Avon Murder Mystery Monthly No. 41 — page 138: what you’re looking at

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

140 THE METAL MONSTER we arose. Now the gap was but a yard off—but we: were motionless— were tottering! a ‘Drake’s arms wrapped round me. With a tremendous effort he hurled me into the portal. I dropped at its edge, writhed swiftly around, saw him slipping, slipping down—thrust my hands out to him. He caught them. There came a wrench that tortured my arm sockets as though racked. But he held! | | Slowly—I writhed back: into the passage, dragging up his almost dead weight. His head appeared, his shoulders; there was a convulsion of the long body and he lay before me. For a minute or two we lay, flat upon our backs resting. I sat up. The passage was broad, silent; apparently as endless as that from which we had just escaped. | —_ Along it, above us, under us, the crystalline eyes were dim. It showed no sign of movement—yet had it done so there was nothing we could do save drop down the annihilating slant. Drake arose. _ “[’m hungry,” he said, “and I’m thirsty. I move that we eat and drink .and approximately be merry.” | He slung aside the haversack. From it we took food; from the can- teens we drank. We did not talk. Each knew what the other was think- ing; infrequently, and thank the eternal law that some call God for that, come crises in which speech seems not only petty but when against. it the mind rebels as a nauseous thing. ‘This was such a time. At last. I drew myself to my feet. “Let’s be going,” I said. . The corridor stretched straight before us; along it we paced. How far we walked I do not know; mile upon-mile, it seemed. It broadened abruptly into a vast hall. And this hall was filled with the Metal Hordes—was a gigantic work- shop of them. In every shape, in every form, they seethed and twiled about it. Upon its floor were heaps of shining ores, mounds of flashing gems, piles of ingots, metallic and crystalline. High and low through- out flamed the egg-shaped incandescences; floating furnaces both great and. small. 7 a | Before one of these forges, close to us, stood a Metal Thing. Its body was a twelve-foot column of smaller cubes. Upon the top was a hollow square formed of even lesser blocks—blocks hardly larger than the Little Things themselves, In the center of the open rectangle was an- other shaft, its top a two-foot square plate formed of a single cube. From the sides of the hollow square sprang long arms of spheres, each tipped by a tetrahedron. They moved freely, slipping about upon their curved points of contact and like a dozen little thinking hammers, ECOMC OOO (GO)