Avon Murder Mystery Monthly No. 41 — page 135: what you’re looking at

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

4,. MERRITT 137 Thicker pulsed the lances of the aurora; changed to vast billowing gurtains. The faceted wheel at the top of the central spire of the cones - swung upward; a light began to stream from the cones themselves—no pillar now, but.a vast circle that shot whirling into the heavens like a noose. And like a noose it-caught the aurora, snared it! Into it the coruscating mists of mysterious flame swirled; lost their colors, became a torrent of light flying down through the ring as though through a funnel top. _ Down poured the radiant corpuscles, bathing the cones. They did not glow as they had beneath the flood from the shields, and if they grew it, was too Slowly for me to see; the shields were motionless, Now here, now there, I saw the other rings whirl up—smaller mouths of lesser cones hidden within the body of the Metal Monster, I knew, sucking down this magnetic flux, these countless ions gushing forth from the sun. Then as when first we had seen the phenomenon in the valley of the blue poppies, the ring vanished, hidden by a fog of coruscations—as though the force streaming through the rings became diffused after it had been caught. Crouching, forgetful of our juxtaposition to, these two unhuman, anomalous Things, we watched the play of the tentacles upon the up- thrust rods. | But if we forgot, we wereinot forgotten! The Emperor slipped nearer; seemed to contemplate us—quizzically, amused; as.a man would look down upon some curious and interesting insect, a puppy, a kitten. | sensed this amusement in the Disk’s regard even as I had sensed its soul of awful tranquillity; as we had sensed the playful malice in the eye stars of the living corridor, the curiosity in the column that had dropped us into the valley. | I felt a push—a push that was filled with a colossal, glittering ‘playful- ness. Under it I went spinning away for yards—Drake twirling close be- hind me. The force, whatever it was, swept out from the Emperor, but in it was no slightest hint of anger or of malice, no slightest shadow of the sinister. | Rather it was as though one would blow away a feather; urge gently some little lesser thing away. | The ‘Disk watched our whirlings—with a sparkling, jeweled laughter in its pulsing radiance. | Again came the push—farther yet we spun. Suddenly before us, across the pave, shone out a twinkling trail—the wakened eyes of the cubes that formed it, marking out a pathway for us to follow. ECOMC OOO (GO)