Avon Murder Mystery Monthly No. 41 — page 84: what you’re looking at

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

86 THE METAL MONSTER lief from that strain of the abnormal under which we had labored s0 long. To my surprise I found that I was hungry, and with deep relief I watched Ruth partake of food and drink even though lightly. About her seemed to hover something of the ethereal, elusive, and dis- quieting. Was it the strangely pellucid light that gave the effect, I won- dered: and knew it was not, for as I scanned her covertly, there fell ipon her face that shadow of inhuman tranquillity, of unearthly with- drawal which, I guessed, had more than anything else maddened Vent- nor into his attack upon the Disk. | I watched her fight against it, drive it back. White lipped, she raised her head and met my gaze. And in her eyes I read both terror and— shame. It came to me that painful as it might be for her the time for ques- tioning had come. oe | “Ruth,” I said, “I know it’s not necessary to remind you that we're in a tight place. Every fact and every scrap of knowledge that we can lay hold of is of the utmost importance in enabling us to determine our course. - “I’m going to repeat your brother’s question—what did Norhala do to you? And what happened when you were floating before the Disk?” The blaze of interest in Drake’s eyes at these questions changed to amazement at her stricken recoil from them. “There was nothing,” she whispered—then defiantly—“nothing. | don’t know what you mean.” | . “Ruth!” I spoke sharply now, in my own perplexity. “You do know. . You must tell us—for his sake.” I pointed toward Ventnor. She drew a long breath. “You're right—of course,” she said unsteadily. “Only I—I thought maybe I could fight it out myself. But you'll have to know it—there’s a taint upon me.” I caught in Drake’s swift glance the echo of my own thrill of ap- prehension for her sanity. “Yes,” she said, now quietly. “Some new and alien thing within my heart, my brain, my soul. It came to me from Norhala when we rode _.the flying block, and—he—~sealed upon me when I was in—his”—again she crimsoned, “embrace.” And as we gazed at her, incredulously: “A thing that urges me to forget you two—and Martin—and all the world I’ve known. That tries to pull me from you—from all—to drift untroubled in some vast calm filled with an ordered ecstasy of peace. And whose calling I want, God help me, oh, so desperately to heed! “It whispered to me first,” she said, “from Norhala—when she put ECOMC OOO (GO)