Avon Fantasy Reader No. 14 — page 95: what you’re looking at

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

pecially in the Capital, the immediate result was a panic. In hut and palace, home and barracks, life was no longer possible because of these puddles of nausea-producing slime. The houses were filled with it. The streets were Alled with it. The only living things that were unaffected were the Yeast Men waiuiig their turn to dic. With sightless faces they shuffled along the streets passing unconcernedly through the decayed bodies of their brothers with apparently only one idea—to keep moving till death came to enable them to add their bit to the defense of their country. The people fled. Sick and sweating, pale-faced and gasping, incapacitated and vomiting, they ran from the terror. The army fled, cursing the Premier for thinking to feed them on such putrid offal, Nothing could hold them, or restore discipline. And around Moronia was a widening, desolate, deserted ring in which there was no living thing. The people fled to the border. The neighboring Kingdoms, however, friendly as they were to Eupenia, thought of their own safety, In this strange vomiting, in the tales of delirium told by the first refugees, they thought they saw symptoms of a new and deadly contagious disease and at once threw a line of bayonets along their borders and forbade emigration from the stricken country. Eupenia deserted her Capital without shedding a drop of blood. Pressicr Plautz, as soon as he had sufficiently recovered from his own per- sonal vomiting, to consider the matter, called a meeting of his Staff and ordered the advances to begin against the enemy. This, he said, was only a new method of conducting war. Were they to be conquered by smells or inert lumps of yeast? Let the artillery blow them to pieces. Let the cavalry cut them to pieces. The infantry could build fires and burn them. A faithful remnant of the once proud army attempted to follow his orders but no soldier, however brave, can continually fight on an empty stomach, and no officer, however capable, can pive orders while constantly vomiting. The army, from the General-in-Chief down to the privates, were continually sick with the sickness of Jonah's Whale. The whole resistance was hopeless. The Yeast Men arrived day after day in increasing numbers and they could not be killed. They could be mutilated, decapitated, but each piece lived and moved ever onwards. Efforts at their annihilation only added to the horror, and put the finish- ing touches to the collapse of morale. What use cutting a thing to pieces when each piece kept on living and advancing? How could any enemy be killed when it could not bleed? Eupenia was hysterical. On the sixth day, the army revolted, killed Premier Plautz and declared the Kingdom a Republic. Immediately they sued for peace by radio. Moronia suspected a trap and refused to grant an armistice. Her guns continued the deadly shower. Finally, on the tenth day of the unequal struggle, peace was declared. Alterwards, the world blamed Moronia tor not granting an immediate armistice, but it is only fair to her to say that she did not, at that time, know the full horror of the war and never did realize it as the Eupenians did. She 93 comiclsooks.com