Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 3 — page 110: what you’re looking at

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

484 I leaped beside it, began to look through the luggage for the medicine-case. I saw Norhala lead Ruth to the remain- ing cube. Saw the girl break away from her, leap beside me, and kneeling at her brother’s head, cradle it against her soft _ breast. needle and the strychnin for which I had been searching, croyched at Ventnor’s side and began my examination of him. The cubes quivered—swept away through the columned forest. We crouched, the three of us, blind to anything that lay about us, heedless of whatever road of wonders we were on, striving to strengthen in Ventnor the spark of life so mear extinction. And as I worked I dwelt upon the dread revelation that had been thrust upon me so brutally; looked aghast upon the wreck of all my webs of theory, all my scientific be- liefs, and all the hard-won standards whose Then as I found the hypodermic — ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. ~ foundations I had thought were imbedded in impregnable facts. For even until then, up to the very threshold of that revelation, subconscious- ly I had held fast to that selfsatisfying hy- pothesis that these shapes must be only marvelous automatons, perfect in their counterfeiting of human thought and will. I had done this, I admitted, now, because I had battled as man in defense of human vanity fed by the opiate lie that man, and man alone, can possess true consciousness, true reason! 3 Now I knew. The intelligence that ruled here was no sage, no sporadic miracle of science blown by the winds of chance to blossom in this hidden heart of the Hima- layas! | It was a mind of metal! A metal mind that looked on man as a plaything! A metal monster! This story will be continued in next week’s issue of the ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, the consolidated title under which both magazines will appear hereafter as one. \ Lt ‘lis FS Wes LRA Y . i - Veit My ; Ya vf | steamed out between the forts and _ turned toward the south. She only touched at Bahia del Toro to drop the mail on her downward trip, though on her re- turn toward the north she paused to take on a portion of her cargo. The Stars and Stripes at her masthead fluttered brightly in the golden sunshine of midday, and the T= white - painted fruit steamer Digitized by (“Go gle = Murray Leinster same sunshine made the sea seem bluer, and the palms greener and vividly alive. Half a dozen small launches that had clus- tered about the white ship scattered and made for different points along the water- front of the city. El Senor Beckwith was seated in a great cane chair on the veranda of the white house that sprawled over the hillside. He Original from (C(O) mie THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY