The Lost World MEGAPACK®. Lin Carter

couldn’t,” Dr. Damon said gently. “You might have thought I was mad.” Then his voice sharpened. “But Jondra, I did warn you not to let the plane be landed in the valley, in my second message—”

      “Second message?” The girl stared at him. “I didn’t get a second one!”

      Dr. Damon whirled.

      “Pierre!” he cried. “Didn’t you deliver my second message?”

      Crane stalled as another figure silently stepped forth from the shadow of the plane. He had come up so quietly that the others hadn’t known he was there. Black eyes, sleek black hair, emotionless features and buckskin garments tabbed him instantly as a French-Canadian guide and a roamer of the north country.

      “Pierre, my guide,” Dr, Damon informed them parenthetically. Then again he demanded: “The second message, Pierre. By heaven, if you failed to send it—”

      “I send it,” Pierre protested in a hoarse, taciturn voice. “I mail it from Good Hope, t’ree week ago.”

      “Then it was lost in the mails,” Dr. Damon sighed. “Well, things have been uncertain right along, since the war. Thank heaven you’re here safe and sound, Jondra. And you, Crane and Harlan. Sorry about your ship, Crane. I’ll pay for the damages.

      “You can stay as long as you need to repair it. Plenty of food supplies came with Jondra. I have a comfortable cave-home in the nearby cliff. Well, you’re all probably tired and hungry. We can unload the plane tomorrow. Follow me.”

      The night was coming on. The three who had spent a dozen hours in the air were ready for food and rest. And shelter. A chill wind swept down into the valley, protected though it was.

      As Crane stepped away from the plane, a thought ground forward in mind.

      “Who turned off the motor, just after the landing?” he asked aloud. “Harlan, Miss Damon and I were on the floor, helpless. You, Dr. Damon, and Pierre were approaching. It couldn’t be any of us.” He grasped the scientist’s arm. “There wouldn’t happen to be—invisible men?”

      Dr. Damon started. “Not that I know of,” he vouched. “It’s a preposterous thought. Your motor died by itself.”

      Crane shook his head. “I’d like to believe that. But the ignition key was turned off.”

      “Then the jar of landing turned it,” Dr. Damon retorted. “Don’t let your imagination run away with you.”

      Imagination? Imagination that the plane at take-off had been heavily loaded? That Jondra Damon had kept on her feet in the bouncing air pocket? That a strange force had withheld his blow at Harlan? That a shock-cushioned ignition key had been turned by a human hand?

      All imagination? Or did it add up to some mystery, strangely linked with this phenomenal valley of invisibility?

      Crane didn’t know. But he was determined to find out, one way or another.

      CHAPTER III

      Sabotage

      Pierre and Dr. Damon led the way.

      Harlan, Jondra and Crane followed in single file, carefully stepping in the exact path they broke. Blundering into an unseen tree would not be pleasant.

      Dr. Damon kept one hand directly before him like a sleepwalker, for emergency, but seemed able to avoid invisible trees by some instinct. He stepped along sure-footedly, as did Pierre.

      “From experience,” he confided, “I can make out the trees. They aren’t absolutely invisible. Nothing can be, except air and colorless gases. The trees throw a faint shadow that my eyes—and Pierre’s—have learned to watch for. With the sun setting, the shadows are longer and more definite. Do you see them at all?”

      Crane gradually made out the faintest of shadows slanting over what seemed barren ground. Like eyes adjusting themselves to gloom, he could squint and bring them up slightly. He sucked in his breath. There were hundreds of those long, faint shadow-streaks. A whole forest towered around them!

      A forest of trees as solid as the ground, but as vagrant to the eye as smoke. Light went through them with less hindrance than through glass. It was amazing, almost incredible.

      The ground was not barren, however, upon closer inspection. A carpeting of dead needles lay decaying over the ground, as in any pine forest. Here and there they stepped over legs and fallen trees, completely visible. Dead branches and sticks were in the visible spectrum.

      “This valley’s invisibility is confined solely to its living life-forms,” Dr. Damon explained. “When a tree or animal dies, it passes into the visible.” He stopped, pointing. “Look—a rabbit!”

      Crane barely made out a faint trail of mist streaking across their path. Invisible animals roamed these invisible forest glens.

      “There are also fox, deer, and I think bear,” Dr. Damon elaborated. “It—”

      He was interrupted by a blood-chilling roar that sounded faintly from far across the valley. Both Pierre and the scientist jerked their heads, exchanged a glance, and gripped their rifles more firmly.

      “Lynx,” stated Dr. Damon briefly.

      “Are you sure it wasn’t anything bigger?” Crane asked. “I just thought I saw a shadow thrown momentarily across the far cliff wall, near where the sound came from. It was the outline of—”

      Crane stopped. He had been about to say something preposterous.

      “Lynx,” repeated Dr. Damon tersely.

      Crane saw the scientist’s surreptitious glance at his daughter. He kept still. But the shadow aside, the roar itself had never issued from the throat of a mere lynx. Of that Crane was dead certain.

      * * * *

      A natural rock overhang formed the roof of Dr. Damon’s valley dwelling. It extended back fifty feet in the base of the east cliff wall, which was three hundred feet high. Logs set upright to enclose the sides of the rock pocket were of Pierre’s handiwork.

      The space within was warm, dry, with a hard-packed floor. Pierre, with his kind’s resourcefulness, had also fashioned several items of crude furniture—chairs, tables and low bunks cushioned with pine needles. One new bunk had been added, obviously for Harlan.

      “You hadn’t meant for me to stay, then,” Jondra said. “There’s danger here, Dad! You wouldn’t say it in the message, but there is danger. I can feel it!”

      Already unnerved by the hazardous landing, the girl’s face was strained. It was not a light shock suddenly to see—or not see—a valley of shadow-things in an otherwise normal world.

      “Danger of stubbing your toe!” Dr. Damon forced a laugh and chucked his daughter under the chin. “Food and sleep are what you need, all of you.”

      Pierre had already begun boiling a stew of jerked beef and onions over a stone stove just outside the pine-slab door. They ate looking out over the now dark valley. It was not so eerie with darkness substituting for invisibility. The unseen forest creaked and rustled under a whipping wind from regions above.

      Crane woke twice in the night, on his unaccustomed bed of pine needles. Pierre sat dozing before the smoldering fire he kept up against the night chill of the northern latitude.

      But the second time Crane woke up, Pierre was standing erect, staring out over the valley of shadow-life. His expression in the firelight was strange—fierce and determined.

      Pierre would bear watching too, Crane told himself. Had he delivered that second message, or not? If not, why not?

      * * * *

      Unloading the plane took the better part of the next day. Pierre, Harlan and Hugh Crane shuttled between the plane and cave with arms full, Pierre leading. Besides food supplies for an extended stay, there were crates of apparatus and chemicals.

      Dr.