Avon Murder Mystery Monthly No. 41 — page 191: what you’re looking at

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

A, MERRITT 193 From the Pit came a blinding, insupportable brilliancy. From every rigid tower gleamed out jeweled fires; their clinging units opened into blazing star and disk and cross. The City was a hill of living gems over which flowed torrents of pale molten gold. The Pit blazed. There followed an appalling tensity; a prodigious gathering of force; a panic stirring concentration of energy. Thicker fell the clouds of sparkling atoms—higher rose the yellow flood. Ventnor cried out. I could not hear him, but I read his purpose—and so did Drake. Up on his broad shoulders he swung Ruth as though she had been a child. Back through the throbbing veils we ran; passed out of them. | “Back!” shouted Ventnor. “Back as far as you can!” On we raced; we reached the gateway of the cliffs; we dashed on and on—up the shining roadway toward the blue globe now a scant mile before us; ran sobbing, panting—ran, we knew, for our lives. _ Out of the Pit came a sound—I cannot describe it! An unutterably desolate, dreadful wail of despair, it shuddered past | us like the groaning of a broken-hearted star—anguished and awesome. It died: There rushed upon us a sea of that incredible loneliness, that longing for extinction that had assailed us in the haunted hollow where first we had seen Norhala. But its billows. were resistless, invincible. Beneath them we fell; were torn by desire for swift death. Dimly, through fainting eyes, I saw a dazzling brilliancy fil] the sky; heard with dying ears a chaotic, blasting roar. A wave of air thicker than water caught us up, hurled us hundreds of yards forward. It dropped us; in its wake rushed another wave, withering, scorching. It raced over us. Scorching though it was, within its heat was ener- gizing, revivifying force; something that slew the deadly despair and fed the fading fires of life. | I staggered to my feet; looked back. The veils were gone. The preci- pice walled gateway they had curtained was filled with a Plutonic glare as though it opened into the incandescent heart of a volcano. Ventnor clutched my shoulder, spun me around. He pointed to the sapphire house, started to run to it. Far ahead I saw Drake, the body of the girl clasped to his breast. The heat became blasting, insupport- able; my lungs burned. Over the sky above the canyon streaked a serpentine chain of light- nings. A sudden cyclonic gust swept the cleft, whirling us like leaves toward the Pit. | I threw myself upon my face, clutching at the smooth rock. A volley of thunder burst—but not the thunder of the Metal Monster or its GOGO .S (GO)