Journey To The Underground World Read online

  The Professor shuddered suddenly, as if a chill breeze had blown upon his naked skin. The Peaks of Peril … in truth the name had an ominous and frightening ring to it!

  “Why did the Neanderthal men call those cliffs by such a name?“he inquired timidly.

  His companion shrugged his bronzed and brawny shoulders.

  “That Jorn does not know,“admitted the Hunter.

  But the Professor had a feeling that before long they would find out for themselves.

  Without another word, Jorn again broke into a rapid, jogging stride, trotting across the plains in the direction of the purple peaks.

  There was nothing else for Professor Potter to do but follow him.

  When Darya awoke from her swoon, it was a time before the Cro-Magnon girl quite remembered where she was, or realized her present danger.

  At some point during her dizzy, swooping flight across the misty skies of Zanthodon, consciousness had left the girl and she hung unconscious from the hooked claws of the thakdol, which were still sunk deeply in the carcass of the uld.

  Thus she had not been awake when the flying reptile reached its noisome lair and deposited therein its double burden.

  She recovered her consciousness in conditions so weird and frightful that, for a long, breathless moment, the Neolithic princess believed herself either blind or dead. For all about her stretched inky blackness, a gloom so intense as almost to be palpable to the touch. And to such as Darya of Zanthodon, reared in a cavern-world of perpetual day, the darkness was a thing of utter terror She screamed … then fell into a shocked silence as the echoes of her frightened cry boomed and resounded about her. From this the girl quickly discerned that she had not, after all, been deprived of her eyesight, but was trapped in an enclosed space of some sort. And, looking up, she discerned a faint trace of day far above her head.

  Above her present place of confinement, daylight gleamed at the end of a tall natural chimney of naked rock, and the brave heart of the Cro-Magnon girl fainted within her at the knowledge of her predicament … for never could she hope to climb that chimney to reach the exit she could see far above her.

  Or could she? For, if the huge pterodactyl had been able to descend through the shaft to leave her and the dead uld in this place, why could she not climb up it again? She was, after all, slender and slim, and her agile body was less than the bulk of the winged reptile.

  Something crunched underfoot. The girl glanced down to see, dimly as her eyes adjusted to the unnatural gloom, that she was in a gigantic nest of woven reeds, littered with filth and noisome with the fetid droppings of the winged reptile.

  Reaching out her arms, the girl explored the confines of her prison. Her fingers met rough stone walls, slimy stone floor, and the jagged curve of the ceiling.

  It puzzled Darya that the thakdol had merely deposited her within its nest, mysteriously refraining from devouring both the unconscious girl and the carcass of the uld whose bloodscent had attracted the huge scavenger in the first place.

  Then as the nest crackled under the gliding, waddling weight of some unseen creature, and a pang of terror lanced through Darya’s heart, she understood the reason for the thakdol’s forebearance-and the true horror of her deadly trap!

  Stirring to wakefulness, small scaly forms wriggled and flopped toward where Darya crouched, hooked claws extended and sharp beaks clacking hungrily.

  The pterodactyl had left her here to be devoured-by its hideous young!

  Hurok of the Stone Age strode through the dense undergrowth of the primeval jungle, his every sense alert and wary for the presence of danger. Well did he know, that hulking veteran of a thousand hunts, that the aisles of the jungle were the dominion of the savage vandar, the ponderous, slow-moving grymp, and of the dreaded omodon, or cave bear. But, rather to his surprise, naught moved or stirred within the jungle-or, if it did, his keen nostrils and sensitive ears could discern no token of its presence.

  The Neanderthal man dismissed the evidence of his senses, although he knew that betimes the predators of the jungle slept, and that within the eternal day of Zanthodon, sleep is a matter of individual need and individual choice.

  Still, he did not trust the peculiar absence of danger. It might well be that all of the monsters of the jungle had selected this particular hour of all hours to fall asleep, but such a coincidence he considered to be most unlikely.

  No: there is only one creature that is the enemy of all of the beasts, and which many of them have learned to fear.

  And the name of that enemy is Man.

  And if men were in this portion of the jungle, in such numbers that even the giant reptiles remained prudently in hiding, Hurok grimly knew that they could only be the savages of Kor. And that meant deadly danger?

  Danger not to Hurok, of course, for he was one of the warriors of Kor himself, and had naught to fear from his fellow Apemen. But the horizons of Hurok’s heart had but recently widened to include others besides his own countrymen. And if a large force of warriors had landed upon the mainland from Kor, they were a potential danger to his friend Black Hair, as he named Eric Carstairs, and to his friends, the panjani warriors of Thandar.

  Walking now with some care, the mighty Apemen traversed the jungle, gliding through the thick underbrush as silently as ever an Algonquin brave trod the savage wilderness of early America. No more silently than the moccasinclad feet of the Indian stepped the huge, splayed feet of the Neanderthal.

  And, ere long, he paused, freezing immobile in the shadow of a great tree. For the breeze had brought to his nostrils a familiar aroma, that of the hairy and unwashed bodies of his kind.

  Cautiously parting the branches before him, Hurok peered therethrough.

  Lumbering along down the aisles between the tall boles of the trees there advanced into view a great force of Korians Hurok could not count higher than the ten digits upon his huge hands, but he knew at a glance that there were many tens-of-tens. Among them he saw and recognized Uruk the High Chief and Xask his cunning vizier, and One-Eye. A grunt of surprise escaped the thick lips of Hurok when he observed the panjan Fumio to be among the host of the war party, and that he went freely and was not bound.

  For a long moment, Hurok debated within his savage and primitive heart: he had only to step forward and join his fellow Korians, to be restored to his place among his people and for his adventures with the stranger Black Hair to become only an episode in his experience, quickly over and soon forgotten . . or he could turn about and strive to warn the panjani of their peril, thus forever making himself an outlaw and an exile, shut out from the companionship of his tribe and the communion of his kind ….

  And there passed through the dim mentality of Hurok the Neanderthal a vision of that which was yet to come, and which only he could prevent from happening. In his rudimentary imagination, the Apeman pictured a howling horde of his fellows, falling upon the unsuspecting panjani as they toiled at the building of their camp. From concealment the Korians would charge whooping, swinging their stone axes and heavy clubs, jabbing with their flint-bladed spears. And the blood of the hated panjani would flow in rivers. And the blood of Black Hair-would be among them … .

  Without a word or a change of expression, Hurok whirled and plunged into the underbrush, heavy feet pounding the earth as he hurtled back the way he had come with all the speed his lumbering form could muster.

  To warn the enemies of his race that his people were upon them-to commit a crime against his own kind so horrendous as to be unthinkable-and to prove to Eric Carstairs that even a hulking, apelike Neanderthal can understand kindness, mercy, justice, and the meaning of friendship.

  Chapter 19. THE STAMPEDE

  With a swiftness born of utter desperation, Darya whirled and tore from her shoulders the bloody carcass of the uld she had slain back in the clearing. She raised the body above her head and hurled it in the very jaws of the infant pterodactyls as the slavering nestlings writhed and scrabbled toward her.

  As the l
ittle monsters fell upon the bloody carcass, Darya seized the momentary respite her act had given her. Crouching, she sprang into the darkness; reaching up, she seized and clung to the sharp stone lip of the chimney that was her only avenue to freedom and light and the open air.

  For a long, breathless moment she clung by her fingertips, her toes dangling within reach of the fanged jaws.

  Then, like an acrobat, the lithe and supple girl drew her knees up, hooked one elbow within the chimney, and inched her way into the shaft, inch by slow and painful inch.

  It was wider than it had seemed from below, as the Cro-Magnon girl discovered, to her immense relief.

  She had reasoned that it must be so, since by no other route could the adult thakdol have made its entry into the subterranean nesting place. But not until she had proven this to herself, did the girl dare hope.

  The rock chimney was rough and slimy with a moist exudation from the surface of the porous rock.

  Wedging her knees and elbows firmly into notches, the girl climbed the shaft with agonizing slowness, ignoring the pain as the sharp outcroppings scored scarlet furrows across the tender flesh of her arms and legs.

  From time to time she paused to rest and to catch her breath, for the ascent was one so difficult and hazardous as to have given pause to a veteran spelunker.

  And at any moment the monstrous mother might return to share the feast with her grisly brood below.

  After an interminable time, filthy from head to foot, smeared with her own blood and running with perspiration, the girl succeeded in reaching the mouth of the stone chimney.

  She dragged herself out up and over the lip, and sprawled at full length upon the flat rock, bone-weary with exhaustion and trembling with the relief of the tension under which she had for so long toiled.

  The brilliant day of Zanthodon was warm and comforting upon her weary limbs, and the freshness of the air as the winds of this height blew past her perch refreshed the weary jungle girl. How delicious, after the stench and the terrible gloom of the thakdol’s nest, to see the light of open day and to inhale the fresh, salt breeze from the inland seal

  And then she looked about, and her heart sank within her breast beneath a weight of leaden despair.

  For she lay atop a flat mesa-like shelf of rock which towered many hundreds of feet above the grassy plain.

  And there was no way down.

  It did not take the long legs of Jorn the Hunter very long to cross the plains to where the herd of wooly mammoths browsed. His swift and easy stride was a pace which the Cro-Magnon savage could have maintained for hours, if necessary.

  But the legs of his companion were far less young, and even in his long-ago youth the elderly savant had been no athlete. And so at the midpoint of their trek, the Hunter was forced to pause while his companion caught his breath and tilled the tremor in his aching limbs.

  In his secret heart, the Professor was not at all sorry that his strength had given out at his point in their journey across the plains. For he delighted in the unique opportunity to observe a herd of mammoths in their natural habitat, and at such close range.

  “Fascinating!“breathed Professor Potter to himself, his vague blue eyes gleaming with interest through his spectacles, which, as usual, tilted askew on the bridge of his nose. He stared at the enormous beasts, taking in the thick, shaggy, wavy hair, faintly reddish, which clothed the sides and shoulders of the browsing monsters, and the way the daylight gleamed on the polished ivory of their fantastic, curling tusks

  He studied the appearance of the young mammoths, their fat sides virtually bald save for a red-gold fuzz, and how their mothers tended them as they waddled about, squeaking and playing.

  “What a chapter this will make for my book!“the Professor wheezed. Jorn the Hunter looked discomforted.

  “I think we should be gone from here,“he grunted shortly. “For the thantors can be dangerous, you know, even though they are not meat-eaters … if they feel their young to be in danger, they can become formidable adversaries.”

  “Like any other herbivores, of course,“nodded the Professor. “Another moment,“he added in a pleading tone. “I really wouldn’t have missed this sight for the world-I”

  On the edge of the herd there stood a great bull with his back to the females and the young, for all the world as if standing guard. As his tiny eyes spied the two men crouched resting in the long grasses, the sentinel flapped his enormous ears and lifted his trunk, giving voice to a warning cry.

  As if by prearranged signal, the females crowded around, sheltering their young, while the other bulls echoed the sentinel’s challenging cry and came shuffling through the long grasses to spy out the danger the first thantor had discovered.

  “Let’s get out of here-now!“urged Jorn, tugging at the Professor’s arm.

  The skinny savant blinked nervously and wet his lips. He yearned to linger, to observe the protective system utilized by the Ice Age monsters, but the danger of alarming the mammoths into a charge was obvious.

  “I suppose you are right, young man,“he said reluctantly.

  “This way,“said Jorn. And springing to his feet, he began running at right angles to his former path, leading the Professor away from the grazing herd, hoping thus to relieve their fears.

  But it didn’t quite work.

  The trouble was that the bulls were sufficiently aroused by now to charge after anything that moved, and when they saw the two humans in flight away from them, they burst into a stumbling, heavy-footed pursuit.

  Jorn knew the lumbering monsters could not run as fast as he, but the old man was not as fleet of foot as was Jorn, and would slow them both down. But Jorn could not desert the Professor, leaving him to be gored and trampled by the mammoths. His mind racing even as his feet flew across the plain, he strove to envision a way out of their dilemma. Long before he and the Professor could reach the shelter of the cliffs, where deep and narrow ravines would afford them shelter from the bulky thantors, the enraged bulls would be upon them. And no man that has ever lived could hope to slay a wooly mammoth with his bare hands ….

  “We cannot hope to outdistance the brutes,“wheezed the professor, at his heels. “What shall we do?”

  “I do not know,“answered Jorn stolidly. “Save your breath for running!”

  Marooned helplessly atop the flat, mesa-like peak, Darya of Thandar came to realize the danger she was in as she looked about her, despairingly.

  All about her rose pinnacles and ledges of rock, and therein she espied many thakdol nests, some dilapidated and evidently abandoned, but others containing odd-looking; leathery eggs or squalling, slithering young.

  The Peaks of Peril must be, she realized with growing horror, the breeding grounds of the dreaded flying lizards. Some of their huge nests were built atop slender spears of stone; others had been wedged into the nooks and crannies which pocked the face of the crumbling cliffs. And a few were built upon the narrow ledges that wound down the sides of the peaks.

  The fresh breeze raised to her nostrils the unholy stench of the thakdol’s droppings, and the fetid reek of rotting meat. Here and there about the peaks flapped or soared the flying reptiles, and the girl knew that at any moment one might spy her clinging to the broad shelf of the mesa, and descend to rend and rip her tender flesh with horrible, hooked claws.

  It was imperative that Darya leave her precarious perch; but where could she go? Not down into that black chimney again, to descend once more into the loathsome darkness of the thakdol’s nest, for death awaited her at the bottom of that dark hole as surely as it did aloft.

  Seized by a sudden notion, the girl crept to the edge of the flat rock and peered down. As she had surmised, narrow stone ledges zigzagged down the steep sheer cliff. It was similar ledges along the face of the nearer of the peaks that had given her the idea.

  For such as the Stone Age girl, to think was to act.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, she flung herself prone and wrapped her lithe arms ab
out a projecting boss, slid her legs over the edge of the mesa. Her probing feet found the upper slope of the ledge.

  Testing her weight, she decided that the ledge could bear her without collapsing, and thus began her descent down the side of the cliff.

  To the pampered children of civilization such as you or I, that descent would have been an endless giddy nightmare of creeping along, inching your way down a steep shelf of rock that, at times, narrowed to mere inches. Nor did Darya find the experience exhilarating or particularly enjoyable: but the daring girl did not falter or give way to her fears. Her small, stubborn chin firmly set and resolve glinting in her blue eyes, she set her back against the cliff and inched her way along the ledge which led down the cliff by slow and tortuous stages.

  The savage girl knew all too well that the slightest miscalculation, the briefest moment of imbalance, a single false step, could plunge her to a swift and horrible death against the sharp rocks far below.

  But she went on, and in time the edge widened into a large shelf which extended several yards from the cliff wall.

  Here she paused to still the trembling of her limbs and to catch her breath in safety.

  As she relaxed, staring out across the broad plain, she espied of a sudden two tiny figures fleeing from the stampeding herd of mammoths.

  The bright yellow hair and bronzed, lithe figure of the taller of the tiny figures seemed to her familiar.

  As did the scrawny legs and wobbling sun helmet of the second.

  It was her countryman, Jorn the Hunter, and Professor Potter, the friend of Eric Carstairs!

  Catching her breath, she saw and realized their deadly peril, for the rampaging bulls of the herd were almost upon the two.

  Even as she watched they halted suddenly, the two fleeing figures, and fell prone in the grass for some inexplicable reason.

  And then her view of the two was blotted out by a mystery . . a blaze of flame sprang out of nowhere, and a plume of thick black smoke obscured her view.