Avon Murder Mystery Monthly No. 41 — page 136: what you’re looking at

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

138 THE METAL MONSTER Immediately upon their gleaming forth I saw the Emperor turn—his immense, oval, metallic back now black against the radiance of the cones. | Up from the narrow gleaming path—a path opened | knew by some command—lifted the hosts of tiny unseen hands; the sentient currents of magnetic force that were the fingers and arms of the Metal Hordes. They held us, thrust us along, passed us forward. Faster and faster we moved, speeding on the wake of the long-vanished metal monks. I turned my head—the cones were already far away. Over the tablet of limpid violet phosphorescence still hovered the planes of the Keeper; and still was the oval of the Emperor black against the radiance. But the twinkling, sparkling path between us and them was gone— was fading out close behind us as we swept onward. Faster and faster grew our pace. The cylindrical wall loomed close. A high oblong portal showed within it. Into this we were carried. Be- fore us stretched a corridor precisely similar to that which, closing upon us, had forced us completely out into the hall: Unlike that passage, its floor lifted steeply—a smooth and shining slide up which no man could climb. A shaft, indeed, which thrust up- ward straight as an arrow at an angle of at least thirty degrees and whose end or turning we could not see.: Up and up it cleared its way through the City—through the Metal Monster—closed only by the in- ability of the eye to pierce the faint luminosity that thickened by dis- tance became impenetrable. : | For an instant we hovered upon its threshold. But the impulse, the command, that had carried us thus far was not to stop here. Into it and up it we were thrust, our feet barely touching the glimmering surface; lifted by the force that emanated from its floor, carried on by the force that pressed out from the sides. Up and up we went—scores of feet—hundreds— CHAPTER XXII The Ensorcelled ‘ Chamber &ZOODWIN!” Drake broke the silence; desperately he was striving to keep his fear out of his voice. “Goodwin—this isn’t the way to get out. We're going up—farther away all the time from the—the gates!” | | GOGO .S (GO)