Mind Wizards of Callisto

Chapter 6 Attack of the Zarkoon

Dawn broke like an immense, soundless explosion, filling the skies of Callisto with clear, brilliant, sourceless golden light.

The event which had transpired shortly before was too momentous to permit me to resume my interrupted slumbers. I rose, threw on my plain leathern tunic and boots, buckled the heavy girdle about my midsection, and slipped my baldric over my shoulders so that my rapier hung in its scabbard at my left hip. Then, because the winds of morning were likely to be chilly at this height, I drew about my shoulders the folds of a heavy cloak of dark wool and left my cabin, ascending the narrow, winding stair to the observation belvedere atop the pilothouse.

Peering over the carven balustrade, I had my first glimpse of an unknown world.

The landscape below was dim with morning mist, but I discerned the level plain stretching beneath us, and could make out the dark, shaggy rondure of wooded hills. Far away on the gloomy horizon a river or lake glittered fierce silver.

Nowhere could be descried a hilltop castle, town, city, paven road or cultivated field. Nothing in view suggested that this nameless land was inhabited by men.

After a long look at the unexplored terrain I descended into the pilothouse and exchanged a few words with the duty officer. As might have been predicted, he had nothing to report. The wind we had been riding most of the right had slackened off at dawn and our speed was now cut in half. With the first light of morn, he had hoisted signal flags, receiving from the other ships in our armada the intelligence that nothing of note had transpired during the hours of darkness. Our approximate position at dawn he had then noted on the rough map which Dr. Abziz had completed the evening before. He had also roughly sketched in the line of the hills which were visible by morning, and the distant glint of water on the horizon.

As for Dr. Abziz, the irascible little geographer had risen as early as had I, and was already engaged in making his first notes on this new world whose periphery we had crossed in the early hours of morning. He gave short replies to my questions, for his entire being was concentrated on the landscape which gradually unfolded to our gaze below, as the warmth of dawn dissipated the morning mists. His keen eyes were intent on the spectacle beneath our keel, whose details resolved themselves bit by bit as the white fog vanished, and he was scribbling notes and sketching natural features busily. Receiving a few curt and even snappish responses to my queries, I turned away and left the little savant to his work.

Tomar brought a steaming mug of mulled, spiced wine and a dish of crusty, warm meat cakes to me on the bridge. Wrapped in my cloak, I stood munching these and sipping the hot wine, while staring down at the enthralling vista which gradually unrolled before my eyes.

First impressions can easily be wrong, of course, but the more I studied the unknown hemisphere beneath us the more I became convinced that the terrain immediately to hand was uninhabited. Nowhere could I discern the slightest traces of human habitation. We were, just then, flying over a wooded tract, a thick mass of scarlet foliage a shade or two darker than the red meadow-grasses of the plains. It was obvious no woodman’s ax had touched those gnarled and mighty forest monarchs, nor had the underbrush been thinned out. And, as for the plains themselves, I could discern no road or pathway, no caravan track; neither were there any domesticated cattle browsing on the meadows, nor the smoke of cooking fires ascending on the morning breeze.

We flew on for an hour or more. I remained in the pilothouse, riveted to the scenery below, hoping that at any moment a trace of human habitation would come into my view. Such, however, was not the case. Gradually the land thinned out to bare, harsh soil, scrubby trees, rocky knolls. Here and there a river glittered, but never one which presented the distinctive configuration engraved on Ang Chan’s silver medallion. Poor, thin little rivulets they were, trickling meagerly between banks of naked, eroded soil. This was a grim, hostile, barren land whereover we now flew by midmorning, and the lack of any signs of human habitation were not at all surprising.

By noon the situation had changed only in that we were now soaring over a rugged land of broken rock and naked hills.

By early afternoon, we observed a mighty range of mountains on the horizon, and, altering the approximately due west direction of our flight, we headed off into the north to investigate this range, which could very easily be the one depicted on Ang Chan’s medallion.

In all, it was a tense, dreary and uneventful day, one of continuous suspense and waiting, which failed to eventuate in discovery.

Evening, however, was to prove remarkably different!

After many hours of silent vigil I had wearied at last. Leaving the bridge in the capable hands of Captain Haakon, I went down to my cabin, took a brief nap and brought these journals up to date. My officers and I had an early dinner that evening, and, at the conclusion of the meal, before retiring, I again ascended the narrow winding stair to the pilothouse for one last look around at the nighted landscape before taking to my bed.

The many-colored moons of mighty Jupiter were aloft. The green sphere of Orovad, or lo, glowed like a Chinese paper lantern through the dusk, and the frosted azure globe that was Ramavad, or Europa, flooded the land with dim radiance. Imavad, as the Callistans call Ganymede, was a crimson disc on the horizon, and the remote gold fleck of Juruvad, or Amalthea, burned like a glittering sequin against the night.

In the shifting and multi-colored rays of the many moons, the rocky scarps, profound chasms, sheer cliffs and sharp peaks whereover we now flew stood out in clear detail. I stood, wrapped in my cloak, one hand resting on the pommel of my sword, absorbed in the savage spectacle. Beside me on the bridge the duty officer at this hour, young Tomar, stood gazing down on this fantastic vista of broken rock and barren sand and fang-like peaks and pinnacles. The land below us looked as bleak and sterile as might the surface of Earth’s cold, dead moon.

Such, however, was not the case: for there was indeed life on the mountainous land beneath us, as we soon discovered.

I was roused from my reverie when the youth Tomar touched my arm, pointing off to starboard.

“Something’s coming, sir―look!”

I followed his pointing finger. In the tangle of conflicting rays of different-colored moonlight it was difficult to make out moving objects, but something was indeed approaching the armada from beneath. Something that flew.

It was ascending from a forest of needle-like pinnacles and for a moment I could make out nothing concerning it.

“Could it be a flight of kajazells, admiral?” the signal officer, who shared the bridge with us, asked.

The kajazell is a smallish winged lizard found mostly in the desert countries or in mountainous regions. But that which floated up towards us on the winds was no kajazell.

“I don’t think it likely, Drango,” I replied. “It’s too big; we couldn’t even see a kajazell from this distance.”

Then the flying object seemed to break apart or scatter, and to our even greater mystification we saw that the unknown thing which arrowed up towards us was not one creature, but several, perhaps eighteen or twenty or even more. Even scattered, the flying creatures could now be discerned to be of considerable size.

A cool breeze was blowing up my spine and I was conscious of an inward alarm I could neither ignore nor explain.

It was a sense of danger. Many times in my perilous and hazard-filled career of adventure I have felt that inward sense of imminent or oncoming danger; and never has it proven a false alarm. Still, I hesitated, waiting for more proof of approaching danger before giving the signal and rousing the armada.

“Whatever they are, they’re bigger than the zell and smaller than the ghastozar,” Tomar observed tautly. And he was quite right. And whether the flying creatures were related to either of the two winged predators he had named, we were entering a zone of extreme peril. Of the ghastozar, I have elsewhere recorded that they are dragonish flying monsters which closely resemble the tremendous pterodactyls of Earth’s nightmare Jurassic. The zell are much smaller but not any the less dangerous. Usually, but not exclusively, denizens of the desert-countries, they are small winged reptiles the size of terrene doves. On an individual basis they are relatively harmless, but when they hunt in enormous flocks they are very dangerous indeed. A sort of Jekyll-and-Hyde creature, when they assemble into gigantic flocks they become half seagull, half bat-winged piranha, and a flock of them can strip a human being to naked bones in seconds.

But these were neither kajazell nor ghastozar, but some third species of flying creature perhaps equally dangerous.

The signal officer on duty, one Drango, was ready to flash the alarm. By day signals are exchanged by means of colored flags run up the shrouds to the crows’ nests atop the double masts amidships, but by night similar signals are given by means of coded colored lanterns. Drango looked to me for my orders. But still I delayed, hesitated, temporized. In retrospect I admit to have made a serious error, but at the time my delay seemed reasonable. I had no knowledge of what the flying creatures were nor of whether they might be dangerous, and I was reluctant to rouse from their well-earned rest my weary mariners of the sky who would spring from their beds to the emergency stations on Drango’s signals.

And while I hesitated, disaster overtook us!

The winged creatures were strung out across the heavens in a long curved line, each creature spaced about twenty feet apart from its fellows.

Now that they were nearer, we could see them better. Smaller than the monstrous ghastozar, they were still somewhat larger than men, measuring about eight feet from barbed, sinewy tail to cruel, hooked beak. Their wings resembled those of immense vultures or condors, and were covered with long feathers of a metallic azure. Their heads were crested with a stiff topknot of blue feathers, touched with crimson at the tips; their bodies, however, did not seem to be feathered at all, but were covered with swarthy, brownish-yellow hide which paled to a bright canary-yellow at throat, breast, belly and thighs.

They were, then, not winged reptiles, but―birds!

They were the first and only winged avians I have yet encountered on the whole of this world. The only feathered creature known to me is a wingless quadruped of horse-like size and shape called the thaptor, which I have several times in these journals described as a semi-domesticated creature the Callistans employ for riding purposes.

That the unexplored further hemisphere of Callisto was inhabited by an hitherto-unknown species of giant bird was a remarkable discovery, of course.

But there were more and greater surprises yet to come!

The oddest thing about the giant bird-winged creatures was that they were essentially anthropoid or manlike in form. Disregarding for the moment their brilliant blue plumage of wing and prehensile, barbed and featherless tails, their bodies were quite manlike, with long gaunt arms whose hands ended in cruel hooked talons, and long, sinewy hind legs which terminated in powerful grasping claws. Stark naked, their bony umber-and-yellow torsos were encumbered with some articles or implements I could not at first discern. Then, as they flew nearer, I saw with an uncanny thrill of amazement that the bird-monsters wore crude harnesses of leather straps from which dangled stone axes, flint knives, short throwing-spears and a variety of curved scimitar-like sword with a wicked glittering blade of chipped obsidian.

They were not birds, but men!

And in the next instant they were upon us.

The panes of thin glass that shielded the bridge from the cold winds shattered as the foremost of the bird-warriors hurtled upon us. I was flung backwards by the thrust of one lean but powerfully-muscled bare arm. Sprawling on my back, I looked up into the hideous face of the monster-man who stood astride me, vulture-like wings spread, claws reaching for my throat.

One look had I into that nightmarish face, all clacking parrot-beak and mad, glaring orange eyes under blue-feathered, overhanging brow―and then Drango hurled himself between my recumbent form and the winged warrior. His rapier flashed from its scabbard to sink into the canary-yellow hide of the bird-winged savage. The monster-man uttered a harsh shrieking cry of rage or pain and batted him aside with one swinging blow of its long arm. Torn loose, the sword flew across the pitching deck, and from the gash in the upper breast of the bird-warrior a weird purplish gore dribbled.

However roughly manlike, the bird-warriors were not even remotely human, it would seem. For it was not the honest red blood of men flowed in their veins, but the purple gore of monsters.

The creatures were intelligent, however, which made them all the more dangerous. For they bore weapons, and obviously knew how to use them.

These scattered observations flew through my brain during the first instant or two we were under attack by the bird-warriors we came later to call the Zarkoon.

In the next instant I was on my feet again, my sword free of its scabbard and flashing in the moonlight. I sprang to return the attack of the Zarkoon savage … but too late to save Drango.

When he inflicted the slight wound on the breast of the first bird-warrior, the creature had flung him aside with one sweep of his long and powerful arms. Stumbling back against the broken window, Drango was seized in the cruel claws of the second monster-man. I can still remember Drango’s cry of pain as those hooked talons fastened in the flesh of his shoulder.

In the next instant, the bird-warrior, still clinging to Drango’s shoulder with one clawed hand, reached around with his other hand and tore at the hapless young officer’s throat!

Hurling the blood-soaked body from him, the second bird-man clambered onto the bridge and seized young Tomar. The brave boy defended himself with his sword, inflicting a deep wound on the left shoulder of his monstrous adversary, which uttered a squawk of pain and outrage and sprang upon him, dealing him a buffet that knocked him flat.

In the next instant the bridge was alive with the winged monsters, and we were fighting for our lives.

Some distance from us, at the other end of the bridge, the pilot died hideously, literally torn asunder by the claws of two squawking bird-warriors.

I leaped to the defense of Tomar, who sprawled helpless on the deck, with the monster-man he had wounded straddling him and reaching for his throat.

My blade flashed, sinking into the brute’s armpit and transfixing its very heart. One mad orange eye glared into mine, beak clashing and snapping savagely. Then that eye glazed and went dull, purplish oily gore gushed from the open beak and the Zarkoon fell dead.

Tomar sprang to his feet, snatching up his blade. The boy was white-faced and breathing in light, shallow gasps, but his jaw was set in a resolute manner and the flame of fighting manhood shone in his clear, steady eyes.

Only he and I by now were still alive. The bridge was littered with corpses. My blade flickered and played as the savage bird-warriors lunged at us: in a moment I laid another feathered corpse beside the first, and had sunk my blade through the shoulder-joint of yet a third.

“Set your back to mine, Tomar,” I said. And we fought back to back for a time against the shrieking cawing monsters. Two more we slew, but for each that fell, two or three more climbed through the shattered windows to hurl themselves upon us.

It was soon over.

A stone ax caught the boy a glancing blow along the side of his head and he fell senseless, blood trickling down his pale cheek from an ugly cut. I stood astride his body and held them off as best I could, but not for long. My sword blade was caught in horny claws and torn from my grasp. Then a towering, lean-muscled form flung itself upon me and bore me to the deck. I strove with all my strength to keep that hideous clashing beak from my throat.

Dimly was I aware of one tall bird-warrior stooping to snatch up Tomar’s unconscious body. In the next instant, as I watched with unbelieving horror, helpless to interfere, the monster-man flung the boy out of the window.

A moment or two later I was seized in the clutch of powerful arms, dragged to my feet, held helpless in the grip of two birdmen who cawed in hoarse triumph.

They dragged me to the broken window.

And then, sinking their cruel claws through the leather of my tunic, they flung themselves―and me―out the window!

An icy gale roared about me as I fell like a stone.

Windows blazing with light, the vast shape that was the Jalathadar swung past me in the night, momentarily eclipsing the banded globe of mighty Jupiter; then it was whirled away on the winds and consciousness left me, and I knew no more.

Chapter 7 Captives of the Bird-Men

It was the rush of icy air against my face which revived me from my momentary swoon.

In an instant, my headlong plunge into the abyss was abruptly checked as the parrot-beaked creature which held me tightly in the grip of its hooked claws spread wide its indigo-plumed wings and broke our fall. The winged man swooped away to the left in a steep, sickening glide. Blinking away the tears the fiercely-cold wind brought to my eyes, I saw ahead of us the other survivors of the battle on the bridge. One of them bore a limp, dangling burden that must be the boy Tomar. Whether the lad yet lived or had been slain by his rapacious captors I could not at the moment ascertain, although I hoped against hope the youth had survived.

Striving with watering eyes to penetrate the dim gloom made bewildering by the tangle of colored moon-rays, I saw we swooped giddily over a tortured landscape of naked rock, carved into precipitous chasms and thronged with a fantastic maze of peaks and pinnacles. In another moment I was hopelessly lost, and could not guess in which direction we flew, nor in what position the armada might be found. The talons of my captor were tangled in my leather tunic and the monster-man thus carried me in such a position that I could gain no clear or unencumbered vista of either sky or land. We were, however, descending rapidly in a zigzagging flight composed of giddy sideslips, which were most disconcerting. In a few moments we were among the fang-like peaks. They rose all about us like the stalagmites in a mighty cavern, or a towering forest of petrified trees. Scarps and cliffs and sheer rocky walls hurtled by to every side. A moment more and the black mouth of a cavern yawned directly beneath us. Then the bird-monster who bore me folded his blue pinions and we fell like stones. The gloom of a mighty pit closed about us―overhead a dwindling circle of moonlit sky shrunk rapidly.

And for a second time I swooned.

An immeasurable time later I woke to find cold water splashing in my face. Groggily rearing up on one elbow I found the boy Tomar bending over me, his worried face a pallid oval in the darkness. He was bathing my face with a bit of rag.

“Are you all right, sir?” he asked anxiously.

I nodded, forcing a grin.

“I seem to be still in one piece,” I made reply. “How about yourself?” The boy indicated that he had not been harmed.

“They thrust us in here with food and water,” he said. Glancing around, I found that we were imprisoned in a cage of iron bars; walls, floor and ceiling were composed of barred grills, until our place of captivity bore a certain resemblance to a monstrously huge birdcage―a resemblance I might have found amusing had it not been for the desperateness of our situation.

The cage was suspended by a chain of iron links from the rocky ceiling of the cavern which arched far above us, lost in the gloom.

Peering through the bars to ascertain as much as I could learn about our surroundings, I saw several similar cages also suspended by immense chains from the roof of the cavern. The light was too faint and dim for me to tell whether or not they were occupied.

We could see little of the remainder of the cavern, but it was obviously enormous and its floor must have stretched very far beneath us. The only illumination came from patches of phosphorescent mold or fungus which grew on some of the nearer stalactites. These glassy stone spears dangled from the black roof above and glistened wetly in the ghostly greenish glow.

The dish of food our captors had left us with looked distinctly unappetizing. Chunks of raw, bloody meat, some green with decay and crawling with maggots, reposed in a slimy stew. I silently determined that I would have to be a lot hungrier than I was, to attempt to down such unappetizing gobbets.

The food dish, by the way, was a shallow stone crock. The dish of water was also of smooth and hollow stone, evidently of artificial workmanship. The water, at least, was clear and fresh and cold. Doubtless it came from some subterranean pool or spring.

Tomar and I crouched on the floor of the cage, discussing our predicament in low tones. The iron bars were flat rather than rounded, and thus somewhat more comfortable to sit upon than might otherwise have been the case. But not much.

Our situation was dismal, if not quite hopeless. There was little hope that we could pry asunder the heavy iron bars, although these were very old and were scaly and red with centuries of rust. The lock that fastened shut the cage door was massive and antique and also thick with corrosion. But even if we were able to pry or break our way loose, we would still be suspended at an unknown height above the cavern floor, with no visible way to climb down.

Concerning this problem, our situation was mystifying. We might be suspended only ten feet above the stone floor―or four hundred! In the dim glow of decay, it was impossible to see anything beneath us. And from the way that echoes boomed and gobbled from wall to wall about the cavern, there was no way of telling our height. I plucked from the bowl a lump of greasy meat and let it fall between the bars of the bottom of the cage; although I listened carefully for any sound it might make when it hit the unseen floor, no such sound reached my ears.

There was nothing else to do; so, after a time, we slept.

It was the clash of horny claws against the cage-bars that aroused us; that and the buffet of heavy bodies that made the cage swing like a pendulum.

Tomar and I woke to stare into the fierce glare of mad orange eyes in a hideously beaked and feather-crested face. Two of the birdlike monstrosities clung to the outside of the cage and one of them was fumbling with the old lock and with a huge key which hung on a thong about his scrawny yellow neck.

Wrenching the door open, they reached in and dragged us out. Kicking free of the swaying cage, the two bird-warriors fell with us in a tight grip. My heart was in my mouth, I must confess; a moment later, however, vivid blue wings were spread open to break our fall and Tomar and I plummeted into the middle of an astonishing scene.

We were set down atop a level stone platform. To every side steep walls of stone fell away―it was like being marooned atop a tall pillar.

Eight or a dozen similar stone pillars―some higher than ours, some lower―thrust up about our own level. Atop these there squatted a number of the bird-warriors. In some cases three or even four of the monstrosities clung to the top of a single monolith, in other cases, only one.

We could see quite well here, for crude torches, smeared with oily pitch, blazed here and there. These were thrust into crevices in the rocks, and shed a fierce, wavering orange glow upon the barbaric scene.

“That must be their chief,” Tomar muttered.

Directly before us, squatting atop a broad pillar, a particularly huge and gross and repulsive bird-man was seated. It was impossible to determine his age, but he was obese and swollen, his sagging belly and dangling jowls forming a striking contrast with the general run of his kind, which were gaunt and lean.

He seemed to be diseased, for his jowls―or wattles―were rough and red and seemed painfully bloated, and the feathery crest which adorned his flat, blunt skull was moulting, many of the feathers missing entirely, some dangling loosely.

His great hooked parrot-beak was cracked and ragged-edged, and his glaring eyes were buried in unhealthy reddened pouches. His immense wings, of a virulent and poisonous green, were folded and towered high above his hunched shoulders, lending him the ferocious aspect of a squatting demon, crouched for judgment of the damned in some dark and cavernous hell.

The rounded pillar on which he nested was streaked and splotched with oily droppings and littered with bits of broken bone. In one scaly claw he clenched a huge piece of raw, bloody meat from which he ripped and tore juicy gobbets. With his hideous, diseased wattles and repulsive beaked head he reminded me for all the world of some repulsive and gigantic vulture gobbling away at carrion.

The other bird-men clustered about on nearby pillars squawked and cawed and fluttered. From time to time the chief uttered a cackling, hoarse cry. Listening keenly to this exchange, I got the uncanny feeling that the monster-men were talking amongst themselves. At least, they seemed to have the rudiments of articulate speech, although so hoarse and metallic were their cawing voices that it was all but impossible to be certain. Nevertheless, listening closely to what transpired, I formed the impression that one of the bird-men, whom I thought I recognized from his harness and accouterments as having been among those who had captured us, and who may perhaps have been the leader of the war-party, addressed his gross chieftain by the name of Skeer, and was addressed in turn as Zawk. Another monster-man, aged and balding and rheumy-eyed, who seemed to hold some privileged position as counselor or shaman, and who made frequent comments on the indecipherable exchange of conversation, seemed to go by the name of Kloog.

At first the notion that these hideous beings had a primitive language seemed singularly horrifying, for creatures so low on the evolutionary scale ought not to be endowed with the rudiments of intelligence or social organization. But, upon later reflection, it seemed undeniable that such was the case. And, after all, they did possess weapons, however crude and primitive, and wear something akin to the trappings of a warrior. Why, indeed, should they not possess the gift of speech?

Although the clacking beaks and hoarse, metallic, cawing voices of the bird-warriors made it impossible to make out the words, I gained the distinct impression that Zawk was relating the circumstances of our capture, to which the chief of the bird-men, Skeer, and his decrepit counselor, Kloog, made occasional incredulous comments or queries. Doubtless, the Zarkoon had never before seen men like us, and had never heard of anything like the immense and weightless airships in which we traveled. Zawk waved his long, skinny arms wildly, as if attempting to describe the indescribable, and squawked and shrieked like a mad cockatoo.

The conversation seemed interminable. But, when at last it was terminated, I was left in bewilderment, having no clue as to what decision had been reached concerning our fate. Skeer, the chief, gestured with the greasy bone on which he was gnawing and two warriors sprang into the air from their perches, swooped down to pounce upon us, snatched us up into the air and bore us back to our cages, thrusting us within by bodily force, slamming and locking the gates behind us, and then flapping off into the gloom again, leaving us to our lonely thoughts.

Tomar kept a brave front, but the boy was inwardly worried. Nor could I blame him for this, feeling numerous trepidations myself.

“What of our friends, Prince Jandar?” he asked me a while later. “Will they not come to rescue us?”

“They will certainly try to, anyway,” I said, noncommittally. I tried to keep a bold face on things, but could not make up my mind whether it would be better to pretend to the boy that our situation was merely hazardous and temporary, or to share with him my own fears that we were completely on our own.

“You mean you don’t think they will be able to find us?” he asked.

“I can hardly guess, Tomar,” I temporized. “It all depends on whether there are many such cavern-mouths as the one we entered, or merely the one. If there are many such, they might spend weeks or even months searching for the right one … if, indeed, they succeed in guessing that it was into the cavern we were borne. I suspect it is more likely that they will think the bird-men nest among the peaks, and, searching the peaks without finding nests, they will think we were taken further away, and will spread out and search the surrounding mountains.”

He looked at me, a long, level stare with no fear in it.

“Then you think our chances of being rescued at all are very slight …”

“I think there is at least a chance. How good of a chance, I simply cannot guess,” I said, having decided to level with the boy rather than attempt to sustain his hopes with false assurances. “Surely our friends will not abandon us to an unknown and doubtless grisly fate without making every effort to find us. Of that much we may be certain!”

It wasn’t much, but it was the best I could offer.

He chewed it over in thoughtful silence, saying nothing more.

After a time we slept again.

And when we awoke, things had changed a bit, in an interesting way. For now we had a neighbor. The nearer of the cages which dangled about us was now occupied. Whether our fellow-captive had been there all along, but had been too weary or frightened or disconsolate to attempt conversation with us, or whether she had but recently been thrust into the cage during our last sleep-period I cannot say, but there she was. By now our eyes had adjusted to the dim trace of light and we could see the occupant of the other cage quite clearly.

“Why―it’s a girl!” Tomar shrilled, excitedly.

And so it was.

Chapter 8 Ylana of the Jungle Country

As the light grew stronger, we could see her more clearly. By now it was daylight in the outer world, and shafts of golden radiance streamed through the crater-like hole in the cavern roof. By this light we could see that the occupant of the cage which hung suspended from the rocky roof by a long chain was a young girl of about Tomar’s own age, which was to say sixteen or seventeen, I suppose, although I have never found it easy to estimate the age of the Callistans.

She was a slim, golden-skinned girl with long, untrimmed dark hair and long, bare legs. Her only garment was an abbreviated affair which seemed to be made of the tanned skin of some cat-like beast. This was draped about her rounded hips, stretched taut over her slight, adolescent bosom, leaving her arms and shoulders bare. She seemed to be a girl from some primitive tribe, for about her throat hung a rude necklace of ivory teeth or fangs, and a crude coil of copper wire was clasped about her upper right arm, with another about her left ankle. She wore thong sandals of tanned leather, a strip of leather wound about her brows restrained the rippling tide of her silky, night-black hair, and a rough leathern girdle cinched in her slender waist. From this girdle hung suspended an empty dagger-scabbard of stitched leather.

In the wash of daylight, we eyed each other with frank curiosity. As for the girl, she seemed never to have seen humans dressed as were we, and her great violet eyes widened with amazement at Tomar’s fiery red thatch and at my own straw-yellow hair, which I was by now accustomed to wearing shoulder-length in the fashion of Shondakor.

The girl was remarkably beautiful in an adolescent, tomboyish way. She had a strong jaw, pert tip-tilted nose, and a wide-upped mouth made for kissing as much as for laughter. Her lovely violet eyes were large, clear, fringed with sooty lashes, and her winging dark brows lent her an elfin look of fragility somewhat belied by the smudge on her cheek and the raw bruise on her brow. Her bare limbs were lithe and supple, slender but firmly-muscled, as if she was used to living out of doors in a hard life of struggle and survival in the wild. But how such a lovely young creature could have survived for long in this harsh and barren land of gritty soil and sterile rock eluded my comprehension.

She was the first to break the silence. “Saoma!” she called, in a low, hesitant voice, using the universal word of greeting all of the nations of Callisto employ, which may, I suppose, be translated simply as “hello.”

I returned her greeting. “My name is Jandar, prince of the Golden City of Shondakor,” I said, “and my companion is Tomar, a warrior of the Ku Thad.”

She wrinkled up her nose at these unfamiliar names.

“Never have I heard of Shondakor or of the Ku Thad,” she said dubiously. “I am Ylana, the daughter of Jugrid of the jungle country.”

“Then saoma, Ylana! Our own homeland is very far from here, for we have traveled far and were en route to another land when the bird-warriors attacked us, carrying off my young friend and myself,” I said.

She absorbed this, continuing to eye us with frank curiosity.

“Never have I seen men such as yourselves, with hair and eyes of such peculiar coloration,” she observed. Perhaps I should add in explanation of her words that Tomar has the green eyes commonly borne by members of the Ku Thad race, while my own blue eyes were inherited from my Danish mother. “The country of your tribe must indeed be very far from the Mountains of the Zarkoon.”

“The Zarkoon? What are they?” asked Tomar.

She gave him a look of amused contempt.

“Surely, boy, you know that the Zarkoon are the creatures who hold us imprisoned!”

Tomar indicated that he did not in fact know the name of the weird bird-men who had captured us. The girl uttered a laugh.

“Then you must be very stupid! How could you not know of the Zarkoon? Did not the Elders of your tribe warn you a thousand times against venturing into their mountainous realm during the hours of darkness?”

Tomar exchanged a baffled glance with me. Obviously, he did not know what the jungle girl meant by the “Elders” of his “tribe.” A child of one of the most highly developed urban civilizations on this world of Thanator, he had never before encountered a member of a backwards and perhaps even savage people.

“You must be a very stupid boy, indeed,” Ylana observed coolly, a hint of mischief in her tones. Tomar flushed, stung by the taunting tone of her words. I suppressed a smile and held my tongue, but it amused me to discover that the flirtation-rituals of teen-alters vary little, even between the planets.

“If you’re so smart, how did the Zarkoon capture you?” Tomar retorted.

Now it was the girl’s turn to flush and bite her lower lip in vexation. I could not help noticing how white and even were those small teeth, nor how ripe and lush were those lips; and I would be very much surprised if the same observation had escaped Tomar’s notice, as well.

“I … I knew well of the danger,” she confessed, “but ventured hither nonetheless, to escape from my enemies. Alas, the terrible Zarkoon are as sharp of eye as the Elders warned …”

I cleared my throat. Something the girl had chanced to remark intrigued me. “Ylana, why did you say it was dangerous to trespass in these mountains during the hours of darkness?”

“Because it is then that the Zarkoon hunt, of course,” she replied, obviously amazed at our ignorance of what were, to her way of thinking, the common facts of everyday life.

“Do they not hunt by daylight, then?” I asked. She flashed me a sharp look in which amazement and contempt were commingled.

“Of course not! During the day they slumber here in their hidden nests beneath the crust of the world, for the brilliance of day is painful to them. During the period of darkness they are free to roam the upper world without harm … the boy is very ignorant of these matters, but you are a grown man, a hunter, perhaps even a chieftain? Is it possible that the Elders of your tribe did not warn you of the habits of the Zarkoon, either? I am very surprised to hear it…”

The look the girl turned on me was one of admiration, and, bathed in the regard of those candid violet eyes, I felt more than a trifle uncomfortable. The frank invitation in that admiring gaze may have been simulated merely for the purpose of further teasing my teen-aged companion, but married men such as myself do not feel comfortable when young girls turn such eyes upon them.

Pretending to ignore the flirtatious look, I thought about the implications of this newly-gained information. The birdwarriors of the Zarkoon had the round, fierce eyes of parrots, and perhaps they were lidless eyes, which would explain why the full radiance of day would cause them discomfort. If the Zarkoon were accustomed to sleeping through the hours of day, then the diurnal period would be ideal for any attempt at escape we might choose to make.

As daylight gradually illuminated more of the immense cavern wherein we were imprisoned, filtering down through the great hole in the rocky roof, we saw that the walls of the subterranean abyss were cut into ledges, probably by aeons of geological action. Thereupon we could barely discern huge nests of woven reeds or sticks. These were scattered about the ledges in clusters, perhaps representing family groups, if the Zarkoon were high enough up the scale of social evolution to have arrived at the concept. Doubtless the bird-warriors, together with their females and their young, were now curled in slumber in those shadowy perches.

Looking down, it was obvious we would not find it easy to accomplish our escape, for we were suspended very near the roof . of the immense cavern, and the rocky floor, strewn with white bones, streaked with oily droppings, and littered with accumulated filth, was hundreds of feet below our level. Even if we could escape from the cages wherein the Zarkoon had imprisoned us, the slightest slip would hurl us into this chasm. To fall from this height would mean, if not certain death, at least broken bones.

However, I noticed that our cages were suspended rather near one wall of the huge cavern, and that the closest of the rocky ledges was at our level, or slightly below it, and about twenty or twenty-five feet away. The nearness of the ledge was tantalizing … it was almost near enough to be within our possible attainment, yet distant enough to make the reaching of it very difficult, hazardous in the extreme, and quite likely an impossible feat.

While I was busy pondering these matters, Tomar and the jungle maid had been conversing in low tones. The girl belonged to a primitive tribe which dwelt upon a jungle plateau not very distant from these mountains. The Zarkoon were the natural enemies of the Jungle People, and had preyed upon them for untold centuries. Further questioning from Tomar elicited less and less information from Ylana, for the girl seemed unable to comprehend that we were not huntsmen or warriors from a savage tribe similar to her own, but the representatives of a higher level of civilization. She was astonished and somewhat contemptuous of our thorough lack of information concerning the hazards and perils of this barbaric world, and her growing scorn for Tomar was expressed both by her contemptuous expression and by the scathing tone of her voice. She evidently considered the youth at my side a pampered and babied favorite who had been unaccountably shielded from exposure to the harsh realities of what were, to her, the common facts of life.

Her own questions were keen and incredulous. When Tomar attempted to describe the realm from which we had come, she was sharp in her disbelief. A walled stone city, indeed! How could such structures be raised out in the open without being exposed to the savage depredations of the Zarkoon? And when Tomar strove to explain that in the city of Shondakor, fifty thousand men, women and children dwelt in peaceful harmony, she responded with shrill derision. How could so many chieftains dwell side by side without preying on one another’s women? What vast herds must roam the jungles of our land, in order to sustain such an immense populace! When Tomar fumblingly tried, to describe the area of farms and fields which surrounded the Golden City for many miles, Ylana’s disbelief became openly abusive. Tomar could not grasp the fact, but I understood that Ylana’s tribe apparently had yet to discover the science of agriculture, and that the very concept of farmers growing produce for the consumption of the city-dwellers was completely beyond her comprehension.

“May I ask how you came to be captured by the Zarkoon?” I inquired. “Were you captured alone, or had you companions?”

“I was alone,” the girl said with a sniff.

“But where were you going―and why?”

She shrugged. Then, with a little expression eloquent of distaste, she explained. “The Elders of my tribe would have given me as mate to a warrior whom I despised,” she said. “Rather than endure his embraces, I fled in the night, hoping to find a haven among my mother’s folk, the River People. But by night the Zarkoon range far afield, and they attacked me from the skies as I crossed the Stone Hills near the borders of the region of my mother’s people. I was alone and had no warrior to defend me; however, my father had taught me somewhat of the arts of war and of the hunt, and thus I was fortunate enough to slay two of the monsters with my bow before they seized and disarmed me. How many did you slay?”

“As near as I can recall, we each slew five or six of the bird-warriors,” I said. Her eyes widened in exaggerated unbelief.

“This boy slew that many?” she sniffed. “Doubtless they were females, or fledglings.”

I again repressed a smile, and tried to convince her that we had fought against full-grown males. Poor Tomar was scarlet about the ears from this verbal abuse.

More to change the subject than anything else, I asked her how it was that her marriage had been arranged by the tribal Elders rather than by her father, Jugrid, for she had described her father as chief of the Jungle People during her earlier discussion with Tomar.

She shrugged dispiritedly. “True, my father is chief of the tribe, but it is the Elders who interpret the will of the Unseen Ones,” she murmured. “He was helpless to oppose their wishes.”

I pricked up my ears at this, for it sounded rather as though the jungle girl was talking of her gods. And, if so, this was most unusual, as the peoples of Thanator, as I have often had occasion to remark in these journals, do not worship any gods.

“The Unseen Ones!” she repeated again, and a trifle impatiently. “Is it possible that your tribe is so remote or so unimportant that you are not under the scrutiny of the Shadowy Ones?”

“Perhaps we know them by another name,” I temporized. “If you could tell us a bit more about them … ?”

“I mean the Unseen Ones, of course,” she snapped. And that was that. It seemed impossible to her way of thinking that we did not know what she was talking about, and we could elicit no further information from her. And, at this point, I desisted from further probing into the matter, for whatever primitive gods her tribe worshiped might well be a taboo subject.

Tomar was still interested in learning more about the habits of our winged captors. I suppose the youth had noticed, as had I, the implications for our escape in the fact that the Zarkoon bird-men are dormant during the hours of day.

“Why have they captured us, anyway?” he asked. “We gave them no provocation and our own homeland is so very distant from their domain, that there is no reason for them to consider us their enemies …”

His tentative tones died away in embarrassed silence, for once again he had exposed his ignorance of the facts of everyday existence before the pert and scornful girl, who regarded him with contempt and even pity, as if he were mentally retarded. She turned to me.

“Is the boy completely stupid, or has he been sheltered from the harsh realities of life?” she demanded, while Tomar flushed and bit his lip. “Not to know the reason for which we have been taken by the Zarkoon!”

I could not help laughing. “If he is as you say, then I am no better, Ylana,” I admitted, “for I have been wondering the very same thing!”

Her huge eyes mirrored her surprise and consternation.

“But―did you not know that the Zarkoon are horrid cannibals―and that they will eat us alive when darkness falls” she cried.

And suddenly I didn’t feel like laughing any more.

Chapter 9 The Expedition of Lukor

While these events had been transpiring, consternation and alarm reigned aboard the Jalathadar and her sister-ships. The uproar of the battle on the bridge, when Tomar and I had fought back-to-back, striving to hold off the attack of the Zarkoon savages, had roused the occupants of several cabins. Only moments after we two had been carried off by our Zarkoon captors, my officers came rushing up the stair into the pilothouse, a bit late to effect our rescue.

As it happened, Koja and Lukor were the first to emerge from the stairwell onto the bridge. Lukor, his silvery mane tousled from sleep, a coverlet hastily slung about his middle, brandishing his sword, was the first to view the scene of carnage, and froze motionless, appalled.

Koja was next upon the bridge, his mighty whipsword held at the ready in one bony hand, solemn great eyes expressionless in the horny casque of his face as they surveyed the corpses strewn about the bridge in pools of human and Zarkoon gore.

“Now, by the Scarlet Moon, what has happened here?” Lukor gasped in complete amazement.

Icy winds shrieked through the shattered window. Without a hand at the pilot’s wheel, the great clipper of the clouds careened drunkenly, wallowing from side to side. Lukor sprang to steady the wheel while the Yathoon warrior stooped to examine the bodies which were strewn about the deck.

“One yet lives,” he observed in his emotionless, metallic tones. It was the young signal officer, Drango. The terrible claws of the bird-warriors had mangled his throat hideously, and he lay in a puddle of blood, but a spark of life yet lingered in his breast. Koja ripped open a case of emergency supplies stored by the wall and strove to staunch his ghastly wound while gallant old Lukor, cursing sulphurously, wrestled with the obstinate wheel.

Captain Haakon was the next to reach the bridge, with the fussy little Dr. Abziz virtually treading on his heels.

“Lords of Gordrimator―what is this?” the grizzled chief officer cried in consternation, viewing the gory shambles of the pilothouse. Staring at the wreckage and the corpses, he nudged one of the dead bird-men with his foot. “What monsters are these?” he demanded incredulously.

“They are Zarkoon, of course,” the fussy little geographer sniffed, avoiding pools of blood fastidiously. He bent over to peer more closely at the dead monster. “Fascinating! So they truly exist after all, and are not merely mythological beings! My colleagues at the Academy will be intrigued at the discovery …”

“Zarkoon? What in the world are Zarkoon? And how came they here?” spluttered the apoplectic captain.

“They flew, obviously! And they are winged, cannibalistic bird-monsters who are mentioned in certain of the ancient legends and sagas we possess concerning this hemisphere,” Dr. Abziz said primly, answering Haakon’s questions in reverse order.

“The monsters must have attacked the ship from the peaks below,” Lukor said excitedly, relinquishing the wheel to one of the pilots who had just come on deck. “What carnage! Someone go and rouse the admiral! And should we not give the alarm if the ship is under attack?”

“It would seem that those poor fellows present on the bridge beat off the attack of these monsters, before falling prey to their weapons,” Haakon growled, “for the skies are clear and naught is toward on the mid-deck … ah, Sojan? Did you call the admiral?”

The officer addressed as Sojan burst upon the scene, white-faced and gasping.

“The Prince is not in his cabin and his clothing is gone … he must have roused himself and dressed―”

“What’s this?” Lukor cried, scooping up a sword which lay against the wall. Turning it over in his hands, he peered closely at the bejewelled hilt. “‘Tis Jandar’s sword, or I’m a bald-headed deltagar!”

“What?” the cry burst from all assembled.

The dying signal officer stirred in Koja’s arms. ” . . Jandar … and Tomar,” he gasped feebly from bloody lips.

“What’s that, Drango, lad? Speak up―what of the Prince?” Haakon cried, stooping by Koja where he knelt, tending as best he could to the dying officer.

“… Both of them … carried off by the winged monsters …”

“Eh? Carried off, you say?” Haakon groaned in consternation. “But where, man―where? In which direction?”

But that question would not be answered. Drango was dead.

Signal-lamps flashed a message of tragedy and terror from ship to ship. The armada halted, and swung in a great circle, hovering about the wilderness of cloven peaks of naked stone whereinto the fantastic flying cannibal-monsters had borne off both myself and the youth, Tomar. A council of war was hastily summoned. Although it was exceedingly dangerous to attempt to cross from ship to ship in midair, especially by night and under a stiff wind, the chief officers of the three other vessels swung aboard the Jalathadar to attend the emergency council.

Zamara of Tharkol, accompanied by the captain of her flagship, swung aboard, followed by the giant gladiator, Zantor, captain of the second ship of the Shondakorian contingent, the Xaxar. As the officers met together in the great stateroom, Prince Valkar, as vice-admiral of the expedition, told them the terrible story of the sudden attack and of our disappearance.

Anxious queries flew about the long table―Dr. Abziz racked his memory for every datum he knew concerning the feared and legendary bird-monsters―a furious discussion raged, but few conclusions were reached, or could be reached, where so many important details remained unknown.

My friends, of course, could not even be certain at this time whether or not I still lived. And no one had the slightest information as to where the Zarkoon had come from, nor in which direction they had flown, upon leaving the gore-drenched shambles of the Jalathadar’s bridge.

Valkar held to the position that nothing more could be possibly done until day. Then the galleons of the armada would split to search the surrounding mountains, and where possible, would lower by gig or skiff search-parties to comb the mountain-tops afoot. The small five-man skiffs had been an invention of the Tharkolians, and were so obviously useful that all ships on the expedition had been equipped with them. They consisted of twin pontoons filled with the hydrogen-like gas, five-seated cockpits, stiff, stationary wings, and were driven by propellers powered by foot-pedals on the floor of the cockpits. This would be the first time the skiffs had actually been used, although of course they had been tested in the shipyards of Tharkol.

It was Lukor who chiefly opposed the decision to await the coming of day before attempting to search the peaks. The fiery old sword-master was all for launching a dozen skiffs at once to comb the nearer peaks before another hour was lost. Valkar patiently pointed out that the updrafts and air-currents in these mountains were uncharted, and that nothing was to be gained by endangering the lives of yet more men. At night, with the confusing moonlight, in an unknown country, the use of skiffs would be hazardous in the extreme, and probably fruitless.

As he was, in my absence, the senior commanding officer of the armada, it was his decision which carried the vote. Lukor, fuming, subsided with a sour grumble or two, and left the stateroom in a vile temper, mingled with fears for my safety and for that of young Tomar, for whom he had long since felt an avuncular affection.

The Yathoon chieftain, Koja, who had been my first friend on Callisto, had supported Lukor’s argument. The solemn-eyed, gigantic insect-man felt keenly my loss, and, in his coldly unemotional manner, chafed at the enforced delay. He reached the main deck and joined Lukor as the gallant little sword-master prowled the windy balustrade, grumbling and cursing.

“Blast them all, Koja, the fools won’t listen!” he seethed. “Every hour―every moment―may count! We should cast off in the skiffs now, and hunt down the hiding place of those winged devils! Jandar may need us desperately, the poor fellow! And the lad―what of him? Why, had it not been for that brave boy, we should all have perished horribly, through the treachery of Ulthar, during the expedition against Zanadar!*”

Koja’s huge compound eyes glittered expressionlessly in the many-colored light of the moons of Jupiter.

“I am of similar opinion, friend Lukor,” the gigantic arthropod said solemnly. “To my way of thinking the rescue of Jandar is of at least equal importance to the success of this expedition against the Mind Wizards. If we wait till day, the Zarkoon creatures may well use the margin of time to spirit away our comrade to an unknown lair too far distant, or too cunningly concealed, for the chances of discovery to achieve success. We are now within an hour of the moment in which Jandar and Tomar were carried off; and it seems to me wisest to pursue the bird-warriors now, while the trail, so to speak, is still fresh.”

“Precisely,” said Lukor, gnawing his moustache savagely. “And I am filled with uncomfortable forbodings that Prince Valkar will decide, if the search at dawn is in vain and Jandar is not then rescued, that to further delay the journey to Kuur would be to jeopardize the success of the expedition. Doubtless he will argue, however reluctantly, that the safety of the Three Cities depends on the attack against Kuur, and that the safety of three kingdoms must outweigh the safety of two men, however dear to us. I suppose he will argue in council that to remain here throughout the day, searching for our captured comrades, may risk Kuur’s discovery of our mission, and thus we will lose the benefit of surprise. Curse it all, Koja, but I do despise the tendency of commanders to consider the mission of first importance, and the rescue of lost comrades distinctly secondary!”

Koja manipulated his brow antennae in the characteristically Yathoon equivalent of a shrug.

“I feel certain that Prince Valkar will do everything his sense of duty permits towards effecting the rescue of Jandar and Tomar; but he is a conscientious officer and takes his duties seriously … if he must decide to sail on and leave our friend to his unknown fate, surely it will be with the utmost reluctance.”

“Reluctance be hanged, Koja!” the chivalrous little sword-master snorted. “I have never been able to sympathize with these high-minded principles of devotion to duty above all! To me, my love for my friends comes first and foremost above all other considerations. Curse me, but I’ll warrant you feel the same about it.”

Koja nodded somberly. “Jandar taught me the meaning of friendship, an emotion alien to my kind. That emotion I prize highly, as I do the safety of Jandar, my friend. To rescue him from peril I would willingly imperil my own life, as, I am sure, would you.”

“Agreed, my chitin-clad and loyal-hearted friend! Happily would I consign to destruction a thousand cities, when the life of my dear friend and old comrade in a thousand battles hangs in the balance. Devotion to duty is very high and noble a cause, in the abstract; but my first loyalty must ever be to those few I call my friends! Well, then, having agreed on the matter―what in the name of the Scarlet Moon are we to do about it?”

Koja regarded him solemnly.

“We have both argued in council as eloquently as our poor abilities afford, that all efforts should be immediately expended on an expedition of rescue. Prince Valkar has, however reluctantly, decided against this, and it was his opinion which carried the vote. We have no other recourse, then, but to strive to rescue Jandar on our own.”

The glint of joyous mischief flashed in Lukor’s keen eyes. Reaching up on tiptoe he essayed to give the gaunt, enormous insect-man a hearty slap on the shoulder. Since the arthropods of Callisto lack anything much resembling shoulders, he was forced in lieu to clap Koja on the back.

“A man after my own heart, my chitinous comrade; although you are not exactly a man in the biological sense of the word, the essence of manhood is in your heart! Very well, then, how shall we go about it?”

Their stroll during this exchange of conversation had carried them the length of the midship-deck, and, by a nice coincidence, they now confronted one of the canvas-covered sheds wherein the five-man skiffs were housed. Pausing in their circumambulations before this unguarded structure, an identical gleam flashed into the eyes of both and the same thought was born in their brains at the same time.

An eloquent look was exchanged in wordless silence between the peppery little master-swordsman from Ganatol and the tall, stalk-legged, inhuman Yathoon hordesman from the Great Plains.

“… Dare we, friend Koja?” hissed Lukor conspiratorially.

The solemn-eyed arthropod blinked owlishly upon the tempting structure.

“Dare we not, Lukor? We have no other recourse, if we are to attempt to explore the peaks. Surely it would not be best for us to strive to seize control of the bridge and forcibly divert the Jalathadar from her present course. The skiff, however, is not guarded, but merely tied down. Doubtless we could sling it over the side by means of yonder boom, which was erected for precisely that purpose. We could then cast adrift, and ride the winds down to the mountain-country below … it will, of course, be dangerous … little in life worth the achieving, however, is achieved without some risk…”

Without further words the two busied themselves about the shed. It was the work of moments to unpeg the canvas, exposing the skiff. Floating in its cradle, it resembled to earthly eyes (had any been there to observe it) nothing so much as an outrigger canoe, curiously fitted with wings.

Koja and Lukor had no difficulty in untying the skiff and conveying it to the rail where they attached it to the boom. Completely weightless due to the store of hydrogen-like gas contained in its double-hull, a child could have conveyed it across the deck with one hand without undue effort. And it was simplicity itself to swing the counter-weighted boom over the side so that the skiff was ready to be launched.

The Jalathadar circled the upthrusting peaks at an altitude in excess of three thousand feet. Cold winds rose from the chasms beneath, buffeting the light skiff from side to side and rattling the boom. Without further ado, Koja and Lukor clambered into the canoelike sky-boat and settled themselves side by side in the first two seats. A curved wind-shield of strong but lightweight glass rose before them, protecting them from the winds. Feeling for the pedals, they quickly familiarized themselves with the workings of the craft.

It was almost as simple as riding a bicycle―although, of course, neither Koja nor Lukor had ever seen a bicycle. The foot-pedals controlled the propellers, which were carved from thin, tough wood and situated in the tail-assembly, directly beneath and to either side of the vertical rudder-fin. The foot-pedals communicated kinetic energy to these twin propellers through long, taut-stretched lines of spider-silk, a light and extremely tough substance as strong as nylon and as light as gut. A system of levers, set in the cockpit panel directly before Lukor’s seat, controlled the wing ailerons and the movable rudder-fin through guy-stays of the same substance. By manipulating these levers the individual piloting the skiff could vary the pitch of the ailerons or flaps on the wings and the rudder assembly in the tail of the craft; thus you could send the weightless skiff rising or falling, curving away to port or to starboard. In effect, the skiff was a miniature model of one of the great galleons; in practice, it was far more maneuverable.

“To the rescue!” crowed Lukor, as excited as a boy about to embark on his first adventure. With a splendid gesture he tripped the lever which released the skiff from the overhanging boom. The skiff coasted unsteadily away, flying parallel to the hull of the Jalathadar for a moment, then, as Lukor recklessly waggled aileron and rudder, the little craft veered away in a giddy half-circle, arching out over the abyss, and descending in a swooping glide more unsettling than any Coney Island roller-coaster could ever have been. Buckled securely in their seats, Lukor and Koja swung as the skiff lurched drunkenly.

In a moment the little craft rightened itself, catching the up-draft. Far above, the vast black shape of the mother ship eclipsed the many-colored splendor of the mighty moons.

Then it dwindled as the skiff arrowed into the abyss … and the adventure was begun!

Chapter 10 Across the Abyss

We fell into something of a glum silence after the jungle maid had made her unsettling announcement. In retrospect, I can see no reason why I had not guessed the cannibalistic habits of the Zarkoon bird-men before. They were hardly above the level of rank savagery, and, resembling monstrous vultures as they did, there was no reason not to suspect them of being man-eaters. Still and all, the news took me by surprise, and it was hardly the sort of news one receives in equanimity, nor was it exactly calculated to put me into a serene state of mind.

Considering what Ylana had told us about the Zarkoon, it became more important than ever that we attempt to escape from the cages as soon as possible. But how do you get out of iron cages suspended above an abyss? And more to the point, what do you do once you have gotten out?

While Tomar queasily contemplated ending his days as chef-d’oeuvre at a Zarkoon dinner-table, I bent my wits to the problems of getting out of here before night fell. At which time, if Ylana of the Jungle Country spoke true, the bird-monsters would wake, doubtless ravenous and anxious for breakfast. Since we were to be that breakfast, we must make our escape now, if possible, and thus put as many korads between ourselves and the hungry Zarkoon as possible before night fell. It was still early morning, so we had, it seemed, plenty of time to make our escape.

How to make it, though―that was the question!

Our two cages were suspended from the roof of the cavern by iron chains, as I have said. It should be easy enough, by rocking the cage back and forth, for Tomar and I to swing near enough to Ylana’s cage to reach through the bars of our own and seize ahold of her cage. Then, with a length of strap unhooked from my girdle, we should be able to bind the two cages together.

Calling over to the jungle maid, I apprised her of what I planned to attempt. Then, instructing the boy to spread his feet widely apart, and doing the same myself, we took hold of the bars and began to swing our bodies back and forth together.

Tomar expressed mystification at my reasons for wishing to do this, which in the interests of saving valuable time I had not bothered to impart to him. Nevertheless the boy complied with my wishes, and before very long we had set our cage swinging ponderously back and forth like the pendulum of some immense clock.

Nearer and nearer our ever-increasing swing brought us to the cage in which the girl was imprisoned. In a few minutes we had come so close to her cage that, on the up-swing, the bars of our cage brushed within inches of her own. Then we began trying to seize and hold onto the bars of the other cage. This proved very difficult to do: either we would bruise our knuckles painfully when the two cages came together, or in snatching out for the bars of the other cage we would disturb the evenness of our pendulum-like swing, which meant we had to start all over again.

After about a half-hour of trial and failure, we did manage to catch ahold of―and to retain our grasp upon―the cage in which the girl was imprisoned. While I held the two cages together with all my strength, Tomar hastily lashed them together with the leather belt from my harness.

Now that we were fastened together, the second phase of my plan went into effect. I’m afraid that both teen-agers eyed me askance as if questioning my sanity, when I told them what I intended doing. It was nothing less than to employ the combined strengths of all three of us in unison to pry apart the bars of Ylana’s cage, permitting her to inch sideways through the opening.

This was really not as difficult as it may seem to whatever reader chances to peruse these pages. I am a full-grown man and have lived an active, athletic life and am thus no weakling. To this add the fact that having lived much of my life under the slightly heavier gravitational pull of my native Earth, my strength is proportionately greater than that of an average Callistan. My strength is not superhuman by any means, but, with two strong young people lending their strength and vigor to mine, and considering the fact that the iron bars, while thick and heavy, were generations or even centuries old and deeply-eaten by rust, I thought we could pry the bars apart sufficiently for the slender girl to wriggle through.

It took us the better part of an hour, but we did it.

Ylana slid through the opening our efforts had made, with all the agility of an eel. The effort cost her a square inch or two of skin, but the girl managed it.

Then, at my urging, she climbed about on the outside of our cage until she reached the cage door, which was fastened with a huge, clumsy, old-fashioned lock.

I told her to pick the lock.

I had noticed earlier that she wore a bracelet of coppery wire wound about her upper arm. Reaching through the bars from our side we held her securely, thus freeing her hands for the task. I doubt if the jungle girl had ever found an occasion to try to pick a lock before, but I patiently instructed her in the craft―which I had perforce mastered during my student days at Yale, in order to get back in my dormitory after hours, on the nights when a date kept me out later than the management allowed.

The lock was full of rust; the wire tended to bend under the slightest pressure. And standing with your feet braced against a slippery bar while swinging two hundred feet in the air is not exactly conducive to one’s peace of mind. However, the plucky girl ignored the fearful height and the other distractions and worked away with grim determination to unfasten the lock. At length she succeeded and the lock sprung open.

Forcing the door open on squeaking hinges, we helped her inside, where she expelled a long-pent breath and huddled on the floor of the cage, indulging in a fit of the shakes for which I did not in the least blame her.

“Now what?” demanded Tomar, curiously.

“Now we get down to that ledge,” I said, gesturing. He followed my gesture with a perceptible shudder, and made some remark, with not unreasonable trepidation, that the ledge was every bit of thirty feet away.

I nodded.

“That’s what makes me glad we were captured fully dressed,” I grinned, and set about the astounding process of taking off my clothes. Tomar gave me one astounded look and got the idea: we would tear our cloaks into strips, augment this length of cloth with strips torn from our tunics as necessary, thus fashioning as long a “rope” as possible. Then, tying our boots to one end for a weight, I hoped to be able to snag a spur of rock which thrust up from the edge of the nearby ledge, thus effecting a crude rope bridge over which we might be able to climb.

I had already pulled off my boots and was getting out of my sleeveless tunic by this time. Luckily for the modesty of the girl (who had by now recovered from her attack of the shakes and was viewing the striptease with considerable amusement, heightened, it must be admitted, by the scarlet-faced embarrassment of the boy who had perhaps never had occasion before to strip down to the buff in the presence of a young female) the traditional Callistan warrior’s garb includes a skimpy sort of loin-cloth by way of underwear.

I should have stripped to the skin, underwear or no underwear, ignoring the presence of the jungle maid, had it been necessary, but luckily it was not. We had sufficient length of cloth and supple leather to reach the ledge without sacrificing our loin-cloths, which greatly relieved Tomar’s sense of the proprieties.

I did not bother to point out to the scandalized youngster that Ylana was of a primitive level of society which probably could not afford the nudity taboo of higher civilizations such as our own. The girl was probably quite accustomed to seeing males of all ages in varying stages of undress, and would probably not have turned a hair had it proved necessary for Tomar or I, or both of us, to have given up even our loincloths for the purposes of escape.

Anything was better than becoming a Zarkoon breakfast!

Eventually the strip-tease was finished―although not without considerable embarrassment on Tomar’s part. The girl delighted in bedeviling my young companion―she said she loved the shade of crimson he turned when blushing―and mischief sparkled in her enormous purple eyes as she gave voice to tart comments on Tomar’s musculature (which she considered remarkably attenuated) and fleshly integument (to put it bluntly, she thought him scrawny in the legs and exceedingly bony in the ribs). This was said purely for the pleasures of mischief, of course, for Tomar was very husky and well put-together for his years, and Ylana later admitted in my hearing that the boy was remarkably handsome. The poor lad suffered through it in grim misery … anything to avoid becoming someone’s breakfast!

There is no telling how long it took us to snag that trebly-damned spur of rock with the weighted end of our makeshift rope-ladder. The booted end of the rope was thrown out―fell short―or overshot its mark―or failed to loop about the sharp jut of stone―and had to be dragged back in, hand over hand, so many times that I lost count somewhere past forty.

Eventually, just as the ache in my arms and shoulders was beginning to assume king-sized proportions, the boots whipped about the spur, tightening a turn or two around the thrust of rock, and became securely wedged so that no tug, however strong, could dislodge them. Then came the question of who would be the lucky one who would be first to attempt to swing hand over hand the length of our flimsy rope and try to scramble up on the rocky ledge before one of the knots gave way under his weight, precipitating him into the abyss.

In the light of cold logic, the task should have gone to Ylana. She was the lightest of the three of us and was the one most likely to reach the ledge in safety. But, of course, I was hardly going to permit a mere girl to risk the dangerous crossing of the abyss first. I was about to take the responsibility upon myself, when Tomar spoke up demanding to be the one to try it.

At first I refused; but the boy would not listen to me. While we were still arguing the question he solved it by suddenly climbing out of the cage, seizing the rope, and swinging out over the abyss before there was anything I could do to stop him.

I crouched there on the floor of the cage with my heart in my mouth, watching the boy, naked save for a brief cloth wound about his loins, swinging along hand over hand the length of the wobbling rope. One slip of the fingers and he would plummet into the chasm beneath. And what if his weight should prove too heavy for the knots to bear, and the rope should come apart in mid-air―or the weighted end of the rope should jerk free of its place?

It took him the better part of three minutes to traverse the gulf, and I don’t believe I breathed at all during that interminable wait.

The girl crouched beside me, eyes wide and unwaveringly fixed on the swinging figure of the nearly-naked boy as he swung slowly down the taut line. Her mouth was open and from time to time she wet dry lips with the tip of her tongue. One hand was clutched about my arm, and as Tomar reached the half-way point, the agony of tension and fear she was suffering was reflected in the way her nails sank into my bare flesh. At the time, so fully was my attention concentrated on the brave boy who dangled by his fingertips above the abyss, that I was hardly conscious of the pressure of those fingers on my arms. Later, however, they left bruises that took days to go away.

After an interminable time, Tomar at last reached the other side of the abyss. We watched as he swung himself up over the lip of stone and onto the ledge. A moment later the boy climbed to his feet, gave us a cheerful grin and a wave, and bent to fasten more securely the weighted end of the line.

And we relaxed and began to breathe again, the girl and I.

Such was my feeling of light-headed relief, that I essayed a joke at her expense.

“Scrawny as a half-starved thaptor he may be,” I joked, repeating one of the pointed remarks she had made about the boy’s appearance during the undressing incident, “but the boy is certainly brave enough, wouldn’t you say?”

Stung, Ylana turned a gaze of violet scorn upon me, elevating her pert little nose in a disdainful sniff.

” 'Brave?' To swing along a rope? ‘Tis childish sport, for one raised in the Jungle Country,” she snorted.

And without the slightest warning, the girl flung herself out of the cage, wrapped her long bare legs about the swinging line, and nimbly traversed the distance in half the time it had taken Tomar!

Arriving at the other side, she levered herself up on the ledge, disdaining Tomar’s assistance, and sprang upon her feet. Putting her hands on her smooth young hips, the girl tossed her head and shot a mischievous little smile over at me.

I swung across the abyss myself, both pair of young eyes intent on my progress. To the teen-aged boy and girl, anyone over twenty-five is ready for the old age home, so I tried to do it as agilely as possible, but I fear my face was scarlet with effort and my chest bedewed with perspiration before I reached the security of the ledge. And I was by that point grateful enough for the helping hand Tomar offered. I clambered up over the lip of rock and sat there for a moment, catching my breath, considering what next to do. Our options were certainly few enough in number.

We had escaped from our imprisonment, but we were still prisoners, in a sense. That is, we were still within the vastness of the hollow mountain, and still prey to the dangerous Zarkoon. At any moment, Zawk and his bird-warriors might swoop upon us like hunting hawks. For, although it was still day, I wondered how trustworthy was Ylana’s information concerning the diurnal dormancy of the winged men, and whether or not a cadre of Zarkoon sentinels might not be on watch. Naked save for loin-cloths, and our boots, which we salvaged from the end of the line and made haste to don, we were few and unarmed and therefore relatively helpless before the blue-winged predators who ruled this cavern world.

And we had yet another problem to deal with.

We had emerged from our cages and gained a ledge near the roof of the cavern. The great circular crater or pit that was―insofar as we knew―the only entrance or exit from the cavern was in this roof. But we were on the opposite side of the cavern from it!

The ledge, of course, did not run evenly all around the cavern. Which meant we could not just follow it around to the other side and climb out the crater-like hole in the roof. Neither could we go across the ceiling of the cavern by any conceivable means, not being able to walk upside down. No, we were going to have to do things the hard way, when it came to escaping from the cavern-world of the Zarkoon cannibals. We were going to have to climb down the sheer rocky wall, cross the floor of the cavern, and ascend on the other side, as near to the hole in the roof as we could manage. This would be hard, exhausting work and would consume many hours, I felt sure. And it would enormously increase our dangers of being discovered by a wakeful Zarkoon. But there was no help for it that I could see.

I rose to my feet, stretching to ease the kinks from my arms and the ache in my shoulders.

“Well, let’s get going,” I said.

The ledge was about two feet wide for the most part and by no means level. At times it dipped sickeningly; at other times it narrowed to as little as nine inches of rock. To further complicate matters, it was streaked and beslimed with the bird-like droppings of the Zarkoon. Our footing was thus precarious in the extreme. In some places we could stride along in single-file; in others, we inched along a hand’s-breadth at a time, with our backs pressed against the wall.

Tomar proved agile, sure-footed and calm-even when the footing was dangerous and uncertain. As for Ylana, my bosom filled with admiration for the sturdy jungle maid. If ever I am blessed with a daughter, I could ask for none better than a girl like her. She was brave and cool-headed, nimble as a mountain-goat, and her cheerful good-humor kept us all in fine spirits. It seemed a momentary truce had been declared in the mischievous rivalry between the two youngsters: they helped each other (and myself) over the hazardous spots without a quip or a sneer, clasping hands without embarrassment or rebuff. And when we reached the terminus of the ledge and had to descend to a lower outcropping, Tomar picked up the girl and handed her down to me, his arms clasped about her waist, and her arms about his neck, their faces rather close together for a moment, in wordless silence. I was grateful for the truce, and wondered how long it would last.

The second ledge descended at a steep incline and would, I guessed, take us twenty or thirty yards down the cliff before it dribbled away in mere stubs of outthrust rock, forcing us to hunt for another way down. We followed this declining ramp in single-file, the girl, as it chanced, going first for no particular reason. The incline was rough, uneven, and littered with pebbles, many of which were sharp-edged, and flinty rocks, and I thanked the unknown and mysterious Lords of Gordrimator for allowing us to resume wearing our boots before forcing us to traverse this path of broken rock.

Ahead of me, going around an immense boulder, Ylana suddenly froze and stood breathless and tense. Catching up to her I looked over her shoulder and felt the blood congeal in my veins. It was a danger I had anticipated, but had hoped to avoid.

Around the bend the ledge narrowed to a smooth boss of rock some three feet wide. And there, directly in our path, a huge, untidy nest of lime-smeared twigs, bits of cloth, dried grasses and gnawed white bones, blocked our way.

In the nest squatted motionless the immense figure of a great Zarkoon.

It was neither Zawk nor Skeer nor Kloog, they being the only three of their terrible kind I knew by name. But it was not the identity of the creature, but its presence, that mattered.

The brute was seated tailor-fashion in the bottom of the nest, his clawed feet securely clenching the sides of the nest lest he should lose his balance in his sleep and topple from his place of safety. His gaunt yellowish arms, terminating in those grotesque bird-talons, were folded loosely in his lap, and his blue-plumed, ungainly wings were half-folded over his shoulders. His beaked and hideous visage was hidden under one wing, and he looked for all the world like a pigeon asleep in his nest. And asleep he was, for I could see his bony chest rise and fall in the deep breathing of slumber.

He blocked our way. And there was no way past him.

Tomar had caught up with us. Peering over Ylana’s shoulder, the boy took in the problem with one swift glance.

“Can’t we brain him with a rock?” the boy whispered in my ear. I shrugged helplessly; we could try, but it would be difficult at best, as his head was half-hidden by the blue-feathered wing, and as I had no means of knowing how tough were the skulls of the

Zarkoon or how easy―or difficult―it might prove to slay one of them with my bare hands.

And there was another danger as well: suppose I didn’t manage to slay the brute outright, but only injured him. His squawk of rage and pain might well rouse his dozing neighbors on ledges nearby, rousing a host of the savage winged monsters―if indeed some were not already alert and awake, as I half-feared.

But there was nothing else to do but give it a try. I was fumbling about on the ledge for a large enough rock, when Ylana caught my attention with a quick gesture, and pointed to the Zarkoon. Thrust through a loop in its leathern harness, the stone blade of a crudely-chipped flint knife glinted in the half-light.

That would indeed be the best weapon.

Gliding past the girl, I bent, plucked the flint knife from the breast of the sleeping monster―and drove it to the hilt in his scrawny breast!

Convulsing in a spasm of agony, he flung wide his gaunt arms, thrusting me off-balance. For a moment I teetered on the brink of the abyss as the monster-man lurched half-erect, vulture-wings beating, yellow beak gaping wide, eyes glaring, mad with pain.

In the next instant, Ylana seized my arm, dragging me back to a place of safety on the narrow ledge as the dying Zarkoon, eyes glazing, oily gore bubbling from its chomping beak, toppled past me over the edge of the abyss.

In the next fraction of a second I froze, knowing my worse fears had been true, and that other Zarkoon waked and stirred in the cavern world.

For a gigantic winged shadow fell across us as we crouched on the ledge. Ylana looked past me at the flying thing hurtling towards us―and screamed!