We discussed plans for the immediate future then, finally deciding on the following course of action: First we’d return to the wreck of my plane; I had a pair of binoculars there that I wanted to secure; they’d be of help in escaping from the valley. Then we’d try to find the place where Carcante’s monster helicopter was stored, for with this we would try to return to civilization. If we were successful in our quest, the future would take care of itself. If not—we’d have to adjust ourselves to changing conditions as best we could.
Our planning finished, I took Claire in my arms in a final embrace. What fate lay before us, we could not ascertain; perhaps we would be parted by death ere five minutes went by.
“Whatever happens, beloved,” I admonished softly just before we left the sphere, “remember to save the last cartridge; and at the worst, use it on yourself. Better real death than a living death at the hands of the beastmen.”
Stealthily, though rapidly, we started across the floor of the pit toward the spiral ledge. There was no sign of life; but the mouths of the caves that lined the ledge seemed to yawn menacingly. Around and around we went, ever upward, our automatics held in readiness, and our every sense alert for any manifestation of danger.
We had almost reached the safety of the top of the pit, and I had begun breathing easier, when something moved in one of the caves and suddenly the comparative silence was rent by a shrill, brutish scream. I fired a shot into the darkness, and the scream ended abruptly.
But the damage had been done. In a second every cave emitted a horde of hairy men and women. The ledge became aswarm with them.
“Run, Claire!” I cried, firing at those nearest to us. “It’s our only chance!” Claire’s automatic spat a stream of fire as she leaped ahead. There was a gap before us; the beastmen seemed to hesitate in indecision; in that moment we got through.
I turned and emptied my pistol into the faces of our pursuers in a sweeping flood of death. Claire did likewise. The beastmen halted under the scathing fire, then turned and dashed madly down the ledge. And we, in turn, fled into the jungle, reloading our automatics as we ran.
With all possible speed we crashed through the underbrush. I had no idea where my plane was; and because of that, we had about one chance in a thousand of finding it; but we kept a sharp lookout for the clearing in spite of that.
And then I saw it! It was some distance away, but I could see the open space through a rift in the tree ferns. We changed our course, heading in that direction.
In a few minutes we stood beneath the mighty tree that held my plane. For a second we eyed the machine that, had it been intact, would have given us an immediate means of escape; then I exclaimed hurriedly:
“The beastmen may attack any time, Claire, and if they do, I’m afraid our pistols won’t be a very great protection, for they can overpower us by sheer force of numbers. If we can get the machine gun down from the plane, we can defend ourselves against a regiment.”
I was about to start climbing to the plane, when a violent motion in the jungle appraised me of impending-danger. Intently we peered through the trees, waiting with ready automatics.
Suddenly the underbrush was thrust aside at a dozen places and as many beastmen leaped toward us. Our pistols hurled twin streams of death at our attackers, halting them before they reached us.
But simultaneous with the roar of our automatics, we heard a chorus of guttural shouts directly behind us. I whirled—and a well-directed blow tore the automatic from my hand!
I have a vague recollection of a whirling melee of hairy arms and legs; a picture of Claire battling bravely; then a clap of thunder about my ears—and utter blackness.
A DULL, gnawing ache in every muscle of my body—a thundering throbbing in my head—these, together with a singular lassitude, were my sensations when conscious life returned to me. Weak, sick, and dazed, I lay there, barely aware that I was alive.
For the moment, my mind, groping blindly through a nightmare maze, was occupied solely by thoughts of the torturing pain that gripped me; then suddenly to my brain flashed the thought of Claire! An intense, yearning wonder for her welfare, and a sickening fear lest she be dead, flooded my mind, banishing every thought of myself.
With a tremendous effort, gasping and shaken, weak and unnerved, I managed to raise myself upon one elbow, and to peer about me. I was alone. All about lay the steaming, prehistoric jungle that surrounded the clearing; but nowhere was there human life. Here and there, a sign of the struggle; here and there a little pool of blood—but I was alone!
And then the thought flashed upon me with increased force, “Claire was gone!” Full realization of this forced itself upon my dazed perception and acted as a goad to my rebellious muscles.
“Claire! Claire!” I gasped, and struggled to my feet. For a moment I stood there swaying, my mind striving to grasp the magnitude of what had occurred.
Slowly my mind cleared—and with returning clarity of thought there came to me an overwhelming realization of my incalculable loss; and the wreckage of all our hopes and plans for the future. The weight of my grief and self-condemnation for the loss of the girl I loved, coupled with the weakness of my body, almost deprived me of my senses for a second time; then a fleeting thought went straight coursing through my body again.
Perhaps there was still time to save her! The sun was well past its zenith, so I must have been unconscious for a number of hours, but there was a bare chance that she was still alive and unharmed!
Hurriedly I circled the natural clearing with my eyes, searching for my automatic. A moment sufficed to convince me that it was gone; evidently the brutes had taken it with them even as they had taken their dead fellows. Why I had been left behind, I could not say, unless it was to furnish a meal for some carnivorous reptile.
With the pistol gone, but one thing remained—the machine gun in the plane.
My weakness and pain forgotten, I began climbing the giant tree. My progress seemed painfully slow; but finally I reached the limbs that supported the wreck of my machine. And there I stopped short, my eyes caught by a queer phenomenon.
By chance I had glanced through the branches at the tall, cone-shaped mountain I had seen in my first inspection of the valley. From my vantage point high above the ground, I could see it clearly, rising into the air no more than a half mile away. But it was not the peak itself that had caught my attention; rather was it the amazing parade that was ascending one of the gradually sloping sides.
In single file, one behind another, stegosaur after stegosaur was ascending the mount, forming a great, reptilian parade, astounding and unnatural. And on the back of each was a beastman!
What could it mean? Beastman and stegosaur climbing to the flat, tablelike top of the mount! For what purpose?
To answer these questions I secured the binoculars from the cockpit of the plane, and trained them upon the parade. Suddenly the glasses fell from my nerveless fingers; and I caught a branch to prevent myself from falling. Their purpose I could not tell, but that it had to do with Claire, I was sure, for there, on the back of the foremost stegosaur, bound hand and foot, and held in the arms of an abnormally large beastman, was the girl!
For a moment my mind was blank—but only for a moment. Then a frenzy seized me, and my mind whirled madly. What could I do? Something had to be done immediately—but what? I had to reach the peak, but how?
And then a sudden thought arrested the wild gyrations of my mind. Frantically I grasped it like the drowning man grasping the proverbial straw. The stegosaurs! Perhaps there was one remaining in the corral that I had seen on Carcante’s screen!
With a machine gun for a weapon, and a stegosaur for a steed, I might still be able to rescue her!
With mad haste and with fumbling fingers that almost refused to do my bidding, I freed the machine gun from its fastenings. After a second’s hesitation, I dropped it to the soft loam that made up the floor of the clearing. Then, seizing a box of ammunition, I flung myself from branch to br
anch until I reached the ground. And there the box slipped from my hands—and I stopped short, frozen in consternation.
Not more than ten feet away, contemplating me sullenly, stood a titanic, red-eyed monster. In horrified fascination I stared at it, my eyes taking in with painful detail, every contour of its thirty-foot length.
It looked more like a gigantic, long-tailed rhinoceros than a reptile, with its heavy, gray knob-encrusted hide covering its body with great folds of overlapping armor. It possessed three great horns—one, fully a yard long, above each eye, and the other, smaller on the tip of the nose. A large, bony, parrot-like beak, and a mighty, tapering tail completed the list of its offensive weapons. Its defensive armament included its armor-plate hide, and a great, collarlike shield that extended back from its head. Fully fifteen feet high, it was far larger than the stegosaurs.
In a flash I had seen all this; a second later my eyes were casting about for some means of defense. All that rewarded my search was a heavy, ten-foot club, like those that the beastmen habitually used when riding their stegosaurs. This lay an arm’s length away from me.
At times of great nervous strain the mind does peculiar things. Mine did at that moment. In a flash I remembered the scene back in Carcante’s studio when he had shown me the picture of the beastmen on the backs of the stegosaurs; had told me that they had had little success in riding any of the other reptiles, except the one called triceratops, a monster that was controlled by blows delivered on the middle one of its three horns. This was a triceratops!
A second this thought had taken—in another second I had stooped and seized the club. A bellowing roar from the triceratops as it lumbered toward me—a sudden side snap at me with its great beak—and I raised my staff and struck it a vicious blow upon its median horn.
I ADMIT that I felt anything but optimistic about the results of that blow; but they were all that could have been desired. The triceratops stopped short, looking at me in stupefied surprise, while a low rumble came from the depths of its barrel-like chest. A second time it snapped at me; and again I struck its middle horn, a far heavier blow than before. The monster rumbled faintly in protest; then turned away.
My first thought had been one of self-preservation, a necessity to subjugate the titan to save my life. But as it turned away, I realized that here was a way for me to reach the peak. There was no need of my depending upon the chance of a stegosaur having been left behind—here was a steed far more rapid!
Raising the machine gun from the place where it had buried itself in the soft earth, I walked around to the triceratops’ rear, staggering under the weight of the weapon. Working my way up the broad tail, I placed the gun in position on the brute’s back. Returning to the ground, I secured the ammunition, and carried it up beside the weapon. Then, perching myself in back of the great shield that protected the creature’s neck, I managed with much prodding, and with occasional blows upon the median horn, to start the triceratops moving through the jungle.
The monster’s pace was slow at first, but as we proceeded toward the mount, it became a headlong flight at express-train speed. Great tree ferns and cycads were thrust aside as though they were non-existent. Nothing could stop this colossus. I had all I could do to prevent myself and the machine gun from being cast to earth.
Finally our headlong flight brought us to the base of the mount. Ere this, of course, the stegosaurs had reached the top. With undiminished speed we followed. Up the long slope the mighty muscles of the triceratops bore me, until we reached the flat that was the mount’s apex.
With a wide, sweeping glance I took in the scene. Claire was lying on the top of the stone table, six foot high, in the center of the flat. The huge beastnian who had carried her, was circling about her in a halting, rhythmic dance, a stone dagger raised high above his head. And each circle brought him closer to Claire!
This had been a human being—the thought flashed upon me—but his return to the primitive had been complete, lie was more beast than man! Back to the primitive. preparing to make a sacrifice to some god that the brute minds of the beastmen had conjured up.
The stegosaurs with their riders were ranged about the edge of the flat in a great, uniform circle.
For a moment the scene was as I have described it; then things changed with lightning rapidity. As a blighting rain of steeljackets poured from my machine gun, cutting off the life of the brute with the dagger like a snuffed-out candle flame, pandemonium broke loose. I sprayed the circle of beastmen with death; under the scathing fire they lost all semblance of order.
Only a few seconds had passed since my advent on the top of the mount, and already fully a quarter of the beastmen had been swept from the backs of their steeds. According to all indications, Claire would lie rescued.
But as I turned my attention to those remaining, something occurred that I had not taken into my calculations. The triceratops, until now entirely motionless, probably paralyzed, stunned by the inexplicable roaring on its back, leaped suddenly into frenzied action. A ten-ton battering ram of infuriated flesh, it ran amuck among the stegosaurs, burying its horns in their bodies, ripping their flesh, and lashing out in insane fury with its mighty tail.
In the first moments of the triceratops’ madness, the machine gun and ammunition were hurled to earth. And all that saved me from a similar fate were the great knobs and crevices of the creature’s hide. Clinging with hands and feet, I managed to retain my position on the wildly swaying back.
In less time than is required for the telling, the top of the peak became a scene of wild confusion, with the squealing stegosaurs leaping about aimlessly, beyond the control of their riders, and the triceratops hurling himself again and again upon every reptile that came within reach. One after another the stegosaurs fell, life destroyed by the monster that carried me.
But the triceratops was weakening. It had not emerged from those numerous encounters unscathed; the razor-edged shields on the backs of the stegosaurs, and their lashing, spiked tails had inflicted great wounds on the larger brute. Now less and less violent became the monster’s attacks. The end, I knew, could not be far away.
The end—when the great beast would fall, and I would be cast from its back to be trampled under the feet of the stegosaurs! The end—with Claire lying bound and helpless on the stone table, left there, perhaps, to die of thirst, or if taken away, to meet a fate worse than death——
Then without warning of any kind, cutting off mv gloomy musings, all motion on the mount ceased! Triceratops, stegosaurs, beastmen—all were still. In stark amazement I tried to move, to determine the cause of this inexplicable cessation of all movement—but I could not! I was paralyzed!
For a moment nothing happened—then a cloud of purple mist surrounded me, and I felt myself drifting slowly through the air! And suddenly a great peace settled upon me; there was naught to fear now. The Purple People, the people of Novad Thasor, had come to the rescue!
In a sudden burst of speed I was borne high above the peak. A second purple disc was waiting there, a disc that held Claire within itself. She smiled at me reassuringly; in spite of her bonds she was uninjured!
AND then something impelled me to look down. Below us, and some distance to the left, hovered a great, purple sphere. Not a disc, this, but a great, cloud like globe, made up, I could see, of the Misty Ones. It was fully as large as the mighty temple that housed Novad Thasor.
As I watched, there was a motion in the sphere. It began to turn slowly as on an axis. Then from its base spurted streams of white flame. They fell upon the paralyzed brutemen and reptiles on the mount, and flowed and splashed over them. In the bodies was a dreadful movement, stiffening—dead nerves responding to the blasting flood of energy passing through them.
Over the entire flat the white flame flowed, touching man and monster as with a caressing hand. There was a sound like the crackling of broken glass—and both living and dead flamed up—and were consumed.
Where not more than five minutes befor
e there had been a bedlam of struggling men and beasts, there were now only little, whirling clouds of gray dust. Slowly these settled to the top of the peak.
A moment more the great globe hovered there; then it flashed down into the valley. The discs that held us followed. Above the floor of the valley the sphere paused hesitantly; then it flashed off at a sharp tangent—flashed off and settled to the earth. In a moment we were beside it.
We had landed in a large, fenced enclosure, in the center of which was a low, oblong building, constructed of rough timber. The Misty Ones released Claire and me before the sliding door that led into the building. After I had removed the cords that bound the girl, a command came for me to try the door. It was unlocked; and in a moment I had thrust it aside.
Rapidly my eyes adjusted themselves to the gloom of the interior—and I saw what the building housed. This was the dead scientist’s airplane hangar; here he kept the giant ato-helicopter that he had used in securing his subjects. The Purple People had saved us; and now they placed before us a means of escape from the valley! Quickly Claire and I rolled the helicopter from the hangar. As we did so I noticed a network of wires covering the ground some distance beyond the spot where the great globe was. I had been wondering how it happened that the beastmen had not injured the plane; these wires, in all probability charged by ato-motors, had kept them away.
With the plane free from the building, we stepped inside the cabin, and I examined the controls. They differed little from those of standard passenger planes; I knew that I would have no difficulty with them.
“Dearest,” I said to Claire then, “the way of escape lies before us; and soon we shall leave this valley forever. But before we go, I want to thank these Purple Beings for the incalculable aid they have given us. They may not understand us, but I want to thank them anyway.”
Claire smiled into my eyes. “Yes, Jimmie, if it hadn’t been for them, I’m afraid things wouldn’t have turned out the way they have.”
Together we left the helicopter, and faced the two Misty Ones who had borne us away from the peak, and the great, purple sphere.
Forgotten Fiction Page 14