Chapter one of An Earthman on Venus. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in a public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Alexis Duclos of the French podcast Citizen Cage. An Earthman on Venus by Ralph Milne Farley. Chapter one. The Message in the Meteor. Never had it been so frightened in all my life. It was a warm evening late in August. And I was sitting on the kitchen steps of my Chapaquiddic Island farmhouse, discussing the draw with one of the farmhands. Suddenly there appeared in the sky over our head a flaming fiery mass rushing straight downwards toward us. Here's where a shooting star gets me. I thought as I instinctively ducked my head, just as though such a feeble move as ducking one's head could afford any possible protection from the flaming terror. The next instant there came a dull crash followed by silence, which in turn was broken by the hired man, dryly remarking. I reckon she struck over to Coheal. Coheal was the slight elevation just back of our farmhouse. So the meteor hadn't been aimed exactly at me after all. If that thing had hit me, someone else would be giving to the world this story. We did nothing further about the meteor that night, being pretty well shaken up by the occurrence. But next morning, as soon as the chores were done, the hired man and I hastened to the top of Coheal to look for signs of last night's fiery visitor. And sure enough, there were plenty of signs. Every spear of grass was singed from the top of the hill. The big rock on the summit showed marks of a collision, and several splinters of some black, igneous material were lying through the round. Leading from the big rock there ran down the steep side of the hill, a gradually deepening furrow, ending in a sort of caved-in hole. We could not let slip such a good opportunity to get some newspaper publicity for our farm. And so on the following Friday, full account of the meteoric visitation appeared in a vineyard gazette, with the result that quite a number of summer folks walked across the island from the bathing beach to look at the hole. And there was another result. For early the following week, I received a letter from Professor Garrish of the Harvard Observatory, stating that he had read about the meteor in the paper, and requesting that I send him a small piece or, if possible, the whole matter by express, collect for purposes of analysis. Anything for the old Harvard. Unfortunately, all the black splinters had been carried away by tourists, so I set the man to work digging out the main body. Quite a hole was dug before we came to the meteor.  With rock-tongued chains and my pair of persurance, we dragged this out onto the level. I had hoped that it would be small enough so that I could send the whole thing up to Harvard and perhaps have it set up in front of the Agassiz Museum, marked with a bronze plate bearing my name, but its size recludes this. My wife, who was present when we hold it out, remarked, it looks just like a huge black teardrop or raindrop, and sure enough it did. But why not? If raindrops take on a streamlined form in falling, why might not a more solid matter do so as well? But I had never heard of one doing so before. This new idea prompted me to take careful measurement and to submit them to Professor O. D. Kellogg of the Harvard Mathematics Department, who was summering at Westchop nearby. He reported to me that the form was as perfectly streamlined as it was possible to conceive, but that my surmise as to how it had become so was absurd. While making these measurements, I was attracted by another feature of the material.  Also, there was to be seen in this metal an absolutely straight crack, extending as far as the metal was exposed, in a side-wise direction. At the time, the crack did not attract me so much as the metal. I vaguely wondered if it might not be gold. But being reminded of Professor Garrish's request for a sample of the material, I had one of the men start chiseling off some pieces. The natural spot to begin was alongside of the place where the covering was already chipped. It was hard work, but finally removed several pieces. And then we noticed that the crack continued around the waist of the material as far as had been chipped. This crack, from its absolute regularity, gave every indication of being man-made. Our curiosity was aroused. Why the regularity of this crack? How far did it go? Could it possibly extend clear way around? Was it really a threaded joint? And if so, how could such a phenomenon occur on a meteorite drop from the sky? Forgotten what the sacrum crop mowing we had planned to do that day. Hastily summoning the rest of the help, we set to work with cold chisel and sledges. To remove the black coating in a circle around the middle of the huge teardrop. It was a long and tedious task, for the black substance was harder than anything I had ever chipped before. We broke several drills and dented the yellow metal unmercifully, but not so much that we could see that the threaded crack did actually persist. The dinner however passed, and still we worked, unmindful of the appeals of our woman-fork, who finally abandoned us with much shrugging of shoulders. It was nearly night when we completed the chipping and applied two-chain wrenches to try and screw the thing apart. But after all our efforts, it would not budge. Just as we were about to drop the wrenches and start to chisel through the metal, someone suggested that we try to unscrew it as a left-handed screw. Happy thought! For, in spite of all the dents which we had made, the two hands at last gradually untwisted. What warrant did we have to suppose that there was anything inside it? We must confess, now it is all over, that we went through this whole day's performance in a sort of feverish trance, with no definite notion of what we were doing or why, and yet impelled by a crazy fixed idea that we were on the verge of a great discovery. And at last our efforts had met with success, and the huge teardrop lay before us in two neatly threaded parts. The inside was hollow and was entirely filled with something tightly swathed in silver-colored felt tape. Breathless, we unwound over 300 feet of this silver tape, and finally came to a gold cylinder about the size and shape of a ginger-snapped tin. That is to say, a foot long and three inches in diameter changed all around with peculiar Arabesque characters. By this time Mrs. Farley and my mother-in-law and the hired girl had joined us, attracted by the shouts which we gave when the teardrop had come apart. One end of the cylinder easily unscrewed also with the left-handed thread, and I drew forth a manuscript, plainly written in the English language, on some tissue-thin substance like parchment. Everyone clustered around me as I turned to the end to see who it was from, and I read with astonishment the following signature, mouse, S, Cabot. But this name meant nothing to anyone present except myself. I heard one of the hands remark to another, to aunt no shooting store at all. Nothing but some friend of the boss shooting a letter to him out of one of these heel-long wrench guns. Maybe so, said I to myself. But Mrs. Farley was quivering with excitement. You must tell me all about it, Raph, said she. Who can be sending you a message inside a meteor, I wonder? My reply was merely, I think that there is a clipping in one of my scrapbooks up in the attic which will answer that question. There was. I found the scrapbook in a chest under the eaves, but did not open it until after chores and supper, during which meal I kept a provoking silence on the subject of our discovery. When the dishes were finally all cleared away, I opened the book on the table and read to the assembled household the following four-year-old clipping from the Boston Post. Citizen disappears. Prominent Klumman vanishes from Beacon Street home. Miles S. Cabot of 162 Beacon Street disappeared from his bachelor quarters late yesterday afternoon under very mysterious circumstances. He had been working all day in his radio laboratory on the top floor of his house and had refused to come down for lunch. When called to dinner, he made no reply, so his butler finally decided to break down the door which was locked. The laboratory was found to be empty. All the windows were closed and locked and the key was on the inside of the door. In the heap on the floor lay a peculiar collection of objects consisting of Mr. Cabot's watch and chain, pocket knife, signet ring, cuff links and tie pin, some coins, a metal bed locker, two sets of garler snaps, some safety pins, a gold pen point, a pen clip, a silver pencil, some steel buttons and several miscellaneous bits of metal. There was a smell in the air like one notices in electric power houses. The fuses on the laboratory power line were all blown out. The butler immediately phoned to police headquarters and Detective Flynn was dispatched to the scene. He questioned all the servants thoroughly and confirmed the foregoing facts. The police are working on the case. Miles S. Cabot, whose mysterious disappearance yesterday shocked Boston society, was the only son of the late Alden Cabot. His mother was a sales of Southboro. The younger Cabot, since his graduation from Harvard, had devoted himself to electrical experimenting. Although prominent in the social life of the city and an active member of the Union University, New York York and Middlesex Hunt Clubs, he nevertheless had found time to invent novel and useful radio devices, among the best known of which was the Indestructo Vacuum Tube. He had established at his Beacon Street residence one of the best equipped radio laboratories in the city. His most recent experiment, according to professional friends, had been with television. Mr. Cabot substituted two circuits for the usual television circuit, one controlling the vertical lines of his sending and receiving screens and the other the horizontal, thus enabling him to enlarge his screen considerably and also to present a continuous picture instead of one made up of dots. The effect of perspective he obtained by adding a third circuit. The detail of this invention had not been given out by Mr. Cabot prior to his disappearance. His nearest relatives are cousins. The last was a particularly gentle touch, it seemed to me. Well, his cousins hadn't yet inherited his property, although they had tried mighty hard and perhaps this mysterious message from the void would prevent them from ever doing so. I hoped that this would be the case, for I liked Miles and had never liked those cousins of his. Miles had been a classmate of mine at Harvard, though later a path drifted upon his leading into back-based society and radio and my leading into the quiet pastoral life of a farm on Chapaquidic Island off the coast of Massachusetts. I had heard little of him until I read the shocking account of his sudden disappearance. The police had turned up no further clues and the matter had quickly faded from the public site. I had kept the post-clipping as a memento of my old college chum. I was anxious to learn what had become of him these four years, so I opened the manuscript and proceeded to read aloud. In the following chapters, I shall give the story contained in that manuscript, a story so weird and yet so convincingly simple that it cannot fail to interest all those who knew Miles' habit. It completely clears up the mystery surrounding his disappearance. Of course, there will be some who will refuse to believe that this story is the truth. But those of his classmates and friends who knew him well will find herein unmistakable internal evidence of Miles' habit's hand in this narrative conveyed to me in the golden heart of a memento right. End of chapter 1, The Message in the Meteor Recording by Alexis Duclos of the French podcast Citizen Cage Chapter 2 of An Earthman on Venus This is a Librevox recording. All Librevox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org. Recording by Alexis Duclos of the French podcast Citizen Cage. An Earthman on Venus by Ralph Mann Farley, stranded in space. Thus wrote Miles' Cabot My chief line of work, since graduating from Harvard, was on the subject of television. By simultaneously using three sending sets and three receiving sets, each corresponding to one of the three dimensions, any object which I placed within the framework of my transmitter could be seen within the framework of my receiver, just as though it stood there itself. All that prevented the object from actually being made to stand there was the quite sufficient fact that no one had yet, so far as I was then aware, invented a means for dissolving matter into its well-known radiations and then converting these radiations back into matter again. But at just this time, by a remarkable coincidence, there came into my hands a copy of an unpublished paper on this subject by René Flambeau. The prior experiments of D. Gerstdorf are well known. He had succeeded by means of radio waves in isolating and distinguishing the electromagnetic constituents of all the different chemical elements. Flambeau went one step further and was able to transmit small formless quantities of matter itself. Although for some reason certain metals, but not their salts, appeared to absorb the electrical energy employed by him and thus be immune to transportation. As I could already transmit a three-dimensional picture of an object, and as Flambeau had been able to transmit formless matter, then by combining our devices in a single apparatus, I found I could transmit physical objects unchanged in form. But this apparatus produced one unexpected phenomenon, namely that whenever I employed excessive power, my sending set would transmit objects placed slightly outside its normal range, and certain small quantities thereof would turn up in other portions of my laboratory than within my receiving set. To test this phenomenon further, I secured some high voltage equipment and arranged with the Edison company for its use. On a small afternoon when the installation was completed, I started to place a small blue China vase in position to sell it. Something must have become short circuit for there came a blinding flash and I knew no more. How long the unconsciousness lasted, I have no means of telling. I was a long time regaining my senses, but when I had finally and fully recovered, I found myself lying on a sandy beach beside a calm and placid lake and holding in my hand a small blue vase. The atmosphere was warm, moist and fragrant, like that of a hot house, and a lap lapping of the wave gave forth such a pleasing musical sound that I lay where I was and dozed off and on, even after I had recovered consciousness. I seemed to sense rather than really to see my surroundings. The sound was very white. The sky was completely over clouded at a far height and yet the clouds shone with such a silvery radiance that the day was as bright as any which I had ever seen with full sunlight on Earth, but with a difference. For here the light diffused from all quarters, giving the shadowless effect which one always notes in a photographer's studio. To my right lay the lake, reflecting the silvery color of the sky, before mistraining the beach and broken safe for an occasional piece of driftwood. To my left was the upland, covered with a thicket of water at first appeared to be dead trees, but on closer scrutiny was seen to be some gigantic pieces of the well-known branched grey leech and with red tips, which I used to find on rocks and sticks in the woods as a child. No birds were flying overhead. I suppose because there were no birds to fly, I fell to wandering, vaguely and pleasantly where I was and how I got there, but for the moment I remained a victim of complete amnesia. Suddenly, however, my ears were jarred by a familiar sound. At once my senses cleared and I listened intently to the distant purring of a motor. Yes, there could be no mistake, an airplane was approaching. Now I could see it, a speck in the sky filed down the beach. Nearer and nearer it came, I sprang to my feet and to my intense surprise found that the effort threw me quite a distance into the air. Instantly the thought flashed through my mind, I must be en masse. But no, for my weight was not nearly enough lighter than my earthly weight to justify such a conclusion. For some reason my belt buckle and most of the buttons which held my clothes together were missing so that my clothing came to pieces as I rose and I had to shed it repeatedly in order to avoid impeding my movement. I wandered at the cause of this. But my speculations were cut short by the alighting of the airplane a hundred yards down the beach. It seemed to land vertically rather than run around the ground, but I could not be sure at that distance. What was my horror when out of it clambered not men but ants. Six footed and six feet high, huge hent, four of them running toward me over the glistening sands. Gone was all my linger as I seized a piece of driftwood and prepared to defend myself as well as I could. The increase in my jumping ability, although slight, coupled with an added buoyancy might enable me to prolong the unequal encounter. The ants came slowly forward, four abreast, like a cavalry formation. While I waited down slow grasping the stick of driftwood firmly in my hand, when nearly upon me they executed right by troopers and started circling in an ever-narrowing circle. Suddenly the ants wheeled and converged from all four points of the compass, clicking their mandibles savagely as they came. The whole movement had been executed with uncanny precision, without a single word of communication between the strange black creatures. In fact, without a single sound except the clicking of their mandible and a slight rattling of their joints. How like a naval attack by a fleet of old-fashioned Ford cars, I thought. When within about ten feet of me they made a concerted rush, but I leaped to one side, at the same time giving one of my antagonists a crack with my club as they crashed together in the centre. These denouements seemed to confuse them, for they slowly extricated themselves from their tangle and withdrew for a short distance, where they again formed and stood glaring at me for a few minutes, clicking their jaws angrily. Then they rushed again, this time in close formation, but again I jumped to one side, dealing another blow with my club, whereupon the fighting became disorganised the ants making individual rushes and I leaping and walking as best I could. I scored several dents in the armour of my opponents and finally succeeded by a lucky stroke in beheading one of them, but at this the other three came on with renewed vigor, although each ant wore some sort of green weapon slung in a holster at its side, they fought only with their mandibles. The slight difference in gravity from that to which I had been accustomed finally proved my undoing, for although it increased my agility, it also rendered me a bit less sure on my feet and this was enhanced by the rapid disintegration of the soles of my shoes. The result was at last I slipped and fell and was immediately set upon and pinned down by my enemies. One of the ants at once deliberately nipped me in the side with his huge mandibles, an excruciating pain shot through my entire body and then, for the second time that day, I lost consciousness. When it came to, I found myself lying in the cockpit of an airplane, spinning through the sky. One of my ant captors was standing on a slight incline at the bow of the ship, operating the control levers with his front feet, and the other two were watching the scenery, the dead ant was nowhere to be seen, no one was paying any attention to me. I was not bound and yet I was unable to move. My senses were unusually keen and yet my body was completely paralyzed. I had no idea as to what sort of country we were flying over, for I could not raise my head above the edge of the cockpit. I didn't know where I was going but I certainly was on my way alright, and not so alright at that. Overhead was the same silvery glare without a patch of blue sky. No sound came from my sinister, indifferent captors. The only noise was the throbbing of the motors. As to the time of day, or how long I had been on board, I had no idea. And what's more, I didn't particularly care. Rather a pleasant sort of a jag, if it were not for the intense pain of liquefying up. After a while, the pleasant sensation wore off and my throat began to feel dry. I tried to call to the ants but of course could not because of the paralysis, and finally desisted even the attempt when I remembered that the ants were speechless and hence probably unable to hear. By a coincidence however, one of the creatures seemed to sense my needs and brought me some water in a bowl, gently holding up my head with one of his four pals so that I could drink. This action touched my heart and also filled me with hope that the ants might not turn out to be such bad captors after all. Then I fell to studying them. First of all, I noticed that each ant carried on the back of its thorax a line of peculiar white characters, somewhat like shorthand writing, and below it several rows of similar writing, only smaller in size. The peculiar green colored weapon slung in a holster on the right hand side of each ant. I had already noticed during the fight, but apart from the white marks and the green weapons, my captors were absolutely naked, and so far they could see they were exactly like the ordinary black ants to which I had been accustomed on earth, only of course magnified by an enormous size. I studied the faces which the ants now occasionally turn towards me. These faces were sinister and terrifying. They recalled to my memory the fright which I had once had when, as a child, I attended an entomological movie and was suddenly confronted with the close-up of the head of some common insect. But the ant who had brought me the water had a human look which relieved him of much of his terrible grimness. In fact, it struck me as vaguely familiar. Ah, now I had it. A certain stolidity of movement amounting almost to a mannerism reminded me of one of my Harvard classmates, a homely good-hearted boy whom we had all known by the nickname of Dogo, and so, from then on, I instinctively thought of that particular ant as named Dogo. Then, for the first time, it struck me as strange that these ants, instead of scuttling aimlessly over the ground or having wings of their own to fly with, as in the mating season on earth, were utilizing a carefully and scientifically built airplane, apparently of their own make. And it struck me as even more strange that I had not wondered about this before. But then the events of that day had occurred with such starling rapidity from the flash in my Beacon Street laboratory through my awakening beside that strange lake, the approach of the airplane, my fight with the ants and my second lapse from the consciousness down to my present predicament that I was to be excused for not considering any particular phase of my adventure as being more as extraordinary than any other. Now, however, that I had time to draw my breath and collect my thought, it dawned on me with more and more force than here I was, apparently on some strange planet of which the ruling race, apparently of human or superhuman intelligence, were not men. And there were not even some other mammal, but were insects, ants, to be more specific. For all that I knew, I was the only mammal, or perhaps even the only vertebrate, on this entire planet. And I remember the remark by Professor Parker in Zoodlegy, one in my freshman year at Harvard. The two peaks of development, in the chain of evolution from the amoeba upward, are the order of hymenoptera, bees, wasps and ants, among insects, and the order of primates, men and monkeys, among mammals. In any other world, it is probable that evolution would produce a ruling race in much the same way that man has been produced upon the earth, and it is a toss-up whether this ruling race would develop along the line of the hymenoptera or in a form similar to the mammals. But one or the other seems inevitable. Well, said I to myself, old Parker is certainly vindicated, at least with respect to one planet. Thus I mused, as the airplanes fell along. Then the purr of the motors lured me to sleep, and for the third time that day, I became unconscious. When I awoke, the sky was losing its luminous silver quality. On one side it was faintly pink, and on the other the silver color merged into a duller gray. The airship still sped along. Dogo brought me another bowl of water, and I found, to my joy, that I could now lift my head enough to drink without any further assistance than to have Dogo hold the bowl. At this sign of recovery, one of the other ants advanced menacingly, as if to bite me again. But Dogo jumped between us, and after much napping of mandibles and quivering of antennae by both, the other ant desisted. This event decided me that Dogo was a friend worth cultivating, but I wasn't the last how to make advances which would be understood. Finally, however, I determined to attempt stroking the huge ant in a way which I had found to be very effective in making friends with animals. Accordingly, when Dogo came near enough, by a great effort, I overcame my paralysis sufficiently to reach up and touch him on the side of his head, just behind one of his great jaws. Apparently, this pleased the ant, for he submitted to the caress, and finally lifted me to a sitting position, so that the padding could be continued with greater ease. I let alone that this padding, to which I had resorted purely by accident, is a universal custom of this planet, corresponding to shaking hands on Earth and signifying greetings, friendship, farewell, bargain, binding and the like. The other ant man occasionally would advance menacingly toward me with his head lowered, but each time Dogo would step between us and lower his own head and agitated the antennae at which the other would desist. I nicknamed the other Satan because of his diabolical actions. In my new sitting position, I was now able to see over the side of the airship. We were passing above grey woods with occasional silver-green fields, in which they were grazing some sort of pale green animals too far below to be easily distinguishable. Through the woods and fields run what appeared to be roads, but as nothing was moving on them I could not tell for sure. Suddenly my attention was distracted from the view by the frantic action of the ant man who are steering the ship. He seemed to be having difficulty with his controls, and then, so quickly that it gave us no warning, the ship reared up in the air and made a complete loop. That is, I merely suppose he made a complete one for when the loop was half done, I dropped out and fell like a plummet. I remember a momentary exultation at being free from my captors and a certain spiteful joy at the thought that I should undoubtedly be dashed to pieces and thus rob them of their prey. Then I had just begun to wonder whether I shouldn't prefer captivity to death when I struck and was not dashed to pieces. I still lived, for I had been thrown slain-wise into a net of some sort and was not swaying gently back and forth like a slowing pendulum. Hooray! I was both free and safe, but my joy was short-lived, for I soon discovered that the fine, silken strands of the net were covered with a substance like sticky-fly pepper, which held me firmly. The more I struggled, the more I drew other strands of the net towards me to untangle me. At last I posed for breath and then the throose down on me. I was caught in a gigantic spiderweb and sure enough, there came the spider toward me from one corner of the web. It wasn't a very large spider, that is to say, judging by the size of my previous captors, I should have expected that the spiders of this world would be as big as the FL Tower. It was quite large enough, however, having a body about the size of my own and legs fully ten feet long. I called him a spider, for that is the earthward which come closest to describing him. With great acidity, he began wrapping me into a cocoon, a process which he seemed to enjoy much more than I. But it did me no good to struggle, for any part of me which showed any indications of moving was immediately pinured with a fresh strand of rope. At last the job was finished and I was completely enveloped with a layer of thick, coarse, sticky silk cloth, translucent but not transparent. End of chapter 2, Stranded in Space Recording by Alexis Duclos of the French podcast Citizen Cage Chapter 3 of Unearthmen on Venus This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. An Earthmen on Venus by Ralph Milne Farley Chapter 3 Out of the Frying Pan When I had dropped from the airplane into the spider web, the time had been nearly evening. All night, off and on, I struggled but to no avail. Finally, shortly after daylight, something startled me by falling plop into the net close beside me. Another victim thought I, well, at least I should have company. But this other creature was not any more inclined to take its captivity calmly than I had been. It thrashed and struggled violently until finally it tore a rent in the upper end of my shroud so that I could see out. My companion in misery was an orange and black striped bee about the size of a horse. He was buzzing frantically and slashing about with his sting while the spider hopped around him with great agility dodging the thrust of the sting and applying a strand of silk here and there whenever an opportunity offered. Thus gradually the bee's freedom of motion became less and less as strand after strand were added to his bonds. But the spider, getting bolder as his captive struggles diminished, finally misjudged one thrust and the imprisoned bee, putting all his effort into the stroke, drove his sting home. The spider toppled from the web and the fight was unexpectedly at an end. And now the bee and I were free if only we could get free. Of the two of us I had the easier task, for my cocoon had dried during the night and was now no longer sticky, but it was still very tough.  A drop equivalent to a little less than eight feet on the earth. Not much difference it is true, but every little bit helped. I now decided to assist my rescuer, the bee, to escape. A rash decision, one would say, and yet the bee seemed to realize that I was helping him, for not once did he strike at me. Picking up a tree branch, I hacked at the cords which bound him until finally he was able to fly away, trailing a large section of the web after him. As he left I noticed that one of his hind legs was gone from the knee down and that he bore a particular scar-like mark on the underside of his abdomen. I should know him if ever I were to meet him again. The web had been stretched between two large gray leafless trees of the sort I had observed near the beach, but without the red tips to the branches. Nearby was a wood of similar but slightly smaller trees, bordering on a field of thickly matted silver-green grass, very similar in color. In this field were grazing a herd of pale green insects, a little larger than sheep, with long trailing antenna. These creatures swayed from side to side, lifting first one foot after another as they munched the matted grass. On the sides of some of them clung one or two bright red parasites resembling lobsters in size and appearance, but their green hosts did not seem to mind or even notice them, nor did they notice me for that matter as I passed between them across the field. On the further side of the field was a road built of concrete resembling in every way such concrete roads as we have on the earth and along it I set out wither I knew not. Now I had had nothing to eat since I found myself on the sandy beach the previous morning. Also I had fought two battles on an empty stomach. The day was hot and moist, my feet were bare as was the rest of me, and I felt discouraged and depressed. Still I trudged along. Can it be true, said I, that only yesterday I rejoiced at freedom from the ant-men? Now I was alone and lost, lost on a strange planet. Oh, how I longed for the sight of my late captors, better even captivity than this. For a while the road ran between silver-green fields, then entered a wood. On the gaunt-grey trees hung a tangle of tropical vines, and between the trees grew some kind of small shrub with large heart-shaped leaves, on each leaf of which there sat motionless one or more purple grass-hoppers about four inches in length. In the distance I occasionally caught sight of some strange sort of bird as I thought, flitting in tandem pairs from the tree.  For a while the strange fauna and flora stimulated my curiosity and kept my mind off my troubles. But then I rapidly lost interest in everything. My stomach gnawed, my knees wobbled, my mind began to cloud, and from that time on I wondered as in a dream for I knew not how many hours. I vaguely remember falling on the roadway and then crawling along for a while. Silly thoughts obsessed my brain, such as wondering whether my taillight was lit and what made the weather so foggy. Finally I collapsed utterly and had just strengthened off the concrete, lest I be run over by some passing car.   Upon dragging myself toward it I discovered that in the bottom of the bowl there was a brown mass looking very much like a stack of wheat covered with some sticky substance. But unfortunately this delectable dish was quite obscured by little hopping lizards, now much bemired in hopping no more. So I reached out my hand to brush them away and instantly the leaf closed upon my arm like a steel trap. My brain cleared at once and I began a frantic struggle to extricate my hand, but it was too late, for with a gentle massaging motion the plant commenced to swallow my arm. Inch by inch my arm descended into that ravenous maw. It was the steady slowness of the procedure that was so fracking, for without a pause my arm disappeared at a rate of about an inch a minute. I braced my feet against the planted pulled, but this cut off the circulation in my arm. Then I wiggled my fingers rapidly so as to keep my hand from going to sleep whereupon the plant swallowed all the faster. The mouth of the plant was closed very much like a clam shell, so just before my shoulder disappeared I braced my body crosswise of the jaws in the hope that this maneuver would prevent the swallowing process from proceeding any further. But the plant merely opened its flexible lips and closed them the other way, taking a firm grip on my chest and just missing getting hold of my right ear. I craned my neck as far as I could to the left and shrieked aloud with terror. Was it for this that I had escaped the ant men and the spider to be eaten alive by a plant? The soft jaws now fastened on the back of my head and began gently drawing that in too. At last only my nose was free. In a minute that too would be enveloped then strangulation and death. At this moment something fell upon me and I felt the plant quiver and shake. The swallowing ceased. Then the soft lips were torn away from one side of my head and I heard a familiar rattling sound. A few seconds later the plant went limp, releasing my arm and I lay upon my back free once more, chasing upward into the eyes of my old friend and captor. Doggo! Doggo! I cried with joy, but he did not seem to hear me.  After about a quarter of a mile we turned aside into a field and there was Satan, the other ant man, standing beside a crumpled airship and the dead body of his pilot. Satan did not seem overjoyed to see me, but Doggo rummaged through the wreckage and finally produced a bowl into which he put some water and some medicine which revived me greatly. Then he laid me on a pile of grass, covered me with leaves and stood guard over me as the pink twilight deepened and the night fell. As it began to grow dark I heard an occasional tinkle like the sound of a Japanese wind-bell, first on one side and then on another. The music gradually increased until it assumed the volume of a very orchestra. I had never heard such dainty bewitching tunefulness in my entire life. Many weeks later I learned that this was the song of the large purple grasshoppers I had seen, but even the knowledge of its source has never robbed the sound of its sweet mystery for me. The fading silver radiance of the sky shed a moon-like light over all below. A faint breeze sprang up, gently fanning the moist frayward hot-house air against my cheeks. The foliage around us waved like a sea of silver grain and the tune of the elfin melody quickly lulled me into a soft and dreamless sleep, secure in the confidence that a faithful friend was watching near. The next morning I was awakened by Dogo stripping off my leafly coverlet. Satan was not to be seen, but grazing near us were some more of those peculiar large green insects with the long trailing antenna which I had seen in my flight from the spider web. As I sat up, Dogo presented me with a bowl of pale green liquid. But I was at a loss to know what to do with it. Was I supposed to wash in it or drink it or rub it on my hair? My friend solved the question by lifting it to my mouth, so I drank and found the taste sweetish and agreeable. All morning we stayed by the wrecked machine, apparently waiting for something. Satan did not show up. Around noon Dogo took the bowl and approached one of the green beasts crazy near. I followed with interest. Two horns projected inward from the tail of the beast, one of which Dogo proceeded to stroke with his paw, and to my surprise a green liquid spouted from the animal quickly filling the bowl. So that is where my breakfast had come from. Green milk from green cows, strange. And yet how much more logical than on earth where a red cow eats green grass under a blue sky and produces white milk from which we get yellow butter. Shortly after lunch I heard the hum of a motor and presently Satan landed near us with a new plane. This strange plane of the ant men stopped abruptly, but for a moment and then settled just where it was like a helicopter. Dogo carried me aboard and we started. Satan at the lever is then Dogo standing guard over me. But whether this was to protect me from Satan or to keep me from falling out again I could not say. We cruised along for several hours over much the same sort of country as I had seen before, except that we crossed several rivers and once a small lake. At last the ship hovered and landed on top of what seemed to be a helter-skelter pile of exaggerated toy building blocks, exactly in keeping with the size of the ants. As far as the eye could see on all sides, these blocks were heaped. They resembled a group of Pueblo Indian dwellings. Dogo and the fierce ant man whom I called Satan, now picked me up in their jaws, the farmer gently and the latter not so gently, and carried me out of the airplane and down an inclined runway into the interior of the edifice. The passage was long, narrow, darkened, winding, but presently we emerged into a room about thirty feet square by ten feet high, lighted by narrow windows opening toward the western sky. That is, I call it western, for it was in this direction that the sky turned pink and even tide. In this room I was laid on the floor. The unpleasant ant man departed and Dogo placed himself on guard in the doorway. Presently two strange ant men entered carrying a couch which they sat down in one corner of the room. Then they walked several times around me, viewing me from all sides with evident interest, until at a stiffening and quivering of Dogo's antenna they hurriedly left the room. I noticed that Dogo no longer carried the green weapon which seemed strange as he was evidently on guard. Then I felt wondering about the couch. It was a simple affair and yet quite evidently intended for a bed, upholstered with some kind of dark blue cloth at that. What need have the ants of a bed, I mused? Certainly they cannot lie down, and even if they could, such a couch as this would be of little use to one of them, for this is only a man-sized couch, whereas these ants are about ten feet in length. My perplexity was tinged with a hope that there might be human beings here. My perplexity and my hope were both increased by the return of one of the ants who had brought the couch, this time bearing sleeveless shirt or toga of white matted material, like very thin silk felt reaching about to my knees, with a Grecian wave designed in light blue around the bottom edge and around the neck and armholes. But what increased my perplexity still further, and at the same time destroyed most of my hope, was the presence of two vertical slits with the same blue trimming in the upper part of the back. The two ant-ben watched with great interest while I put this toga on and were evidently pleased to find that I knew how to do so. The messenger ant then withdrew and presently returned with a bowl of green milk which I drank as usual. By this time it had become quite dark outside, but the room still remained light due to two long glass bulbs set in the ceiling and containing some sort of incandescent substance.  They resembled the fluorescent lamps familiar on earth. These lamps showed that the inhabitants of this planet were well advanced in electrical engineering. Was it not strange then that they had not developed radio and communicated with the earth? And yet not so strange year when one considers that they had no sense of hearing. Dismissing these thoughts from my mind I lay down on the couch. Then Dogo was relieved as sentinel by a new ant-man who carefully and inquisitively inspected me but from a safe distance. This guard too was without any green weapon. Finally the two lights went out and I slept my last thoughts being to wonder what was in store for me and what was the significance of the couch and the strange blue and white article of clothing. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of an Earthman on Venus. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Alexis Duclos of the French podcast Citizen Cage. An Earthman on Venus by Ralph Malm Farley. Go to the ant thou slugged. As I slowly awakened the next morning I vaguely remembered a terrible nightmare of the night before. But no, it was no dream for I opened my eyes upon the same plain concrete room with its slit windows. I was lying on the same couch, the same strange ant-man was standing guard at the door. During the night someone had placed over me a blanket of some sort of light fleecy wool felt. As I lay in bed I studied the walls of the rooms and noticed what I had not seen before. Three dials sunk in the opposite wall close to the ceiling. Each dial had 12 numbers or letters around the edge and also a single pointer. The pointer of the right dial was slowly revolving left-handedly. The pointer of the middle dial was turning even more slowly while that of the left dial appeared motionless. Absent-mindedly I started to time the right-hand pointer. One chimpanzee, two chimpanzee, three chimpanzee I counted in sing-song. That being a formula which I had been taught at a child to count the time between a lightning flash and the resulting thunder in order to estimate the distance of the stroke. Four, if carefully done, each chimpanzee called one second of time and each second meant one quarter mile of distance. Of course the real object of the game was to distract the child's mind from his fear of the lightning. I now found that it took about 50 chimpanzees for the right pointer to move one of the 12 graduations. This fact I verified by several trials. I fell to wondering what the device was for. It looked and acted like a gas matter or electric matter. Then I dismissed the matter from my mind and considered my predicament. For some reason I thought of my father, Alden Cabot, now many years dead. The old man had been a stern, puritanical character, a boring thought and frivolity. How often I heard him rebuke some act of laziness with his favorite biblical quotation. Go to the hand, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise. Who'dn't father be pleased? Thought I, for I have certainly gone to the hand, alright? But now the big question is how to get away from them. By this time the sentinel noticed that I was awake and immediately brought me my breakfast consisting of a bowl of the sweet green liquid and a bowl of dark reddish brown paste about the consistency of mashed beans and having a rich flavor not unlike beef gravy. After breakfast Dogo took his turn as guard. I patted his head and then went over to the windows to see the view if any. The windows overlooked a courtyard completely enclosed by piled up Pueblo buildings. In the yard was a fountain surrounded by beds of plants quite unlike any that I had ever seen before. The prevailing color of the foliage was gray and silver-green. Many of the twigs bore knobs of red or purple and a few of the plants had brilliantly colored blue and yellow flowers somewhat similar to those of dandelions. For a long time I aimlessly gazed upon this beautiful garden. The warm moist fragrant atmosphere was not conductive to hurry or to excitement but finally even the beauties of the view pulled upon me and I returned to the blue couch. Just then Dogo ushered into the room with great deference. Four ant men slightly smaller than himself but more refined looking than he if one can appreciate such differences among ants. That is, they were more slender and delicate like machines built for precision rather than for strength. They evidently were a bit afraid of me for after eyeing me furtively from the door they appeared to confer with Dogo though not an audible word passed between them. To assure them that I was perfectly harmless Dogo walked over to me and permitted himself to be padded after which the committee drew near and inspected me carefully agitating their antenna at each newly discovered peculiarity. They appeared chiefly perplexed by my forehead and my back to examine which they lifted up my toga. They counted my fingers several times and then counted my toes but the thing about me which amazed as them the most was my ears. These they studied for a long time with much inaudible consultation as I judged by the motion of the antennae. Finally they took the departure and Dogo came to me bristling with excitement and apparently having much important information to impart but alas he didn't know my language and he had no language at all. I padded him again but this time it did not soothe him for he broke away from me impatiently and returned to his station by the door. Left to myself I fell to study in the meter again watching the counter-clockwise rotation of its hand even the left pointer had moved a bit since early morning. Now I noticed what I might have surmised on the analogy of an earthly gas matter that each graduation of the central dial represented one complete revolution of the pointer on its right and this principle presumably extended to the dial on its left then I counted chimpanzees again and found that the right hand pointer was still rotating counter-clockwise at the rate of about 50 chimpanzees per graduation. Counter-clockwise? Why perhaps this machine was a clock? I made a hasty mental calculation one graduation equals 50 seconds 12 graduations one complete rotation equals 600 seconds 10 minutes thus one graduation of the middle dial represents 10 minutes and its complete circuit represents 2 hours By the same token a complete circuit of the left dial would represent 24 hours one day My guess was apparently correct At that time it did not occur to me as strange that the day on this planet should be 24 hours as on Earth The figure to the left of the top of each dial was a single horizontal line presumably standing for unity For a single line either horizontal or vertical is the almost universal symbol for unity Then, said I the next figures must be 2 the next figure 3 and so on around 12 You reckon I can now count up to 12 with these creatures Thus establishing in writing at least the beginning of a possible basis of communication Eager to test my newfound knowledge I beckoned to Dogo He came to my side Scratching the n figure 5 upon the floor with a small pebble which I found in a corner for I could not reach the dials to point at their figures I held up 5 fingers The effect was electrical greatly excited Dogo rushed to the door but, posing on the threshold he returned held up 3 legs looking at me almost besiegingly as I thought and when I wrote an hand figure 3 on the floor his joy knew no bounds He patted me on the side of my head for a moment to show his appreciation and then rushed once more from the room And now, for the first time I was left unguarded but I had no thought of escape in the first place because it would be unfair to my friend and in the second place because escape merely from the room would be useless Presently Dogo returned with the committee of 4 and put me through my paces He would hold up a certain number of legs and I would scratch the corresponding character upon the pavement Finally, as a crowning stunt I wrote down 5 and 6 pointed to them and then wrote down 11 The committee were much impressed Then Dogo had me put on and take off my toga for them Evidently, he was trying to convince them I was a reasoning human being like themselves though what the disrobing performance had to do with it I could not see for the life of me At last, the committee left and after that a very nice luncheon was served More green milk, some baked cake and honey Real honours to goodness honey like we have on earth You can't appreciate how these little touches of similarity to good old Terra firma appeal to me Thoroughly homesick after 3 whole days absence After luncheon, Dogo brought me a pad of paper and pointed stick like a skewer with its tip encased in some lead like metal The stick could thus be used as a pencil He himself was similarly equipped except that his pencil had a strap for attachment to his left front claw The difference between the two pencils attracted my attention and excited my wonder but I could not account for it Instruction began at once I would point to some object Dogo would make marks on his pad and then I would copy them on mine adding the name in English These additions puzzled and annoyed my instructor but I persist for otherwise I might forget the meaning of these scratch marks When a vocabulary of about 20 concrete nouns had been accumulated Dogo took away my shit and then pointed to the articles in turn while I wrote down their ant names as well as I could remember them Fortunately I have a good visual memory for I was no more able to invent sounds for the ant words than I would have been able to read aloud a Chinese laundry ticket After several hours of this absorbing sport Dogo produced a book with the rare presence of mine I figured that as ant men wrote with their left hands and had counter-clockwise clocks their book would probably begin at the wrong end so accordingly I opened at the back and sure enough the last page was numbered one This proof of my intelligence pleased my instructor greatly On page one was a picture of an ant man under it was printed the word which Dogo had given me as equivalent to himself Next came the same word followed by a strange word Then these two words were repeated followed by two others Resounding by the analogy of my primary school days at home I decided that these words were ant men An ant man This is an ant man But I was wrong for on this basis the next line made no sense for reading from right to left the next line would be An ant man is this Oh, I had it Ant man, Zee ant man I see Dee ant man The ant man sees me To test it I wrote down the word for I and pointed to myself Dogo who had been watching me intently as I'd studied the page now showed unmistakable signs of pleasure at this evidence of my intelligence and departing Soon returned with a large furry little like creature with about two feet square called a buntload so I learned later which is set on the floor before me with every expectation of extreme gratitude on my part I tried to appear grateful but could not figure out what I was supposed to do with the beast The buntload, however has much more definitive views on the subject for he emboldened over to me and patted me on the side with one of his front paws I looked inquiringly at Dogo who indicated that I was supposed to feed the buntload with some of the remains of my luncheon which was still on the couch The buntload, after satisfying his hunger curled up in a corner and went to sleep whereupon I returned to my studies evidently ant man kept pets the same as humans but whether this buntload was supposed to be a dog or a cat or what I did not know Dogo then taught me how to write buntload and the words for food, mouth and eat, my first verb, by the way and so on By supper time I was in a position to carry on a very elementary conversation with my instructor but only by pad and pencil, of course for not a word, not a sound I had ever heard him utter and since their speech was not articulate their written language could not, of course, be phonetic it must be ideographic like the Chinese the fact that each word consisted in but a single character lent color to this surmise and yet I noticed that all of the characters which I had so far learned could be decomposed into distinguishable parts and that there were only about 30 of these parts in the aggregate this fact certainly pointed to phonetic alphabet of 30 sounds for it was inconceivable that these highly cultivated animals possessed only 30 ideas and yet how could an unspoken language be phonetic I gave up the puzzle supper came, the lights went on and my buntloads uncurled and embled over to be fed I decided to regard him as a cat and so named him Tabby at this meal Dogo joined me and as we ate, my attention was again attracted to the white marks on his back which to my surprise I now noticed were exactly like those on the clock they must be his license number 334-2-18 if the large figures represented his license number I thought what did the small figure stand for the license numbers of the cars he had run into perhaps I little guessed how near this came to being the truth that night I went to bed well satisfied with my progress but alas although Dogo proved to be an indefatigable teacher I did not get on so well during the succeeding days but I did make progress in one thing however namely in acquiring a beard although facilities for washing and bathing were provided in a little alcove of my room and although a fresh toga was forthcoming from time to time yet my captors did not furnish either a razor or mirror of course hands have nothing to shave and they cannot be blamed for not caring to look at themselves in the glass I tried my best to explain to Dogo what I wanted but it was no use if this manuscript is ever discovered let the reader try to figure out how to explain by sign language to a person who has never seen either a razor or looking glass that you want them when the beard got well underway the committee of four were recalled to view it they were even more impressed with my beard than they had been with my ears and made frequent visits to take notes on its growth this convinced me that they had never before seen any men or at least any unneeded ones and so my hope for human companionship received another blow yet if there were no men on this planet how account for the fact that when I drew a sketch of a table and a chair these were at once forthcoming together with a written name for each of course all my time was not spent in lessons sometimes I played with Tabby and sometimes I took long walks gradually I became more of a guest than a prisoner or even a curiosity and so I was given the run of the entire city which was built as one large connected house a veritable jumble of rooms, passageway, ramps and courtyards but this freedom nearly proved my undoing one day when I had strolled usually far from my own quarters I met my old enemy, Satan, in one of the courtyards instinctively I shrank back but he gave every indication of wishing to be friendly even to the extent of turning his head on one side to be padded this stateful as the act was to me I decided that discretion was the better part of Veiler and so padded him gingerly apparently as a reward for this service he beckoned me to follow him and so I did through many a winding corridor our way finally led to the outskirts of the city to a grading guarded by a sentinel whom Satan promptly relieved when the old guard has gone, Satan, to my great surprise opened the gate and motioned me to step out this was indeed a favor for although I had been able to get plenty of fresh air in the courtyard flower gardens and on the roofs yet I had felt cramped and restrained and had longed for the freedom of a run in the open fields so patting me again to show my gratitude I rushed out and turned several handsprings for joy on the silver sword and I regained my feet what should I see to my dismay but a squad of ant men issuing from the gate and rushing toward me at full speed with Satan at their head his savage jaw snapping with hate I stood astounded for a moment and then turned and fled at an earthly speed of running a man would have little hope of distancing one of these creatures and he had a buoyancy of this strange planet gave me a slight advantage over them until I had the misfortune to stub my toe on something and fall whereupon the pack closed over me the fall stunned me and as my brain darkened I felt the sharp mandibles of my enemy fasten upon my throat end of chapter 4 go to the ant, thou sluggard Recording by Alexis Duclos of the French podcast Citizen Cage Chapter 5 of An Earthman on Venus This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Alexis Duclos of the French podcast Citizen Cage An Earthman on Venus by Ralph Miles Farley A vision The full measure of Satan's perfidy was now evident Under the guise of pretended friendship he had learned me to the city gate and had persuaded me to step outside then hastily calling a detachment of the god he had informed them that I had escaped he had led them in pursuit of me and my flight had furnished sufficient verification of his accusation so now I was entirely in his power he was free to kill me without fear of the consequences for the whole squad would back up his story that I had fled and that he had been forced to slay me for the purpose of preventing my escape why did he not bite me at once and end my life I do not know perhaps he wished first to gloat over me at any rate after I came out of my days he loosened his hold on my throat and planting his front feet upon my prostrate body through his head a loft as if singing a poem of victory although of course no sound came then suddenly sprang away from me entirely and now I discovered the meaning and use of the peculiar green weapons which every ant man carried slung in a holster at his side when out of doors these supposed weapons were nothing more nor less than green umbrellas which Satan and the others were now hastily putting up in very evident terror sitting up weekly I tried to figure out what had so frightened them as to cause them to desist abruptly from their attack on me but I could discern nothing except a patch of sunlight the very first I had seen by the way since my advent on the planet my late antagonist were apparently watching this to me very pleasant sight with every indication of extreme fear looking above I saw a small bit of blue sky the patch of sunlight passed close by me and proceeded toward a small herd of green cows who were and as it passed among them the shifting of their feet stopped and every cow on whom the light had rested shuddered, wilted and dropped in evident agony upon the ground then I realized that this planet must be very close to the center of the solar system and protected from the intense heat of the sun only by the dense, silvery clouds which surrounded it I was now nearly certain as I had surmised before from the prevailing silver grey and a gravity slightly less than on earth that this must be the planet Venus I was still gazing abstractly at the stricken cows in the wake of the solar heat when I was rudely called to my senses by the ant pack closing over me once more and once again the mandibles of Satan fastened on my throat but the best laid plans of mice and men and even ant men gang aft agli with always clever scamming Satan had made one fatal mistake he had reconned without the faithful doggo as Satan's jaw was about to pierce my jugular again he dropped me and stood at attention as if in response to a peremptory command from a military superior I looked up and saw that the rest of the god were also standing at attention while repeatedly approaching up from the city gate came my old friend doggo with antennae erect and quivering once more he had saved my life how I regretted the blows which I had struck him in a fight at the beach on my first day upon his planet and how glad I was that he had not been ahead which I had severed in that spirited encounter presently, as if in response to another command Satan slunk away and a squad of ant soldiers returned to the city while doggo came and stood solitiously at my side when I had rested sufficiently I rose to my feet and together we returned to my quarters it was time for my lesson but I was in no mood for study so I gloomily pushed the books and papers to one side and went and stood by one of the windows gazing aimlessly at the beautiful garden below it is always darkest before dawn as I stood there at the window with my spirits at the low ebb there came to my eyes a vision which changed the entire course of my life for crossing the courtyard below me was what seemed to be a human being here at last was someone for me to talk to but was it a human being after all? he or she or it stopped just in front of my window and began daintily to pluck a bouquet of flowers so that I had ample opportunity to study the creature it wore a blue and white toga similar to the one which the ant man had furnished me and I now say the reason for the slits in the back for through them protrude a pair of tiny rudimentary butterfly wings of iridescent pearly hue the complexion of this dainty creature was a softer pink and white than ever high I had seen on any baby its hair was closely cropped and curly and brilliantly golden but the most attractive thing about it was the graceful way in which it swayed and pirouetted as if before a mirror there unless in its own imagination this piroueting led me to suppose that the creature whether human or not was probably feminine is there any more beautiful sight in the world or in any world for that matter than a beautiful girl admiring herself and preening herself and acting all together natural and girlish when she thinks that she is alone and unobserved but was this a girl? she was pretty enough to be an angel or a fairy and the little wings suggested something along that line then I began to notice certain other things about her which puzzled me in the first place she had an extra little finger on each hand and six toes on each of her bare little feet yet this fact did not in the least detract from the dainty slimness then two they're projected from their forehead two tiny antenna such as one sees on pictures of elves also she apparently had no ears anyhow the lack of ears was oddly noticeable though the absence of the little pink tip just barely showing below the edge of short hair did give a slightly unfinished look to that part of her head antenna and wings she must be either fairy or some new and beautiful kind of creature she bore such a close resemblance to a human being that my lonely spirit was cheered by the thought that at least there was a possibility of speech and human companionship on this planet so intent I had been on drinking in this vision of beauty below my window that I had not noticed Dogo approach me and place himself at my side I was terribly fearful lest the girl should go away without my finding out who she was and how I might see her again so forgetting my manners and even the fact that she was of an unknown race I plucked up sufficient courage to address her my dear young lady I began but I got no further for without noticing me in the least she picked up her flowers and left the courtyard then I turned and there was Dogo standing beside me so he too had seen the fairy seizing my patent paper I wrote what is that? and he replied it is a cupian are there many cupians I wrote yes he answered am I a cupian? I asked his answer we do not know it puzzles us that afternoon I made more progress with my studies than I had made in weeks for now I was no longer feeding myself merely for a bare existence in an ant civilization but rather I was preparing for communication with and I hope life among creatures closely resembling my own kind the beautiful cupian was evidently like the ant man devoid of hearing apparently she lived here in the ant city and so undoubtedly understood the ant language but to make sure I asked Dogo on my pad do cupians read and write this kind of writing? and he answered yes at this I certainly did tackle my work with the Vim it was clear now that if I wished to communicate with her I must perfect myself in a written language of the ants and so I set myself assiduously to the task every day at about the same hour she came and picked the blue and yellow flowers and the red and purple twig knobs of the garden below my window and every day I sat in the window and watched her and racked my brains for some tactful way in which to attract her attention of course I raised the question with Dogo but he kept putting me off by saying in substance it is not yet time this I took to mean that I could not yet write fluently enough to converse with her and so I redoubled my efforts at my studies so rapid was my progress now under the spur of my desire for human companionship that within a very few days I was able to graduate from my primers and read real books one of the first real books which they brought me was a history of their world and this interested me greatly as it furnished a setting for the experiences which shortly were to crowd upon me this book confirmed my theory that this world was the silver planet Venus finally I reached a point where my interest was such that I could not wait to wait further through the voluminous pages so taking my pad and pencil I asked Dogo tell me briefly about the more recent events on Poros for so they called the planet though of course I did not yet know the sound of this word nor even whether it had a sound tell me more particularly about the great war well he replied also in writing of course a little over 500 years ago the entire inhabited part of the planet Poros that is to say the continent which is surrounded by the boiling sea was divided up into 20 or more warring kingdoms of cupions and one small kingdom of Ant-Man namely Formia the Formians who possessed of all the virtues became more and more vexed with the increasing degeneracy of the neighbors until for purely atristic reasons the Formians began a conquest to extend their culture when the first convenient excused offered we declared war on one of the cupions nations which we proceeded to attack through the territory of a neutral state but wasn't this wrong? I interjected he admitted I suppose that you are right but it really was a violation of all treaties and of the solemn customs of the planet but it was all in a noble cause the other nations did not have sense enough he continued to rally to combat the common menace and so the Formians gradually concurred them one by one until at last Formia was mistressed of all Poros there must have been some very able statesmen in the imperial consul at that time judging by the terms imposed by our conquering nation we erected a fence or pail across the middle of the entire continent and all the cupions regardless of their former boundaries were organized into a single nation to the north of this pail the nation was named Cupia and so the creatures were composed it and Q the first was made its king Q, so I later gathered from the book was a renegade cupion who had always greatly admired the conquerors and I had even gone so far as to assist them in their conquest the Antmen, Dogo went on took over all the territory to the south of the pail and prospered greatly we were naturally a more industrious race than the sport loving cupions and now had in addition the services of slaves for by the terms of the Treaty of Mooney every male cupion upon coming of age has to labor for two years in Formia there have followed nearly 500 years of peace a peace of force it is through and yet a peace under which both countries had enjoyed prosperity in recognition of which fact the anniversary of the signing of the treaties annually celebrated through the continent the present reigning monarch of Cupia is Q the 12th the first after a long line of docile kings to give us any trouble in the enforcement of the treaty but even he keeps within the law the status of Cupia enacted by a popular assembly while those of Formia are promulgated by an appointed council of 12 but the law of both countries must receive the approval of the Queen of Formia such were the salient features of the recent history of Poros every day I watch for the fair cupion at the appointed hour I learn to know her every feature and every curve of her supple girlish body I noted that her eyes were as you blue I noticed the dainty way in which the tip of her little pink tongue just touch each edible red twig knob which she placed between her lips and many another individual mannerism a great many beautiful girls have a met in the course of my brief existence Boston society need yield the poem to none on this score yet I had gone to all the teas and dinners and dances perfunctorily merely because it was done and had always regarded women as an awful bore how few women are interested in radio engineering for instance or even have a sympathetic feeling for it but now all was changed and I didn't in the least care whether or not this girl was interested in radio engineering or what she was interested in provided I could eventually interest her in me for I longed for human companionship of course on days when tropical thunderstorms swept the city as happened frequently I did not expect her but on such days I missed this my one contact with humanity and felt vaguely uneasy yet I did not fully realized how much even this daily visits of hers to my garden had come to mean to me until one perfectly pleasant day when the cupian girl failed to show up at the expected hour I waited and waited and threaded and threaded but still she did not come Dogo was unable to offer any consolation and my lessons went very badly the next day the committee of four made one of their visits of inspection I had now progressed far enough in my mastery of their language so that Dogo was able to explain to me the reason for the existence of this committee this four wrote here are the professors of biology, anatomy, agriculture and eugenics from the University of Mooney the center of education of old porous immediately upon your capture this committee was speedily dispatched by the university authorities to make a thorough study of you they were to determine whether you are a cupian or some new and strange kind of beast and whether your particular breed could be put to any good use how interesting I wrote on my pad it is for them to question you, he replied come I will write down for you to answer the things they wish to know so then through the medium of Dogo's pad they questioned me at length about myself the earth, how I had come to porous and my progress since landing but their procedure mystified me how did Dogo know what they wanted him to say was he a mind reader? when they had asked me all they cared they gathered together in a corner apparently holding an inaudible conference on the result it was evident that there was something of great moment in the air and so there was or presently they withdrew and returned with the young girl the girl whose presence on this planet had inspired me to master at last the ant language eagerly I sprang forward with my stillness in paper anxious to start a conversation with this fair creature and then I was halted by the sight of her face to my dying day nothing can ever wipe from my memory the deeply engraved picture of the look of absolute horror and loathing which she gave me as she recalled from the contamination of my presence then she fainted dead away and was carried out by the four professors oh how I longed for her the one human like creature that I had seen on porous and yet one an impassable gulf separated us the gulf between the understandings and mentalities and means of communication of two distinct worlds I was determined nevertheless to see her again but how that was the question end of chapter 5 a vision recording by Alexie Duclos of the French podcast Citizen Cage


Welcome to this talk on request modeling. My name is Philippe Parclot. Thank you for the great presentation, Max. So I have one slide left to do. So I'm a security researcher as a Max at GoSecure. I focus mainly on application security. So if you have a question about any of those projects, you can poke me afterward. So the topic of today is HTTP request modeling, or I've shortened it to request modeling. The way I divide this talk first, we're going to start with the introduction to a key concept needed to understand request modeling. So mainly HTTP tunneling introduced by HTTP 1.1. There have been some new variants recently, but I'm going to focus on the various technique related to HTTP 1.1 specifically. I'm going to do an overview of the different attack and the risk associated to request modeling, so mainly cache poisoning, credential hijacking, or connection hijacking, URL filtering bypass, and XSS. At the end, I'm going to present what are the mitigation depending on what appliance you have installed. This will apply both to a cloud provider and if you have on-premise infrastructure, and also a key takeaway to summarize everything. So this presentation doesn't bring new exploit or new CVs specifically. What I've tried to do is an introduction to request modeling and summarize these three main presentation. So first in 2005, there is this company, WatchPire, that introduced the concept of request modeling. Already in 2005, all the risks that I'm going to present are most the cache poisoning, the XSS, and the connection hijacking were already present in this paper. What happened in 2016 is this French researcher, Regis Leroy, presented at DEF CON with a variant of this same attack using a different header called transfer encoding. We're going to see later how it's working. But what really put request modeling on the map is the presentation from James Kittle in 2019, introducing again small new variants but mainly presenting some actual case of an iProfile website. So we're going to see a few examples in this presentation. And at this point in 2019, it became really a popular variety and people become more aware of it. In 2016, the proof concept were not as convincing, I would say, but still all the paper were detailing all the detail of the exploit. So to understand request modeling, we need to understand HTTP tunneling. HTTP tunneling is a concept of HTTP 1.1. So we can see a main difference between HTTP 1.0 and 1.1 is that initially, HTTP was one request equal one TCP connection. This is not best for performance because there's a lot of in-shake involved every time you do a request. And for a simple plain HTML web page, it could make sense. It's lightweight, not lightweight, but simple to implement. The thing is, as soon as you have a couple of image styles sheet JavaScript files that are referred by this page, certainly you have a ton of TCP connection required just to load one page. In 1.1, per system connection were introduced. With this concept, we're going to be able to put in the same pipeline, so HTTP pipeline, multiple requests in a continuous matter. It also introduced transfer recording header that will be used in some variant later. So visually, how does it look? HTTP pipelining. So HTTP pipelining is used by client, but HTTP client include boats, browser, and backend server that communicate with other backend servers. So a proxy would do HTTP pipelining because, in the end, they don't want to create a ton of sockets for every client. And they want to reuse connection to reduce the number of TCP and shake, as one example. So if one client send two requests, we can see here that the requests are placed first in the socket connection. If we have another client that sends two other connections, they're going to be placed potentially in the same connection pool or connection, I should say. So here, it's a pool of only one connection. So in the same socket, we have four requests from two different clients. Another reason they are doing HTTP pipelining is that we don't have to wait for the response to send another request. We can send all the requests all at once and parse the response as they come. So that's HTTP pipelining. Now, if we look inside of the socket at multiple requests in one connection, we can see a few requests here, three requests. And if I am adding some color, we can see that there are three requests. But how does the proxy or the web server knows where each request ends? Because this is really important. We have multiple clients and multiple requests per client. So we need to know where everything ends in a precise manner. So I've added some color. But server are not guessing. They need some clear spec. So what they will use here is ContentLand. ContentLand header is pretty simple. So with ContentLand 0, this means after header, we're going to have two new lines, so stashar, stashan, two times. And then it's going to be the content of the post body, the body of the request. Here in this case, it's 0. So right away, we're continuing to the next request. The second request is a post request where there is a ContentLand that is not 0 because it has multiple parameters in post. So here it's simple. ContentLand is red. And this way, we know where every request ends. Request smuggling is going to take effect if we have an infrastructure where there is a proxy, either a proxy that we have put in place, so our own web cache, maybe something that has firewall feature or a web proxy. But it could also be a cloud provider, maybe a cloudflare, fastie, et cetera, that is in between the client, so the browser, and our web server. And request smuggling in a nutshell is when the proxy looking at the connection will interpret one request, while the back end for the same series of bytes will see two requests. And the reason for that is that the parser will have some small differences that the attacker will try to capitalize on. So let's see a first attack. So this is a proof concept that is taken from the first paper, so the paper from 2005 from Watch Fire. I've taken this example because it's really simple to understand, but keep in mind that this will not work in modern system because, for example, Angelinix and Apache will simply block requests, any request that has multiple content length. But 2005, the paper, all the payload were focusing on double content length in one request. So here on the left, we're gonna see what the proxy see and on the right, what the server will interpret. And so it's the same communication. It's not a two box two request. This is the same communication. And the reason the proxy and the back end will not interpret it the same way is that when they parse the request, it's a bit like parsing JSON. You're gonna parse multiple properties. And if you have to store those values in an Ash map, for example, if you have a value that are unique per key, once you're gonna encounter a duplicate, you can either choose to override the existing value or simply ignore the following one. So in the case, in this case, the first, the proxy also on the left, will simply always override with the last header. So here it's gonna keep the value 37 for the content length while the backend, the web server here is keeping the first one and will never override this value. So you can add 10 header of content length. It will keep the first one, which is zero. So what this introduced, it introduced a problem where we're reading two different content length so they don't agree where the first request end. So in the case, the first case is gonna be between blah and get test while the second one is gonna be ending right before the get profile. So what is the effect? So the first scenario that they are presenting in the paper from 2005, out of four or five risk is cache poisoning because on the left, the proxy will think that we're requesting to index and then test page while the backend is answering to the path index and profile slash one, two, three, seven. So what is gonna happen if our proxy is also having a feature of caching is that the first page will be returned as expected so the response will match what was requested but for the second page, we're actually returning user data, so partly profile information from the user ID one, three, seven and the content of this JSON will be overriding the test.htm. So this is problematic because the attacker will send this malicious request but every user that will request test.htm afterward will be using this poison resources. So some of the other risks that are presented in this first paper already in 2005, cache poisoning as we saw, capability to bypass real infertering. So if we have authentication or a path that are blacklist by the proxy, so think about a path that might be administrative console, maybe monitoring console or any management page that one needed to be blacklist. These could be bypassed. Credential hijacking or connection hijacking is going to be when we are going to do a second request that is incomplete and is gonna grab the following request or a request from another user and we're gonna try to get some value reflected. So we're gonna send an example in a moment. Persistent XSS, I put it in code. We're gonna be able to force HTML or JavaScript to a user that are visiting the website without special interaction. So all they need to do is visit the website and they are gonna receive an XSS. So there's gonna be a demo at the end of their presentation. So an open-videoc is a very similar cases to the XSS. So I'm gonna present an example, but here this time with a more modern technique. So the technique that was presented with the talk at DEF CON by Regis, Laura is using transfer encoding chunk. So transfer encoding chunk is a feature from HTTP 1.1 that aim to allow server to response, provide some huge response. So think about maybe a large XML file that is maybe generated on the fly and maybe you don't know the length of this response ahead of time. So instead of computing everything in memory, know the size and send the response. You can with a transfer encoding chunk send each of part of your file one chunk at a time. So here I have a file that I'm generating on the fly. So the way it's gonna work, where first the first line is always the size in hexadecimal of the following line. So then you can pass any binary or ASCII value. Then the second part is eight character long. So we have Northsec. And then conference is 11. 11, the length of this chunk. So we're passing B. And the last part is always zero just to acknowledge the browser. We're done with sending the response. This is completed. So here we have no content length description of all the requests at once. Why this feature is useful is that while it might be aimed at server response, it can also be used in a request. So if I'm requesting the index page from myapp.com, I can also include the post body in a chunk format and that's what we're going to abuse. So it can be abused because content length and transfer encoding are kind of colliding because they serve the same feature. They are describing the length of the body of a post request. So when this was introduced, an RFC specified what you should do if the client is sending both content length and transfer encoding. The answer to this is the RIC says when there is transfer encoding, you should use this adder. So you should ignore content length at all. So there should be a priority in transfer encoding. But the way transfer encoding is parsed, this adder might differ from one infrastructure to another. So one server from one server to another. An example of this is here with where the backend here is going to parse a transfer encoding adder while there's not an invalid adder separation. So as you might know, every adder in an HTTP request should be separate by slash R slash N. No matter what, this is not a Windows or Linux thing. Every request, no matter the platform should always be slash R slash N. But this specific backend was parsing adder with new line that are just slash N, so not the new line. So for this reason, the proxies is parsing the request as the spec and only seeing content length. It's not seeing transfer encoding adder in the first request. But if we do the same communication, our backend is parsing it differently, so switching in chunk mode. And for this reason, the zero that is initially placed will be interpreted as we have a chunk that will follow of zero. So ending the request, and then we have another one that is starting. So what is happening is we have a request that is not yet completed that is still in the pipeline. So we're gonna receive a response for the first part in blue. But the next user that will send a request, its request will be basically glued to the previous one that we've started. So we are forcing the request update profile to the user. So all its cookie and all the adders from its request will be append to this request. So that's what we are seeing visually in orange. So this is called connection hijacking. A few other alternatives to this that were found by the talk from James Kiddall. So that's his main focus for his 2019 talk is that he found tons of variation in actual software. So either if you place a non-printable character between the column and chunk. As you can see, there are a ton of variation and the bird plugin that was released to support this testing has numerous variation of this. So if you are reading the paper from James Kiddall, you will see that they are often referring with some short name and that I'll be using later also in this presentation. The prefix is always what the proxy is seeing and the second part is what the backend is seeing. So that's it for this. So yeah, sometimes the proxy will look at content then, but sometimes it will interpret a transparent coding. So this is not one site, sometimes it can be reversed. An example of connection hijacking. So very similar to the one previously where we were forcing the update profile, but with a real case scenario that was found by James Kiddall on New Relic platform and specifically the login server. So the first element that need to be recognized is that the login email field is reflected in the page. So as soon as there's an incorrect login, so if it's forcing an incorrect password, so there's no chance that the login will work, but the email is reflected in the page. So what can we do about this if we have a, if we did take that the server is also vulnerable to HP request smuggling? Here we're gonna do the technique with transparent coding chunk where the, so it's very similar to the double content land header that we add initially, the simple payload from the beginning, but here we're taking advantage of, we're gonna override the transferring encoding header with X, so just to nullify that there's even the chunk mode enabled. So the proxy doesn't see chunking at all because it's keeping the last header in the case where there's our duplicate headers. The second on the left, we can see what the backend is seeing and the backend is here we're passing, we're starting a new request for the login. So this is the request that was reflecting the login email field, but we're not gonna finish the request. So we need to specify a huge content land and basically we're gonna grab the following requests. So basically content from another user and what James Cato managed to do is a proof concept where he was able to intercept, post request to the login page that was reflected in his form. I went submitting the request on the left. So now here's an example of how can we abuse XSS with the same technique? So instead of grabbing the next request here we're gonna happen something to force an XSS on the response of the next user, so the user that has the request next in the HTTP pipeline. So here it's a very simple cases. This was found I think in a SAS provider that was kept anonymized, but basically it looked like a provider that simply doesn't support chunking and coding. So it's probably a proprietary stack that was made, that was unmade. Here, yeah, so the backend doesn't support chunking and coding. So for this reason we're abusing it by making the content land huge to grab almost everything. I don't know, so the first request is using chunk. So for this, the chunk part will grab everything. So we have a 10 and 66 that will grab the actual request or the first part of our request that we want to force while the proxy, not the proxy, the backend will see it differently. I'm gonna do a demo in a moment with XSS with a simpler case, but here we're injecting it in the body. So the response that the second user will see is basically it will, so yeah, the SAML equal is not the response, but what is sent to the page, but because it was reflecting the SAML parameter in the response, here we could exploit the XSS. So why are we doing this instead of reflecting XSS? First, there's no interaction needed, and sometimes there are some specific condition that make the XSS theoretically unexploitable, but because of request modeling, sometimes we can add header that are required to the exploitation. So we needed a demo, so I'm going to demonstrate request modeling with a very simple website called simple website. So this website has a contact form that is interesting because if we look at, if we add some additional parameter that are not there initially, these are reflected here in the page. So we might look for a potential XSS by appending some value, but we can see that everything is encoded, but the everything here is encoded by the browser, and this is something that make, theoretically this XSS not exploitable, so if I'm sending this to repeater, so it's not really possible unless you're going to all version of IE. So, but if we send an actual mail that is unescape, so unencoded here, we will see that it's actually reflected. I'm actually in the right page, yes. So we can see here, I'm going to add some character to make it more visual, but we can see that everything here is not escaped. So we're going to take advantage of this, that the fact that we can exploit it this way by crafting our own request. So it's going to be a simple request where the proxy will look at the content land header while the backend will support chunk properly and will see two different requests, and the second starting here. We will not see the response for the second request, but any user that will be following our requests will see an XSS. So I will send this malicious payload. So for what we're receiving here is the response for the first request, so nothing special, but if we're a user navigating on the website, we're not going to see something yet, and this is something you need to be aware with request smuggling, is that proxies will often have multiple connection pools, so you might need multiple requests. So here I'm using HTTP Apache traffic server, and after 10 requests, we can see that a user was hijacked, so I could have been visiting any page. In the end, I received a response for the contact form. So this is the quick demo. Before doing a payload like this, how can you discover such a reality? So here I have some quick payload. So there is a plugin and different scanner that will try to detect this. This is a payload that is basically testing both chunk and content at the same time, and what we want to see is if the second request is actually using chunk mode, can we happen one character could be X, could be G, anything to the next request just to break the method. So the method, the next request should be a post or a get or potentially a put, let's see. So when we send this, we're not going to see something yet, but if we do a lot of requests with our payload at some point, we might receive something like a 405 not allow. 405 stands for method not allow. Why does it come to this? It's because it's actually doing a G post here because we're repeating a post request. And at some point, our request combined with a previous one. I remember hearing in one of the presentation by James Kiddall that for one exploit, he had to send 800 requests to confirm the reality. So this is a reality that is hard to confirm because in real infrastructure, you're not the only one doing requests. So you need to be patient and have a good idea of what you're trying. So if you can extract, for example, version or some information about what the proxy is being used and what is the backend, you can find a reality like this or be more precise. I know the scanner from the BERT plugin is using a timeout technique and this is not perfect because it will miss a few cases, including the demo I've present. I've run the scanner and didn't found it, but I'm gonna show a quick way, a quick tip to still find the reality if you're using the plugin. Okay, so now I'll be you defend against this with this reality. The quick, the easy answer is just do your updates. So Apache traffic server, Angelics, Varnish, HAProxy, all have received fixes. There are some exception like I know BigFix was mentioned in the presentation where they say they have done a fix, but it's actually not visually where they mentioned to mitigation. So it's not built in. So if you're having F5 in your infrastructure, there are two methods to mitigate the issue. So, and one of the issue is to activate advanced WAF and a specific role to block request modeling. So be aware that sometimes they say there's a fix, but actually there is a method for mitigation. So in the case of F5, they have created a new role. So don't try to modify your own application to mitigate this. Adding a few security errors won't fix this issue. So, content security policy will not have any effect at preventing these type of instances because we're controlling all the other parameter and even part of the body. Cloud services have provided some fixes but none of the provider listed here have made a public response of how they have implemented it, but there is an RFC 7232 that is giving guideline of how you should normalize requests. So when you have both transfer encoding and content land, how can you normalize the query to be sure that there's no ambiguity? So they are using it. So this is a screenshot for detection. So that's one of the best way to be 100% sure. So even if you have done your update, be sure that you're not involved. So it's an extra protection. Doing some manual tests will be helpful also. But this is the plugin from Burr. These are all tests that can be done when you're on the request modeling scan. Be aware that some case will not be found because they expect some time out to be created with some payload. And in multiple cases that I've test, it didn't found the reality that I've introduced. So, but you can find the reality still using the plugin. So if you have the flow plugin from Burr, flow is basically showing you all the requests from Burr. So everything that you see in the proxy, but also request initiate by a plugin. And you will see here request initiate by plugin and respond that our 405 should be fishy and analyzed because either this request or one of the previous one have introduced a glitch that introduce a bad method. So look for a 405 now, this is important. If you're doing manual testing, make sure your clients for disabled content and because by default, Burr will simply rewrite content and other. So it might be breaking your payload without you noticing it. So be aware of this. So already at the last slide, so take away request modeling can greatly affect your application. We've seen multiple risk and attacks. So this is not only one vector. There are multiple venue. If there are some, if you are renowned to this, make sure you test your environment with automated tools and potentially manual testing. There are some new variant that I don't have the time to cover, but recently there have been some variant with a WebSocket and HTTP2. So while in 2019, James Kedall had some new variant with transfer recording, there are some variant that allow specifically bypassing URL filtering. So if you have time to check those, there are some nice proof of concept available by the company that found the venue initially with for HTTP2. And apparently the talk from this year from James Kedall is gonna be on HTTP2. And most of the key related are already published from late last year. It was a nominate as a top 10 attack of last year. So if you are looking for the slide, there is this short link. And for to reproduce the demonstration I've made, I didn't have time to do the HTTP2 one. But if you're curious, these are in the slide, so on. The slide should be already available.


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