Beyond the Stars by Ray Cummings

Jim had been received by the dying king. For what seemed hours he sat with Ren in a castle room waiting to be admitted to the royal bedside. To Jim it was irksome. He was afraid the king would die, afraid something would go wrong, and we would all be held as prisoners again.

But he finally saw the king. Jim took the oath of allegiance, swore he would do what he could to rescue the prince.

They started back through the city streets. At this time I was with the girls on the Island of the Virgins. The moon had just risen.

They were in the main lower street before our house. The moon was still low at the horizon; its light was cut off by the houses. The street lamp shone full on the railed flower bed, but close to the buildings, under the pedestrian levels, the shadows were black. Jim suddenly became aware of peering green eyes, a black shape that leaped at him. Other shapes, with great wobbling heads.

A giant shape of human form had knocked Ren down. Another struck Jim, bore him with its weight to the pavement. His senses faded from a blow on the head, and blackness, smothered by clanging gongs in his ears as he lost consciousness.

For a moment, after an interval of what length he never knew, knowledge that he was still alive came to him. He seemed to remember that a giant manlike shape with a bullet head had leaped upon him. It had another head, huge, wobbling like a balloon. But the large head had fallen off it; the large head lay on the ground, with tiny arms supporting it.

The phantasmagoria of a dream. But Jim's head was clearing now, just a little. Something was holding him, and he could feel movement-a rhythmic jogging. He opened his eyes. A city street was passing. A great hairy arm was about his middle; he was being carried by something that walked; being held horizontal, his head, arms and legs dangling.

A giant, brown, hairy shoulder was over him; and above that, the great bulge of a head-a smooth, dead-white inflated membrane-a head that bounced and wobbled as the thing strode forward.

A brief consciousness, a vague, dreamlike impression, scarcely strong enough to make a memory, and Jim's senses again faded into a black void of silence.

When Jim came fully to himself he was lying in a glow of yellow moonlight. Beneath him was a smooth, curving metal surface. His head ached horribly; a lump was upon it, and there was matted blood in his hair.

He was sore, bruised all over, but with returning strength he realized that he was not seriously injured.

He lay a moment, trying to remember what had happened, and the memory came, distorted and vague. Over him spread the canopy of stars, with a great yellow moon rising. The curving metal surface beneath him was gently swaying. Was he on a boat? He was still no more than half conscious. He murmured, "Ren! Ren!"

"Yes, Jim? Jim, is that you?"

Jim struggled up on one elbow. Ren was sitting hunched beside him. Ren-alive, seemingly uninjured.

They were on a boat, lying in its bottom, a small, narrow metal boat, six feet wide perhaps, and perhaps five or six times as long. Its gunwale curved up two or three feet over Jim's head. They were lying in the narrowing of its bow.

Farther astern, in the yellow moonlight, were figures, brown, hairy bodies-men; or were they giant gorillas? They had small bullet-like heads, faces flat-nosed, with receding forehead and receding chin, and two small eyes that blazed green.

Jim very slowly sank back, but in a posture where he could see the length of the boat. The figures there were not animals; they were men of brute force and brute intelligence. Four of them, with powerful, hairy bodies, wide-shouldered, deep-chested, with short, thick legs and very long arms.

They were clothed in what seemed trunks of animal skin, and a skin fastened over the bulging chest to one shoulder. And each had a broad, tightly drawn belt at his waist.

To Jim came the memory of his capture. It was no fantasy, his memory of a hairy body, with a balloonlike, wobbling head. The four huge heads were here now, in a group near the center of the boat. Each was about four feet in diameter. A dead-white membrane, with bulging, distended veins on a forehead, over a grotesque flat face.

Heads, belonging to these four bodies? Jim realized it was not that. These were separate living entities, which had been riding astride the shoulders of the four.