Avon Murder Mystery Monthly No. 41 — page 177: what you’re looking at

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

A. MERRITT 179 Yonger muffled nor faint. ‘They roared; they seemed to pelt through air and drop upon us; they beat about our ears with thunderous tattoo like covered caverns drummed upon by Titans with trunks of great trees. The drumming did not die; it grew louder, more vehement; defiant and deafening. Within the Thing under us a mighty pulse began to throb, accelerating rapidly to the rhythm of that clamorous roll. _ I saw Norhala draw herself up, sharply; stand listening and alert. Under me, the throbbing turned to an uneasy churning,’a.ferment. “Drums?” muttered Drake. “Theyre no drums. It’s drum fire. It’s like a dozen Marnes, a dozen Verduns. But where could batteries like those.come from?” | “Drums,” whispered Ventnor. “They are drums. The drums of \ Destiny!” Louder the roaring grew. Now it was a tremendous rhythmic cannon- ading. The Thing halted. The tower that upheld Ruth and Norhala swayed, bent over the gap between us, touched the top on which we rode. | | Gently the two were plucked up; swiftly they were set beside us. Came a shrill, keen wailing—louder than ever I had heard before. There was an earthquake trembling; a maelstrom swirling in which we spun; a swift sinking. | ~The Thing split in two. Up before us rose a stupendous, stepped pyra- mid; little smaller it was than that which Cheops built to throw its shadows across holy Nile. Into it streamed, over it clicked, score upon score of cubes, building it higher and higher. It lurched forward—away from us. | From Norhala came a single cry—resonant, blaring like a wrathful, golden trumpet. The speeding shape halted, hesitated; it seemed about to return. Crashed down upon us an abrupt crescendo of the distant drumming; peremptory, commanding. The shape darted forward; raced away crushing to straw the trees beneath it in a full quarter-mile-wide swath. Great gray eyes wide, filled with incredulous wonder, stunned disbe- lief, Norhala for an instant faltered. Then out of her white throat, through ‘her red lips pelted a tempest of staccato buglings. Under them what was left of the Thing leaped, tore on. Norhala’s: flaming hair crackled and streamed; about her body of milk and pearl— about Ruth’s creamy skin—a radiant nimbus began to glow. In the distance I saw a.sapphire spark; knew it for Norhala’s home. Not far from it now was the rushing pyramid—and it came to me that within that shape was strangely neither globe nor pyramid. Nor except for the trembling cubes that made the platform on which we stood, did the shrunken Thing carrying us hold any unit of the Metal Monster ECOMC OOO (GO)