Page:Weird Tales Volume 10 Issue 03 (1927-09).djvu/146



author of "When the Green A Star Waned" and "The Eternal Conflict" has again turned his pen to a wonderful story of cosmic space. In this tale he has let his vivid imagination swing out through the illimitable void, and built up a gripping tale of nightmare horrors unequaled in literature.

from the Blood-Red Tower of Nak-Jad into empty space, Lura Veyle underwent nameless terrors in the Gorge of the Gray Shine and the Lake of the Dark-Blue Ooze. Hesperus, co-equal with Lucifer, flashes through the tale in a blaze of regal purple and dusky gold, and the contemptuous echo of his wrath pursues the quivering soul of Lura Veyle through all the hells. A breath-taking story, a fascinating tale of the outer dark. It will be printed complete in the

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across the dark clearing and then paused for a moment at its edge, contemplating it.

Around him there loomed the vast, dark machines of the moon men, mighty and enigmatic engines of destruction. And, too, around him lay their own shriveled, withered bodies. As yet he had given no attention to the machines. Later, he thought, men could examine them, learn from them. Later

Manning turned to go, then paused again. His eyes had caught a sudden gleam of light in the east. It was the gleaming disk of the full moon, just floating up in the eastern sky, like a shining bubble. From it there flowed down on the clearing a sudden flood of white light, picking out the gleaming surfaces of the great machines there. For a long while Manning stood motionless, gazing up toward it. Suddenly he flung his arms wide-

"Gilbert!" he cried softly; "wherever you are, now, do you hear me? It was you saved us, it was you saved us all! Do you hear me, now?"

Only a whisper of wind broke the stillness. Suddenly hot, stinging tears rushed into Manning's eyes.

"Gilbert!"

For a moment, the silence reigned unbroken. Then a soft little breeze stirred the trees around him, and they leaned sighing branches down toward him. That was all the answer that came to the man at the clearing's edge, who stood with arms flung out toward the summer night, in greeting and farewell.