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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Huddlers, by William Campbell Gault This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: The Huddlers Author: William Campbell Gault Illustrator: Ernie Barth Release Date: June 20, 2010 [EBook #32904] Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HUDDLERS *** Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net The Huddlers By William Campbell Gault Illustrated by Ernie Barth [Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction May 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] [Sidenote: _He was a reporter from Venus with an assignment on Earth. He got his story but, against orders, he fell in love--and therein lies this story._] That's what _we_ always called them, where I come from, huddlers. Damnedest thing to see from any distance, the way they huddle. They had one place, encrusting the shore line for miles on one of the land bodies they called the Eastern Seaboard. A coagulation in this crust contained eight million of the creatures, _eight million_. They called it New York, and it was bigger than most of the others, but typical. It wasn't bad enough living side by side; the things built mounds and lived one above the other. Apartments they called them. What monstrosities they were. We couldn't figure this huddling, at first. All our attention since Akers' first penetration into space had been directed another way in the galaxy, and though I'll grant you unified and universal concentration may be considered unwise in some areas, it's been our greatest strength. It's brought us rather rapidly to the front, I'm sure you'll agree, and we're not the oldest planet, by a damned sight. Well, by the time we got to the huddlers, Akers was dead and Murten was just an old man with vacant eyes. Jars was handling the Department, though you might say Deering ran it, being closer to most of the gang. Jars was always so cold; nobody ever got to know him really well. Th
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