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Shangri-LA, issue 4, January-February 1948
Page 8
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MOORE to Akerman: I think I know why the pursuer's flash made Nyusa visible. Did you ever notice the peculiar colors one's skin turns under different lights? A violet-ray machine turns lips and nails--as I remember--a sickly green, and the blue lights they use in photographers shops sometimes, make you purple. I once figured out why, but can't remember and haven't time now to go into it. Something about complementary colors and mixing yellow and blue, and whatnot. Well, you remember in Bierce's THE DAMNED THING his inivisible monster was a color outside our range of perception. Couldn't this flash-light be of some shade which, combined with Nyusa's peculiar skin-tone, produced a visible color? ** And Venus is the Hot Planet anyhow, so no need to increase her body temperature above normal to make it possible for her to run about in the altogether. ** Smith had met her in the absolutely black dark of the starless Venusian night. She came tearing down the street and bumped into him, and, tho considerably astonished to find his arms full of scared and quite unadorned girl, he of course didn't realize her invisibility then. Alterward came this squat, dark pursuer, flashing his greenishly glowing ray to and fro. When he'd gone by she heard another sound--origin yet unknown, to me or anyone else--which so alarmed her that she pulled Smith into a run and guided him at top speed thru /the spelling "thru" & "tho" are Catherine's/ devious byways and into an unlighted room. "Lift me up," said she, "so I can reach the light." And when it goes on he realizes that he is holding in midair a beautifully muscular, firmly curved armful of nothingness. He had just dropped her onto the floor and staggered back, doubting his sanity. What happens next I don't know. ** If you have any more ideas, they'll be welcome. This is the stage of a story when I usually sweat blood for several days, racking an absolutely sterile brain for ideas. Then something takes fire and the whole story just gallops, with me flying along behind trying to keep up with it. Very strenuous. ** Think hard and see if you can find any possible reason, sane or insane, as to what the noise was she had heard, why it alarmed her so, whether she is invisible just by a freak of nature or whether by some mysterious mastermind's intent. I suspect she is in the power of some insidious villian, but don't know yet. ** All thru the preface of the story I've made such veiled hints about the nameless horrors which stalk by night along the waterfront of Edoes, that said villian might be almost anything--some horror out of the ages before man, or some super-brain of the far advanced races we know nothing of, or an unhappy medium like the Alendar. (That reminds me--Vaudir is the infinitive of--as I remember my college days--the French verb wish. I presume Nyusa is purely original with you, so you deserve more credit than I for it's a grand name.) /'"Thank you kindly , ma'am," said the 18-year-old lad. "There is no truth to the rumor that I made it up from the initials of our major metropolis, N.Y.U.S.A."/ ACKERMAN to Moore--/This is the point where I was supposed to come in for my big hunk of egoboo, quoting my share in the development of the plot, but I can't find the vital letter I 8
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MOORE to Akerman: I think I know why the pursuer's flash made Nyusa visible. Did you ever notice the peculiar colors one's skin turns under different lights? A violet-ray machine turns lips and nails--as I remember--a sickly green, and the blue lights they use in photographers shops sometimes, make you purple. I once figured out why, but can't remember and haven't time now to go into it. Something about complementary colors and mixing yellow and blue, and whatnot. Well, you remember in Bierce's THE DAMNED THING his inivisible monster was a color outside our range of perception. Couldn't this flash-light be of some shade which, combined with Nyusa's peculiar skin-tone, produced a visible color? ** And Venus is the Hot Planet anyhow, so no need to increase her body temperature above normal to make it possible for her to run about in the altogether. ** Smith had met her in the absolutely black dark of the starless Venusian night. She came tearing down the street and bumped into him, and, tho considerably astonished to find his arms full of scared and quite unadorned girl, he of course didn't realize her invisibility then. Alterward came this squat, dark pursuer, flashing his greenishly glowing ray to and fro. When he'd gone by she heard another sound--origin yet unknown, to me or anyone else--which so alarmed her that she pulled Smith into a run and guided him at top speed thru /the spelling "thru" & "tho" are Catherine's/ devious byways and into an unlighted room. "Lift me up," said she, "so I can reach the light." And when it goes on he realizes that he is holding in midair a beautifully muscular, firmly curved armful of nothingness. He had just dropped her onto the floor and staggered back, doubting his sanity. What happens next I don't know. ** If you have any more ideas, they'll be welcome. This is the stage of a story when I usually sweat blood for several days, racking an absolutely sterile brain for ideas. Then something takes fire and the whole story just gallops, with me flying along behind trying to keep up with it. Very strenuous. ** Think hard and see if you can find any possible reason, sane or insane, as to what the noise was she had heard, why it alarmed her so, whether she is invisible just by a freak of nature or whether by some mysterious mastermind's intent. I suspect she is in the power of some insidious villian, but don't know yet. ** All thru the preface of the story I've made such veiled hints about the nameless horrors which stalk by night along the waterfront of Edoes, that said villian might be almost anything--some horror out of the ages before man, or some super-brain of the far advanced races we know nothing of, or an unhappy medium like the Alendar. (That reminds me--Vaudir is the infinitive of--as I remember my college days--the French verb wish. I presume Nyusa is purely original with you, so you deserve more credit than I for it's a grand name.) /'"Thank you kindly , ma'am," said the 18-year-old lad. "There is no truth to the rumor that I made it up from the initials of our major metropolis, N.Y.U.S.A."/ ACKERMAN to Moore--/This is the point where I was supposed to come in for my big hunk of egoboo, quoting my share in the development of the plot, but I can't find the vital letter I 8
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