The Motion Demon Read Online Free Page A

that crossed the rails, bumping into switches, Grot wandered among the coldly glittering iron.
    Suddenly he heard behind him a heavy groan, he felt the trembling of the earth under his feet. He turned around and slowly became aware of a gliding, detached engine.
    He took it in with the eye of an expert, ascertained the abundance of the trailer, and joyfully noticed the absence of the stoker.
    A decision as quick as a flash, as a flicker of an eyelid, throbbed in his troubled brain and ripened immediately.
    With a careful, predatory step, a stalking step like a panther’s, he went to the side of the iron monster and in one spring jumped to the platform.
    The movement was so sudden and unexpected that it stupefied the driver of the engine. Before the driver could orient himself to the situation created by his new guest, Grot gagged his mouth with a kerchief, fettered his hands crosswise, and, laying him on the engine’s floor, pushed him from the running-board towards the earth.
    Dealing with this in the course of several minutes, Grot then took over his predecessor’s place by the furnace.
    A titanic joy was bursting in his heart—a cry of triumph erupted from his chest. He was once again at the controls!
    He pressed the spigots, tugged on the steam, turned the whining crank. The engine, as if sensing the hand of a master, quivered at being employed; it coughed with a robust, parting whistle, and moved forth into the wide world. Grot went insane from intoxication. Emerging from the labyrinth of rails, he entered the main track that sped along straight ahead like an arrow and swooped forward into space!
    A gale-like speed commenced, unhampered by anything, uninterrupted by stops or monotonous halts. Grot passed indistinct stations like lightning, he flashed by indistinct towns like a demon, flew through indistinct halting places like a hurricane. Without pause he scooped coals with a shovel, threw them into the furnace; he fed the fire, compressed the steam. Like a man possessed, he ran from trailer to furnace, from furnace to trailer; he checked the water level on the meter, he inspected the steam pressure.
    He saw nothing, he thought nothing—he only drank in speed, he only lived for rushing motion, he plunged himself into the gigantism of momentum. He lost count of time, what part of day it was, what hour. He did not know how long the hellish ride had lasted so far—a day, two days, or a week….
    The engine ran riot. The wheels, frenzied with speed, carried out unattainable, fantastically swift revolutions; the over-strained pistons retracted, then eagerly pushed forward again; the possessed, breathless copper bins rattled. The needle on the pressure gauge went continually up—the red-hot furnace belched out fire, scorched the skin, burned the palms. That’s nothing! More! Further on! Faster! Full speed ahead! Full speed ahead!
    A new heap of coal vanished into the abyss of the furnace and spattered a bunch of blood-like sparks—a new jet of steam shot blazing heat into melting pipes….
    Grot fixed his feverish eyes on the ruby mouth of the furnace and drank in its swelter, sucked in its blood….
    Suddenly—something surged, something hooted with a devilish whine—an explosion resounded, as if from a thousand cannons, thunder roared, as if from a hundred lightning bolts…. A fiery, entangled cloud burst forth, a confused column of fragments, iron hulls, bent sheet metal. Under the sky sputtered a rocket of bits and pieces, ripped-apart spans, blown-up bells….
    The pall of night was rent asunder by Grot’s crimson end.

 
     
    THE WANDERING TRAIN
     
     
     
    FEVERISH ACTIVITY REIGNED at the Horsk train station. It was right before the holidays, an eagerly anticipated time when people could take off from work for a few days. The platform swarmed with those arriving and departing. Women’s excited faces flashed by, colourful hat ribbons flapped around, frantic rushing marked every scene. Here, the slender