!

(_To be concluded_)

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The Jovian Jest

_By Lilith Lorraine_

[Illustration: _The object shot forth another tentacle._]

[Sidenote: There came to our pigmy planet a radiant wanderer with a
message--and a jest--from the vasty universe.]

Consternation reigned in Elsnore village when the Nameless Thing was
discovered in Farmer Burns' corn-patch. When the rumor began to gain
credence that it was some sort of meteor from inter-stellar space,
reporters, scientists and college professors flocked to the scene,
desirous of prying off particles for analysis. But they soon
discovered that the Thing was no ordinary meteor, for it glowed at
night with a peculiar luminescence. They also observed that it was
practically weightless, since it had embedded itself in the soft sand
scarcely more than a few inches.

By the time the first group of newspapermen and scientists had reached
the farm, another phenomenon was plainly observable. The Thing was
growing!

Farmer Burns, with an eye to profit, had already built a picket fence
around his starry visitor and was charging admission. He also flatly
refused to permit the chipping off of specimens or even the touching
of the object. His attitude was severely criticized, but he stubbornly
clung to the theory that possession is nine points in law.

* * * * *

It was Professor Ralston of Princewell who, on the third day after the
fall of the meteor, remarked upon its growth. His colleagues crowded
around him as he pointed out this peculiarity, and soon they
discovered another factor--pulsation!

Larger than a small balloon, and gradually, almost imperceptibly
expanding, with its viscid transparency shot through with opalescent
lights, the Thing lay there in the deepening twilight and palpably
shivered. As darkness descended, a sort of hellish radiance began to
ooze from it. I say hellish, because there is no other word to
describe that spectral, sulphurous emanation.

As the hangers-on around the pickets shudderingly shrank away from the
weird light that was streaming out to them and tinting their faces
with a ghastly, greenish pallor, Farmer Burns' small boy, moved by
some imp of perversity, did a characteristically childish thing. He
picked up a good-sized stone and flung it straight at the nameless
mass!

* * * * *

Instead of veering off and falling to the ground as from an impact
w