DESPITE the mighty bounds with which Ted Dustin pursued the hideous flying reptile which was carrying off Maza of the Moon, the star-like gleam of her head lamp quickly grew more dim, showing that he was being rapidly outdistanced.
Presently it twinkled and went out, but he continued his pace, unabated, in the same direction.
As he hurried on, huge herbivorous dinosaurs, disturbed at their feeding, raised their massive heads from time to time to contemptuously snort fiery vapor at the queer and insignificant creature that bounded past them. Mighty reptilian carnivores, their bloody feasts interrupted, were more hostile, snarling or roaring hideously when he passed close to them, but he paid no heed to either.
Once his path was barred by a great, quill covered creature resembling a tiger, with the exception of the tail, which was a short, thick, spine-covered stub. It was larger than a draft horse, and presented a most fearsome appearance. With gleaming tusks bared, and sickle-like claws unsheathed, it sprang for him.
He halted, digging his toes into the ground for an instant to stop his forward momentum—then leaped backward, alighting fully fifty feet behind the spot on which he had stood. Before the creature could spring again he brought both pistol degravitors into play, and although the invisible beams played for but a moment across the huge breast of the beast, it was as if a giant scythe had suddenly cut through it, dividing the dorsal part of the body from the ventral. The claws and belly, apparently impelled by something akin to reflex action, leaped weakly forward, but the head and upper part of the body slipped off and fell to the ground behind them.
Without pausing to view the unusual sight of four massive legs wobbling disjointedly about carrying a great, sagging belly, Ted again pressed forward.
Presently the character of the country he was crossing changed. At first the shimmering, undulating surface of the savanna was broken by occasional outcroppings of white stone, mostly conical in form, but as he progressed, the vegetation grew more and more sparse until it disappeared altogether. He was in a forest of white columns, cones and pyramids—mighty stalagmites that dwarfed to insignificance anything of which he had ever heard or read, reaching up ward toward equally huge stalactites, depending from the vaulted roof above. The ground beneath his feet was completely covered by rock fragments, varying in bulk from mere white powder to huge boulders weighing thousands of tons evidently the remains of both stalactites and stalagmites dislodged by seismic disturbances.
His pace was slackened by these constant obstructions, and by the fact that the light gradually diminished in intensity as he drew away from the luminous vegetation. As he penetrated further and further into the deepening gloom that shrouded the ghostly columns there came to him the conviction that his quest was well nigh hopeless. There came, also, in the dark moment, the realization that the girl he had known for so short a time had come to mean far more to him than a mere companion in adventure—that if she were dead, life would have little to offer him.
Tired and dejected, he sat down on a boulder to rest and to think. Automatically he reached in his pocket for his black briar. As he did so, a tiny pebble suddenly fell at his feet. Several more followed as he quickly glanced upward.
Just behind him the huge stump of a broken stalagmite, fully a hundred feet in diameter and forty feet to where it had been cracked off, reared its shattered head. Turning his gaze toward it, he saw the tip of a huge pinion brushing back and forth across the edge as if its owner were engaged in a struggle. But most important of all, he noticed that the end of the wing as well as the broken edges of the stalagmite were bathed in a white radiance which differed in color and appearance from the phosphorescent luminosity of the lunar flora and fauna. Was it from the head lamp of Maza?
Bounding to his feet, he looked in vain for a place to climb the stalactite. Then, remembering the advantage his earthly muscles gave him, he backed up for a few paces, took a running start, and sprang into the air.
He had hoped to be able to catch hold of the rim of the broken top, but to his surprise, he passed completely over it, alighting in a cup-like depression about twenty feet in diameter which housed two of the homeliest looking creatures on which he had ever set eyes. They were scrawny, long legged, goggle eyed caricatures of the flying reptile which had carried off his companion some time before. Standing on the edge of the rim, dangling the girl by one leg in its huge mandibles and balancing itself with outspread wings, was the reptile itself, apparently trying to feed her to its young. That they had been unable, thus far, to do more than strip some of the wool from her armor, was evinced by the condition of their saw-edged bills, which both were shaking for the evident purpose of trying to rid them of the annoying fuzz.
All this, Ted saw at a glance, and no sooner saw than he acted. Whipping out a degravitor, he completely severed the great, arched neck of the reptile with a single sweep of its deadly ray-then caught the girl in his arms as she fell headlong, and was himself knocked to the floor by the falling, hissing head of the monster, while its giant body fluttered and toppled backward to crash to the ground a moment later. Partly stunned though he was by the blow from that huge head, he quickly dispatched the two hideous young ones with his degravitors—then turned his attention to the girl who lay across his lap.
Her eyes were closed and her head hung limply against the side of her glass helmet. Quickly opening her visor, he chafed her cheeks and forehead and blew on her eyelids, the faint flutter of which presently notified him that her consciousness was returning.
“Ted—Ted Dustin,” she murmured, and snuggled more closely to him.
He held her thus for a few moments, his heart beats registering an acceleration that could not possibly have been due to his recent exertions. Then she opened her great blue eyes, looked up into his, and said:
“Kari na Ultu.”
This, he interpreted to mean: “Go to Ultu,” so he, not having sufficient lunar vocabulary to ask her in what direction, managed to convey his question by signs.
She sat up, looked at the instrument strapped to her wrist for a moment, then pointed in the direction in which they had been traveling.
“Ultu,” she said.
For answer, he rose, still holding her in his arms, walked to the edge of the stalagmite, and stepped off, alighting at the end of the forty foot fall with no more of a jar than a similar step from a height of seven feet would have caused on earth.
Her little exclamation of alarm as they fell was changed to a cry of surprise and delight when she saw they had reached the ground unhurt. Then she signed that she wished to be put down.
He gently lowered her to her feet, and together they pressed on into the deepening gloom—their way now made easier by the light of the girl’s head lamp, reflected with many weird effects by the spectral white columns.
For many miles they traveled through murk so black that it seemed almost to have solidity, their range of vision limited to the small area lighted by Maza’s head lamp. Then a faint phosphorescent twilight tempered the thick darkness, and scattered tufts of luminous vegetation led into a mighty, tangled jungle, as well lighted by its own flora as the first one they had crossed.
Before they entered it, Ted unholstered one of his degravitors and, handing it to his companion, showed her how to fire it by pressing the trigger. She tested it, first on a clump of luminous toadstools and then on a small flying reptile, and he was delighted to see that her marksmanship was excellent, due, no doubt, to her proficiency with a red ray projector.
Then she extinguished her head lamp, and together they plunged into the riotous medley of sound and color, of strange smells and stranger sights that constituted a lunar subterranean forest.
After more than an hour of travel through the jungle without molestation from any of its queer creatures, they arrived at the bank of a swiftly flowing stream about sixty feet across.
The girl took a small drinking cup from a pocket of her armor, dipped it in the stream, and offered it to Ted, but he gallantly shook his head, indicating that she should drink first. She did so, sipping the water slowly as if it had been the last glass of some priceless wine of rare and ancient vintage. Ted filled his canteen in the meanwhile, and drank a deep draught, finding the water slightly alkaline, but quite palatable.
Having drunk her water, Maza opened two clasps which loosed her glass helmet, and lifted it from her head. Then she sat down on a low toadstool and began a minute examination of the fine wires on the crest which constituted the antennae of her radio set. She worked with them for some time, her white brow often wrinkled in puzzlement, but presently gave up with a shrug of disappointment.
Then Ted, who had been watching her intently, took the helmet from her hands and closely examined the broken head-set himself. His knowledge of radio, combined with his extraordinary inventive genius, stood him in such good stead that it was not long before he had located the source of the trouble.
While he set rapidly to work to repair the damage with tools from his pocket kit, his companion gathered some dried and broken ribs of tree fronds that had fallen nearby and ignited them with a tiny red ray from a small lighter she carried. Then, taking Ted’s hunting knife from its sheath, she cut several slabs from a pear shaped mushroom that grew near the water’s edge, spitted them on a green frond, and grilled them over the fire.
By the time Ted had finished his work of repairing her small radio set, she had spread the top of a toadstool with large flat leaves in lieu of a table cover, and placed thereon tastily grilled slabs of mushrooms, together with several varieties of small fruits which grew in abundance all around them.
Returning her helmet to her, Ted showed his admiration of her lunar woodcraft and culinary skill by seating himself opposite her and heartily falling to. The mushroom slabs were delicious, and the odd fruits exceptionally palatable.
When they had finished, Maza pressed the signal button connected to her head set, there was an answering voice, and she immediately began a conversation which lasted several minutes, but which Ted was, of course, unable to understand. Once he saw her glance at the instrument on her wrist, and judged that she was telling someone their location. Presently she ceased talking, walked to a bed of moss beneath some long, overhanging fronds, and lay down as if to sleep, motioning Ted to do likewise.
Tired as he was, Ted could not bring himself to even think of closing his eyes in so insecure a spot, so he sat down on the moss beside her, unholstered his degravitor, and patting it, indicated that he would guard her while she slept. She closed her eyes without protest, and presently the regular rise and fall of her small, shapely bosom indicated that she was asleep.
For several hours Ted amused himself by watching the strange creatures of the earth, air and water. Giant saurians, with necks gracefully arched, paddled lazily past, sometimes darting their heads with lightning like rapidity into the water, and usually bringing up fish or small amphibians in their powerful jaws. Small flying reptiles, soaring low, sometimes descended to the surface of the water, sometimes dived beneath it, triumphantly emerging with living, wriggling food morsels which they usually swallowed as they flew, with little or no mastication.
But tired nature gradually asserted itself, and Ted finally caught himself nodding. He shook himself awake, but eventually nodded again, and thinking to close his eyes for but a moment, slept.
His awakening, he knew not how long thereafter, was rude and startling, for a warrior clad in glittering silver armor was kneeling on his chest, holding the point of a keen sword to his throat while two others, similarly accoutered, held his arms against the ground. His first thought was for the safety of his girl companion, but a glance showed him that she was completely surrounded by a ring of the armored soldiers.