Queen of the Panther World

by Berkeley Lingston

  Hank was pounding a fist into a palm. His grey-green eyes were bleak, and his face had that stony look of intense anger. I could almost read his mind. Evidently Luria also could.

  “There’s no use in empty and useless speculations or threats,” she said. “We are helpless until help arrives. So let us be of good cheer.”

  “But how do you know help will come?” Hank asked.

  She smiled and I thought of the Mona Lisa. “Mokar will not fail us,” she said. “Mokar . . .?”

  “He is well on his way.”

  “But that stockade,” Hank said. “How was he able to, to . . .? But of course,” understanding came to him, “I only hope he will make it in time. I think Loko won’t give us too much of that commodity.”

  I stuck my two cents in:

  “And Loko’s just the sort of guy who’d keep us on tenterhooks, draw the time out, let us think that maybe he won’t cut our throats or whatever they’re going to do, until the last second. Somehow, though, I have an idea that it won’t be too soon.”

  A deep sigh turned our attention to the gigantic woman who was standing by Luria’s side.

  “What’s wrong, Sanda?” Luria asked.

  “I’m hungry,” was the simple reply.

  “The big gal talks sense,” I said. “So am I.”

  BUT food wasn’t to come for a long time. We sat around, lay around, talked, kept quiet, did everything to make the time pass more quickly. Luria and Hank got together in a corner and found things in common. I gathered without being told, that Hank was pitching woo at her and from the look on her face she wasn’t finding it hard to take. But me, I was lost. The other member of our party was built along the lines of an overweight wrestler. Besides, she was a little short of the grey matter. About all there was for me was some silent philosophy. And that’s pretty difficult to do in my position.

  When food did come there was enough of it to feed an army.

  “Like we’d asked for a last meal,” Hank said.

  I was taking a bite on something that tasted pretty good. But at that I kind of lost my appetite.

  “Why don’t you gag yourself?” I asked.

  “How about you doing it?” he wanted to know.

  “I got both hands busy, dope,” I said.

  “So why don’t you try eating with your feet? Ten fingers aren’t enough for you.”

  “Look, sponge-head,” I began edgily. I didn’t like the tone of his voice. “I didn’t ask to come along on the ride. So don’t play Sad-Sack for my benefit . . .”

  “Oh, hell, Berk,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be square,” I said quickly. “That was no joke, son.”

  The two women kept giving us wondering glances. Luria could understand the King’s English, but our version was over her head. The other gal was just size, no quality, except in muscle, of course. Suddenly the thought came to me how to make time pass. Talk, I had discovered long ago, is the finest devourer of time.

  “Y’know,” I said, “I’ve always been curious as to how you managed this business of, now I’m here, now I’m not. Just how do you do it?”

  Tiny furrows formed between her eyebrows as she concentrated in an explanation which would be simple enough, yet explanatory:

  “Oddly enough,” she said, “it’s a great deal more simple than you would imagine. Yet in one sense, more complex. You see, the whole thing is a matter of, shall we say, mind over matter . . .”

  “So you said and you’re glad,” I broke in. “Elucidate on this bit of mental gymnastics.”

  “. . . But because it is mind triumphing over matter the explanation is far more difficult than, say, the process of digestion,” she went on as though there hadn’t been an interruption.

  “Now I understand,” I said. “How simple the whole thing is, dear. But you’re so clever . . .”

  “Let her be, Berk,” Hank said. “Go on, baby.”

  “Baby?” The word wasn’t new to her but its connotation in the sense Hank gave, was.

  “A term of endearment,” I said. “But as Hank says, go on.”

  “Yes-s . . . Well. I simply think the object or person into another dimension of space and time. And that is the whole thing put as simply as I can.”

  “Fine. I don’t get it! Tell me this now. When we first saw you, you were dressed in clothes very much the same as the women wear on our planet. How’d you do that?”

  “I realized the instant the transposition took place and I saw the manner of dress of your women that I would be taken for a stranger. Not knowing the customs of your planet or country, I knew I had to do something about it. So I . . .”

  NOW wasn’t that like a woman, I thought. Give her a joke to tell and she’s a cinch to forget the pay line; give her a story and at the most interesting part she’ll get that far-away look like as if she’d just remembered something she saw in a blouse and couldn’t quite remember the shop. It was Hank, however, who nudged her on:

  “So you what?”

  “I lost my material self,” she said.

  I thought I heard right. But I wanted to make sure:

  “You dood? Lucky you found it. What do you mean?”

  “I mean I was no longer flesh and blood. For example, the outfit I wore.

  I got that from a shop on a city avenue.

  I remember it was dark and I simply walked in through the masonry and glass, took the outfit I wanted and left. It was not the time for sleep so I walked about. I also remember an experiment I performed. This disappearance of material self was new to me. There was a man coming toward me. I walked straight at and through him. I remember it so well because he was with a woman and they were holding a conversation. He did not lose a word as I stepped through him.”

  So there were ghosts. They all come from Pola. H’m. Could that mean there was no Heaven, no Hell, just Pola? Aah. What was I thinking? Hank, it developed, wasn’t thinking what I was.

  “How simple it all is,” he said. “All you have to do is dematerialize, step through the tent and escape.”

  “I thought of that and . . . No. We are all in this together. So we’ll remain.”

  “But Loko will put you to death,” Hank pointed out.

  “When that bridge is on us we’ll think about the crossing. Let us wait to see what Mokar brings.”

  “I don’t know what he’s bringing,” I said. “But I hope he makes it fast. My patience is running out.”

  “Then you’ll have to renew it,” Luria said sharply. “Mokar might have come to Jimno in the midst of an engagement. What’s more, they have to be certain that the children are in a safe place; that there will be enough guards; then they must locate Lovah and her force . . .”

  “Lovah? Coming here?” I asked. “But of course. Jimno’s forces will not be enough.”

  The whole situation was bathed in a new light. I was light-hearted Joe, ready for a lark or a wrestle, but now that my Lovah-honey was going to be involved—well! Things were shaping up. And not to my liking, either.

  “But holy cats!” I said. “Even with Lovah’s warriors there won’t be enough to make a decent fight.”

  “It will be a combination of several factors,” she pointed out. “In the first place there will be the element of surprise; secondly, Jimno and Lovah will not attack from the same direction; and thirdly, there is the factor of the paavans . . .”

  I asked what they had to do with it. “They were bred not for riding alone. Wait,” she promised. “You will see how terrible they can be.”

  Hank got to whispering to her again so I sat in my little corner and digested what she told me. Maybe we had a chance. Then I got to thinking of the parrot and how she was going to manage to get him out of Loko’s clutches. Hang it! I kept thinking of the bird as a material being. It was Luria’s father, of course. Then I thought how silly that was, especially if one said it aloud. Then I stopped thinking.

  Again time marched on. Suddenly I saw Luria place her hand to Hank’s lips. He stop
ped talking and I stopped dreaming. She had heard something, something to which our Earthly ears were not attuned. She arose with a movement akin to one of her paavans, she rose lithely and stepped toward the tent opening. The rest of us followed suit.

  “They come,” she whispered. “I hear them in my mind. I don’t know their plans, so be prepared for anything.”

  SHE warned us. But what happened was the last thing I thought would happen. Fire arrows . . .!

  There must have been hundreds of them. They fell with tiny hissing sounds and whatever they touched burst into flame. In an instant the entire compound was a mass of fire and smoke. But we didn’t wait to see what was going to happen next. Not us. We were the Rover Boys and gals, and we roved but fast, to hell and gone out of there.

  A torment of sound stuck our eardrums as we hit the open air. There were the terror-stricken sounds of men and women caught in the inferno, and above those were the horrible screams of animals tied to stakes and unable to escape. A pungent acrid odor came to my nostrils, an odor hard to place until I brought to mind a roast that had become too well-done.

  I was just standing, listening open-mouthed to the horror around me, when I heard a wild scream of exultation almost in my right ear. I pivoted and saw Luria, her face transfigured, looking straight down the avenue formed by the rows of tents. I understood her cry of triumph when I saw what was sweeping down the avenue. Mokar, riderless, was in the lead and directly behind him was Lovah and Jimno riding neck and neck in a wild race to get to us first.

  Mokar paused only long enough for Luria to mount and get Hank up behind her and then, headed straight for the center tent, Loko’s quarters. Lovah, looking like one of the Valkerie, only prettier, paused long enough for me to get on behind, then she was off after her queen. She handed me one of the two swords she held clenched in each of her dainty, though dangerous, fists.

  She raised hers on high and screamed:

  “For the Queen! Death to Loko and his!”

  But it wasn’t quite that easy. Captain Mita and the giant were no stupes. They were caught flat-footed, shocked with surprise. But it didn’t last long. Only long enough for them to start a dispersal of their forces. And the first thing they did, as though they realized the whole purpose of the attack, was to ring Loko’s tent with guards. We rode, like the six hundred, into the jaws of death.

  I don’t know how many Luria had at her disposal; I had no chance to count even if I wanted to, but certainly they weren’t many. We hit the outer shell of the ring with the force of a battering ram, broke through and were swallowed by the inner rings. And, baby, were those guys and gals tough! Loko hadn’t picked these babies for their kindness to their fellow-beings. They played the woodchoppers ball pretty good with their stickers.

  By some quirk of fate Loko’s tent was one of several the fire-arrows had missed. All around us the other tents blazed in fury. I caught a quick glimpse of them, then had no time for anything but the defense of my life and Lovah’s too. Her arm was swinging a death tune to whoever was within reach of that terrible plaything. As for me, I was also swinging, maybe not with the assurance or ease of Lovah, but with as terrible effect, As I said before, l had discovered a strange thing about Pola. My strength was multiplied ten-fold for some reason, and though I did not always hit a vulnerable spot, the power of my blow when it did land was enough to decide the issue immediately.

  But there was only one of me and Hank. The sheer weight of their numbers, plus the addition of reinforcements which kept arriving, lost us the encounter. A shrill whistling sound was suddenly heard and Lovah’s face turned to mine with a dismal look of despair on it. I heard her words:

  “Retreat! Luria calls retreat . . .”

  WHEN her mount’s head was turned and we were racing like the wind back down the avenue of tents for the open ground beyond. We raced into the flat and kept running. I kept turning my head and saw Jimno. My heart leaped in my throat in sudden terror. I couldn’t spot Hank or the girl. My pulse raced in time to the bounding paces of Lovah’s paavan when I saw them at last. They were the last two out of the compound. Like a true queen, Luria had waited till the last of her subjects were away before she retreated.

  We continued running at top speed for quite some time. As we raced onward endlessly Lovah gave me a resume of what had happened:

  “Jimno is wonderful. A born leader. He caught the rear guards who had been left in town flat-footed. They hadn’t a chance, and we mashed them to bits. Then we did an about face, ran in different directions, met at the rendezvous and made for the groups which we knew would be scouring the countryside for us. One by one we smashed them until at the end they were forced to join together. That was the moment for the third part of our forces to strike. The enemy was tired; we had fought them to a stand-still, and when the fresh forces attacked, they fled. Only to be met,” she ended proudly, “by the paavans we let loose. Aah! The terror and destruction our wondrous paavans meted out!”

  I could well imagine. I’d seen those gigantic panthers at work only a short while before, and what they could do to human flesh was not pretty.

  She went on:

  “. . . But we were still too-few. Loko must have enlisted the aid of every warrior on Pola. More and more kept coming. Their sheer numbers would have lost any pitched battle. We had to let off finally. Then came the message from our Queen . . .”

  I looked from side to side and tried to gauge how many there were of us. It couldn’t be done. We were strung out in a long line and since we were running in the flat which reminded me of the prairie of a midwestern state, many of them were out of sight in the hip-high grass.

  “Are we retreating to some plan?” I asked.

  “Yes. The Great Forest lies ahead. Not even the bravest of all the warriors on Pola would dare venture in its depths. Ambush is only a matter of hiding behind a tree. Loko isn’t that big a fool.”

  AFTER a while Luria’s forces merged until we were no longer stretched out in a long line although we were still riding loosely in groups of ten or twelve. Both Luria and Jimno rode their mounts close so that the three of our paavans were running abreast.

  Luria seemed dispirited. Hank had his mouth close to her ear and I could see he was trying to break her mood. Maybe I know more about dames than Hank does. At any rate I put my two cents in.

  “Cheer up, kid,” I said. “We haven’t lost yet. . . .”

  “We won’t lose at all!” she said. “I wasn’t thinking of how the battle stands. It’s, it’s . . .”

  I divined her worry. That silly bird. H’m! To her it wasn’t silly at all. It was her father . . . I kind of grinned and she noticed it.

  “He smiles,” she said grimly. “He is more brave even than I thought. The moment is dark and your friend smiles, Hank. He is a man.”

  “He’s a damn fool,” Hank said. But his eyes were twinkling in fondness. Henry Fondness, I called him. “He just doesn’t know when to worry.”

  “The only thing I worry about is meeting a deadline for Ray Palmer,” I replied. “But that wasn’t what I was thinking about. I think I know what’s bothering our pretty Queen. The bird. Aha! I was right . . .”

  She had turned her head in surprise.

  “. . . Well. I’m not raising an issue, understand, when I say stop beating that pretty head against a wall. The bird is just one of the many things that I don’t understand about this place. But you understand. That’s what counts. So it’s simple. He says he’s your father. Then surely he won’t play tricks with you. Loko seemed greatly impressed with him.”

  “You forget,” she broke in. “All Loko has to do is wring the bird’s neck . . .”

  Hank was ahead of us both.

  “He can’t,” Hank said. “The bird is a symbol known to everyone. But unless a symbol is visual it loses its significance. Your father was more than just smart. He gave himself the body of a bird the likes of which can’t be found anywhere on this planet. Loko won’t be able to find a substitute so he’ll
have to let him live. He will probably rig some sort of fol-de-rol about him being the only one able to understand the bird’s words, or perhaps the only one who is allowed to converse with the bird. He can’t afford harm to come to the bird.” Of course my thoughts ran in an altogether different direction. I’d been puzzling about the bird without getting any satisfactory answer. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to. But if the old gent had been such a world-beater in the wisdom line, he hadn’t proved it by doing what he had. What was more, I didn’t believe the bird. That business of imitating Barry Fitzgerald, and the others—of course with four or five different voices he would sound more mysterious. On the other hand, if he was that smart he should have been smart enough to have known that Loko and any one else who wanted to rule had but to find him and such a situation that was now at hand, would come about. There was something not very bright about that bird, or something too bright for me to get.

  Lovah whispered in an aside to me. I didn’t hear her and she repeated: “The Great Forest is at hand. Very soon it will welcome us.”

  I looked ahead and saw a wall of trees which stood so close together not a shred of light seeped into their depths.

  “You could hide an army in there,” I said.

  “As I told you,” Lovah agreed.

  “But how do we get in?” I asked. “The paavans will find the path. This is where we find them.”

  SHE spoke the truth about the panthers knowing their way. Straight as a die they sped for the solid wall ahead. As we came close the place looked a little terrifying. We had to stretch out again in a single line. Luria took the lead, Lovah, with me grasping her close about the waist a little more tightly than usual, came next. I caught a glimpse of Jimno holding up his mount. I imagined he was going to cover the rear. Then we were in the damp darkness of the forest that was really primeval.