"[A] pomegranate writer: popping with seeds--full of ideas." --Ray Bradbury We are all part of some cosmic pattern, and this pattern works toward good and not evil. It builds and does not destroy. So I shall go on in my search for a race where I can find kinship and happiness." ―Henry Kuttner COSMIC TERROR STRIKES AS A MESSENGER OF DEATH SWEEPS THROUGH THE UNIVERSE. Like a great, lethal snake, plague creeps through the galaxies. No conscious entity can halt its progress, and life is slowly draining from planet after planet. Only one super-intelligence is capable of preventing cataclysm. To do it, he must penetrate far beyond infinity - to the formless, deathless creatures out to kill the universe.

Clifford Sawyer, investigating ghosts in a mine, finds ancient beings from another world -- and gets swept up in a titanic struggle for control of a parallel dimension. Henry Kuttner (1915-1958) was known for his literary prose and worked in close collaboration with his wife, C. L. Moore. They met through their association with the "Lovecraft Circle," a group of writers and fans who corresponded with H. P. Lovecraft. Their work together spanned the 1940s and 1950s, mostly published under pseudonyms such as Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O'Donnell.