Flying
Eyes Excerpts
From the back cover:
Linc Hosler was
sitting in a packed football stadium when the Flying Eyes appeared and cast
their hypnotic power over half the crowd. Thousands of people suddenly began
marching zombie-like into the woods where they vanished into a black pit.
Linc used every
resource of the Space Research Lab and the National Guard to destroy the Eyes.
But nothing could stop them, for they proved immune to bullets and bombs.
In desperation,
Linc captured an Eye and found a way to comunicate with it through his mind.
He learned that radiation was fuel for the creatures' lives. And then they issued
their terrible ultimatum: Explode a series of atom bombs to supply them with
radiation or they would turn the world's population into mindless robots!
It gave the world
two harrowing choices--self-destruction via fallout from the bombs or annihilation
via the sinister Flying Eyes ...
From inside:
Over the stadium,
a shape appeared, and a great Eye came sailing over the wall, down the line
of people, clearing their heads by inches, and fell into place before them.
It hovered there and moved along backward, leading them in their strange march,
through the parking lot, toward the river, then turned to move parallel to the
water. The people followed, and the parking lot suddenly heaved as cars, despite
the lack of room, roared forward. The crunch of metal on metal and the breaking
of glass were added to the frantic blast of horns.
...
The radio sputtered
to life with the frantic voice of an announcer:
"... and people
are following them--where, no one knows--why, no one knows. They just follow.
The giant Eyes are sailing out from the stadium. Two of them are in the downtown
shopping area, and two more at the Recreation Center. The city has gone wild.
There was no estimate of anything. There is no one sane enought to estimate.
And still people follow the Eyes. I've seen them, ladies and gentlemen. Right
now, looking out of the window here on top of the Garner Building, I can see
one of them. It's a great, blue Eye--just an Eye--and it hovers above the street
and blinks its giant lids and stirs up papers on the street with the sweep of
its lashes. There's something ominous in it aside from its immensity--something
that looks out of it, weird and foreign. It has no expression. It is just pure
horror, and it--"
Linc snapped the
set off angrily. "That guy should be horse-whipped for putting out a broadcast
like that. He's scaring hundreds of people to death who haven't even seen the
things."
...
He stooped in the
shelter of a doorway and Wes panted up beside him. Wes was no longer a tanned,
gentle giant of a man. His face was dead white and his lips gray. He pointed
toward the center of town, and Linc stepped out of the shelter to see.
The street, itself,
was a tangle of stalled cars, some climbing the backs of others, wrecked and
abandoned. Glass gleamed broken on the cement, and water ran in streams into
the gutters. People sat in some of the cars, their heads visible in the street
lights and the flash of neon signs. More people ran among them, or clamored
up and down the sidewalks, or peered frozen from the shops.
And over the street,
caught here and there in the light, were six Eyes. They glided back and forth
with an even beat as though they were breathing. They sailed up and down the
street, turning their whole enormous bulk, tilting downward to gaze into the
cars and the stores. Their blinking was a vast closing and opening, their bodiless
rolling was a horror against nature. They moved quickly, tipping, and coming
low. The street lights caught them and were reflected in their depths and the
glint was almost phosphorescent, alien and eerie.
Did I mention that
J. Hunter Holly is a woman?
...............
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