Avon Fantasy Reader No. 9 — page 23: what you’re looking at

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

were assembled, with suitable representatives of the press and the movies. It was to be decidedly a gala occasion! At last the hour arrived, Zero Hour as it was called in France. Dressed in my insulated, ray-proof space suit, with its great quartz globe of a head, covered with insulating shutters and armed with periscopic televisors, its instrument belt, where hung_ a bewildering array of boxes, dials, projectors, and control leads, and its pressure control and air-renewer, I sat in an easy chair before the half-circle of obvious skeptics. Doc stood beside = his hand on my shoulder, explaining the apparatus. He was finished. For a moment he gripped my shoulder, oe released me and nodded. Even as they disappeared, I could see-the faces of the scientists take on an expression of incredulity and wonder. Then they were gone, leaving fading bodies that suddenly winked out. A Negro, Doc’s chauf- feur, lasted longest, passing through intermediate red-green shades, indescrib- ably weird, into an intense red, very dark, then slowly fading into a shim-° = « mering phantom that vanished almost immediately. Then a flashing, chang- ing panorama of myriad vivid colors and marvelous combinations, rich, beautiful beyond imagination, a formless mass of dazzling, leaping flame that filled all the empty heavens with its wondrous glory. And then—dark- ness. I had entered a region of no vibration. For a moment I was panic-stricken. I was lost, hopelessly lost in eternal darkness, unable to see my dials and instruments, speeding endlessly through the unknown! It was the end! Never again would I see old earth, my own little speck in endlessness. Never again would I feel Doc’s fond grip on my shoulder, see the flash of black Tom’s ivory teeth, handle the loved familiar instruments, gaze through the powerful microscope at the endless crystalline forms showing so clearly in the blazing light of I flushed and grinned sheepishly. Here were the lamps at my forehead and wrists, ready to flash into instant light, real, visible, white light from a source independent of outside vibration. Of course Doc had prepared for such an emergency! I puckered my lips to form the whistle that would send them flashing into luminescence, then halted as other light burst on me, first glorious purple, then sapphire, emerald, all the colors of the spectrum, leap- ing, playing, and—taking shape! I slowed down, released my death-grip on the control, stopped, and awkwardly scrambling, shot upwards. I was floating, helpless in my air-distended suit, in a pool of deep green, steaming liquid. I floated about as high as I would have at home, in the sea. And sure enough, water it was. Above me, in the misty heavens, shone a great ball of green flame, filling nearly a quarter of the dome of the blue- green, a monster sun. More I could not see, for the quartz globe that held my head had sunk deeper than the rest, and was almost entirely submerged. Putting my hand to my belt, I felt for the button that controlled the peri- scope, found it; raised my “extra eye” into position. Sure enough, there was land near me, steep clay banks, a great level platform of deep purple crystal, and above, showing at the summit of the red clay clifis—grass. 21 Comircbooks;com