Onslaught from Rigel-Fletcher Pratt
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What happens when Murray Lee awakens as a metal being?
Preface of the Onslaught from Rigel. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox dot org Read by Winifred Aston The onslaught from Rigel was By Fletcher Pratt. Preface Mr Pratt is well known for his Reign of the Ray and the War of the Giants, where in both stories he showed his excellent knowledge of warfare and what a future war might be like. In this story, he combines that knowledge with a vivid and fertile scientific imagination to construct an interplanetary story that marks a new triumph for Wonder Stories quarterly. We know that many scientists believe that life may have originally come to Earth in the form of spores from other solar systems and other universes.
We therefore might really have had our home dim ages ago on worlds distantly removed from our earth. The ability to travel the interstellar spaces, however, might also be possessed by other creatures. Creatures driven by fear, necessity, and by the will to conquer. And if they come, in mighty waves, with scientific powers far beyond us, to dominate the earth, a terrible time will face the puny human race. And in this story they do come, and provoke some of the strangest and most exciting adventures that have yet been recorded. End of preface
Chapter one of the Onslaught from Rigel. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org. Read by Yoganant The Onslaught from Rigel by Fletcher Pratt Chapter one The onslaught from Rigel. Mare Lee woke abruptly with the memory of the sound that had roused him drumming at the back of his head, though his conscious mind had been beyond its ambit. His first sensation was an overpowering stiffness in every muscle, a feeling as though he had been pounded all over, though his memory supplied no clue to the reason for such a sensation. Painfully he turned over in bed and felt the left elbow where the ache seemed to center.
he received the most tremendous shock of his life, The motion was attended by a creaking clang and the elbow felt exceedingly like a complex wheel. He sat up to make sure he was awake, tossing the offending arm free of the covers, The motion produced another clang, and the arm revealed itself to his astonished gaze as a system of metal bands bound at the elbow by the mechanism he had felt before, and crowned where the finger should be by steely talons terminating in rubber like fingertips. Yet there seemed to be no lack of feeling in the member. For a few seconds he stared open mouthed, then lifted the other arm. It was a right hand counterpart of the device he had been gazing at. He essayed to move one, then the other.
The shining fingers obeyed this thought as though they were flesh and blood. A sense of expectant fear gripped him as he lifted one of the hands to unbutton his pajamas. He was not deceived in the half formed expectation. Where the ribs clothed in a respectable amount of muscle should have been a rope. of glistening metal plates appeared. Thoughts of body snatching and bizarre surgery flitted through his mind to be instantly dismissed. Dreaming? Drunk? A dreadful idea that he might be insane struck him, and he leaped from the bed to confront a mirror. His feet struck the floor with a potentous bang and each step produced a squeak and clank, and he faced the mirror, the familiar mirror before which he had shaved for years.
With utter stupefaction he saw an iron countenance above which a stiff brush of wire hair projected ludicrously. One does not go mad at such moments. The shock takes time to sink and At all events I may as well get dressed, he remarked to himself practically. I don't suppose water will do this hardware any good, so I'll omit the bath. But if I'm crazy, I might as well go out and have a good time about it. Dressing was a process prolonged by an examination of himself and the discovery that he was a most efficient metal machine. He rather admired the smoothness of the hip joints and the way the sliding parts of his arms fitted together, and was agreeably surprised to find that in the metallizing process his toes had become prehensile.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What happens when Murray Lee awakens as a metal being?
0:01–51:14
2
How do the survivors organize a new colony and plan their next move?
51:14–1:33:30
3
What mysterious radio contact and strange signals do the crew encounter as they approach New Jersey?
1:33:30–3:19:42
4
How does Sherman devise a way to unlock the cage bars and escape?
3:19:42–3:37:26
5
What happens when Sherman and Martalami encounter the giant mechanical elephant and the Lassans?
3:37:26–5:06:00
6
How do the characters design and test the new gravity‑beam weapon?
5:06:00–5:17:20
7
What happens when the monitor and its crew confront the green Lassan globes?
5:17:20–6:49:12