Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 3 — page 96: what you’re looking at

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

470 sounds. Up rose the five wheels, merged even as they lifted into one enormous circlet, spun, an unimaginably huge sparkling Catherine wheel, high up in the green haze —vanished within it! CHAPTER XVI. THE DRUMS OF THUNDER. : ROTESQUELY, jAorribly, did the G Thing now appear to be headless—a decapitated shape hovering over us. From on high came again the wailings. Into view whirled the colossal ring, yards in advance of us. Down it swept, was _ drawn back like a leaf in a draft, swerved and clicked into place on the girdled, mon- strous body! ‘Good God!” Drake’s voice, despite his boast, was shaking. ‘““Man—man the pygmy!” Ventnor, eyes burning. Once more we heard the wailings. The Following Thing trembled, ran together, melted—was gone, dissolved into a host of spheres and blocks and pyramids that fol- lowed in our wake like a quiet, reaching - wave—gently and sedately! Now I noted that we had swept over toward the right wall of the cleft; were gliding over a broad ledge. This ledge was, I judged, all of a hundred feet in width. From it the floor of the place was dropping rapidly. muttered The opposite precipices were slowly _ . to the top of the barrier; were upon it, drawing closer. After us flowed the flank- ing host. Steadily our ledge arose, the floor of the canon dropped. Now we were twenty feet above it, now thirty. And the char- acter of the cliffs was changing. Veins of quartz shone under the metallic plating like cut crystal, like cloudy opals; here was a splash of vermillion, there a patch of amber; bands of pallid ochre stained it. Abruptly my gaze was caught by a line of inky-blackness im the exact center of the falling floor. So black was it that at first glance I took it for a vein of jetty lignite. It widened; I saw that it was a crack, a fissure; now it was a yard in width, ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. now three; blackness seemed to well up within it, blackness that was the very es- sence of the depths. Steadily the ebon rift expanded; spread suddenly wide open in two sharp-edged, flying wedges— Earth had dropped away. At our side a guif had opened, an abyss, striking down depth upon depth; profound; immeasure- able! We were human atoms, riding upon a steed of sorcery and racing along a split rampart of infinite space! I looked behind—scores of the cubes were darting from the metal host trailing us; in a long column of twos they flashed by, raced ahead. Far before us a gloom began to grow; deepened until we were rushing into blackest night. Through the murk stabbed a long lance of pale blue phosphorescence. It unrolled like a ribbon of wan flame, flicked like a serpent’s tongue—held steady. I felt the Thing beneath us leap forward; its velocity grew prodigious; the wind beat upon us with hurricane force. | I shielded my eyes with my hands, peered through the chinks of my fingers. Ranged directly in our path was a barricade of the cubes and upon them we were racing like a flying battering-ram. Involuntarily I closed my eyes against the annihilating impact that seemed inevitable! ‘“ God!” I heard Ventnor mutter; felt the Thing on which we rode lifting; un- closed my lids. We were soaring at a long angle straight and still with that awful speed unchecked were hurtling through the blackness over the shaft of phesphorescence, the ribbon of ‘pale light that I had watched pierce it and knew now was but another span of the cubes that but a little before had fled past us! Beneath the span, on each side of it, I sensed the illimitable void! We were over; rushing along in darkness. I became conscious of a mighty tumult, a vast crashing and roaring, reverberations that might have come from the smithies of Vulcan in the deepest hidden caverns of Earth. The clangor waxed, beat about us with tremendous wings of sound! Far away was a dim glowing, as of rising - we fl ecomnilelaoolks di wry ( a (CO t