Avon Murder Mystery Monthly No. 41 — page 141: what you’re looking at

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

A, MERRITT 143 We peered into a vast and columnless vault, a limitless temple of light. High up in it, strewn manifold, danced and shone soft orbs like tender suns. No pale gilt luminaries of frozen rays were these. Effulgent, jubi- lant, they famed—orbs red as wine of rubies that Djinns of Al Shiraz press from his enchanted vineyards of jewels; twin orbs rosy white as breasts of pampered Babylonian maids; orbs of pulsing: opalescences and orbs of the murmuring green of bursting buds of spring, crocused orbs and-orbs of royal coral; suns that throbbed with singing rays of wedded rose and pearl and of sapphires and topazes amorous; orbs born of cool virginal dawns and of imperial sunsets and orbs that were the tuliped fruit of mating rainbows of fre. They danced, these countless aureoles; they swung and threaded in radiant choral patterns, in linked harmonies of light. And as they danced their gay rays caressed and bathed myriads of the Metal Folk open beneath them. Under the rays the jewel fires of disk and star and cross leaped and pulsed and danced to the same bright rhythm. We sought the source of the music—a tremendous thing of shim- mering crystal pipes like. some colossal organ. Out of the radiarice around it great flames gathered, shook into sight with streamings and pennonings, in bannerets and bandrols, leaped upon the crystal pipes, and-merged within them. And as the pipes drank them the flames changed into sound! Throbbing bass.viols of roaring vernal winds, diapasons of waterfall and torrents—these*had been flames of emerald; flaming trumpetings of desire that had been great streamers of scarlet—rose flames that had dissolved into echoes of fulfillment; diamond burgeonings that melted into silver symphonies like mist entangled Pleiades transmuted into melodies; chameleon harmonies to which the strange suns danced. ‘And now I saw—realizing with a clutch of indescribable awe, with a sense of inexplicable profanation the secret of this ensorcelled chamber. Within every pulsing rose of irised fire that was the heart of a disk, from every rubrous, clipped rose of a cross, and from every rayed pur- ple petaling of a star there nestled a tiny disk, a tiny cross, a tiny star, luminous and symboled even as those that cradled them. The Metal Babes building like crystals from hearts of radiance be- neath the play of jocund orbs! Incredible blossomings of crystal and of metal whose lullabies and cradle songs were singing symphonies of flame. It was the birth chamber of the City! The womb of the Metal Monster! Abruptly the walls of the niche sparkled out, the glittering eye points regarding us with a most disquieting suggestion of sentinels who; slum- GOGO .S (GO)