Adventure Magazine Cover — page 91: what you’re looking at

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

The Web of the Sun stuck it butt foremost to the flying New Yorker. Lassiter got it without breaking his stride. Beyond the pavement, the sand slowed him up. His feet slipped, his shoes filled. Both men were reduced to a miserable trot. Lassiter stared ahead through his dripping sweat. The sun was just sinking behind the western palisade. It was the hour of sacrifice, when things flung into the net vanished. With a last effort the promoter plowed up the mound, gasping for breath. IN THE limed circle lay the Incan girl, At the sound of Lassiter’s sobbing breath she turned her head, saw him and screamed— “Primol” She struggled violently to loose herself. The man plunged down the stones toward her. At that moment a section of the land- ward stones opened. Something huge, leggy and bristly flashed out. Its spindling legs covered a twenty foot circle. Its body was a globular bag mottled with spots the size of a man’s head. In a sort of spiked plate on its front were set six staring black eyes. The plate and bag were borne on the huge spiky legs at about the height of a man’s head. The thing flashed on the girl with a sort of rubbery snap. It caught her on the movable spikes of its frontal plate, and next moment flashed back. It was so swift, so silent, so horrible, Lassiter had neither time nor mind to raise his firearm. A mere stab, a flash—and the net hung empty save for the girl’s clothes still stick- ing to the limed cords. The Stendill agent climbed down to the net shakily, like an old man. He set his feet on the cords and moved carefully around the limed center toward the unstable stones. He heard Nunes shouting at him from the hillock. What he pushed was not a stone but a sort of silken flap that swung back easily. Inside it was dark. He could see only the white blur of the girl, and the glint of eyes, such as he had seen on the rim of the crater. He drew out his flashlight with queer deliberation and switched it on. Under its spurt, the cavern: glowed all over witha pale sheen. It was lined with silk. The place stunk of insects and rotting flesh. Under the hard light of the electric torch, ce creature gave the girl’s body a delicate SI kiss, a mere touch with a hair-like lancet that slipped into the lower margin of her right breast over her heart. At the touch, the girl curved up her body, her right arm dropped among the spikes on the frontal plate, her left swung limply down. Lassiter risked a shot at the eyes above her body. During the very flash of the shot, the monster vanished and reappeared sticking to the silken roof over the pro- moter’s head. Its great bag hung down- ward from a spread of legs. ‘The white body of the girl was still in its mandibles, The promoter lifted his automatic to shoot again. Suddenly down through the electric glare fell coils of shining viscid cables. They fell in a sort of horrible shimmering beauty around his neck, arms, legs. He could see the stuff spewing out of eight spinnarets at the end of the abdomen. Fortunately the man had his pistol trained on it. He fired deliberately, three times, into this downpour of limed sdk. At the third shot Tilita’s body fell from the roof to the silken floor. «The thing itself van- ished. Amid the gummy silk Lassiter con- trived to twist his light this way and that. The cavern was empty. The thing had escaped with such suddenness his eyes did not register the motion. The sound of voices and the flare of torches came from the further end of the cavern and presently Gogoma and four other priests of the sun appeared crawling out of the end of a tunnel which evidently connected with the temple. The naked behemoth glanced about, then waddled over the silken carpet to the woman’s limp form. In the flare of the torches he balanced his bulk carefully, stooped and lifted the flexuous figure. straightened and laid it across the sweating expanse of his chest and shoulder. He stroked her curves with puffy fingers in profound satisfaction. After a moment he thought to ask— “T hope you are not injured, Sefor Lassiter ?”’ The Stendill agent made some answer amid his smother of limed tubes. Two of the priests ran over and began stripping the viscous stuff from his body with their greased hands. | “In your zeal to save the girl from being consumed, Sefior Lassiter,” purred the high priest, ‘I hope you have not caused her to be DOOK He C©@