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Words: 17370 in 12 pages
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Illustrator: Ed Emshwiller
Release date: November 26, 2023
Original publication: New York, NY: Royal Publications, Inc, 1958
SPACEROGUE
Illustrated by ED EMSH
They were selling a proteus in the public auctionplace at Borlaam, when the stranger wandered by. The stranger's name was Barr Herndon, and he was a tall man, with a proud, lonely face. It was not the face he had been born with, though his own had been equally proud, equally lonely.
He shouldered his way through the crowd. It was a warm and muggy day and a number of idling passersby had stopped to watch the auction. The auctioneer was an Agozlid, squat and bull-voiced, and he held the squirming proteus at arm's length, squeezing it to make it perform.
"Observe, ladies and gentlemen--observe the shapes, the multitude of strange and exciting forms!"
The proteus now had the shape of an eight-limbed star, blue-green at its core, fiery red in each limb. Under the auctioneer's merciless prodding it began to change, slowly, as its molecules lost their hold on one another and sought a new conformation.
A snake, a tree, a hooded deathworm--
The Agozlid grinned triumphantly at the crowd, baring fifty inch-long yellow teeth. "What am I bid?" he demanded in the guttural Borlaamese language. "Who wants this creature from another sun's world?"
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