Avon Fantasy Reader No. 9 — page 44: what you’re looking at

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

tion, and sealed the pit, lest the inflow of air consume the vegetation of their well-nigh airless world. It would seem that any plan of conquest had been abandoned, For a while we wondered how we were to get through without break- ing the crystal, and spreading the alarm as the upper air rushed in. Then Doc discovered a sort of narrow air-lock in the pit’s side, through which a single person could reach the inner world. Alone he went through, and returned alone. Beneath was the mechanism that moved the valve and he thought that he could operate it by himself, if I would pilot the aero. So, comparing our chronometers, we went to our posts. The seconds ticked off, slowly, slowly. Then, with a rush, the disk swung down and I found myself battling a screaming tempest that hurled me down, down until the pallid sea engulfed me. But the aero was water-tight and air-tight, and when I bobbed to the surface, the disk was closed, the wind had stopped, and Doc was dropping swiftly toward me. I opened the hatch quickly and soon we were speeding over the strange landscape of this innermost world, with Doc at the controls. Bordering the pale sea, and extending for perhaps twenty miles back from its edge was the rocky waste, black and ragged, stained everywhere with the red lichen like great clots of drying blood. Wherever there were crevices in which water settled a yellow scum formed at its edge, be it in motion or stagnant, sending out twisting arms into the grey, dead pools and the oddly phosphorescing rivulets in search of some food or other, I know not what. Other than the Things, we saw but one creature in that inner world that was not plainly of the vegetable kingdom. It was a world of strange plants and plant-forms, adapted by the radioactive nature of the soil and water to exist upon the few thin gases of its air, or to live parasit- ically on one another. Beyond the mountainous region in which we found ourselves, the land sloped down on all sides to a strange, unwholesome forest that filled most — of the inner world. Indeed, almost all of the land that we saw, with the exception of the narrew rim of low mountains, was below the level of the white sea. Seepage fed the pools of the hot, fetid lowlands and dense clouds _ of vapor rose from the many swamps. For a while we hung over it, seek- ing a clue to the Things, then skirted the edge of the smooth cliffs that marked the edge of the mountains. The vegetation of the place was utterly unnatural and nauseating. Thrusting out of the steaming scum-covered pools were great tree-shapes with writhing, moving roots, and having smooth trunks like an eel’s body. There was no foliage, but from the top of the trunk sprang a mass of slimy tentacular branches terminating in cup-like organs of a smoky orange, that contrasted strongly with the deathly white of the trunk and branches. From these hung little clusters of pale yellow fingers, lax or twisting hungrily. As we watched, a long branch darted down into the water near a root, then rose, the tentacles clutching the body of a small reptile, legless, with great white eyes, crimson gill-organs and a 42 | | ~ COMIC LOOK<S.COnN Sam mama ia a as Lc a cas ccaLcé cas i