I think it is the sun, passing in a higher and longer arc above the dead landscape, that has called me back from the utterness of despair. The snow has melted from the rocks, forming little rills and pools of water; and strange plant-buds are protruding from the sandy soil. They lift and swell visibly as I watch them. I am beyond hope, beyond life, in a weird vacuum; but I see these things as a condemned captive sees the stirring of spring from his cell. They rouse in me an emotion whose very name I had forgotten.
My food-supply is getting low, and the reserve of compressed air is even lower. I am afraid to calculate how much longer it will last. I have tried to break the neo-crystal ports with a large monkey-wrench for hammer; but the blows, owing partly to my own weightlessness, are futile as the tapping of a feather. Anyway, in all likelihood, the outside air would be too thin for human respiration.
The walking-stick people have re-appeared before the flier. I feel sure, from their lesser height, their brighter coloring, and the immature development of certain members, that they all represent a new generation. None of my former visitors have survived the winter; but somehow, the new ones seem to regard the Selenite and me with the same curiosity and reverence that were shown by their elders. They, too, have begun to bring gifts of insubstantial-looking fruit; and they strew filmy blossoms below the port… I wonder how they propagate themselves, and how knowledge is transmitted from one generation to another….
The flat, lichenous vines are mounting on the rocks, are clambering over the hull of the Selenite. The young walking-sticks gather daily to worship me—they make those enigmatic signs which I have never understood, and they move in swift gyrations about the vessel, as in the measures of a hieratic dance…. I, the lost and doomed, have been the god of two generations. No doubt they will still worship me when I am dead. I think the air is almost gone—I am more light-headed than usual today, and there is a queer constriction in my throat and chest….
Perhaps I am a little delirious, and have begun to imagine things; but I have just perceived an odd phenomenon, hitherto unnoted. I don’t know what it is. A thin, columnar mist, moving and writhing like a serpent, with opal colors that change momently, has appeared among the rocks and is approaching the vessel. It seems like a live thing—like a vaporous entity; and somehow, it is poisonous and inimical. It glides forward, rearing above the throng of phasmidae, who have all prostrated themselves as if in fear. I see it more clearly now: it is half-transparent, with a web of grey threads among its changing colors; and it is putting forth a long, wavering tentacle.
It is some rare life-form, unknown to earthly science; and I cannot even surmise its nature and attributes. Perhaps it is the only one of its kind on the asteroid. No doubt it has just discovered the presence of the Selenite, and has been drawn by curiosity, like the walking-stick people.
The tentacle has touched the hull—it has reached the port behind which I stand, pencilling these words. The grey threads in the tentacle glow as if with sudden fire. My God—it is coming through the neo-crystal lens—
APPENDIX ONE:
STORY NOTES
Abbreviations Used
:
AHT Arkham House Transcripts: a set of transcriptions and excerpts from the letters of H. P. Lovecraft prepared by Donald Wandrei and August Derleth after Lovecraft’s death in preparation for what would be five volumes of Selected Letters (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1965-1976).
AWD August W. Derleth (1909-1971), Wisconsin novelist, Weird Tales author, and co-founder of Arkham House.
AY The Abominations of Yondo (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1960).
BB The Black Book of Clark Ashton Smith (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1979).
BL Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.
CAS Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961).
DAW Donald A. Wandrei (1908-1987), poet, Weird Tales writer and co-founder of Arkham House.
DSThe Door to Saturn: The Collected Fantasiesof Clark Ashton Smith, Volume Two. Ed. Scott Connors and Ron Hilger (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2007).
EODEmperor of Dreams: A Clark Ashton Smith Bio-Bibliography by Donald Sidney-Fryer et al. (West Kingston, RI: Donald M. Grant, 1978).
ES The End of the Story: The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Volume One. Ed. Scott Connors and Ron Hilger (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2006).
FFT The Freedom of Fantastic Things. Ed. Scott Connors (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2006).
FW Farnsworth Wright (1888-1940), editor of Weird Tales from 1924 to 1939.
GLGenius Loci and Other Tales (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1948).
HPL Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937), informal leader of a circle of writers for Weird Tales and related magazines, and probably the leading exponent of weird fiction in the twentieth century.
JHL Clark Ashton Smith Papers and H. P. Lovecraft Collection, John Hay Library, Brown University.
LLLetters to H. P. Lovecraft. Ed. Steve Behrends (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1987).
LWLost Worlds (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1944).
MHS Donald Wandrei Papers, Minnesota Historical Society.
ODOther Dimensions (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1970).
OSTOut of Space and Time (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1942).
PDPlanets and Dimensions: Collected Essays. Ed. Charles K. Wolfe (Baltimore: Mirage Press, 1973).
PPPoems in Prose (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1965).
RAA Rendezvous in Averoigne (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1988).
RHB Robert H. Barlow (1918-1951), correspondent and collector of manuscripts of CAS, HPL, and other WT writers.
RW Red World of Polaris. Ed. Ronald S. Hilger and Scott Connors (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2003).
SHSW August Derleth Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin Library.
SL Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith. Ed. David E. Schultz and Scott Connors (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 2003).
SSStrange Shadows: The Uncollected Fiction and Essays of Clark Ashton Smith. Ed. Steve Behrends with Donald Sidney-Fryer and Rah Hoffman (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989).
ST Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, a pulp edited by Harry Bates in competition with WT.
TI Tales of India and Irony. Ed. Scott Connors and Ron Hilger (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2007).
TSSTales of Science and Sorcery (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1964).
WS Wonder Stories, a pulp published by Hugo Gernsback and edited first by David Lasser and then Charles D. Hornig.