Mind Wizards of Callisto

Chapter 1 The Mystery of the Mind Wizards

When you have an enemy, you cannot rest in peace until you have destroyed him.

This is one of the great laws of life, and it holds as true for individual men as for nations.

As a warrior by inclination, a fighting-man by profession, I have made this dictum a part of my personal philosophy. And nothing that has ever chanced to occur in my long career of wandering and adventure has ever proved this belief an error.

And now we had indeed an enemy! An enemy secretive and furtive, shadowy and hidden, unscrupulous and insidious. There was no course open to men of courage and honor but to seek out the hidden lairs of that enemy and destroy him before he brought his cunning schemes to fruition and destroyed us.

In the years since I first found myself miraculously transported across the gulf of millions of miles of space by some mysterious agency to this strange and marvelous world, I have allied myself with a people called the Ku Thad. They are a brave and stalwart and freedom-loving nation of heroic and noble-hearted warriors, and the seat of their power is the great city of Shondakor the Golden, which arises amidst the Plains of Haratha on the River Ajand.

To their princess, the fair Darloona, I have given my allegiance and my heart.

And―by a miracle even more wondrous and inexplicable than that which so strangely transported me to this unknown and beautiful planet―I succeeded in winning her heart as well.

It is a miracle I will never completely manage to understand. That I, a wandering young adventurer from a far-off world, should have won the love of the most beautiful princess of two planets, remains and shall ever remain a mystery beyond the scope of my comprehension. It seems to me that I am a very ordinary young man, no braver or more handsome or more exceptional in any way than any other of a thousand young men. But my beloved saw in me some rare and precious quality that remains invisible to my own scrutiny, and chose me for her mate from all others.

It is no mere false modesty on my part to say that this marvel remains inexplicable to me, for I am no more humble or self-effacing than most men. It is simply, I think, that few men really deserve the wonderful gift of the heart of a lovely and noble woman. Once that gift has been bestowed upon us, we thereafter must spend the rest of our lives earning and deserving that gift.

However, against all odds, I had won through a world of perils to a place beside the Princess of the Golden City and had made her mine. Her kingdom, which now I shared as Prince Jandar of Shondakor, I have held firm against a host of enemies. Mere months before, the city of Tharkol, ruled by the mad queen Zamara, had launched an insidious assault against our realm. Armed with a secret weapon of immense power, the self-styled “Empress of Callisto” had sought to subjugate the Golden City of the Ku Thad as the first step on her ambitious program of planetary conquest. She had caught us by surprise, taking as her prisoners my princess and myself, as well as our staunch ally and comrade, the burly Perushtarian warrior, Ergon.

In a bewildering sequence of remarkable events, we had been able to turn the tables on Zamara, carrying her off into the wilderness of the Great Plains, safely eluding recapture by the Tharkolians until narrowly managing to rejoin our own comrades.

And then had come a sequence of revelations so unexpected and surprising, that the entire history of this jungle-girdled world would forever after be changed because of them.

For Zamara was not truly mad, it proved, but had been seduced into her gaudy dreams of world conquest by an insidious band of telepaths who dwelt in a secret citadel in a far-off land, from which hidden fortress they worked to the destruction of the free cities of Thanator.

Once the full truth became known, Zamara was overcome by contrition and labored mightily to undo the damage she had done. From our most powerful enemy she became our staunchest ally, adding the armed might of her own warlike realm to the fighting legions of the Ku Thad in a mighty effort to throw down the power of our true enemy, the Mind Wizards of Kuur.

In this great crusade upon which we were shortly to embark, a second ally lent us his strength. This was the redoubtable and cunning Seraan of Soraba, a merchant city to the north on the shores of Corund Laj the Greater Sea, Kaamurath by name. His city-state had been next on Zamara’s agenda of world dominance; apprised of this, the clever Prince Kaamurath had insinuated his master-spy, Glypto, into the city of Tharkol. It had been Glypto who was instrumental in freeing us from Zamara’s captivity, after we had been taken prisoner in a daring Tharkolian raid.

Soraba is a part of the wealthy Perushtarian empire to the north. They are not a warlike people, the Perushtarians, but a nation of tradesmen and merchants. In the past, when internecine strife broke out between the several cities of their empire, the Perushtarians had been wont to hire the services of an immense mercenary army called the Chac Yuul, the Black Legion. But those days were over and gone, and in recapturing the kingdom of my beloved princess from the clutches of her enemies, I had taken a part in the overthrow of the Chac Yuul. Broken and dispersed, the warrior host had since vanished from the great stage of world events and no longer played any major role in the history of the Jungle Moon.

Hence the wily Kaamurath had been forced to rely upon his own resources in defending his realm from the ambitions of Zamara of Tharkol. Disguising himself as the merchant Shaphur, he had led a caravan of warriors, also disguised, to reconnoiter the situation, and we had fallen in with him after effecting our escape from Tharkol.

In time all of these matters had come to their resolution. And when at length it became known that a secret agent of the hidden fortress of telepaths―the “Mind Wizards,” they styled themselves―had in fact been the power behind Zamara’s throne, a fact cleverly concealed from everyone, including Zamara, it became grimly obvious to the sovereigns of Shondakor, Tharkol and Soraba that we should never be permitted to enjoy peace until we had rooted out and destroyed this secret nest of telepathic magicians who worked, and had worked behind the scenes for many years, to overthrow the kingdoms of Thanator.

It was some months after our return from these hazardous adventures that we prepared to embark on our crusade against the Mind Wizards of Thanator.

For that time we had labored mightily in preparation for this expedition. In our attack against the Mind Wizards, we had determined that speed was the essential factor.

Only one hemisphere of this planet is known to us. Thanator, or Callisto, is one of the moons of Jupiter. The astronomers of my native Earth will doubtless argue that Callisto is too small a world to sustain a breathable atmosphere, and too distant from the Sun for its surface to be warm and fertile, much less tropic. With these learned teachings I cannot argue: all I can say is that I, Jon Dark, have dwelt upon this world for months, and that I still live and breathe and feel the warmth of a tropic daylight upon my flesh.

I expect no one to believe the amazing narrative of my adventures, for I can offer no tangible proof of their veracity to offset the calculations of astronomers. I suspect, merely, that the sages and scientists of my native Earth have yet to unriddle most of the secret mysteries of the Universe … and that the inexplicable existence of intelligent life upon the surface of the Jungle Moon is but one of those mysteries.

How I traveled here I can neither explain nor even understand. And why I continue to set down with a reed pen on papyrus this continuing narrative of marvels remains a puzzle even to myself. At periods a volume of these memoirs is transported through the jungles of the Grand Kumala by a picked war-party of fighting-men in my retinue to a mysterious jade disc which is the site of the Callistan terminus of a peculiar subspatial link between our two worlds. Who built this marker I cannot conjecture―what unseen and superior intelligence maintains this Gateway between the worlds is still a mystery even to myself. And whether these memoirs do indeed retrace the route I traveled years before, to materialize at the bottom of a jade-lined well in the central plaza of the Lost City of Arangkor in the trackless and unexplored jungles of southern Cambodia I dare not even guess.

The fact that human beings no different from my fellow Earthlings dwell upon a distant planet seems to me a fact of astounding importance to the future of mankind. It behooves me to pass along to my fellow Americans some record of the marvels and mysteries I have encountered here. If any eye but my own shall ever peruse these pages I cannot ever hope to know. Perhaps these memoirs go astray when they vanish up that pulsing beam of golden light that forms at random intervals within the jade Gateway … perhaps they wander forever in the far places of the Universe, a Universe whose vastness and many mysteries and inexplicable secrets I am only beginning to comprehend.

Or, perchance they molder into decay in a forgotten city of crumbling stone that has been lost for unknown ages in the midst of the Cambodian jungles.

I do not know; probably, I shall never know.

But write them I shall, hoping that across the vastness of some three hundred and eighty-seven million, nine hundred and thirty thousand miles they will somehow come into hands of men able to read them and to appreciate the transcendent significance of the information they contain.

To those readers, then―if any―I now speak. Doubtless to you my narrative of marvels and adventures upon a distant world will seem no more than an extravagant fiction. Sobeit. Read and ponder well; the decision of my veracity is yours to make. And stop to think: if this is nothing but mere fiction, then I must surely be the most gifted romancer in all the annals of fantastic literature since Edgar Rice Burroughs. For only an author of his great imaginative genius could concoct so weird and marvelous a world as Thanator, and make it real and living on the page.

Then pause to consider: would any author, able to invent such a stirring and vivid narrative, thronged with wonders, leave so many questions unanswered, so many mysteries unsolved?

Somewhere on the further hemisphere of Callisto, yet unknown to us, the secret citadel of the Mind Wizards lay hidden.

But―where?

Callisto is not a small world. It measures nearly three thousand miles in diameter, which makes it, with Ganymede and Titan, one of the largest satellites in the Solar System―so large, in fact, that at the very dawn of the science of astronomy, the great Galileo was able to discover it by means of the small, crude lenses available to him. We are talking, therefore, of something in the neighborhood of twenty-four million square miles.*

And―where in all this twenty-four million square miles might the lair of the Mind Wizards be found?

Only the one hemisphere of Callisto is known to us and has been mapped by the cartographers of Thanator: the hemisphere which contains the Corund Laj, the Grand Kumala, the White Mountains, the Great Plains of Haratha, and the Sanmur Laj, or Lesser Sea, as well as the cities of Shondakor, Tharkol, Soraba, Farz, Narouk, Ganatol and Perushtar, and, formerly, Zanadar.

The opposite hemisphere is completely unknown. And we had good reasons to suspect that the hidden lair of the Mind Wizards lay in the trackless wilderness of this second hemisphere.

But again―where?

Luckily, we possessed two slender clues to the whereabouts of the secret citadel.

During the desperate attempt of the Ku Thad to recapture their city from the clutches of the Black Legion two years ago, I had been forced to fight to the death against the cunning devil-priest, Ool the Uncanny, in the Pits below Shondakor, in order to rescue my comrades Koja of the Yathoon Horde and Lukor, the gallant and peppery little master-swordsman from Ganatol, who had been taken prisoner by the Chac Yuul.

At that time, and before our duel ended in his death, the clever little warlock who had been the mastermind behind the Black Legion, the power behind the throne of its leader, Arkola, had boastfully revealed to me some hint of the hiding place of his fellow Mind Wizards.

His words are burnt indelibly into my memory. Well do I recall that harrowing hour in which for the first time I matched swords against an adversary who could read my mind like an open book, and knew a split second in advance where my next stroke would fall.

Only by sheer chance had Ool been overcome and slain. But in his overconfidence, sure of his victory over me, he gloatingly let slip some small clue as to the location of the mysterious Mind Wizards.

Smirking in oily anticipation of his triumph over me in the deadly game of blade against blade, he had boasted to me, there in dank and gloomy dungeons, and his words remain in my memory to this hour―

1 am one of the Mind Wizards of Kuur, dark shadowy Kuur that lies beyond the Dragon River amid the Peaks of Harangzar, on the other side of Thanator. My people share a curious science, a mental discipline that permits us to read the thoughts and minds of other beings … We are a small, a dying race; but we have a mighty power over the minds of other men, a power which, if used adroitly, can lay an empire within our reach.

Because of these words which Ool had incautiously let slip in the moment before he inadvertently tripped over the corpse of Bluto which lay sprawled out behind him, and fell, shattering his skull against the pave, gave us our first precious clue to the whereabouts of the land of Kuur. It was in the second hemisphere, near a river amidst the mountains: that much, at least, we knew.

Our second clue had lain in our hands for months, but had somehow or other gone unrecognized all that time until the sharp eyes and keen wits of old Zastro, the wise sage of the Ku Thad and one of our most trusted councillors, discerned its hidden meaning.

It was in the form of a small circular medallion of precious metal which Ergon had found about the neck of Ang Chan, another Kuurian, a second Mind Wizard, who had been the power behind Zamara’s throne and the mastermind behind her mad scheme of world conquest, even as Ool had skulked and whispered in the shadows of the mighty warlord, Arkola.

There aboard Zamara’s great warship, as a flying vessel of Shondakor closed in battle with it, Ang Chan had fallen to a chance-flung dagger wielded by Zamara herself, hurled at the wily mastermind by the outraged princess in the terrible moment in which she had at last discovered how the yellow dwarf had manipulated her thoughts to obey the bidding of the far-off Mind Wizards.

The medallion bore a seemingly meaningless inscription, curved and ragged lines gathering about a triangular symbol. The disc contained no message that was legible to me at the time, so I thrust it within my garments for later examination and promptly forgot all about it.

Chapter 2 Secret in Silver

In the great Hall of the royal palace of Shondakor were we assembled for the council of war.

Once the grinning idol of Hoom, devil god of the Chac Yuul, had leered down upon the splendid hall, squatting like a huge, obscene toad atop the dais of many steps.

Now the Twin Thrones stood upon that high place beneath a billowing canopy of cloth of gold, the thrones wherefrom Darloona and I were wont to preside over state functions.

At the foot of those stairs a great table of carven stone was set and many gilt chairs were drawn about this table, whose top was littered with books and documents, scrolls and charts.

At the head of this table I sat, as Prince of the Golden City. To my right sat Zamara, Princess of Tharkol, and to my left, the gross bulk of Kaamurath, Seraan of Soraba. At lower places about the table sat the lords and chieftains and courtiers of the Ku Thad realm―handsome and courageous Prince Valkar, majestic Lord Yarrak, the solemn-eyed arthropod Koja, and Lukor of Ganatol, and many another brave and stalwart ally, not the least among them, in our reverence and esteem, being the aged and silver-haired Zastro, the sage and philosopher of the Shondakorian realm.

Only my princess was absent from our council, but the voice of motherhood has a higher call at times than do the demands of statecraft. And our infant son, but newly born, loudly and insistently required her presence more needfully than did we.

For months we had labored, three cities in concord, to mount the greatest expedition of war ever launched across the face of this world―or, at least, the greatest known to our annals.

Since the destruction of the Sky Pirates of Zanadar, Shondakor alone of all the cities of the Jungle Moon possessed a fleet of the fantastic flying galleons wherewith the cruel corsairs of the City in the Clouds had long harassed the other kingdoms of Thanator. From our successful battle against Zanadar we had borne away two of the mighty ornithopters, the Jalathadar and the Xaxar.

But in the interval since the fall of Zanadar, and all unknown to us, the cunning Mind Wizards had moved in secret to arm the warlike Tharkolians with the flying ships―a secret weapon with which the self-styled Empress Zamara had planned the conquest of Thanator, never dreaming that she was but a tool in the hands of the Mind Wizards.

To Zamara’s able craftsmen and artisans, the agent of the Mind Wizards, Ang Chan, had delivered the secret formulae and techniques whereby the amazing sky warships were built and rendered weightless. Carefully working in secret, the Tharkolians had completed two such aerial contrivances, which they had christened Empress and Conqueress. These two galleons of the clouds were the prototypes of a yet mightier number that would, it had been planned, form the greatest sky navy in the history of the planet, and which would subjugate the many kingdoms of Thanator to the rule of Zamara.

In the months since we had defeated the imperial ambitions of Ang Chan of Kuur and had won the contrite Zamara of Tharkol to our side, we of the Three Cities had labored tirelessly to prepare for the great expedition against the secret citadel of the Mind Wizards.

The bravest warriors, the noblest fighting-men, the most skillful archers and swordsmen of three kingdoms had trained unwearyingly for their duties aboard the combined fleets of Shondakor and Tharkol. The finest intellects in three realms had pooled their wisdom to our aid; cartographers and scholars, geographers and explorers, had combined efforts to scrape together what few morsels of information or rumor, legend or hearsay, could be found concerning the unknown far side of the planet. The finest maps, the most detailed and reliable charts, had been compiled. They were the end result of months of discussion and research, the sifting of evidence and the comparison of knowledge. But these charts fell pitifully short of accuracy or detail. If we entered the skies of the unknown far side of Thanator armed only with these charts, we should be flying blind into an unknown and mysterious world. We might well consume months―years―in combing many thousands of square miles, in search of our uncharted destination.

At the culmination of a lengthy series of meetings, the final discovery came to light. During these councils we had painstakingly gathered together every minuscule scrap of data we possessed concerning the Mind Wizards. I had racked my brains for every tiniest bit of information I had learned from my brief association with Ool during my incognito tour of duty among the warriors of the Black Legion, and I had ransacked my memory to reconstruct, as accurately as possible, every word he had ever spoken in my hearing.

Princess Zamara did precisely the same, setting down for the scribes to copy out everything she knew or remembered about Ang Chan, and striving to recall every word, the text of every single conversation she had ever had with the yellow dwarf. We combed over this accumulation of material, searching for clues, but found little that was of any use to us.

As well, we examined minutely the contents of Ang Chan’s suite back in Tharkol, fetched hither in the Empress. I don’t know precisely what we had hoped to find―perhaps a letter, a map, a book, some kind of document that might indicate the location of the hidden lair of the Mind Wizards.

And then I recalled the curiously-inscribed disc Ergon had taken from about the neck of Ang Chan as he lay dying in the cabin of Zamara’s flying ship. At the time I had slipped this item into my pouch, vaguely planning to examine it later, which was something I had completely forgotten to do in the interim. The pouch still lay in a cupboard in my dressing room. I sent a servant to find it and displayed the thing before the council.

It was a smallish disc of some heavy, slick metal resembling silver. One side was smooth and blank, but the other was engraved with an odd design or pattern of curved and wavy lines which made no particular sense to me. It looked like this:

We passed the small silver medallion around the table, examining it one by one. No one could make anything in particular of it, until it came into the hands of wise old Zastro. He peered at it thoughtfully, then called for the document in which I had caused to be transcribed the several passages of dialogue which had passed between Ool and myself during the time I had served (under a false name) in the retinue of Prince Vaspian of the Black Legion. He slowly read aloud that particular information concerning the location of Kuur which Ool had let slip during our battle in the Pits.

When he raised his lined and weary face, his eyes gleamed bright with youthful zest and excitement.

“Do you not grasp the meaning of it, my lords?” he inquired.

Gallant old Lukor sniffed impatiently.

“I, for one, do not, friend Zastro,” he said. “‘Tis but a bauble, scribbled with a meaningless design, to my way o’ thinking!”

“Then why should he wear it concealed in the bosom of his garments?” Zastro asked, gently.

Lukor wrinkled up his brow.

“Mayhap because it was precious to him―how can we guess?”

Zastro nodded slowly, silver beard gleaming in the shafts of brilliant day which fell athwart the table through tall windows.

“And perhaps we can guess why it was so valuable to him,” he said. “We may assume that this Ang Chan was not intended to remain forever at the court of Tharkol, but would eventually, once his mission was concluded, have made his way back to his unknown homeland. Exactly how he would have effected this journey I cannot guess―nor does it particularly matter. But it seems to me that he would have had to keep about him, against that moment of need, some way of telling how to get home again across half the world. Is this not reasonable to expect?”

We all nodded or murmured acquiescence. Koja eyed the old sage with his solemn and inscrutable gaze.

“Are we to assume that you profess to see a map of some kind in the scribble on the reverse of the medallion?” he inquired in his harsh monotone.

The old man smiled gently.

“That is precisely the case!” he said. “Consider―Ang Chan could not have known precisely when it would become necessary for him to make his return journey. His return might have waited upon the successful termination of his mission, or it might have come about quite suddenly―for example, if his identity had unexpectedly been exposed.”

“There is sense in what you say, Zastro; speak on,” Lord Yarrak bade, his eyes alive with keen interest.

“He might have been many leagues distant from his suite in the palace, absent from Tharkol on a mission for his queen, when the time for return came. Thus, would it not be reasonable for us to expect he would keep somewhere about his person at all times the means whereby to find his path back across half a world to shadowy and hidden Kuur? Now, for a man to keep a book about his person, or a pouch of papers, much less a folded parchment map, would be to arouse suspicions in all he met and to risk the loss of the return-chart in any one of a thousand ways.”

“Such as?” Zamara asked skeptically.

“Why, such as theft. A thief, brushing against him in the street―a burglar, robbing his apartment while he bathed―a fire breaking out suddenly, making it impossible for him to escape with aught but his life. But suppose, foreseeing these eventualities, he caused a miniature map to be engraved upon a bit of ordinary jewelry which he could wear upon his person at every moment of the day or night, waking or sleeping …”

“You mean―the medallion?” I said.

He nodded, smilingly, then traced with a careful hand a replica of the seemingly meaningless tangle of curved lines on a large sheet of blank parchment, and held it up for the rest of us to see.

“Now, observe this long line that threads its curving way through the midst of the design,” he said, indicating it with his forefinger. “Prince Jandar has told us that Ool the Uncanny mentioned that the lair of the Mind Wizards was `beyond the Dragon River.’ This line in particular catches my attention, not only because the small triangular mark is situated just beyond it, but because it is unlike the wavy lines that enclose it. The line coils and undulates like a serpent … and it may be because of that similarity that the Kuurians call it `Dragon River.”’

We stared intently at the replica of the miniature chart, listening in utter silence as the old man spoke.

“Now, as for these regularly wavy lines which. we see both above and below and to the right of the serpentine line, they suggest to me nothing more or less than a stylized way of indicating mountain ridges on a map. Some cartographers, you know, sketch in miniature drawings of mountains, others prefer to illustrate the natural features on a map with some manner of conventional design. These wavy lines, then, could well represent the major ridges of the mountains which Ool the Uncanny called `the Peaks of Harangzar.”’

“Go on,” Prince Valkar urged.

“I believe that this triangular mark represents the secret citadel of the Mind Wizards. It may represent a single pyramidal building, or the entrance to a subterranean cavern system, a castle, or even a city. We have no way of telling that in advance, and shall not be able to make certain until we are on the spot.”

He put the replica chart down on the table and beamed upon us his serene, saintly smile.

“The most amusing thing about this humble discovery of mine,” he said, “is that I should not have been able to make these guesses if we did not have the vital clue Prince Jandar had already given us. Possessing this verbal information about the mountains and the river, it becomes possible to make sense out of a map deliberately designed to look like a meaningless scribble. And, of course, the Mind Wizards could not have known what Ool the Uncanny had let slip in his conversation with the prince, that time they dueled to the death there in the Pits. Either bit of information is completely useless without possession of the other; possessing both, we should find it remarkably easy to find the location of Kuur.”

Fat, moon-faced Kaamurath of Soraba had lolled wheezing in his chair throughout this, sucking noisily on sweetmeats, his bright, quick little eyes fixed unswervingly on Zastro’s face. Now, for the first time, he spoke in his high, breathy voice.

“This personage is not entirely certain he follows the meaning of the admirable sage of the Ku Thad,” he said politely. “We still have half a world to search, do we not? And we must still cover many hundreds or even thousands of korads before we can hope to find the hiding place of the despicable Mind Wizards?”

Zastro smiled again. “Yes, but the Seraan forgets how rapidly the ornithopters cover ground; and how easy it will be to find a river that curves with this precise configuration. Besides, we will be looking for mountains. On this hemisphere of Thanator, only two mountain ranges of any particular size or importance break the flatness of the land-surface, the White Mountains of the Sky Pirates to the north of the Grand Kumala, and the Black Mountains of the Yathoon Horde to the south. The land-surface of Thanator is not extremely extensive; it is nowhere near the size of Prince Jandar’s home-world, whereon, he informs me, many score of major mountain ranges arise in six or seven different continental masses. No, sire, we shall find it easy to search from the air, investigate only the mountains, and we shall look for a river of this configuration. Besides, we have one further important geographical clue on the medallion which as yet I have not mentioned.”

“And what may that be?” the Seraan wheezed.

“This mountain at the end of the river, which is larger than any of the others, and whose crest seems to be cloven into three distinct peaks. That would seem to be a very distinctive landmark, and one we can hardly fly over, or near, without noticing. It would seem to be the mountain in which the headwaters of the Dragon River rise. It narrows our search considerably.”

And so the council determined that Zastro had indeed hit upon the secret of the medallion, and the location of shadowy Kuur was at last known to us.

We all felt jubilant over the discovery, and more eager than ever to launch our expedition against the homeland of the Mind Wizards.

As for myself, I felt a certain chagrin-mingled, it must be admitted, with wry humor.

For five months we had searched our wits and racked our brains for the secret of the location of Kuur.

And for five months I had―quite literally―been carrying it around in my pocket!

Chapter 3 Shondakor, Farewell!

Once the keen perception of Zastro had penetrated the mystery to its core, and we knew that we possessed, at very least, a vital clue to the location of Kuur, events moved rapidly towards our departure.

We would of course employ the sky navy of Shondakor for this purpose. There was never really any question but that we would fly to the secret fortress of the Mind Wizards. The ingenious and remarkable winged galleons invented by the Sky Pirates of Zanadar could traverse the globe far swifter than any army, mounted on thaptors or borne in chariots drawn by those ungainly, hippo-like draft-animals the Thanatorians call the glymph. True, the number of armed warriors and supplies we could transport by ornithopter was strictly limited, whereas by land we could move as large a host of fighting-men as we might care to assemble: but speed was of the essence, and the element of surprise in our attack might prove the single factor that would tip the scales of destiny towards victory rather than defeat.

And so the sky navy was made ready. Perhaps the term “sky navy” sounds a bit presumptuous; the flying galleons in the service of royal Shondakor were, after all, but two in number. Actually, it was the fat, sleepy-eyed Prince of Soraba who coined the term. Soraba is a maritime realm, and employs a mercantile navy to transport its goods between the four Perushtarian cities and also to trade with the cities of Ganatol and Shondakor, which are built on the shores of navigable rivers.

The neologism was invented in this manner. Kaamurath of Soraba had offered the use of his navy to transport the legions of war across that inland sea called the Corund Laj. Then, pausing, blinking thoughtfully, he reminded himself that the Golden City possessed its own navy―a small one, true enough―but a navy whose keels rode the golden skies of Thanator rather than her green seas. A “sky navy” he called it―kajathol in the universal language shared in common between all of the many human or humanoid races of Callisto.* The term caught on by reason of its novelty, I suppose, and was used to refer to our two winged galleons from that point on.

These two ships, as I have elsewhere mentioned, were the Jalathadar, captained by the indomitable Haakon who had served us so well during the expedition against the City in the Clouds, and the Xaxar, whose captain was, of course, the mighty Zantor, once a corsair chieftain of Zanadar and now a firm and trusted friend.

But the sky navy had recently been doubled in size, for our new ally, Zamara of Tharkol, had joined forces with us and her own aerial galleons, the Empress and the Conqueress, would fight by our side. Perhaps I should explain at this point―being uncertain if any eye but my own will ever peruse these pages, and, furthermore, not knowing if my hypothetical reader will possess intact the earlier portion of this narrative*that the secret of building the remarkable aerial contrivances, believed lost with the fall of Zanadar, had survived among the savants of Tharkol. Zamara had originally intended to launch her own aerial navy as the prime instrument in her ambitious scheme of world conquest; now, by one of the small ironies of fate, she was employing her flying galleons against the secret stronghold of the Mind Wizards … who had given these secrets to her in the first place, hoping thereby to help her realize their own mad dreams of a planet-wide empire!

The shipyards of Tharkol had labored mightily for many months, perhaps the better part of a year, but thus far two ornithopters only had reached completion. A third and fourth vessel, which I understand she intends to christen the Avenger and the Zarkoon―which last is untranslatable, being the name of a mythological or legendary monster similar to the Harpies or the Furies of classical fable―were nearing completion in the shipyards of Tharkol, but neither would be sky-worthy in time to depart with us.

Thus it was that the armada we were soon to launch against our mysterious enemies consisted of four mighty war-galleons of the skies. And a mighty armada it was, armed to the teeth, its decks bristling with fighting men, its holds filled with the weaponry of war. Ever since our return from Tharkol we had been training men day and night for shipboard duties. And the cream of the fighting-men of the Three Cities (as we of Shondakor and Tharkol and Soraba thought of ourselves in our newly-forged alliance) were ours to command, the flower of the fighting manhood of three great realms vied for a chance to join our adventure.

This crash course in “skymanship” was only made possible by a fluke. The crew of the original ship, the Jalathadar, had been hastily and imperfectly trained by myself and my comrade, Koja of the Yathoon Horde, who had served in the wheel gangs of the Zanadarian pirate ships during an earlier period of enslavement. But our rude and fragmentary experience had later been polished with the aid of Zantor, who had joined us in the attack against the pirate city, and had gone over to our side with his entire crew of seasoned and experienced mariners of the clouds. Now that we had a veteran cadre of sky sailors amongst us, it was easy to divide the eager new recruits into teams, each under two or more veterans of the air.

The force of warriors we handpicked from the ranks of the Three Cities was comprised of the finest fighting-men in the world. Nor was their number inconsiderable, for ornithopters of the size and capacity of those which made up the armada could each hold a crew of one hundred and fifteen officers and men. Multiply that number by four and you achieve a total of something slightly under five hundred warriors. Since the armies of Thanator rarely total more than two or three thousand fighting-men, most of whom are poorly-trained and inefficient foot-soldiers, mere yeomen conscripted by force in time of war, our actual strength compared well with that of a genuine army. That is, few Callistan armies contain more than five or six or seven hundred mounted “knights.” The only exceptions to this are the Yathoon barbarians, gigantic hordes numbering in the many thousands, and every one a trained and merciless warrior, and, of course, the Chac Yuul, or Black Legion, a now (happily) broken and disbanded mercenary host of brigands who for years had terrorized the cities of this hemisphere.

In the era of the Sky Pirates, the corsair ships included a complement of some thirty-five officers and crewmen―most of whom were warriors, trained in sword, bow, javelin or lasso―while the remaining eighty members of the ship’s strength consisted of slaves chained to the wheels which powered the great vessels. We, of course, shunned the employment of slaves. This was not, I might add, because of any enlightened attitude among the citizens of Thanator against the institution of slavery (for, after all, what else can you do with captives taken in war except enslave them―the only alternatives being to butcher them, or to set them free to fight against you again, which is nonsensical). Nor was it, simply, that I had once worn the chains of slavery, groaning at the wheel of the aerial ships, and could not endure the notion of another mortal in the same predicament; in truth I must admit that, while I found my time at the wheel grueling and humiliating, it was not unendurable; I was not treated with any singular cruelty, and I found it an excellent way to build the strength of my back, chest, shoulders and arms.

But I am being facetious here, as you may have surmised. Actually, it was simply the most practical thing to do, to eliminate slaves from the crew-strength. We needed every single fighting-man we could carry―we had the vigorous young manhood of three kingdoms to recruit from―and we could hardly afford the luxury of carrying in each vessel eighty men who could not fight.

So we all took a turn at the wheel, even I, the Prince of Shondakor. And beside me at the grueling task cheerfully labored princes and nobles, officers and aristocrats, and the scions of the oldest and wealthiest and most blue-blooded houses in three realms. And not one of us, I’ll wager, but deemed our turn at the great wheels a privilege. For we served in a high-hearted crusade against the cunning and treacherous and secret foes who would undermine and destroy us with their uncanny powers.

In these preparations, Soraba, of necessity, played a minor role. While our Perushtarian allies were no less eager than we to crush the menace of remote and hidden Kuur, the red men are not sprung of a warrior race, and the ancient and honorable profession of arms has gone neglected throughout their history to their occasional detriment. This is an over-generalized statement, and is not entirely true, for Kaamurath of Soraba is a clever and farsighted man, and under his regime considerable strides have been taken to check and to reverse this racial disinclination towards soldiering. Years ago he realized that a princedom unable to defend itself against its enemies must buy peace, either through tribute to the foe or through paying the wages of professional mercenaries. And the squandering of money is not a situation which pleases the merchant-minded lords of the Perushtarian Empire.

Hence the fat, sharp-minded monarch years ago trained and recruited a warrior legion from among his own people, paying a high premium to overcome their innate distaste for the martial arts. And from among his finest warriors, selected in open competition against the flower of the fighting-men of Shondakor and Tharkol, we selected no fewer than fifty-seven.

That may not sound very impressive: but if you could see the average Perushtarian―fat, greedy, bejeweled, draped in gaudy silks, reeking of perfume―you would appreciate what a remarkable transition the Seraan of Soraba had accomplished within a single generation.

If he could not equal the Shondakorian and Tharkolian contribution in number of fighting-men, however, the stouthearted Kaamurath determined to uphold his end of the mutual venture by paying for almost everything. His artisans and craftsmen and traders put at our disposal, of course without cost, the finest weapons that could be found across the breadth of Thanator. He pressed upon us provisions, foodstuffs, medicinal supplies, armor, clothing. He outfitted the four vessels in the armada with the most accurate and superior navigational instruments, maps and charts, cordage and chandler’s stores money could―and did―buy.

My admiration and liking for the shrewd, fat, soft-spoken little Perushtarian increased with the arrival of every new shipload of gear and provender. Kaamurath knew the value of a diol (as the basic monetary unit of Thanator is known) as well as any wealthy merchant-prince. He knew also that the conquest of his city would cost a million times what this generous outlay was worth. And he knew that victory over one’s enemies is a bargain at any price.

The armada of the Three Cities was manned with the fighting strength of Tharkol and of golden Shondakor.

But we flew on wings of gold. Soraban gold.

At last the time had come and we were ready to depart. The men were fully trained, well experienced, and in fighting trim. All was in readiness to launch the first multi-national air armada in the history of this planet.

At my side on the control belvedere of the Jalathadar, the flagship of the new sky navy, stood my most gallant and trusted comrades―Prince Valkar, Lukor the Ganatolian, Koja of the Horde, stout, gruff old Ergon, and the savant, Zastro, wise man of the Ku Thad. It was suspected that his keen intellect would be needed on this expedition, for on this venture we crossed swords with cunning and clever foes. As well, a gallant youth named Tomar had joined the ship’s company in a Thanatorian naval rank comparable to that of an ensign. This youngster had acquitted himself admirably on a former adventure, when it had been his quick wits and fearless daring alone had saved the Jalathadar from destruction at the hands of the unscrupulous traitor, Ulthar. Lukor, who had conceived of a paternal fondness for the youth, vowed he would prove himself an asset on the quest.

It was a clear and brilliant morning: the skies burnt fierce gold in the weird, sourceless dawn of Callisto. The populace of Shondakor had turned out in all their thousands to salute us as we set sail over the world’s edge. In brilliant robes, crowned with nodding plumes, decked with flashing gems as if for some high festival, they waved and cheered as the signal flags ascended the shrouds and the anchor lines were cast off, setting us free upon the winds.

From the great tier of the palace at the heart of the Golden City, I caught my last look at my beloved. Darloona, with our infant son Kaldar in her arms, crowned with a coronal of starry gems, blew me a kiss. The baby cooed and gurgled and kicked his heels, delighted at the color and pageantry of the magnificent scene. Beside my wife and child, tall, lordly Yarrak, Darloona’s uncle and the senior peer of the realm, returned our salute as the mighty galleon rose above the crowded streets, her huge bat-ribbed wings catching the brisk morning breeze; and we were aloft.

Behind us from the naval yards the mighty bulk of the Xaxar ascended in our wake, her banners streaming, spread wings booming as they caught the rising winds. On the cupola atop the pilothouse I caught a glimpse of that great warrior, Zantor. Alone of the corsair captains of Zanadar, he had shown mercy towards his captives, and gentleness towards the helpless. The Sky Pirates had made him a slave―a gladiator, to fight savage beasts and wild men in the arena for their bloody sport: but I had made him a lord of Shondakor, and was proud to call him by the name of my friend. Grim and somber, impassive of mien, with brooding eyes, Zantor was a silent, thoughtful man; but this morning, with its rich color and music, flags rolling on the wind and cheering throngs on every rooftop and balcony, I saw him clearly, and he was grinning with delight.

Like immense, graceful birds, or flying dragons from the mist-torn skies of some lost dawn age, the two immense galleons rose into the air. With the Jalathadar in the fore, the Xaxar trailing behind, we glided in a great curve through the sparkling air. Twice we circled the towering spires of the royal palace of Shondakor in a stately circuit―and a third time.

Then we veered away to the west and a few points north.

The mighty metropolis shrunk behind us to a cluster of dolls’ houses. Gold fires of dawn flashed in the glittering length of the river Ajand as in the mirror-bright blade of a slim scimitar. The crimson fields of the Great Plains filled our vision; the city dwindled astern, and was soon lost to sight in the distance.

The adventure was begun!

Chapter 4 The Armada Assembles

As the Golden City vanished in our wake, I turned to the pilothouse where Captain Haakon stood behind the young officer, Karan of Tharkol, who had drawn first watch.

“Captain, if you will take her up to the two-thousand-foot level,” I said.

He saluted crisply.

“Two thousand feet it is, admiral!” The signal was flashed to the mid-deck and relayed to the wheel-gangs below. The rate of our wing-beats increased; at the same time, trim-gangs drew taut the guy-stays on sturdy winches. The trim of our ailerons sharpened. At the bow, the rudder-gang threw their levers over in response to signal flags flashed from the fore belvedere. And we ascended by some five hundred feet to the height I had requested.

“Very good, captain,” I nodded. “West by northwest, and steady as she goes. Call me in thirty-five minutes; I will be below in my stateroom.”

Acknowledging his salute I turned and led my entourage down narrow, winding stairs within the forecastle to a long, low-ceilinged room where round ports, sheathed in glittering crystal, gave forth on a stupendous vista of crimson, rolling plains. Here, seated at a long table amidst a clutter of books and charts and scrolls, a plump, short, little man frowned up at me irritably.

He was red-skinned and bald, with sharp black eyes filled with ill-humor, and you would have thought him a pureblooded Perushtarian had it not been for his amazing beard. This hirsute appendage clung to the very tip of his fat double chin and thrust out, sharp and waxed to a point, in a stiff tuft. Since his face was otherwise as hairless as an egg, and, on the whole, much rounder, this jutting thrust of beard lent him a ludicrous appearance.

It looked, in fact, for all the world like a billy goat’s beard! But the possessor of this amazing appendage was inordinately proud of it. I suppose, to paraphrase an old adage, in the country of the bald the wearer of even a billy goat’s beard is king.

At any rate, my entrance was viewed with distinct displeasure. The little plump red-faced man darted an unwelcoming look in our direction and voiced a little sniff of peevish temper.

“How go your cartographic labors, Dr. Abziz?” I inquired, taking no notice of the little man’s disrespectful manner.

“They would progress much faster, Prince Jandar, if I might not be continually interrupted by great hulking warriors clanking about in all their steel and leather, with their great boots and clumsy hands!” the little man replied sharply.

I smiled, but refused to be made angry. This officious and sharp-tongued little gentleman was a distinguished cartographer, loaned to us by Prince Kaamurath from the famous Academy of Soraba. He was considered the foremost of living experts on the science of geography―or should it be “callistography”?―and held himself, evidently, in the highest personal esteem. I found him quite the most amusing little pedant it had ever been my fortune to encounter, so amusing, in fact, that it was nearly impossible to be offended by his peevish snapping tongue and puffed-up self-esteem.

“Ah, cousin? The work goes well, eh? Good, good!”

It was the gallant old swordmaster, Lukor, said this. Dr. Abziz stiffened in his chair as if suddenly finding a cobra coiled up in his lap. He utterly and completely detested Lukor, for Lukor was a Ganatolian, and the only thorn in the side of the vastly inflated ego of the Soraban pedant was the fact that he was not of the purest Perushtarian blood. His mother had been a Ganatolian woman, and it was through her, of course, that he inherited the capacity for hirsute adornment, unknown to Perushtarians of pure descent. Lukor had discovered, quite early on, that while the irascible little geographer loved his thrusting tuft of beard with a rare passion, he distinctly disliked being reminded of his mixed heritage. It was therefore only natural for Lukor to bring up the subject of the Ganatolian side of Dr. Abziz’s lineage at every possible conversational turn, for he delighted in puncturing a swollen ego almost as much as he enjoyed pricking a foeman’s gullet with the point of his steel.

“If this … ah … gentleman could desist in claiming a familial relationship which could not conceivably exist, perhaps a scholar of some distinction could be permitted to resume his labors,” Dr. Abziz implored of the room at large in a strangled tone.

Lukor chuckled, eyes twinkling merrily.

“With the very greatest pleasure, I am sure!” he said heartily. “Nothing delights me more than to accommodate a fellow-countryman! Ah,” he breathed gustily, “how pleasant it is, here among all you Shondakorians and Perushtarians and Tharkolians and other such―like foreigners, for a poor, elderly, lonely, gentleman―adventurer from Ganatol to stumble upon a friendly face from home!”

And with that he dealt the fuming little doctor a stout thump between the shoulder blades that must have rattled his teeth. Abziz squeezed his eyes shut and pursed up his mouth as if in suffering so acute that words failed him.

Trying to conceal a grin, Valkar swooped down on Lukor, who was about to launch another conversational sally, and, firmly linking arm in arm with him, bore him away.

“Will you visit my cabin and share a rare old bottle of quarra, swordmaster?” the tactful prince asked. “I’d appreciate your expert opinion on the vintage …”

Lukor smacked his lips, eyeing Dr. Abziz doubtfully, but permitted the young prince to bear him off down the corridor. Next to a good fight, or to tormenting the waspish little Perushtarian geographer, the gallant old master-swordsman from Ganatol relished a fine vintage of quarra.* Valkar had foresightedly laid in a sizable supply of the beverage, as soon as he had seen how things lay between the peppery little cartographer and the silver-haired Ganatolian swordmaster.

As the door closed behind them, Dr. Abziz cautiously opened one eye and peered about, almost as if expecting Lukor to pop up from behind a chair and yell “boo”; ascertaining to his satisfaction that his tormentor had quit the premises, the little pedant uttered a snort and a loud sniff―a combination of sounds which somehow managed to convey at once disgust, relief, and satisfaction.

“Your forgiveness, my lords,” he snapped. “But I cannot endure the presence of that―that―swaggerer! Seizing upon a fancied likeness to his late great-uncle, the fellow has thrust himself upon me at every turn, reeking of quarra, smirking, unreeling interminable family histories and genealogies, obdurately refusing to so much as listen to my patient, irrefutable arguments that we could not conceivably, by any stretch of the imagination, be related! Insufferable lout! That a mature gentleman of his years should swagger about like a young bravo, that―that terrible weapon slapping about his spindly shanks …. ohh!”

The doctor shuddered and closed his eyes again as if to blot the horrendous image from his memory.

The youthful Tomar, perhaps too young to see the humor in the scene, spoke up anxiously.

“Doctor, I, I’m sure Sir Lukor meant nothing by it; he’s a wonderful old gentleman, and―and Prince Jandar says he is the finest swordsman in all the world, even though he is so very old. But he really shouldn’t annoy a great scholar like yourself, because we’re depending on you to figure out our route to Kuur, and we know it must be very hard to do, and that only a great intellect could have the knowledge …”

The plump features of Dr. Abziz, which had been pursed into a tight expression as if he smelled something vile, relaxed at the boy’s earnest words. He beamed on the youngster with something resembling a fond eye. Stiffly cold and formal with the rest of the officers, including myself, Dr. Abziz―unlikely as it may seem―had conceived of a certain fondness for the brave, manly, good-natured youth.

As he made quiet thanks to Tomar for his words, I reflected there might be hope for the old pedant yet. If Tomar could elicit a word of thanks from the stiff-necked old fellow, there might be a chance we could persuade him to join the human race after all!

Since the doctor had appropriated the stateroom for his studies, we tactfully left it to him and reascended the winding stair to the windy balustrade. Before long the clustered towers of Tharkol rose over the horizon, and, as we drifted nearer, we saw that the Conqueress and the Empress were already aloft, waiting for our arrival. Aboard the former would be Princess Zamara herself, for the beautiful young Tharkolian queen was a swordswoman of no mean repute, and eager to match her steel against the villainous Mind Wizards.

Also aboard the Conqueress I expected to find my old friend Glypto, the wily and cunning Soraban master-spy who had so brilliantly masqueraded, on our last adventure together, as a cowardly, sniveling, whimpering lickspittle of a starveling thief. The remarkably homely little fellow had played the part to consummate perfection, and never once during the days and weeks we adventured together had I the slightest suspicion his groveling, whining, self-pitying manner was assumed; nor that his beaked nose, stubbled and hollowed cheeks and glittering, wary eye concealed a calm, cool intelligence, agile, resourceful, fearless, and clever.

Streaming with banners, the Conqueress came about with majestic grace as we approached the city. As had been the case in royal Shondakor, the citizenry of Tharkol had turned out in strength for this momentous and historic occasion, and the broad avenues and mighty plazas and forums of the Scarlet City were gaily bedecked as if for holiday, and thronged with massed thousands who waved at us the flags of our own kingdom in friendly salute.

For several minutes the four galleons of the clouds circled about the city, gliding in a stately procession, tracing a circuit of the walls of Tharkol. To those thousands who viewed the amazing and beautiful aerial procession from below in the streets and squares of the city, it must have resembled a stately slow-motion ballet in the skies.

Then, assembling according to previous arrangements, the four mighty frigates formed an arrowhead or chevron formation, with the Jalathadar, as flagship of the armada, taking her position in the point of the arrowhead.

Now joined together in this high emprise, the armada glided from the circle and soared grandly off into the west, leaving the flag-bedecked city of Tharkol to cheer itself hoarse in our wake.

And thus began what promised to be the most incredible and momentous of my many adventures on the Jungle Moon, as we set forth on our expedition to the edge of the world and beyond ….

Chapter 5 Journey to the World’s Edge

At the height of nearly half a mile above the surface of Callisto, the aerial armada of the Three Cities sailed majestically into the unknown west of the world.

On the glass-enclosed bridge of the Jalathadar, I mused yet once again on the mighty airships and the marvel of human ingenuity they represented. Nothing remotely akin to them had ever cruised through the blue skies of my native world, save in the fantastic romances of Jules Verne and the cryptic notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. I suppose the ponderous and stately dirigibles of my planet’s transient era of lighter-than-air flight must have seen something faintly akin to these majestic clippers of the clouds, but those days were long since past.

What a miracle of engineering the aerial galleons of Thanator represent! The long-ago invention of some forgotten genius of whelmed and conquered Zanadar, the great ornithopters are a marvel of the imagination somehow made real … and one of the many dreams of Leonardo da Vinci which have come true in the centuries after his time. After all, that most glorious genius of the Renaissance somehow envisioned the tank or armored car, the Gatling gun, that primitive precursor of the modern automatic weapon, the helicopter, and something remarkably like a cross between the pocket submarine and the diving bell. All of these the titanic vision of da Vinci pictured in graphic detail in his coded notebooks, leaving their eventual perfection to the mechanics and inventors of later generations. The ornithopter, or airship that flies by flapping its wings in imitation of a bird in flight, was one of his most amazing and revolutionary conceptions and the drawings of them in Leonardo’s notebooks anticipate the engineering problems involved with startling accuracy, visualizing them in vivid descriptive terms. My professors at Yale told me that the problems of human flight fascinated da Vinci for years, and that he struggled long to perfecta working model. It was, I suppose, the simple problem of weight which defeated his magnificent dream and prevented it from reaching fruition, and which brought to an end his superb effort to give wings to man centuries before the triumph at Kitty Hawk.

If only the divine Leonardo could somehow have spanned the ages and the gulf of space, to peer down through the brilliant morning skies of distant Callisto to watch as the great armada of the Three Cities floated on throbbing vans through the golden dawn―how enthralled he would have been, to see his splendid dream achieved at last by the denizens of an alien world!

The ponderous dimensions of the sky-ships alone would have amazed him. Frigates such as the Jalathadar measure some eighty-seven feet from stem to stern and are built very broad in the beam, flat-bottomed and portly; but otherwise their appearance and design is greatly reminiscent of the majestic galleons of the Elizabethan Age which once navigated the piratical blue waters of the Spanish Main. They are built quite high in the poop and the forecastle―the forecastle rising to about forty-two feet above the level of the keel and the poop or sterncastle a little less, some thirty-five feet―with a broad mid-deck, lined with a carven balustrade. About the only thing they lack for the Spanish galleon look to be complete is canvas, for of course they have no use for sails, and, hence, none for masts either. (They do have two masts, but short ones, and principally for the display of flags; observation stations are mounted like crows’ nests atop these short, stubby masts.)

The upper works of the forecastle bulge out sharply, an exposed belvedere giving a clear view on all three sides (and down, as well), and this belvedere opens into the pilothouse, with a balustraded observation deck mounted on the roof. The admiral’s stateroom is located directly beneath the pilothouse, with the captain’s quarters and the officers’ dining room (which also serves as council room) to either side. Further down the sloping curve of the forecastle, at about what would serve as the waterline on a seagoing ship, are two more observation decks or balconies, one situated on either side of the forecastle, and the sterncastle has a similar belvedere and rooftop observation deck giving a clear view to aft; just beneath this is situated the vertical rudder fin, ribbed like a gigantic Chinese fan; this is attached to the rudderstock which supports the belvedere and which is itself attached to the sternpost and thence to the aft steering gear.

From either side of the rather broad maindeck, which is the one feature about the vessel which lends it a slightly ungainly appearance―more like a fat goose than a graceful swan, you might say―the hinged wings extend. They are a part of the hull, and extrude to either side at right angles from slightly below the deck-level. These wings are quite solid and immobile for about two thirds of their full extent, but from thereon they are hinged in an ingenious and rather complicated manner, with enormous pulleys and guy-stays which manipulate the outboard wingsections so they do, actually, flap up and down in a ponderous fashion. The movements of these hinged sections, as well as the complex system of ailerons, are controlled from the capacious bold built directly below the central deck. There, stacked one above the other with narrow balconies and platforms at each level, are the ranks of enormous wheels which supply the motive power for the wingsections. Or perhaps I should say it is the wheel-gangs, whose task it is to turn these immense gears by hand, who supply the motive power. Turning these wheels communicates kinetic energy through an amazing system of sequential cogwheels, pinion wheels successively engaging with larger cogs, and the whole connecting with the guy-stays I spoke of earlier. These guy-stays are tough and thin as the finest grade of nylon cord you could buy on Earth (they are actually made of the silk of an enormous kind of spider). Perhaps I should remark here that a clever ratchet-and-pawl arrangement on the wheels prevents any sudden reversal―otherwise, of course, the first contrary gust of wind would strip the gears, which could be disastrous. These guy-stays are coiled about gigantic winches just above the topmost wheel-systems, and they communicate from the winches to the outboard wingsections through rows of circular ports in the hull. These ports, incidentally, ventilate the entire hold, or wheel deck, as it is called, quite admirably. Please don’t get the image of grimy, sweat-soaked wretches toiling at the oars in fetid darkness under the overseer’s lash―the sort of scene commonly found in the marvelous pirate movies popular when I was a boy. The wheel-gangs on an airship like the Jalathadar do indeed perform great physical effort, similar to that of groaning slaves plying the oars in the hold of a Spanish galleon. But they do it in air-conditioned comfort!

If such sky-ships were made out of wood, the weight would be prohibitive, on the order of hundreds of tons, surely. But they are not. Instead, they are fashioned entirely out of paper-layer after layer of tough, coarse papyrus-like paper, soaked in glue, stretched over molded plaster forms, and baked in ovens. When “done,” the plaster molds are chipped or broken away, leaving a hull-section molded of light, tough, amazingly strong laminated paper, from which the ships are put together. The Thanatorians also employ a powerful gas, like hydrogen, which fills the hollow double-hull (which is caulked until airtight, of course) and a series of airtight compartments in the bilge. The effect of this gas is to make the galleon almost completely weightless, just as in a German dirigible back in the First World War. The only known supplies of this natural gas were in the White Mountains, and they were destroyed when we conquered Zanadar. But recently the men of Tharkol found an even more capacious deposit of the gas in the Black Mountains near the south pole of Callisto.

The weightless effect of the stored hydrogen-like gas, of course, does much to render the galleons skyworthy. But the laminated paper construction is the real secret.

Who knows? If Leonardo da Vinci had known about papier-mache, the skies of the early Sixteenth Century might have been filled with such majestic aerial marvels as ply the windy heavens of Callisto!

The scarlet walls of Tharkol faded into the distance behind our sterns. The mighty armada of the Three Cities, cruising at about twenty-five miles an hour, floated due east at an altitude of about half a mile.

At this speed (which doesn’t sound like much in the era of the jet airplane, but which is pretty fair for a vessel propelled by sheer human muscle-power alone) the armada could cover some three hundred miles or more during the hours of day. We could also, if necessary, cover about the same distance during the night, by rotating shifts of wheel-gangs on a watch-and-watch, or four-hours-on-and-four-hours-off basis, although that would be a grueling pace to keep up, and would only be used in direst need.

But if needs must, the armada could do it. And, at that pace, we could fly from pole to pole in about eight days, thus covering something like forty-three hundred miles in little more than a week’s time. This we did not contemplate; at least, we did not look forward to the task. Generally speaking, the wheel-gangs do not power a sky-ship night and day; there are lengthy rest periods in which the vessels maneuver into the grip of one or another of the complex system of prevailing winds the Zanadarian pirates had traced and charted with great care and exactitude.

It was not my plan to do thus on the flight to Kuur.

On this trip we would be flying through skies whose winds had never been charted, for the simple reason that―insofar as any of us knew―the Sky Pirates had never ventured this far from home.

Neither had we.

With Tharkol lost behind in the mists of distance, we flew on over the easternmost extremity of the Great Plains of Haratha which dominate most of the southern hemisphere.

At noon my officers and I lunched in the long, low-ceilinged dining room. Dr. Abziz had testily set aside his books and papers for the occasion, so that we could use the long table for the purpose for which it had originally been designed, although he did give voice to a few pointed remarks about the mentality of men who think more of their bellies than of the recondite and abstruse questions of theoretical geography.

He was not in the least pleased when mischievous Lukor agreed heartily, begging us to hearken to his “learned cousin” and to take our empty bellies elsewhere, so that a “true son of Ganatol” might be allowed to get on with his work. Frostily declining to accept my amiable offer to join us for luncheon, the fussy little doctor decided to take his repast in the privacy of his cabin. Lukor alone professed to be disheartened by his decision.

Even an admiral works on the Jalathadar, so, after lunch, I served my scheduled term of duty at the wheels and retired quite early to my cabin. I occupied myself until dinnertime by bringing up to date this narrative of my most recent adventures. During the months between the collapse of Zamara’s mad schemes of world conquest and the departure of the armada for Kuur, I had recorded these recent events in the first half of this manuscript* and I carried with me on the expedition the complete manuscript, to which I added from time to time.

That night I went to bed rather early, and, as the second day of our expedition proved uneventful, spent most of my off-duty time at the writing desk, keeping my journals up to date. In this I had the assistance of the aged savant, Zastro. During the past year or so we had worked together, he and I. The old sage was fascinated by what I could tell him of life on my native world, to the extent of desiring to learn how to read and write and even speak English, which by this time he had thoroughly mastered. In return for my tutoring him in my native tongue, he assisted me in completing my mastery of his own language. For, while by this point in my adventures on the Jungle Moon, I could, of course, speak the universal Callistan language with great ease and facility, my acquaintance with the written characters and grammar was still cursory, if not rudimentary. So we spent the long, uneventful hours of the first two days of the expedition in our mutual exchange of language lessons, and portions of my recent journals I dictated to Zastro in English, so that he could practice his familiarity with the handwritten tongue.*

Again quite early in the evening of the second day of the voyage, after a turn at the wheels, I retired to my bed, wincingly aware of muscles I had forgotten I possessed. A few turns at the wheels will do that for even the most practiced athlete.

The second day had been, as I have said, much like the first. We flew over crimson meadows in no way different from the leagues of the Haratha plains we had traversed the day before.

But, towards dawn, I woke suddenly and sat bolt upright in my bed, aware of a stirring of inward excitement I could not at first account for. Then, looking at the dimly-burning time-candle in its glass bottle across the cabin, and counting the carefully-measured rings painted thereupon, I became cognizant of the time, which was about four A.m., and realized with a thrill what had awakened me. It had been my subconscious, which had evidently been counting the hours away. We had by this hour covered two hundred and thirty-seven korads.

That was making good time. But we were making more than just good time―we were making history!

For, at about the moment I had awakened from my slumbers, we had flown beyond the eastern limits of the map of Callisto.

We had, in fact, just flown over the edge of the world … .