Adventure Magazine Cover — page 169: what you’re looking at

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

Gilford the Gifted and sent forth croaking cries for help, the heaviness of the quiet that followed crushed down upon him like an inexorable judgment of doom. Then, in sheer exhaustion, he slept. When he awoke there was no change, except that his eyes did not hurt quite so much when he tried to see. But again there were hours and hours of waiting, of frantic hope and ungovernable fear; hours of shrinking helplessness and of awed and whispering prayers; hours that drew Gilford down and down into a kind of humility he had not known before. Toward the end of that second period of wakefulness he was whimpering a little, and when, at the beginning of what was, to him, the fourth dawn, he discovered that he could see just a little, he leaped wildly to his feet and stumbled crazily toward the window. Soliden’s big Madeira chair got in his way and he halted there, with his hands shading his eyes from the light as they stung him viciously into the exercise of caution whether he would or not. When he opened them again warily, he did not attempt to face the light, but held his head down and peered at the floor just in advance of his feet. He shuffled his way around the chair and held on to it as long as he could when he had passed beyond it. Just as his finger tips were relinquishing the assurance the chair gave, he leaped back a step and an involun- tary cry burst from his parched and cracking lips. Soliden was lying there. Gilford could have touched the overseer with his outstretched foot. Presently look- ing blearily down at him and not seeing him very distinctly, Gilford whispered: “Soliden! Soliden!”’ There was no answer, nor any movement of any sort, and after calling again and again with the same result, Gilford stuck out his foot and excitedly tapped Soliden’s shoulder with his toe. Soliden scarcely moved. But his head wabbled violently. And rolled away from his body about a foot. RY SOMETHING that wore a tattered 4% suit of pajamas, a battered sun ‘S®@ helmet and what was left of a pair of mosquito-boots, fell into Harth’s sitting- room above Marsden & Co.’s Benin City 163 shop several evenings later and promptly went to sleep on the floor. For a moment, in the doorway, Harth had a glimpse of a lithely built Bini girl whose color scheme was red and yellow and black. “T bring him,” he heard her say simply, as he hurriedly put aside a month-old news- paper; but before he had an opportunity to question the girl or even to identify her, she had slipped swiftly and noiselessly away. Harth took a second look at the man on the floor, picked him up with amazing ease and carried him into his bedroom. Where- upon Gilford woke up and murmured distantly. “T kicked his head off.” While Harth bathed him gently and applied cold cloths to his eyes, Gilford added confidentially: “Funniest thing you ever saw. I kicked his head off—away off—and then I put on my helmet and walked out. Just walked out. N othing else for you to do, you know, after you’ve kicked a man’s head off like that. Fight’s over.’ Harth listened, of course, But did not put any faith in Gilford’s babblings. He saw the marks of the hippo hide and ‘Gilford’s eyes told their own story. A clinical ther- mometer disclosed a temperature of one hundred and four. After quite a long period of silence, as Harth continued to apply cold cloths to his patient’s eyes, Gilford fumbled about his head inquiringly with his hands, then asked in a low, secretive voice— “Where is my helmet?” “T have it here. Why?” ‘““What’s the color of the inside of the brim now?” “Green, of course. green.’ “Green?” “Certainly.” ‘“That’s good. I hope it stays that way. It hasn’t been green since I kicked Soliden’s head off. After that it became yellow, then red, then black, changing, you know, always changing, like a—like a—oh, one of those whirligig things with colors on it. And she wouldn’t let me sleep. Yelled at me. Animo! Animo! Just like a ruddy Kroo headman. Damnable!”’ A pause. “May I sleep now, please?”’ “Surely. Go ahead.” “Thanks,” drowsily. A bit faded, but still “Decent of you.” COMiCOoOoks Cc (©