The Zanthodon MEGAPACK ™: The Complete 5-Book Series (68 page)

For the pass which was obviously the destination of the savages was none other than the main pass into Zar, the one of the stone monster heads.

And that pass was thoroughly guarded by unseen watchers.…

CHAPTER 24

THE PROFESSOR’S INVENTION

Ialys had led me into an enormous stone-walled room filled with seething vapors, blazing furnaces, sulphurous stenches, and vile chemical reeks, where many artisans and workmen toiled. It was crowded, busy, and very noisy.

Hammers clanged on anvils, wielded by burly men stripped to the waist and black with soot. Sparks flew in showers from the strokes of their mauls and these, mingling with swirling clouds of black smoke, lent the cavernous room an aspect satanic, like a glimpse of the Inferno.

Amidst the noise and turmoil, my old friend Professor Percival P. Potter. Ph.D., hopped about shrilling orders, waving his arms excitedly, reprimanding or instructing his workmen in a feverish mixture of Zarian, Zanthodonian, and English. He stopped short when he perceived me standing there at the entrance to this incredible basement factory.

“Eric, my boy! Holy Heisenberg, whatever are
you
doing here? I…I had thought you in chains, groaning under the cruel lash of these fiends.…”

I stared at him in utter bewilderment.

“What in the world—or under it!—are you talking about, Professor?” I demanded.

“Why—why—well,” he spluttered, “Xask said—that is, I was given to understand.…”

“
Xask
, is it?” I said harshly, beginning to comprehend the astounding scene. “And you trusted a single word from that sly devil?”

“I—I—um,” he muttered, subsiding feebly. And eyeing me more than a bit
guiltily
.…

Guiltily? Guilty about
what
?

I looked around me, eyes narrowing against the smoke. I could smell the sulphur in the air, and there it was—heaps and mounds of raw yellow sulpher, being raked to and fro in long wooden trays. They were
purifying
the stuff.

Looking beyond, I saw open fireplaces where wood was obviously being reduced to charcoal.

And my heart sank within my breast. For I knew the ingredients of gunpowder as well as the Professor did.…

* * * *

While I maintained a grim silence, the old boy showed me around. Since I had yet to utter a word of reproof, his natural buoyancy asserted itself. And he was obviously very proud of his work.

“I was presented with a host of problems, my boy, as you can doubtless well imagine…the Minoans are not yet into the iron age, although their technology is quite advanced; it is simply that this part of the mountain country seems lacking in iron ore. How, then, to fashion pistols or rifles? I resolved on case-hardened bronze, bound with brass wire to reduce the chances that the explosion of powder in the chamber might crack the barrels of the guns.…

I nodded, saying nothing. The old boy’s enthusiasm was so simple and pure, I did not wish to hurt his feelings by giving speech to the emotions I was feeling. Taking heart from my silence, he burbled on, proud as a peacock—

“The mechanism of a revolver is, I fear, a trifle too complex for the Zarian craftsmen, although, of course, in time…in time…at any rate, my dear boy, I simplified the design of my weapons to something like the old-fashioned blunderbuss, employing a lengthier barrel so as to build the velocity of the bullets and to improve, as much as is possible, the directness of their flight…it was a pretty problem, I assure you! But there was no way for these simpletons to rifle the inside of the barrels, if that is the proper word for it—
you
know what I mean, the inner spiral groovings which give a bullet the, ah, ‘spin’.…”

He showed me the finished product. It was an ungainly cross between a Kentucky squirrel-hunter’s rifle and a primitive blunderbuss. It looked ugly as hell, but I had little doubt that it would shoot well enough. The old flintlock rifles generally did.…

“The powder is crude enough, I know,” he went burbling on, “and coarse, but as time goes on we shall undoubtedly be able to refine the mixture and reduce the size of the grains…for bullets, now, I settled, after considerable thought, I can assure you, on simple slugs with cross-grooved noses—”

“Like dum-dum bullets?” I inquired heavily.

His watery blue eyes brightened cheerfully and his stiff little white spike of a goatee waggled as he nodded with enthusiasm.

“Precisely! I—ahem!—saw more than a few gangster movies in my younger years…the lead is easy enough to procure in these parts, fortunately.…”

I groaned inwardly. I had seen a few old gangster movies myself. And knew that a dum-dum bullet goes
in
easily enough, but when it comes out the other side, it leaves a hole large enough for a cat to walk through.

And we are talking about human bodies, not marksmen’s targets.

“However did Xask talk you into this?” I asked, finally.

“Well, ah…the fellow presented me with some
very
cogent arguments, as I hope you realize,” he faltered, evading my eyes. And then he went into a long and vague and rambling account of what Xask had said, which boiled down to very, very little.

Xask was an excellent con man. Like all con men, it’s not the idea content of his sales spiel that counts, but the seeming honesty, vigor, and reasonableness of his voice and manner.

The Professor was honestly not able to recall the arguments and persuasions which the wily little Machiavelli had used to win him over. Except, of course, for the flat lie that I was in a damp, dripping cell, being worked upon daily by the torturers of Zar.…

Which suddenly made me understand why I had been escorted to an entirely new suite after my private interview with the Divine Zarys, rather than going back to bunk with the Professor. With me out of sight, Xask could tell the old man any lie he wanted to.

It was all very neat.

And very ugly.

Armed with these guns, the legions of Zar could overrun the entire length and breadth of the Underground World. No army had a chance of standing in their way. Picture the poor Cro-Magnons, with their bows and arrows, axes and spears, trying to stem an invading flood of Zarians armed with the Professor’s flintlock rifles! Primitive and clumsy weapons though they were, they could cut down the boldest and most skillful of the warriors of Thandar or Sothar or any other tribe.

Including the Neanderthals of Kor—however many survived that massacre on the plains of the thandors—for all their ponderous might and savage ferocity.

Not even the Barbary Pirates could withstand the legions of Zar, no matter how strong their fortresses might be.

When you have gunpowder, you have rifles. It is a very short step from there to siege cannon. To catapult bombs. To grenades.

To world war.…

* * * *

The Professor was chagrined when I finally pointed these things out to him. He looked crestfallen, lower lip wavering childishly, vague eyes filling with something suspiciously like tears. I tried to speak as reasonably and patiently as was possible under the circumstances, and I tried not to upbraid him, for I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

But my words must have been a crushing disappointment to the Prof. Like stepping on someone’s bright new toy. And that’s exactly what his flintlocks represented to him: not a weapon of war, of conquest, of sheer murder, but a bright, fascinating new toy.

The sheer, intellectual game of reinventing firearms, using ancient, traditional crafts and Bronze Age artisans had intrigued and captivated him. That the practical applications of his glittering new toys were nothing less than red murder, warfare, rapine, and plunder simply had not occurred to him. Or, if they had, it was but hazily, as a far off, distant possibility, outweighed by the excitement of the technical achievement.

I understood all of this, and tried not to speak harshly to the poor old fellow or to make him feel any worse than he did already. But plain facts had to be pointed out and, if necessary, driven home bluntly.

“Think of our brave and gallant friends facing a disciplined troop armed with these bright new guns of yours,” I begged. “Think of Tharn and Varak and Garth and old Hurok…all of their bravery and gallantry and brute strength would be of no avail against what they call ‘the thunder-weapon.’ Of no avail at all.”

“M-my boy,” he quavered broken-heartedly. “I d-didn’t think, I simply didn’t think…why, Xask told me how the Scarlet City is ringed about with savage foes, unable to defend itself, the warrior spirit fading out—”

“Come on, Doc, use your head!” I said roughly. “Those tame dinosaurs they ride are a dreadful weapon, better than Hannibal with his elephants, and a lot scarier.”

“Y-yes, I believe you are right, I am indeed culpable.…”

“And to put such armaments within the grasp of sneaky rats like Xask—whom I wouldn’t trust any farther than I could throw him, and I’d love to see just how far
that
would be!—or the Queen’s pet general, our pal Cromus, remember him? As ambitious and as unscrupulous as they come—”

“You are quite right, my boy, and I deserve your harshest words. It was criminally negligent of me to have cooperated in the reinvention of firearms, intriguing experiment though it certainly was. But—what can I possibly do to stop it now? These Zarian engineers and bronze-smiths are cunning artificers, and swiftly grasped the principles I taught them…what could
I
do to change what has already been accomplished here?”

He had me stumped, and I had to admit it.

“I honestly don’t know, Doc; but you’ve got to do
something
,” I said. He looked troubled, but thoughtful: and when Professor Percival P. Potter, Ph.D. starts Thinking (with a capital ‘T’), you can rest easier with the knowledge that you’ve got one of the best brains on (or under) the Earth working on your problem.

Ialys was tugging on my sleeve. I had almost forgotten she was there. She looked nervous and apprehensive.

“Lord Eric!” she cried. “You have stayed here too long—you must get back to your suite before the officers come—”

“What officers, girl?” I demanded.

“During every wake they come to inquire after the progress the old man, your friend, has achieved—
hurry!
I will escort you back to where we met.”

I guess I had lost track of time, talking to the Doc. So I bade him a hasty adieu and let her hurry me to the door. But it was a little late for making a strategic withdrawal.

We ran straight into Cromus and his bully-boys
.

CHAPTER 25

THE UNDERGROUND ROAD

Within the black mouth of an alley lithe figures lurked. Overtopping them by head and shoulders loomed a burly shape. Bewildered, they peered out upon a busy, noisy, bustling bazaar.

Hurok and his warriors had managed to reach the outskirts of the Scarlet City unobserved, by means of their trick of swimming beneath the stone bridge which connected the island of Zar with the shores of the inland sea. But from this point on, there seemed to be no way to penetrate more deeply into the Minoan city without risking the chance of discovery.

The alley was narrow and black as pitch, for tall buildings shut out the eternal daylight of the Underground. This darkness was unnatural to the Cro-Magnon men and it made them distinctly uneasy.

Neither did they enjoy the filth and stench of the narrow way, with its heaped and fetid garbage, its worn cobbles beslimed with ooze, its mouth choked with abandoned junk and fragments of debris. They were eager to be out of this dark, vile place—into the open air and daylight once again.

Hurok, however, cautioned against such rashness. What, after all, could a mere handful of men however bold and brave, hope to accomplish in a city filled with thousands of their enemies?

The gloom of the alley bothered the Neanderthal warrior little. Accustomed as he was to the dark caves of his rocky homeland of Kor on the island of Ganadol, his small and dim eyes rather enjoyed their brief respite from the all-pervading daylight of the surface of Zanthodon.

“How can we hope to do battle against so many?” he rumbled in his deep bass tones. “Only by stealth and with great care could we dream of finding where Black Hair and the old man, his companion, are held.…”

“But where, O Hurok, in all this wilderness of stone caves would they imprison our chieftain?” asked Varak pointedly. “What use to linger here amid the blackness and the stench, when we have not the slightest idea of where Eric Carstairs lies imprisoned?”

There was good sense in Varak’s words, as Hurok well knew. But the burly and hulking Apeman of Kor had a shrewd notion of where his black-haired friend could be found. From the cliffs he had studied the layout of the Scarlet City, and had noticed that toward the center of the metropolis a lofty palace or citadel reared its spires atop a rise of ground. Of course, Hurok had no acquaintance with cities, ancient or modern; he had no way of guessing that the highest part of ground within the circuit of most of the great cities of the ancient world had been chosen to house the most important structures. This was true of the Acropolis of Athens as it was true of the Capitoline of Rome and the Brysa of age-lost Carthage.

And it was also true of Zar, the Scarlet City of the Minoans.…

To Hurok’s way of thinking, so important a prisoner as Black Hair would be held in the residence of the ruler of Zar. And that residence could only be the huge and imposing pile of masonry which rose on the hilly heights at the center of the city, with the great arena behind it. The problem was-how could he lead his warriors all that distance without their being seen and the alarm sounded?

And that was a problem indeed.…

Squatting on his heels, Hurok pondered his dilemma. And as he did so there came to his ears a gurgling as of running water. This sound seemed to come from a rust-eaten grill set into the cobbled surface of the narrow little alleyway. For what reason the barred opening had been built Hurok could not imagine; he had not, after all, ever heard of sewers and neither could he have known that ancient Knossos, capital of Crete, had been famous in antiquity for its running water and flush toilets.

And running water must run
somewhere
.…

Examining the grill, the Neanderthal warrior discovered that it could be lifted free of its iron frame. When he strove to accomplish this, he made the further discovery that ages of neglect had effectively welded the grill to its frame with layers of encrusted rust.

While his baffled men looked on in total lack of comprehension, Hurok bent all of his mighty strength to the task of wrenching free the grill of the sewer. Great thews swelled to rock hardness along his sloping and apelike shoulders; ropes and cables of muscle sprang into sharp relief along his broad back and deep, furred chest.

With a sharp
crack!
the layers of rust shattered and the grill came loose in his hands. Peering down into the opening he had made, the Apeman of Kor blinked as his eyes adjusted to the virtually impenetrable gloom of the sewer. Soon he discovered the opening to be a long, narrow tunnel one end of which obviously emptied into the inland sea, as it went in that direction.

Peering the other way, he glimpsed the continuation of the underground passage, as it rose ever so slightly, extending in the same direction as they wished to travel, toward the center of the great city.