PART IV: CROSSING THE ABYSS
CHAPTER 16
THE PROFESSOR DEPARTS
Xask and Murg plunged headlong into the bushes and the underbrush swallowed them up. The ground shuddered violently underfoot and bushes whipped violently. As the two ducked and staggered between the trees, the gloom of the jungle was made hideous by the squeal of tearing wood, the thunder of toppling trees, the roaring of panicked beasts.
After a time, as the two ran out of breath and paused to catch their second wind, leaning exhaustedly against the tall bole of a towering cycad, it became evident that the earthquake was over and most of the danger seemed to have passed. The ground trembled no more and the burning whiff of sulphur and brimstone had faded from the humid jungle air.
Murg and Xask looked at one another wordlessly, and Xask smiled. They had escaped safely and were again at freedom, and Xask vindictively hoped the black warrior-woman had been crushed to death beneath the failing tree which had felled her.
“Come over here and free my wrists,” he snapped. Murg scuttled to where the other crouched and fumbled nearsightedly at the thongs which bound the vizier.
“Alas, Murg has no knife,” he wailed.
Xask shrugged irritably. “Untie me with your fingers, then, and be quick about it! Now that the earth has stopped its shaking, our late captors—those of them that have survived—may come looking for us.”
Murg tugged and pried at the thongs. “Murg hopes they all are slain,” whined the little man.
Xask glared coldly.
“Best for us that they are not,” he stated crisply. “For I still have need of them, as hostages for the secret of the thunder-weapon.”
Murg did not know what the other man meant, but wisely held his tongue, poking and pulling at the thongs. After a moment Xask added, meditatively:
“And if perchance they are dead, well…then I must think of something else. Aren’t you done with that yet?”
“Yes, master!” breathed Murg, and Xask pulled free of the thongs and briskly began rubbing the circulation back into his hands.
After a brief rest, they started on. As best they could, the two retraced their steps to approach the place where the falling tree had given them their chance to make a break for freedom. Neither Xask nor Murg had any particular talent as scouts or hunters, so their woodsmanship was minimal; still and all, before very long they found the place, but Jorn, Niema and Yualla were no longer there.
Xask studied the turf about the fallen tree thoughtfully, thin lips pursed. “It would seem that even the black woman survived the earthquake,” he mused. “They must all have continued on the track of their tribes. In that case, they would have traveled in that direction,” he said, pointing.
Snapping a curt command to Murg, the vizier started off in the direction which the three were most likely to have traveled. Cautioning his little companion to silence, he slunk through the woods, making all possible speed, but keeping as quiet as could be managed, to avoid being discovered by those he was following.
Unarmed as both men were, they felt themselves fortunate that the earthquake seemed to have driven all of the beasts of the jungle into their lairs, where, doubtless, they cowered in safe hiding. Thus the two were not molested during their tracking of their quarry.
Xask, busied with his own plans and plots, said but little, save to snap curt commands to his unhappy little companion from time to time. As for Murg, the poor fellow was morose and miserable. He seemed always to be finding himself under the thumb of those wiser or stronger than himself, and he was getting heartily sick of it. First there had been the dreadful, cruel Gorpaks, then the Neanderthal bully, old One-Eye, then he had been taken captive by Yualla of Sothar; now, he was at the beck and call of the Zarian vizier.
Murg wished there was something he could do about this, but was too timid and cowardly to think of a course of bold action that would free him from his present yoke.
Had Xask known of the emotions seething in the scrawny breast of his companion, he would only have smiled cynically.
Nobody ever paid much attention to Murg.…
* * * *
Professor Potter was also restive, but from more elevated motives of intellectual excitement and scientific curiosity than those which stirred in the heart of Murg. He was consumed with a fervent desire to witness the volcanic eruption at first hand, and at length resolved to do so while we lingered on the beach, waiting for the hunters to return with their catch.
Pausing to scribble a brief note to me on a blank page torn from his little black notebook, he took up a dagger and a light spear, and crept into the jungle. And I must confess that it was some time before any of us discovered that he was missing. When it did come to our attention, I found his note pinned with a thorn to my bedroll, and scanned it quickly. The missive read as follows:
Eric, my dear boy:
I simply must observe the active volcano at first hand, and have seized the opportunity to do so while our party is busied with hunting, cooking, and eating. I will be very careful, and will return soon enough, so please do not worry about me!
Your friend,
Percival P. Potter, Ph.D.
Blurting a curse, I sprang to my feet, then hesitated. Many of our group were still absent, including the black warrior, Zuma, and my friends, Gundar and Thon of Numitor. Varak looked at me quizzically, it having been that warrior who brought to my surprised attention and consternation the fact that the Professor had departed from our company.
“He will get lost, and then get eaten by a dinosaur, if I know the Doc!” I swore. Varak patted me on the shoulder.
“The old man is smarter than you think, Eric Carstairs, and will not be so foolish as to stray into the jungle without blazing a trail so as to be able to find his way back to us,” he said. “And, besides, the shaking-of-the-ground has frightened the dangerous beasts into hiding—see how silent the jungle is? He will be all right, Varak feels certain.”
“I sure hope you’re right,” I said grumpily. The truth was, I had become inordinately fond of the scrawny savant by this time, and dreaded losing him. But, surely, the volcano was not very far away, and, anyway, there wasn’t much I could do about the Doc’s disappearance. I just wish I had kept a closer eye on him, that was all.…
* * * *
Yet another person was getting restless and worried about things, and that was my beloved princess, Darya of Thandar. Before we left the camping area in pursuit of Hurok of Kor, we had dispatched a messenger to the encampment of Tharn the High Chief, informing him of our mission and promising that our absence from the tribes would be as brief as possible. We suggested that they continue on their way and promised that we would follow their trail and catch up with them a bit later.
Darya had been separated from me too long, and we had only very recently been reunited, for her to feel happy at my departure or comfortable over the length of my absence. So, while the twin tribes were momentarily held at bay, helpless to cross the wide chasm which the eruption and earthquake had opened in their path, the Cro-Magnon girl decided to backtrack and find me herself.
Knowing that her father would sternly forbid such an act, she merely took up her weapons and departed from the host in such a manner that her departure went unnoticed. She did, however, mention where she was going and why in a brief exchange of words with one of the warriors at the rear guard of the host, so that her father would not be unduly worried over her disappearance.
Knowing that Eric Carstairs and his company could not be very far to the rear, this warrior, a man named Bugor, permitted her to leave without trouble. He knew the bold and headstrong Princess from her childhood, and had a hearty respect for her woodsmanship and intelligence.
Entering the thick underbrush, Darya moved on light, swift feet down the jungle aisles in the direction from which the two tribes had come. It was her intention to locate the area in which we had all lain encamped during the last sleeping period, then strike out on our trail, for the cavegirl reasoned that she could follow the spoor of Hurok as easily as we could, and in this, of course, she was correct.
The jungle was silent and seemingly uninhabited as she glided through its aisles and glades and thickets. Darya was an experienced huntsman and her senses were as honed and keen as those of any Mohawk brave’s, and she was confident that she had naught to fear. The girl had lived all of her young life in such surroundings, and knew that those predators which were large and ferocious enough to be dangerous, make considerable noise in moving through a jungle as thick as this one, and thus advertise their presence far in advance of their arrival. If any such disturbance came to her notice, Darya intended quite simply to climb a tree in order to remove herself from the path of danger.
But there is one dangerous denizen of the prehistoric jungles of Zanthodon that moves as silently as a gliding shadow, and that is the isst, or giant python, which flourished in primal ages and often attained the astounding length of forty-five feet.
Darya froze, therefore, with a startled yelp when without the slightest warning an immense serpentine shape dropped a coil from the boughs directly overhead, to challenge her passage with a hissing cry from fanged jaws that could open to swallow a full-grown man.
And, in the next fraction of a second, a sharp explosion rang out, deafeningly loud in the ominous silence which pervaded the jungle, and three things happened almost simultaneously.
The huge head of the super-python simply flew apart in a gory splatter.
Immense, writhing coils loosened, and the monster serpent dropped limply to the floor of the glade almost at Darya’s fear-frozen feet.
And a man, clothed as she had never before seen, stepped from the underbrush with a smoking rifle in his hands.
CHAPTER 17
THE BRIDGE OF LOGS
When the tall tree toppled slowly toward Niema, the black girl did not hesitate but plunged directly into its path. Jorn yelled and sprang forward. An instant later, the tree crashed to earth directly on the spot where the Azuri maiden had been standing when the earthquake struck.
In the excitement of the moment, neither Jorn nor Yualla—and certainly not Niema—noticed that Xask and Murg had seized this opportunity for escape, and had taken to their heels and vanished into the underbrush.
Jorn clambered over the tree trunk to find the lithe black amazon squatting amid a thick-leaved bush, shaken but unharmed and smiling broadly. The girl had instinctively realized that to leap backward would have been to come up against another tree, and that safety lay only in jumping under the toppling jungle giant.
“Niema is unharmed,” she informed the Cro-Magnon youngsters. They squatted beside her, while the earth tremors subsided. Once the brief earthquake was over, they searched for their two captives and found them missing.
No one was particularly sorry to discover this, and least of all Niema. She grinned, white teeth flashing.
“Niema is happy to see their heels,” she remarked, employing an Aziru saying whose meaning is more or less identical with “Good riddance!” Her companions were unfamiliar with the phrase, but grasped it readily enough.
“The earth has stopped shaking and that bitter, burning smell is gone from the air,” Yualla pointed out. “Let us be on our way before it starts up again.” Her companions agreed with her, and without further ado they continued on in the direction they had been following.
Niema strode along zestfully, fully aware that the earthquake would have frightened the more dangerous beasts into hiding in their lairs for the present, and that this reduced the perils they might face and made a more rapid and less cautious pace possible.
Her keen eyes searched the ground for signs of the passage of many human feet. The spoor she tracked would have been obvious even to you or me, and she followed the path made by the twin tribes as easily as if they had been marked with directional signs.
She had, of course, no slightest notion of what was about to happen next.…
* * * *
When the ichthyosaur overturned their dugout canoe, Hurok and Gorah sank beneath the foaming waves of the Sogar-Jad.
As the water closed over his head, Hurok opened his mouth to yell. Promptly swallowing a mouthful of seawater, he fought down his panic, closed his mouth, and kicked violently to the surface. When his head broke water, he reached out desperately with long and powerful, apelike arms. Flailing about, he touched the slick wood of the boat’s keel and locked his grasp thereupon, thus managing to keep his head above the waves. When, a moment or two later, Gorah also reached the surface, he helped her to grab ahold of the overturned boat.
The huge aurogh had submerged again, like the supershark it was, being unable to breathe the air and needing to return to its watery realm frequently. But it was obviously hungry, the ichthyosaur, and it was hunting.
Hurok feared the creature would bite their legs off underwater, but for all his strength, he was unable to clamber up out of the water and sit astride the overturned hollowed log. It simply bobbed under his weight and would not permit itself to be ridden.
Before long, however, the huge marine monster surfaced again, and bore down on them. This time he could see it clearly, the long beaklike snout, the round eyes mad with hunger and bloodlust. His weapons were lost in the sea, all save for the stone axe lashed to his waist; but, needing both hands to cling to the overturned canoe, he could not unlimber his means of defense, even if it had been feasible or even possible for him to employ spear or axe while immersed in seawater up to his chin.
Gorah wailed in fear, and, to tell the truth, Hurok felt his courage quail, for there seemed no way out of this dilemma. Even if he and his mate had been able to swim, which neither could, they were too far from the shores of the mainland of Zanthodon to have even dared attempt to swim to the beach before the hungry aurogh would be upon them with snapping jaws, ripping and tearing their bodies asunder.
Spotting its prey clinging desperately to the hollow log, the maritime monster bore down upon them, the water frothing to either side of its opening jaws like the fan at the prow of a speedboat. Gorah squealed and shut her eyes, momentarily expecting the jaws of doom to close upon her. Hurok growled a hopeless curse and stoically waited for the end—
But it did not come!
Water boiled behind them and there soared into view an incredibly long and sinuous neck, like the foreparts of the Sea Serpent of legend. Atop this supple neck upreared a head with open jaws fearsomely armed with fangs the length of cavalry sabres.
A yith! thought Hurok to himself, with an inward groan.
As if they were not in enough danger from the ichthyosaur, now the dreaded plesiosaurus of the antique Prime had entered into the competition…and the prize was the flesh and blood of Hurok and his new mate!
* * * *
Tharn brooded at the lip of the chasm that had reft in twain the grassy meadows and the swamps. From lip to lip the crevasse must have measured thirty paces or more, and that was too wide for even the limberest boy in the twin tribes to leap, or the most agile of the scouts. And, even were they able to somehow toss a line to the far side of the steam-belching abyss, there were among the tribes women and infants, the aged, the infirm and the injured, who would have found it impossible to bridge the abyss by swinging hand over hand along such a length of line.
Garth, his brother monarch, the Omad or High Chief of the tribe of Sothar, was among those who could not have made so difficult a passage, due to his recent and but newly healed wound. So the jungle monarch conferred with his chieftains as to how best to circumvent this newest obstacle in their journey south.
“We could, my chief,” said one of the scouts, “travel east to the slopes of Fire Mountain, where the crack in the earth began, and attempt to go around it, thus taking ourselves quite some distance out of the way, but at least being able to continue on our way.”
They discussed this, but it was obvious that the suggested plan offered even more perils than they now faced, for the rivers of live lava which had poured down the slopes of the volcanic mountain had ignited the brush and dry grass in the foothills, and was still burning.
It was Garth himself who thought of an alternative to this hazardous solution. His sharp eyes had noticed a place near the edge of the jungle where tall tree’s, felled by the quake, had bridged the gap in the earth. He suggested they cross the abyss by these natural bridges, which looked to be secure enough.
“Even the old and those suffering from wounds can go across the gap by inching along the tree trunks,” he said. “I, myself, although not yet having recovered my full strength and agility, feel certain that I could negotiate the abyss in that manner, with time.”
One of Tharn’s senior chieftains spoke up at this point.
“And, to facilitate our passage of the crevasse, my chief,” he said, “could not our warriors, armed with axes, fell yet more trees so that more could cross the gap in less time?”
It was, at length, decided that this was the best idea yet brought forth, and without further ado the two Omads gave orders and men began chopping down those of the taller trees which grew the nearest to the edge of the abyss, while the younger and more agile warriors and hunters crossed by means of the trees which the earthquake had felled, and, calling back across the crevasse, reported the trees secure and unlikely to be dislodged under the weight of men.
In this manner, the men and women of the twin tribes began to cross the abyss. By ones and twos at first, then by the dozens, they climbed across by means of the fallen trees and those other trees the woodsmen had felled. Before long, Tharn himself crossed and so did Garth, albeit slowly and gingerly, favoring the wound near his heart.
By now, the combined tribes numbered in the hundreds, and it consumed much time for so huge a host to gain the other side but at length, save for the rear guard, it was accomplished.
And it was then and then only that Tharn discovered that his daughter had gone back some time before to find Eric Carstairs and his companions, who still had not rejoined the host. And Tharn found himself in a quandary!
“Curse the wench for a foolhardy child!” he growled, his brow black and thunderous. “If she were here now, I’d turn her over my knee and teach her a few lessons.”
“Yes, my Omad,” agreed the guard to whom the gomad Darya had given her message to her father, and his tones were quite unhappy.
“Oh, I don’t blame you,” said Tharn, seeing the expression on the face of his warrior, a trusted and valiant man of the tribe. And then he added a phrase which we might translate as saying, “the saucy minx could charm the birds out of the tree’s, if she wanted to,” or something to that effect.
“Well, my brother, what shall we do?” inquired Garth of Sothar, who had overheard the exchange. “Now that all of our people have crossed the abyss, we can hardly go back…”
“I know,” grunted Tharn, seething.
“And the gomad’s future mate, Eric Carstairs, is not, after all, very far away, surely! Your daughter the gomad will reach his side soon, and he will follow to the brink of the abyss with all his companions and cross even as we did, for the method we used to cross the gap will be obvious. So, shall we stay here and await their coming, or continue on?”
Tharn, arms folded upon his mighty breast, considered the matter.
“We shall go on,” he said briefly.
CHAPTER 18
DENIZENS OF THE DEEP
Herr Oberlieutenant Manfred, Baron Von Kohler, late of General Erwin Rommel’s famed Afrika Korps, had left the camp that “morning” after breakfast in order to scout out the jungles ahead, leaving the two soldiers, Corporal Schmidt and Private Borg, to tend to Oberst7 Dostman, whose wounds were suppurating and who was unable to travel at more than a very moderate pace.
The jungle seemed quiet during their morning meal, but the Baron took along a Mauser rifle and a few precious rounds of ammunition just in case. The Germans were on their way to the sea, which they believed to be somewhere nearby and to the west of their present campsite, but because of Colonel Dostman’s injuries, taken when they had been attacked by a stegosaurus, they must move by slow and easy stages, and it seemed wise to scout out the terrain in order to avoid rough or dangerous ground.
The Oberlieutenant was a tall, well-built man, with an erect and military bearing. His close-cropped hair, once blond, was now silver-gray, and the years he had spent here in the Underground World of Zanthodon had left lines in his broad brow and had furrowed his lean, clean-shaven cheeks. But his pale blue eyes were sharp and keen as in his youth, and his step was light.
During the long years since they had found their way down into the gigantic cavern-world beneath the trackless sands of the Sahara, Von Kohler had seen his company dwindle and diminish, some of his fellow officers and private soldiers falling prey to accident and illness, but most of them to the fangs of the fantastic prehistoric monsters who lingered on in this lost world, so much alike to that fabled Andean plateau of which he had read in Herr Doyle’s excellent romance in his boyhood back in Munich. And now that his senior commanding officer, Colonel Dostman, seemed unlikely to recover from the battle with the stegosaurus, Von Kohler was all too aware that soon the responsibilities of command would come to rest solely upon his own shoulders.…
When the earthquake struck, he was traversing a ravine in which a small stream gurgled over smooth stones. The shock threw him prone, but he recovered himself a moment later, nerves tingling with shock. Scrambling to his feet, he recovered the Mauser he had let fall when thrown to the ground and fell into a fighting crouch, peering around alertly. Fortunately, the quake was a brief one and soon over.
He climbed up out of the ravine, making a mental note of the fact that the steep incline would prove difficult for Schmidt and Borg to negotiate, as they would be encumbered by the crude litter in which the Colonel was to be carried. He must scout out a better way for them to travel than to climb down into the ravine.…
A time later, having found a better means of crossing, he was continuing on toward the sea when a dramatic scene caught his attention and arrested his progress.
Directly before him, through a thin screen of bushes, Von Kohler saw a young golden-haired woman in abbreviated hide garments, bearing a long spear and a bronze knife. He knew her at once for one of the Cro-Magnon savages they had seen but avoided heretofore in their passage through the jungle, and he lingered behind his screen of bushes, knowing that where there is one person there are probably many more, and that the savages of Zanthodon generally travel in full tribal strength. The German officer thought it prudent to conceal himself while investigating the situation.
He saw, although she did not, the monstrous python whose heavy coils hung from the bough directly above her head.
An instant later, the girl froze in terror as the giant snake swung its fanged and gaping maw toward her through the leaves.
The German had been raised with all the chivalrous instincts of his class of the old nobility. Without a moment’s thought or hesitation he snapped the rifle to his shoulder and blew off the python’s head.…
* * * *
Head reared high above the seething waves, the yith gave voice to a deafening challenge, like the steam whistle of a locomotive. In response, the aurogh gave a vicious snap of its sharklike jaws, and submerged. An instant later the sea went mad, exploding in sheets of spray and boiling foam as the two prehistoric sea monsters closed in mortal combat to decide which of them would devour the hapless Hurok and his mate.
The fearsome jaws of the ichthyosaur closed upon the scaly shoulder of the yith, which uttered a thunderous hiss and swerved its snaky head to rip and tear with saber-sharp fangs at the face and snout of its adversary.
The seething foam became streaked with crimson as the marine monsters battled for their prey. Gorah rolled her eyes skyward and shuddered, as much from the terror of the scene as from the chill of the waves.
Hurok strove again to right the boat, but again he failed, for with nothing against which to brace his huge splayed feet, he could gain no purchase on the wet and slippery wood, despite the iron strength of his burly shoulders and arms. In his struggle, however, he flailed out with both legs and the dugout floated away from the scene of combat.
This gave the Apeman an idea, which he conveyed in guttural words to his mate. The two were clinging to the same side of the canoe, now, in unison, both kicked out with their strong legs, propelling the overturned boat slowly through the foamy waters.
Peering hastily back over one furry shoulder, Hurok saw that the plesiosaur had wound its sinuous length about the giant shark-monster, and was ripping at its flesh with those dreadful fangs, and all the while the triple rows of teeth were crunching deeper and deeper into its mailed shoulder.
As they paddled away from the scene of terror, the two monsters, locked in a murderous embrace, sank from sight beneath the bloody waves, and, although the water continued to rage in turbulence for a time, giving evidence of the titanic battle which roared on beneath the sea, neither surfaced again.
Hurok gave a sigh of heartfelt relief. Had the Apemen of Kor any religious instincts, he would doubtless at this juncture have muttered a prayer of gratitude to whatever divinities watched over the warriors of Kor, but his people were too low on the scale of civilization to have developed more than a primitive awe of the spirits of their dead ancestors.
“Keep kicking,” he growled to Gorah.
* * * *
In time they wearied, and, since neither of the marine monsters had made a reappearance, simply rested, clinging to the hull of the overturned dugout canoe, letting the slow and shallow surges of the subterranean sea drift them nearer and nearer to the shore of the mainland of Zanthodon.
At length, Hurok felt solid mud beneath his feet, and from that point on the two Korians pushed their craft through the surf and dragged it up onto the sandy shore, and sat down wearily, letting the humid warmth of day dry their bodies and resting from their exertions, glad to feel the firm earth under their feet once more.
Hurok privately swore never to venture any nearer to, the sea of Sogar-Jad than the beach thereof, for one ducking beneath the waves was enough to last him a lifetime, and few of the warriors of Zanthodon ever for a second time survive the fangs of the mighty monsters of the deep.
“Where are we O Hurok?” inquired torah in faint tones, exhausted from the perils through which she had passed. Hurok looked around and heaved hairy shoulders in a shrug.
“Hurok does not know,” he admitted. The simple fact was that one stretch of sandy beach fringed by the edge of the jungle looks very much like any other stretch of sandy beach fringed by the jungle.
But as the Peaks of Peril were no longer in sight, the Apeman knew that they had drifted with the current very much farther to the south than he could have wished. His companions and the twin tribes themselves could be many days’ march away in either direction by now.…
When they were dried and rested and had fully recovered from their dunking in the Sogar-Jad, the two Neanderthals got to their feet and began to explore. The only weapons they had retained from their sea adventures were the flint knife which Gorah carried at her waist and the heavy stone axe slung about Hurok’s hips on a tough leathern thong. These weapons were good enough for fighting at close quarters, but Hurok felt more comfortable with a spear’s length between him and whatever beast they might encounter. So they lingered in that spot long enough for him to hew down a sapling and trim its twigs and branches away with blows of his axe.
With the sharp blade of Gorah’s knife he sharpened one end of the makeshift spear to a point. Then, hefting his new weapon to his shoulder and taking Gorah’s hand in his huge paw, he began trudging up the beach, choosing the northerly direction at pure random.
Hurok did not know just what he was looking for—some sign of his missing friends, I suppose—but what he found amazed and alarmed him. He pulled Gorah into the bushes and bade her squat there while he peered nearsightedly at the peculiar individual he spied coming down the beach.
It was a man, but such a man as the Apeman had never seen or heard of, black as ebony from heel to crown.
Roaring his challenge, Hurok sprang from the underbrush and leveled his spear at the breast of Zuma the Aziru—
CHAPTER 19
MEN FROM YESTERDAY
The Professor had tramped through the jungle for quite some time now, heading in the direction of the active volcano in the swampy plains of the south. He encountered no dangerous beasts or reptiles along the way, and was feeling quite pleased and satisfied with himself for his mastery of woodsmanship—when suddenly a loud explosion rang out sharply through the silence of the deserted jungle.
“Noble Newton, but if I didn’t know better, I could have sworn that was a rifle shot!” exclaimed the old scientist to himself as the echoes of the sound rang and died, smothered in the thick undergrowth between the boles of the trees.
Inquisitive as always, Professor Potter diverged from his path to circle back, hoping to find the source of the sound. As the only firearm which existed here in the Underground World was my own Colt .45 automatic, the Professor was baffled as to what could have made such a noise—for it certainly was not the metallic bark of my pistol being fired.
Emerging from the bushes, he halted suddenly, eyes goggling in amazement as he found himself looking upon a tense, dramatic scene.
Directly in front of him was a grassy glade. In the midst of this open space there stood the supple, half-naked figure of a young golden-haired girl whom the Professor instantly recognized as Darya of Thandar.
At her feet, writhing in slow death spasms, were heaped the thick, glistening coils of the most enormous python the scrawny savant had ever seen. It seemed to be without a head!
Between the Professor and Darya stood a tall, well-built white man, facing the Cro-Magnon girl with a smoking Mauser rifle clenched in his hands.
His back was turned to the Professor, but the old scientist saw with amazement that the man had close-cropped silver-gray hair topped with the battered remnants of an officer’s cap—an officer’s cap such as those worn by the German Army during the Second World War.
The man was completely clothed in garments of faded khaki, very much worn and carefully repaired, but little more than a collection of scrupulously clean rags held together by needle and thread. The desert boots he wore were dilapidated and long unpolished, but scrubbed clean.
Taking a deep breath, the old man stepped forward and put the point of his spear between the shoulder blades of the German, who flinched and tensed all over, but did not move or even turn his head.
Darya blinked incredulously at the sudden appearance out of nowhere of her lover’s friend, then smiled.
“I say, my dear, are you hurt at all?” quavered the Professor in a shaky voice. “If this brute has dared to lift a hand against you, I’ll—I’ll—”
In his excitement, the Professor spoke in English, although he knew quite well that the Princess of Thandar knew only a few words of that language. But the man into whose back the point of his spear was pressing was acquainted with the language, and turned to look with amazement at his attacker.
He saw a scrawny old man in tattered bits of fur, wearing an absurdly large and very dirty sun helmet, with a white goatee and pince-nez glasses perched insecurely on the bridge of his nose.
All three looked at each other in wordless astonishment, while at their feet the giant reptile slowly, slowly, died.
* * * *
Recovering from her surprise, Darya lifted her own spear and touched the German officer upon the wrist. He knew precisely what she wanted him to do—drop the rifle—but as the weapon was not on safety and had a hair-trigger, he was reluctant to do so. Addressing the old man at his back in only slightly accented and formal English, he said gently:
“With your permission, sir, I will lower my rifle to the ground, as to drop it might cause it to fire.” His voice had good timbre, resonant and cultured. The Professor nodded crisply.
“Please do so, and take care!”
The rifle safely laid at his feet, the officer lifted both hands in token of surrender and spoke again.
“If I may introduce myself, sir, I am Oberlieutenant the Baron Manfred Von Kohler, late of the Ninth Attack Group of the Afrika Korps, at your service!” Worn bootheels clicked together as the officer made a slight bow. “I assure you, sir, that I meant no harm at all to the fraulein; my weapon was at the ready in case the serpent was not entirely dead.”
The Professor came out of the bushes and looked his prisoner over narrowly. The officer was no longer a young man, and had suffered many privations in the jungles of Zanthodon, from the tattered but patched condition of what remained of his uniform, but his keen blue eyes were candid and alert and his voice was steady.
For his own part, Manfred Von Kohler was examining the old scientist with equal interest and curiosity.
“English?” he inquired with a slight smile. The Professor shook his head.
“American—although I have spent much time in England, and, for that, Germany, too—although of course that was after the…the…”
The Professor let his words trail away awkwardly into silence.
“You meant to say ‘after the war’?” the German said, completing the Professor’s remark. And it was not really a question. The Professor looked a trifle unhappy.
“Yes,” he said simply. The Baron looked at him for a moment, and then in quiet tones, asked the question.
“My country lost the war.” Again, it was not really a question. The Professor nodded, and Manfred Von Kohler drew a long, deep breath.
“So. Thank you for your candor,” he said softly. “The…Russians, I suppose?”
Professor Potter shrugged. “The Russians, yes; and the Americans, and the British, and the Free French.…”
The German nodded with a touch of sadness in his eyes.
“So,” he breathed. “I knew it was a lost cause. To take on the whole of the civilized world was pure madness…I was only a boy when I entered the Army, but even then I knew it was madness. Still…all of these years we have spent in this fantastic world under the sands of the Sahara, with never a word of news, one could not help but entertain…hopes.”
The Professor cleared his throat. “I…um…I’m sorry,” he said. The German shook his head with a polite smile.
“Not at all. If I may presume, you will be wondering what I am doing here.”
“As a matter of fact—?”
Hands still raised, the officer gave a brief explanation.
“My group was cut off from the main body during a desert battle,” he said quietly. “When our vehicles ran dry of petrol, we attempted to cross the desert afoot. A sandstorm drove us into seeking refuge in a cave. When the blown sand blocked the entrance to the cave, and we thought we should soon suffocate, we discovered that fresh air was coming from the other end of the cave. We followed the tunnel as it sloped down and down into darkness, and in time we found ourselves emerging into this perennial daylight, in a world left over from prehistoric ages in a cavern larger than we could comprehend. Ever since then, we have been trying to find our way back to the surface, but without any success, I fear.”
“An amazing story, simply amazing!” breathed the Professor. The German shrugged.
“We have been here ever since,” he finished. “It has been…many years now.”
“It has indeed,” agreed the Professor sympathetically, and he refrained from telling just how many.
“There are more of you, then?” Potter asked.
“In the beginning, we were three score, although several were wounded in the desert battle,” said Von Kohler. “The fantastic world, as you know, has many perils. Some of our numbers we lost to the depredations of the great prehistoric beasts, others to swamps, earthquakes, fever. But four of us remain alive, including myself. There is my superior, Oberst Hugo Dostman, who was very seriously mauled by a stegosaurus and whom we do not expect to live, and two soldiers, Corporal Schmidt and Private Borg, good and loyal men both. We are encamped not very far off; I came ahead to scout the safest path to the sea, and arrived on the scene just in time to assist the fraulein in eluding the fangs of the monster serpent.”
Professor Potter was busy absorbing this latest of the many surprises Zanthodon’s jungles hide, and so was Darya, who was breathlessly hanging on every word. The conversation, by now, had fallen into a crude sort of lingua franca, part German, part in English, and part in the universal language of Zanthodon, the conversants picking up a term from one language where they lacked it’s equivalent in another.
Darya was able to grasp about one word out of every four, but that was enough for her to get the drift of what the two men were talking about. She touched the professor’s arm.
“It is true, what the stranger says,” she told him. “I did not even see the isst until he shattered its head with his thunder-weapon. Had he refrained from doing so, Darya would by now be dead and eaten—!” She shuddered at the idea.
The Professor nodded thoughtfully.
“Well, then, my dear Baron,” he said tentatively, “I believe that we can permit you to lower your arms to your sides, if you wish, although I most earnestly entreat you not to attempt to pick up your rifle. Both the young woman and myself are remarkably proficient in the employment of these crude weapons,” he said with a meaningful gesture of the spear he still held at the back of the German officer.
Manfred Von Kohler nodded and said nothing. He had no doubt that the beautiful Cro-Magnon girl could use the spear with great skill, and would not hesitate to do so, were he foolish enough to try for his firearm, but he rather felt inclined to think that the old American scientist overstated, to some degree, his own skill with the weapon.
“Thank you, sir,” he said, lowering his arms to his sides.
And they stood for a moment without words.
“Well,” said the Professor at last, clearing his throat uncertainly, “and now we must decide—what the devil I am supposed to do with you!”
CHAPTER 20
XASK MAKES A DISCOVERY
With Niema, as usual, taking the lead, the three adventurers moved on swift and silent feet through the jungles of Zanthodon. Jorn and Yualla knew they could not be very far behind their tribes, for so huge a host of men, encumbered with women and children, the aged and the injured, can move only as rapidly as the weakest among them.
Thus it came as no particular surprise to them when, of a sudden, Niema froze, motionless, with a quick gesture at the two Cro-Magnon youngsters behind her, commanding silence.
The bushes parted before where she stood, revealing a tall blond-headed young man armed with a long knife at his waist and a bronze-bladed spear held at the ready. Spying the long-legged black woman, he paused momentarily, eyes widening in amazement.
In the next instant, Jorn and Yualla came crashing forward, and all three embraced, laughing with joy while the Aziru girl watched uncomprehendingly.
“Varak—is it really you!” exclaimed Jorn the Hunter with delight. The other hugged him fiercely, tears of happiness agleam in his blue eyes.
“The question should be—Jorn, can it be that you still live?” declared Varak. “We thought you long since dead from that fall you took from the mountain ledge…and, unless my eyes are lying, is not the girl at your side Yualla, gomad of the Sotharians?”
“I am Yualla,” laughed the girl.
“Your father and mother will be heartily relieved that you still live…but were you not carried off by a hunting thakdol8? By what marvel have you both survived? By what incredible luck do you come to be here? And, before my heart bursts with curiosity, do tell me who that amazing black colored woman is…although I suddenly am able to guess her identity.”
Interrupting each other, the Cro-Magnon boy and girl related to Varak a brief and somewhat confused account of their adventures while Niema stood with a warm smile lighting her lovely face, affectionately sharing the excitement and joy of these reunited friends. For Varak, of course, had been on the mountain with Hurok and the others of my retinue when they had striven to seek the Professor and me amid the bewildering ways of the Scarlet City, that time we had been held captive by Zarys of Zar.
Varak interrupted this torrent of narrative just long enough to answer a question from Yualla.
“My news will please you,” he grinned. “For we are all together again, or soon will be…Eric Carstairs and the Professor are with us, and all of our other comrades, although Hurok had strayed from us, I hope but briefly. And, Yualla, your mother and father, and all of your tribe, are not far ahead, for we parted from them only a little time ago in order to search for our huge and hairy friend. Soon we will all be united again, to continue the journey south to Thandar…but tell me, Jorn, how it was that you escaped from the little men of Zar?”
The tale was taken up again, and when at length it came to a narration of the most recent of their adventures, and the two youngsters mentioned how they had been found and befriended by Niema, the tall warrior interrupted a second time, to turn a smiling face upon the silent amazon girl. “If you are truly Niema of the Aziru,” he said, “and surely there cannot be two such women as you in all the length and breadth of Zanthodon, then I have welcome news for you, lady, which will be pleasant to your ears, I doubt not!”
“What news is that?” inquired Niema, and, as if by foreknowledge of the words the warrior was about to speak, her heart lifted within her breast in a surge of glorious hope.
“The black warrior who would be your mate, Zuma of the Aziru, is among us and we are already friends!” said Varak triumphantly.
The blaze of joy that lit up Niema’s face was truly wonderful to see.
“Can it be the truth?” she breathed faintly. “Tell me that he is well and unharmed, and searches for me still!”
“He is—he does—!”
“Where, then, is he at this moment?” she demanded. Varak pointed toward the sea.
“We split up to hunt for food for our meal,” he said. Hefting his spear with a rueful expression on his face, he added: “I came into the jungle, hoping to find uld, but the shaking-of-the-earth seems to have scared them all into hiding, for not yet have I so much as made a single kill! As for Zuma, he went down the beach, hoping to spear fish in the tidal pools along the shallows, and for aught I know paces the sands even now—”
“Ai-raa!” shouted Niema in a loud voice filled with exultant joy, startling them all. And, without another word, the black girl turned and plunged into the brush and vanished from their view in the direction of the shores of the Sogar-Jad, eager not to waste another moment before hurling herself into the arms of the stalwart black warrior whom she had long desired to take as her mate.
* * * *
When Manfred Von Kohler blew the head off the giant python to save Darya of Thandar from its gaping jaws, the shot was heard by other ears than those of Professor Percival P. Potter.
Moving stealthily through the brush on the heels of Niema, Yualla and Jorn the Hunter, Xask and Murg were keeping their quarry in sight when the shot rang out, echoing through the stillness of the wood.
Xask allowed a gasp of surprise to escape, his lips, and sank his fingers into the skinny arm of Murg. An unholy light flashed in the dark eyes of the Zarian vizier, for he at once recognized the sound as that made by the thunder-weapon which Eric Carstairs carried, although on second thought it seemed to him that it was different in timbre and in loudness.
How this could be eluded his imagination, for surely, there could not be two such weapons in the Underground World—not since the explosion set by the Professor back in the Scarlet City had totally destroyed all of the weapons which his wiles had coaxed and coerced the scrawny old savant into making for him and his Empress.
Instantly abandoning the tracking of the Cro-Magnon couple and the tall black warrior woman who had befriended them, he turned to plunge through the bushes in the direction from which the shot had come.
With an unerring sense of direction, the vizier led his whining, stumbling little companion to the glade where they arrived in time to be eye-witnesses to the confrontation between Darya of Thandar, Professor Potter, and the unknown stranger in peculiar garments who held a weapon of dark metal such as neither Xask nor Murg had ever looked upon before.
Xask instantly deduced that it was a thunder-weapon of similar power to the small hand weapon which Eric Carstairs carried and which Xask had long coveted, for in trigger and in barrel it resembled the automatic. He could not imagine how two such weapons came to be here in the jungle world of Zanthodon, but he could not deny the evidence of his eyes.
Cautioning his companion to silence, he crouched in the brush and overheard their conversation. Many of the words and terms they employed were unfamiliar to him, but Xask disregarded this fact, since there was nothing he could do to alter it. Agleam with cupidity, his eyes were riveted on the thunder-weapon as Manfred Von Kohler, with the Professor’s spear jabbing him between the shoulder blades, bent and gently deposited the deadly thing on the greensward at his feet.
So fixed was his attention on the scene taking place before him in the glade that he did not notice the stealthy approach of another until Murg timorously nudged him in the ribs to apprise him of the fact.
Xask could see that the second stranger was garbed in clothing similar to the first, in hue and design, and that these were also scrupulously clean but worn almost to tatters and carefully patched. He was larger and fuller of face than the first stranger, and was going bald. But none of these details was of any particular interest to the vizier.
What caught his fascinated eye was the fact that the second stranger also bore a rifle similar to that which the first had just surrendered, and that a small hand weapon very much like that belonging to Eric Carstairs, was holstered at his hip.
Glee lit the dark eyes of Xask; there were now at least four thunder-weapons in the Underground World, rather than merely one!
Which quadrupled his chances of getting his hands on one, so that the surviving artisans of the Scarlet City could duplicate them and arm the legions of Zar with a weapon of such irresistible might as to conquer the entire world.