Jongor- the Complete Tales, Page 2

  THE girl’s pack was larger. And Varsey’s was the largest of the three. He could barely lift it to his shoulders.

  They disposed of their surplus supplies in a crude cache. Jongor’s lips curled contemptuously as they tried to conceal the things they were leaving behind. Even the dullest-eyed Blackfellow would instantly discover where the supplies were hidden. The three people, Jongor discovered, knew nothing about practical concealment.

  He thought they would follow the Blackfellows. He was glad of that. These people were intruders here. They were strangers. They had come from that mysterious world that lay far away. When the Blackfellows attacked them, he had aided them only through impulse. As a reward, they had tried to kill him, which served him right for trying to help strangers. In all Jongor’s experience, one thing was universally true of strangers—they were dangerous.

  Jongor was surprised when they continued in the same direction they had been moving. They weren’t leaving, then. They were going forward, into Lost Land. They were entering his country. The trail they were following would lead them, if they had the nerve to follow the extremely hazardous passage, into that vast valley that was Lost Land.

  They would pass almost immediately under him. Silently Jongor drew his bow, nocked a feathered arrow on the string.

  The intruders were coming closer every minute. Jongor drew himself erect. The bow bent in a great arc. Hofer was in the lead. Then came the girl. Then Varsey. The tip of Jongor’s arrow covered Hofer.

  Jongor had only to release it. The feathered shaft would leap downward. It would go completely through the guide’s body. Another shaft would be on the way almost before the first had landed. It would strike the girl. And a third, flashing downward almost as quickly as rifle fire, would finish Varsey. They were strangers.

  One of them had tried to kill their rescuer. The bow creaked softly as the tough wood complained of the tension of the string. The three whites were directly under him now. This was the time! Release the arrow!

  But the bowstring did not hum its song of whistling death. Slowly the gray-eyed giant let the bow slip back from the great arc. The nocked arrow did not leap downward.

  Jongor watched them move along beneath the fold of rock where he had taken refuge. He watched them sweat along the trail toward Lost Land. His eyes followed the girl. His smooth brown face became sad. Thoughts turned over in his mind. The girl—He remembered another girl who looked amazingly like this one who had passed below him—his mother.

  Ten years had passed since Jongor’s mother had died, and his father with her. Jongor had been twelve years old when the teros caught them. His face became dark with rage as he remembered how the screaming teros had killed his father and his mother, leaving him alone in the vast expanse of Lost Land.

  His father had been Captain Robert Gordon, one-time U. S. Naval aviator, and the remnants of the smashed plane in which he and his bride had attempted to fly over Lost Land were Jongor’s most sacred possession. Fierce air currents had sucked the plane downward in that epic flight. Out of control, it had crashed to earth. Captain Robert Gordon and his bride had barely escaped with their lives. And even though they escaped the smashup, they discovered there was no way to escape from Lost Land.

  Twisted, tortuous mountains surrounded the vast valley, and beyond the mountains was the desert, waiting to suck the life from those who attempted to cross it. Captain Gordon had made the attempt. He had found his way through the mountains. But always the desert had turned him back.

  THERE, in Lost Land, Jongor had been born. His parents had named him John Gordon, but his first infant efforts to pronounce his name had resulted in “Jongor.” So “Jongor” he had become, to his adoring mother and father. And Jongor he had remained.

  When the teros killed his parents, after a hard but happy existence twelve years later, Jongor had faced the terrible prospect of survival in a land armed with claw and fang. A twelve-year old boy would have been a juicy tidbit for the beasts in the valley, a pleasant appetizer. He no longer had the strength of his father to protect him, his mother to care for him. He had to face the world—alone.

  The first few years after the death of his parents had been a nightmare. Not only was John a forlorn and exceedingly lonesome boy, but death lay in wait for him at every turn of the trail. Death waited beside every water hole. Danger lurked in the movement of every twig. Against the terrible forms death took in Lost Land, young John Gordon, could not fight back. He could only run.

  He had run. And his legs had grown long and his chest deep. There came a time when he no longer had to subsist on snails and frogs and fruit, on fish and smaller animals. There came a time when Jongor, who had learned to live by running, walked unafraid. His father had made him a bow and arrow.

  It had been little more than a toy, to amuse and please the eager youngster.

  But as the years passed Jongor had made other bows, each one stronger than the last, each one sending its feathered death farther, each bowstring throbbing louder, until now Jongor feared nothing in all Lost Land, except one thing. And since he stayed away from the one thing that he feared, the one thing that was stronger than even his mighty muscles, deadly in a way even his keen mind could not understand, he was relatively safe.

  The sight of Ann Hunter stirred strange nostalgic memories in Jongor’s mind. She was a girl. His mother had been a girl. So he did not launch the arrow from his mighty bow.

  Instead he followed the little party.

  All day long he followed them. He could have made three times the speed they were making. They moved cautiously along narrow ledges, with hundreds of feet of drop below them, where Jongor could have traveled as swiftly and as silently as a shadow. They toiled painfully up steep slopes where he could have gone at a dead run.

  But their lives had never depended on the speed in their heels.

  Two days later, when the three entered Lost Land, they were obviously exhausted. Varsey had already disposed of most of his pack. The girl was moving unsteadily, stopping often to rest.

  Only Hofer plodded doggedly on, as though he were driven by a fierce, relentless urge to move forward.

  Jongor watched them enter the huge valley. To the left, stretching away until they were lost in the distance, was a line of high, rocky cliffs. To the right, spreading out like the arc of a great fan, was an expanse of steaming jungle. It was the same as much of the land surface of the globe must have been when the earth was young—bog, swamp, clumps of trees rising on little knolls, dirty, stagnant water caught in still pools. Reeds, creeper vines, saw-briars grew everywhere. There was no obvious path through it.

  Jongor saw Hofer hesitate. The guide’s eyes swept the expanse of Lost Land. The three talked earnestly for several minutes. Then they did what Jongor was afraid they would do. They turned to the left, along the line of cliffs. The going was obviously easier there.

  Even if he had not known what lived in the cliffs, Jongor’s keen eyes would have found the beasts lurking there.

  WHAT was the matter with these three people, he wondered. Couldn’t they see? Were their senses so dull they could not detect what was waiting for them?

  They must be blind, he decided. They didn’t even see the dino down there in the swamp. The dino was resting in a clump of trees, but Jongor knew he was there. He could see the tiny birds flying around his back.

  Jongor looked at the dino. Then he looked at his wrist. Around his muscular left arm, just above the waist, he wore a curious bracelet. The strangely linked metal, covered with weird hieroglyphics, was worn smooth.

  The bracelet was set with a single stone as big as a silver dollar. The stone was a crystal. Although Jongor didn’t know it, the crystal was of exactly the same type that is used to tune modern radio transmitters to an allotted wavelength.

  It had been carefully ground and polished. Some long-dead workman had hollowed out the center of it. The interior of the crystal was creamy with tiny veins of light. As Jongor looked at it, the veins of light i
n the heart of the stone seemed to pulsate with a faint illumination.

  “DAMN the mosquitoes!” said Varsey petulantly. The stinging insects rose in clouds from the swamplands He slapped at them.

  Ann Hunter looked backward, along the trail they had followed. During the first day, there had been hope in her face, but it had long since fled.

  Hofer saw her. “There’s no use looking for him,” the guide said. “Varsey plugged him. He’s either dead or he’s holing up somewhere licking his wounds.”

  “You speak of him as if you thought he was an animal,” she said angrily.

  “That’s probably what he is. These natives aren’t far above the animal stage,” Varsey interposed contemptuously. “He’s a native freak.”

  “He isn’t, either!” the girl flared. There was real anger in her voice now, “He’s white. I saw him and I know. His skin is brown from living in the sun, but he isn’t a native.”

  Varsey relapsed into a sullen silence. They plodded forward without another word-

  “I—I don’t like this country,” said Ann protestingly. “I get the creepy feeling that something is watching me from every side.”

  Her eyes swept the jungle. She was accustomed to living in cities where the most dangerous thing is a speeding automobile. In spite of her recent experiences, she had not learned how to look for danger in the jungle. Her eyes passed over the resting dino. Jongor would have seen it instantly, but Ann did not even notice the strange blotchy pattern in the trees.

  Nor did Hofer. He was not looking for a dino, and certainly he was not expecting to see one. Consequently he didn’t see it. The wind—what little wind there was down here below the mountains—blew from the monstrosity toward them, so it did not smell them. And its eyesight was very poor.

  Something creaked on the cliffs above them. The guide’s ears caught the sound. He stopped, and looked up.

  But the tero—for such was the dino—was still. It had seen them and had shifted its position slightly, getting ready. Its skin was the same color as the cliffs and unless it moved, it blended so well with the rocks as to be almost invisible.

  “You see something?” Varsey demanded.

  “I guess not,” Hofer answered. “I heard a noise that sounded like a saddle creaking but it must not have been anything.” He moved forward.

  “Let’s find a place and camp for the night,” Varsey implored. “I’m tired as a dog.”

  “You’ll probably be more tired than you are now before you have a chance to rest,” Hofer grunted.

  DOGGEDLY, step by step, the three plodded on.

  The tero drew itself into a knot ready for launching. Its whole misshapen body quivered with eagerness at the sight of the food passing below it. The beady eyes winked with the fierce hunger that it felt. And there was food—juicy, helpless food—for the taking. The tero leaped.

  Ann Hunter saw the shadow hurtling down the side of the cliff. She turned tired eyes upward. She thought, when she first saw the shadow, that a strangely shaped cloud was passing over the sun and throwing a darkened blotch on the cliff below. Then she saw what caused that swiftly moving shadow. It was no cloud. It was—

  Her scream rent the air.

  Hofer leaped like a startled dog. He, too, had seen the shadow an instant after Ann. Her scream roused him to instant alertness.

  He looked up. His eyes bulged.

  “Good God!” he shouted. “A pterodactyl!”

  It was the great winged lizard, the forerunner of the present-day birds, the hideous monstrosity with leathery wings and long bill lined with needle-sharp teeth, that may easily have given rise to the legends of flying dragons that occur in the folk lore of almost all primitive peoples.

  It was bigger than an eagle, bigger even than a South American condor. But unlike the eagle and the condor, it was not a good flyer. It could not rise from the ground. As a result, the pterodactyls lurked among cliffs, from which they could launch themselves downward, their great leathery wings serving as excellent gliders. If the wind was strong, or if they gained enough speed in the descent, they could zoom upward, sweeping and circling like a gull. Unlike a gull, they could not maintain their flight.

  The great bill, armed with needle-sharp teeth, the curved clawed wings, their size and the fact that they dropped like a plummet on their unsuspecting prey, made them dangerous antagonists.

  The sight of the bird-lizard diving toward them paralyzed Ann Hunter. For the first time in her life, she was completely unnerved. A rabbit crouching in the grass, suddenly hearing the whistle of wind around the wings of a diving hawk, has the same moment of paralysis. Ann Hunter could not move.

  Varsey gibbered. The same kind of paralysis gripped him.

  Hofer seemed built of nerveless iron. A shocked cry of recognition had leaped from his lips when he saw the pterodactyl plummeting toward them. Then he went into action. His rifle leaped to his shoulder. But even in this moment of extreme danger, he did not fire blindly. He took aim.

  Seconds ticked away while the barrel of his rifle followed the plunging tero.

  It was falling like a stone. Each split second brought it nearer.

  Hofer’s finger tightened gently on the trigger. The rifle spat fire. The bullet smashed through the left wing of the bird-beast. It hit the tero, but not in a vital spot, merely throwing it off its line of flight. The thing had been aiming straight at Ann. It would have struck her, with beak and claws and flapping wings dealing terrible blows, if the bullet had not blocked it.

  The tero landed ten feet short of its mark. But it wasn’t dead. Far from it. The pain of the bullet wound had merely enraged it. It leaped forward.

  To the frightened girl, the tero looked as big as a horse. She saw the huge wings beating the air, the outstretched beak lined with gaping teeth, the cruel, gleaming, beady eyes. The wings were not strong enough to lift it off the ground. But they lifted it part way, so that it seemed to leap at her.

  It hissed like a snake.

  HOFER shot the monstrosity through the head. It collapsed into a quivering heap of leathery membranes right at Ann Hunter’s feet.

  “Thanks,” the girl panted, white-faced. “It would have got me—if you hadn’t shot it.”

  The guide ignored her. He looked at the pterodactyl. There was amazed, incredulous wonder on his face. He shoved his cork helmet back, and wiped the sweat from his face.

  “Himmel!” he muttered. “A pterodactyl! Who would have believed that? Why, the last of those things perished from Earth thousands of years ago!”

  In this moment of stress, an accent had crept into Hofer’s voice. Muttering, he shook his head again. His eyes went from the dying bird-lizard up the cliff from which it had leaped. The shock of what he saw there froze his face into an expressionless mask.

  CHAPTER III

  The Dino Rider

  “GOD save us!” Hofer gasped.

  “There isn’t just one pterodactyl up there on those cliffs! Dozens, there must be! A whole nest of them, there is. Look!”

  Ann Hunter felt her flesh crawl when her startled eyes swept again up the cliffs. The ragged line of rocks was broken into ledges, peaks and caves. Every ledge, every peak, every cave seemed to harbor one of the monsters. The cliffs were alive with them. As far as she could see, the shuddery shapes moved.

  Attracted either by the shot, or by the sight of the first bird-lizard diving, they were coming out of the caves, crawling far out on the ledges, scrambling up on the pinnacles of stone that rose above the cliffs. The whole vast escarpment seemed in motion.

  Everywhere Ann looked she saw wings moving, beaks gaping. The sound of the moving bodies was a heavy, creaky, continuous rustle. The air was suddenly heavy with the nauseous reek of decay that made the girl fight to keep from retching. Hisses sounded.

  “We can’t go any farther in this direction,” Hofer whispered. “We must go back, and quickly.”

  Already one of the pterodactyls had launched downward in a screaming dive. It was the nea
rest one to them, now that the first one had been killed. It swooped, attempted to zoom upward, its wings flapping heavily—and fell short.

  But it kept coming toward them. It could move rapidly on the ground. Another dived from the cliffs. And another.

  “Back!” Hofer shouted. Ann and Varsey needed no urging to obey his command. They could see the teros coming.

  Ann knew the pterodactyls were coming faster than they could retreat. She knew also that their guns could stop a dozen of the flapping monsters. In a pinch they might stop half a hundred of the things. But they could not stop them all. There were too many.

  And they had absolutely no sense of danger. The slaughter of the first wave would not in the least deter the second:

  Ann Hunter saw death flapping after them. It was Varsey who saw death coming from the rear. He was in the lead, stumbling in panic-stricken flight away from the teros. He stopped suddenly. Ann bumped into him.

  “Ugh!” Varsey gurgled. With trembling hand, he pointed.

  Down in the swamp, in a clump of trees, a crackling noise sounded. Something huge heaved to its feet there. All of its great length was not visible through the trees. But what the girl saw made her think a mountain was heaving up in the swamp. It looked that big to her. She saw the great gray sides, the armor plate, the incredibly horned snout.

  Hofer saw it too. “A dinosaur!” he panted. “Himmel! But it is logical enough. Where we find pterodactyls, dinosaurs we will also find. But who would have thought that such things anywhere on earth had remained alive in the Twentieth Century?”

  Most of the fright that the sudden appearance of the diving teros had caused seemed to have left the stolid guide. The sight of the dinosaur did not seem to scare him either.