and with eyes still closed but discerning by a sort of dream-vision, I half-consciously turned, beheld luminous yellow—draperies?—fluttering behind me, bouying me: like scarf-wings, whipping comet-tails.

"An instinctive transient fright gripped me, admonishing me to withdraw from this blue region into the calid darkness from which I had come—but the melody's urge was stronger than my feeble urge to retreat. The azure became flecked with diamond points of light which augmented into great white moons, and from one to another in a vast network rayed pulsing filaments, vascular channels of fluid light.

"A stupendous chorus of clear unhuman voices, as from diamond throats, emanated from these linked moons, of which the music which had conveyed me was only a distorted, ghostly echo.... In tangible waves this greater music rippled around the webbed moons, beating against me as though to force me away on its tides I know not whither.

"Beneath me was a limitless tract of grey slime which rose and fell torpidly as with the breathing of a somnolent subterranean thing. The moonlight burned brightly on it, and crawling across it from some remote place came—trees?—snaky-rooted things whose prehensile branches bore, instead of leaves, flexible lenses.... They left behind them red trails on the slime, and excrementory ribbons of thin blue vapor streamed from their topmost appendages. Occasionally they paused to feed, focussing their lenses upon the gelatinous ground, which became luminously white under the concentrated light. The sucking mouths of the serpentine roots absorbed this matter, and red viscosity seeped into the eaten places, greying rapidly under the moon's effulgence, chemically affected by it.

"And the trees mated. Gynandrous, they converged in pairs or groups, pressing close together, thrusting their limbs into one enormous cluster, aggregating their lenses into a series of complex, compact forms ... shuddering with a violent ardor.... From erectile protuberances rimming the lenses ruby liquid spurted, bursting with incandescence under the condensed moonlight.

"Spent, drooping, the trees separated, and the radiant orgasmic matter drifted lightly down to the slime, burning fitfully as the trees moved away indifferently.

"Apparently these flickering radiances fed, for gradually they grew, dulling, becoming opaque, substantial——thrusting out probing roots, developing limbs, wandering like their parents. They snailed onward out of sight, all of them.

"Silently, a phosphorescent green river raced like a bolt of furcate lightning over the green wastes. It was composed not of water but of myriad tiny luminous crawling insects. A conscious river, altering its tortuous course at will, small streams deviating from the main body and meandering erratically, then rejoining the general current. This river's end drew into sight, flashed under me and into the distance, leaving fast-greying red paths on the slime.

"The moon's music assailed me; simultaneously I felt those man-measures, which had carried me so long, cease, leaving me without a link to my own world—helpless against the inexorable tide of the lunar melody, which, bursting more loudly, swept me higher, through an interstice of the circulatory web, into blue infinity. And there it left me; fading ripples of it would lap me, but were too dissapated then to sweep me farther.

"I floated aimlessly in the void, it seemed for ages, less a body than a mind, aware of neither hunger nor thirst nor ill of any sort other than a dreadful sapping weariness.

"There was no way of reckoning time, but after an eternity of loneliness and self-boredom, I heard a glissando of mellow tintinabulations. A troop of small stars flashed toward me like a scattered handful of sparkling white gems, whirling in interweaving dance of enchantment, tinkling glad clear tunes like the babbling of crystal brooks. The joyous, youthful essence of their song so charmed me that I forgot my weariness and vocally ventured to imitate it.

"At last they broke their circle and swept away, single-file, out of sight, diminishing with distance.

"For awhile I hummed their song, but with every repetition it lost some of its starry quality and gained a human-ness, earthiness, animalism—until it impressed me no longer beautiful, and I was silent.... Wearily the sluggish ages passed ... in the illimitable blue solitudes....

"Eventually I heard the man-music, again like a summons—its vibrations piercing the moon-net, receding, drawing me with it. Its power increased with every unit of retregression, dragging me with it. Over the wastes of slime it dragged me, all in a fraction of seconds. Wind tore at me, racketing in my ears, drowning music of both moons and man.

"In a flash of cataclysm, of cosmic pandemonium, the moons, jostled out of their places by my abrupt passage through the web, strained apart, snapping their pulsant filamental arteries. White, searing drops of blood of light oozed from the severed ducts, hissing as they fell, and splashed on the slime, which heaved torturedly. The crawling trees reared upon their writhing roots, flailing their lensed limbs, and the phosphorescent rivers halted suddenly, piling into swiftly disintegrating mounds.

"The rain of light blood thinned and ceased: the moons dimmed and plunged earthward, lusterless. As they touched the tempestuously tossing slime, it shrieked stridently, deafeningly—cosmically! An outcry voicing all life's inherent dread of the horror of pain and death, which arose from all sides, like an auditory vise, tightening upon and crushing me. The blue chaos was wiped away by utter blackness; the shriek weakened, ceased.

"I opened my eyes, shut them—dazzled by daylight, and opened them again, but cautiously. My brother Ray was standing over me, shaking me, calling my name ... AND IT WAS I WHO HAD SCREAMED!"

as i remember——