Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 90: what you’re looking at

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

880 ly inward, forming the circumference of a huge circle. The inner floor was hardly more than a thousand feet down, and seemed fairly level. We continued on, arriving finally over the mouth of a little circular pit. This formed an inner valley, half a mile across and with sheer side walls some five hundred feet high. As we swung down into it 1 noticed above the horizon behind us a number of tiny black dots in the sky—other girls flying out from the city to our meeting. I have never beheld so wild, .so complete- ly desolate a scene. The ground here was that same shining mass of virgin metal, tum- bled about and broken up in hopeless con- fusion. Great rugged bowlders lay strewn about; tiny caverns yawned; fissures opened up their unknown depths; sharp-pointed crags reared their heads like spires. left standing amid the ruins of some huge cathedral. There was, indeed, hardly a level spot of . ground in sight. I wondered with vague alarm where we should land, for nowhere could I see suf- ficient space, even for our small platform. We were following closely the line of cliff wall when suddenly we swooped sharply downward and to the right with incredible speed. My heart leaped when, for an in- stant, I thought something had gone wrong. Then the forward end of the platform tilted abruptly upward; there was a sudden, mo- mentary fluttering of wings, a scrambling as the girls’ feet touched the ground, and we settled back and came to rest with hardly more than a slight jar. Miela stood up, rubbing her arms, which must have ached from her efforts. “We are here, Alan—safely, as we planned.” We had landed on a little rocky niche that seemed to be in front of the opening of a small cave mouth in the precipitous cliffside. I stood up unsteadily, for I was cramped and stiff, and the solid earth seemed swaying beneath me. I was stand- ing on what was hardly more that a narrow shelf, not over fifteen feet wide and some thirty feet above the base of the cliff. Mercer was beside me, looking about him with obvious awe. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. ** What a place!” he ejaculated. We stepped cautiously to the brink of the ledge and peered over. Underneath us, with the vertical wall of the cliff running directly — down into it, spread a small pool of some heavy, viscous fluid, inky black, and with — iridescent colors floating upon its surface. . It bubbled and boiled lazily, and we could feel its heat on our faces plainly. Beyond the pool, not more than a hun- dred yards across, lay a mass of ragged — bowlders piled together in inextricable con- fusion; beyond these a chasm with steam | rising from it, whose bottom I could not see—a crack as though the ground had sud- denly cooled and split apart. Across the entire surface of this little cliff-bound circu- lar valley it was the same, as though here | a tortured nature had undergone some ter- — rible agony in the birth of this world. The scene, which indeed had something . infernal about it, would have been extraor- dinary enough by itself; but what made | it even more so was the fact that several - hundred girls were perched among these crags, sitting idle, or standing up and flap- ping their wings like giant birds, and more were momentarily swooping in from above. I had, for an instant, the feeling that I was Dante, surveying the lower regions, and that here was a host of angels from heaven invading them. During the next hour fully a thousand girls arrived. There were perhaps fifteen hundred altogether, and only a few strag- glers were hastily flying in when we decided to wait no longer. Miela flew out around the little valley, calling them to come closer. They came flying toward us and crowded upon the nearer crags just beyond the pool, clutch- ing the precipitous sides, and scrambling for a foothold wherever they could. A hundred or more found place on the ledge with us, or above or below it wherever a slight footing could be found on the wall of the cliff. When they were all settled, and the scrambling and flapping of wings had ceased, Miela stood up and addressed them. A solemn, almost sinister hush lay over the valley, and her voice carried far. She spoke hardly above the ordinary. tore, SEARS eo im