A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, February 1950 — page 92: what you’re looking at

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

92 A. MERRITT’S FANTASY ship greatly, and then, as we struck the rough ice, it had ripped out the belly of the boat, and that had served as a sort of brake, softening the final shock. For once I was glad of the angry face of the Arctic Ocean, leaden dark, except where its waves curled and whitened at the head, and gave spray to the whistling wind. They would not be apt to choose that sea as a landing place. “And there in the pressure ridge,” said Darrell, ““we may be able to get to some sort of shelter from their bombs. That’s what they'll try to do—pot us from above!”’ We ran for the white, ruined hill of ice. I suppose that we were almost the first humans in the history of the world who were really ae to see a ridge of pressure ice! Stumbling over the rough places, and sliding on the smooth, we headed for that great white junk heap. I had to help Sylvia. She had no foot- sense for ice, and no wonder—her life had been lived, almost since childhood, within the smoking mountain. But I got on with her, keeping the rifle and a small portion of the pack, while Darrell accepted the lion’s share of the burden. We were making good progress, and the distance was not great. But above us in the air followed hunting hounds which _could run a mile in nine or ten seconds. And now they were sliding down at us. They did not seem to be coming very fast; they were loafing as leisurely as hawks cutting their way down the wind. Only when the silver airships came closer could I see how they were leaping through space. And now I heard a strange, high- pitched scream—the sound of the craft as they tore through the air—and no sound of engines at all. They were circling, as though to find possible landing places. I had thought, two hours before, that we were leaving the Smoking Land behind us forever. But now the gloomy picture of the place rolled nearer and nearer in my mind’s eye. Even Sylvia’s iron nerve gave way a little. She threw up a hand before her face and cried out faintly. I had to guide her as she ran on at Darrell’s heels. We saw, a moment later, with just what fangs those hounds of the sky were gar- nished. Something flew past my head with a whir like a cannon ball ripping the air. It was shooting forward on a long slant, and, hitting the ice fifty feet from us, it exploded with terrific force. All three of us were knocked flat and skidding. The air filled with chunks of ice big enough to smash us to bits, but luck saved us. And then, scampering to our feet and running on again, we saw that the bomb had blown a great hole right through the ice sheet; we could see 33 Ae: slopping up around the sides of it! | DON’T think that we had more than fifty yards to go to the heaps of vast ice boulders that might give us shelter from the bombs. And Murder was there before us, capering and prancing and howling to us to come faster on our wretched pairs of legs. We did our best, but the men of the Smoking Land were giving it to us hot and fast. The second bomb dropped right at Dar- rell’s feet and I thought we were gone. But it did not explode. It had smashed into the ice with terrific force, and cracked right open, like an apple, but it did not blast us to bits. Something was wrong with it. _It gave me a feeling that fate would fight for us, m this pinch. Flash, flash, flash! Like sword-strokes the silver boats glided over us, and the bombs came. Three of them exploded al- most in an instant, not far from us, and we were flattened. Sylvia and I managed to get up, at once, though we were staggering drunkenly. And then we saw that Darrell lay still, with his arms outspread, and a streak of blood down his face. I was sure he was dead, but we caught him by the heels, Sylvia and I, and ran on, dragging him. Murder came and helped, putting his teeth in Darrell’s coat and tugging more than Sylvia and I put together. It was Murder, too, who led us straight to the proper spot. The entrance hole was so small, but we managed to push Darrell through and get in behind him, creeping down a narrow, low tunnel about which the gigantic blocks of ice were piled. They looked as though they had been shaped and squared in a quarry, and were lying there ready to build the palace of GOMIIGIOO S © iin