Avon Fantasy Reader No. 9 — page 43: what you’re looking at

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

city only, the capital of the empire, had a temple of Poseidon more lovely, but of that we saw only pictures, for Luda, their capital, was the scene of the great destruction. We carefully removed the library, the contents of the Museum of Nature and Art, and the scrolls from the Amphitheater of Law-Giving to the upper world and stored them just within the great gates, together with a great many scientific devices which we found in the dim vaults beneath the city. Incidentally, Doc sent back a large sample of the fungus-spores with the other things when the time came. We did not send them at once, for one of us must be there to receive them, and we had no intention of returning as yet. I do not know why, but I seemed to have a queer feeling that when we had once quit that other world, Poseidon, the Atlantides called it, we should not return. There was then no good rea- son for this, but—we have not. And we do not intend to. Among other things, we had found hundreds of aeros on every level, aeros of varied type and mechanism. The smaller ongs*we used to- transport our specimens to the ventilator, for only these long, narrow machines could pass through the door of the bronze cup at the shaft-bottom. Five of these, each loaded with orichalcum, we left with the other things. A sixth, an express areo too large to pass through the opening, we used later. It was long, cigar-shaped, with a crystal-enclosed control room and_ observation chambers*in the front and sides of the stream-lined bronze hull. By means of the powerful orichalcum motors, using a sort of atomic energy, it was able to attain terrific speeds. We have done a thousand miles an hour in it, here on earth, where we were able to bring it after we found that the disintegrating ray from the Underworld had also blasted the roof of the upper cavern, above Luda, and opened a passage to the surface of the planet. It is capable of more. Our work over, we started in the aero for Luda, about five hundred miles away, the maps showed. Using low speeds, we arrived in an hour and a half. There lay the dead city, buried in the malignant grey dust, there the gaping black pit, cutting through the vitals of the city into the unknown heart of the planet. Luda seemed bathed in a halo of green, as we approached it, for the light of the green sun poured through the riven roof in a great shaft of emerald light. We did not stop to examine the ruins, but few straight to the pit and dropped down into the darkness, the control room ‘revolving with us as the ship’s nose dipped. We went very slowly on our way down, so that the trip of a little over one hundred miles took over an hour. Then we slowed up and settled among the débris on the great crystal door that closed the narrow bottom | of the pit. Through it we could see a pale white sea lapping at a craggy shore. Above the harsh black beach rose a ragged plateau, covered with ugly blotches of the livid red lichens that grew everywhere in this strange, un- « friendly world in the planet’s depths. There was no more. Evidently the Things, whatever they might be, had carried away the débris for examina- 41 3 CORMICOOO<S.6Oln ra