The Zanthodon MEGAPACK ™: The Complete 5-Book Series (82 page)

As if they were not in enough danger from the ichthyosaur, now the dreaded plesiosaurus of the antique Prime had entered into the competition…and the prize was the flesh and blood of Hurok and his new mate!

* * * *

Tharn brooded at the lip of the chasm that had reft in twain the grassy meadows and the swamps. From lip to lip the crevasse must have measured thirty paces or more, and that was too wide for even the limberest boy in the twin tribes to leap, or the most agile of the scouts. And, even were they able to somehow toss a line to the far side of the steam-belching abyss, there were among the tribes women and infants, the aged, the infirm and the injured, who would have found it impossible to bridge the abyss by swinging hand over hand along such a length of line.

Garth, his brother monarch, the Omad or High Chief of the tribe of Sothar, was among those who could not have made so difficult a passage, due to his recent and but newly healed wound. So the jungle monarch conferred with his chieftains as to how best to circumvent this newest obstacle in their journey south.

“We could, my chief,” said one of the scouts, “travel east to the slopes of Fire Mountain, where the crack in the earth began, and attempt to go around it, thus taking ourselves quite some distance out of the way, but at least being able to continue on our way.”

They discussed this, but it was obvious that the suggested plan offered even more perils than they now faced, for the rivers of live lava which had poured down the slopes of the volcanic mountain had ignited the brush and dry grass in the foothills, and was still burning.

It was Garth himself who thought of an alternative to this hazardous solution. His sharp eyes had noticed a place near the edge of the jungle where tall tree’s, felled by the quake, had bridged the gap in the earth. He suggested they cross the abyss by these natural bridges, which looked to be secure enough.

“Even the old and those suffering from wounds can go across the gap by inching along the tree trunks,” he said. “I, myself, although not yet having recovered my full strength and agility, feel certain that I could negotiate the abyss in that manner, with time.”

One of Tharn’s senior chieftains spoke up at this point.

“And, to facilitate our passage of the crevasse, my chief,” he said, “could not our warriors, armed with axes, fell yet more trees so that more could cross the gap in less time?”

It was, at length, decided that this was the best idea yet brought forth, and without further ado the two Omads gave orders and men began chopping down those of the taller trees which grew the nearest to the edge of the abyss, while the younger and more agile warriors and hunters crossed by means of the trees which the earthquake had felled, and, calling back across the crevasse, reported the trees secure and unlikely to be dislodged under the weight of men.

In this manner, the men and women of the twin tribes began to cross the abyss. By ones and twos at first, then by the dozens, they climbed across by means of the fallen trees and those other trees the woodsmen had felled. Before long, Tharn himself crossed and so did Garth, albeit slowly and gingerly, favoring the wound near his heart.

By now, the combined tribes numbered in the hundreds, and it consumed much time for so huge a host to gain the other side but at length, save for the rear guard, it was accomplished.

And it was then and then only that Tharn discovered that his daughter had gone back some time before to find Eric Carstairs and his companions, who still had not rejoined the host. And Tharn found himself in a quandary!

“Curse the wench for a foolhardy child!” he growled, his brow black and thunderous. “If she were here now, I’d turn her over my knee and teach her a few lessons.”

“Yes, my Omad,” agreed the guard to whom the gomad Darya had given her message to her father, and his tones were quite unhappy.

“Oh, I don’t blame you,” said Tharn, seeing the expression on the face of his warrior, a trusted and valiant man of the tribe. And then he added a phrase which we might translate as saying, “the saucy minx could charm the birds out of the tree’s, if she wanted to,” or something to that effect.

“Well, my brother, what shall we do?” inquired Garth of Sothar, who had overheard the exchange. “Now that all of our people have crossed the abyss, we can hardly go back…”

“I know,” grunted Tharn, seething.

“And the gomad’s future mate, Eric Carstairs, is not, after all, very far away, surely! Your daughter the gomad will reach his side soon, and he will follow to the brink of the abyss with all his companions and cross even as we did, for the method we used to cross the gap will be obvious. So, shall we stay here and await their coming, or continue on?”

Tharn, arms folded upon his mighty breast, considered the matter.

“We shall go on,” he said briefly.

CHAPTER 18

DENIZENS OF THE DEEP

Herr Oberlieutenant Manfred, Baron Von Kohler, late of General Erwin Rommel’s famed Afrika Korps, had left the camp that “morning” after breakfast in order to scout out the jungles ahead, leaving the two soldiers, Corporal Schmidt and Private Borg, to tend to Oberst
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Dostman, whose wounds were suppurating and who was unable to travel at more than a very moderate pace.

The jungle seemed quiet during their morning meal, but the Baron took along a Mauser rifle and a few precious rounds of ammunition just in case. The Germans were on their way to the sea, which they believed to be somewhere nearby and to the west of their present campsite, but because of Colonel Dostman’s injuries, taken when they had been attacked by a stegosaurus, they must move by slow and easy stages, and it seemed wise to scout out the terrain in order to avoid rough or dangerous ground.

The Oberlieutenant was a tall, well-built man, with an erect and military bearing. His close-cropped hair, once blond, was now silver-gray, and the years he had spent here in the Underground World of Zanthodon had left lines in his broad brow and had furrowed his lean, clean-shaven cheeks. But his pale blue eyes were sharp and keen as in his youth, and his step was light.

During the long years since they had found their way down into the gigantic cavern-world beneath the trackless sands of the Sahara, Von Kohler had seen his company dwindle and diminish, some of his fellow officers and private soldiers falling prey to accident and illness, but most of them to the fangs of the fantastic prehistoric monsters who lingered on in this lost world, so much alike to that fabled Andean plateau of which he had read in Herr Doyle’s excellent romance in his boyhood back in Munich. And now that his senior commanding officer, Colonel Dostman, seemed unlikely to recover from the battle with the stegosaurus, Von Kohler was all too aware that soon the responsibilities of command would come to rest solely upon his own shoulders.…

When the earthquake struck, he was traversing a ravine in which a small stream gurgled over smooth stones. The shock threw him prone, but he recovered himself a moment later, nerves tingling with shock. Scrambling to his feet, he recovered the Mauser he had let fall when thrown to the ground and fell into a fighting crouch, peering around alertly. Fortunately, the quake was a brief one and soon over.

He climbed up out of the ravine, making a mental note of the fact that the steep incline would prove difficult for Schmidt and Borg to negotiate, as they would be encumbered by the crude litter in which the Colonel was to be carried. He must scout out a better way for them to travel than to climb down into the ravine.…

A time later, having found a better means of crossing, he was continuing on toward the sea when a dramatic scene caught his attention and arrested his progress.

Directly before him, through a thin screen of bushes, Von Kohler saw a young golden-haired woman in abbreviated hide garments, bearing a long spear and a bronze knife. He knew her at once for one of the Cro-Magnon savages they had seen but avoided heretofore in their passage through the jungle, and he lingered behind his screen of bushes, knowing that where there is one person there are probably many more, and that the savages of Zanthodon generally travel in full tribal strength. The German officer thought it prudent to conceal himself while investigating the situation.

He saw, although she did not, the monstrous python whose heavy coils hung from the bough directly above her head.

An instant later, the girl froze in terror as the giant snake swung its fanged and gaping maw toward her through the leaves.

The German had been raised with all the chivalrous instincts of his class of the old nobility. Without a moment’s thought or hesitation he snapped the rifle to his shoulder and blew off the python’s head.…

* * * *

Head reared high above the seething waves, the yith gave voice to a deafening challenge, like the steam whistle of a locomotive. In response, the aurogh gave a vicious snap of its sharklike jaws, and submerged. An instant later the sea went mad, exploding in sheets of spray and boiling foam as the two prehistoric sea monsters closed in mortal combat to decide which of them would devour the hapless Hurok and his mate.

The fearsome jaws of the ichthyosaur closed upon the scaly shoulder of the yith, which uttered a thunderous hiss and swerved its snaky head to rip and tear with saber-sharp fangs at the face and snout of its adversary.

The seething foam became streaked with crimson as the marine monsters battled for their prey. Gorah rolled her eyes skyward and shuddered, as much from the terror of the scene as from the chill of the waves.

Hurok strove again to right the boat, but again he failed, for with nothing against which to brace his huge splayed feet, he could gain no purchase on the wet and slippery wood, despite the iron strength of his burly shoulders and arms. In his struggle, however, he flailed out with both legs and the dugout floated away from the scene of combat.

This gave the Apeman an idea, which he conveyed in guttural words to his mate. The two were clinging to the same side of the canoe, now, in unison, both kicked out with their strong legs, propelling the overturned boat slowly through the foamy waters.

Peering hastily back over one furry shoulder, Hurok saw that the plesiosaur had wound its sinuous length about the giant shark-monster, and was ripping at its flesh with those dreadful fangs, and all the while the triple rows of teeth were crunching deeper and deeper into its mailed shoulder.

As they paddled away from the scene of terror, the two monsters, locked in a murderous embrace, sank from sight beneath the bloody waves, and, although the water continued to rage in turbulence for a time, giving evidence of the titanic battle which roared on beneath the sea, neither surfaced again.

Hurok gave a sigh of heartfelt relief. Had the Apemen of Kor any religious instincts, he would doubtless at this juncture have muttered a prayer of gratitude to whatever divinities watched over the warriors of Kor, but his people were too low on the scale of civilization to have developed more than a primitive awe of the spirits of their dead ancestors.

“Keep kicking,” he growled to Gorah.

* * * *

In time they wearied, and, since neither of the marine monsters had made a reappearance, simply rested, clinging to the hull of the overturned dugout canoe, letting the slow and shallow surges of the subterranean sea drift them nearer and nearer to the shore of the mainland of Zanthodon.

At length, Hurok felt solid mud beneath his feet, and from that point on the two Korians pushed their craft through the surf and dragged it up onto the sandy shore, and sat down wearily, letting the humid warmth of day dry their bodies and resting from their exertions, glad to feel the firm earth under their feet once more.

Hurok privately swore never to venture any nearer to, the sea of Sogar-Jad than the beach thereof, for one ducking beneath the waves was enough to last him a lifetime, and few of the warriors of Zanthodon ever for a second time survive the fangs of the mighty monsters of the deep.

“Where are we O Hurok?” inquired torah in faint tones, exhausted from the perils through which she had passed. Hurok looked around and heaved hairy shoulders in a shrug.

“Hurok does not know,” he admitted. The simple fact was that one stretch of sandy beach fringed by the edge of the jungle looks very much like any other stretch of sandy beach fringed by the jungle.

But as the Peaks of Peril were no longer in sight, the Apeman knew that they had drifted with the current very much farther to the south than he could have wished. His companions and the twin tribes themselves could be many days’ march away in either direction by now.…

When they were dried and rested and had fully recovered from their dunking in the Sogar-Jad, the two Neanderthals got to their feet and began to explore. The only weapons they had retained from their sea adventures were the flint knife which Gorah carried at her waist and the heavy stone axe slung about Hurok’s hips on a tough leathern thong. These weapons were good enough for fighting at close quarters, but Hurok felt more comfortable with a spear’s length between him and whatever beast they might encounter. So they lingered in that spot long enough for him to hew down a sapling and trim its twigs and branches away with blows of his axe.

With the sharp blade of Gorah’s knife he sharpened one end of the makeshift spear to a point. Then, hefting his new weapon to his shoulder and taking Gorah’s hand in his huge paw, he began trudging up the beach, choosing the northerly direction at pure random.

Hurok did not know just what he was looking for—some sign of his missing friends, I suppose—but what he found amazed and alarmed him. He pulled Gorah into the bushes and bade her squat there while he peered nearsightedly at the peculiar individual he spied coming down the beach.

It was a man, but such a man as the Apeman had never seen or heard of, black as ebony from heel to crown.

Roaring his challenge, Hurok sprang from the underbrush and leveled his spear at the breast of Zuma the Aziru—

CHAPTER 19

MEN FROM YESTERDAY

The Professor had tramped through the jungle for quite some time now, heading in the direction of the active volcano in the swampy plains of the south. He encountered no dangerous beasts or reptiles along the way, and was feeling quite pleased and satisfied with himself for his mastery of woodsmanship—when suddenly a loud explosion rang out sharply through the silence of the deserted jungle.

“Noble Newton, but if I didn’t know better, I could have sworn that was a rifle shot!” exclaimed the old scientist to himself as the echoes of the sound rang and died, smothered in the thick undergrowth between the boles of the trees.

Inquisitive as always, Professor Potter diverged from his path to circle back, hoping to find the source of the sound. As the only firearm which existed here in the Underground World was my own Colt .45 automatic, the Professor was baffled as to what could have made such a noise—for it certainly was not the metallic bark of my pistol being fired.

Emerging from the bushes, he halted suddenly, eyes goggling in amazement as he found himself looking upon a tense, dramatic scene.