Avon Fantasy Reader No. 9 — page 75: what you’re looking at

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

obs passed, I learned that these people, my children and descendants included, rarely lived longer than a century, their average life span being about sey- enty years. When I passed the century mark without showing any signs of senility, it was noised about that I was an immortal. This belief increased ‘my power, and consequently I neither denied nor affirmed its truth, al- ‘though I knew I should be middle-aged:at two hundred and would prob- ably be dead before I had traveled far in my third century of existence, as three centuries was the average life span for my race, and a total of four centuries rarely attained. Having now reached my two hundred and ninety-eighth year, I am ready to return to my maker, leaving a hundred thousand descendants— a proud-race who have long since ceased to intermarry with the white- skinned savages. They are known as the Celestial People, and I have made them lords over the lesser races of my mighty empire. This record, which I have graven on age-defying stone with my own hands, will be sealed in the cave in which I am cutting it. I have calcu- lated chat, not less than five thousand seus hence, the door of the cave will be revealed by erosion. As the end approaches I feel the gift of prevision—the urge to prophesy. When my message is found, my descendants. will be numbered by millions. They will not be scientists, but religionists. I see this tendency persisting in them, up to this day, and it will continue. Although I have taught them ‘to read and write the language of my people, and to worship T’ien, I have _long since abandoned the attempt to teach them science. My every effort to get them to grasp even the rudiments of astronomy and physics was un- availing. My simplest statements along these lines were interpreted as sym- bolic religious utterances and wound around superstitious beliefs. The pure language of my forefathers, together with the characters I have taught them, is undergoing a gradual change. It may be that, five thousand years hence, this writing will be unintelligible to my descend- ants. Time, however, should raise up a man among them, who will have the intelligence and the persistence necessary to decipher it. I picture him, however, as a studious man of religion, and therefore uninterested in its faentific aspects—and my scientific mind yearns to communicate with others of its kind—minds that will understand. : To my descendant, I therefore give this charge: Translate this writing into the languages of the leading nations of Earth. Then journey hence, to a place where you will find a pit three quarters of a mile-in width and more than five hundred and fifty feet deep. - It will be ringed about by a wall a hundred and fifty feet in height. My figures are approximate- because they are only calculations, based on the size and speed of the meteoric mass which Mars projected to Earth. Because it is unique on Earth, and exactly resembles the pits on my - native planet, men of science who are interested in Magong will eventu- ally visit it, When you have found it, you will secrete yourself in the neigh- 73 icomicbooks.