The Meteorite
entityAerolithus contrahens—A piece of the great outside
The meteorite was a strange, shrinking stone that fell onto the Gardner farm and was studied by Miskatonic University scientists, who found it magnetic, faintly luminous, and utterly unlike any known terrestrial substance before every trace of it — and the coloured globule within it — vanished entirely.
The meteorite fell out of the sky in a white noontide cloud amid a string of explosions and a pillar of smoke from the valley, bedding itself in the ground beside the well at the Nahum Gardner place and leaving a big brownish mound above ripped earth and charred grass. It shrank in size day by day though scientists insisted stones do not shrink, its heat lingering persistently and glowing faintly at night; it was oddly soft, almost plastic, and had to be gouged rather than chipped for a specimen.
Miskatonic University professors tested it extensively: a specimen refused to cool even in a pail and burned through its bottom, another faded wholly away in a glass beaker and took the beaker with it, and it showed an affinity for silicon. It gave off no occluded gases when heated on charcoal, was negative in the borax bead, was non-volatile at any producible temperature, was highly malleable on an anvil, and displayed shining spectral bands unlike any known colours when heated before a spectroscope. It resisted water, hydrochloric acid, nitric acid, and aqua regia, yet was magnetic and showed faint Widmanstatten figures after acid immersion. Embedded within it was a large coloured globule, glossy, brittle, and hollow, which burst with a small pop when struck with a hammer, emitting nothing and leaving only a hollow cavity. The scientists concluded it was "nothing of this earth," obedient to outside laws.
During a thunderstorm the stone "drew the lightning," being struck six times within an hour; afterward nothing remained of the mass but a ragged pit by the well-sweep, and digging turned up nothing. A fragment kept cased in lead in the laboratory lasted a week before vanishing without residue.
Fate — It vanished completely, both the tested specimens and the original mass, leaving no residue or trace behind.
Haunts
Sources
Every fact above traces back to the text.
“Then there had come that white noontide cloud, that string of explosions in the air, and that pillar of smoke from the valley far in the wood.”
The Colour Out of Space (1927)
“It was nothing of this earth, but a piece of the great outside; and as such dowered with outside properties and obedient to outside laws.”
The Colour Out of Space (1927)
“That fragment lasted a week, at the end of which nothing of value had been learned of it. When it had gone, no residue was left behind”
The Colour Out of Space (1927)