The Lost World MEGAPACK®. Lin Carter

the monster would be upon them, clawing and rending.

      The five froze into the paralysis of fear.

      Crane broke from it with a groan and fumbled for the grenade slung on his belt. Dr. Damon and Harlan were too stupefied to even remember them, or bring up their rifles.

      Crane pulled at the pin with fingers of rubber. Before he could draw it, a hand clutched his wrist in a grip of steel.

      “Pierre, you fool!” Crane snarled. “Let me go—”

      “No kill beast!” Pierre muttered.

      They struggled. The sound of monsters feet pounding heavily against their ears. Only seconds were left…

      The grenade’s roar drowned out the triumphant bellow of the behemoth about to overtake them. A frightful scream shattered the air, as of a creature mortally wounded. Violent threshing sounded, as a mighty body writhed in death agony. A tree crackled and toppled, brushing at the five humans now stumbling away.

      They stopped and faced one another, a hundred feet from the danger spot, pale, trembling, shaken to the roots of their souls at the narrow escape.

      Dr. Damon suddenly let out a jubilant shout.

      “It’s dying right on the spot! More blood! Come on, all of you, back to camp for more bottles—”

      Not till an hour later, after they had returned, did the reptilian monster give its final gusty sigh of death. One last swish of an invisible tail flung dirt, needles and splintered branches in all directions. Then all was quiet.

      The scientist brought up with a jerk as Crane held him from running close.

      “Let go!” Dr. Damon screeched. “I have to pump that blood out before it’s too late.”

      “You’ll wait five minutes, till we’re sure he hasn’t one last kick in him,” Crane said firmly, holding the biologist tight. “That tail, if I know anything about dinosaurs, could bash in the side of a locomotive.”

      Jondra touched his hand and flashed him a smile of thanks.

      But the monster lay still, and in fifteen minutes they had drained gallons of viscid fluid into the jars they had lugged from camp. Harlan dumped in wholesale quantities of his preserving chemicals.

      Then they watched, gasping, as the corpse passed, by degrees, into the optical realm. Thirty feet long, from snout to tail-tip, spined, armor-plated, huge as a house, it lay in a mass of trampled vegetation and half-splintered trees which more slowly assumed a visible status in death.

      It was the first dinosaur seen by human or near-human eyes for an unthinkable age.

      “Look what it took to kill it!” Harlan said, awed.

      The exploding grenade had torn out its entire chest. Bullets alone would have been a laughable farce against the gargantuan creature.

      “Thank heaven for the grenades!” Dr. Damon breathed. “I’m wondering now how Pierre and I dared to sneak around for six months with our pea-shooters, under their very noses!”

      He turned with a glowing face, waving at the bottles filled with invisible blood.

      “We owe you our lives, as well as this, Crane. You tossed that grenade just in time!”

      Crane said nothing. Obviously the others, paralyzed in blind terror, hadn’t seen that desperate moment when he struggled with Pierre. He looked at Pierre, but the impassive face avoided his. Pierre had no explanation for his astounding act.

      But what bothered Crane the most was something else.

      He hadn’t thrown the grenade! Nor had Pierre or the others! An unseen hand had done it.

      Had there been a man’s shape in the steam mists?

      CHAPTER VI

      The Invisible Robin Hood

      The following day dawned clear and bright. But there was a cloud in Crane’s mind. He watched Dr. Damon and Harlan busily transferring the blood to sealed cans, at the workbench.

      Jondra watched moodily. This was not the right environment for her. Her feminine nerves would give way in a few more days.

      Pierre sat in the sun, staring out over the valley, as though observing the shadow-life.

      Crane’s churning mind strove to put the jigsaw puzzle together. Why had Pierre wanted the dragon to live? And what lay veiled in Harlan’s cold eyes?

      And was there a fifth man—invisible—in the valley?

      Crane strode to his plane, in sudden alarm. This was their only way of getting out of the valley—as a group. If someone had other plans.

      Too late! He knew it the moment he entered the cabin. The panel-board lay smashed by a wrench from the tool chest. The drive-wheel had been battered to bits, and the steering post bent and twisted out of shape. The plane was useless, beyond repair!

      They were trapped, in the valley of invisibility!

      Crane stood cursing. It had been done the night before. Harlan or Pierre? Or—a chill went down his spine—the unknown presence?

      Returning on the trail to camp, Crane held his rifle grimly. Harlan, Pierre or the invisible man? It surged through his mind like the beat of a drum.

      Pierre still sat impassively before the cave entrance. His beady eyes did not turn. Crane watched him for a long, cautious moment. Was he shamming, fully aware that Crane must know of the ruined instrument board? Was he waiting for Crane to make the first hostile move…

      “I’d advise you to drop your gun!”

      Crane whirled. It was Harlan in the doorway, half smiling. An automatic in his hand pointed straight for Crane’s heart.

      Caught off guard, Crane had little choice. He dropped his rifle. Pierre, starting from his daze, was tensing preparatory to lunging for his rifle, a yard away.

      “Easy, Pierre!” Harlan warned, and the French-Canadian relaxed. “Now step to the right, both of you, away from your guns.”

      As they complied, Dr. Damon and Jondra came running out.

      “What is this, Harlan?” the scientist demanded testily. “What—”

      He gasped, seeing the gun.

      Harlan herded them all together, unarmed and helpless before his automatic. He looked from one to the other with undisguised triumph.

      “So it was you, Harlan!” Crane said. “You smashed the instrument panel so we couldn’t leave the valley. What’s your game?”

      “I can say it in one word—invisibility!” Harlan retorted.

      “You mean you want the secret of invisibility for yourself?” Dr. Damon guessed belatedly. “Why? For what earthly purpose? Harlan, this is outrageous—”

      “Shut up!” Harlan grinned strangely. “For what purpose? Can’t you guess? You mumbled about it all morning. That a person could take a dose of that animal blood with its invisibility hormone—and become invisible himself!”

      Crane cursed, but at himself. Why hadn’t he seen that before? The secret of invisibility was of incalculable significance. From the first, Harlan must have plotted to hog it.

      Harlan resumed. “Last night, Crane, after smashing the panel-board, I used your batteries. They furnished power for a little private radio in my belt. I sent a prearranged signal, to friends of mine. They should arrive, by plane, in an hour or so. You called my hand, but a little too late.

      “We’ll take all those cans of blood. And then we’ll leave the valley—alone!”

      The plain, brutal threat sent icy rage through Hugh Crane. His muscles knotted, and a growl rasped from his throat.

      “Watch yourself, Crane!” Harlan yarned. “I prefer to let my less