Avon Fantasy Reader No. 9 — page 39: what you’re looking at

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

While Doc examined the camera, I went.alone down the narrow pas- sageway that led off from the balcony. It was lighted, but after traversing a rather short flight of steps I came upon a great room built into the side of the building between the inner dome and the carved roof of the ex- terior. Through the crystal ceiling the light from the sphere above shone in, lighting the whole room brightly, though similar spheres, unlighted, were poised at intervals throughout its annular length. All the way around the building it extended, with passageways extending up and down into other parts of the building and of the city. Everywhere were tiers of strongly bound manuscripts and parchment rolls, while one entire section of hundreds of shelves contained roll upon roll ee film, almost exactly like our own moving picture film, but metallic and very thin. Leading from this section, a broad stair opened into a darkened room in the very peak of the dome, filled with — small booths capable of being connected with each other, so as to accom- modate a party. Each booth was provided with a projection apparatus and ‘ a small and a large screen, the latter probably used when two or more booths were joined for a number of spectators. It was the library of the priests, and,.as we later found, of the nobles of the marble zone. I hurried back to Doc, to find him on his way to look for me. He carried’ the camera and a roll of film like that in the library. : “Look for a projector,” he called, as he saw me. “This film won’t need developing, and I think well see something interesting if we run it off.” | “Pye found one,” I replied, “and what is more, Pve found the library. Come on, I want to see what you have.” Alas for my hopes! Doc had to explore the library before we went a step farther, and then he insisted upon taking apart a camera and a projector to show how the things worked. As he explained it, light and sound activated a sort of ray which in turn produced an indelible impression cn - a paper-thin metal strip. The film needed no developing and was naturally far more durable than our own films. The frequency of exposure was almost doubled, so that every slightest motion and undertone was recorded faithfully. In the projector, a second scanning ray controlled a sort of micro- phone apparatus as well as a battery of tubes of different frequencies which produced fluorescence of various colors on an electro-chemically treated screen. Those are the fundamentals only; technically there was a great deal more to the matter than would appear at first sight, especially in the pro- | jector. We settled down in the rather comfortable mesh-seats of the booth, while Doc put in the two reels that he had found in the camera. Alone, each was a perfect record of the type of our own moving pictures. Together, there was a decided effect of depth, due to a queer interference-phenomenon, peculiar to the special arrangement of treated screen and tubes, that made the result startlingly real. Part of the film, which had not been exposed, Doc had run off, after leaving a small gap, in scenes of the building as it now 3 EComichooks.com