Avon Fantasy Reader No. 9 — page 45: what you’re looking at

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

lithe black body ending in a flat tail. A few moments later, on the shore, we found one, also dead, and examined it. It took certain gases direct from the air, then used them over and over again by running them through the radioactive water until they could be purified no more. We turned from the sight of the carnivorous plant devouring its prey. The crushed, pulpy form, the dripping juices, the eagerly writhing yellow scum—all sickened us. Was this the sole life of this inner world? . As if in answer to our question, a gap appeared in the cliffs, opening into a huge amphitheater beyond. Its floor was smooth and black, and in its center, some ten miles from us, towered a great black city, a coned city like Yzdral and Luda. On its great outer walls, in its streets, was no sign of life, but between us and it rose a thin barrage of pale blue flame, rising sheer to the lowering ceiling of luminous clouds. that shed a ghastly white gleam over the entire scene. Doc pointed below. _ A gate had once closed the gap in the cliffs, but now it was shorn through a as if it had been wax, seared clean, with no clue as to its destruction save a slightly billowing layer of rock that covered the otherwise smooth floor. It had been melted! On the side toward the swamp a thin ribbon of orichalcum had stretched across the pass, the source of the. blue barrage, but now it, too, was twisted and fused. Here and there lay a blackened, dis- torted body, all that was left of the warders. “Atlantides,’ said Doc. “Apparently they came down here, those who survived, to avenge the death of their race. They built a city, a stronghold from which to attack the Things that had exterminated their race. They could live here with respirators, as you can see from the bodies. They warred against the Things, perhaps they were very nearly successful, but finally their hiding place was found and attacked, their barriers broken down, their last stronghold shattered. I do not understand how that bar- rage was retained after their destruction. Perhaps it is automatic. But——” “Doc! Look!” I shouted. “It’s happening now! They’re still there.” Extending from the city walls for several miles beyond the wall of flame, a sheet of pure white was hiding the black rock. With the binoculars we could see that tiny jets were spraying the rock with white enamel. And now, revealed in relief against the white, a cloud of vapor appeared, intensely black, surrounding the city. It seemed to be stirring slowly within itself, though we could see it only as a silhouette, to be moving uneasily to and fro as if it were waiting impatiently for something. Now, suddenly, the ring thinned. Opposite us the vapor flowed out from the main body in a single great cloud that took a spherical shape, then sped to the barrage, tried it, flowed swiftly around its circumference, testing and trying all its surface. A smaller mass detached itself and returned to the main body. In response, the line thinned again, and the great sphere was doubled in size, reinforced. Off to the right of our position it formed a steep truncated cone, from which tiny darting wisps of black mist stretched forth to play over the face of the wall of flame. Now they returned, went forth again explor- 43 COMMIGCIOOKS.EOLn BN OE EE ——