Lankar of Callisto

Chapter 1 THE CITY IN THE JUNGLE

It was early afternoon when we landed at the Siem Reap airport just north of the capital city. We had to wait in interminable lines to collect our luggage and to go through passport examination and customs inspection. Eventually we emerged under a darkening sky to be greeted by grinning pedicab-drivers who shrilled out the names of hotels, vying with each other for our trade. We selected one cheerful little man from the line who greeted us in a comical mixture of French and Cambodian.

“Bonsoir, lok!”―which meant “good evening, mister”―he called. I think Noel was attracted to him because of his smile, which was gleaming and colorful. I mean that quite literally, by the way, for his teeth were inlaid with gold and plaques of red carnelian. The Cambodian natives, it seems, regard white teeth as bad luck, and while the poor peasants color them by chewing on betel nut, those who can afford to do so have their teeth set with gold fillings or with semiprecious stones like lapis or carnelian, or even with jewels.

Babbling merrily in at least three languages, our driver heaped the luggage on the rack and we climbed in and settled ourselves while he mounted the rear of the vehicle, taking a running start, and steered us smoothly into the flow of traffic. These pedicabs look like an odd hybrid of bicycle and the traditional rickshaw and most of the street traffic of the Cambodian capital is composed of them, since gasoline has recently become very expensive due to shortages and the cutoff of foreign imports. “Legs are cheaper than gas,” is the saying here.

For a time we were pedaled along a narrow country road beside a muddy yellow waterway. Naked brown boys scrubbing dusty elephants amid the stream waved and catcalled as we went clicking by; grimacing gibbons chattered from tall stands of bamboo that rattled and clattered in the spanking breeze; birds with red plumage screeched from immense banyans or fragrant lemon-groves. We saw entire families up to their knees in the muddy water, scooping up silver, wriggling fish in wicker buckets. Occasionally the waterway widened and we saw stately, if clumsy, wooden junks competing with all manner of rivercraft for right of way―everything from bamboo rafts to rusty packet boats, loud motorboats scooting by graceful crafts that looked for all the world like Venetian gondolas. Far off downstream a huge oil tanker stood at dock.

Before long we entered the city proper and moved through narrow streets lined with open-air shops which sold an amazing profusion of odd merchandise―wrought-silver elephants, gongs, bamboo flutes, paper good-luck flags, incense sticks, betelnuts, begging bowls of polished wood, dogmeat sausages (at which we shuddered), modern Chinese comic books. Buddhist monks strolled the sidewalks in their saffron robes under yellow parasols. Old women with shaven heads went by, wrapped from armpit to ankle in black sarongs called sampots, with spotless white blouses. Mobs of ragamuffin children were everywhere, chewing sugarcane―the local equivalent of lollypops-lugging shoeshine kits, begging for pennies, munching on sunflower seeds. Fortune-tellers squatted on the sidewalks, a jumble of mystic books, copper amulets and magical herbs spread out before them on pieces of oilcloth. Most of the traffic was composed of pedicabs similar to the one in which we rode, which are called cyclos; there were very few automobiles to be seen.

Noel had brought along a street map of Phnom Penh which she had been studying on the plane while I read Jandar’s manuscript; so we were able to follow our progress through the city easily enough. Phnom

Penh is a city of many waters, laid out so that it straddles the intersection of the Tonle Sap and the Bassac River, where they merge with an elbow of the mighty Mekong which empties into the ocean one hundred and thirty miles downstream. This intersection, called the quatre bras, the “four arms,” is like a great `X’ of water, and most of the local transportation is by means of the various rivers, canals and suchlike. The country itself is quite small, covering 66,000 square miles, about the size of the state of Washington back home. The capital is rather small, in keeping with about four hundred thousand inhabitants.

We entered the Boulevard Norodom, a broad tree-lined avenue. Here for the first time we saw automobiles in number, mostly small foreign imports I could not name. Our driver, pedaling away behind us, called our attention to a local landmark, the famous Wat Phnom, a tapering, battered, weather-beaten, spire-topped shrine which rises atop a wooded hill near the approximate center of the city, gained by a wide flight of stone steps. We passed by it close enough to see the stone seven-headed cobras that adorned its roof. “Wat Phnom” means “Hill Temple,” and the legend has it that six centuries ago when rainy season floodwaters arose, they washed the trunk of a great koki tree up this hill to the doorstep of a lady named Penh. Inside the tree were found four bronze images of the Buddha, and the omen was interpreted to mean the gods had withdrawn their favor from the old imperial capital, the famous jungle metropolis of Angkor, and were searching for a new home. Rumors of the miracle spread and a fair-sized town grew up rapidly around the central hill whereon lived Lady Penh, who built the spired temple to house the idols. Later, when an invasion from Thailand overran Angkor, the king of that day moved south, settling here, making this his capital. The city has been known as Phnom Penh, “the Hill of Lady Penh,” ever since.

We reached the waterfront where we were supposed to meet Sir Malcolm’s head boy, checked our luggage in a riverside passenger station, paid our cyclo-driver, tipping him handsomely, and, as we had plenty of time to spare, decided on an early dinner. The station manager, or dockmaster, or whatever he was, spoke a fair bit of English, recommending the center of the local nightlife, an establishment called le Bar Jean, where the local members of the French colony meet for cocktails, conversation and continental cuisine. Noel demurred, preferring something more Cambodian to French; the stationmaster told us how to find the Lotus d’Or, a floating restaurant serving traditional Vietnamese dishes, which had originally been built as a movie set.

We set out on our own. The steep golden yellow roofs of the Throne Hall, reserved for coronations, gleamed in the fires of sunset; paper lanterns bobbled from bamboo rods above open-air shops inwardly lit by kerosene lamps; colored paper good-luck flags fluttered from doorsills as we passed, displaying a bizarre bestiary―the half-human Garuda bird, the three-faced god Chak Kboun, fantastically colored elephants, and a green-faced giant named Pipchek, borrowed from Hindu myth. Eager-faced urchins, who could spot a “wealthy” tourist ten miles off, vied to escort us to local monuments like the great Preah Morokoe pagoda with its famous floor of solid silver tiles. There was certainly a motley throng filling the lamplit streets, among them a surprising preponderance of terribly respectable-looking Chinese businessmen in neat, gray Western business suits, with narrow, black conservative ties. Since about a third of Phnom Penh’s citizens are Chinese, and since they control most of the trade and own nearly all of the shops, I suppose this wasn’t really surprising.

The city was crowded and colorful, a place where many different cultures meet and mingle. Along Rue Khemarak Phoumin―over which garish paper banners advertise soccer games and boxing matches to the sports-mad Cambodians―there is a restaurant serving a traditional Chinese menu, crossed, in a most unlikely fashion, with a French sidewalk cafe. But we finally settled on a seedy little eating-place which offered Cambodian dishes and even a headwaiter who spoke English. Shunning the dogmeat sausages, Noel asked about a dish called chong roet, which turned out to be live locusts or cicadas broiled over pans of charcoal.

We settled on roast trei chkowk, a local variety of lake chub roasted crisp and tender over a pot of charcoal, served up on a bed of steaming rice. It was tangy and delicious, topped off with heady Cambodian tea served in curious wooden pots, with ansamcheks for dessert-rice cakes with banana centers, wrapped in leaves and served piping hot. The restaurant was crowded and noisy, sawdust on the floor and odorous of fish-heads. Pretty girls in gorgeous sarongs twirled in the national folk dance, called the lamthon, in a kind of floor show; they were followed by musicians who played eight-stringed gares, a native orchestra of gongs and flutes and instruments called tros which look like one-stringed violins. We ate hugely, enjoyed ourselves enormously, and the bill came to a staggering thirty riels, which was about ninety cents American.

After supper we went strolling among the shops. Noel wanted to pick up a few souvenirs to bring home as gifts for her sister, the Jellerette children across the street, and our next-door neighbors, the Roethers, who were usually kind enough to collect our mail and newspapers for us when we were off on trips. She also hoped to find something nice for Marie Cerut, a local antique dealer with whom she had struck up a close friendship.

“Keep your eyes open for something to bring back for Ron Stoloff,” she said, referring to the President of the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, whose guests we would be at the annual Philcon the following month.

Everywhere we went we saw clear evidence that this was a country at war. Military vehicles were to be seen moving through the streets or parked at corners, and there were many Cambodians in uniform, some of them carrying weapons, mingling with the crowds along the street. The recent explosion of rebel action in the outlying provinces and the dangers of an attempted Communist take-over of the new Lon Nol government had caused our State Department to be more than a little reluctant to permit Noel and me to have passports for Cambodia. Obviously, Uncle didn’t like the idea of U.S. citizens getting into a Southeast Asian country at war, for fear of American nationals getting mixed up in what might be an international incident. While we were in the capital, though, we didn’t see any evidence of trouble, although once we got out on the river and down into the jungle regions, we might expect a little more danger.

Well, we had determined to take our chances on that, and hoped that everything turned out all right.

The streets were very crowded by now, and made a gorgeous and exotic sight, lit by swaying paper lanterns, colored lights shining on strange brown faces, gilded wood, signs in curious characters. I wished we had more time to sample the nightlife, but we did not.

Back on the dock we found our transportation awaiting us, in the form of a rusty, patched, decrepit little steam-launch that was a dead ringer for the dilapidated craft Humphrey Bogart captained in one of our favorite movies, The African Queen. Sir Malcolm’s number-one boy, Charlie Phuong, had already located and loaded our luggage aboard. He was a short, cheerful, grinning, bowlegged boy of indeterminate age, who carried his life’s savings around with him in the form of a wide grin bright with gold fillings. Sparkling black eyes greeted us under the bill of a battered old baseball cap, around which a scrap of fluttering red scarf had been knotted for good luck, or to keep the devils away, or maybe both. The rest of his costume consisted of muddy tennis shoes, a ragged pair of khaki shorts, and a cast-off olive drab army shirt.

The moon had risen while we were at dinner, and the river traffic was at its pitch as we cast off, chugging noisily, into the main channel. Brightly lit sampans and junks floated by us; boats of every description were loading at docks heaped with tins of pitch, bales of raw, unprocessed rubber from the great Chup plantations to the northeast of the capital. We saw workmen, naked to the waist, laboring under flaring torches at sacks of fragrant yieng yieng bark from which incense is made, shoving about baskets filled with garish peppercorns, stalks of green bananas, bundles of peacock feathers, cords of cut bamboo, bundles of turtle shells, anteater skins and kapok. Amusingly, one boat was unloading cases of Coca Cola bottles.

Our boat threaded its noisy path through an arrangement of mud dikes, canal locks, and waterways. Wooden cowbells went click-clack in fields beside the river; oil lamps gleamed in the waxed paper windows of farmhouses and huts as we sailed downriver under star-crowded skies. Peasants worked late in flooded, shallow ricefields, bent double and looming like black cutouts against the moon. We sailed past bamboo forests, lemon groves, ungainly stands of banana trees, and thick banyans. In one hillside farm a clumsy Zadrugar tractor, imported from Yugoslavia, rumbled, belching black, oily smoke.

Noel and I struck up a conversation with our friendly pilot. Charlie Phuong, it turned out, was not a native of Phnom Penh but hailed from a hamlet with the delicious name of Battangbang, which I gathered was the capital of the northwestern province. He had nothing but contempt and derision for the locals hereabouts, whom he considered city slickers, more interested in organized sports, movies from Hong, Kong, and political squabbles, than in the traditional elements of Cambodian life. He was very uneducated and very superstitious, what with his crimson head scarf to frighten off night-wandering demons, and the copper bracelet he wore clasped about one muscular brown bicep which was a good-luck charm. He chattered in friendly, amiable fashion while we glided down the star-mirroring river, which widened. He had worked nearly a calendar year for Sir Malcolm, whom he held in good-humored veneration―his name for the British archaeologist was Lok Thom, which means something like “Mr. Big”―and, although uneducated, he had picked up a surprising vocabulary in English: pungent, earthy, shot through with French cuss-words and the names of Cambodian deities and demons, all mixed together in a patois so inimitable I will not even attempt to reproduce it in these pages.

We passed something like an enormous, densely black, floating island, around the edge of which Charlie Phuong maneuvered the laboring little steam-launch while purpling the night air with a torrent of profanity in at least three languages. This floating island turned out to be a logjam, drifting downstream from the forest around Kratie. Native lumberjacks, only their red, devil-frightening head-scarves visible in the gloom, scampered nimbly about this gigantic raft of logs, keeping careful eyes peeled to be certain the heavy hardwood logs of teak were buoyed up on hollow bamboo trunks.

I smoked cigarette after cigarette, sitting in the prow, staring dreamily out on the starry skies, the moonlit river, and the jungle thickets which lined the river to each side; Noel dozed in the rear, pillowed on our luggage. The trip would take hours.

Then I must have dozed off myself, for the next thing I knew was Charlie Phuong grinning down at me, gold fillings glittering in the torchlight, shaking me awake. I stretched and sat up and looked about me. We were pulled over to one shore of the river, where a crude little log-built dock thrust out on sunken pilings a few yards into the stream. The dock was crowded with small, nimble men passing our luggage ashore, each snatching a bag and tossing it into the waiting hands of the next.

Then a spry, sixtyish, little man with bright, inquisitive blue eyes and a goatee of silvery white, his scrawny form clad in filthy khaki shorts and a mud-besplattered T-shirt, popped up directly in front of me, squinted about, spotted me, and grinned―a grin which made his entire leather-tanned face dissolve into a mass of laughter-crinkles.

“Mr. Carter, I gather?” I nodded, still half-asleep. He rubbed bony hands together briskly.

“Excellent! Excellent! And your charming lady, I see. Well, hop out―hop out―you’re here, you know! Welcome to the city of Arangkor; population twenty-six―now twenty-eight! It’s a five minute stroll through the brush―watch your step, dear lady, or you’ll go up to your waist in mud―the dock we built for a reason, you know! Come-Billy-Boy, my cook, has fresh tea brewing, or instant coffee, if you prefer … come along now. Careful with the gentleman’s luggage, you clumsy monkeys!”

And he bustled into the line of laborers, vanishing in the dark.

So it was that at last I met Sir Malcolm Jerrolds, distinguished author of Unsolved Mysteries of Asia (Macmillan, 1964), Excavating the Gobi (Cassels, 1966), and A Preliminary Report on the Arangkor Discoveries (unpublished).

And so it was, also, five or six minutes later, at the end of a muddy trail cut through some of the densest and least-explored jungles on this planet, that I came to Arangkor itself―mystery-city of the vanished Khymer-Kings, lost city of the ages.

Chapter 2 CONSEQUENCES OF TAKING A STROLL

“Not much to be seen by night, of course―great pity―splendid sight by daylight, I assure you―more tea, missus?” the little, gnomelike man chirped briskly. Noel accepted a tin cup of the steaming beverage with a smile; I nursed a similar container filled with a rank, bitter brew Billy-Boy mistakenly considered to be coffee, preoccupied with staring around me in a bemused fashion.

This tea party was being held, incongruously, on worn camp-chairs amidst a plaza of broken stony slabs where once, our spry little host assured us, the ancient God-Kings of fabulous Kambudja had held open-air court.

Stone buildings loomed to every side, heavily-carved, fantastic sculptures edged with moon-silver. Birds squawked in the jungle night; monkeys screeched; somewhere, far off, a water buffalo bellowed lustily.

Noel was interrogating Sir Malcolm on archaeological methods; I was too bone-weary, despite the bitter black coffee, sweetened with curdled, faintly soursmelling condensed milk, and too heavy-eyed, to do much but sip the stuff, smoke, and stare around me.

Great frowning stone masks glared down at us. They might represent Lokesvara, a future incarnation of the Buddha, or then again they might not, Sir Malcolm told us. The Khymer glyphs, yet undeciphered, would reveal much, he assured us, his white goatee waggling up and down in the light of the small campfire.

We had been served a late camp-supper of good oldfashioned K rations, which brought me back with a

resounding bump to my army days, to snow-buried tents along the Korean hills, the faint rattle of machine gun fire in the frozen air. Talking a mile a minute all the while, the little archaeologist had whisked crackling glossy photographs of unknown carvings under our noses―whisked them away after a moment’s glance to shove rattling wooden trays of small stone artifacts into our laps―then snatched these back to unfold a crisp, rustling palm-leaf codex scrawled with brightly-painted figures, crowned with nodding plumes, sporting birdfaces, waving many arms, and surrounded by unintelligible hieroglyphic dialogue like something from a comic book fallen from Mars.

It was impossible not to like Sir Malcolm Jerrolds from the first moment you met him. He was a small, spry wisp of a man, leathery-tanned, with peering, keen eyes and a nervous manner that made him jiggle and fidget around in the most amusing manner. For all his jittery manner and irresistible flow of conversation, he was what I would call a perfect host. By this I mean that, within a few moments, he was treating you as if he had known you for years and felt free to relax and be comfortable with you, and he made you feel the same way about him. He was adorable, and Noel simply loved him from the start. She had always been enthusiastic about ancient history and archaeology, and her alert, sincere interest and intelligent, pointed questions touched a chord within the little capering Britisher. He beamed upon her fondly, for her enthusiasm matched his own lifelong passion to learn the secrets of our ancient ancestors. He danced attendance upon my wife and ransacked his files for curious and interesting objects and fragments, which he displayed tenderly, with touching confidence, as a shy child will show you her beloved dolls.

The work of the expedition was not so much to excavate Arangkor, he told us, as to clear away the rubbish. That is, the ancient Khymer metropolis was not buried under fathoms of earth as Babylon or Pompeii had been, but simply overgrown with jungle. Vines netted the towers carven with leering stone masks, bushes choked doorways or blocked passages, centuries of rotting leaves hid the streets under a carpet of squelching mold. Since arriving here, Sir Malcolm and his native boys had been, in a very real sense, performing the work of street cleaners. He showed us the mountain of leaf mulch piled outside the half-toppled city wall; all of that his boys had removed in wicker baskets.

By this time, however, most of the underbrush and fallen leaves and branches had been cleared away. The work, from this point on in, was that of photographing and measuring and taking notes, making rubbings of temple carvings, and things like that.

“Much―much easier, dear lady, I assure you!than the digging-up of Amgash under a broilin’ Mesopotamy sun―or scratchin’ up tons of dried clay from the rubble of Timnash back in ‘58, with the bloody Arabs and the bloody Israelis bangin’ away at each other right over our bloody heads!” he said perkily.

Noel nodded and said something interestedly, smothering a slight yawn with one hand. Her eyes were sleepy, I noticed, and was about to interrupt Sir Malcolm and suggest we discuss it tomorrow, when the old fellow noticed my wife’s sleepiness himself and curtly bade one of his toothily grinning boys to get our tent ready.

“Talk here all night if I don’t pop th’ two o’ you into your cots show you around tomorrow, dear lady: some sights to be seen here that will astonish Europe when I send my first batch of pictures to the Journal of Asian Antiquity! And when I publish my Preliminary Report, well, dash it, I’ve data there will topple the prevailing theories of Khymer dating into the dungheaps, I assure you! Yes, my dear sir, theories will fall to every side like tree-trunks in monsoon weather! Must ask you to glance over my manuscript in first draft―advice of a genuine professional, very valuable―write too damned fast, that’s my trouble! Ideas all there in good enough order, quite, quite; but gettin’ it down in readable fashion―always been my problem. But, here, the both of you are yawning―off to bed now; up with first dawn, you know. Lots to be seen! We’ll talk more tomorrow … .”

And off he went, bawling out a scurry of native boys, leaving us to our friend with the colorful smile, Charlie Phuong, who would show us where we could wash up, and would then escort us to our beds.

The beds proved to be stiff, narrow cots set side by side in a tiny tent pitched on a side street off the plaza, with a wooden packing crate stood on its end between the cots to serve, obviously, as a night table. I put thereon my change, cigarettes, keys and sunglasses, arranging these in a half-circle around a spluttering oil lamp, by whose wavering, smoky light we undressed sleepily. So much had happened that day we were exhausted, and the voluble Sir Malcolm’s rapid-fire conversation had worn out our vocal cords. We said goodnight and crawled into the sleeping bags.

That night, as might have been expected, I just couldn’t get to sleep. Although I was worn out after the excitement of the day, the clammy chill of the jungle night, combined with the hard cot and the discomforts of a sleeping bag, militated against my attaining that cozy serenity requisite to slipping off to slumberland. Also, I must confess, I was accustomed to the warm, breathing weight of one or another of our dogs sleeping at my feet.

Noel fell asleep without trouble―I could hear her breathing in the chilly darkness of the tent. But I tossed and turned, unable to get comfortable, unable to turn off my mind. After about an hour of this I decided to hell with it; I got up, slipped into my khakis, breeches, and boots and unzipped the tent, thinking to walk around a bit and view the marvels of Arangkor by moonlight while smoking a cigarette or two.

The full moon of Cambodia was an immense pallid orb of ghostly light silvering the carven faces on the stone gates and towers. The moonlight hid the scars of time’s decay behind a veil of shimmering glamor. Almost, it seemed, the city lived untouched by the erosion of the ages. The cracks that zigzagged the worn stone facing of the temple were invisible in the silvery dimness; the rubble-choked streets were brimming with dense gloom. At any moment I half expected barbaric priests in feather headdresses to appear on the upper tiers and begin some primordial chant to the moon gods, or masked princelings of a lost age to be glimpsed amidst the shadows of the long arcade, bound for assignations with naked, barbaric courtesans.

It was all impossibly romantic.

For a time I smoked and dreamed, my imagination peopling the shadowy streets with ghostly processions ….

Then I saw the light.

It appeared suddenly, like an apparition. One moment the city was dark and dead and still, gilded by the jungle moon: in the next instant a dazzling shaft of amazing light sprang out of nowhere to thrust like a shining lance against the jeweled skies. It was like a huge searchlight, impossibly brilliant, very unexpected. Vague thoughts of air raids stirring in my mind, I headed towards it, impelled by devouring curiosity. I entered a curving street lined with frowning monoliths, then passed through a gloom-drenched arcade of partially-fallen pillars, and found myself on the edge of an immense stone-paved plaza.

Before me, in the center of a circle of huge stone idols, lay an opening in the stone floor, round as the mouth of a well. It was from deep in the subterranean shaft of this well that the beam of sparkling radiance soared skyward. And then, of course, I knew it … and the prickling of superstitious awe roughened the skin of my arms and stirred the nape-hairs on the back of my neck.

For it could be none other than that mysterious, jade-lined well Jandar had seen a year and a half ago … and the weird beam of sparkling force was, must be, the transdimensional gateway he had called “the Gate Between the Worlds.” …

Within me, my imagination awoke. I shivered slightly as to the cold breath of the Unknown. For the scene that lay before me now was in no detail different from the scene he had described in that first volume of his memoirs which I had titled Jandar of Callisto … there before me, bathed in the dim silver of the moonlight, the ring of stone colossi squatted, facing inwards to turn their enigmatic carven eyes upon the mystic Well that formed a magic pathway to other planets.

There they sat, the nameless gods of a primal and mysterious race, many arms brandishing aloft the emblems of their forgotten divinity, wheels and keys and stone flowers, stylized thunderbolts and odd-looking swords and skulls … and the restless, pulsing light of the Well cast ripples of luminance across their sculptured features. As wave on wave of sparkling force moved up the stationary beam, it seemed they frowned or smiled or grimaced; and the moving, throbbing heart beats of light lent the flicker of motion and the illusion of cold, watchful intelligence to their carven eyes.

It was an unforgettable scene of weird grandeur and strange majesty―as awesome and magical as anything in the pages of Haggard or Merritt―and it was really happening! Not on the written page; but in the real world of everyday life.

It was too strange, too fantastic, to be frightening. I was caught in the grip of a supernatural awe such as I have never before experienced. Without consciously thinking about it, I stepped forward, entering the plaza. The throbbing heartbeat of living radiance flickered before my eyes with mesmerizing force. I went forward between two of the stone gods to stand on the very brink of the Well, and all I could see before me was that soaring shaft of mysterious light that blazed up and up until it dimmed the stars and paled the ghostly glory of the Cambodian moon … .

And then my boots slid out from under me and I fell, sliding down a shallow incline towards the very edge of the Well!

Too late for caution, I remembered that the margin of the Well was fashioned of a slick, glassy stone like pale, smooth jade.

Too late to avoid the peril, I remembered that Jandar himself had made exactly the same mistake. He, too, had slipped and fallen on the glossy stone … but I, at least, had been forewarned!

The jade lip of the Well was slick as if oiled; ever so slightly concave, it sloped inward towards the mouth of the Well.

I slid down the depression helplessly, skinning the palms of my hands against the stone as I instinctively sought to arrest my progress. There was no handhold, nothing I could catch hold of, no way I could keep from falling into the Well … .

Then I slid over the brink, and the golden, throbbing splendor of the mystic light enveloped me, and I lost all consciousness.

Was it a dream―a distorted fancy of my mind alone?

I seemed as unaware of my physical body as if I had been transformed into a dimly sentient thing of impalpable vapor.

Yet somehow my senses functioned: I was aware of the sensation of flight. It seemed to me that I was thrust upwards at an inconceivable velocity.

Only for a brief, flashing instant was I aware of hurtling through space at fantastic speed.

There was a moment when intense darkness closed about me, black as the cold gulf that yawns between the stars.

For a flashing instant I shuddered in the grip of intolerable, super-arctic cold.

I was hurled through space at frightful velocity.

Ahead of me, a dim radiance expanded with magical swiftness into an ochre, banded sphere.

Particles of frozen rock circled the width of the luminous giant.

One granule of parched, frigid rock swung up before me, unfolding like a magic flower.

For a blurred instant I saw needle-sharp peaks of black rock stabbing up at me as I fell downward now … and the valleys between the fanglike peaks were choked with smooth expanses of cold blue snow … frozen methane or ammonia … .

Then the vision before me went hazy, as if I hurtled through an immaterial barrier of illusion … .

I caught a brief, swift glimpse of what lay behind the mirage of a dead, frozen world.

I saw vast plains of weird scarlet, fantastic jungles of black trees with crimson foliage, glittering rivers and shining seas. Barbaric stone cities sprinkled the plains, stood beside the shores of river and sea, looking like wonderfully detailed toy metropolises designed by Frazetta or Hannes Bok.

Then black and crimson jungles swept up to engulf me.

And my consciousness went out like a blown candle.

Chapter 3 ON ANOTHER PLANET

My back was cold, as if I was laying on some hard, uncomfortable surface of glass.

I opened my eyes and looked into arching skies of crawling gold. It was as if the heavens had been domed over with auric glass, crawling with a film of liquid.

I rolled over on my side, levering myself up on one elbow, and became suddenly conscious of two things.

For one thing I was stark naked. My khaki shirt and jacket and whipcord riding-breeches were gone. So were my boots; even my undershorts and socks.

For another thing I was staring upon an incredible landscape. Before me lay a vista of smooth meadows, rising from a distant stream to the edge of a dense forest or jungle. The meadow grasses were the color of new-shed blood, impossible, pure scarlet. And the jungle, or as much of it as I could see from my recumbent position, was composed of weird trees, black as India ink, whose trunks and branches and roots were fantastically gnarled and knotted, unlike those of any tree I had ever seen or heard of.

And the leaves of those black trees were an incredible shade of crimson.

Beyond meadow and forest, the landscape dwindled into dimness at the horizon; a horizon which seemed curiously near.

I looked down at myself. Every stitch of clothing I had worn was gone. So were my rings, the plain gold wedding band I wore on the fourth finger of my left hand and the carven brown carnelian seal-ring I wore on the middle finger of my right.

Gone, too, was the aluminum POW/MIA bracelet I had worn for months on my left wrist. As an example of the haziness that clouded my mind in those first few moments after my awakening, I will cite the thought which passed through my brain, that the Capt. Michael McCuistion―the missing-in-action American officer whose name was inscribed on the VIVA bracelet―had himself disappeared somewhere in Cambodia or Laos or Vietnam. And now I was lost or missing, although I knew, with a sinking feeling deep within me, that I was far more lost than he.

I knew where I was, of course.

The scarlet plain, those black, gnarled trees with crimson foliage, the dim skies of misted gold―I knew them, although I had never before seen them. I had read descriptions of this landscape in Jandar of Callisto.

I grinned, trying to find an element of ironic humor in the despair of my predicament.

For I was, must be, on the world of Callisto, moon of Jupiter! Like Jandar before me, I had slipped and fallen into that jade-lined Well that formed a transdimensional gateway between two worlds―the planet Earth on which I had been born and lived my forty years of life―and Thanator the Jungle Moon, that distant world of mystery and marvel where strange men battled for survival against weird beasts and savage foes.

I lay stark naked upon a disk of lucent, glassy jade amidst crimson meadows near the edge of black-and-scarlet jungles. In just such a scene had Jandar materialized after falling into the Gate Between the Worlds.

Many thoughts went whirling through my dizzy mind as I lay there, trying to come to grips with the fantastic truth of what had happened to me. Odd, irrelevant thoughts. For instance, I wondered what had become of my seal-ring. When my body had dematerialized in that pulsing glory of light, I understood what had happened well enough―from reading Jandar’s own theories and speculations concerning the swift, miraculous fourth-dimensional transition he had experienced before me, I knew nonorganic materials such as my rings and bracelet had not accompanied me on my travels. When my body had dematerialized in that pulsing glory of light, they must have fallen into the Well, together with my clothes, which had been composed mostly of synthetic fibers.

But I regretted the loss of that ring keenly. It was an ancestral talisman to me, representing a link with my forefathers over generations. It had been a possession of the Carter family for perhaps longer than I could guess; my father had worn it, and my grandfather before him. I certainly hoped it had not been damaged or destroyed by the light ray. I wondered if someone in Sir Malcolm’s camp would be thoughtful enough to search the bottom of the Well and find it.

Almost in the same instant it occurred to me, helplessly, to wonder about my wife. Surely, Noel would be worried sick when she awoke next morning and found my cot empty. She wouldn’t have any way of knowing what had become of me―or would she? It wouldn’t take her long before she noticed my clothes were missing, and the pack of Viceroys I had put down beside my cot. She would know I had gone for a stroll: but would she guess I had fallen into the Gate Between the Worlds, or would she assume I had strayed into the jungles outside of Arangkor, perhaps to be slain or carried off by some wild beast or Rebel guerrilla?

She would be worried sick about me, I knew with a pang of guilt that made me curse myself for falling into the same trap as Jandar, after his own account should have warned me to be more cautious. There wasn’t much I could do about it now: I was here, whether I liked it or not.

I got to my feet. I felt perfectly all right, although I was physically tired after the long day. But the excitement of what had transpired kept the adrenalin pumping through my system, and I was more alert and wide-awake than ever. I noticed that the Band-Aid I had put on my leg last night was also missing; it must be nonorganic like my rings. I was aware of a slight toothache which puzzled me, until I realized that every filling in my teeth must have vanished like my rings, when I dematerialized. That might be troublesome, if I was going to have to remain here on Callisto for very long. I was sure there were no dentists to be found on the Jungle Moon!

The breeze on my bare legs was uncomfortably chilly. I looked thoughtfully at the edge of the black-and-scarlet jungle; once behind that screen of trees and bushes I would be out of the wind, but there was no telling what savage beasts might be prowling the jungle aisles in search of dinner, who might regard a stringy and slightly underdone sciencefiction writer as an appetizing morsel.

The confusion of my thoughts was such that it was only with a firm, conscious effort of will that I calmed my agitation. It was perfectly true, I reasoned to myself, that my predicament was grim and my position not without peril. I was alone, naked and unarmed, on an alien world teeming with ferocious predators and savage warnors. And even fully clothed and with a pistol holstered on my hip, I would have been in a position of considerable danger, for I was certainly no steely-thewed man of action, no burly, two-fisted adventurer. I grinned again, rather wryly: for years now I have been writing stories about men in just my predicament―but I never expected to find myself in such a spot!

A writer’s life is one of lazy, self-indulgent comfort interrupted by periodic episodes of furious activity―of a literary nature, that is. I’ve never been much interested in sports, nor in exercise, my idea of a hard day’s work being writing a chapter of a new novel or maybe turning out a short story. It’s been more years than I care to think of since I last came face to face with physical danger, unless you want to count the times I’ve gotten in between two of my dogs, in an attempt to stop a dogfight. And the only savage warrior a New York science-fiction writer ever expects to face is the ever-possible street-corner mugger or holdup man.

So I was certainly not in any condition to hew my path through a jungle filled with ferocious monsters! True, Jandar had faced the same perils and gotten through them unscathed; but he had been a young, hard-muscled daredevil aviator and professional soldier, not a sedentary writer who begrudges the physical effort it takes to paint the front porch or mow the lawn ….

Then it occurred to me that, after all, I was in a way better equipped to face up to the hazards of this adventure than Jandar, when he had been, so to speak, in my shoes, for all that he was ten years younger than I and more the two-fisted fighting-man. Because I had read his Callistan memoirs and had a .pretty good idea of just where I was and of just what I was likely to be facing in the hours or days ahead of me. I knew, from the maps he had sketched, that the Callistan terminus of the Gate was along the southernmost borders of the jungle region he called the Grand Kumala; and I knew that the nearest human settlement where I was likely to find a friendly welcome was Shondakor. And, remembering that map, I even knew where Shondakor was in reference to my present position. It lay on the eastern side of this southern tip of the Kumala jungles, on the shores of a river called the Ajand. It might take me a couple of days of foot-weary walking to get there, but at least I knew where I was and where I wanted to go, which is more than Jandar knew when he had stood on this same spot, a year and a half ago.

My mind was clearer now, my panic and confusion ended. True, I was in a tight spot, but the future was far from hopeless, and if I could just keep control of myself and think and plan ahead with a bit of practical common sense (never my strongest point, by the way), I could get through this unexpected adventure, hopefully, in one piece.

The first thing I needed was something in the way of clothing.

The urgency of this had nothing to do with modesty, but was simply due to the fact that civilized urban man feels peculiarly helpless and vulnerable standing around in the buff without so much as a Band-Aid on, especially when he’s got a jungle to get through. Later on I was going to be needing food and water and a place to sleep. But first it seemed imperative to find something to cover myself with, and maybe something in the nature of a weapon, so that if anything with more teeth than I had came at me I would have something else than just a couple of bare hands to defend myself with.

The jungle seemed to be the only place I was likely to find clothing and weapons, so I went up the hill to the edge of the woods and entered them cautiously. Thorny-edged leaves scratched my bare chest and thighs and as my bare feet scrunched through thickmatted fallen leaves and squelched in gooey unseen muck I wondered if there were any snakes on Callisto, deciding, with justifiable uneasiness, that there probably were.

Once beyond the edge of the Kumala I found myself immersed in thick crimson gloom. The only illumination was the sourceless Callistan equivalent of daylight―a curious fluorescent effect among the gases in the upper atmosphere, which caused the entire heavens to glow with steady, sourceless, omnipresent luminance. Callisto, of course, was too distant from the sun to receive much light from that source, and Jandar had speculated that perhaps it was some unknown radiation from the planet Jupiter which bathed the upper surface of the Callistan atmosphere, exciting visible light just as electricity creates light among the inert vapors in a neon tube.

Anyway, when this rich gold light filtered down through the dense masses of red leaves which formed the roof of the Kumala jungles, everything took on the crimson murk of a photographer’s darkroom. It was very difficult to see. In fact, it was so dark inside the wall of jungle at first, that I could hardly see where I was going, and blundered into treetrunks and spiny bushes, to the considerable detriment of my epidermis.

I had to feel my way along like a blind man, both arms stretched gingerly out in front.of me, my bare feet slipping and sliding in the muck of rotting leaves.

To be candid, it was not the happiest hour I had ever spent. I was trembling with fatigue and could hardly keep my eyes open, for by this time, of course, I would long ago have been sound asleep back in the tent among the ruins, after a busy and tiring day. My mouth felt dry and parched, and I had a powerful yearning for a cigarette. And all about me I was horribly conscious of what might be lurking in the reddish gloom. I knew something of the dangerous beasts known to frequent these jungles, and I found that knowledge, however scanty, a lot more unsettling than blissful ignorance would have been.

Even armed with a cudgel, what could I do to defend myself against such brutes as the vastodon, the dreaded elephant-boar of the Callistan wild, from which Jandar had once rescued the Princess Darloona in these very jungles? Or the ferocious yathrib, the fearsome dragon-cat from which Koja the Yathoon had once saved Jandar himself? Yes, I soon proved to myself the truth of the age-old adage that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” My imagination, teeming with ghastly images of slinking monstrous shapes, seized on every rustle in the leaves, every crack of a twig, and peopled the blind red gloom with hideous animals.

However, quite a time had passed by now, and nothing had sprung upon me in the interval, and my fears began to ebb, although I moved with no less caution. Also, by this time, my eyes had adjusted to the dim red murk and it became easier for me to negotiate the thorny thickets and to pass between the knotted black boles without stumbling into them. Almost it could be said I began to enjoy myself; after all, I was only the second man of my world to stand here on the surface of a weird and alien planet, and it was a peculiar experience to find myself in much the sort of predicament in which I am accustomed to place the heroes of my stories. It amused me to wonder if Edgar Rice Burroughs would have felt the same as I, had he suddenly by some inexplicable miracle found himself transported to the jungles wherein his apeman hero generally roamed, or to the dead sea-bottoms of Barsoom under the glory of the hurtling moons.

The experience of being upon a strange planet was endlessly fascinating to me. All about me to every side, unseen life muttered and rustled and crept. Tiny eyes peered at me from thick boughs arching above my head like the beams of a roof. Small, timid creatures fled squeaking and chattering from my approach, although I would very much have liked to have seen them. None of the larger and more dangerous beasts that Jandar had so chillingly described in the five volumes of his memoirs I had read had yet made an appearance. It was easy enough to guess that, during the hours of daylight, the greater predators slept in their lairs, emerging only when darkness fell to hunt and kill. It was this way, I believed, in the jungles of the distant Earth; and I hoped it was true here on Callisto, as well.

Before long I stumbled upon a weapon. I mean that quite literally, for the long length of black, gnarled wood lay directly in my path and I barked my bare shins against it and almost fell fiat on my face. It was a heavy pole or staff, admirably straight, and half again as long as my arm. I suppose the cudgel wouldn’t have been of much use against the yathrib or the vastodon, but, in a pinch, any weapon is probably better than none, and somehow, holding it, I felt far less naked than before.

I began to think about the problem of clothing. By now my legs and arms and torso were criss-crossed with red scratches from rough bark, thorny vines and sharp-edged leaves. One of these bushes with the sharp-edged leaves caught my eye. The leaves were rubbery and fibrous and about as large as dinner plates. Leaning my cudgel against a tree, I pulled off a half-dozen of the big, floppy leaves and found that their spiny edges could be peeled away neatly. With a bit of fussin’ and cussin’ I devised a rude sort of apron to shield my loins fore and aft, knotting the fibers together about my middle. Then, with a bit of ingenuity, I fashioned an abbreviated vest or elongated collar of these same leaves which I hung about my neck to protect my upper arms, chest and shoulders.

This attempt at do-it-yourself haberdashery worked so well (which is to say the garments actually held together and didn’t fall apart after five minutes of use), that I was further inspired to attempt something in the nature of footware. Sitting down on a fallen log I peeled away strips of fiber and tried to cover the soles of my feet with the tough, rubbery leaves, lacing them together over my instep with the long fibrous strands. I used a sharp twig to pierce holes along the upper edges of each leaf, through which with a bit of labor I managed to thread my “shoelaces.” I was somewhat less effective in my solo venture at the fine art of shoe-cobbling, but by pulling the laces tight and knotting them securely, the moccasins actually stayed on and I was convinced they would work, although I thought it wise to carry a generous supply of leaves with me for repair and replacement purposes.

“Eat your heart out, Thom McAn!” I said aloud, chuckling.

The rustling jungle fell silent on the instant. Even to my ears, my voice sounded shockingly loud.

And then I heard the growl.

Chapter 4 I MEET AN OTHODE

The menacing sound reverberated through the long clearing, at one end of which I sat on the fallen log. At the sound, I started violently, sprang to my newly shod feet, and snatched up my heavy staff. Sweat popped out on my forehead and, suddenly, my mouth was drier than before.

However, the sound was not repeated and, as nothing came charging at me from the bushes or dropped snarling from an overhead branch, I relaxed a bit. Almost I managed to convince myself that the sound had only been in my head the result of an overactive imagination.

I was, as I have explained, at one end on a long glade or clearing among the trees. The other end of the clearing lay pretty much in the direction I wished to travel, and, since I could obviously make better time going through the clearing than through the thickly grown trees, I gathered up my bundle of leaves and moved across the grassy space with some haste, thinking to put as much distance between myself and the throat that had uttered that menacing growl as possible, just on the off-chance that the sound had not been a product of my own imagination.

The opposite end of the clearing lay in dense shadows.

From the depths of those shadows, two burning eyes glared at me like blazing coals.

I stopped in my tracks, let go of the leaves, and clenched my cudgel in both hands, like a baseball bat. I’m not ashamed to admit my hands were shaking violently, and that I urgently wished myself far away from this place.

I guess my mind doesn’t function terribly well in moments of extreme stress or danger. I say this because of what popped into my head at that instant. All I could think of was an anecdote about W.C. Fields, probably apocryphal: they had asked him what he wanted carved upon his gravestone, and the actor had quipped “On the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.”

On the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia. My sentiments exactly, as I stood there, clutching my flimsy little stick with trembling hands, staring into those eyes of flame!

They blinked, those eyes. Then I heard the growl again. Only this time it had a plaintive note to it―almost a note of entreaty.

I took a cautious step forward; two steps. Now I stood within the shadow myself. My eyes adjusted to the denser gloom … and I saw a strange sight.

Pinned against the thick meadow, grass at the far end of the clearing, lay an immense beast. It looked the size of a full-grown tiger, its burly-shouldered, broad-chested body covered with a supple, short-haired nap of soft fur colored an impossible purple.

It lay there helplessly pinned under a fallen treebranch, its hindquarters pressed into the matted grasses. The branch was as big around as my waist and looked to be extremely heavy. How long the beast had lain there, unable to defend itself against the, approach of another predator I do not know, but from the torn condition of the grasses, the creature had been there for hours, at least. The grasses were ripped and torn out by the roots, exposing raw lavender soil, and apparently the helpless brute had struggled in vain for many hours to free itself from the crushing weight.

Relief gusted through me, for it was obvious that I was in no danger from the fantastic creature. Since this was the first specimen of animal life on Callisto I had yet seen. I lingered to take a good look at it.

As nearly as I could judge, the beast had six legs.

They were short and fat and crooked, like the legs of a bulldog, lending the monster an absurdly bowlegged appearance. Its head was a trifle bulldoggish, too. It was virtually neckless, with a remarkably ugly froglike face, all goggling eyes and wide, batrachian gash of mouth that seemed to stretch from ear to ear. It lay there looking up at me, mouth open, panting from exhaustion or pain, and again there sounded from deep in its chest that growl that was almost a whine of entreaty.

I could not help noticing that the wide, froglike mouth with the powerful, bulging cheeks and heavy, underslung jaw, was armed with plenty of blunt, strong-looking tusks. Jaws like that could make hamburger of a man’s arm in seconds. I could picture my bones being crunched into powder by those heavy, grinding tusks … and it was not a pleasant picture. Luckily for me the big brute was helpless, pinned under that fallen log, and unable to spring upon me, as it would otherwise doubtless have done.

Taking up my extra supply of leaves, I prepared to inch my way around the beast and enter the jungle. As I did so, the brute craned his head around to look at me. The expression in his goggling eyes stopped me. There was suffering in them, and a mute, stoical pleading in the silent gaze the purple beast turned upon me. A pleading which I could not pretend I had not seen. A pleading I could not quite ignore, no matter how reasonable it might seem for me to do so. I stood there for a while, unable to make up my mind to leave.

“Well, you big bozo, you’ve gotten yourself in a tough spot, haven’t you?” I said in a low voice. Almost as if he somehow understood the sympathy in my words. the creature stirred feebly under the crushing weight. Hs huge, blunt forepaws scratched at the bare soil, where he had torn up the grasses in an effort to pull his body out from under the weight which pressed his hindquarters into the ground. He made a little sound deep in his throat, like a whine or whimper, a questioning sound. And all the while he turned upon me those huge, helpless eyes. There was dignity in that `5 mute gaze, and pride. But the pleading was there, and I could not ignore it, being the sort of man I am.

Two things made me do the crazy thing I did next.

The first thing was that I knew, or supposed I knew, what kind of beast it was. It was an othode. Jandar had described these creatures in the manuscript I had read on the plane: purple, short-legged beasts about the size of mastiffs, ferocious but sometimes domesticated for the purposes of hunting.

In other words, something remarkably like the Callistan equivalent of dogs.

Now, as anyone who knows me will certainly testify, I feel about dogs exactly as the late Will Rogers felt about people … to paraphrase his famous motto, “I’ve never met a dog I didn’t like.” Noel and I share our house on Long Island with five members of the species and have raised and found homes for litter after litter of puppies. My wife, in fact, has the nice habit of finding stray dogs and bringing them home to fatten up. It is usually our avowed intention of finding people to adopt these homeless vagabond waifs, but as often as not, by the time we have coaxed back to healthy, plump, waggy-tailed condition the latest homeless mutt, we have fallen for its doggy charms ourselves.

And the othode who lay there begging me with its eyes for help looked an awful lot like a dog.

I just couldn’t pass him by, pretending not to notice those begging eves.

The other thing that made me stop and linger a while was connected to my first reason, you might say. And that was that the othode bore a striking resemblance to one of the dogs Noel and I had rescued from starvation on the streets. This was a dog we called The Mighty McGurk―a big, brown, goggleeyed, fat, bowlegged, cavorting, lovable sort of bullmastiff type to whom we had given our hearts, receiving the gift of his in return.

McGurk occupied a very special place in our affections, and especially in mine.

And the othode looked very much like McGurk. If you can imagine a McGurk grown to the size of an adult tiger, with six legs and bright purple fur.

I put down my cudgel and my bundle of leaves, and squatted on the turf, talking to the poor brute in a quiet voice.

“Well, now, you big bozo, what am I going to do about you, eh? Even if I could get that big log off you, ms’s probably broken your back, you know. And, if it h. n’t once you’re free, you’d probably rip my arm off, wouldn’t you? Hmm?”

The fat, wattled purple throat uttered a distinctly dogggish whine, eager yet verging on a warning note.

He wasn’t too sure of me, any more than I was sure of him. For all the big bozo knew, I was going to brain him with my cudgel in the next moment. Just as, for all I knew, he might go for my throat the moment I got him out from under that log.

Well, we had the grounds for some sort of a relationship in that, at least. We mutually distrusted each other.

I wondered if I was being stupidly sentimental. Quite probably I was, and anybody else in my homemade shoes would doubtless have had the good sense to tiptoe on past, thanking his lucky, stars the mower was pinned down and unable to get at him. But I knew, down deep inside, that if I did walk away from this scene, it would be a mighty long time before I could get the picture of those mute, pleading eyes out of my mind, and it would be pretty hard to live with myself. ii I did walk away from this.

So all the while talking in a quiet, low voice to him, I walked around behind the poor helpless creature and gingerly teed to heft the log. It was even heavier than I had thought and for a sickening moment or two I was afraid that I wasn’t going to be able to so much as budge it, much less lift it off the crushed body so the beast could die in peace.

I heaved and grunted and sweated, my hands straining w e the log, gritting my teeth with the thought that I was probably causing the poor fellow pain. But he did not utter a single complaint, and all the while turned upon me his sad, melancholy gaze that reminded me of McGurk.

The harsh bark was cutting and scratching the palms of my hands. Soon they were raw and bloody, but I had managed to slide the log off him, bracing the weight against my thigh. With a loud whoosh of pent breath being released, I let the log thump against the turf and sagged to my bruised knees wearily.

Bozo had taken it without complaint, although it must have hurt. Only one yelp escaped him, and that was when I swung the weight of the log off his hindquarters at last.

The log had not crushed his body as far as could be seen, for although his hindquarters were scratched and bruised and bloody it didn’t look to me as if he was seriously hurt. What had probably saved him from a broken spine or a crushed pelvis was the thick, springy mat of coarse meadow-grasses which formed a pillowbeneath him. The weight had pushed his haunches into this mattresslike thickness; if he had been lying on bare or rocky soil―with no “give” to it―he would undoubtedly be in far worse shape than he was. Of course, he would be lame and limping for some time, and would be immobilized until his bruised and bloody rear legs recovered. But he was not paralyzed and had suffered far less injury than I had thought possible.

I wiped my hands on my bare thighs, leaving smears of blood and dirt, wishing I had a place to wash. Even on Callisto, you could still get blood poisoning, I thought. And just then I became conscious of a gushing, gurgling sound which had been part of the background noise of the jungle for a long time, but which only now did I recognize as the sound of running water.

Pushing through the brush at the end of the clearing I found a small streamlet gushing over stones and rotting logs. The water was clear and bitterly cold when I dabbled my bruised hands in the stream, and when I tasted it I found it was fresh enough, with a sort of piny or herbal taste to it. I drank deep, after washing my hands as clean as I could get them without having available such civilized amenities as a cake of soap or a hand towel. I was so dry and thirsty by this point in my adventures, that I drank and drank. Never had a drink of water tasted so good to me.

On the point of going back for my cudgel I paused. Unbidden, a vision arose before me, that of Bozo’s dignified, accusing eyes, his mouth gaping open, tongue lolling. The poor brute must be even thirstier than I had been. I cursed my softheartedness for a while, staring around for something to carry water in. I certainly was not going to permit an unknown wild animal to lap water from my cupped palm; it might occur to him to take the hand for a tidbit.

Then my eye fell on what looked like the shell of a freshwater clam, only five times bigger. There .were quite a few of these empty shells littered about the grassy bank of the stream, and, peering into the rushing water, I saw several undisturbed clams clinging to mossy rocks. Obviously some species of jungle life was accustomed to cracking open the clamshells and sucking out the tender meat inside. At any rate, one of the empty shells would do to carry water in. I took the biggest one I could find, filled it brimful, and carried it back into the clearing, being careful not to spill.

As I came around in front of Bozo, he eyed me solemnly, uttering a warning rumble. But he made no further menacing sign as I set the shell full of water down by his head. Neither did he take his eyes off me for an instant until I had retreated to a safe distance. Then, and then only, did he deign Lo turn his attention to the water, which he lapped up thirstily. So thirstily that I had to make four more trips to the stream before he was satisfied. Then, his thirst appeased, he again gave me a solemn, dignified glance, whined once, softly, deep in his broad chest, obviously by way of thanks, and turned his attentions to his bruised and bloodied hindquarters, which he began to lick clean. The bruises were swelling almost visibly, and must have been tender, but he kept at it until he had cleaned himself up and looked presentable.

By this time night had fallen. It happened quite suddenly, just as Jandar has always described the magically swift transition from noonday brightness to the nocturnal dark. Helping free Bozo had taken so much time, I realized a trifle guiltily, that now I was going to be forced to stay here until dawn. Obviously, if I tried to make my way through the jungle by night, I was either going to lose my way hopelessly, or get eaten alive by one of the nocturnal predators―or both. I could have been miles away by this time, had it not been for Bozo. But, after all, what did it matter? I could sleep here as easily as anywhere.

And, come to think of it, this was a rather convenient place to spend the night.

“Not bad accommodations, eh, Bozo?” I quipped. He pricked up his ears and looked at me quizzically. “A soft bed for the night,” I said, patting the thick, springy turf, “with hot and cold running water-well, cold, anyway―and even a bedtime snack.” By this I referred to the freshwater clams I had discovered in the stream. I pried several of them off the stones of the stream with my bare hands, cracked them open against a flat rock, using the end of my cudgel. They did not look at all appetizing, even by the mystic glamor of moonrise (for by this time, from the many-colored brightening of the sky, a patch of which could be glimpsed above the open clearing where the branches did not quite meet, I guessed that at least two or three of the “moons” of Callisto must already have risen).*

Unappetizing or not, the clams were probably edible. and I was famished from my labors. I’ve never been particularly fond of clams, even when served on

ice in the finest restaurants, but I managed to get the slimy gobbets down and found them tastier than anticipated Even Bozo lapped up two or three, although I could tell from the way he sniffed suspiciously at them, they were not a regular part of his diet.

He had dragged himself partway across the clearing with slow, painful movements, until his back was up against a huge tree. I understood his reasoning without the need for words: it was part of his instinct, when injured, to put his back up against something like a treetrunk, so that if any enemies came at him in the night, they would have to attack him from the front, which would bring them within reach of those powerful jaws filled with blunt, crushing tusks.

We bedded down for the night. I collected as much of the long, dry grasses as would cover us; we would need the grassy blanket, or at least I would, for already the chill of night was creeping into the air. I would have liked a fire, not only for warmth but also to keep prowling beasts at bay, but fire we had none, nor even the means to build one.

I was still a bit careful of getting too close to Bozo, fearing he might turn on me, being a wild beast, after all, and therefore unpredictable. So I curled myself up under the scratchy grasses some distance away. But Bozo made the first overtures of friendship: after a time I heard him dragging himself nearer and nearer.

Then I must finally have dozed off, despite the scratchy discomfort of sleeping naked on the lumpy turf and my various and assorted bruises, cuts, aches and pains.

When I woke with dawn the next morning, I discovered my face was pressed into a burly, soft-furred shoulder. He had crawled up against me during the night, probably for warmth, and we had slept cuddled together all night, my face against one soft, suedelike purple shoulder.

And I had, almost against my wishes, made my first friend on Callisto-Bozo the othode.

I grinned sleepily to myself. I had landed on Thanator naked and friendless and alone, just like John Carter of Mars. And already I had a friend, in the Callistan equivalent of “Woola, the faithful Martian hound”!

Chapter 5 WE FIGHT A VASTODON

Even back home I have never been fond of camping or sleeping outdoors. And when I awoke the next morning I had good cause to redouble my lack of enthusiasm for the outdoorsy life. For I was stiff and lame and sore in every limb, my head felt as though during the night a party of naughty gremlins had packed it full of cotton-battin’; and my mouth tasted like the bottom of a sewer-pipe.

After half-waking to find myself curled up against the warm, furry, breathing bulk of the othode, I dozed off again and did not awaken again until the glare of golden daylight upon my face made further slumber impossible. I lay without moving for a few moments; then, aware that I was no longer pressed cozily against Bozo’s back, I sat up and looked around.

My newfound friend was nowhere to be seen, for the clearing was empty in the wash of golden light. Well, it was probably just as well. One hesitates before making friends with a purple monster the size of a Bengal tiger, even under the most favorable of circumstances, of which these were not. Most likely Bozo had recovered the use of his hind set of legs during the early morning, and had slunk off into the brush to resume his savage mode of existence. I felt distinctly lucky that he had not reverted to his savage nature, and had not turned upon me as we lay side by side.

I got unsteadily to my feet, despite the twinges and throbs resultant from spending the night stretched out on knobby roots and itchy grasses stark naked. I drank fresh water from the gurgling stream, scrubbed my face in the cold fluid and tried to comb my hair out of my eyes. My stomach was growling and grumbling like a whole pack of hungry othodes, and I felt headachy and bleary-eyed. Just then I think I would gladly have gambled my immortal soul for a cup of hot, fragrant black coffee and a couple of cigarettes.

But I had come through my first night in the jungle unscathed, and that was cause for rejoicing. To this day I can’t explain why some jungle predator hadn’t leaped upon us during the night, but none had, and I was in no mood to question my luck. Just so long as my luck held out long enough for me to reach Shondakor and the safety which Jandar’s city afforded!

Returning to the clearing after my perfunctory ablutions, I received a surprise.

Crimson bushes rustled, and an immense, burly-shouldered brute slid his purple body through them and waddled limpingly into the midst of the clearing. It was Bozol He had not deserted me with dawn after all, but had gone hunting for our breakfast. Clamped between his wide jaws were two plump, blood-splattered furry creatures that looked like an unlikely cross between rabbit and squirrel, if you could ignore the fact that their furry bodies were of an improbable bright pink. Bozo dropped one of these at my feet, gave me a long, solemn, eloquent look, and then retired to the other end of the clearing to make his breakfast of the second of the pair.

I have never been thanked for a kindness so eloquently without words before! I had no doubt that Bozo could easily have devoured both of the fat little “squirr-bits” (or “rabb-ells”?) himself, and still have had room for more. But the brute knew I had helped him, and deep in his primal, doggy heart, felt the stirrings of an inarticulate gratitude he knew no other way of expressing.

I had never had raw squirrel-rabbit for breakfast before, but from the noisy signals my midsection was telegraphing to my brain, this was no time to be picky. The furry outer skin was only loosely attached to the still-warm little body, and most of it came off without too much trouble. I washed the blood away by immersing the creature in the stream, and made some sort of a meal on its warm, rather tough flesh, which tasted like raw chicken more than anything else. Or, rather, like I should imagine raw chicken to taste. I chewed down a few mouthfuls of stringy meat and left the rest for Bozo to gobble up. Once I got started on my way through the jungle, I thought it likely I would be able to find something edible in the way of berries or nuts or something.

Bozo had polished off the remnants of the second rabbit-squirrel, and had cleaned the blood off his forepaws, his broad chest and his own face. He licked his chops almost exactly as a dog does, I noticed. The big fellow moved with a pronounced limp, as if his hind legs still hurt him, which they doubtless did, but he could get around all right. In fact, with six legs at his disposal, he could manage to get about without much trouble, even without using the terminal pair.

I gathered up my belongings, such as they were, and was ready to depart. All the while Bozo lay there at the far end of the clearing, regarding me solemnly from; huge, goggling eyes. His rear end was still bruised and somewhat swollen, I could see, but functional. I would like to have said goodbye to him in genuine doggish manner, by scratching the loose folds behind his ears and thumping his burly shoulders, but I didn’t quite dare approach him on such familiar terms.

“So long, now, Bozo. I guess you can get around by yourself now, hmm? Be a good boy, now, and don’t get into any more trouble. Okay? Watch out for falling trees. Goodbye, Bozo!”

Having said this and grinning as he cocked his head on one side, listening carefully to the words as if he could almost sense their meaning, I resolutely turned about, entered the brush, jumped across the stream, and began making my way through the jungle in the same general direction I had been traveling the night before.

I was certainly stiff and lame from spending a night on the cold bare ground, but as I worked my way through the jungle gradually my assorted aches and pains began to ease as my muscles limbered up. I still felt gummy-eyed and thick-headed; I still hungered for a good cup of coffee, and the dryness at the back of my throat told me I would certainly enjoy a cigarette, but I tried to keep my mind off these things, and in time I just about forgot them.

I collected a handful of dry, chewy nuts about the general size and shape of almonds, but tasting more like rather bitter walnuts. These I found littering the turf under a huge tree with amazing scarlet leaves, long streamers of them, for all the world like red hair-ribbons. A bit further on I encountered another kind of tree which sported large, fleshy, bright yellow fruit. Once you managed to get through the tough skin, the insides were soft and wet and tasted rather like a gamy variety of mango. Munching on the dry, bitter nuts and sucking the stringy rind of the pulpy yellow fruit, I made my way through the jungle, feeling I had something inside me that could be quite accurately described as a decent breakfast.

“If Noel could only see me now!” I grinned to myself. My wife would hardly believe her eyes, for she has often complained that my habitual breakfast―three strips of well-done, crisp bacon, one slice of buttered toast and one-half cup of cold grapefruit juice―is fixed and unvarying, whatever the season. But here I was, striding along in quite a cheerful manner, on several mouthfuls of raw squirrel-rabbit, a handful of bitter walnuts, and two overripe mangoes!

Which reminded me to worry―about her worrying! I knew she would be sick with fear for me, thinking I had gotten myself lost or killed somehow. And, remembering the look on Bozo’s face when I left him behind in the clearing, made me think of our dogs, McGurk and Sir Dennis and Rowrbazzle and Molly Brown. I was missing them as much as they were missing me by now, I knew. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to cross the jungles and get to Shondakor―maybe I would have been wiser to just stay in the vicinity of the jade disk!

The trouble with that idea was that I didn’t know the rhythm of the dimensional gateway that linked this world of Callisto with my own world. It might be days―or weeks―before that sparkling beam of force formed itself between the two, far-distant planets, and I could get home safely. I had needed food and shelter, something to wear and something to drink, and something to defend myself with. And the only place to find those necessities had been the jungle; and once I was actually in the jungle, it had seemed logical to simply keep on going, knowing in a rough manner that if I kept going’ long enough I would come out on the far side, probably within sight of the walls of Shondakor, or at least of the river Ajand on which the city of Jandar and Darloona was built.

“When in doubt, or lost, keep moving,” I said to myself, coining the adage on the spot. And then I grinned again: alone and friendless and half-naked, armed only with a piece of wood, wandering through an alien jungle, after a night spent curled up on the bare ground beside a fearsome beast―and I was still cheerful and could crack a joke, however feeble. I felt terrifically proud of myself and wished Noel could see me, fearlessly trekking through the wild like someone in a novel by H. Rider Haggard.

Just then, as I was happily complimenting myself on my ability to survive in the wild, one of my homemade shoes fell apart, worn through, and I stepped barefooted on a sharp twig.

I sat down on a convenient root, removed the tattered scraps of my leaf-shoe, and examined the cut on my foot. Then I began trying to put together another shoe out of the fibrous leaves I had been carrying with me for just that purpose. My foot ached where I had run the twig into it, and I was grimy and sweaty. My stomach still grumbled hungrily to itself; I still wanted a cigarette badly, and my teeth were beginning to ache where the fillings had vanished out of them and I had unwisely crunched down on a mouthful of those dry, tough nuts. I began to wonder just how Robinson Crusoe had managed to do it, after all.

Then something came halfway through the bushes, stopped when it saw me sitting there fumbling to put together a new set of footwear. And it squealed angrily―deafeningly―and shot at me with the speed of an express train!

I caught a swift impression of something gray and leathery and built rather like a dwarf-elephant, but with a wrinkled, snarling snout, a sharp yellow tusk, and a ‘wicked little red eye full of bloody murder, as it came hurtling at me.

I yelled, half stood up, and fell backwards over the root I had been sitting on the moment before.

I landed flat on my back, neatly managing to knock all the air out of my lungs, and lay there sucking and gasping for breath, my eyes watering.

The elephant-boar, for it must have been one of the savage vastodons, it looked like nothing else―made another lunge in my direction, but couldn’t quite figure out how to get around the tree in order to get at me. If once it did get near enough, I somehow knew, it would disembowel me with one vicious, sidewise swipe of those curling, evil-looking tusks.

And against four hundred pounds of infuriated vastodori, my little cudgel would be only a flimsy toy

Dizzy, panting for breath, I struggled to my feet just in time to see Bozo the othode launch himself out of the bushes behind me. He whizzed through the air, a blurred form, like a purple thunderbolt. Straight at the nape of the vastodon he hurtled, for the enraged brute had its huge head down, swinging from side to side, fierce tusks glinting in the bright gold of daylight, pawing at the turf before flinging itself upon me.

Down on the back of the monstrous elephant-boar came the growling othode. Mighty as it was, the vastodon staggered under the impact as Bozo crashed down upon its shoulders. The big fellow was in a fury, growling deep in his chest, his hackles bristling down his back, his goggling eyes blazing with killer-madness. Crunch went those heavy, underslung jaws, blunt tusks sinking deep into the flabby, loose, leathery hide of the vastodon. Muscles bunched along Bozo’s terrible jaws, went rock-hard as those crushing tusks sank deep into the nape of the vastodon’s neck.

The elephant-boar shrieked ear-piercingly, like a steam whistle. Then the massive beast went into a whirling, bucking, rearing dance as it strove to dislodge the growling killer crouched upon its back. Slathering foam splattered from its working jaws as it chomped those curling yellow tusks in maddened fury. Bozo was unfooted in seconds, sliding about. But his terrible jaws locked grimly, tusks slicing deeper and deeper into the nape of the monster’s neck. The vastodon had a huge, humped back like that of a buffalo, but those great tusks sank ever deeper, and the othode hung on, remorseless as death itself. Like the relentless and untiring bull-mastiff he so much resembled, Bozo would cling with those jaws until death claimed him, I knew. And 1 was doing nothing to’ help him!

I was horribly afraid, shaking with terror, but the thought of standing by, a mere spectator, while the great, faithful othode went to his death defending me was more terrible than the thought of facing that wriggling, hairy proboscis and those chomping, vicious tusks.

I sprang forward, snatching up the heavy, knotted length of my cudgel, and sprang directly in front of the infuriated vastodon. I swung the cudgel back over my shoulder and brought it down full in the face of the elephant-boar with every bit of strength I had in me. The first blow made him squeal in fury, one red eye glaring madly at me; the second broke one of those horrible tusks to splinters; the third smashed an eye into gory, dripping ruin. But then, in his whirling dance to dislodge the growling othode tearing at his spine, the vastodon swerved about, giving me only one sweatlathered side to hit at.

The vastodon was like a whirling hill as’ he spun about, his great buffalo-hump looming above my head, all running with blood, the snarling purple othode still clinging to his back, those terrible jaws locked deep in its very spine by now. Bozo was flying through the air as the maddened brute whirled in his frenzy, and the great purple body slammed into branches and went smashing through thorny bushes, as the monster spun about, trying to dislodge him, to break his hold. But, once locked in killing fury on the body of a foe, those mighty jaws would relax their hold only in death.

I got in another smashing blow as the bloody devilmask of a face whirled past me. A moment later I brought the club down a second time, crushing the other eye to scarlet slime. Blinded now, blood spurting out of its mouth with the bubbling foam, the vastodon was staggering, its knees jellylike. Then I saw an opening and sprang forward directly into its face. Hairy bristles and rubbery, wrinkled flesh rasped against my middle as that writhing, obscene proboscis closed about my hips, dragging me forward into the reach of those dripping jaws. But then. I brought the cudgel smashing down, directly atop the monster’s blunt skull. There sounded a loud, sickening crack, like a coconut splitting in a vise.

The brute fell wobbling to his knees, dragging me down with it. Then the hairy proboscis went limp and slack, releasing me, and I wriggled free and lurched to my feet. My own knees felt soft and wobbling as jelly, and I staggered over to lean against a tree. Sweat was running down into my eyes, blinding them, and everything was a swimming blur.

I lost my breakfast into the nearest bush while Bozo broke the vastodon’s back.

Something dry and rasping was licking my face and somewhere very near something was whining deep in its throat. I opened my eyes groggily and looked into the worried face of Bozo the othode. It was streaked and splattered with blood, that ugly, purple face, but

the blood was that of the vastodon. Peering blearily past the immense wriggling purple body that was desperately trying to wag the tail he had been born without, I saw the corpse of the elephant-boar stretched out between the trees under a cloud of huge black glittering flies.

Bozo licked my bearded chin again with a huge pink tongue. I ached in every groaning muscle and sinew, and my head felt like :a pressure cooker about to explode. Bright needles of pain went through my left knee every time I tried to move it, so I just lay still for a while, rubbing the wet, loose fur behind Bozo’s ears, letting him lick my face, talking to him in hoarse, exhausted tones, saying the same thing over and over again, because there was nothing else to say.

“… good boy, Bozo, that’s a good boy, good old Bozo, he’s a good boy … we got that vastodon, didn’t we, good boy, yep, between the two of us, Bozo, old boy, that’s one less vastodon … .”

I giggled at my own inane words, but I felt dizzy and lightheaded and filled with elation and kind of silly.

But―what the hell!―I felt entitled to a bit of silliness. After all, it isn’t every day a sedentary science fiction writer pushing forty gets to fight a weird monster on an alien planet.