Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930Various
Science
Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930
Various
Science fiction -- Periodicals; Science fiction, American -- Periodicals
Jim's brain reeled as he looked down. Imagine a bridge about half-way
up an amphitheatre of a hundred stories, the ground beneath packed
with human beings no larger than ants, the whole of the vast interior
lined with them, tier above tier, faces and forms increasing from
pismire size below to the dimensions of the human form upon a level,
and, again, fading almost to pin-points at the summit of the vast
building, where the soft glow of the artificial light filtered through
the glass of the roof.
He clutched at the air, felt the soft pressure of the force that was
restraining him, looked at Lucille, and saw her half-unconscious with
fear, leaning against it, leaning against that soft, resilient,
cushionlike, invisible substance; looked at Parrish, whom the shock
had thrown into a sort of semi-catalepsy--Parrish, mouthing and
staring!
He looked forward to where the tongue of flooring ended. Here, upon a
stage, flanked with huge carven figures, a group was gathered. At
first he was unable to discern what was being enacted there, so
brilliant was the light that glared overhead.
It was the Eye, a round disc perhaps ten feet in diameter, that
all-seeing Eye of Atlantis that guarded the great city, but how it
worked Jim was totally unable to discover. He saw, however, that it
was blinking rapidly, the alternations being so swift that it was only
just possible to be conscious of them. Perhaps the Eye was opening and
closing ten times a second.
Jim strained his eyes to see what was taking place on the stage at the
end of the tongue on which he stood. What was it? What were they doing
there? And was that the captured Atom Smasher standing between what
looked like grinning idols? A group of captured Drilgoes near it?
A shrill scream from Lucille echoed through the vast amphitheatre. Her
eye had seen what Jim's had not yet seen--something that had shocked
her into complete unconsciousness.
A marble figure, she stood leaning against the invisible force that
kept her on her feet, and in those open, staring eyes was a look of
ineffable horror.
* * * * *
Jim could see clearly now, for the light from the Eye was slowly
diminishing in brilliancy, or else his own eyes were growing more
accustomed to it. Those carven figures, forming a semi-circle upon the
platform were figures of gods, squat, huge forms seeming to emerge out
of the blocks of rock from which they had been fashioned.
Hideous, gruesome carvings they were, resembling some futuristic
sculpture of to-day, for the artist who had fashioned them had given
hardly more than a hint of the finished representation. It was rather
as if the masses of rock that had been transported there had become
vitalized, foreshadowing the dim yet awful beings that were some day
to emerge from them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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