“They’re bluffing. We can tell ’em to go to hell. They can’t touch us. But I never knew the Murians could speak English,” Alan Hunter finished apprehensively.
“Hah!” the voice said.
“Golly!” Alan Hunter gasped. “They can hear us too.”
“Of course I can hear you,” the voice continued. “And you must stop. You must return the girl to the Murian city.”
Then Ann Hunter recognized the voice and realized why it had spoken to them in English.
“That’s Hofer,” she breathed in relief. “My guide,” she added for her brother’s benefit. “It’s all right. He must have found his way to the Murian laboratory, must have discovered how to use the things they have. Hofer is all right. He wouldn’t try to harm us. He must want us to return to the city so we can all rest up and leave this horrible country together.”
Ann’s relief was pathetic. The weird voice speaking from the air, even if she had heard it before, was terribly frightening. But now her brother knew how the voice transmission was effected, which removed all the uncanny weirdness from the act. And Hofer, instead of the Murians, was speaking to them.
In Ann’s mind there rose up a picture of Hofer, that man of iron nerves and relentless purpose. She remembered Hofer coolly following the flight of the pterodactyl with his rifle, waiting until he was certain of his shot, ignoring the death that was diving toward him. She remembered Hofer when the natives attacked, firing as methodically as if he had been at target practice. Hofer had stood by her, Ann Hunter recalled, when she insisted on entering Lost Land.
“Yes,” the voice said, in a tone that showed both satisfaction and anxiety at the same time. “You must return here. Then we will all leave together, after we have rested. But you must not continue farther. There is death ahead of you—an ambush. I can see what you cannot see.”
HOFER was protecting them, helping them. They had forgotten him, had left him in the Murian city, but he was still trying to help them.
“Of course we’ll return,” the girl said eagerly. “We’ll start immediately.”
She looked at Jongor and at her brother for confirmation. Jongor’s smooth bronzed face showed absolutely nothing. His gray eyes were fathomless. He was holding the spear, ready for action. He only glanced at Ann. His eyes were roving the jungle. There was a curious, strained alertness about him.
A moment later Ann’s eyes grew wide. For on the face of her brother she read incredulous horror.
“Was Hofer your guide!” he gasped.
“Yes. What do you mean? Is there something wrong with him? He seemed all right to me.”
“Everything is wrong with him!” Alan Hunter groaned. “He was my guide too. I was warned not to take him, but I paid no attention to that warning. He got the fever and I had to send him back with an escort of carriers. That was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me, for in his fever ravings I learned what he really is.
“The man is an anarchist! On top of that, he is hopelessly insane, but is clever enough to hide it. He’s a mad anarchist, sworn to the destruction of all forms of government.[2]
“Somewhere or other Hofer must have picked up a clue to the existence of Lost Land. He has spent the past fifteen years trying to find his way here. He’s never been able to manage it, because no one was willing to finance an expedition for him, until we came along.
“Oh, Lord!” young Hunter groaned.
“Ann, believe me. He and Varsey got together and played you for a sucker. Hofer would have given his life to get into this valley, because “he wants the weapons of the Murians. He intends to use them to overthrow all the governments on Earth. And now he has the weapons he has spent years trying to get!”
Her brother’s words were hammers of doom pounding in Ann Hunter’s mind. She saw how completely she had been tricked, how Varsey and Hofer had used her for their own devilish purposes. She remembered the hidden energy that had seemed to possess Hofer, how he had forced himself forward relentlessly. At last she understood the bidden urge that drove him: He wanted to find the long-lost Murian city, to obtain the terrible weapons of this vanished race!
Hofer was a traitor not only to Ann Hunter but to all humanity, to all civilization!
“He’s trying to get us back into his power,” Alan Hunter said. “He’s trying to trick us again. But we know what he is, and we won’t go back. We’ll get out of here, and come back with an army—”
A burst of raucous laughter came from the air.
“You think you can escape me!” Hofer’s voice snarled from nothingness. “You think you will get away, and send back bombing planes! Hah! You miserable slaves of pluto-democracy! I will show you whether or not you will escape from Hofer!”
“What does he mean?” the girl whispered.
“He means—that!” Jongor whispered, pointing.
The sound was already audible, a humming drone. Coming into existence in the little glade where they stood was—the vortex of the “shaking death”!
Already bits of soil, leaves and dead twigs were swirling into the air.
CHAPTER X
The Charge of the Dinos
HOFER had gained control of the “shaking death.” He could see his victims. No matter where they fled, he could send the frightful whirling vortex after them.[3]
Ann Hunter screamed. Her brother stood, pale and distraught, gazing with frightened eyes at the glinting mist swirling in a growing whirlpool around them.
Jongor acted. Instantaneously. He caught the girl around the waist, the bearded youth by an arm, and leaped toward the edge of the vortex. Rising wind currents smote at him. Cyclonic bursts of air buffeted him to one side. Air, if moving with sufficient speed, can seem as solid as stone. And this was the same kind of fearful whirlpool that drives wheat straws through solid oak boards. This was a tornado, artificially created.
Jongor fought against it. The great muscles of his legs, muscles that he had developed during the long years when he had had to run to live, strained against the fury of the rising air. He felt the vortex begin to lift him. His weight began to lessen. Alan Hunter, who weighed far less than Jongor, was flung upward. The giant fought to drag him down. At the same time he fought to reach the edge of the screaming pool of air.
The vortex was growing. The currents were moving faster, whirling more violently. The sound was becoming a thunderous roar. Above the roar, Jongor thought he could hear Hofer’s screams of wild laughter.
“That will fix you, you savage!” Hofer was screaming. “And that will fix you too, you snooty society girl! And that idle wastrel who is your brother, this will fix him, too! Hah, hah, hah! Die, damn you, die!”
Jongor drove his muscles to the last fierce erg of their energy. And the vortex held him! He strained forward. The air currents caught him and threw him back. He fought as he had never fought before. There was a girl in his arms. He must save her. But he couldn’t save her! Strong as he was, the vortex was stronger. And growing stronger still. It was threatening to lift him clear off the ground.
Around him the soil was whirling upward. Small trees were being uprooted and flung toward the sky. He knew if once he was borne aloft, he would never come down again, except as torn, mutilated flesh.
Releasing the girl, he dropped to the ground.
“Grab my belt!” he yelled to the two. “Hang on tight! I’m going to crawl!”
And crawl he did. He felt Ann’s and Alan’s fingers tighten in the tough skin belt that he wore. Digging hands and knees and feet into the ground, he began to crawl. It would have been fatal to walk erect. The currents were too strong. In less than seconds they would have swept him off his feet.
But down next to the ground, the howling vortex did not as yet have quite so strong a grip. For what seemed an eternity to him, Jongor did not know whether he was going to win or lose.
Then he reached the edge of the vortex. Dragging the girl and the youth with him, he leaped out of the circle of whirling air.
; “Hah!” Hofer shrieked. “So you have come out of the grasp of the ‘shaking death’! And you still think you will escape! Hah!”
Jongor ran as he had never run before. Behind him the vortex lumbered into motion. It began to follow him. It did not move very fast. Alone he could have outdistanced it. But he was carrying Ann Hunter in his arms and trying to help her brother at the same time.
He plunged through swamp pools, he crossed slow-moving streams, he fought his way through the tangle of creeper vines. Blood appeared on his legs where the briars cruelly tore him. Sweat began to glisten on his body. His great chest began to heave.
FINALLY, in the center of a heavy forest, he found shelter. The trees hid them from the sight of Hofer. They heard the vortex go roaring past.
“He’s lost us!” Alan Hunter panted.
“I doubt it,” Jongor breathed. “True, he has missed us this time, but he will not quit trying. Our only chance is that we may escape until night comes. Then, if we can make the mountain pass before morning, we may be out of danger.”
“We’ve got to escape,” the youth said desperately. “I’m not thinking of our own lives, either. We can die, and the world will take little account. But Hofer is an anarchist. He hates all forms of government. If he learns how to build that vortex—and he will learn, you can bet!—he’ll leave Lost Land. He’ll go to America, and suddenly a very mysterious tornado will strike Washington, D. C. It will destroy the Capitol.
“That will be serious, but it will be as nothing compared to what will follow. He’ll turn those vortices loose on every capital in the world. A series of tremendous tornadoes will strike London, Berlin, Rome, Tokyo. Every government in the world will be blown off the map. Hofer has the weapon to do it. The ‘shaking death’ of the Murians is just exactly what he wants. That’s why we’ve got to escape!”
Jongor listened. The cities that Alan Hunter mentioned were only names to him. He knew nothing of them. Nor did he know the meaning of government or of civilization. But he saw the fierce earnestness of the youth facing him.
Gravely he answered, “We’ll escape—somehow.” Remaining out of sight they heard the vortex roar across Lost Land, heard it come back, cross and crisscross the huge valley searching for them.
They didn’t wait for night to start out toward the pass that led out of the valley. Taking advantage of every bit of cover, they began moving toward the distant mountain trail that would take them to freedom.
They came to a gap in the trees from which the knife gash that marked the trail was visible. Jongor pointed toward it.
“The pass is miles away, but we must reach it before morning,” he said.
There, in that narrow passage in the mountains, was safety. For Jongor, it was the beginning of the trail to the world he had never known. It was the return to the land of his father, the land that he knew was terribly menaced by the fanatic back there in the city of the Murians.
He looked at the distant pass. His outstretched arm froze. Horror leaped into his eyes.
“The pass is blocked!” he snarled. “The shaking death is in the pass.”
Hofer had set the vortex directly in the narrow passage. He had blocked their escape. They were trapped. Trapped! They could see boulders, tree limbs, whole trees even, rising into the air.
“Isn’t there another way out of this valley?” Ann Hunter cried.
“No,” Jongor answered. “That is the only pass in or out of Lost Land. And it is blocked.”
His face looked as though it had been chiseled out of granite.
“Isn’t there anything we can do?” Alan Hunter pleaded. “We’ve got to do something. We simply can’t fail!”
Jongor shook his head. “I know of but one thing that will save us now,” he said. “It’s a desperate chance.”
His eyes roved around the jungle as if he were looking for something. Behind them, the vortex roared as it rumbled across the valley. To the left, another tornado had come into being and was reaching upward to the heavens in the form of a gigantic inverted black cone. Two vortices! And another was forming. Hofer was taking no chances. He would sweep all life out of the valley in order to destroy the three humans who menaced him.
“One thing we can do,” Jongor said. “As soon as night comes, we will try it.”
“What is it?” Alan Hunter asked.
He told them what it was. Their faces paled as they listened.
DAWN was in the air. Hofer leaned from a window erected by the long-gone Murian scientists. The moon was setting. It gave off enough light to show the vague outline of the huge valley below him.
“Hah!” he gloated, shaking his fist. “That has done it.”
Beyond the wall that circled the city were eight huge vortices.
One was raging in the mountain pass miles away. Others were sweeping like gigantic scythes back and forth across the valley.
Hofer turned back into the power room, made a quick adjustment of the intricate instruments assembled there.
“Ho, Varsey,” he said to the man in the room with him. “They’re dead. Do you hear that? They’re dead! Not a chance is there that they have escaped.”
Varsey’s arm was in a sling. His face was bloodless.
“Hurry up and make certain they’re finished,” he said. “Then let’s grab all the jewels we can carry and start getting out of this place! It gives me the creeps!”
“Yes,” said Hofer, cannily studying the man in the room with him. “Take a look from the window on the other side and see if any Murians are around.”
“They beat it long ago,” Varsey protested. “No use looking.”
“Just to make sure,” Hofer insisted. Varsey moved to the window Hofer had indicated. As he turned his back, the guide snatched a rifle leaning against the wall. He took careful aim and sent the bullet crashing between Varsey’s shoulder blades. Without a sound, Varsey collapsed to the floor. He writhed once, and was still.
Hofer viciously kicked the dead body.
“You were a coward and a weakling,” he spat contemptuously. “If I had taken you back, you would have betrayed me, just as you betrayed that girl. No one will ever betray me, Varsey I The whole earth will tremble before me! When I loose the vortex of the ‘shaking death’, no man will be able to stand against me. Do you hear that, Varsey? I shall be king of the world! Do you hear me, Varsey?”
Varsey did not move. A little stream of blood rilled from between his shoulder blades and spread over the cold stone floor.
Somewhere in the laboratory an instrument howled. Hofer adjusted it. Then he turned again to the window and looked down over the valley, where the vortices swept like scythes across the jungle.
Gone was the stolid, unemotional guide. Hofer was alive with passion now. The tortuous depths of his dark mind spewed over his face in a gloating grin. The mad anarchist stood at the top of his distorted world. Down below him he saw all his dreams of destruction coming true.
Suddenly his grin became fixed. A glassiness crept into his eyes.
Around the city there was a protecting wall. Beyond that wall, in the gray half-light that comes before the dawn, he saw something moving. It was coming straight toward the wall. As he watched, it shoved the wall down, and plodded over it.
Hofer’s grin of triumph was changed into a distorted mask of fear as he saw what was happening.
CHAPTER XI
The Wages of Hate
“FASTER, little one,” Jongor yelled at the top of his voice. “Push the wall down. Shove it to one side. It was made to stop you, but it was made many centuries ago and has grown weak. You are strong. Push the wall down. Push, little one; push as you have never pushed before. Push, thou cousin of the snake, thou great overgrown chunk of worm food. Push!”
The dinosaur grunted like a straining mule. It dug its hoofs into the ground, set its powerful tail to secure all possible leverage. And it pushed! Tons of muscle strained. Giant tendons creaked. Horny head plates cracked as the beast shoved against the wall.
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And the stones gave. They began to slide over each other!
“Push!” Jongor roared. “Get the lead out of your miserable carcass, and push!”
The dino “pushed.” With a thunderous crash the wall collapsed.
“Through the opening,” Jongor commanded. “Through it, and into the city, you lumbering rascal. Move, I say!”
The dino drove through the break in the wall. Behind it—behind it came a score of others!
This was Jongor’s plan: to find the dinosaurs and bring them near the city. With the crystal he wore on his arm—the crystal that some Murian official had lost in the valley and Jongor had found—He could control not only one but many of the lumbering beasts. All during the night, dodging the sweeping vortices of the “shaking death,” he and his two companions had rounded up the dinos.
Now he and Ann and Alan Hunter rode the first one. And the others, caught in the thought-impulses transmitted from the crystal, followed blindly behind. They did not know what they were doing. They only knew an imperative command came to them, a command they had to obey. And they obeyed. A thundering herd, they charged into the city of the Murians.
“He’s in the building with the domed top! Alan Hunter shrieked. “We’ll have to tear it down to get him out!”
“We’ll get him!” said Jongor grimly. “Move, my little cabbage, move!”
The dino swung toward the structure Alan Hunter had indicated.
Jongor knew how close a race they were running with death. If Hofer had time to set another vortex going, even the charge of the dinosaurs could not break through.
And the vortex was starting! Jongor saw the first mist swirls swing in a giant circle, felt the howling thrusts of the first battering winds.
“Faster!” he roared, shaking the spear that he carried toward the building where Hofer hid. “Faster thou worthless cockroach of the swamps!”
The vortex began to roar.
The dawn was suddenly hideous with blasts of sound. The squealing roars of the dinosaurs, the thunder of their feet, the howl of the gyrating vortex of wind, all combined into a cyclonic horror that shook the very earth. The Murians, long since fled, huddled together and told each other that the world assuredly was coming to an end.
Jongor- the Complete Tales Page 8
