A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, February 1950 — page 89: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE SMOKING LAND 89 felt when the brave Aztecs rushed on them in waves, and the glass blades of their war axes shattered to bits against the good Spanish steel of helmet and breastplate. But now the quivering length of the ship was gathering speed; the hissing, rushing sound beneath us increased, the walls slipped more rapidly past us, and finally, like the leap of an animal which had been crouching, we shot from the hall, and sprang into the very center of the leaden sky! That was how it seemed to me, as I watched. But then I saw that it was not the sky at all. It was on a level or even dipping line that we had traveled, and the ragged jaws of a set of hills appeared straight before us. I looked at Darrell who was struggling with a lever. He groaned; and the nose of ie speeding boat turned slowly down- war I had lived through many heart-crush- ing instants on my strange journey—but none so terrible as this, for death stood close to us then, and laughed at us. CHAPTER 27 Crash! E WERE not at full speed. No, we were just dawdling along at a triflling hundred and forty or fifty miles an hour; but that would be sufficient to crumple the entire ship like a paper bag smashed flat between a pair of hands. I ges out, “D’you know the con- trols?” Darrel said nothing. I saw the bulge of his jaw, and the gleam of sweat on his face as he reached for another lever. Plainly he was simply guessing, and we were two seconds from eternity! So I threw in my own guess and grabbed a lever on which his left hand was already resting, and pushed it forward. Promptly that turned the nose almost straight down toward the ground. I yanked it back frantically, and the nose of the ship flew up again. I almost felt the belly of the silver boat scraping against the ground, but then we flew away with terrible speed right at the hills, then high above them... . I got Darrel by the shoulder; we were laughing like a pair of hysterical maniacs. Laughing, and yelling, and beating one another, while we hurled through the air. For southward, southward was freedom! I got Darrell out of the driver’s seat and took it myself. No matter how brilliantly he had engineered our escape, I felt a little more capable of handling that silver cigar as it shot through the sky. And what a thing it was! In five minutes of experimenting I knew about the controls well enough. And in those five minutes, we saw the smoking mountain dwindle behind us, and shrink smaller and smaller, receding into the horizon; and then, beneath us, a gleaming line of white rushed away be- hind—the breakers shattering against the cliffs. I remember that Murder, with a whine, stood up and put his forepaws against the glass of the cabin door, and Darrell pulled him back, for fear he should press on the catch that held the door shut. We did not want the blast of a three hundred mile wind cutting in through that open door and tossing us about like paper in a gale! And now, looking back, the Smoking Land was already no more than a dull mist, mounting slowly upward; and be- neath us were the fields of drifting ice, and spots of leaden water. Then I began to play with that air boat. Imagine yourself encased in the handle of a javelin, and hurled at the stars by the hand of a giant—that was how it felt to drive across the universe in the silver ship! I dipped her down to the surface of the sea, until we actually heard the growl- ing and the roaring of a pressure ridge, and saw the great blue-white blocks of ice shooting up, and piling into mountains. Then I shot the ship in a long, scream- ing line up through the lower masses of clouds, and up through the higher layers, until we were speeding throug” a sky of luminous milk, as it were, and then higher, higher, till it turned a bright, springlike blue. We shot along at that level. I would have played more tricks with the ship, but Darrell was strongly against it. He was for taking a high position, a straight line to the south, and hanging there until COMicaoo S C@