Avon Murder Mystery Monthly No. 41 — page 144: what you’re looking at

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

146 THE METAL MONSTER of the Flying Things, the Mark Makers—one of the incredible mes- sengers. - | | Close upon its fall came increase in the turmoil of the crowding throng awaiting us. Came, too, an abrupt change in our own motion. The long arcs lessened. We were dropped more swiftly. . | _ Far away in the direction from which the Flying Thing had flown | sensed another movement; something coming that carried ‘with it sub- tle suggestion of unlikeness to all the other incessant, linked movement over the pit. Closer it drew. } “Norhala!” gasped Drake. | | Robed in her silken amber swathings, red-copper hair streaming, woven with elfin sparklings, she was racing toward the City like some lovely witch, riding upon the back of a steed of huge cubes. | Nearer she raced. More direct became our fall. Now we were drop- ping as though at the end of an unreeling plummet cord; the floor of the valley was no more than two hundred feet below. “Norhala!” we shouted; and again and again—again “Norhala!” Before our cries could have reached her the cubes swerved; came to a halt beneath us. Through the hundred feet of space between I caught the brilliancy of the weird constellations in Norhala’s great eyes—saw_ with a vague but no less dire foreboding that on her face dwelt a ter-. rifying, a blasting wrath. Oo As softly as though by the hand of a giant of cloud we were lifted out from the wall, and were set with no perceptible shock beside her on the back of the cubes. — | : “Norhala—” I stopped. For this was no Norhala whom we had known. Gone was all calm, vanished every trace of unearthly tranquil- lity. IX was a Norhala awakened at last—all human. | Yet in the still rage that filled her I sensed a force, an intensity, more than human. Over the blazing eyes the brows were knit in a rigid, golden bar; the delicate nostrils were pinched; the sweet red mouth was white and merciless. It was as though in its long sleep her human self had gathered more than human strength, and that now, awakened and unleashed, the violence of its rage touched the vibrant zenith of that sphere of which her quiet had been the nadir. “ was like an urn filled and flaming with the fires of the Gods of wrath. What was it that had awakened her—what in awakening. had changed the inpouring human consciousness into this flood of fury? Foreboding gripped me. “Norhalal” My voice was shaking. “Those-we left-—” “They are gone!” The golden voice was octaves deeper, vibrant, throb- GOGO .S (GO)