Chapter XV: The Green Girl

It was, indeed, the form of a woman--rather, of a girl. The eyelids were closed and still. There was no breathing, and no perceptible beating of the heart. But the body was very beautiful. The hair was soft and dark; the skin, white with just a hint of the green coloration. The features were regular, classic--perfect! The lips were still very red.

That form was familiar to me--it was the dearest shape of my dreams! It was the Green Girl! There could be no mistake. This was the flesh and blood reality of the delightful vision that had been the joy of my life. At last, my supreme wish was granted! I had found the Green Girl! But too late! She was so white and still!

As Sam remarked, his words reaching me faintly through a gray daze of despair, she seemed to have belonged to a rather highly developed race of people. In fact, so far as physical perfection goes, she was without parallel; and physical and mental endowments usually go hand in hand. The wide white forehead betokened a keen intellect.

Sam had expected to find ornaments on the body, but no such things as we did find! There was a thin band of metal about the waist! The twisted fragments of a strange metal object were upon the back, fastened to the white shoulders with metal clamps that gripped them cruelly!

It was evident that something, recently torn away, had been fastened to the back of the girl!

Sam brought a file from the machine. I helped aimlessly, mechanically, and we cut that metal frame off. As we worked over that white body, with its soft tints of green, I saw strange, livid marks upon the back, that stood out sharply from the warm hue of the skin! I had never seen anything like them. They were splotches of a dull violet color! They looked like burns, or stains, that must have been caused by the thing that had been fastened to her body.

"Radium burns?" I questioned Sam in apathetic curiosity.

"No. Something similar, perhaps. Radium emanations whiten the hair, but the color of the skin is not affected except by inflammation. This is the effect of atomic radiation of a shorter wave-length, I think. My hands were oddly stained for months while I was making my initial experiments with the artificial generation of the cosmic ray, which led to the hydrodyne. I found the cause and developed an effective treatment. I imagine that burn is the chief cause of her coma."

"Coma! Then she isn't----" My heart beat madly, and a mist came before my eyes.

"I think there is hope. She seems not to have been injured by the monster, or to have been seriously hurt by the fall. She is in a profoundly comatose state, due to the electronic burns, and also to physical exhaustion and the terrible hardships of which her appearance gives evidence."

"If you can save her----" I fell on my knees and raised that delicate head in my arms.

"Let's get her to the machine. It's cooler in there. We'll do what we can."

I picked up the silent body, still warm and limp, and carried it to the machine, up to the deck, and down into the cabin. I gently placed it on the divan, and nervously urged Sam to haste.

He deliberately began his work. He had included medical supplies in our equipment; and he was a doctor of considerable skill, whose special knowledge of the effects of etheric vibration was of greatest value here. I could do little except stand and watch him, or stride impatiently up and down the room.

First he quickly prepared a thick red liquid, with which he bathed the violet-colored burns. Then he made a hypodermic injection, and next administered a small quantity of some kind of gas--a mixture of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, with something else that I did not recognize. In a few minutes the beating of the heart had become normal, and the breathing was resumed. He had me cover the patient up, and it soon became evident that she had passed into a deep but natural sleep.

I sat by the couch, feasting my sight on the reality of the vision that had been mine so long, in a fever of impatience for the time the beautiful sleeper might awake, so that I could speak to her, yet fearful of making a sound that would disturb her.

Sam had gone out to examine the dead monster more fully. In half an hour he came back in the cabin, carrying a queer writhing green thing in his hand. He held it up silently for me to see. With a sickening sensation, I perceived that it was a miniature replica of the great flying monster!

It was no bigger than a dove! The madly fluttering wings were a bright rich green, very delicate and soft. The thin, slender tentacles that clutched Sam's hand, or scratched harmlessly at it with undeveloped claws, were a pale rose color. The thin, fish-like body was almost white, and the little bloom at the end of it was now an intense violet in color, while the little black sense organs were thrust stiffly out of it.

"Quite a find!" Sam said. "We ought to learn no end of things from studying it, if we can keep it alive."

"Quiet!" I whispered. "Don't wake her! But where did you get it?"

"Tore it out of a curious pouch on the back of the old one. A cunning little creature, isn't it?"

"Not to my way of looking at it!"

"I wonder what it eats? Most likely it's carnivorous. The claws would suggest as much. And that assumption would demand that there must be large game of some kind to support the winged plants."

Sam carried the little monster on into the galley. In half an hour, since he had not come out, I left the sleeping girl and went in to see him, fearing that he had been bitten or stung by the thing. I found him with the grotesque little creature perched contentedly on his finger, sucking with the thin pink tentacles at a wisp of cotton he had soaked in condensed milk. An odd thing I noticed about it. The little bloom on the end of the body, which had been purple a short time before, was now white, flushed only with a pale pink glow.

"It's as friendly as a kitten," Sam said. "I'm going to name it Alexander. No reason why it should not develop into a young conqueror."

"Keep it, and give me a pet rattlesnake!"

And it was well he did keep it.