The Lost World MEGAPACK®. Lin Carter

      Singularly, here and there an ordinary pine stood plainly in view, green and solid.

      “Some seeds drift down into the valley from above and take root. Seeds of the common visible variety.”

      Crane suddenly chuckled. “Hunting invisible deer! Most hunters have a devil of a job bagging one they can see!”

      “You think we’re fools to try?” countered Dr. Damon imperturbably. “Wait and see—”

      He broke off and held up a warning hand. The line stopped. The scientist pointed ahead.

      Two hundred yards beyond, a steam spring’s vapor wound lazily around and around a clump of bushes. Off and on, like the shutter of a blinking light, it outlined the form of a deer lying hidden. Sensing human presence and the consequent danger, the creature was on its haunches, ready to leap away.

      But it was still there—a perfect target. The steam silhouette betrayed it, robbing it of the advantage of invisibility.

      Pierre was slowly bringing up his rifle, with the caution of an experienced hunter. The others held their breaths. The gun steadied, then barked, sending echoes crashing back and forth between the cliffs.

      Crane saw that Pierre had missed. The deer had leaped away at the crack of the gun, with all the lithe grace of its kind. It vanished utterly, passing beyond the steam curtain like a fading dream.

      “What’s the matter with you, Pierre?” Dr. Damon snapped irritably. “First time I knew you to miss a perfect shot like that.”

      The French-Canadian stood dazed, looking at his rifle in stark disbelief.

      “Something push barrel,” he mumbled. “Spoil shot.”

      “If that’s the best excuse you can think of—” The scientist glared at the man, then waved the party on. “Well, we’ll try our original scheme. We won’t find any more deer lying that conveniently in view.”

      He explained his plan. “You’ve said frankly you’re a poor shot, Harlan. So you be our beater. Make a circle near the cliff edge quietly, and then cut straight toward us. Any deer you scare up will run our way.

      “Now, there are three main springs ahead. Pierre, the one at the left. Crane, the middle one. I’ll take the right one. Between the three of us, we eventually should bag a steam-silhouetted deer.” The scheme was carried out. Harlan, carefully picking his way through the invisible forest, made a wide circle, then stamped noisily toward the three men with ready rifles. Two deer were seen leaping through the steam curtains—but away instead of toward them. Disconcerted, Crane’s shot went wild. Pierre and Dr. Damon hadn’t even tried to fire.

      “Deer gone here now,” the scientist muttered. “We’ll try again in an hour.” The results were the same. The deer were again leaping away from them, at an angle they were unprepared for. No one fired.

      “What’s wrong?” Dr. Damon rasped, his temper short. “You must make too much noise circling, Harlan.”

      “I don’t!” the chemist snapped back. “If you ask me, something else scares them first, before I get near—and from the other direction.”

      “A dragon?” Jondra gasped in alarm. “Of course not,” her father snorted. “We’d easily hear him.”

      An hour later, Harlan tried again.

      Three deer came leaping. At the instant Crane saw a silhouette over his steam spring, he tensed to swing his rifle from right to left. The deer’s motion the other way—from left to right—completely disconcerted him. There was no use to shoot blindly, a second later, at the portion of thin air into which the deer had dissolved.

      “Damn!” he grunted. “We’ll never get them that way. They just don’t come from the right direction. What’s doing it?”

      Harlan came back with a sober, almost frightened face.

      “I think I saw—” he gulped.

      “A dragon?” Jondra asked again.

      “—the shape of a man!” Harlan finished.

      His four listeners gasped. The thought of an invisible man, more than even the frightful dragons, sent chills down their spines.

      “I saw it way ahead, running through the steam curtain, swinging its arms and chasing the deer away before I could get near. He must have made enough noise to scare the deer, though they couldn’t see him.”

      “Nonsense!” Dr. Damon had recovered and almost yelled the word. “You’re all letting your nerves go. Pierre and I have been here six months without running across this mythical invisible man. It was a bear walking upright, naturally.

      “Now scare up the deer again, Harlan. And don’t picture your grandmother in the mists next!”

      Crane this time deliberately watched for the deer to be scared up from some point opposite Harlan. When a steam silhouette did appear, he had the exact bead. The crash of his gun hurled from the nearest cliff.

      In his eagerness, arriving first at the spot, he yelped as an invisible hoof cracked him smartly on the shin. He stared down. On the grass before him lay a creature kicking in its dying reflexes. He could actually see only one thing—the mushroomed bullet hanging apparently in mid-air, lodged in an invisible heart.

      Then he saw more. A pool of liquid was slowly outlined at his feet and began to tinge with a faint ruddy hue.

      “Quick, Jondra!” Dr. Damon panted, running up. “The incisor and pump.”

      Jondra opened the case she had carried all morning, handing over the instruments. With the skill and speed of experience, the biologist inserted a large hypodermic in an invisible jugular vein. Crane and Harlan sat on invisible animal legs that were still striking out. Dr. Damon attached rubber tubing and pumped transparent blood into a series of flasks.

      “Haemolin—sodium citrate!” he barked at Harlan.

      Harlan dumped the prepared solutions in the flasks, reagents that prevented coagulation and deterioration. It was all done in a minute.

      The blood-drained body beneath Crane shuddered, gave a final heave, and was still.

      “Watch!” Dr. Damon commanded.

      Slowly the corpse took form. Inner organs misted into being, rapidly solidifying to visibility. Then overlying tissue precipitated out of thin air. Muscles sprang into being. A vast network of veins and arteries snaked into vision. Finally hide, hair and hooves appeared.

      In the space of fifteen minutes, an ordinary deer lay before them, no different from its cousins in the outer world. With the passing of life and the breakdown of the delicate invisibility hormone, flesh hidden from human eyes had dropped into the visible spectrum.

      It was uncanny, eerie, like a magician’s trick perfected to an impossible degree.

      “But its blood is still invisible!” Dr. Damon crowed, holding one flask up.

      To all appearances the flask was empty, clean. Even the refractive index of the solutions added had been largely erased.

      “The secret of invisibility—in a flask!” Harlan murmured.

      Crane glanced at him sharply. The man’s eyes were enigmatic.

      Jondra shuddered and turned away from the scene.

      “Let’s go back to camp—”

      “What? Without taking along delicious cuts of venison?” her father scoffed.

      Pierre already had his knife out and was expertly skinning the carcass. Soon after he was carving off choice steaks. The strong, salty smell of fresh meat rose into the air.

      Crane fidgeted. “Isn’t this rather risky, in case one of the dragons—”

      As if at a signal, a blasting roar thundered against the confining cliffs. A dragon