Avon Fantasy Reader No. 9 — page 70: what you’re looking at

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

Days passed, and I detected new tactics on the part of my father. He evi- dently decided to risk all in an attempt to dodge the projectiles, for I saw that Magong was shifting out of her orbit—moving in closer to the sun in an eccentric fashion that would make it dificult for an operator to properly aim and time a projectile intended to strike her. Soon I saw that he had moved into the orbit of Earth, then beyond it, between the orbits of Earth and Venus. At first I could not fathom his plans, but gradually they dawned on me, as I saw Earth come along and Magong fall in behind her. It was his intention, I felt sure, to use the larger planet as a shield against the devastating Martian proje ectiles, Something must have gone wrong with his control station, however, for Magong presently fell behind the Earth in her race around the sun, then rose, crossing her orbit behind her, and hurried forward to catch her once more—this time outside Earth’s orbit, between Earth and Mars. Something, also, had happened to Magong’s rotation on her axis. Whereas she had previously revolved once in every twelve hours, she now turned with exceed- ing slowness. Rushing on past Earth, she continued for some distance, then paused and fell back once more to wait for the larger planet. Magong, I could clearly see, was caught in the gravity net of Earth. Thus she had become a satellite of that planet, even as the huge broken projectile of Lido Kan _had become two satellites of Mars. Lido Kan kept up his pitiless bombardment of Magong, once he had grown accustomed to her new orbit, with deadly accuracy. Once, and once only did [ see him miss, the projectile, which was a relatively wall one passing Ma- gong and striking somewhere on the planet Earth—I could not tell just where because of the silvery cloud envelope that hid her surface from view. Although fully four-fifths of her population must have been wiped out by this time, I knew that Magong still kept up the fight, as the atmosphere in my room grew rarer each day until breat hing was a painful effort. One day Lido Kan entered my room. Strapped to his back was an appa- ratus containing concentrated air, from which he took mouthfuls from time feo tiie. “I come\to take leave of you, young whelp of P’an-ku,” he said. “My people are ing by the millions for want of air, thanks to the infernal rays which your father has managed to keep trained on us. Our dissipated atmos- phere cannot be brought back, nor could we manufacture a new one, from the elements locked in the soil, in less than a thousand years. I am leaving, therefore, with the five hundred large ether ships I still possess, for. the. purpose of colonizing the damp, unhealthful and savage planet Earth. My Wave projecting stations, I will leave manned, each being provided with a supply of ee eeicrated air, and committed to the task of continuing the bombardment of Magong until death overtakes them. “I will have one of your hands unfettered, and will leave you plenty of food and water so that-when death finally oie you, you wiil be slain CoOnniclooolks (©)