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  "I would advise you, sir, to stand up and take your punishment like a gentleman! For I have every intention of giving you a sound thrashing-"

  The hairless man got to his feet and stepped toward his assailant, mouth open to ask some question or to make some retort. Whereupon, Professor Potter knocked him down with a beautiful uppercut, a skill he had not until then known that he possessed.

  This time blood leaked from a split lip and the hairless one spat out the fragments of a broken tooth.

  The Professor bent and touched the trembling shoulder of the child on the floor, who was staring at him with wide, shocked eyes.

  "There, there, little girl," the Professor murmured solicitously. "I would advise you to run home to your mommy. I shall see to it that this vile cur refrains from molesting children from here on, for I shall give the fellow the thrashing he deserves-"

  Suddenly, and quite unnervingly, the naked child screamed -shockingly loud in the frozen stillness that had fallen over the scene. Screamed, and crawled away from the touch of the Professor's hand with terror written on her pale face.

  "Why, why, ker-hem!" the old scientist spluttered, mystified.

  Looking around, he saw all of the cavern people in the immediate vicinity standing stock still, staring at him wildly.

  "My good people, I only-" he began bewilderedly.

  One tall, lank individual pointed a trembling hand at him, with fear and loathing visible in his green eyes.

  "He struck a Gorpak!" the cavern man said unbelievingly. "A Gorpak-"

  "He must have gone-mad," cried another in shocked tones. "To strike a Gorpak is an act of madness!"

  "Perhaps he is a pervert," said another, and this one was a woman old enough to be the child's mother.

  She looked the Professor up and down with horror and disgust. "Indeed, he looks like a pervert," she remarked. "See how he covers his body with those dirty rags, and wears hair upon his chin."

  "You are probably right, Noorka," commented the man standing at her side. "Only perverts cover their bodies in emulation of the Gorpaks."

  Then, turning to address the hairless man, who sat on the floor nursing his sore jaw and bleeding lip, the last man to speak bowed humbly to him and in a servile voice asked the following astounding question:

  "Here is the thing who struck you, Master, while you were using my child. He must be either mad or a pervert. May we kill the thing who dared to interrupt your pleasures?"

  "Yes," replied the Gorpak mumbling, with a venomous glance at Professor Potter. "You may."

  Part Three

  THE HOLLOW MOUNTAINS

  Chapter 11. THE THINGS IN THE PIT

  When Tharn of Thandar reached the shores of the Sogar-Jad, he stood there brooding, mighty arms folded upon his deep chest, regarding the misty waves of the underground ocean with a thoughtful and somber gaze.

  They had searched the jungles between the plain of the trantors and the sea without finding any further trace of his missing daughter, and now they must decide in which direction to go in order to continue their quest.

  Grizzled old Komad, the chief scout, suggested they strike "north" along the coast to skirt the edges of the Peaks of Peril.

  "There is no particular reason which Komad can offer his Chief for going in this direction," the lean old scout admitted, "but we must go in one direction or another, and I suggest the Peaks."

  "There is one good reason," offered a warrior named Ithar, who was the leader of the huntsmen. "And that is that Eric Carstairs went thither when he parted from us." The keen-eyed men of the Thandarian host, it seems, had noticed when I separated from Hurok at the scene of the stampede, and struck out across the plains on my own, thinking to find Darya among the Peaks of Peril. Respecting my right to go forward alone, they had not sought to stay me.

  "It is as Komad the Scout has said," rumbled Tharn in his deep voice. "Between one direction and the opposite direction, there is little choice. But before we go down the coast in order to return to Thandar, let us go a bit farther up the coast and see what is to be seen in those parts. Ithar, give the command, for Tharn has spoken."

  Without pausing to rest or eat, the host of warriors traveled along the shore where the plain of the trantors ended, and skirted the edge of the Peaks, where they dwindled to mere stony hillocks and small rocky islands scattered out a ways into the Sogar-Jad.

  In time they reached the small grassy meadow beyond the peaks, where a little stream meandered through the jungle, across the plain and poured into the sea. They saw a calm lagoon and, beyond it, the long and heavily jungled promontory with its spine-like ridge of stone hills, which was a minor continuation of the Peaks of Peril.

  Unbeknownst to them, this small area had been the scene of many dramas. Here it was that Jorn and the Professor had emerged from the mountain pass to see Darya borne off by the pirates; here Jorn and the Professor had parted company; beyond, on the promontory, Jorn and Darya had come ashore, only to fall prey to the trap of the tilting stone atop that very promontory; and there the Professor had vanished into the caverns.

  The pity of it was that Tharn was at that moment closer to the lost Princess and to the other adventurers than he had been in some time, and he did not know it.

  Hurok, too, was somewhere in the hollow world within-the mountains, and Xask, Fumio, One-Eye and myself were not far away at this juncture. Many and widely separated are the threads which make up the texture of my narrative, but at this point the diverging stories of our adventures begin to draw together.

  Grimly, Tharn surveyed the empty terrain. Nothing that his eyes could see in the scene before him suggested other than that none of us was within a thousand leagues of this place; nevertheless, he gave the nod to Komad. The old scout led his men to explore the field, the little brook, and the beach. He returned with better news than he had left with.

  Tharn followed him to the beach to see for himself.

  "See, my Omad, the marks of a young girl's foot in the sand, and those of a young warrior's." said Komad.

  "These could be the marks of the feet of any woman," said the jungle monarch heavily.

  "Not so, my Omad! They are obviously not the marks of the feet of a small child, nor of an old woman, but of a girl the age of the gomad, your daughter. Neither are they the marks of the feet of a female of the Drugars, for, although I have never seen a female of the Drugars, they may hardly be expected to be any more comely than are the males, with feet correspondingly big."

  "There seems to me no reason to assume they are Darya's prints," argued Tharn.

  Komad gave him a level gaze.

  "These lands do not seem to be inhabited," the scout observed. "And what other young woman of our race do we know to be in these parts of ?"

  Tharn returned his gaze unblinkingly.

  Then he said, "Follow the footprints, if you can."

  Under Komad's direction, the scouts fanned out and began to search the sandy beach and the greensward. They did not require much in the way of a trail to follow: a mere freshly dislodged pebble, or crushed sprout of vegetation, or patch of disturbed leafmold sufficed to eyes as keen as theirs.

  Before long they entered the jungle, where they found the trail of Jorn and Darya easily enough.

  It ended in a blank wall of atone.

  From his hidden place on the balcony far above the huge room, Hurok watched as a troop of odd-looking, bald and bandy-legged guardsmen brought the listless, shuffling slaves into even ranks. They did this with cudgel blows and whip lashings, also with angry, barking cries. It puzzled the Apeman of Kor that the panjani did not turn upon the little men and crush them down, for theirs was the superiority of height and weight, and also of numbers. Cowering and whimpering under the blows of their guards, they seemed to lack all power to resist.

  Shortly thereafter, when all were assembled into two rows, an old man hobbled forward to harangue them in shrill, hysterical tones. The echoes of his speech wh
ooped and gobbled through the hollowness of the cavern, making his words difficult if not impossible for the Apeman of Kor to make out.

  He was of their kind, but different in some wise. Shriveled and gaunt, as pale and naked as were the others of the cavern folk, his stringy arms were clasped about with wooden beads strung on thongs or lengths of gut. These clanked together as he gesticulated. His skull-like head was crowned with a peculiar headdress wherein six red bits of glass or perhaps gems smoldered in the dim illumination. It did not occur to Hurok until later that this headdress might have been fashioned with the fore end of the six-eyed Sluaggh in mind . . . for at the moment, fortunate fellow, Hurok had yet to see his first Sluaggh; the time was fast approaching, however.

  After an interminable harangue, the old shaman (or what ever he was) shuffled back out of the way and lifted a brass tube to his shrunken lips.

  A shrill, piercingly sweet whistle sounded, making Hurok wince.

  Immediately, a square section of the floor began to lift on unseen gears, disclosing a scene of such repellence that it was like a glimpse into the deepest pit of hell . . . .

  Beneath the enormous stone chamber lay a noisome, fetid swamp of black slime and oozing, stagnant water.

  Therein squirmed and lazed crawling, enormous, glistening wet, legless things like overgrown leeches or giant slugs.

  They were leathery brown on their outside or upper portions, and their soft bellies were loathsomely pale. Hurok could see the beady glitter of their little red eyes in the gloom of the pit, and his huge body shuddered instinctively.

  He could not have said why, some primal sense of danger flickered in his mind, perhaps. For Hurok had never heard of the horrible Sluaggh, neither had he ever seen one before.

  As he watched, nape-hair bristling, thick lips framing an inaudible growl of menace, one of the leech things crawled forward to the edge of the pit and fixed its glittering multiple gaze on one of the redhaired naked men who happened to be first in line. Without the slightest flicker of expression on his slack-jawed face, this hapless individual stepped over the edge and fell into the squirming slime.

  In an instant the Sluaggh crawled upon his unresisting body and clasped it in a cruel embrace. The man shuddered once or twice as the obscene mouths of the leech's suckers fastened on his pallid flesh, but made no effort to escape.

  An indescribably horrible sucking sound commenced from the slime bed. The whites of Hurok's eyes shone and red madness flickered in their depths; was the panjani insane to endure such an abomination?

  Why did he not fight back?

  The sucking sound went on and on. Now another Sluaggh slithered to the edge of the opening, fastened its gaze upon the first of the cavern people who stood in the other line, and overwhelmed her will. For she was a young woman, remarkably attractive, with long curling red hair foaming over her superb breasts. The dim light of torch candles, which did not penetrate into the slime pit, gleamed on her smooth flanks and dimpled buttocks.

  Like a sleepwalker, she stepped over the edge and fell into the repugnant embrace awaiting her. Hurok could watch her face as she yielded her naked body to the embrace of the crawling slug. Her features were pale, her mouth open and gasping, but her green eyes were glazed, indifferent, empty.

  Again, that hideous sucking sound . . . .

  Hurok growled, deep in his chest; his eyes glared redly and foam flecked the corners of his wide, thick-lipped mouth and beaded his shaggy russet beard. He watched, helpless to intervene, as men, women-even small children-stepped forward in obedience to some unheard command, and entered the pit of their doom.

  When one of the Sluaggh had finished dining and had crawled from the limp body of its prey, the red marks of the cruel suckers could clearly be seen; they marked the corpse from throat and breast to abdomen and thighs. And the body itself seemed shrunken and depleted.

  There were eight of the Sluaggh in the slime pit, and it took eleven of the cavern people to satisfy their hunger. Of course, some of their victims were small children whose little bodies naturally contained less blood than those of the fullgrown adults.

  At length this grisly and interminable feast was over. Swollen and replete, the gorged leeches lay sommnolent among the corpses, twitching a little as they sprawled lazily in the stinking mud. Again some mysterious signal passed between them and the bandy-legged Gorpaks, and in obedience to their masters, the Gorpaks lowered into place the stone lid.

  Then the Gorpaks trooped out of the room. And for a little time the cavern people held to their ranks, but gradually it dawned upon them that their contributions were no longer required. The rank broke up and the cavern folk circulated aimlessly about the room, rejoining family groups or friends, or just sitting down where they were.

  There was no conversation between them, and there was no weeping. Neither did any of those who had survived the ghastly feast show the slightest sign of being glad or relieved that they had, for the moment, at least, escaped the doom which was seemingly common to their unfortunate race.

  Shivering, sick to his stomach, Hurok retreated from the balcony into the corridor again.

  Never in his life had he seen anything more horrible than the spine-chilling scene he had just witnessed.

  And he knew that it would haunt his dreams for years to come . . . .

  And now that the Neanderthal man had discovered the truth about these mysterious caverns, he was eager to begone . . . to escape these clammy stone ways, thick with the lingering stench of the fetid slime pits and the hideous things that squirmed and slithered therein.

  Every moment he continued to remain here within the hollow mountain increased the chance that he might be discovered and captured and forced to endure the horror he had just watched inflicted upon others.

  He headed back the way he had come, but the corridors branched and intersected, confusing Hurok.

  Before very much more time had passed, he knew that he was thoroughly lost.

  Stepping with care, slinking in the deepest shadows, huge stone axe held at the ready, the Korian warrior sought to find again the huge empty chamber and the broken door of wood that led to the cave beyond, and thus to the freshness of open air and clean daylight and the safety of the outer world he knew.

  But the portions of the maze in which he now inadvertently found himself were busier than those he had earlier traversed. The first time one of the cavern people came unexpectedly upon him, Hurok raised his axe and was about to silence the cry of alarm he fully expected to burst from the lips of the red-haired man.

  But no such alarm sounded. The pale, naked man merely gazed past the Drugar with dull, uncaring eyes and continued on about his business. Scratching his head in perplexity, Hurok stared after the retreating figure. He could not understand such complete indifference to an armed intruder. It seemed uncanny and weird; almost, the Neanderthal suspected himself to be invisible, but of course he knew that he was not.

  It began to seep into the small brain of the Apeman of Kor that these people of the caverns were in no wise akin to the other panjani he knew from the outer world. They were stalwart warriors-bold, dangerous, fearless, skilled fighters. But these men, although superficially similar to them in appearance, were like sleepwalkers, seemingly devoid of will or attentiveness; true slaves, slaves down to the blood and bone and sinew, incapable of independent thought, without the slightest, feeblest spark of the instinct for self-preservation or survival.

  He pitied them and despised them. Most of all, I suspect that Hurok pitied them, although pity-like mercy and fairness and good sportsmanship-are qualities found but seldom among his kind.

  He should have known that his progress through the cavern city went not unobserved.

  Suddenly, with a deafening clang, a cage of iron bars came crashing down to enclose him. It had been pulled up against the roof by cables and winches, and the trap had obviously been prepared with him in mind.

  With a coughing grunt of rage, H
urok threw himself against the barrier. All of the titanic strength of his ape-like arms swelled in his mighty thews as he grasped the iron bars and surged against them. His efforts were, however, futile.

  A troop of Gorpaks emerged from the shadows where they had been hiding, to survey the creature they had captured. One of them grinned nastily.

  "It is a bull Drugar, in the prime of his strength!" the bandy-legged little man chortled, eyes gleaming.

  "The Lords will be well pleased, for their carcasses contain very much hot blood!"

  "Loose me from this trap, panjani dwarf, and Hurok will find out soon enough how much hot blood your own puny body contains," growled the Neanderthal, shaking the bars until the entire cage rattled and clanked.

  A cudgel wielded by another Gorpak rapped his hard knuckles smartly, where he clenched the bars.

  "Silence, animal, when Captain Lutho deigns to speak in your presence," snapped this other.

  The little officer swelled visibly under such adulation.

  "Never mind, Vusk," he drawled gloatingly. "If only the Lords would not take such very great pleasure from his gore, your Captain should be pleased to teach the animal a lesson . . . ."

  "Every guardsman in the Ninth knows and respects the prowess and bravery of Captain Lutho," the others in the troop chorused. Lutho grinned, disclosing a row of small yellow teeth which had been filed to sharp points, and for a moment, even through his rage and fury at being caged, Hurok wondered if the Gorpaks had not perhaps adopted tastes in cuisine similar to those of the loathsome slugs they served.

  Lutho dismissed Hurok and his growling fury with a contemptuous glance.

  "Process the creature, will you Vusk? I have matters to at tend to in the breeding pens. See that the impertinent animal serves at the next Feasting. . . "

  All the blood of Hurok of Kor ran ice cold at the hideous import of those casual words.