Avon Murder Mystery Monthly No. 41 — page 80: what you’re looking at

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

82 THE METAL MONSTER Ls like Ventnor to flay himself like this for what he thought stupidity, like him to make this effort to admit his supposed fault and-crave for- giveness—as like him as that mad attack upon the flaming Disk IN its own temple, surrounded by its ministers, had been so bafflingly unlike his usual cool, collected: self. | “Martin,” I called, bending closer, “it’s nothing, old friend. No one blames you. Try to rouse yourself.” “Dear,” it was Ruth,.passionately tender, “it’s me. Can you hear me?” “Only speck of consciousness and motionless in the void,” the whisper began again, “Terribly alive, terribly alone. Seem outside space yet— still in body..Can’t see, hear, feel—short-circuited from every sense— but in some strange way realize you—Ruth, Walter, Drake. “See without seeing—here floating in darkness that is also light— black light—indescribable. In touch, too, with these—” _ Again the voice trailed into silence; returned, word and phrase pour- ing forth disconnected, with a curious and turbulent rhythm, like rush- ing wave crests linked by half-seen threads of the spindrift, vocal frag- ments of thought swiftly assembled by some subtle faculty of the mind as they fell into a coherent, incredible message. _ “Group consciousness—gigantic—operating within our sphere—oper- ating also in spheres of vibration, energy, force—above, below one to which humanity reacts—perception, command forces known to us— but in greater degree—cognizant, manipulate unknown energies— senses known to us—unknown—can’t realize them fully—impossible cover, only impinge on contact points akin to our senses, forces—even these ‘profoundly modified by additional ones—metallic, crystalline, magnetic, electric—inorganic with every power of organic—conscious- ness basically same as ours—profoundly changed by differences in mechanism through which it finds expression—difference our bodies—~ theirs. | _. “Conscious, mobile—inexorable, invulnerable. Getting clearer—see more clearly—see—” the voice shrilled out in a shuddering, thin lash of despair—“No! No—oh, God—no!” “Then clearly and solemnly: “And God said: let us make men in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over all the earth, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” A silence; we bent closer, listening; the still, small voice took up the thread once more—but clearly further on. Something we had missed between that text from Genesis and what we were now hearing; some- thing that even as he had warned us, he had not been able to articulate. The whisper broke through clearly in the middle of a sentence. “Nor is Jehovah the God of myriads of millions who through those GOGO (GO)