As the Green Star Rises

Chapter 6. ISLE OF THE ANCIENT ONES

Through the impenetrable darkness of the night the mighty blue wings of the immense hawklike bird had borne the black superman, Ralidux, with the two women who were his helpless captives. Ever since the bolt of electric fire had struck Zarqa the Kalood into death or unconsciousness, thus freeing him from the control of an alien mind, the ebon princeling had given the hawk its head.

It might fly where it wished, for aught he cared. He could no longer return to dwell among his brethren in the Flying City for now it was known that he, Ralidux, had conceived an atrocious lust for a lesser being. This depraved passion, his fellow immortals of the Flying City of Calidar viewed with an abhorrence verging on horror; even as you or I might view a member of our own species so maddened with lust as to desire copulating with an animal.

To the distorted intellect of Ralidux, the surface of the world was a savage wilderness inhabited only by beasts. The only oasis of civilized men known to him was the Flying City itself. He must choose, therefore, between exile in a savage wilderness or the swift extermination by his horrified brethren, were he foolish enough to return to the Flying City.

It was, therefore, a matter of no importance to him where the blue-winged zawkaw bore him. Life from now on was to be a brutal, degraded existence in a hideous hell of noisome beasts, where he must dwell until death, forever deprived of the comforts of converse and companionship of his kind.

Were it possible for his fevered, disordered intellect to shrug off the red mists of madness which now blinded it, he might have recalled the discovery whose horrendous implications had driven him over the brink of sanity. That was, quite simply, that the man-shapen “beasts” who inhabited The World Below were not beasts at all; they were human creatures like himself, with the divine gifts of reason and coherent speech, and a high civilization of their own. The exquisite creature he held clasped against his powerful black breast was no beast, but a woman; the other half of the human species which his purely masculine civilization considered legendary, since their females had died out ages before.

Had he realized the implications of this discovery, he might have understood that the desire he felt for the beautiful young woman who lay panting and helpless in his arms was no ghastly, unholy lust at all. It was merely the normal human desire of male for female—a physical desire his insane, immortal brethren had ruthlessly repressed for untold centuries. This repression had in part contributed to their common madness.

His arms tightened about the lissome creature he held. His nostrils tasted the warm, perfumed odor of her floating hair; and he was very conscious of the delicately rounded smoothness of the silken, half-naked, voluptuous body he held against him. It was almost worth it, to have lost the companionship of his kind and his own self-respect, to be able to vent his lusts at leisure upon the lovely, desirable creature whose charms had inexplicably enslaved his soul.

He blinked through his wild, disordered, feverish dreams. Day had come up over the edges of the world, while he had flown onward in a stupor. Beneath him there now glistened an immense expanse of open waters, with scattered small islands clad in jungle verdure amidst them. Such a phenomenon was unknown to him or to the annals of his civilization; but he regarded the vast, landlocked sea with complete indifference. To his mad brain, one part of the world was no different than another. All places in The World Below were equally savage and untamed.

The blue wings were weary after long hours of flight. Spying the jungle isles below, the exhausted zawkaw began to circle downwards towards one small isle. The hand at the reins gave no indication of its wishes; thus the giant hawklike bird, given its head, settled downwards, alighting upon the dewy sward of the nearest isle.

Ralidux climbed stiffly from the saddle, lifting down the sleeping Goddess of Ardha. She had passed from panic to uncaring lassitude, and from thence to a fitful and exhausted slumber during the long nightmare of her abduction by the ebon madman.

Ralidux neither knew nor cared what his other captive might do. His entire being was concentrated on the object of his desires. Cradling the unconscious Goddess in his arms, he left his winged steed untended, and entered the jungle.

Niamh the Fair slid from the saddle to the greensward and lay there numbly for a time. The disastrous and tragic turn of events which had turned their escape into yet another nightmare of captivity, separating her forever (as she supposed) from her friends and former comrades, left her dazed and apathetic. She had seen the sparkling bolt of force that struck the skysled; she had watched with horror as the crippled craft swerved into the foliage of the great trees, careening crazily; even if Prince Janchan, Zarqa the Kalood and the aged philosopher, Nimbalim, had not died when the bolt struck their craft, surely their death had followed swiftly when the craft had crashed into the trees.

She was now completely alone and friendless, as she had been once before; before her eyes, the mighty form of her hero and lover, the great champion Chong, had been struck down by a traitor’s blow during their desperate escape from the Secret City. If anything, her present situation was even more desperate and completely hopeless. So far had she wandered, that she had not the slightest idea in which part of the world she now was. Wherever she was, surely she was thousands of leagues from her own city of Phaolon. Even the wise old sage of her court, Khin-nom, had not known of the existence of this mysterious, unknown sea.

Even worse, she was on a savage jungle isle; at the mercies of a depraved maniac who regarded her and her companion as mindless beasts, formed in a weird mockery of humanity; to be ruthlessly disposed of at will. Her situation was precarious and replete with perils.

Rousing herself from her despondency, the resourceful girl determined to explore the jungle. Perhaps she might find a hiding-place wherein she might seclude herself against discovery; or perhaps within the lush verdure she hoped to stumble upon some manner of weapon with which to defend herself against the fury of Ralidux.

She stepped into the dense growth of brush which grew at the jungle’s edge and vanished from view.

Ralidux bore the unconscious Arjala into the gloom of the jungle aisles. Although he had never before seen such surroundings as these, having spent the interminable centuries of his immortality in the synthetic environment of the Flying City, he wasted scarcely a single glance on the wild, untamed vegetation through which he progressed.

His entire being was concentrated upon the voluptuous form of the helpless young woman he held clasped against his breast. The last vestiges of reason had deserted the black immortal by now; lust blazed up within him, consuming his last tenuous grip on his sanity as if in a conflagration.

The wall of trees parted, revealing a dim glade and a limpid pool whose cool, fresh, crystalline waters bubbled up from hidden springs. Depositing his limp burden on the grassy margin of this pool, he bent, dampened the hem of his garment in the chill waters, and began bathing the face of the unconscious woman.

In a moment or two, Arjala stirred. Her thick lashes parted and she gazed about her in wonderment. Beyond the pool, half-buried in jungle foliage, lay huge blocks of stone and broken columns carven with curious symbols in an unknown language. It was these ruins which first caught her attention. To her dazed mind, it seemed as if she had awakened from her swoon only to find herself immersed in a strange, marvelous dream. The last thing she could remember was that long, nightmarish flight through the moonless dark, crushed helplessly in the arms of the beautiful black madman who had carried both herself and the Princess Niamh out of the sky city astride his monstrous winged steed. Now she woke, if indeed she was awake, to find herself in a wild, disordered garden of tropical growths such as she had never envisioned, not even in her wildest fancies.

Trees she had known had soared into the heavens like god-built pillars supporting the sky. But these trees that ringed the glade where she lay were curiously dwarfed, rising to merely two or three times the height of a full-grown man. And what were these peculiar ruins that lay strewn about, half-buried under roots and bushes? Never had she heard of cities built of stone. In the treetop regions where her race customarily made its abode, deposits of stone were unknown. The cities of the Laonese were made of crystals—a tough, resilient material derived from the sap of the sky-tall trees among whose upper branches the cities of her race were built.

But as a priestess of the Inner Temple, as an Initiate of the Secret Mysteries, she was privy to certain antique lore preserved by the priestly scribes and archivists. Thus, she recognized certain of the stony glyphs as the work of a prehistoric race whose origins were shrouded in mystery, as was their eventual doom; a race her people held in the highest degree of awe, and whom they knew only as “the Ancient Ones.”

She half-rose from her recumbent position to examine the enigmatic ruins more closely. Then it was that her wandering gaze fell upon the magnificent form of the half-naked black Calidarian. He stood motionless as an eidolon of jet, watching her lissome movements with eyes of cold yet burning quicksilver—eye within which there blazed no spark of pity or humanity—eyes fierce with unholy hunger and with the pure frenzy of desire.

It was Ralidux! So she had not dreamt it all, but was still at the mercies of the mad immortal who had conceived a consuming passion for her loveliness!

She fell back on the cushion of the sward, half-faint at her discovery. As she did so, a mad lust flared up in the immobile features of the Skyman and he sprang upon her as a wild beast springs upon his shrinking prey.

Chapter 7. ALTAR OF THE SERPENT-GOD

Even as had Arjala, Niamh marvelled at the strangeness of the jungle foliage. That trees should grow so small seemed to her both wondrous and inexplicable. Still and all, this was a portion of the world thoroughly unknown to her and her kind; it was perhaps only natural that in such strange regions nature should adopt forms other than those familiar to her.

She wondered at brilliant flowers like jungle orchids, that grew in a variety of hues bewildering and bizarre—flame orange, virulent scarlet, cat’s-eye yellow—and at blossoms striped, speckled and mottled with patches of velvety black. Their heady odor intoxicated her senses, even as she exclaimed in astonishment over their smallness. The blossoms known to her, that grew wild upon the mighty boughs of the towering trees, were often the size of mature humans. True, in the roofed gardens of Phaolon, horticulturists had bred flowers as minutely small as these through patient cultivation and grafting; but to find such miniscule flowers blossoming in the jungle was startling to her.

And then it was that she came upon the Temple—for a Temple it could only be.

It loomed above the dwarfish tangle of the trees, walls of crumbling, sculptured stone bedizened with weird and curious ornamentation. Stone faces leered and grinned above the lintels of door, gate and window; faces with fanged maws or cruel beaks instead of mouths, with bulging, inhuman brows crowned with sharp horns, or curling locks like serpents. Some had two eyes, some three or four or seven; some bore but one glaring organ amidst their brows, which stared cycloptically down at the wondering girl.

Niamh, too, was an Initiate of the Secret Mysteries. She knew something of the lore of that vanished race, rumored to have existed on the extremities of the planet during its youth. They had been contemporaries of the Winged Ones, of the Kaloodha, of Zarqa’s long-extinct people, had the mysterious Ancient Ones. Alone among the many denizens of the World of the Green Star, they had built their habitations upon the surface of the planet, rather than aloft amidst the branches of the gigantic trees.

A flight of stone steps rose steeply from the floor of the jungle to the threshold of the carven gate, which yawned blackly open. Vines and lianas shrouded the bottom-most steps, and dead leaves were blown into the corners of the stairs. Time had pried apart the stones whereof the stairs were built, and saplings grew amidst the steps, thrusting the stones awry.

Niamh ascended the stairs with trepidation and lingered, hesitantly, upon the threshold of the Temple, peering within. She could discern nothing of the interior, whose depths were hidden from her searching gaze by densest gloom.

She resolved to enter and discover what lay within. The isle seemed uninhabited, singularly deserted by wildlife of any kind. In all her exploration of the jungle she had yet to come upon the slightest trace of any beast. The creatures known to her were the tree-dwelling dragon lizards, the winged moths and dragonflies of the vast, sky-tall forest; and such creatures would be unlikely to dwell here in the jungles of the isle. But she sensed a curious tranquility about the jungle, a mood of peacefulness which enveloped the isle; she felt somehow that whatever the hidden dangers the place held, she had nothing to fear from predators.

She stepped within and was swallowed up in the fathomless darkness. Within the next few moments, however, her eyes adjusted and gradually, objects began to be visible in the black depths of the Temple. She wandered the length of a stone-paved hall, staring up at monstrous idols which grinned or beckoned or menaced; they lifted numerous hands whose claws, fingers, paws or pincers clasped stony artifacts which doubtless represented the attributes of power of these unknown divinities.

Some of these were stone flowers, skulls, wheels and keys; others seemed to represent stylized thunderbolts, swords, axes and other weapons of curious design. The stone gods sat enthroned, or squatted tailor-fashion, or were coiled about the tops of pedestals. Far above her head, twisting marble columns rose to support a lofty dome which had survived the depredations of time in a remarkable state of preservation.

The utter stillness of the Temple, which was broken only by the shuddering echoes of her sandals as they scraped upon the tesselated pavement, together with the ominous darkness of the vast hall, were awesome to the girl. Her skin crept to the rustle of echoes. She fancied that the glaring stone eyes of the row of monstrous and deformed godlings followed her timid progress with sentient, knowing gaze. The fixed and glaring orbs seemed to gloat down upon her, as if they knew some terrible and tremendous secret whose existence she did not guess.

By now it became obvious to the Princess that she would find no weapons in the mysterious Temple of the Ancient Ones; and nothing with which to defend her from the beasts of the jungle, if any were there, or against the black madman, Ralidux.

Whatever furniture, tools or utensils the vast pile of masonry had once contained had either lapsed to dust with the passage of innumerable ages, or had been carried off by the Ancient Ones themselves. They had deserted this island, giving over their stone shrine to the dominion of the jungle.

She resolved to retrace her steps, hoping to see the open, wholesome sunlight once again. The darkness, the shuddering silence, and the brooding monstrosities of hideous stone were beginning to prey upon her nerves. She found herself starting nervously at every sound, even though she knew it to be only the echo of her own footsteps. She caught herself peering over her shoulder, looking behind her into the menacing gloom in wary apprehension. Her skin crept upon her bare forearms; her firm adolescent breasts rose and fell with the quickness of her breath, while her heart thudded against her ribs.

She felt the icy breath of fear against the back of her neck. But every time she turned quickly to look behind her—nothing was to be seen.

She was afraid; but there was nothing here to be afraid of. Or, at least, there was nothing which she could see or hear. Was it some unknown or dormant sense within her, somehow detecting the approach of danger, which strove to alarm her to flight? She did not know; but suddenly the quiet jungle, the open air and streaming sunlight beyond the dark portal seemed very desirable to her. She wished mightily to be gone from this place of cold stone, dead silence and pervasive, haunted gloom.

Just then, she caught a glimpse of a peculiar structure the gloom had previously concealed from her. It must be the secret altar of the mysterious shrine; the shadowy abode of the nameless god whom the Ancient Ones had worshipped here, long ages ago.

It was a very strange altar; naught but a flight of circular steps leading to a dais. In the center of that dais a deep well was sunken; before that well, two stone pillars had been raised, with stone rings at their tops. Looking at this strange sight, Niamh shivered suddenly; it was almost as if the unknown builders had raised those pillars before the well so that a human sacrifice could be bound between the pillars, the wrists chained to the two stone rings.

She ascended the stone steps to the top of the dais to investigate this weird altar; her former fears were forgotten in the impulse of curiosity.

The pillars were sculpted to represent leering, goggle-eyed faces, one atop the other. She noticed without really comprehending it, that the cavern eyes of these frightful faces were fixed to stare down at something in the depths of the well.

Cautious of a misstep, the Princess of Phaolon approached the rim of the well and peered down. She could see nothing of whatever lay concealed in the darkness at the bottom of the well, but she did not believe it held water. The odor which arose from below was a sour, musky stench, very different from the putrid smell of scummed, stagnant water.

As she turned to go, her sandal accidentally dislodged a bit of broken stone from the very brink. This fragment fell into the well. She lingered warily, but there came to her ears no sound of a splash when the rock reached bottom.

A moment later, there came to her ears a most peculiar sussurration. A hiss, like that of escaping gas. This was followed by a dry rasping, as if some moving thing was scraping against the stone sides of the well… as if something was crawling or gliding swiftly up the throat of the well…

Truly frightened now, the girl sprang down the steps and ran on light feet down the length of the domed and pillared hall, towards the distant doorway and the sane freedom and sunlight beyond.

The silent, motionless row of carven gods or devils watched her go, and smiled to themselves their timeless, graven smiles.

At the threshold she paused momentarily in her flight, and turned to look behind. Never could she recall what had impelled her to take that final backwards look.

As she stared back into the darkness, her eyes widened until the whites could be clearly seen all around the pupils.

The pallidly golden tint of her skin whitened with stark terror. The hairs stiffened and lifted on the nape of her neck, as the hackles of a beast rise when it senses danger.

Her features became strained and contorted into a mask of horror. She shoved her knuckles against her lips, as if trying to stifle the scream that rose from within her.

Then she shrieked—a desperate, wailing cry of unbelieving horror. She turned to flee from the pursuit of the monstrous thing she had glimpsed moving behind her in the darkness of the ancient building…

Chapter 8. NAKED FANGS

The Goddess Arjala lay helplessly pinned against the greensward, clasped in the powerful arms of the ebon princeling from the Flying City. His weird quicksilver eyes flamed with unholy lust as he covered her upturned face with panting kisses.

The Goddess writhed in his arms, resisting him with every ounce of strength her lithe body possessed. But it was useless, she realized with growing horror. He was far stronger than she, and the impulse of his tumultuous desire was irresistible. No matter how strenuously she strove to fight him off, the black immortal would overcome her.

Arjala had experienced much that was new to her since Zarqa and Janchan had carried her off, while attempting to rescue the Princess of Phaolon. Reared in an atmosphere of seductive luxury, her most idle whim was absolute law; the Ardhanese priestess and vessel of the Goddess was thoroughly unaccustomed to having her wishes ignored or even flouted. But since the skysled had borne her off into the night, she had been angered, insulted, and ordered about; it was as if she were a person of no consequence, instead of being the most powerful woman in her realm.

The ultimate indignity, however, had been suffered at the hands of the black immortal, Ralidux, and others of his kind.

For in the Flying City, Arjala had been subjected to the most abhorrent, obscene degradation of all, that of slavery. She had been stripped, poked and prodded about; tested, weighed and measured like some animal in an experimental laboratory.

And now, the affront supreme! For the black madman meant to force his virility upon her, against her will. There could be no more horrendous insult than this. As the realization spread throughout her, the Goddess forgot her fears in a rising tide of rage that welled up within her and exploded in a spasm of fury that even Ralidux had not expected.

It is amusing to contemplate the sense of fury, outrage and degradation with which Arjala viewed her attempted rape by Ralidux. It is not amusing in itself, that is; but when you consider that Ralidux himself viewed the act he was striving to perform as nothing more than a shameful, degrading coupling of a superior being with an animal of the lower species, the humor in the incident becomes visible.

Right now, however, Ralidux was not amused. He was, in fact, trembling with furious frustration. The sudden spurt of anger within her breast had turned the Goddess into a spitting tiger-cat, all claws and screams.

With one hand free of the clutches of Ralidux, Arjala did her best to claw out his quicksilver eyes. The best she could manage to do, however, was to rip raw and jagged furrows down his face, scoring it from brow to chin. Hot blood spurted under her tearing nails; stung, Ralidux howled, clapped one hand to his torn face, and the struggling young woman scrambled free of him.

She fled into the jungle in the next instant, vanishing into the gloom between the trees. He staggered to his feet, snarling curses, the blood leaking down his face and dribbling between his fingers. Her nails as they raked his face had narrowly missed his left eye, by perhaps a third of an inch.

Possessed by maniacal rage, Ralidux did not pause even to bathe his wounds in the pool amid the glade; he plunged into the jungle after the girl. The green gloom swallowed him up, and the glade was empty; there was no sign that man had even breeched its secluded solitude, save for a scrap or two of cloth torn from Arjala’s garb and the blood of Ralidux that wet the crushed grass like some ghastly scarlet dew.

Arjala had not the slightest notion of where she was going, but hurtled in headlong flight through the twisting, crossing aisles of the jungle. In a few minutes she emerged from the edge of the jungle into the sunlight of open day. Pausing for a moment in her flight, the girl looked about her dazedly, so as to ascertain her position.

By some quirk of fate, she had emerged at the same point she had entered the jungle earlier. There before her was the immense blue hawklike bird, resting upon a fallen log. The saddle upon its back was empty.

In her present state, the mind of Arjala was out of control. Sheer instinct impelled her now; and to see was to act. The giant bird represented to her dazed, outraged thoughts the opportunity for escape; her chance for freedom from a situation which was intolerable to one with her sense of self-importance and queenliness.

Without a moment’s hesitation, she quickly ran across the level space where the bird squatted wearily. In her proper mind, she would have been timid of the immense raptor and wary of its uncertain domestication; but in her current hysteria, it did not even occur to her that the bird might resist her if she mounted the capacious saddle strapped about its breast at the base of its neck.

As for the great hunting-hawk, it eyed her curiously, turning its fierce orange eye upon the half-naked girl. But it made no objection to being mounted and would indeed have responded to her picking up the reins, and flown away with her, even in its wearied condition.

This action, however, Arjala did not take. A voice hailed her from the edge of the jungle.

Terror flashed in the liquid jewels of her beautiful eyes and she turned slowly to see which of her companions was accosting her—the madman whom she loathed and hungered to slay, or the rival princess for whom she had scant liking.

With eyes wide with unbelieving horror, Niamh the Fair stared behind her into the darkness of the Temple.

Up from the black well atop the altar dais slithered the hideous length of an enormous serpent. Its eyes of soulless flame glared through the darkness as if to mesmerize the Princess.

The head of the serpent monster was as thick and heavy as the body of a mature man; its scaly-clad, sinuous length was nearly two hundred feet long. Perhaps it was the monster god the Ancient Ones had worshiped long ago, or the descendant of that reptilian divinity; or possibly it was but a denizen of the jungles who had chosen to make its noisome lair in the black tunnels beneath the age-old temple. Niamh never knew; nor did she care.

The girl had heard of such creatures, which seldom climbed to the height of the jewelbox cities built high in the sky-tall trees and were, for that reason, so rare as to be considered mythological. It was known as the Ssalith; and such were the traits of cunning and ferocity the monster serpents displayed, they were feared even by the terrible sea dragons and the fearsome ythids of the upper regions.

Pale and trembling with horror, Niamh fled from the approach of the Ssalith. Down the crumbling stone stair she fled on white nimble feet, darting into the jungle.

On her very heels the gigantic serpent poured its scaly and sinuous length out of the yawning portal of the Temple and down the carven stair, its jaws grinning open, scarlet tongue flickering, tasting the air.

Soundless as a shadow it glided into the jungle and, in a few moments, had vanished within.

Ralidux plunged through the bushes, oblivious of the branches that whipped his bloody face; ignoring the bite of sawing-edged leaves as they snatched and tore at his thighs and legs.

He sought the girl who fled before him with a single devouring compulsion which gnawed at the citadel of his sanity. The girl would be his or he would perish in her pursuit; naught else in all the world mattered to him now but to exhaust the burning lust which tormented him, upon her helpless body.

He was by now wholly mad. His superhumanly beautiful face was transformed into a horrible visage of naked fury. The severe, classic composure that had made his features as perfect and immobile as those of a superb sculpture had been shattered to rage. His eyes blazed like mad stars of silver fire in the raw and bloody ruin of his snarling face.

Suddenly the aisle before him was filled with a gliding, serpentine bulk. He paused in his headlong flight. Scenting fresh blood, the head of the monstrous Ssalith swung about.

Before it stood an unarmed naked man, streaming with gore. The giant serpent was hungry, enraged and eager for the kill. Its tiny brain could only contain one thought at a time; hence, it forgot the fleeing girl and lunged for this new delicacy which fate had thrust into its path.

With the Ssalith, to see was to strike. The hideous blunt-nosed head thrust for Ralidux like a bolt of lightning. Jaws lined with curved fangs the length of cavalry sabers now gaped wide. Uttering its war-cry, a deep-throated, thunderous hiss, the monster serpent struck!

Fear lent wings to the flashing legs of Niamh the Fair. Like a frightened deer she sped through the gloom of the silent jungle, emerging suddenly into the full light of day.

Before her was spread the grassy plain on which they had alighted from their hawklike steed; beyond stretched a tawny beach and the open sea.

The hawk was still there. So was Arjala!

Crying out for her to wait, Niamh sprinted forward. Arjala turned a furious, tear-stained face in her direction. Her eyes were raging and wild, like those of a beast. She snatched at the reins without a word. The zawkaw spread its vast wings and beat the air with a sound like drumming thunder. And started to rise!

Niamh, almost by Arjala’s side, now watched as the blue hawk began to ascend. She sprang into the air, a lithe leap with all the strength and agility of her long legs.

One upreaching hand brushed the dangling stirrups—slid—caught—and held!

The hawk rose a hundred yards into the sunlit air, and circled out over the sparkling waters of the sea. With the Princess of Phaolon dangling by one hand from the stirrup, her heels kicking at empty air!

Chapter 9. FLAME FOR FREEDOM

The thick, sticky strands of the enormous web trembled ever so slightly. Somewhere in the vast system of taut, interlocking cables, the great spider crouched like a malignant thing, waiting… waiting.

Waiting for something to land and become entangled in the huge net it had spun with slow, patient labor.

As the skysled had just become entangled!

Now, sensing the entanglement of some flying creature, the huge spider woke from its trance. Tasting the air with huge, hairy feelers, the crouching brute expanded its stalk-like, jointed legs. Behind the hideous, chitinous mask of its face was a brain; cold, calculating and emotionless it estimated the precise location of the entangled thing and its post position in the tremendous web which hung between two of the great trees.

Dappled sunlight glistened on the armored legs as the vast bulk of the spider shifted. The light of the Green Star sparkled on the crab-like chitin, which had an oily sheen. The rays that filtered down through immense leaves flashed in the great orbs of the compound eyes. Legs thrust out, clenching the sticky web-strand; now the immense spider stood, balanced on the swaying cable.

In the next moment it was moving along, claw over claw with a sidewise, scuttling motion; down the length of the anchor-cable in the direction of the foreign object whose abrupt impingement in the tightly-strung web had disturbed it from its waiting somnolence.

At some considerable distance from the rapidly-moving spider, the Prince of Phaolon and the ancient philosopher were attempting to revive their comrade, Zarqa the Kalood.

The inhumanly gaunt, golden-skinned creature had fallen forward over the control panel of the skysled, striking his bulging and hairless brow against the inner rim of the crystal windshield. They could discern no heartbeat nor pulse within his body; however, the faint traces of a shallow, ragged respiration they could detect. It was this token that life yet flickered within the body of the Winged Man that gave them hope. Thus, they persevered in their attempt to revive Zarqa.

Nimbalim of Yoth had dampened a bit of cloth torn from the hem of his robe and with this was bathing the brow of the Kalood. Janchan of Phaolon was rubbing the gaunt, skeletal wrists and chafing the forearms of the winged giant, hoping to restore his circulation.

Within a few moments their attempts at resuscitation were crowned with success. The immense purple eyes of the Winged Man opened and he stared about him vaguely. They gave him water mixed with wine to drink; he partook lightly of the beverage, coughed, and seemed stronger.

My dear friends! … What has occurred? Where are we, and why is the vehicle no longer in motion?

The cool whisper of alien thoughts within his own brain was an uncanny sensation, and one still novel enough to cause the old philosopher to shiver slightly. But Janchan was by now well accustomed to the Kalood’s telepathic mode of communication and hence, it did not disturb him as it did the Yothian.

His frank, tanned face reflected his relief and delight at the recovery of his comrade. In a few, terse words he apprised the Winged Man of their predicament, and expressed his joy that the bolt from the black superman had not slain Zarqa.

Luckily, it was but a glancing blow, Zarqa smiled. And the bulk of it was absorbed by the wind-crystal, which thus deflected most of the bolt. Otherwise I might easily have been slain… but I fear that my swoon has caused me to lose my control over the mind of Ralidux! This means that he is now in command of his wits. Our two female companions in adventure are completely at his mercies…

So swiftly had things been happening, and so concerned had he been over the condition of the Winged Man, that Prince Janchan had not yet thought of the possible consequences of Zarqa’s loss of consciousness to the Goddess Arjala and Niamh the Fair. Now the dangerous plight of the two women was brought home to him, and his eyes went blank with horror.

During their period of captivity in the Flying City, he had been thrown together with the voluptuous Ardhanese priestess, in close proximity. His innate sense of chivalry had caused him to adopt a protective manner towards the unfortunate young woman; and this, together with their enforced intimacy, had ripened (in his heart, at least) to a passion more intense and personal. He was by now deeply in love with the willful, obstinate girl; and he had reason to believe she returned his admiration.

Knowing of the frenzied desire which Ralidux had conceived for Arjala, he realized that the woman he loved was now completely in the power of the lust-maddened maniac. A chill of the utmost horror went through his robust, manly frame.

“Now, by all the Lords of The World Above, my friend, you are right! We must speed to her rescue without a moment’s delay! The vicious, depraved madman will have his will with her at the first opportunity… and Arjala is a noblewoman of high caste!” This he said in quick, gasping tones; but he said nothing more. To one familiar with the tradition-bound, age-old ways of the Laonese, there was no more to be said. A noblewoman of the highest caste may be violated against her will, subjugated by sheer force. But she does not live long after this, the ultimate indignity.

Every noblewoman on the World of the Green Star wears a tiny blade sewn into the hem of her intimate garments. The knife is called The Avenger of Chastity. Once subjected to degradation, a woman of Arjala’s caste unsheathes this hidden blade with a ritual gesture.

And sheathes it again, in her own heart!

Nimbalim cleared his throat with a trace of irritability.

“Your pardon, my friends… but may this unworthy scholar remind you that we have other, more pressing, more immediate problems to cope with than those of the missing members of our party? I refer to the hungers of the rapacious xoph, whose approach can even now be felt by the tremors along the web; I doubt not that he speeds with much alacrity in order to discern what chance visitor had entered his domain, and to discover if it should be the sort of provender his appetite demands for its assuagement…”

Zarqa had by this time recovered fully from the stunning assault of the ray bolt. In a single, all-encompassing glance he took in the details of their entanglement; wasting no time in idle words, he bent swiftly to energize the controls of their aerial conveyance.

The skysled quivered, engines thrumming; but so thoroughly were they enmeshed in the adhesive grip of the enormous net, that even the powerful magnetic flux which drove the contrivance proved insufficient to extricate them from their predicament.

Janchan unsheathed his sword and undertook the task of cutting them free. But the spider-silk was tougher and more durable than braided nylon cord; his transparent blade, razory-sharp though it was, would take upwards of an hour to saw through even one of the many strands which held them fast.

And they did not have an hour; their life might well be measured in mere minutes if they did not soon manage to extricate themselves from the web of the spider-monster.

Your sword-edge will not cut us free, friend Janchan, the thought pulsed swiftly from the Winged Man.

“What then? Stay here and die?” panted that worthy person.

If necessary, I trust we shall face our doom with the equanimity of those who strive on, even into the very jaws of defeat, replied Zarqa. But I know of one instrument which may serve to liberate us.

“Its name? Quickly! From the way the web is vibrating, the great spider is almost upon us,” cried Janchan.

Its name is—fire! came the throbbing thought of Zarqa the Kalood.

Fire! Of course! Janchan grinned—a humorless rictus of the lips which had no mirth in it. The sticky substance of which the mighty net was woven might well prove easily combustible. Indeed, the adhesive qualities of the monster spider’s web reminded him of the gummy residue left at the bottom of an oil lamp when all the fuel is exhausted. Why had the simple notion not occurred to him? At least it was worth a try—

He said as much, and Zarqa nodded solemnly.

But we must act swiftly, my friends, or the spider will be at our throats, he said mentally. Now, search your garments—have we, any of us, a flint-striker on our persons?

The Winged Man made reference to a small artifact employed for striking sparks, similar to the flint-and-steel contrivances used for identical purposes by early American colonists. Such instruments were customarily carried in a small pocket by travellers, who were thus assured of being able to light a cook-fire or illuminate a torch in the wilderness during their travels. The savant Nimbalim ran his fingers through the pockets of his robes, then shrugged with empty hands.

Zarqa’s tawny hide was in itself proof against the elements; and his kind were not equipped with external genitalia and required no cover for modesty. He had neither pocket nor pouch in which to store the necessary implement.

And as for Janchan he searched his person with hands that were now a-tremble, with a horrible inner conviction that he, too, had no such device upon him.

The three adventurers looked at each other with consternation in their faces, and empty hands. And the gigantic spider was almost upon them.

Chapter 10. THE VAULT OF MARVELS

As the enormous serpent struck at him, Ralidux did the only thing he could; he sprang up into the air.

With a vicious snap, the fanged jaws of the monster Ssalith closed upon the space his body had occupied a split-second before.

His arms were stretched above his head to grasp a branch that arched over the jungle path. As he sprang, however, his fingers brushed the branch of the tree—slipped, and failed to cling.

He fell back. As he did so, the head of the serpent-god chanced to be directly beneath him. Thus, he landed to find himself astride the neck of the giant snake!

His powerful legs clamped about the serpent’s throat; he threw himself forward, wrapping his arms about the base of the Ssalith’s skull, his hands locked together just behind the hinges of its jaws.

The reptile was astounded, outraged and furious. Never before had its prey attempted to ride upon its back; the experience was new, and it did not like the weight of the little manling. It shook its head furiously from side to side in an attempt to dislodge its rider, but he clung tightly to avoid being hurled off. Ralidux was mad, but sufficient sanity made him realize that only by clinging to the back of the reptilian monster could he avoid being mangled between those fanged, hideous jaws.

The gigantic Ssalith then attempted to rub him off by scraping its head against the turf, and against the trunks of the trees. The rough bark tore his skin and lacerated his shoulders, but Ralidux gritted his teeth against the pain and clung like death to his precarious perch.

Again and again, the serpent battered its blunt-nosed head against any obstacle it could in an effort to dislodge the manling; but he clung like a leech.

The serpent hissed and squalled, forked tongue flickering, jaws gaping and closing on empty air. Nothing it could do would loosen the powerful grip of the black man, whose muscular thighs were clamped painfully about its gullet. Ralidux intensified the pressure of his grip; most of the serpent’s enormous length was sheathed in powerful muscle, mailed in a coat of impenetrable scales, impervious even to the point of a sword. But the base of its throat was unarmored and tender; there alone was it unprotected; there only was it vulnerable. And it was precisely there that the bare knees of the black superman slug into its soft throat with crushing pressure, cutting off its windpipe.

The Ssalith exploded in a writhing fury, battering its head blindly against rocks and trees, thrusting and wriggling through dense bushes. Nothing it could do seemed to discourage the little creature that clung to the back of its neck, slowly throttling it.

The miniscule brain of the serpent-monster could hold only one thought at a time. Fury had driven hunger from its mind; and now fear replaced fury. Safety, to the tiny mind of the Ssalith, meant its nest beneath the ancient stone temple; now it headed back the way it had come, gliding through the jungle aisles toward the security of its noisome lair in the warm and fetid gloom of the subterranean catacombs, from which the tempting odor of Niamh’s flesh had lured it.

It slid out of the jungle, ascended the broken stone steps and entered the darkness of the ruined edifice. Still Ralidux clung grimly to his perch behind its skull; by now he was battered and bleeding from a score of scratches, dazed and half-conscious. But he knew that if once he let go and fell off, the ravening snake would be upon him in an instant.

Darkness closed about him. Presently he discerned that his loathsome steed was descending a tunnel cut vertically into the depths. Before long, this well would terminate in some manner of nest; it was possible that there the reptile had a mate, or a brood of offspring. Were that to prove the case, his doom was assured.

Rousing his sluggish wits, he lifted his head and peered about him. The darkness was, at this depth, somewhat alleviated by a sickly phosphorescence. A vague green glow was visible; seemingly shed by the reeking slime which coated the lower portion of the vertical shaft.

By this ghostly luminosity, Ralidux caught a glimpse of a side-tunnel which branched off at a right angle. Its black mouth rose rapidly toward him as the Ssalith slithered down the shaft. From the quick glimpse he caught, it seemed that this side-tunnel was too small and narrow to permit the entrance of the serpent’s blunt, wedge-shaped head.

As he was borne past this opening he released his grasp, threw his arms up and caught hold of the lower lip of the tunnel’s mouth. In the same instant, he let go with his legs. Now he dangled free, supporting his weight by the grip of his fingertips only. The enormous length of the serpent brushed against him as the remainder of its body slithered by. Scales rasped against his raw back and bruised legs; but in a moment, the gigantic snake had vanished beneath him and he was able to drag himself up and into the mouth of the second tunnel.

The sluggish wits of the Ssalith did not at once register the fact that the tormenting pressure of the manling was gone. By that time, Ralidux had crawled further into the black tunnel and was beyond its reach.

Ralidux crawled the length of the tunnel on his hands and knees because it was too low-roofed to permit him to stand erect. At the end the tunnel opened into a large, circular rotunda with a domed roof. The rotunda had evidently been hewn from the solid bed-rock of the island, and Ralidux marvelled at the sheet immensity of labor expended on the subterranean structure. Other side-tunnels branched off from all sides; their black mouths gaped in the smooth circular walls of the room, spaced at broad intervals.

The rotunda was barren of anything but the litter of trash and rotten, decayed bits of wood and fabric that had once perhaps been furniture. It was difficult to ascertain the purpose for which the subterranean chamber had been designed.

A wide stone arch led into an adjoining antechamber; therein the Skyman from Calidar found weird artifacts of glistening metal and crystal whose purposes were equally enigmatic. Chamber followed chamber, in a straight line. At the terminus of this series, he entered a huge stone vault filled with incomprehensible mechanisms used by the Ancient Ones. Among these he espied a slender craft, pointed at either end, which resembled a gondola or a canoe. It was fashioned entirely of a sleek metal of fierce indigo hue, and possessed a cockpit-like enclosure shielded with crystal. Peering within the transparent cupola, the Calidarian saw a padded seat and a curving control-panel. Lights yet glowed among the controls, suggesting that this strange vessel still possessed motive power.

The discovery intrigued the black man. A savant among the Skymen, he was familiar with the super-science of the Ancients; they in many ways had rivalled the brilliant and sophisticated achievements of the Winged Men who had ruled the planet before the advent of man.

The terminal chamber opened upon a cliffside, which gave a clear vista of jungle, sea and sky. A heavy growth of vegetation screened this lateral opening. Ralidux clambered through, making his way out of the jungle-clad slopes to the shore, and thence around the curve of the isle to the spot where he had left his zawkaw.

The giant hawk, of course, was no longer there, having flown off with Niamh and Arjala. A fury gnawed at the heart of the black immortal, as he guessed that his fair captive and her accomplice had eluded his clutches in this manner. For an indeterminate period he ranged the jungle isle, careless of again encountering the serpent-monster, finding no trace whatsoever of the two women. Towards nightfall, he became convinced the women had departed from the isle by means of the winged steed.

By this time, aware of a raging hunger, he paused to refresh himself with such jungle fruits, nuts and berries as he could find. His keen intellect, whose rationalizations were not entirely impaired by his lust for Arjala, considered the alternatives open to him.

His appetite somewhat sated, he climbed back up the verdure-clad slope to the lofty cliff and reentered the stone vault where the advanced mechanisms of the Ancient Ones reposed. Unless the gondola-like craft was indeed an aerial vehicle as it seemed, and still under power, he was marooned here helplessly. This goaded him to wild extremes, for he could not bear the notion that the voluptuous creature who was the object of his desires had escaped him.

He experimented with the craft and found the mode whereby the crystal-screened cupola could be energized. Entering, and seating himself within the cockpit, he studied the controls closely. Their markings were in a language unknown to him; but his highly-trained scientific mind soon ascertained the purposes of the various verniers, levers and studs.

Easing forward a red-enameled lever in its slot, Ralidux heard the hum of hidden engines. A vertigo assailed him as the slim craft floated free of the floor of the vault and ascended towards the rocky roof overhead. A touch on the lever halted this motion, and he thrust forward a second control-bar. The vehicle floated forward, its up-curved prow cleaving through the dense growth of bushes which screened the exit from the cavern.

In another moment his flying contrivance soared aloft above the jungles, circled the island once, and he then headed her prow into the dawn and flew out over the open sea.