Avon Murder Mystery Monthly No. 41 — page 116: what you’re looking at

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

118 THE METAL MONSTER gripping like frightened children each other’s hands. Then Drake stopped. | | By all the Aell of this place,” he said, solemnly, “I'll run no more. After all—we’re men. If they kill us, they kill us. But by the God who made me I’ll run from them no more. I'll die standing.” His courage steadied me. Defiantly we marched on. Up from below us, down from the roof, out from the walls of our way the hosts of eyes gleamed and twinkled upon us. | a “Who could have believed it?” he muttered, half to himself. “A living city of them! A living nest of them; a prodigious living nest of metal!” “A nest?” I caught the word. What did it suggest? ‘That was it—the nest of the army ants, the city of the army ants, that Beebe had studied in the South American jungles and once described to me. After all, was this more wonderful, more unbelievable than that—the city of ants which was formed by their living bodies precisely as this was of the bodies of the Cubes? | How had Beebe* phrased it—‘the home, the nest, the hearth, the nursery, the bridal suite, the kitchen, the bed and board of the army ants.” Built of and occupied by those blind and dead and savage little insects which by the guidance of smell alone carried on the most intri- cate operations, the most complex activities. Nothing here was stranger than that, I reflected—if once one could rid the mind of the paralyzing influence of the shapes of the Metal Things. Whence came the stimuli that moved them, the stimuli to which they reacted? Well then—whence and how came the orders to which the ants responded; that bade them open #Azs corridor in their nest, close that, orien Le chamber, fill that one? Was one more mysterious than the other: Breaking into my current of thoughts came consciousness that I was moving with increased speed; that my body was fast growing lighter. Simultaneously with this recognition I felt myself lifted from the — floor of the corridor and levitated with considerable rapidity forward; looking down I saw that floor several feet below me. Drake’s arm ‘wound itself around my shoulder. “Closing up behind us,” he muttered. “They're putting us—out.” It was, indeed, as though the passageway had wearied of our delib- erate progress. Had decided to—give us a lift. Rearward it was shutting. I noted with interest how accurately this motion kept pace with our own speed, and how fluidly the walls seemed to run together. Our movement became accelerated. It was as though we floated buoyantly, weightless, upon some swift stream. The sensation was *William Beebe, AHantic Monthly, October, 19109. GOGO .S (GO)