube. He stooped to pick it up; then obeying some obscure

warning, drew back his hand.

And again, he saw, its glow was dying. The tiny sapphire lightnings flashing fitfully,

withdrawing to the disc from which they had come. There was no sound from it.

He sat, watching the luminescence glow and fade, glow and fade, but steadily becoming

dimmer. It came to him that two elements were necessary to produce the phenomenon.

The electric ray itself, and his own fixed attention. His mind must travel along the ray, fix

itself upon the cube's heart, if its beat were to wax, until ... what?

He felt a chill of spirit, as though from contact with some alien thing. It was alien, he

knew it; not of this earth. Not of earth's life. He conquered his shrinking, picked up the

cube and took It into the tent. It was neither warm nor cold; except for its weight he

would not have known he held it. He put it upon the table, keeping the torch turned from

it; then stepped to the flap of the tent and closed it.

He went back to the table, drew up the camp chair, and turned the flash directly upon the

cube, focusing it so far as he could upon its heart. He sent all his will, all his

concentration, along it; focusing will and sight upon the disc as he had the light.

As though at command, the sapphire lightnings burned forth. They burst from the disc

into the body of the crystal cube, then beat back, bathing the disc and the markings.

Again these began to change, shifting, moving, advancing, and retreating in the blue

gleaming. They were no longer cuneiform. They were things ... objects.

He heard the murmuring music, the plucked harp strings. Louder grew the sound and

louder, and now all the body of the cube vibrated to their rhythm. The crystal walls were

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摘要：

TheChallengefromBeyondTheChallengefromBeyondbyH.P.Lovecraft,C.L.Moore,A.Merritt,RobertE.Howard,andFrankBelknapLongWrittenAugust1935[C.L.Moore]GeorgeCampbellopenedsleep-foggedeyesupondarknessandlaygazingoutofthetentflapuponthepaleAugustnightforsomeminutesbeforeherousedenougheventowonderwhathadwakened...

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