Avon Murder Mystery Monthly No. 41 — page 98: what you’re looking at

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

100 THE METAL MONSTER Well? At any rate the goddess was born—shedder of the lightnings even from her birth. And she is as you see her. “Cleave to your kind! Cleave to your kind!” Suddenly he shrilled. “Better is it to be whipped by your brother than to be eaten by the tiger. Cleave to your kind. Look—I will show you the way to them.” He sprang to his feet, clasped my wrist in one of his long hands, led me through the curtained oval into the cylindrical hall, parted the cur- tainings of Norhala’s bedroom and pushed me within. Over the floor he slid, still holding fast to me, and pressed against the farther wall. An ovoid slice of the gemlike material slid aside, revealing a door- way. I glimpsed a path, a trail, leading into a forest pallid green be- neath the wan light. This way thrust itself like a black tongue into the boskage and vanished in the depths. “Follow it.” He pointed. “Take those who came with you and fol- low it.” | The wrinkles upon his face writhed with his eagerness. “You will go?” panted Yuruk. “You will take them and’go by that path?” | “Not yet,” I answered absently. “Not yet.” - And was brought abruptly to full alertness, vigilance, by the flame of rage thiat filled the eyes thrust so close. “Lead back,” I directed curtly. He slid the door into place, turned sullenly. I followed, wondering what were the. sources of the bitter hatred he so plainly bore for us; the reasons for his eagerness to be rid of us despite the commands of this woman who to him at least was goddess. | _ And by that curious human habit of seeking for the complex when the simple answer lies close, failed to recognize that it was jealousy of us that was the root of his behavior; that he wished to be, as 1t would seem he had been for years, the only human thing near Nor- hala; failed to realize this, and with Ruth and Drake was terribly to pay for this failure. I looked down upon the pair, sleeping soundly; upon Ventnor lost still in trance. | | “Sit,” [ ordered the eunuch. “And turn your back to me.” I dropped down beside Drake, my mind wrestling with the mys- tery, but every sense alert for movement from the black. Glibly enough I had passed over Dick’s questioning as to the consciousness of the Metal People; now I faced it knowing it to be the very crux of these incredible phenomena; admitting, too, that despite all my special plead- ing, about that point swirled in my own mind the thickest mists of ECOMC OOO (GO)