The Lost World MEGAPACK®. Lin Carter

dared not speak in reply. But my fingertips crept gradually across the stained and dirtied fabric of my makeshift khaki shorts, coming nearer and nearer to the butt of the automatic.

      The entire scene, I feel certain, occupied only a few seconds of time. But I have learned the truth of what some philosophers have guessed, that time is truly subjective: for I lived an endless, aching eternity during those fleeting instants before the cat struck. And I hope I never live their like again—

      Suddenly, shifting its ponderous weight upon the branch, the cat lashed out at me with one huge paw, unsheathing its terrible, hooked claws—

      In the same split second I whipped out my pistol and fired full in the snarling face of the saber-tooth—

      And missed!

      For the claws of the vandar brushed the barrel of my automatic, knocking it from my grasp, and the slug meant for smack between those blazing emerald eyes wasted itself on empty air.

      And the pistol fell, bouncing from branch to branch, vanishing as it plunged through green leaves.

      Then the saber-tooth sprang—

      * * * *

      Tharn of Thandar paused suddenly as an unfamiliar noise slammed through the silence of the jungle. His outspread arms froze his scouts, huntsmen and warriors in their tracks.

      “The sound came from ahead, there, from that tree,” said the warrior to his right.

      Without speaking, the High Chief made a curt gesture and four warriors glided through the bushes, vanishing behind a screen of dense vegetation.

      The Thandarian stood, a silent and majestic figure, his fierce blue eyes sharp and wary as those of the eagle. For many days, now, he had led the war party up along the meandering shores of the Sogar-Jad, searching for his lost daughter. The spoor of her captors had easily been spotted by his huntsmen, who had tracked the slave-raiders this far without once losing the trail.

      And in the breast of Tharn the High Chief burned an unquenchable passion: to find his daughter, the gomad Darya, alive and unharmed; to slay to the last shambling brute-man the Drugar who had captured her; and to return once more with Darya to their homeland far down the seacoast.

      As yet, and despite all speed they had been able to attain, Tharn and his war party had not been able to catch up with the fleeing Drugars. It was as if the heels of the Apemen bore wings. And, as yet, Tharn had no way of knowing whether his daughter still lived, or had succumbed to the cruel treatment of her brutish captors or, perchance, to the attack of some monstrous predator.

      Until he saw her corpse, Tharn would believe her alive and in need of his assistance. But within his mighty heart, the Cro-Magnon monarch earnestly dreaded that moment of final discovery. For life in the savage wilderness of Zanthodon is precarious and only the most powerful of warriors may for long endure its myriad perils. And Darya was a young girl, no seasoned, hardy warrior!

      That strange sound that had shattered the jungle stillness an instant before was unknown to the Omad of Thandar; never before had he heard its like. Not even the thunders that growled amidst the heavens were so startlingly loud, and Tharn frowned thoughtfully, wondering as to the source of that uncanny noise.

      An instant later, the leaves parted and one of his scouts called him in low, urgent tones. He strode through the thick bushes, glancing up to see an amazing sight.

      Tied to either side of a massive treetrunk, a man of the panjan and a hairy, hulking Drugar faced the assault of a mighty vandar, as the universal tongue of the Underground World names the great sabertooth of the late Oligocene and early Pleistocene Eras. The huge cat was about to launch itself against the helpless man—

      Tharn of Thandar reached out and snatched the great longbow from the hands of the nearest of his scouts. Swifter than thought itself he nocked the long shaft of an arrow with a practiced twist of his wrist, drew the bowstring taut until the feather of the shaft touched his right earlobe.

      And loosed the shaft with a fluid motion—

      * * * *

      Just as I gasped over the loss of the automatic, the sabertooth hunched its massive shoulders, tensing its hind legs, and launched itself directly at me, like a tawny juggernaut.

      It all happened too swiftly for my mind to even register the danger, much less for my heart to quail in fear.

      But swifter even than the leaping saber-tooth—like a bolt from the blue!—a long arrow flew to bury itself to the feather in the skull of the giant tiger.

      The arrow pierced the great cat’s brain, emerging with a spurt of gore from just under the left eye.

      Its leap going awry, the springing cat flew past me to graze the tree bark of the trunk with one heavy shoulder. Then it fell, limp as a mackerel, bouncing from branch to branch until it crashed to earth far below.

      The arrow must have killed it instantly; it was dead in mid-leap, surely.

      And I released in a whoosh the lungful of air I had not even been aware of holding, and felt my limbs go limp and strengthless from sheer reaction. A narrower shave than that is hard to imagine, and the cat was to haunt my dreams for quite some time to come.

      We looked down, Hurok and I, as warrior after warrior emerged from the bushes to examine the dead cat, and to stare curiously up at us. They were tall, handsome men, with strong, well-built bodies and lightly tanned skins, clad only in brief loincloths of hide or fur. Clear and blue were their alert, fearless eyes and yellow-gold their unshorn manes of hair.

      I knew them at once for Cro-Magnons.

      Which did not, of course, mean they were friendly Cro-Magnons.

      In this savage, prehistoric world, where to survive at all requires a constant struggle against wind and weather, beast and predator, and other men, the hand of every creature is lifted in war against all else that lives.

      A stranger is probably an enemy, for he is certainly not a friend.

      And a dead enemy is the only safe enemy.

      Such thoughts must have passed through the mind of one of the warriors beneath us, for with cold, grim features and steady hands he lifted his bow to drive an arrow through our hearts. And I sucked in my breath again, and held it, waiting for that terrible lance of pain to extinguish my consciousness.

      But the tall, majestic man at his side turned and struck aside the how so that the arrow whizzed off to lose itself among the leaves. Then this particular man strode forward to examine us with stern but thoughtful eyes. He made an abrupt, unmistakable gesture, disdaining words.

      He as good as said, “Come down.”

      So we came down. There was nothing else to do. With my pistol lost, we were so far outnumbered as to make any sort of resistance not only futile but suicidal.

      The warriors closed about us, and led us forward to where the older man stood, arms folded upon his mighty breast.

      He looked us over, eyes bright with frank and honest curiosity.

      “A true man in company with a Drugar!” he exclaimed, in a deep bass voice, marveling. “Never have I seen or heard the like! Tell me, stranger, are you the Drugar’s prisoner or is he yours?”

      “Neither, to be precise,” I said with as much boldness as I could muster. “We are friends.”

      “‘Friends’?” he repeated, with a grimace of surprise. “And since when do the Ugly Ones and the Smoothskins make friends, the one with the other?”

      I shrugged. “Never, so far as I know, until I, Eric Carstairs, won the friendship of Hurok of Kor,” I said bluntly. It seemed to me that I had nothing to lose, and that a bit of honest boasting and belligerence might not be out of place. “‘Eric Carstairs,’” he repeated again, pronouncing my name with a trifle difficulty. “And what sort of a name is that?”

      “It is my name,” I said firmly, “and not at all unusual in my homeland.”