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Spaceways, v. 4, issue 4, whole no. 27, April 1942
Page 5
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SPACEWAYS 5 ALTER, THE AVENGER by MARGARET WELLS [Handwritten text by title: Why should I read this?] [Illustration of figure in doorway, on right side of page... illustration is hard to view what is going on. Lines are not printed very well. Text wraps around image on left side.] Every night, Altur, the Wanderer, shed his earthly sell, that Kohmeer, the blue-bearded, white-haired Magico of Otool, had condemned him to endure.... When Altur was but a child of ten he had seen his dead sister's body borne away to the gloom-shadowed bulk of the place of Kohmeer, where all the dead of Vad were taken; and had followed. In the dismal, drear heights of the highest, blackest tow-er of those many soaring pinnacles, he had found the old magician probling with a slen-der, bloody knife into the brain pan of Al-tur's lifeless sister. Rage had flooded through his sturdy boy-body of Altur and he hurled the scrawny, wrinkled necromancer from a slitted embrasure. Kohmeer flashed downward toward the yellowed thick water of the moat; yet, as he sped, he called on the demons of Kakool, of Karsam, of Voddisomm, and of Ssessorass; about him they closed their tenous, immaterial ranks, striving to check his downward plunge; yet to no avail. The frail bones of theat sinful pry-er into the mysteries of man's mind, smashed utterly to fragments beneath his pulped flesh, lay on the rocky bottom of the foul moat. With his last dying breath; with therattle of imminent extinction in his flooding throat, Kohmeer spoke in the hoarsely gutteral and froglike croakings that is the tongue of Burrball and Tsadaam, those grotesque half-amphibian mons-ters of swamplands, condemning Altur of life on that utterly vicious and heartless world called Erth. So it came that Altur, from the world of Otool, in the system called by the Holy Scrood Torpool, was born, for the second time, to two of the frail four-limbed Erthlings. He did not remember Otool in those first few transplanted years; not until he was grown into a moody, fanciful youth of twelve did he begin to remember his home planet and his mighty, eight-limbed body, lying in a twitching, brainless stupor high up in his father's desert castle; and the city of Vad, where ruled his uncle, Strok. Only at night, when the darkness of sleep burst the bands of unhuman fash-ioning called forth by Kohmeer, did Altur venture back through airless void and flaming stars to his homeland; there he would drift, dull eyes watching the sur-ging purple seas and riotous orange and yellow jungles of Otool, until the wak-ing vibrations of his Erth body warned him that morning was come. Altur explored the twenty continents of Otool. He found icy plateaus, is-olated from the rest of the planet by curtains of fiery mist curling above molt-en lakes of fire; he found desert cities, hoary with age, their walls instinct with an eternal malicious evil; he saw the ice-men of Baarjo, whose bodies shat-tered to the very vibrations of the wind; and the mighty flying slugs of Kamool, which, fortunately for the men of Otool, were confined, by nature, to the vast crater-bed of an extinct volcano. Many and varied were the animals and plants of Otool, and her sister planet, Kontool, that the disembodied soul of Altur was permitted to see. Altur, or as the Erthians knew him, George Carver, was the strangest of strange among his fellows. A clumsy inept fool of a lad, his thoughts far away in the system of Torpool, or wrestling with some abstraction of the Holy Skrood--as it revealed the will of Tolak, the one god of Otool, toward mankind. The Erthly mother of George Carver was a strange woman--flaxen-haired and white-skinned, fairest of a fair race--yet she had mated with a man in whose
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SPACEWAYS 5 ALTER, THE AVENGER by MARGARET WELLS [Handwritten text by title: Why should I read this?] [Illustration of figure in doorway, on right side of page... illustration is hard to view what is going on. Lines are not printed very well. Text wraps around image on left side.] Every night, Altur, the Wanderer, shed his earthly sell, that Kohmeer, the blue-bearded, white-haired Magico of Otool, had condemned him to endure.... When Altur was but a child of ten he had seen his dead sister's body borne away to the gloom-shadowed bulk of the place of Kohmeer, where all the dead of Vad were taken; and had followed. In the dismal, drear heights of the highest, blackest tow-er of those many soaring pinnacles, he had found the old magician probling with a slen-der, bloody knife into the brain pan of Al-tur's lifeless sister. Rage had flooded through his sturdy boy-body of Altur and he hurled the scrawny, wrinkled necromancer from a slitted embrasure. Kohmeer flashed downward toward the yellowed thick water of the moat; yet, as he sped, he called on the demons of Kakool, of Karsam, of Voddisomm, and of Ssessorass; about him they closed their tenous, immaterial ranks, striving to check his downward plunge; yet to no avail. The frail bones of theat sinful pry-er into the mysteries of man's mind, smashed utterly to fragments beneath his pulped flesh, lay on the rocky bottom of the foul moat. With his last dying breath; with therattle of imminent extinction in his flooding throat, Kohmeer spoke in the hoarsely gutteral and froglike croakings that is the tongue of Burrball and Tsadaam, those grotesque half-amphibian mons-ters of swamplands, condemning Altur of life on that utterly vicious and heartless world called Erth. So it came that Altur, from the world of Otool, in the system called by the Holy Scrood Torpool, was born, for the second time, to two of the frail four-limbed Erthlings. He did not remember Otool in those first few transplanted years; not until he was grown into a moody, fanciful youth of twelve did he begin to remember his home planet and his mighty, eight-limbed body, lying in a twitching, brainless stupor high up in his father's desert castle; and the city of Vad, where ruled his uncle, Strok. Only at night, when the darkness of sleep burst the bands of unhuman fash-ioning called forth by Kohmeer, did Altur venture back through airless void and flaming stars to his homeland; there he would drift, dull eyes watching the sur-ging purple seas and riotous orange and yellow jungles of Otool, until the wak-ing vibrations of his Erth body warned him that morning was come. Altur explored the twenty continents of Otool. He found icy plateaus, is-olated from the rest of the planet by curtains of fiery mist curling above molt-en lakes of fire; he found desert cities, hoary with age, their walls instinct with an eternal malicious evil; he saw the ice-men of Baarjo, whose bodies shat-tered to the very vibrations of the wind; and the mighty flying slugs of Kamool, which, fortunately for the men of Otool, were confined, by nature, to the vast crater-bed of an extinct volcano. Many and varied were the animals and plants of Otool, and her sister planet, Kontool, that the disembodied soul of Altur was permitted to see. Altur, or as the Erthians knew him, George Carver, was the strangest of strange among his fellows. A clumsy inept fool of a lad, his thoughts far away in the system of Torpool, or wrestling with some abstraction of the Holy Skrood--as it revealed the will of Tolak, the one god of Otool, toward mankind. The Erthly mother of George Carver was a strange woman--flaxen-haired and white-skinned, fairest of a fair race--yet she had mated with a man in whose
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