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Title: The Thing in the Attic

Author: James Benjamin Blish

Illustrator: Paul Orban

Release Date: May 20, 2010 [EBook #32447]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE THING IN THE ATTIC

By James Blish

Illustrated by Paul Orban

[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science
Fiction July 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

[Sidenote: _Honath and his fellow arch-doubters did not believe in the
Giants, and for this they were cast into Hell. And when survival
depended upon unwavering faith in their beliefs, they saw that there
were Giants, after all...._]

_It is written that after the Giants came to Tellura from the far
stars, they abode a while, and looked upon the surface of the land,
and found it wanting, and of evil omen. Therefore did they make men
to live always in the air and in the sunlight, and in the light of
the stars, that he would be reminded of them. And the Giants abode
yet a while, and taught men to speak, and to write, and to weave,
and to do many things which are needful to do, of which the
writings speak. And thereafter they departed to the far stars,
saying, Take this world as your own, and though we shall return,
fear not, for it is yours._

--THE BOOK OF LAWS

Honath the Pursemaker was hauled from the nets an hour before the rest
of the prisoners, as befitted his role as the arch-doubter of them all.
It was not yet dawn, but his captors led him in great bounds through the
endless, musky-perfumed orchid gardens, small dark shapes with crooked
legs, hunched shoulders, slim hairless tails carried, like his, in
concentric spirals wound clockwise. Behind them sprang Honath on the end
of a long tether, timing his leaps by theirs, sin