Journey To The Underground World Page 4

“That much!”

  “Well, we’re stuck here for a while, at least,“I said grimly. “Babe can’t fly until we repair her rotors-yow!”

  I yelled, ducked, hit the dirt-and the Professor was not far behind me.

  “What was that?“I gasped, as the enormous kite-shaped black shadow sailed on over the lagoon.

  Glancing up, I saw wide, bat-like membranous wings, a long snaky head and tail, and a beaklike muzzle filled with an incredible number of very long teeth.

  “Either a pteranodon or perhaps a true pterodactyl,“murmured the Professor abstractedly, peering at the soaring reptile. “How remarkable that here life forms otherwise extinct still flourish … no pteranodon has flown the skies of the upper world for seventy million years and more, yet here they seem to thrive, if yonder specimen is indicative …”

  “Yeah,“I grunted, staring after the winged monster as it lazily flapped away over the treetops. “And come to think of it, Doc, how’d ‘you suppose the dinosaurs got down here, anyway? That volcano crater is straight down for miles and miles. Maybe a flying critter like that one that just went by could have gotten here under his own steam, but the protocroc we saw a minute ago certainly couldn’t.”

  He frowned, rubbing his brow with a grubby forefinger. “There may well be, probably are, other entrances to Zanthodon besides the one by which we traveled here … side vents, volcano fumaroles …

  and some of them may perhaps descend into the cavern-world at an angle less steep, thus affording passage to the four-footed saurians.”

  Warming to his latest theory, the Professor began a rambling discourse that was more like thinking out loud than anything else. No one quite knows what killed the dinosaurs off, but the difficulty of obtaining sufficient food, climactic changes to which the cold-blooded reptiles could not comfortably adjust, all these probably share the blame. He made it seem very understandable that some of the saurians, drifting down across Europe in search of food or warmer climes, might have crossed the Gibralter land-bridge (for in those ages, the Mediterranean was only a land-locked lake), finding their way to North Africa and, some of them, into Zanthodon.

  His explanation sounded pretty reasonable to me, but then, I’m no scientist.

  “Just think of it, my boy,“he breathed, eyes agleam with the good old scientific fervor, “living survivors of a lost age, dwelling here beneath the earth’s crust … ah, Holy Huxley and Dear Darwin! When we return again to the upper world, we shall astound the entire scientific community-or we could, that is; especially if we were to bring back a living specimen of a species known to have perished into extinction scores of millions of years ago! … Why, think of it!-Mighty Mendel, but it could make our names forever undying and immortal in the annals of exploration and discovery … !”

  I could just imagine trying to cram several hundred pounds of fanged fury into Babe’s cramped little cabin, but I said nothing. No reason to shatter the Professor’s dream.

  “If we get back,“I couldn’t resist pointing out. “The way things stand right now, Babe’s in no condition to handle that ascent. I couldn’t even get her off the ground, lacking those rotor-blades.”

  He rubbed his hands together briskly, glancing around.

  “Then we shall begin work at once,” he puffed. “We’ll make camp on that high ground … and we must find a source of fresh water, as I presume the lagoon is salty … some manner of rude palisade should keep the larger predators at bay while we effect repairs on your machine, Let me see, now … we can make charcoal with some of the dry wood from the jungle, build an oven with loose rocks, rig up some sort of smithy using spare parts from your tool box … the repairs will be crude, certainly, and only temporary, but surely with your strength and my skill, we can render the machine airworthy again within a matter of weeks-perhaps even days.”

  “I suppose so,“I said, a bit dubious about the whole thing. “But the main problem is going to be keeping ourselves alive that long.”

  And that was going to be a problem!

  The only weapon I had thought to bring along was my .45, for which I had plenty of ammo. But the automatic was not going to be much good against any of the bigger dinosaurs, and the Professor and I both knew it. What we needed for that was a good, huge elephant gun. If not a mortar!

  If I had known we were going to be marooned here, like characters out of King Kong or The Lost World, I could have bought some more sophisticated weaponry on the black market back in Cairo. A beltfull of fragmentation grenades would certainly come in handy, I thought to myself wistfully. The Professor pooh-poohed my fears.

  “Cease your trepidations, my boy,” he huffed. “Most of the giant saurians are vegetarians, and no more dangerous than milk cattle … now let us begin looking for a source of fresh water.”

  I thought to myself of a prize bull that had gored a careless farmhand to death back home when I had been a kid, but decided not to mention it. The Professor was a hard guy to argue with. He always had fifty-seven reasons why he was right and I was wrong, and I had to agree that he certainly knew more about dinosaurs than I did.

  So we started out, searching for a spring. In order not to get ourselves lost, we decided to trace an ever-widening circle, using the site of Babe’s wreck as the center of the spiral. Just in case we did run into trouble, I insisted on taking along a light backpack of medical supplies and food. He grumbled that this was an unnecessary precaution, but relented and gave me my head in the matter.

  Under the steamy skies of Zanthodon’s perpetual day we started off. The Professor had a theory about the uncanny daylight which bathed the jungle country beneath the earth:

  - he figured that the original explosion which had created the Underground World had reacted chemically with minerals in the vaporized rock to create an effect not dissimilar to chemical photoluminescence. He was probably right about this, for during all the time I was to spend here in Zanthodon the light never changed or faded or dimmed.

  Strange, strange! … This world of eternal day where monsters from the prehistoric past roamed and raged amid jungles left over from Time’s forgotten dawn ….

  But there were even stranger marvels yet to come.

  The first inkling we had that we were in serious trouble came swiftly.

  A black shadow blotted out the sky and as we threw ourselves prone, there descended on flapping wings like those of a monstrous bat another of those ghastly winged reptiles we had seen earlier.

  It was about the size of last year’s Buick, its lean and sinewy body covered with leathery, pebbled hide rather than scales, and it had the same long beaklike snout filled with an amazing number of long, sharp, white teeth.

  The thing pounced down upon us like a chicken hawk on a couple of fat pullets, clawed feet reaching for

  our flesh as it fell. I felt a blast of hot, stinking breath and looked up into mad, hungry scarlet eyes Then I hit the dirt, rolled, snapped up, leveling my .45. I pumped two slugs into the pterodactyl as it scrabbled about in the mud, trying to get ahold of the Professor. The stench of gunpowder stung my nostrils and the explosion of the gunshots was deafening. The thing squawked, red blood spurted from one wing, and it fell over on its side, clawing at the ground as I dragged the Professor clear, tugging one leg.

  “Th-thank you, my b-boy,“he panted. “That was a narrow shave … henceforward we must keep on the alert for such flying monsters-”

  The underbrush rustled as something big and greenishbrown came pushing through. It was bigger than three oxen, with a head the size of an oil-drum. Its cruelly beaked snout bore a short, curved horn thicker than my thigh, and there was nothing but fierce hunger in its little pig-eyes. It looked like the granddaddy of all rhinos, and it came thundering down upon us like a runaway locomotive.

  We sprang clear as it crashed into the crippled pterodactyl and sank that nasal horn to the hilt in the bat-bird’s leathery chest. It began to crunch and munch juicily, ripping off raw steaks, blood squirting all over; and it was one ugly custo
mer, let me tell you! It stood about seven feet high and was about twenty feet long, and it must have weighed in at two or three tons. It had four squat legs, bowed out at the knees, and a huge, swaying paunch, and a thick tail like an alligator. The thing’s feet looked like those of an elephant.

  “What the hell is it?“I whispered to the Professor as we took hasty refuge in the bushes.

  “I don’t precisely know, my boy,“he panted. “Obviously a ceratopsian, perhaps a genuine triceratops, I don’t know …”

  “You don’t know?”

  He glared at me with some asperity.

  “My boy, there are more than a dozen genera of ceratopsians, and I can’t be expected to recognize one at a glance! They look very different, you know, from their skeletons … but from the bony shield covering the monster’s neck, I should certainly say triceratops … but that is very interesting, very interesting indeed! For triceratops is known mostly from fossils found in North America-in the state of Montana, to be precise, where I believe the first skulls were discovered in 1888.”

  “Well, what’s it doing here in Africa?“I wanted to know.

  He shrugged helplessly. “My boy, your guess is every bit as good as mine!”

  “I think we’d better find a tree to climb,“I suggested. “That triceratops of yours is just about finished with his pterodactyl snack, and may require something more substantial for the main course-like you and me.”

  We found a huge, gnarly tree and climbed it. And not a minute too soon …

  Twenty minutes later we were still sitting there on a tree limb as the monster prowled with ponderous, earth-shaking steps around and around the tree, pausing from time to time to look up at us and grin, showing a vast pair of jaws and a mighty empty looking gullet. The thing’s head was at least seven feet from the base of that bony shield to the beaked snout, and looked fully capable of gobbling up both of us at one gulp.

  And it didn’t look like it was getting bored waiting for lunch, either.

  I gave the Professor a look.

  “Mostly vegetarians, eh?“I said sarcastically.

  Looking remarkably unhappy, the Professor made no comment.

  Chapter 6. BATTLE OF THE GIANTS

  Before long it began to rain, which didn’t make the Professor any happier. He seemed to hate getting wet as much as any cat, and fussed and fumed as we sat there, treed by a triceratops, getting soaked to the skin in a warm drizzle. The shower, unfortunately, did not seem to dampen the enthusiasm of the lumbering monstrosity below, or diminish his appetite.

  I said something to that effect, and the Professor snapped at me waspishly.

  “The giant reptiles have very small brains, and the creature will lose interest before long and wander off, having forgotten what he was after in the first place,“he said brusquely.

  Like most of the Professor’s predictions, this one proved to be wrong, too. For, half an hour later, the brute was still lumbering about beneath our perch, and he was beginning to get impatient, too. This impatience took the form of giving the tree we were in a nudge or two with his horned snout. And let me tell you, three tons of armor-plated superrhino can really nudge! He shook the tree as easily as a housemaid shakes out a feather duster, and we had to hang on for dear life.

  “Goodness, but I wish he would stop that infernal shaking!“wheezed the Professor, hugging the rough trunk in his skinny arms. “And if only he would go away-I am far too old for these acrobatics!”

  Then followed one of the most ludicrous scenes I have ever witnessed. For, whipping off his sun helmet, to which he had tenaciously clung all this while, he began flapping it at the triceratops below like a man trying to drive away an annoying mosquito.

  “Shoo, you nasty thing!-Go away!-Leave us alone, now!-We have no time for this nonsense-Shoo!“he shrilled in an exasperated tone of voice. The monster craned its neck skyward, blinking those tiny piggish eyes at the small, scrawny man above.

  I began to laugh so hard I nearly fell off my branch, for the expression on the triceratops’ face (or what passed for its face, at least) seemed to me one of blank bafflement. Oh, sure, I know the monster’s leathery visage was incapable of displaying any expression, but that’s what it looked like to me. It was as if the brute was reacting to a novel experience: for, surely, not too many triceratopses in this day and age have ever been angrily “shooed”by a shorttempered professor!

  Our salvation arrived right on schedule, shortly after the shooing. And it took a quite unexpected form … .

  Vegetation crackled, branches snapped and crunched, as a second huge form came lumbering out of the jungle. I took one look and let my jaw drop down to about here: for I had expected another dinosaur, from all the noise, but what emerged into view was a very big elephant wearing a fur coat!

  Our visitor was easily twice the size of any elephant I have ever seen, and entirely covered with a long and wavy blanket of coarse red hair. From beneath its long, prehensile trunk sprouted two fantastic ivory tusks, each a good twelve feet long, and these were extravagantly curled.

  I exchanged a look with the Professor, and he was as glazed of eye and dangly of jaw as I.

  “But this is utterly impossible …“he whispered, half to himself. “A wooly mammoth from the Ice Age! … How could it possibly coexist with one of the great carnosaurs?”

  “What do you mean?“I asked.

  “Why, the mammoths date from the Pleistocene, only one or two million years ago, and the triceratops is a Mesozoic reptile! … the two monsters come from ages nearly one hundred and fifty million years apart … . This is utterly fantastic!”

  And what followed was even more fantastic: a duel to the death between hyper-elephant and superrhino.

  Upon spying the dinosaur, the enormous mammoth stopped short. Flapping his ears he lifted his long trunk, giving voice to an enraged squeal of ear-ripping intensity, like a steam whistle gone mad. I got a hunch that this was Jumbo’s personal hunting ground, and that the triceratops was intruding where he was not welcome.

  As for the dinosaur, he was in a furious temper, anyway, from his frustration at not yet being able to shake down the lunch he had treed. Squaring off, pawing the mud with one enormous forefoot, he lowered his head, aimed that thick, stubby, pointed horn-and charged!

  He caught the mammoth right below the knee, goring him deeply. With a scream of pain and fury, the hairy brute went down on all fours with a thump that shook the ground. Then, swinging its huge head from side to side, the mammoth caught the triceratops across one beefy shoulder with the point of his curlicue tusks, ripping open a longjagged gash between two plates of the reptile’s armor.

  Honking furiously, the dinosaur backed off, snorting and pawing the mud, gathering his energies for another charge. The mammoth climbed to his feet again, slightly favoring his gored leg.

  The two monsters charged at each other, and when they met it was like two armored tanks colliding. The impact was terrific, but neither monster seemed even slightly dazed. And in the next instant they were at it fast and furious, goring with their tusks, trying to knock each other flat with those heavy hammerlike heads. The ground quaked and trees shook to the fury of their battle. It was an awesome spectacle, and the Professor was utterly enthralled.

  “Precious Pliny! Think of it, my boy, we are witnessing a combat no human eyes could ever have looked on before in all of the world’s history … such a duel of prehistoric titans as could only occur here in Zanthodon! Two gigantic monsters from the far ends of time, one a survival from the dim and misty Mesozoic dawn, the other a creature from the Ice Ages, separated from each other by a hundred and fifty million years of evolution … incredible!”

  I could understand his amazement; back home I have a friend who plays war games with miniature armies, and one of his favorite hobbies is to pit the great generals of history, divided by centuries, against each other: Napoleon against Peter the Great, or Alexander of Macedon against Hannibal, or Julius Caesar against Genghis Khan. My frien
d Scott would certainly have savored the rare spectacle we witnessed in that unforgettable battle between two titans from Time’s remotest dawn!

  It wasn’t long before I discovered something unexpected and even curious about the fight to which we were the only witnesses. And that is, it was really quite a one-sided contest.

  Rather to my surprise it did seem that the triceratops was getting the worst of it all. I suppose that I was accustomed to thinking of the gigantic prehistoric dinosaurs as colossal monsters, virtually invulnerable-a habit I probably picked up from watching Godzilla movies-but now that I think back on that fantastic battle of maddened giants from the remote past, I have to remember that the mammoth was far bigger and lots heavier than the dinosaur, who was, after all, only about twenty or twenty-five feet long and who must have weighed no more than two or three tons at the most.

  Well, the wooly mammoth was about seventeen feet high at the shoulder, and would probably have tipped the scales at two or even three times the triceratops’ tonnage. And his legs were like the trunks of the giant redwoods of California; when, after some trying, he finally got the triceratops under one of his legs, and had a chance to set his foot down upon the hapless reptile, he broke its back with a grisly snap that was sickeningly audible.

  It was all over quite soon: streaming blood from a half-a-dozen places in his flanks where the triceratops had gored him, the furious mammoth trampled the crippled dinosaur into bloody slime.

  And it suddenly occurred to me that this was our cue to make a hasty exit before the victor returned to the tree for the spoils. With his height, and that long trunk; the mammoth could pluck us from the bough as easily as an apple-picker plucks ripe fruit from the branch. I said as much to the Professor, and he chuckled nastily, as he often did when I displayed my ignorance.

  “We have little to fear from the mammoth, my boy-although were we to get underfoot, he could make short work of us … but, at any rate, we need not fear the beast will attempt to eat us … for, unlike the triceratops, the wooly mammoth is a vegetarian like his remote descendant, the elephant.”