Adventure Magazine Cover — page 70: what you’re looking at

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

60 loosed it with a violent shudder. The corpse dropped half in and half out of the whirl- -pool. 7 The Stendill agent stood with a shaken heart. He stooped and washed his hands. The mystery that had formed over his party on the rim of Motobatl seemed weaving itself about them. Its inscrutability ap- palled him. It seemed to Lassiter that the very brilliancy of the sunshine wove a shin- ing web to veil some murderous power. He looked down at the ill-starred Chacala, at the ashen corpse—— . At that moment the whirlpool choked, re- gurgitated with a roar. Tons of water leaped up and flowed bankward. It caught Lassiter to his knees. ‘Tilita cried out and reached down to help him up the bank. Chacala’s body went with the ebb. The vortex opened again with its endless suck- ing. The body spun about the green funnel, spun about, drawing closer, and at last dived downward and disappeared, a dim greenish shadow with flying legs, as if some swimmer were stroking downward into the maelstrom, bent on self destruction. The goldfinch was gone; whether Las- siter accidentally loosed it, or squeezed it to death in his excitement, he never knew. om THE death—the murder of Cha- SYee] cala—brought Lassiter a presenti- Mull ment of some wide disturbance in Mrcu abel and somehow, the promoter sensed that the colporteur was in the midst of it. in an effort to learn more about the tragedy that had shocked them. _ As the two entered the northern edge of the great plaza fronting the teocalla, the promoter was not surprized to see a distant figure running in from the southern bound- ary of the piazza toward the main entrance. At such a distance he could tell nothing about who it was; perhaps a priest hurrying to the temple for aid in some new assas- sination. Both the man and the girl hurried forward past the series of immense pilasters when Lassiter saw that the person hurrying in from the south was a woman, an old woman. The promoter guessed it to be Xauxa, Cha- cala’s wife. She ran with the labor of gravid women; her effort must have inflicted severe punishment. Apparently she meant to run straight into the temple, and now as she came, Lassiter could hear her calling the Lassiter and Tilita set out homeward’ ~~ Adventure names of the priests in a desperate voice— ““Gogoma! Jagala! Quiz-Quiz! Caxas! Gogoma!”’ With his quick sympathy, Lassiter hur- ried down, with some hope of relieving the old woman’s trouble or despair, when Tilita gave a gasp and cried out: “Tt’s my madre! Oh, what has happened? Perhaps the nzv#ia—”’ She went flying down the vast tufa pavement screaming— “Madre! Mi madre! What has happened? Madrel’’ Lassiter followed running. As he drew near the entrance of the,teocalla, he saw Gogoma standing in the archway. The entrance and facade were so huge the priest was diminished to a mere brown blob guard- ing the passage. “What is it, Prymoxl?” he called in the short-breathed voice of the exceedingly obese. “My ntias!’’ screamed the old crone. ‘Where are my nifias, Gogoma? What have you done with my ntfas?”’ As Lassiter hurried toward the entrance to aid his future mother-in-law, Gogoma’s’ brown spot swelled to a vast dripping body. “Your nifias are in the sun, Prymoxl——”’ “My nifvias are dead! They are dead!” shrieked the crone. ‘You killed them! You!” she shrieked and rushed at him with curved fingers. The fat man put out the bulk of his arm with unshaken dignity and allowed her to carom against it. It was shocking, the col- lision between the ancient crone and the behemoth. Both were fairly helpless. “Be quiet, Prymoxl— Why do you come screaming to the temple that your children are dead— Why—— “The man Birdsong swore it! He swore they were dead—he swore by his god!”’ “He knows everything!” wailed the crone. “‘He works wonders to prove it! He struck the bark of my baobab and it caught fire!”’ Gogoma widened his slit-like eyes and swung his bulk a little forward to stare at the virago. “He struck fire—with his hand!’ “Oh, st, sz, sil’? The old woman seemed to grow weak. ‘‘Fire spurts from his hand! That proves he told the truth! My xifias are dead—my little nifias are dead—”’ Suddenly the old woman’s wrinkled face broke into a twisting; her flabby breasts heaved to a sort of choking; her old eyes had no tears. It was the hideous sobbing DOOLK (©