Avon Fantasy Reader No. 13 — page 125: what you’re looking at

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

the whole story ... he could not know. He never listened to the radio, never read a newspaper. : But abruptly the whole thing fitted together in his brain like the missing ‘piece of a puzzle into its slot. The significance of it all gripped him with damning clarity. There were not sufficient minds in existence to retain the material world in its mundane form. Some other power from another di- mension was fighting to supersede man’s control and take his universe into its own plane! Abruptly Mr. Chambers closed the book, shoved it back in the case and picked up his hat and coat. He had to know more. He had to find someone who could tell him. He moved through the hall to the door, emerged into the street. On the walk he looked skyward, trying to make out the sun. But there was no sun—only an all pervading grayness that shrouded everything, not a fog, but a gray emptiness that seemed devoid of life, of any movement. The walk led to his gate and there it ended, but as he moved forward the sidewalk came into view and the house ahead loomed out of the gray, but a house with differences. He moved forward rapidly. Visibility extended only a few feet and as he approached them the houses materialized like two dimensional pictures with- out perspective, like twisted cardboard soldiers lining up for review on a ‘misty morning. Once he stopped and looked back and saw that the gray- ness had closed in behind him. The houses were wiped out, the sidewalk 5 faded into nothing. Shee , ' _ He shouted, hoping to attract attention. But his voice frightened him. It ' seemed to ricochet up and into the higher levels of the sky, as if a giant - door had been opened to a mighty room high above him. ~ He went on until he came to the corner of Lexington. There, on the curb, he stopped and stared. The gray wall was thicker there but he did not realize how close it was until he glanced down at his feet and saw there was nothing, nothing at all beyond the curbstone. No dull gleam of wet asphalt, no sign of a street. It was as if all eternity ended here at the corner of Maple and Lexington. With a wild cry, Mr. Chambers turned and ran. Back down the street he raced, coat streaming after him in the wind, bowler hat bouncing on his head. » Panting, he reached the gate and stumbled up the walk, thankful that meegt still was there. . On the stoop he stood for a moment, breathing hard. He glanced back over his shoulder and a queer feeling of inner numbness seemed to well over him. At that moment the gray nothingness appeared to thin, the ' enveloping curtain fell away, and he saw... : _ Vague and indistinct, yet cast in stereoscopic outline, a gigantic city was limned against the darkling sky. It was a city fantastic with cubed domes, spires, and aerial bridges and flying buttresses. Tunnel-like streets, flanked on either side by shining metallic ramps and runways, stretched endlessly to the vanishing point. Great shafts of multicolored light probed huge stream- : ers and ellipses above the higher levels. Bae x 123 COMM|COOOLSCOl