《Lost on the Last Continent》


 EPISODE 01 THE HOLE IN THE AIR

    Episode 01 The Hole in the Air


    Colonel Preston Lost did not think of himself as reckless. He believed in preparation, proper equipment, patience in stalking the prey.


    But, if truth be told, he was not a cautious man.


    When the stormclouds parted, and he glimpsed the glowing, unearthly craft he chased through the wild hurricane above the Bermuda Triangle, Preston Lost gritted his teeth in an odd smile, gripped the joystick, dropped the nose of the superhighspeed pursuit plane sharply down, opened the throttle of the jet engines, and ignited his afterburners.


    He squinted through the small, sloped, triangular windows of his rocketplane. The solid sheets of rain blocked his sight. The unidentified flying object was disk-shaped, bathed in a nimbus of strange light, and changed course and speed with sudden, strange jerks of motion that defied normal laws of inertia. It moved like no aircraft and no missile known to man.


    The flying disk dove into black cloud. At furious speed Preston dove in after, engines roaring. The winds roared louder. Preston had little fear of being spotted.


    The cockpit vibrated and the hull groaned. More than one of his gauge needles crept toward red.


    The magnificent machine was dubbed the Shooting Star VII. She had been built for one purpose. This purpose.


    The black hull was bat-shaped, streamlined to the ultimate degree. She had no tailfin, no large surfaces to reflect radar. She was, in fact, an aerospace plane. No ordinary jet, she was driven by a combination of turbo-ramjets and liquid-fuel rockets. She could achieve supersonic speeds and low earth orbit.


    Equally sophisticated was her military-grade detection gear. He lost sight of the flying disk amid turbulent cloud and the hellish flares of lightning. But his instruments continued to mark the location of the fleeing quarry.


    The altimeter blinked a warning. Sealevel was approaching. Somewhere below the curtain of cloud, the wind-lashed ocean waters were waiting. Preston''s eyes narrowed. Did the flying disk intend to ditch?


    The cloudwrack parted. Preston, lightheaded from his dive, wondered if he were hallucinating. For it looked like the cloud had opened a huge, red eye. It was staring at him.


    Like a hooded lantern opening, a strange, bright, ruby beam, wide as a highway, spilled out from the center of the apparition and splashed across the knotted textures of surrounding cloud. Perched between the clouds was an erubescent maelstrom surrounded by streamers of bright vapor, with a tightly-wound spiral of electric discharges circling them in turn.


    Into the spotlight beam of red now shot the flying disk, as it jerked into yet another impossible, right-angled turn, and was yanked into acceleration even more impossible.


    It flew toward the vortex, directly toward the middle. The eye shaped apparition now grew wide, as if startled at the approach of the disk. Or as if opening in welcome.


    For suddenly Preston realized what he was seeing: The resemblance to an eye was accidental. The white vaporclouds formed the sclera; the flares of Saint Elmo''s Fire formed the iris; the red light was issuing from the pupil. But it really was a maelstrom, a whirlpool.


    And this whirlpool, like that around a bathtub drain, let into a pipe, a tunnel. A tunnel, yes, without walls, and opening into a direction that seemed to have no place to be in three dimensional space. But still a tunnel.


    The thing was impossible. It was a hole in midair.


    The red pupil was like a porthole, a window. A window into where?


    The vapor he was seeing was flooding toward the opening. Earth''s sea-level airpressure was forcing atmosphere out into some region of lower pressure. The electrostatic discharge was to be expected when two masses of air at different temperatures collided. But where did the hole in midair lead?


    This storm had risen very suddenly, and the flying disk, levitating serenely over the dark waters off Bermuda under the moonlight, had changed course, unaffected by the rising winds, and darted down toward the gathering stormclouds.


    Perhaps the storm had been caused by the sudden drop of pressure?


    The flying disk fled into the red beam, and grew suddenly smaller as if with distance. His detection gear went haywire. Active radar said the thing was gone; passive radar said it was present but dwindling in cross section.


    The pupil of the apparition began to close. The game was escaping.


    There was no time for deliberation. He either had to ignite his rocket engine, and try to guide his craft into the narrowing ring of electrical fire and screaming winds, or he had to abandon the chase and pull up, hoping against hope that he could bring his nose up sharply enough so as neither to rip his wings off nor to pancake into the sea.


    Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    Preston Lost, in truth, was not a cautious man. He had hunted game in India, Africa, and Greenland, on and under the sea. He had climbed mountains and flown experimental planes. But those dangers were known. This was the unknown.


    He flung his craft toward the vortex. He ignited his rocket. Three gravities of acceleration smothered him as with a giant, invisible hand.


    Beams of red light from some unknown sun, dimmer than the sun he knew, splashed into the cockpit, momentarily blinding him. At the same time, the column of compressed, rushing air being sucked into the closing eye of the maelstrom picked him up like a vacuum cleaner picking up lint from a rug.


    The Shooting Star went into a flat spin. A blurred world of cloud and lightning tumbled past the triangular windows of the cockpit. Preston''s seat automatically flattened, putting him in a prone position, and his altitude suit inflated. But the acceleration was too great for his body.


    The edges of his vision turned black. His hand fell from the deadman switch which kept the rocket thrust roaring. In a strange, sullen silence, the pursuit plane seemed to be plunging down a spinning tunnel walled with boiling clouds and blinding stabs of lightning.


    Preston Lost, groaning, opened his eyes. Had he blacked out for a moment? Of the maelstrom, the storm, the clouds, there was no sign. The horizon was turning in a lazy loop in the canopy windows, earth and sky and earth again. The whistling in his ears told him he was in a stall, his wings at no angle to catch the air.


    Below him was a chain of active volcanoes. The ground was bright with burning patches of forest, and the air was black with smoke.


    The broken landscape rushed up to meet him.


    He groggily pushed the stick forward. Tailfinless, the chance of a stealth craft regaining control was slim. But there might be a way.


    He opened the split ailerons to the full, hoping their drag would pull his wingtip back, and, in combination with the forward wing yaw, would increase the overall drag, and produce a stabilizing yawing moment.


    A change in the pitch of the scream of the air told him it was beginning to work. Perhaps not soon enough. He saw tumbled crags, rocks, and patches of forest fire spin past his view. But there, glinting like a silver coin, was a mountain lake. He worked the controls, uttered a two-word and probably blasphemous prayer, grinned like a maniac, yanked on the stick.


    Out of the crimson sky plunged a creature. Its wingspan was equal to that of his plane. Its skin was naked leather. Its wings were triangular sails of membrane. The freakishly narrow head had a miter of bone above and a beak like a saber below. The monster was tiger striped with red, yellow, purple and black; its belly was blue; yellow rings of color surrounded its staring, lidless, lizardlike eyes; a scarlet wattle dangled rakishly from its cockscomb.


    Preston''s wings thrummed. He was beginning to pull out of the spin. Had the plane been under control, he might have avoided the collision. The monster was diving headlong, its beak opened like scissors. Preston yanked the stick, poised as if balanced on one wing for a moment, hesitated.


    The collision sprayed the black blood of the creature across his small, triangular windows, blinding him. He heard the scream of metal and felt the stick jump in his hand as he lost purchase. He felt, rather than heard, fragments and scraps of wing material peeling off into the air. The ceramic composite of his hull could withstand the heat of supersonic friction, but was not designed for impacts. The wing lifting surfaces had shattered like a china plate.


    He heard the ramjet stall out. Particles of bone and flesh, moving at the speed of machinegun bullets, tore into the delicate fanblades of the intakes.


    Most jets allowed the pilot to eject from the cockpit. But this rocketplane was a compromise between jet and spacecraft, and had no such feature. He had to land with her or die with her.


    But this compromise cut both ways. A safety circuit cut off the ramjet fuel before the debris from the intake tore the engine apart; but he still had power. Solid fuel rockets do not need air intakes. They carry their own oxygen.


    The fuel gauge showed only 15,000 pounds of propellant were left. Eighty seconds of flight time. At high speed, even the reduced wing had enough intact surface to provide lift. He felt the stubby wings bite, heard the air scream, and felt the stick respond.


    The plane bucked like a bronco. One wing was more damaged than the other. He entered a tight curve, wrestling the plane into a spiral.


    The radar showed him he was above a torn, rocky, mountainous landscape. The infrared scopes gave insane readings, as if the ground below were on fire. But then the scope showed a round, flat surface. From the size and position, it might have been a mountain lake, but the temperature reading was too high.


    He ignored the readings. The scope must be damaged. The rocket had a fixed rate of exhaust. There was no throttle, no brake. The best he could do was find the moment in his wild spiral when his nose was pointing in the right direction, and cut the rocket.


    The craft was flung like a stone from a sling into straightline flight. Now he wrestled with the ailerons, praying for level descent. The proximity alarm screamed. The peaks were close.


    Grimacing, he drove his service revolver, aimed, and blew out the bloodstained window. The wind shrieked into his faceplate, blowing fragments of glass throughout the cockpit.


    He saw the lake, round as a silver dollar, slide past his tiny window. A rocky texture of mountain peaks of black rock, plumed with volcanic clouds, surrounding the upland valley holding the lake. Dozens of cones were active. Lava crawled in slow, wormlike streams and waterfalls, glowing.


    It was an insane world. The moon was four times its proper size. The sky was so purple as to be almost black. Dark green jungle stretched to the horizon. He saw long-necked monsters rear above the trees and bat-winged flying things against the winedark sky. Plateaus lifted their high, flat heads above the jungle canopy. A line of steep mountains reared jagged peaks. Was his altimeter malfunctioning? These mountains were higher than the Himalayas.


    The opened the flaps, cutting his airspeed. It was not enough. One last trick was left. His fantastic plane boasted a dozen cold nitrogen gas thrusters: he opened the valves of the four nose nozzles to their fullest. These were meant for zero-gee maneuvers, not for this.


    But it was enough, barely. The lake swatted him like an earth-sized hammer. His discovered the scope reading had been accurate. The water, mingled with steam, that sprayed in through the broken window was boiling hot.

 EPISODE 02 THE UNEARTHLY EARTH

    Episode 02 The Unearthly Earth


    Boiling water gushed in a stream in through the broken window of his rocketplane, and splashed across the faceplate of his pressure suit. The visor bubbled and darkened, blinding him. He could feel the flesh-roasting heat of the boiling lakewater through his suit fabric, but the seams were airtight, and so he was not scalded.


    Frantically, Preston hit the quick-release lever of his harness, and leaped out of his seat. Underfoot, he could feel the hull of his plane beginning to tilt her nose upward. From the sound behind him, he could hear water gushing in. He holstered his pistol and yanked off his helmet to allow himself to see: it was like sticking his head in a sauna. Steam was filling the interior of the aircraft.


    The Shooting Star was submerging.


    The deck was at a steep slant and growing steeper. The cabin was compact and narrow. There were two hatches: a round hatch aft and an oval hatch above the wing.


    The round hatch lead to the service module aft of the cabin. Here oxygen, water, and electrical power were stored. Certain tools, food and potable water and other gear that might have been useful was also stowed there; but Preston saw that the hull was warped from the crashlanding, and the seam around the hatch had sprung. Water and steam came around the rim, which was no longer true to the frame.


    There was a tightly-folded inflatable raft strapped against the cabin hull to one side, and a backpack packed with survival gear strapped to the other. Here also was his elephant gun.


    He threw his backpack, weapon and cartridge belt in a hasty, clattering mass over one shoulder and then put his hands the to wheel of the oval exit hatch.


    The wheel turned. He pulled, but the oval hatch did not budge.


    The lights of his control panel flickered and died as the electrical systems in the service module were drenched and submerged.


    The boiling water was already lapping his boots, and the deck was now slanted almost to the upright. Preston put his toes sideways into the slats ribbing the hull, even as the groaning the deck turned vertical. There came a loud report aft, and the hatch to the service module came free of its hinges. Preston was now inside the narrow hull with a gargling geyser erupting from the rear bulkhead. The ship was going down quickly.


    He realized that the airpressure inside the cabin was rising with the water, and this pressure was holding the hatch shut. The screaming whine in his ears were the airpumps, which had automatically come on when the hull was breached.


    He flattened himself as best he could against the hull, covered his face with one elbow, and pried open the safety tab, and pulled the cord to trigger the explosive bolts.


    The ringing in his ears told him he had gone deaf for a moment. The oval hatch soared, spinning, in a parabolic arc across the wing. He did not hear the sound of it bounce against the shattered, glassy surface of the great, black, curving wing, nor the splash as it fell into the bubbling waters.


    With hands and feet on the slippery hull, he climbed to the nose of the craft, which was rearing upward toward a sky the color of rosy wine.


    The flying monster that had slammed into the intakes, and been partly chewed by the turbine blades, was still lodged there, a tangle of naked, membranous wings, and a gargoyle skull as narrow as a knife. The creature''s large body, easily twelve feet in wingspan, dripping with black blood and white boiling water, was being hauled up into the sky as the Shooting Star continued to raise her prow.


    Preston''s helmet was gone: the sauna heat plastered his hair to his brow, and made him blink. The savory smell of boiling meat was in his nostrils.


    More by instinct than thought, he shrugged the rifle off his shoulder into his hands, broke it, and inserted two rounds. The rifle was a magnificent Holland & Holland double rifle. The round was a .700 Nitro Express, as was as long as a lady''s finger. The piece handled like a shotgun, with the weight needed for powerful cartridges and heavy bullets.


    The nose of the craft was broad and flat. He put his feet under him and stood. He stared, squinting in amazement. The world around him was impossible.


    The clouds above were red and dim as if it were twilight, but the sun, a rose-hued bubble, was overhead. The disk was dim enough to look at directly, without wincing.


    The heavens were imperial purple. Stars burned pale as ghosts. The moon was also visible, if four times its accustomed width. It looked gigantic, ready to topple onto his head. But he saw the mottled markings: it was clearly Earth''s moon. He had just been looking at it above the Caribbean skies.


    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    About him loomed mountain peaks, white with snow and black with rock. From a near peak poured smoke in vast, inky clouds, giving a heaviness to the hot air as if a storm were forever brewing, forever about to break. It smelled of ash. The pall covered a quarter of the sky.


    Closer, he saw this high lake was in the crotch of a saddle between three mountains. The rocky slopes were lush and green, but long streaks of gray where the vegetation was dying formed claw marks across the crumpled knobs and steeps slopes.


    The verdure was tropical: cycads, palms, mangroves. Lianas, vines and mosses dripped from heavy limbs in gross profusion. Here and there orchids opened their bright, fleshy blooms. The smell of humid rottenness was everywhere.


    Earth''s trees.


    But in the sky were a circling flock of batlike, naked flying things, with narrow skull-like faces beneath miters of bone.


    Bright against the dark purple sky, was the flying disk he had chased through to this place. It moved across the cloud as quickly as the circle of a flashlight a kitten chases along a dark carpet.


    It was coming back this way.


    He turned. Streaks of contrail and rocket exhaust reaching across the dome of the dark heavens dove down like a finger, pointing at this spot.


    The ringing in his ears diminished, and now he realized why he had so automatically readied his rifle. The sounds coming from the surrounding jungle were as of a stampede of many animals. Here also was the heavier tread, elephantine, of big game. The air shook with roars and calls, the hissing of lizards, the shrill cries of birds. He saw primates, perhaps lemurs, leaping from treetop to treetop in a flurry of motion.


    Suddenly, there was a movement in the water nearby, an eddy. He brought this rifle around just in time. A large snakelike neck ending in a head the size of a coffin, with nightmare jaws filled with a clutter of serried fangs, and two round, black froglike eyes protruding topmost, lunged out of the boiling waters toward him. The skin of the monster was white, translucent, like some freakish deep sea creature, but in shape and size, it was a dinosaur. It was a vertebrate. Its bones were visible as dark shadows beneath its flesh.


    He discharged his first barrel with a solid roar into the gaping jaws. Pale fluids like the blood of squids leaped upward in a spray. Perhaps he missed the walnut sized brain of the pallid monster, for it drove its white-splattered skull-like head toward him.


    Preston was pulled offbalance by his pack, slipped, skidding down the slope of the hull toward the boiling waters his suit could not possibly withstand.


    Frantically, he caught himself with one hand, and braced his feet against the smooth angle where the curving wing blended into the curving fuselage.


    The long neck of the monster was wobbling near. Its motions were blind and awkward, but it seemed to sense Preston was its prey.


    The jaws snapped down. Preston one-handedly raised and fired his second shot. It struck the joint where jaw met neck and shattered bone and vertebrae.


    It was not a clean shot. The recoil bruised his shoulder. He had been holding the double rifle stupidly, and the powerful weapon had a kick like a mule.


    The great nightmarish head of staring eyes and jagged fangs now writhed. Up reared a massive pale body round as the hull of a yacht. Great flippers like those of a sea turtle flailed frantically against the aircraft wing, as if the monster were trying to climb out of the water.


    And long, low, noise like a woodwind issued from the elongated neck. A death rattle. The head flopped down over the wing. The plane tilted in that direction. Preston slid toward vast, pale corpse.


    But even as the plane slid further under the boiling lake, more of the monster came to the surface. He saw the creature''s body reached to a nearby rocky tussock.


    Without pause, Preston jumped onto the pale monster''s spine, and in three rapid leaps went from shoulderblades to pelvis to the tussock. This was a back rock covered with slippery moss and coral growths sharp as knives.


    The backpack pivoted on his shoulder strap as he leaped, and nearly dunked itself into the water, but the straps got tangled in the thorny coral. Little stingers came out of the coral and scratched the canvass.


    Meanwhile his rifle slide down the mossy slope and vanished under the roiling surface. The thing was a work of art, his best friend, and his only hope for survival. Without pause, he plunged his hand after.


    The pain was blinding. He gripped the riflestock and pulled. With his other hand, he opened the backpack, yanked out one of the bags containing four ounces drinking water, ripped it open with his teeth, and poured it over his scalded fist.


    He had two hands, after all. But only one Holland & Holland.


    While he was doing that, a snakelike thing issue from a niche in the coral. He caught it between the craggy surface and the butt of his rifle. Drops of boiling water flew up as he hammered the creature to death.


    The thing struck, but neither bite nor sting penetrated his flightsuit. Blood oozed from the cracked carapace. It was a thing that looked like an armored centipede, except that it was three feet long and thick around as a garden hose. But with a dizzying sensation, he recognized it.


    Preston since childhood had been fascinated with prehistoric animals. Many a museum he had haunted, many books had collected, and many a paleontologist he had invited to dinner. He often joked he''d been born in the wrong epoch to face a true challenge as a hunter: mastodons were so much grander than elephants, smilodons more ferocious than tigers.


    The giant centipede was an Euphoberia. The lake monster was a Plesiosaur, even if no paleontologist had guessed it to be coated with such skin.


    Earth, then. But when? No year of prehistory held both dinosaur and flowers. The future? The flying disk implied as much. But then how did ancient monsters come here?


    Foolish question. They came as he had: through a vortex.


    A hiss from overhead drew his startled eyes. The Pteranodon flock was wheeling lower. The leader had folded wings and was stooping to dive. His hand was hurt and his fingers not responding. The ammo belt was twisted around and under the coral growth were his pack was snagged. He knew he could not break the weapon and reload in time.


    He slung the rifle, drew his pistol, which he braced carefully on his wounded wrist. It was a C96 Broomhandle Mauser firing 9x19 mm Parabellum rounds.


    Another hiss, and a second monster swooped, and then a third. The whole flock, like a flight of arrows, their bony beaks like spearheads, plunged down through the dark red air of the impossible world.


    There were ten rounds in the clip.


    He grinned an odd little grin and took aim.

 EPISODE 03 THE LITTLE GRAY MEN

    Episode 03 The Little Gray Men


    Preston Lost fired. Time froze. He did not really hear the sharp, stingingly loud report of the broomhandle Mauser, nor the high-pitched, sibilant scream, half a snake hiss and half a crow call, of the monster in the forefront of the flock.


    Preston could not really see circle of the jungle trees framing his view, nor the smoldering volcano cone above that, nor the strange skies beyond. He did not see the shape of the narrow, naked-winged pteranodon in the lead. He did not really see its slender, bony face, nor its elongated crest, nor its hideous saber-sharp beak.


    Instead, he saw its right eye. He saw nothing but the eye.


    He saw its right eye explode in blood and vitreous humor, as an exit wound, large as a softball, erupted from the narrow skull. The corpse fell at the same rate as its dive, so there was no change in its motion.


    But his vision had already moved to the next of the twelve monsters. Two shots. The first missed. The second drove in through the roof of its mouth as it opened its maw in a scream. The bullet shattered its beak and pallet and skull.


    Then the third. The head bobbed unexpectedly, so he missed. He centered his aim on the ribs of the narrow chest and sent two bullets through its heart.


    Fourth. He struck it in the left eye. Fifth. Struck on the spot where the snaky neck joined the collarbone, and blew the head clean off, so that it went spinning in a spray of blood off into the air, a grotesque boomerang of black, green and slate-blue flesh. Sixth. Another miss, but luckily he struck the shoulder joint, causing one wing to collapse.


    Seven and eight passed through wing membrane, making small puncture holes, but the ninth shot drilled a monster directly through the heart, and blood gushed from its narrow beak.


    Only one bullet left. Seven pteranodons were dead in mid-swoop, and five more were screaming hideous, breathless screams like the hissing of gigantic snakes. His glance swept the six incoming targets, looking to see where his remaining bullet could be best spent.


    But the flying lizards had snapped their wings open like parachutes, slowing their fall. Perhaps they had been startled by the thunder of gunfire. Perhaps they were too stupid, their brains too primitive, to be startled. But now the five survivors were tearing at the flesh of the ones who had been shot. They raked their brother''s wing membranes with savage claws.


    Like sharks maddened by the scent of blood, the pteranodons fought each other in midair over the scraps of each other''s flesh.


    Apparently a gaping head wound or a hole in the chest did not slay these unnatural brutes instantly. They clung to life with the cold fury of lizards. The wounded fought back with mindless vigor, insensible of pain or shock. Even the headless body, by some reflex in its nerves, raked its claws wildly when it was struck.


    Then the foremost of the unwounded landed on the body of the plesiosaur, which was still floating in the agitated water, and began to tear gobbets out of the body with its sword-length beak, hissing and cawing hideously. Two more of the sky monsters saw, and grew jealous, and landed, and began bickering.


    The pteranodons circled each other with mincing, delicate steps, bobbing their long, bony heads up and down menacingly, and croaking baleful croaks.


    The body of the corpse trembled and stirred. The plesiosaur was not fully dead after all. Its jaw was broken and pale blood gushed from its neck and dripped from its teeth, but now it brought its upper fangs neatly down on the quarreling pteranodons, catching two of them on teeth as sharp as spears. One pteranodon was cut nearly in half, but it had the same tenacious, unthinking ferocity and vitality as the sea monster, and so it reared up against its tormentor and drove its vicious beak directly into the dying plesiosaur''s eye.


    The sea monster reared back its head, whistling and screaming. The other flying lizards, instead of retreating into the air, launched themselves at the exposed neck with manic bloodlust, croaking and cawing.


    Two other of the unwounded pteranodons dove and splashed into the water, ripping at the wounded body of a third pteranodon, the one Preston had shot through the shoulder joint.


    The boiling water made their narrow bodies turn red and begin to blister, but the horrors were not deterred. Their sole response to pain was to attack ever more avidly whatever was in reach.


    So these three were splashing and stabbing and scraping each other with talons, when a gush of water erupted from beneath.


    Into view rose a creature larger than a swordfish, with a beaked mouth even longer, and rows of teeth like shark teeth. It had fins and vertical flukes like a shark, not horizontal like a dolphin. But it worked its fins with a paddling, doglike stroke, nothing like the graceful motions of a fish.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    The plesiosaur was the size of a submarine, while the pteranodons were closer in size to a hang-glider. This newcomer was roughly the size of a pony.


    From books, he recognized this new horror. This was an ichthyosaurus.


    A pteranodon as it beat its wings and launched itself into the air, struggling to rise. The fishlike lizard reared up. The massive shark-toothed jaws closed over the flying monster''s midriff. The pteranodon was not smaller than the lake monster, but it was lighter. Its hollow bones cracked and bent like soda straws. The ichthyosaurus uttered a chilling trumpet of triumph before it dove, carrying the struggling pteranodon down and down. The other fights continued unabated.


    Preston had been frozen with horror, but only for a moment. These did not act like beasts from his own world. Few creatures attacked their own kind, and rarely did predator eat predator. Scavengers usually held back and waited for wounded prey to die.


    He recovered himself. It would only be a moment before one of them noticed his tasty body clinging to this rocky atoll in the steaming lake water, or the thrashing of the dying plesiosaur sent a wave over him to boil him to death.


    He looked. The shore was actually not far off, and many mossy trees, laden with vines, bowed crooked branched overhead. It was slightly too far to leap to shore, slightly too high to grab a branch.


    A great wind stirred the branches then, and a white light shined from the sky. A vibration too low to hear with the ears throbbed in the teeth of Preston Lost. He looked upward. Now what?


    Solemn and silent as a ghost, a disk-shaped machine made of thick crystal hove into view, coming in low over the trees.


    It was a lens larger than a cargo plane, with no visible means of propulsion or lift. The main hull was a dark bluish ceramic or crystal or coated by a tightly-clinging layer of pale, translucent substance. The whole was glowing with a dull light that reminded him of the Cherenkov radiation found surrounding submerged atomic piles.


    The flying disk took position just above the boiling lake, and lowered itself.


    The pteranodons uttered shrill sounds and fled, the hale still clawing at the wounded as they did so.


    An ichthyosaur, perhaps the mate or hunting partner of the first one, was hanging just below the lake surface. It turned an expressionless eye toward the descending craft, worked its oddly shaped flukes, and dove toward darker depth.


    Preston Lost heard no noise with his ear as the flying disk came closer, but a vibration in his bones set his back teeth on edge. The outer shell looked as hard as diamond, but, even as he watched, it flowed in syrupy motions as if alive. Blisters or pillboxes of the blue hull became visible where the pale substance formed a dimple and pulled away.


    Small cones and black disks stood up from the blisters: they were telescopes or something of the sort. A jointed arm unfolded from the craft, elongated, and delicately dipped into the water. Thermometer? Sonar? Camera? There was no way to tell.


    The flying disk hung just above the spot where the corpse of the Plesiosaur was floating. Of Preston''s rocketplane, there was no sign on the surface, except for a spreading pool of oil. She must have finished sinking while he concentrated on immediate threats.


    A pang of anger made him suck in air through clenched teeth. His magnificent plane! The years of work, the countless costs! This cruel world had swallowed the wonderful aerospace rocketplane. He blamed the flying disk, and whoever was aboard.


    As if in answer to his thoughts, the outer, semifluid shell of the vehicle rolled back again to expose round hatches ventral and dorsal. The hatches dilated. The interior shed a dull firefly glow.


    Hairless and naked gray-skinned men, no longer than children, emerged from the hatches one after another. They had no garments and no ornaments, but some wore belts or harnesses with pouches. Here they carried what looked like instruments fashioned, or perhaps grown, out of crystal, shell, or ceramic.


    There were over a dozen. They walked upright or crawled like spiders, with elbows and knees held high, palms and soles clinging to the hull. Those emerging from the bottom of the craft ignored gravity. They sauntered or trotted head-downward, affixed to the hull at if it were floor, and craned their necks to look at the lake waters approaching.


    They were close. He saw each detail. They had no external ears, and their eyes were black in sclera and iris, more than twice the size of human eyes. A double wrinkle between the eyes hinted at nostril slits; the mouth was a tiny, lipless bud. Albeit nude, they had no sign of genitalia or any sexual characteristics.


    The creatures moved with an eerie dignity in utter silence.


    Preston took the opportunity to disentangle his backpack from the knob of rock where he stood, and shrug his shoulders into the shoulder straps, tighten the belt. Next, he broke his rifle, thumbed the lever to eject the spent cartridges, and loaded two more of the heavy caliber bullets, and closed the weapon with a satisfying snap.


    His motion attracted attention. One of the naked figures drew itself upright and pointed a skinny nail-less finger at him. As one, the other gray men''s head swiveled on their necks, and their overlarge and inky eyes narrowed. The stares were cold and incurious.


    None spoke aloud. One drew a lantern of shell from its harness, sent a rapid combination of colored flashes in through the glassy hull.


    At this signal, a larger hatch opened, and a score of taller hominids slid into view.


    These were elongated and lean men with blotchy skin, mottled yellow, brown and white. The smallest stood nine feet high, and had a nine inch long neck. These flexible necks gave the heads a clownish, balloonlike look, as the narrow faces swayed and bobbed high above the slim shoulders. The clownish look was emphasized by dark mottling beneath each cold eye, as tears on a pantomime doll. Their fingers were long and spidery, but their feet were long, thin pads of flesh with no sign of toes. Each had a plume or crest running from the peak of his skull and down his spine, Mohawk-style. Their aspect was docile and mournful.


    They wore knee-length brown leather coats painted to match their skin mottles.


    Each carried what looked like a harquebus: an overlong barrel of pale ivory with a heavy wooden stock. The lock and triggers were glass, not metal.


    An officer in yellow flourished a wooden blade whose edge was a line of sharpened obsidian. The harquebusiers unlimbered their weapons, and propped their barrels atop forked wands to open fire.


    Preston was quicker. The Holland & Holland roared like thunder.

 EPISODE 04 BATTLE AT BOILING LAKE

    Episode 04 Battle at Boiling Lake


    Before the foe had a chance to fire, Preston Lost''s first shot from his elephant gun went through the chest and out the back of the captain in the yellow coat, leaving an exit wound the size of a grapefruit and the heavy slug also passed through a man or two behind him.


    The noise seemed to shock the long-necked men. Some of the squad started and stared at the clouds, or at the volcano cone not far away, looking for the source of the sound.


    The little gray man gestured at the glassy hull on which they stood, and the glass material flowed like water and solidified like ice, forming transparent battlements behind which they fell to all fours.


    These protective glass walls grown from the hull blocked the harquebus line of fire. A gray man flourished a lantern, and flashed colored heliograph commands to the harquebusiers. These came forward and leaned their long, awkward weapons on the newly made glass merlons,


    The weapons were silent aside from a quiet, flat crack of sound when the projectiles passed the speed of sound. There was no smoke, no sound of gunpowder. Instead, long, slender splines or rods of crystal darted from the barrels. These splines, swift as arrows, landed on the rock, shattering into glassy shrapnel.


    Had Preston Lost been standing on the rocky atoll in the boiling lake, he would have been cut to bits.


    He had used the moment of confusion to fire his second shot not at the flying disk at all, but at the tall, vine-draped tree whose branches were hanging so tantalizingly above his head, out of reach. The heavy bullet struck the joint of a likely looking branch where it met a larger branch. His aim was true. The wood parted. Groaning and creaking, the massive branch fell like the gangway of a ship flung down. Boiling water splashed and struck his legs, scalding him even through the heavy fabric of his flight suit.


    The branch had carried down with it many vines. He ran and jumped. He caught a vine in midair. It was covered with thorns like a cactus. His gloves protected his hands. The vine parted under his weight, dropping him toward the boiling water surface. More by blind luck and by audacity than anything else, his leap momentum carried him into the midst of the fallen tree limb. He clutched at the slimmer branches radiating from the broken branch.


    The far end of the broken branch was still lodged in the mass of the trunk. Some tenacious strips of bark still connected it to the main trunk, but it was groaning and sliding open under the impact of his weight. In a moment, the bark would rip, and the branch would drop entirely into the boiling water.


    Looking down, he saw an Ichthyosaurus, in the shallow lake water just below, eyeing him. Was it intelligent enough to sense his predicament? Or was it a mindless killing machine, merely attracted by the vibration of branch striking water? Either option was chilling.


    He scampered up the branch as quickly as a squirrel. His wild eyes were fixed on the shivering strip of bark that was very slowly parting under his weight.


    In the next moment the harquebusiers had reloaded. Another flight of bright glass-sharp spears hissed through the air.


    He was partly covered by the leaves of the trembling branch he was balanced on. One spline struck him in his knapsack, but hit some hard obstruction, and did not impale him, but shattered. Crystal shards of shrapnel from the impact dashed across his shoulders and the back of his head, cutting him and drawing blood. The other splines passed through the branches and twigs left and right, sending leaves into the air, and then passing into the water and vanishing.


    By good fortune, none struck the wood near him. Those that struck water did not shatter on impact. Had Preston been on hard ground rather than balanced in midair, the volley would have filled the whole area with shrapnel.


    He rose and leaped just as the branch trembled and gave way, falling with a great splash into the boiling lake below.


    He clung at a slippery limb. Stinging centipedes emerged from holes in the hollow branch to rake their angry stingers across his gloves. He uttered a curse, swinging his leg over the branch, and pulled himself up. His motions were swift and frantic.


    The crystal disk dropped lower, its hull brushing the upper branches of the lakeside trees. Some red and furry monkey-sized creatures uttered blood curdling screams and threw twigs at the flying disk when they were disturbed. The rim of the crystal disk pass between him and the red sun. Shadow fell around him.


    A narrow head peered over the edge of the disk, and a long necked man aimed his strange weapon. Preston''s final bullet from his Mauser struck him between the eyes. The man toppled limply across the crystal battlements of the saucer, and fell into the boiling water, his harquebus toppling after.


    But now the Ichthyosaurus, roaring a loud roar like no sea creature in Preston''s time could make, rose from the waters. Two of the splines that had missed Preston were lodged in the fish monster''s hide.


    Preston instinctively called out a warning. When out game fishing, he had once seen killer whale leap as high as the tuna tower of his boat, twenty feet or more. Apparently whoever was piloting the flying disk was more nonchalant, or less experienced.


    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    The maddened fish monster rose and rose and snapped at a little gray man clinging to the underside of the hull. The sharked-toothed beak closed on the gray man''s head and tore him from the hull. He made no sound as the bleeding monster fell back into the boiling water with him. There was a white splash, a gush of bubbles. The smell of boiled meat rose up.


    The other gray men looked downward gravely, showing no emotion. The long necked men cowered and quailed and raised their odd comical heads to utter drawn-out ululations of mourning from their bass, woodwind-length throats.


    Now two of the harquebusiers fired their glass spears again, but at the lake, not at Preston. One struck the Ichthyosaurus, who leaped again.


    Preston meanwhile had vaulted himself into the thickest part of the tree. There was a crotch where several sturdy limbs met. A mess of leaves made a nest here.


    A furious jabbering greeted him, and a thrown twig rebounded painfully from the bleeding back of his head. He turned.


    Here was a large simian creature with bright eyes as gold as amber, a pointed, triangular muzzle, and sharp white teeth. Black markings circled its eyes and mouth. The fur was fox-red. The tail was ringed like the tail of a lemur, but prehensile, for the beast was hanging from it. It was armed with an impressive set of fangs, which it bared in Preston''s direction. He had stepped into its nest.


    He did not want to shoot it, nor move. The glowing, flying disk was not ten feet overhead. He spoke in a soothing tone.


    "Hullo there big, smiley fellow! That is quite a mouthful of teeth you''ve got. Now, we don''t want to start a fight or make much noise, do we? No we don''t. Why don''t we find something nice for you to chomp on, more tasty than my tough old rawhide, eh?"


    Without taking his eyes from the creature, he groped into his knapsack, groped, and pulled out his survival ration bar. He tugged it open with fingers and teeth, broke off a bit, and tossed it lightly toward the primate. The bar fell to the leaves with a soft noise.


    Meanwhile, out on the boiling lake, the battle between flying disk and fish monster had attracted attention. The long snakelike neck of a second Plesiosaur was rising out of the waters, its broad nostrils quivering. The little gray men with frantic flashes of their lanterns signaled into the interior of the glass hulled craft. The flying disk began silently to rise, and the men on the upper and lower surface of the craft sought hatches.


    Not fast enough. With a thrust of its flukes, the Plesiosaur lunged, reached, snapped. One half of a long-necked harquebusier disappeared into the huge, red mouth. The other half went flying over the treetops, trailing streams of blood. The gray men hid below deck.


    The harquebusiers crouched behind the battlements opened fire.


    At the same moment, giant centipedes, Euphoberia, began swarming down the upper branches toward Preston. The creatures were a foot in length, and their bright scales gleamed as if oiled with red, yellow and orange.


    One centipede as long as his forearm sank fangs into his glove as he broke open his rifle. He plucked up the creature with a grunt of disgust, and, whirling the snake-sized centipede overhead, threw it at the hull of the ship seen through the leaves overhead.


    A hooting from the monkey creature startled Preston. He had no time to reload; and his Mauser was empty. He drew his switchblade and flicked it open, and turned to meet this new threat.


    But, no. The simian was munching happily on his ration bar, gargling with pleasure. Now it aped him. It nimbly plucked up one of the giant centipedes and flung it toward the flying craft. The motion of its arm was manlike, not the like the stiff, narrow-shouldered throw of an ape. The centipede landed amid the long-necked men, who uttered hornlike cries of woe.


    "Good boy! Good throw!" said Preston in a soothing voice, wondering where his spare magazine was. "You are a regular Cy Young, aren''t you, Smiley? Cy the Smiling Saber-toothed Simian, I suppose. Do it again! Watch me!" For one of the stinging, biting foot-long centipedes was climbing his boot at that moment. He pinned it with his knife, grabbed, and threw it.


    Smiley the simian hooted again, and was answered by chatter and hooting in the surrounding trees.


    The flying disk rose up out of reach of the Plesiosaur. Now Preston could see them reloading. The harquebusiers carried foot-long quarrels of crystal in quivers, which they muzzle loaded. These splines expanded to twice or thrice their length instantly when the trigger was pulled, and this force was what propelled them. He also saw that when shot in a volley, the splines curved away from each other, as if magnetically repelled. This spline-gun was meant to throw glassy shards into a volume, not hit a bull''s-eye.


    Preston''s eyes narrowed. It seemed more like a crowd control weapon than a military one. The penetrating power was limited. And the range was poor.


    Now other simians of Smiley''s tribe began appearing furtively through the leaves, like little ghostly faces with gold eyes. The game of throwing poisonous centipedes was imitated quickly. Soon a dozen, then a score, of the yowling monkeys were flinging deadly insects up onto the deck of the disk.


    The disk rose out of reach of sea monster or thrown centipede, and took up a position above the lakeshore. Vents in the hull opened, and spat a drizzle of burning oil. Leaf caught fire, and soon a thick black pall of smoke hung in the air. The simians, appalled by the spreading flames, took flight.


    Preston Lost, however, reloaded. The cartridge he used was frightful: a 3.5 inch case and a 1000 grain bullet, whose muzzle velocity was 2000 feet per second. Heavy enough to kill a bison.


    As it happened, it was also heavy enough to pierce the hull of the flying disk and leave an impressive spiderweb of cracks. The eerie glow surrounding the craft began to stutter. The disk itself began to list and wobble.


    The fire was spreading. Coughing, Preston Lost scampered down the tree, and began pushing, worming, and shoving his way through brier and underbrush. The flying disk did not pursue, but hung in midair at an odd angle, rotating slowly, while its aura of light waxed and waned.


    Preston Lost moved away from the lakeshore toward higher ground. The trees here were taller, spaced farther apart, and the underbrush was less dense. It was hot, muggy, and nearly everything he touched was covered in thorns.


    He crested a hill. On the far slope, he was out of range of the long-necked men and their limited weapons, out of line of sight of the flying disk. Only then did he stop, clutching his knees, grinning and panting.


    He would feel pain from his burns and cuts and bruises soon, but not now. Now he was exhilarated.


    His grin faltered when he saw the disk rising into view, a bright lens. It was still listing, and its glow was unsteady. A figure standing on the hull raised horn to mouth, and blew loud blasts.


    Ahead of him, and downslope, was a green valley lush with jungle trees. Horn answered horn. Unseen below, and not far away, answering signals sounded, echoing from nearby peaks.


    It was a hunting call. They were closing in.

 EPISODE 05 HUNTSMEN OF PANGAEA

    Episode 05 Huntsmen of Pangaea


    Bruised, aching, and bleeding, Preston Lost stood on the slope of the jungle-covered mountain shoulder and laughed. The horncalls of the huntsmen hounding him rang in his ears. Above him was a strange red sun and dark purple sky of the unknown, far-future ages.


    Around him was the deadly fauna and flora of primitive, prehistoric eons. How future and past were mingled, he did not know. The lay of the land and the dangers of these unknown beasts he did not know. The number, position, and resources of the huntsmen he did not know. Their reasons for hunting him he also did not know.


    But he knew the hunt. That he was, for once, the object of the hunt did not change that. He was on familiar turf. He knew what to do.


    Most prey flee directly away from the noisy beaters and trumpeters, and therefore into the arms of the silent huntsmen. That was assuming the hunt had time to prepare.


    In this case, however, Preston assumed his presence on this strange, latter-day earth was as much as surprise to his foes as it was to himself. In that case the horns were sounding off to allow the parties to identify their positions to each other. On the other hand, it meant parties were already in the field. Which meant what?


    He shimmied up a tall tree. The crown gave him a wide view of the surrounding landscape.


    This place was a mountain range whose slopes were overgrown with jungle. The lower slopes and the valleys between the peaks carried the lush trees and ferns typical of tropics. A different shade of green ruled the higher slopes: these were conifers. Above the treeline was snow.


    Preston stared in awe at the scene framed by a high and snowy peak to his left and a higher volcano cone looming to his right. For here was an unobstructed view of the great pass leading down and down into the world below.


    Below the mountains were tablelands. In shape, these were reminiscent of the North American southwest. In texture, these green mesas looked like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Jungle growth covered high, flat surfaces, and drooped from the bare, rocky sheer sides. It was as if the deserts of Nevada and Arizona had been recently overgrown and swamped by the jungles of Mexico and Panama.


    And far, far below, the canyons and lowlands were covered in a mist the weak red sunlight did not pierce. In his practiced eye, Preston judged this volcano-pocked mountain range to be taller than the Rockies or Andes, taller than the Himalayas, all of which he had tramped, at one time or another, for months.


    He felt giddy, sick with disorientation. What year could this be? It was far enough in the future that the sun and moon were changed. Far enough for new mountains to rise and landscapes to sink. Far enough for evolution to change man into little gray shapes with eyes like nocturnal beasts, or into strange giraffe-men with mottled skins.


    "Get a grip on yourself, man," he muttered aloud. "You are the elephant now; you are the wounded tiger. You are the one being hunted. No time for second thoughts. You went looking to find out where the flying saucers came from. Well, no complaints. You found them. Now how do you get the heck away from them?"


    For he looked up into the purple sky, and saw, bright as a shining dime, the disk of the flying machine. He squinted, but could not make out what the crewman was doing. Preston mentally reviewed the contents of the survival kit he had so carefully packed. To be sure, it had a signaling mirror, two whistles, a strobelight, and a bright orange weather blanket. All things mean to catch the attention of a search plane. But camouflage netting, or other gear to help him elude aerial pursuit, he did not have. And no binoculars.


    As it turned out, he needed none. The figure raised a horn and sounded a fanfare of notes. Then he flourished a flag and waved it in a pattern of circles and figure-eights. Semaphore.


    ¡°Why do they have antigravity and powered flight, but they do not have radio?¡± Preston said aloud. ¡°A time traveling flying saucer with no radio set. What gives?¡±


    He decided to shelve the question until another day. Now he scanned the peaks and forests of this mountainous jungle. He was looking for an encampment. He was imagining something like a prison or a castle, some fortified position which would maintain patrols around it.


    In two places, he saw smoke rising, which might have come from chimneys or cookfires, but then he saw three other places were smokes where rising from crevasses or ash cones. Those two might be the encampment he hypothesized. Or might not.


    ¡°Who knows what the forts here look like? I could be staring right at one and not seeing it,¡± he muttered.


    He heard horn calls again.


    In the distance, but not as distant as he would have liked, he saw a large group of figures silhouetted against the purple sky as they came over the crest of a hill, a spot clear of trees. The figures were manlike, upright, but some were twice or thrice as tall as the others. It looked like a party of adults mixed with children or midgets. He counted over forty.


    He did not see the distinctive long necks and Mohawk haircuts of the motley men.


    This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    They were headed toward him. The flying disk must have seen his direction.


    Loping along with this group were shaggy, doglike shapes, low to the ground. That was bad.


    Preston clambered swiftly down the tree. He froze on a branch ten feet above ground. Sitting on his haunches, staring up at him meditatively, was the cat-faced ring-tailed primate he had dubbed Smiley. Or was it the same one?


    The simian smacked his lips, and gestured with a manlike forepaw. It was the same one.


    ¡°No more food for you,¡± said Preston, sliding to the ground. ¡°Great White Hunter need heap big grub to keep him much strong, Ug! You savvy?¡±


    Smiley drooped at the tone of voice, and made his eyes so big and round and sad with unspoken pleading, that Preston laughed.


    ¡°You remind me of my favorite mutt I used to own. Or, actually, all of them. On second thought, once I run out of rations, I will need to find someone like you, someone with a digestive tract like mine, to tell me what is good around here to eat. But the immediate order of business is getting away from the hounds. If you can keep up, I can use the company. Which way?¡±


    Smiley looked up, eyes bright with hope, but made no reply.


    He found his ration bar, broke off a crumb, tossed it to the beast. ¡°The other good thing is that when I talk to myself as I slowly go mad, it will look like I am talking to you. Why that makes sense, we can discuss some other time. Come on.¡±


    He checked his boots, tightened his laces with a fork, and set off uphill. He alternated jogging, running, walking.


    As they started off, he explained his plan to Smiley, who loped along sometimes beside, sometimes before him, sometimes trailing.


    ¡°I figure it like this. We keep under the canopy, and avoid meadows. Make for higher ground, until we reach the conifers. The flying saucer does not seem to have any fancy gear like the Shooting Star ¡ª that is my crate, remind me to tell you about her sometime, because she is a beaut ¡ª so won¡¯t be able to track us from the air.¡±


    On they ran. Once he stopped briefly to go to the bathroom, and to tend his wounds. He pulled out shards of glass from the back of his head as best he could by himself, using his signal mirror to guide his groping hand. He applied stinging antiseptic to his neck, and then sterile gauze. He removed his glove to wrap his burnt hand, hoping to minimize the blistering.


    Smiley watched, wide eyed.


    ¡°Nope, the main problem is dogs. Assume those are like bloodhounds, because it is suicide not to assume the worst. You ever heard about tricks escaped prisoners can pull, such as crossing a lake or stream to throw off the scent? Don¡¯t work. Little skin cells float to the water surface, leaving a scent trail, and all the hound has to do is circle the lake. Same for climbing trees. Scent sticks to the bark. And gimmicks like changing clothes, washing in scented soap, leaving a dead fish on the trail, running in circle or doubling back? Won¡¯t fool a trained hound.¡±


    He took no particular pains to hide his footprints, but he did swerve when he could to go through briar patches, thick thorns, rough footing. He followed the path of greatest resistance.


    ¡°You are probably wondering why I am just running, and picked the worst ground I can. Well, you cannot outsmart a bloodhound. Their sense of smell is too good. And you cannot really wear them down in the long run. The reason why the cavemen domesticated the dog was because dogs could keep up with the hunters running after wounded game. You see, persistence is our one advantage, we primates. So you and I are not betting on wearing out the hounds. We are betting on wearing out the houndskeepers.¡±


    The first time he pushed through the bed of a plant that seemed half cactus and half Venus flytrap, Smiley leaped on his back, startling Preston. Smiley was large for a monkey, but not too large, so Preston carried him through the stinging thorns.


    ¡°You see, it take years to train hounds. So most trainers are not young men. Not that I am as young as I would like. But I am pretty darned fit. How do I do it? Glad you asked. I box, I wrestle, I fence. I ride. I wonder if I will ever see my horse again. His name is Tornado. I even turn into a monomaniac when it comes to things like ballroom dancing. I found this partner as fanatical as I was, and we practiced and trained until we won top-level trophies. Ah, what was her name again? Not Tornado. Some human name.¡±


    With trees overhead, he could not make any observation of the sun. His watch was still set to Atlantic Daylight Time: the dial showed him what hour it was back in the Bermuda Triangle. Rather, it showed what hour it would have been had he not fallen through countless eons. He did not even know if Earth still turned at her accustomed rate.


    Dark surprised him. Night fell suddenly when it came, making Preston wonder what latitude this was. He slowed to a walk, fished out his LED headlamp from his kit, put it on. He had a sixty-hour battery meant to power this, and a strobelight for signaling passing planes at night.


    Before he lit the lamp, he found his roll-up sunglasses and his duct tape, and taped the sunglasses over the lamp lens. This gave him enough light to see where to put his feet, but he hoped it was not enough to give his position away.


    On and on they went. He broke off part of the survival bar and chewed while he ran, fed and another crumb to Smiley. He washed it down with his second packet of sterile drinking water. What he would do after he ran out of ammo, of battery power, of safe water, of rations, of matches, and of toilet paper, he shelved for another day.


    He ran onward in the dark of night, always moving upslope. Then he noticed Smiley getting nervous: ears flatting, hackles raised. What was the animal sensing?


    ¡°You know what bugs me? I have not heard any sign of pursuit, or seen any lights behind us,¡± said Preston. ¡°That makes me a little nervous. You got the willies, too, don''t you, little guy? Let''s switch. I will follow you. You take point. Go around the danger.¡±


    Smiley seemed to understand. At least, he took off running. The little beast was weary, but not yet worn out. Preston ran after. He was not worn out yet either.


    The giant red sun came suddenly into the sky just as Preston, following Smiley, emerged from the trees and found himself atop a sheer cliff. There was a view of the valley below, and a view of the long slope behind.


    Behind, he saw movement at the wood¡¯s edge to the south. Shapes that were certainly dogs and men were moving upslope, but keeping to the easier ground between cliff and forest. He turned his head. To the north he saw no one, but he heard the faint call of a horn. He was between them.


    Below him, to the east, was an extensive encampment, a township of tents and rude cabins, but with stone-walled buildings with peaked roofs midmost, and a round tower. The smokes from dozens of cookfires and campfires rose up. The whole was surrounded by a palisade of wooden palings. Watchtowers atop tripods of lashed beams stood atop the gates.


    Preston uttered a curse. This the fortress which no doubt had sent out the huntsmen. No wonder they had let him run all night. He had been heading directly where they wanted him to go.

 EPISODE 06 RIVER OF FIRE

    Episode 06 River of Fire


    Preston Lost stood on the brink.


    Before and below him was a large, armed camp surrounded by a ditch and a wooden palisade. A field of tents and cabins surrounded a central fortress of stone buildings. Above rose a stone tower. Black banners and pennants displayed an emblem of a stylized dragon circling and consuming the many-rayed red sun.


    A flying disk was seated atop the tower. It looked like the hood of a strange and giant mushroom. He saw no evidence of damage: perhaps this was the same flying disk he had shot yesterday, now repaired. Perhaps it was another.


    He turned. In the opposite direction was a tall, harsh mountain slope of pine trees, frost and snow. Above this loomed a smoking volcano cone. A growing black cloud filled the sky above it.


    From one side came the sound of hunting horns. One arm of the pursuit, perhaps running all night as he had done, had circled the mountain to approach from the opposite direction, and cut off any flight to the north.


    To the south an open strip of tall grass separated the edge of the forest from the brink of the cliff. Here he could see, silhouetted against the morning sky, tall and broad silhouettes marching with sinister, deliberate, tireless steps toward him. In their hands were wands they leaned upon. They either wore headgear shaped like antlers, or they grew antlers. If so, this was yet another race of men different from the gray men or the motley men. The grass reached up to their knees.


    Preston looked at the grass around him. It was above his waist. These creatures were gargantuan, twelve or fourteen feet tall.


    The rustling in the grass around the Gargantuans betrayed the motions of shorter creatures, perhaps hounds, perhaps houndsmen.


    Preston turned with a snarl to Smiley the simian panting next to him. "Here I thought you had scented or sensed some danger you were going to lead me around. Now we are trapped against the cliff. Why did I trust a big red monkey?"


    Smiley looked up, and his ears drooped at the tone of voice. Smiley was weary from the all-night run, but his eyes were still bright. It was not clear if he understood the situation, or understood Preston''s fear, but he showed his fangs and chattered gaily, and then leaped away through the tall grass, and was lost to sight.


    "Go on! A rat deserting a sinking ship¡­" growled Preston angrily. He stepped to the edge of the cliff, and peered down the dizzying, sheer slope. He measured the distance to the treetops below with his eyes, wondering if he had time to rappel down the cliff face.


    There was fifty feet of parachute cord in his survival pack. It was not long enough. Perhaps he could cannibalize the handle of his steel drinking cup to act as a piton. But the idea of dangling from the handle of a cup hammered into the rock face did not thrill him. Not while clinging precariously above what was obviously a military camp.


    Meanwhile, he was still murmuring to himself. "I fed you! You could have stuck around and flung poo at them or something."


    A noise behind him made him turn. Smiley was halfway up a tree, gibbering and gesturing. Smiley saw him looking, scampered a short way, looked back.


    "Am I dumb enough to follow you again, after you led me here?" He kicked a pebble over the brink. In the deceptive twilight, the fall was twice what he first had guessed. He sighed. "Yeah, I guess I am."


    Smiley led. As before, Preston alternated jogging and sprinting. Sweat loosened his bandages, and his cuts began to sting and bleed.


    Fatigue was building. He fell into a sort of walking daze. The sounds and signs of pursuit grew steadily closer as he climbed.


    Two hours later, the slope steepened. His legs were leaden. But his will was iron. He forced himself to continue, jogging and walking.


    An hour after that, chill bit him. Snow was on the ground. Around him the trees were no longer leafy palms, but crabby pines. He saw he was leaving footprints.


    "Come on, Smiley," he said to the simian. "This might not fool a hound''s nose, but it will tire out any huntsman trying to climb after." And he shimmied up the tree.


    Perhaps it was the novelty of using a different group of muscles, but he got his second wind. For the next few miles, the going was slow but steady. The forest was dense enough to go from tree to tree. Sticky sap coated him. Pine needles clung to his sweat.


    Twice he made a daring leap rather than circle back to find a narrower gap to cross. Both times he broke branches and bruised himself, and promised himself not to do that again.


    Smiley now hopped back to Preston, and pulled on his hair, and gibbered excitedly. The little simian clearly had a firm idea of which way he wanted Preston to go.


    "Why not?" muttered Preston. "Fall through a hole in the sky, ram my crate into a dinosaur, get shot at by flying saucer men, follow a monkey."


    Preston smelled smoke. He glanced up. The volcano cone above was belching like a factory chimney. Other plumes of black smoke issued from cracks and fissures lower down the slope. He was not imagining the burnt smell in the air could cover his scent, only that the hounds might grow hard to manage. No dog wanted to go into a fire.


    Time passed. The red sun climbed toward noon, but the light never grew strong. Pursuit grew loud. He heard barking, and a chattering like that of a monkey troop disturbed. Had the pine needles been thinner, he doubtless would have been in eyesight of the hunters.


    Preston followed Smiley from tree to tree uphill and down, but always toward the volcano cone dominating the sky above. Suddenly the trees stopped. There was a wide meadow sloping up and away. On the far side, beyond the crest, were more trees. There was no way to cross the gap without exposing himself to hostile eyes.


    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    Preston clung to an upper branch, bruised, and breathing heavily, his eyes and arms aching with fatigue. Smiley chirruped at him, tugging, dancing, and pointing. "You want me to cross the meadow? Leave my footprints all over, where everyone can see? What is the hurry?"


    Smiley jabbered frantically.


    Preston squinted. What was frightening Smiley? He sniffed. The scent of burning stone was also mingled with the smell of burning wood. More plumes of smoke were rising up than had been an hour ago.


    He uttered an oath. "We are in a forest fire, aren''t we?"


    Most of the smoke, at the moment, seemed to be coming from a point just behind the ridge of the slope ahead.


    But Smiley was already scampering down the trunk.


    Preston decided to trust the instincts of the beast. Animals knew what direction to flee when a forest fire was spreading.


    Down he went.


    Smiley went pelting rapidly over the snow of the open meadow. Crazily, he was heading toward the high crest, that selfsame crest pouring so much smoke into the air.


    Preston sprinted after the running red simian.


    A sound of baying and a chattering clamor rose up from the trees behind him as he struggled up the slippery white slope. Smiley disappeared across the top of the crest ahead while Preston was still laboring through the clinging snow a hundred yards behind him. The soft and yielding surface clung as if with freezing fingers to his toes and ankles each time he moved his boots. Smiley appeared again, his furry red head popping above the skyline. His wide gold eyes seemed even wider in their raccoon rings. He hooted, urging Preston onward.


    Preston wondered at himself. He could see the black smoke hanging like a curtain just beyond the crest toward which he ran. But his every trained instinct told him that Smiley would not run into a forest fire, no, not even when pursued by hounds. Animals simply did not act that way.


    But there was no time for second thoughts. Fifty yards. Ten. He could hear the pursuit crunching in the snow behind him, close enough to be clearly audible, of quadrupeds loping. Long, blood-chilling bays rent the air.


    At the crest, the snow cover was thin, and Preston could feel solid ground beneath his boots. He turned.


    It was over a dozen beasts that were plowing and plunging through the snow drift toward him. They were not bloodhounds.


    Hounds? These monsters were bigger than ponies. The shoulder blade of the massive front legs stood taller than a grown man''s head. The narrow, jackal-like skulls of the monsters were over two feet long, and most of that was snout. Massive fangs like sabers hung over the lower lip. A course mane clung to the spine and ran from neck to tail. The back legs were puny, and gave the creatures the distinctive hunched look of a hyena. The paws ended not in claws, but four hooves, one on each toe. The fur was tawny, marked with white stripes on flanks, with white mittens.


    Giant hoofed jackals. A memory from one of his many books on paleontology floated to the surface: these were mesonychids: Andrewsarchus mongoliensis.


    He remembered the scientific name because Roy Chapman Andrews, for whom the genus was named, was an American explorer, adventurer, and naturalist who had been Preston Lost''s idol and mentor.


    He stood on the slope, dumbfounded with horror at their size, and at the hideous jackal-skulls, barking and yammering, with fangs longer than his forearm. Had these been the beasts he had been hoping to tire, to outdistance?


    Then he saw a stranger sight. Little red simians with raccoon masks and ringed Lemur tails were riding along in the manes of the giant hoofed jackals. Some were running lightly alongside, their smaller bodies not breaking the surface of the snow. They were the twins of Smiley. Some of them had been outfitted with harnesses, pouches, or hunting horns.


    His brain whirled. Were these trained circus monkeys whom some madman had trained to run with a hunting pack? Or were they intelligent creatures? These had been the smaller biped had had glimpsed walking next to the giants, but mistook for children.


    Taking to the trees had been a help to them, not to him.


    One of the little red simians riding a giant hoofed jackal raised its horn and blue a blast. The jackals bayed horribly. Deeper horns, no doubt carried by larger, gargantuan hands, answered from the forest, deep as the trumpeting of elephants.


    Preston, without thinking, raised his Holland & Holland to his shoulder, aimed, and shot. The monster jackal''s head exploded, and the shards passed through the little rider, killing him. The roar echoed.


    Two of the jackals were spooked, and halted. Those two had riders. The other ten continued clawing up the slope.


    "Avalanche, please, God!" he said. "Otherwise, there is no way out of this."


    But no avalanche came. "Well, I might have time to reload, or might not. And there is a Gideon Bible in the survival kit. Do I die while shooting, or praying?"


    A thrown rock bounced painfully against the back of his skull. Smiley beckoned, turned, fled over the slope, and scampered away.


    "Fine. I''ll die running after a monkey. Wonder what that says about how I''ve lived."


    So Preston followed. Once over the ridge, he saw what lay beyond.


    This valley was smaller, less than a hundred yards to the next crest, which was snowy and rocky and thick with pine trees. The crease in the center of the valley was filled with smoke. The show had melted. The puddles steamed. Like a river down the spine of the valley was a tongue of lava. It was oozing, black as night, and cracks broke through the surface like blood through a scab, but the blood was red-hot molten rock.


    Downstream, where the lava was still in motion, the forest fire was roaring merrily. Here, where black crust had formed, all the trees within yards of the lava flow had burned to ash or stood like smoldering corpses, upright husks black as burnt matchsticks. The taller trees had crumbled into a mixture of white ash and black dappled with red coals that panted and breathed like living things.


    Smiley ran downslope and straight toward the lava stream.


    Insanity. A barefoot monkey could not cross molten lava. As well walk through a blast furnace. The temperature was above a thousand degrees.


    Where the lava skin was broken, the liquid rock was bright, and superheated plumes were visible as shadows shivering in the air. These spots could not even be approached without risking severe burns unless the wind was behind him.


    This was not merely a small channel of lava, but a river. It was a black and cracked tube three yards high and ten or twenty yards across. It looked like some headless and horrible heaving worm of fire slowly inching its way across the valley bottom, burning all before it.


    It was insanity to go, and certain death to stay.


    Preston Lost was not a cautious man: he went.


    A plume of smoke from the burning trees nearby made him cough. His eyes watered but he dared not blink. He soaked a handkerchief in packet of water, and tied it over his mouth and nose.


    Where was the red monkey? Preston ran on, as the air grew hot and hotter.


    As he got closer to the valley floor, the smoke grew thick, blinding him. He heard the crackling of burning trees, saw the floating sparks like fireflies, smelled the scent of burning pine and molten rock.


    Then, suddenly, the air was cool and fresh. The smoke was gone.


    Preston looked, and froze. His legs were weak. Astonishment paralyzed him.


    The river of lava was parted neatly, and he had walked into the middle of it. A wall of molten lava was upright, looming above him, to his left. The bare ground was cool underfoot. A few paces away, a second wall of lava was looming. This wall was not the black skin of cooling lava, but the raw, red-hot liquid that should have burned him like bread in a toaster.


    Nothing was holding the liquid rock back. Nothing was halting the plumes of superheated air which should have incinerated him.


    He was safe in the middle of a river of molten rock.


    It was impossible.

 EPISODE 07 FALLS OF DEATH

    Episode 07 Falls of Death


    Smiley screamed.


    Preston, standing between two nine-foot tall walls of red-hot molten rock, stirred like a man waking from a dream. Ahead of him, the gold-eyed simian was baring his six-inch fangs, shrieking, urging him to run. Behind him, Preston heard the sound of close pursuit. He stole a glance over his shoulder. Dimly he glimpsed through the smoke, flying soot and sparks, and the air distorted with heat shimmers, down the slope of the valley behind him, half a score of the giant, hoofed jackals charging, urged on by their small red-furred riders.


    Preston ran toward Smiley, who had turned tail and was scampering away. The walls of lava stood to either side of Preston, issuing no heat. Then Preston was beyond the stream of lava, and climbing the cinder-covered slope.


    Heat fell across the back of his shoulders and neck like a club. The air was suddenly dry and unbreathable.


    The ground underfoot was a mixture of snow puddles and heaps of ash, some white and dead, some red and smoldering. Smoke was in his eyes, and it was hard to see where to put his feet.


    He risked a glance behind.


    The giant jackals entered in the corridor of cool ground between the two lava walls. Preston was weary from his all-night run, bruised from his crashlanding, cut and bleeding from his battle afterward, burned in one hand. But even had he been in perfect health, a man cannot outrun ten galloping stallions. Nor these mesonychids, who were creatures just as swift.


    But Preston saw a slender hope. The monsters were fearful of the standing walls of lava, and so were pelting down the corridor of cool soil in single file. He might be able to wreak a terrible havoc among them with his double rifle and Mauser pistol before they overwhelmed him, provided he had time to reload before they cleared the mouth of the corridor.


    He halted, turned, and broke his weapon, ejected the spent shells. He fumbled for the massive bullets, inserted two. The Holland & Holland snapped shut with a hefty, satisfying clack of noise. Had he time to find a fresh magazine for his pistol? There was only one left.


    Smiley again vented a yowl of frustrated impatience. Preston looked up.


    What had spooked the animal? Then he saw the danger.


    The plumes of superheated air hanging above cracks and scabs in the black crust of the lava were bowing toward him. He could see them the way the hot air above a sidewalk on a summer''s day can be seen, like a shimmer, like a ghost.


    The wind had changed. Red sparks were also flying this direction.


    Approaching lava with the wind in your face was to invite severe burns of skin and lung, anything the superheated air might touch. The breeze was blowing streams of thousand-degree hot air toward him.


    Could he outrun the breeze? He could try.


    Preston broke the rifle open and sprinted, telling himself never to doubt the instincts of a wild creature again. The simian must know the danger of the lava flow, living in this active volcanic region, and his sharp animal senses must have sensed the change of the wind.


    In a trice Preston was up the slope, past the burned trees, columns of soot, piles of red coals, the ash-white ground. Then he was in among green trees and banks of snow.


    The snow was half-melted and slick. His boots went out from under him. He slid and fell. He landed on his rump and slid into a holly bush, which unceremoniously dumped wet snow all over him. Icy water slapped his face and trickled painfully down his neck. But the air, for one breath, was not drying his mouth and choking him.


    He winced. The breech of his rifle closed painfully on his thumb, but he neither dropped the weapon nor lost the large and expensive bullets. Expensive? Irreplaceable.


    Suddenly Preston heard a hideous yowling. He twisted himself to look back the way he had come.


    The ten jackal monsters were screaming. The foremost had not yet cleared the mouth of the corridor. Their fur was smoldering and smoking. The red simian riders clinging to their manes were also on fire. One or two had fallen and were being trampled. There was confusion at the rear of the line, as those who had only just entered the unnatural gap between the high walls of lava now tried to turn and retreat, but the last fellow trying to enter was blocking the way.


    Snarls and shrieks grew shriller and louder. Plumes of superheated air, visible as shivering mirages were passing among them, lighting fur ablaze. The two walls, as if suddenly remembering the natural order of things, now slumped and sluggishly fell inward toward each other, moving as lava should. Segments of the semi-liquid wall belled out. Muddy legs and rippling floes surged before and behind the panicked jackals, and reached into their midst.


    If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    The red-hot rock sagged and crawled with abominable, sadistic slowness, creeping no faster than molasses.


    Preston watched with sick horror. Animals should die cleanly and swiftly, with a single shot to the head. Not like this.


    Perhaps the swifter of foot, those neared the mouth of the corridor, could have escaped touching the lava as it collapsed slowly inward. But it slew without touching.


    Three of the monsters staggered free of the corridor mouth. One was splashed with a few drops as the lava wall slammed shut behind it. These drops passed cleanly through flesh and bone and any internal organs in the way, leaving smoking holes from spine to belly.


    The other two staggered, smoke rising from their fur. The wind blew the superheated plumes across them. Their hideous screaming stopped once lung tissue was burned away. They ignited like oily rags, reared up on their hind legs, and danced and kicked and died.


    Two of the little red simians had been riding one. Their bodies were curled up like the bodies of babes in the womb, their skin a black crust the same hue as the lava behind them.


    Of the remaining seven, nothing remained. No incinerator burned as hot as the living magma of this lava stream.


    Preston rose unsteadily to his feet, blinking. The heat beat on his face. Spots danced before his eyes. His head felt light. He sat, and put his head between his knees.


    Preston was in exactly that position when Smiley, scampering back and more frantic than ever, bit him in his rear. Preston yelped and jumped erect. He looked around for some likely stick to club the vicious little animal. But Smiley was already scampering away.


    On the opposite side of the valley, across from the river of lava, above the streamers of smoke and flying ash, Preston saw two dozen or more huge, hoofed and saber-toothed jackals, many bearing little red simian riders, now cresting the rise. Each little simian stood atop the spine or head of the monster carrying him. The crowd of huntsmen peered down toward Preston with golden eyes surrounded by raccoon rings, and this made each expression one of clownish surprise.


    But they raised horns and blew signals, and the party split into two groups, one racing to the right and the other to the left, seeking some path around the obstruction of the lava stream.


    The deeper horns of Gargantuans in the rearguard answered.


    Preston remembered his resolve to trust the instincts of Smiley. In the direction the simian had gone, he fled.


    Fatigue was now gnawing at him with iron teeth. He made his way with a combination of walking, stumbling, jogging. The horns grew louder behind him, and he heard them from the left and right. As he ran, he found his second and final clip of 9x19 mm Parabellum rounds. He had ten shots left.


    Thoughts of deep despair until now held back as if behind a dam flooded into him. After these shots, there was no sporting goods store to get more. All stores were gone. All monetary systems, industries, sciences that he knew were gone. All the people, nations, languages, and animal species he knew.


    Every plant, tree, and root his eye fell upon was unknown to him. Had he been stranded on any continent or land of his day, he would have known what to do to survive. Even that was lost and gone. Men with bloodhounds, he would have known what to do. Mesonychids ridden by trained tracker monkeys, he had merely made it easy for them to close the circle about him.


    Smiley was waiting by the bank of a deep and rushing stream. The ground here was steep and broken, so the stream was falling from brink to brink like a slinky tumbling down as staircase. Pines lining the banks clung precariously. The red-tongued ash cone of the volcano was upstream. The roaring noise of a waterfall was downstream.


    When Preston emerged from between the pine boughs and stepped into the open by the streambank, he heard a trumpet from overhead. He looked up, but did not see the flying disk that had spotted him. He eyed the tumbling white water, jagged rocks, and dark depth of the stream bed.


    "I hope you are not expecting me to ford here, Smiley!" Preston said wearily. At that moment, horns answered the trumpet. They were coming from somewhere in the forest slopes beyond the rushing stream. The hunters were before him and behind him.


    Smiley, as if in answer, loped away downstream. Preston''s preference would have led him upslope, where black volcano clouds were hiding the ash cone, but he stuck to his resolve to trust the little red monkey.


    He followed as rapidly as he could, but the ground was very steep and broken. Often he had to turn his back to the direction he was going, and climb down tilted slabs of rock made slippery with coats of ice or fallen pine needles. Spray from the wild water next to him wetted the air. It quelled some of the smell from the fumes and fires. He found it refreshing.


    This stream bed and sides were entwined with rugged black formations of obsidian. In one corner of his mind, he noted two things.


    First, that these black rivulets of rock were solidified remnants of previous lava flows. Obvious in hindsight, but it had never occurred to him before that liquid rock would always flow into any local streambeds, since the water also sought out the lowest ground.


    Second, the black cloud cover from the volcano was getting lower. Dark wisps were just above the tree crowns here.


    The slope grew steeper. Preston found himself at the brink of a steep incline. Some yards below him, it was a vertical drop.


    A strong wind was blowing here. He clung with white knuckles.


    The stream next to him slid down the incline and leaped over the edge into a bearded spray of waterfall. Far below, he saw a grid of tents surrounding a circle of walls, buildings, and a tower. The simian had led Preston in a circle: that was the encampment below.


    A trumpet sounded practically in his ear. Rising up suddenly into view, huger than the full moon, came the flying disk.


    Long necked men in Mohawks wearing spotted coats of yellow and black stood atop the disk. A bugler with spyglass and signal flag was sounding his horn. A squad of Harquebusiers with spline guns were propping their awkward weapons on their forked wands and preparing to fire. A group of gray skinned midgets clung by their feet to the disk''s underside, looking on with emotionless eyes.


    Horns sounded from behind. The hunters were closing in. Upstream, the hulking figures of jackals emerged from the forest shadows, and began loping down the rugged, broken slope.


    Preston uttered a curse. Smiley had led him into a trap.


    Smiley jabbered at him, and went over the edge of the cliff, and began scurrying down from rock to rock. The little red form disappeared behind the waterfall.


    The spline guns opened fire. A dozen of the yard-long lengths of razor-sharp glass javelins arched outward from the flying disk.


    Preston fell.

 EPISODE 08 CATARACT OF COMBAT

    Episode 08 Cataract of Combat


    Preston saw Smiley scurry from a knob of rock behind the curtain of the waterfall. From his perch above, Preston glimpsed a shadow of what looked like a shelf or step where Smiley was crouching, dry, in a narrow space between the back of the water and the face of the cliff.


    When the spline guns silently fired their deadly glass spears, Preston leaped from the cliff. The wind was fierce, and yanked him to one side as he plunged.


    More than a dozen of the gleaming transparent spears hurled through the air toward him with a crack of sound, spreading as they flew. In his mind''s eye, he could see perfectly what would happen: each spline would shatter on impact into razor-sharp flying shrapnel, and anyone caught in the cloud of spinning glass would be cut to pieces.


    He struck and passed through the rushing, weightless mass of the waterfall''s white surface. The water thrust him sharply downward with great force. The shelf where Smiley crouched was a set of wooden logs lashed together with rawhide fibers and held atop slanted posts driven into the rock. The edge of shelf struck Preston across the chest, and he bounced away back into the rushing stream of the waterfall. His breath was driven out of his body as neatly as if a baseball bat had struck his midriff. His fingers slipped from the wet and slippery surface without finding purchase.


    For a moment he was weightless, falling, and dazed. Black spots danced in his eyes. But then a sharp pain struck him sharply across the shoulders and waist.


    He heard the noise that was partly the sound of plate glass shattering, partly the sound of a grenade. It was the splines. The harquebusiers had not anticipated that their target would jump, nor had they corrected for the wind. The splines shattered against the rock cliff high above him and several yards downwind. He was not near the center of the exploding cloud of fragments. The curtain of falling water slowed the little darts, triangles and hooks of glass so that they rebounded from the shoulder and arm of his flightsuit without penetrating, or stabbed into his heavy gloves.


    Above the roar of the waterfall, Preston heard a breathless grunt from above him. He realized that the wiry little simian had grabbed him by the straps of his backpack. However, the monkeylike creature was no larger than a medium sized dog. He was small enough to ride on Preston''s back. Despite Smiley''s frantic, panting, scrabbling, jerks of resistance, Preston''s weight was inexorably pulling the small creature inch by inch toward the edge of the shelf.


    Water was pounding on his head, and stabbing pains were pounding through his chest. His arms and legs were dangling down, and his magnificent, priceless Holland and Holland rifle was dangling below that. The strap had fallen from his shoulder, and even while dazed, his hand had automatically closed around the strap with vice-like firmness. Preston stared at his own hand as if it were an alien being clamped to the end of his arm, wondering how it had retained the presence of mind save his rifle, but also glad of it.


    But Smiley was slipping and Preston was about to fall: Preston kicked in midair, making his body rock. Smiley screamed and lost his grip on whatever anchor was holding him on the shelf. Preston swung. The posts beneath the shelf supporting it loomed in his view. He tossed the Holland & Holland lightly into the triangle made by the post, the cliff, and the shelf above. He snapped his wrist to turn the rifle sideways. The motion sent horrible pain through his chest.


    Smiley came flying over the edge just at that moment. Preston was in free fall. He hoped he did not have broken bones in his chest, because, if he did, this would hurt.


    It did hurt. He blacked out, or almost. When his vision cleared, he found himself hanging from his rifle strap by one hand, his arm almost pulled from his socket, pains in his chest like hot coals, and his legs dangling down. On his back was his pack. Dangling down by one strap was Smiley, holding on by one  prehensile foot. The water had matted and flatting his hair, making him look like shrunken and miserable wraith.


    "You did not let go," Preston whispered, awed. The little beast had clung, trying to save him, and had not done the wise thing: release the strap to save himself.


    Preston looked up. Using his rifle like an anchor was blasphemy. Uttering a blasphemy, he grabbed the strap with his other hand. He tried to chin himself up, but the pain in his chest defeated him.


    There he hung, too weak and wounded to pull himself higher. His body swayed, sending more pains into his chest, when Smiley climbed atop the backpack. The flap of the backback slapped Preston in the back of the head. Smiley had opened the backback, no doubt looking for food.


    Preston shouted and swore at the idiotic monkey. The simian hissed at him impatiently.


    He swayed again as Smiley rummaged through the gear.


    Light glowed about him. It was the Cherenkov radiation glow from the flying disk.  The saucer-shaped flying machine was approaching the cliff face. The curtain of water between them was white and translucent, so only light, not shapes, were visible beyond.


    This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    A shattering sound of splines exploding against the cliff smote Preston''s ears. A volley struck the wet rocks below him, far enough away that no shrapnel reached him.


    A minute later, he heard a second volley crash against the cliff, this time closer. He felt tiny taps on the toes of his boots, but whether these were spent glass shards or water drops, he did not know.


    He then felt Smiley''s damp cheeks pressed against his cheek, and then the creature put an arm and a leg around his neck, and a moment later, the little monster had wrapped his tail around Preston''s neck and had flopped down, headforemost, across Preston''s chest. This gave Preston a close and unobstructed view of Smiley''s brightly colored hindquarters and genitalia he would have preferred to avoid.


    Preston saw what the Simian was doing. Smiley had looped a rope once and twice around Preston''s chest. It was the bright orange parachute cord from his survival kit.


    Smiley now ran up Preston''s arm, and leaped neatly to the post holding up the shelf, trailing the cord after him. He spun around the post acrobatically and scampered back down Preston''s arm.


    Whether by luck or Smiley''s wit, the cord was passing through the center of the rifle strap, which meant that even when he let go of the rifle strap, the rifle would not fall. Preston shifted his grip carefully to the orange cord. He swayed and swung, but the cord held. The pain in his chest was too great for him to haul himself up the rope, but he could brace his feet against the wet cliff, and let the rope play out, and lower himself.


    He glanced over his shoulder, and would have laughed, had he breath for it. Next to him was a wooden ladder, also lashed with rawhide, and below him was another shelf made of wooden logs.


    He played out the ropes rapidly: perhaps too rapidly. Smiley clung to his back and screamed in fear. Preston fell to the second shelf below, but scrambled beneath it to cling to its supporting posts. Smiley imitated him, and crouched atop the other support. The next volley of splines struck, shattered against the damp rock wall above. Glass splinters embedded themselves into the wooden logs shielding him. One or two fragments spun through the cracks between the logs, striking him in the cheek and shoulder, drawing blood.


    "My turn," Preston muttered. The pain his chest did not prevent him from worming his way back up onto the shard-strewn shelf. He relaxed his grip on the orange cord he held. The cord passed over the posts holding the shelf above, and through the strap of the rifle, which he lowered into his hands. He reloaded, knelt, and raised the weapon toward the source of the blue light shining as an oval shadow through the white curtain of water.


    He fired twice. Shrill screams and hoarse calls issued from the source of the light, which was now canted over on its side. Preston saw shadows falling, as men thrown from the disk passed between his eyes and the source of light. The light shrank suddenly. The disk was moving away.


    Smiley now scampered to the next ladder. Voices rang from above, deeper than human. from above. A horn blast rent the air.


    Preston drew the line in, looped it around the supports, tied the cord into a proper bowline below his hips, and lowered himself so quickly to the next shelf below that Smiley, who was sprinting down the ladder head-downward like a squirrel, look at him in surprise when he passed him.


    Smiley shrugged a human shrug, leaped, and landed on Preston''s back. He chattered in a commanding voice. An order. He pointed a finger over the edge. Down!


    Down Preston went, past two more shelves.


    The third platform below was larger than the others, and partly caught in the spray. Because of the noise of the falling water, the gargantuan man standing on this platform did not see Preston approaching. His skin was black as pitch, but his hands and feet were albino-white. He wore a leather coat with exaggerated shoulders and flared hips. In his hand was an amber-colored wand. A cap adorned with antlers shaded his head.


    Around his knees were half a dozen little red simians, twins to Smiley, except that they wore embroidered vests of blue and silver.


    The cliff face before the shelf was cut with many small, square marks, exposing a layer of white substance beneath. Someone was here mining or digging for something. For what?


    One of the simians looked up, saw Preston descending, and raised a cry. Another simian raised a weapon shaped like a sea-shell, which spat a dark buzzing shape through the air toward Preston. It struck him in the glove. It was a wasp larger than his thumb, digging into the leather frenetically.


    The gargantuan looked up, and Preston shot him twice in the chest and once in the face. The momentum of the rope swing carried him down. He kicked the huge shape in the neck and shoulders. The twelve foot tall man seemed to take a long, lingering moment to topple and disappear into the rushing water.


    The man''s six foot tall wand fell among the simians, and struck two of them. The simians jumped and danced in spasms of agony, and fell from the platform. The other simians raised sea-shell weapons and sent wasps like bullets winging through the air. Preston noted their positions, kicked off the rock face, and found himself swinging on a long arc through the open air on the far side of the waterfall curtain. The wasps lost velocity coming through the water, and missed him. Preston returned fire. Thunderclaps of his barking Mauser echoed from the cliff wall.


    The wasps circled for a second pass, but Smiley opened wide his jaws and uttered a long, loud burp. A smell came from Smiley''s muzzle. It was comical, but the wasps veered away.


    The pendulum of the rope carried Preston back in through the curtain of water. Four simians were prone, two were standing, but only one was armed with a wasp-thrower. Preston''s bullet entered the eye and shattered the rear hemisphere of the creature''s skull. The remaining simian bared fangs and lunged. Preston kicked it unceremoniously from the platform.  The scream diminished with distance.


    He landed and gathered in his rope. Victory. Preston hefted the Mauser in his hand. One round was left in his pistol. No replacements.


    He looked around. The mining had been more thorough here, for the rock was peeled away like a cave mouth, but the mouth was blocked by the white substance beneath. He heard the noise of voices from below, calling, and answers from above. Through the curtain of water, the light from the flying disk was visible. There was no escape in any direction.


    He cocked an eye at Smiley. "Time for a talk. You are clearly intelligent. How come you carry no tools? Second, why lead us into this dead end ¡ª Hey! what are you ¡ª Yikes! What in the flaming blue blazes is that?"


    For Smiley had daubed some of the blood from Preston''s cheek onto a handkerchief and tossed it lightly against the white substance the mining efforts had exposed.


    Like a visage glimpsed emerging from a fog stepping into the circle of light shed by a streetlamp, a face was forming in the substance.

 EPISODE 09 CAVERN OF SKULLS

    Episode 09 Cavern of Skulls


    Colonel Preston Lost stood on a bloodstained wooden platform. This, and the platforms and shelves above and below, were affixed to the walls of a recessed chimney of rock behind a waterfall. Pickaxes had laboriously chipped away the rockface to expose a smooth, white substance beneath, something not of glass or metal or stone.


    Now that substance was altering, changing, and the image of a face, a head, a body, and then an array of arms and legs emerged from the depth of the substance, and became visible.


    Preston at first thought a living man was walking through the white material toward him, and he raised his Mauser pistol with its single remaining bullet. But no: his weary eyes and brain had fooled him. It was merely an image, a drawing, a representation of a man, fading into view.


    To his shock, it was a drawing he recognized: an image called the Vitruvian Man, drawn by Leonardo da Vinci. This was a stern-faced man, shown nude and spread-eagled, with two pairs of arms reaching out from his shoulders, two pair of legs from his hips. A square about the figure showed his outspread arms were equal to his height. A circle showed his arms and legs were equidistant from his navel. Other lines showed the proper proportions of the joints, shoulders, crotch. Ratios on the figure displayed the Golden Mean, where the whole was to the part as that part was to the remainder, as seen in Greek architecture, Renaissance painting, and everything in nature from spiral galaxies to seashells, sheephorns to sunflower seeds.


    The white panel holding the image vanished like a dream. Preston scowled, half in wonder, half in fear. He swept his hand through the empty air where once the white panel had been. There was no ash, no sign of debris, no heat, nothing.


    Beyond was a rough floor sloping upward. Damp and irregular walls, coated with a stubble of stalactites crowded either side. Gloom defeated eyesight.


    It did not look inviting.


    Of course, the scene outside here with him looked even less inviting.


    He drew his knife and eyed the ladders leading here. The ladders were sturdy enough to hold gargantuans, and affixed to the cliff by many wooden dowels sunk into sockets carved into the rockface. Cutting the knots lashing the ladders to the platform would do nothing. He saw the top of the lower ladder was vibrating. Men were climbing from below. Any one of the gigantic men approaching could break his bones as easily as a grown man could a child.


    He looked up. He saw why the waterfall was apart from the cliff face: a previous lava flow, following the same contours as the water, had left a beetling deposit, hung with stalactites, at the lip of the cliff when the molten rock cooled. This deflected the course of the water. It was almost as if the lava malevolently had attempted to wash the ladders and platforms of the miners away.


    Preston wished he had such a power to aid him now. Little red figures were swarming down the ladders from above. They were quick as squirrels, and descended headfirst. Many carried the black seashell-shaped wasp-throwers.


    "Who are those little red monkey-men? Your cousins? They look just like you¡­" But Smiley was no longer there to answer Preston''s demand. Preston turned, darting his gaze in every direction. The simian was gone.


    He had no other idea, and no time to come up with one. So, in he went.


    After only a footstep, his foot fell on something that rustled and cracked. He pulled out his compact LED headlamp and switched it on. A gasp of horror escaped him. In the bright beam, he saw the floor was strewn with bones, rib cages, and human skulls of various sizes. He tilted the beam.


    The corridor led a few paces and opened into a wide cavern. As far as his beam could reach, this cavern floor was piled thick with human bones. Also, here were helmets of bone, buckles of shell or horn, glass buttons, flint spearheads and discolored wands of amber dropped among the remains. The cavern floor sloped upward, so the bones and debris was gathered near his feet.


    "This does not look good¡­" muttered Preston. His experience spelunking told him to avoid corpses found in caves. It either meant a large predator or a toxic vapor. He had no fancy deep-caving breathing gear with him here, and only one flashlight, two glowsticks, and no map to tell him whether this cavern had any other exit. Caving in an active volcanic region was madness. Was there any other escape route? Whichever way Smiley went might be safe.


    He turned. Outside, in the sunlight, stepping through the curtain of the waterfall that bisected the large platform, now came a gargantuan man some fifteen feet tall. His helm was made of many tusks fitted together, adorned with wide elk antlers. A vest of teeth tightly thonged together protected his broad chest. Other gargantuan men were behind him, carrying amber wands whose touch was death. The leader in the elk helm was a head taller than his followers. He carried a flint-headed tomahawk in one hand and seashell-shaped wasp-gun in the other.


    This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    The gargantuan raised his weapon and fired first. Preston leaped backward with agility, drawing his Mauser pistol, and steadying it with both hands. A trio of wasps zoomed into the cave, turned, and darted toward Preston. Two were unable to make the turn tightly enough and missed. One struck him in the glove, penetrated the leather, and a sharp pain like a hot needle entered his flesh.


    He fired. His aim was off. The final, irreplaceable pistol round struck glancingly against the helmet of teeth and shattered part of it, also smashing the huge man''s cheek. A fragment of bone put out his right eye. The socket was a pool of blood and vitreous humor. He stumbled back, roaring, out of Preston''s line of sight.


    Preston scurried backward, up the sloped floor, and deeper into the cave. The sunlight falling into the entry corridor was too weak to penetrate here. And the wide bodies of the gargantuans blocked the light as they entered.


    Huge and angry faces appeared at the opening. The beam from Preston''s headlamp fell into their eyes, dazzling and angering them. Both roared a battle cry in an unknown tongue, and both leaped forward.


    He ran backward. There was no time to reload. He had nothing but a knife. His head was only as high as the waistline of one of these giants. In a single stride, they covered two fathoms, and were almost upon him.


    A skull was under Preston''s foot. His ankle turned. He fell. He was lucky he did. From the corner of his eye, he saw a black pit behind him, straight and deep as a well. He turned his head. The bottom was beyond the reach of his lamp''s bright beam. He saw cuts in the wall of the well, like the steps of a ladder.


    He put his hand on the handhold, turned his head, and shined his lamp''s beam into the eyes of the oncoming gargantuans. The one in the front blinked, blinded, as he rushed forward and reached his massive hand down toward the dazzling source of the light. Preston swung his legs over the edge. A sharp pain pass through his chest, but his feet found a lower foothold of the carved ladder. The huge man missed his footing, and jerked, arms windmilling.


    In that same moment, Preston mentally apologized to the beautifully crafted Holland & Holland, swung it in one hand by the barrel, and caught the overbalanced giant neatly in the temple of his skull with the butt of the stock. The was a crack Preston hoped was skullbone, not wood. The gargantuan toppled over the edge. He groped for Preston as fell, but missed his grasp. He vanished into darkness.


    Preston switched off the light and ducked his head. The gloom here was total. Not enough light could reach through waterfall, corridor, and cavern to reach this far. He heard a whisper of motion above his head. The second gargantuan was slashing through the air with his amber wand.


    Preston ignored his chest pains and scurried down the line of handholds. He stopped, shouldered his rifle. Should he draw his knife? Perhaps he could hamstring the giant man as he came over the edge, while he was offbalance. On the other hand, as best he could tell, the slightest touch of the gargantuan man''s amber wand brought convulsions and death.


    He heard noises above. Instead of his knife, Preston drew out his emergency strobelight meant to attract the attention of passing airplanes, and one of the slender whistles. He held it up and switched it on.


    Not one but several of the gargantuan men had their huge, dark faces hanging over the edge. The leader with the ruined eye was not there. When the intensely bright, flashing light, stuck their faces, the giants cried out in anger and alarm. He blew the whistle. Ear splitting noises, shrill and strange, filled the cave and echoed from the walls.


    But the gargantuans were not so easily deterred. One of them hooted a command. A trio of red furred simians in dark jackets swarmed over the lip of the well. They did not go to the ladder. Perhaps they did not see it, or perhaps they did not need it. The wall was rough, with enough projections and knobs for the skinny and nimble monkey-men to pick their way.


    He tried to stuff the strobelight down the collar of his flightsuit to free both his hands for climbing. The sudden motion sent a pain through his chest, and he swayed. The whistle fell from his lips during his cry of pain. With both hands he clung to the handholds.


    The flickering strobelight, blindingly bright, spun its beam as it fell. It struck bottom thirty or forty feet below, and went dark.


    From the noise, he could tell the gargantuans were heaving the large loose stones of the cavern floor aloft to cast down after him. Also, he could hear the little red simians approaching. They were moving faster than he, with the sprained bones in his chest, could manage.


    The fiery sensation in his hand increased, and his fingers went numb. The wasps evidently carried a poison in their sting.


    He gritted his teeth, ignoring pain. He was not about to quit. He would fight until he died, taking as many with him as he could. He drew his knife and clenched it between his teeth, pirate-style, and began climbing down.


    He felt the wake of the wind, and heard the deadly whisper, as some dark mass passed by, missing him by inches. There came other sharp snaps of noise. Wasps moving at the speed of a slingstone struck his cheeks and brow, and hundred bounced from his leather flight jacket. His wasp-stung face felt like a mass of fire. Numbness spread along his face and skull. His lips were rubbery. His eyelids were swelling.


    He rubbed his numb hand along his numb face. It was coated with blood from a dozen tiny punctures. He wiped the blood on the his flightsuit, then on the wall, hoping to keep his weakening grip firm.


    The cave walls to the left and right turned white and lit up. Preston, although his eyes were blurry in the strange light, could see the roof of the cave and the upper part of the walls through the circular mouth of the well above him. Images of the stern-faced Vitruvian Man, showing him in all his perfect proportion, appeared, one in the lefthand wall, and one in the right. The wall itself was glowing with an eerie, colorless light. Preston hoped this was not a sign of radioactivity.


    The simians disintegrated. Flesh vanished. Blood spread like a red cloud and evaporated. Only the bones were left. The giant faces staring down over the sides of the well opened their jaws to scream. Fleshless bony skulls opened their jaws even wider, then the jaws fell away. Spinal vertebrae clattered like a stack of coins, scattering.


    A large skull hit Preston in the shoulder. His numb hand left the handhold. He remembered soaring through the air, with the strange, pale light all about him.


    Then, nothing.

 EPISODE 10 OUBLIETTE

    Episode 10 Oubliette


    He did not recall the impact. Strangely he did after have a distinct memory of the snap of glass as his headlamp shattered, leaving him in darkness, and blood running down his brow.


    For a moment, he thought he was awake. He thought he saw something. But no.


    There was nothing before his real eyes. Before his inner eye memories flipped past as rapidly as the facecards glimpsed in a deck ruffled by a thumb.


    Wartime made for rapid advancement, and he was among the youngest to achieve the rank of colonel. The peace that followed seemed final, with no further enemies on the horizon. Preston Lost found him unable to return to civilian life. His parents before their passing away had amassed a fabulous fortune several times over, so work was not a necessity.


    He was a man born at the wrong time. Chivalry was dead. There were no more crusades, no more mighty deeds to be done.


    Sport fishing and big game hunting became first a pastime, than an obsession. Here, for a while, he found his gnawing hunger sated. But the times were against him. For then first one nation and then another outlawed such sport. Even herds that were overpopulated and overgrazing their resources, private hunters were not allowed to cull. The turmoil of war had turned popular opinion against any private ownership of weapons. Perhaps against anything dangerous, rare, worthy of manhood.


    The aerospace plane had, at first, been merely another pastime. To go higher and faster than any civilian jet was an adventure, and, frankly, to elude regulations became sort of a game also.


    And then he saw an unidentified flying object.


    There it hung, high in the dark blue sky above the Rockies, flying too high and too fast to be real. At first, he had thought it some strange reflection in the canopy, or a trick of the eye. Ordinary radar returned no echo.


    But even that early prototype of the Shooting Star was able to gain altitude, keep the moving object in view. He broke off pursuit of the flying disk over the Great Salt Lake in Utah only when the local air traffic control ordered him away from airspace reserved for the international airport.


    He was curious. He investigated. He was wealthy; he could bring immense resources to bear. There seemed to be no unbiased sources of information about flying saucers. Everyone seemed either too skeptical or too gullible. More crackpot theories filled this field than any other. Nine tenths of what was written or filmed was rubbish, the eyewitnesses unreliable, the evidence ambiguous, and could be explained away.


    But the other tenth¡­


    There were also reports of abductions where victims were taken aboard the flying disks, manhandled with sadistic indifference, subjected to cruel experiments, and released. Then there were also reports of abductions where the victims were never seen again.


    Preston traveled to speak to witnesses and survivors in person. Most were eager to speak to any sympathetic ear. A large community of similar investigators, reaching back years, had trod this path before. There were books, magazines, even seminars. Some reports reached back to the Dark Ages, and spoke of elves on flying boats who bedeviled the people.


    Preston often lay awake at nights, brooding, poring over the reports of the small army of detectives, scientists and librarians he had hired to help him. It was real. The human race was being preyed upon.


    Then came the last interview. A family of Mormon ranchers, living on Yard Moose Mountain in Utah, had seen UFOs three times, hovering after midnight above the mountain peak. After the first two sightings, some cattle were mutilated, and black patches found burnt into the ground. After the third, their daughter was gone. Only her severed arm was found, engagement ring still on the finger.


    Preston recognized the date. This had been the same UFO he had seen and chased. The one that escaped.


    Staring at the diamond ring the sobbing mother brought down from the mantelpiece made something bend inside Preston''s soul, and snap.


    It was as if a man-eating tiger he had failed to shoot had escaped to kill again. This had happened because he had not been ready.


    At what point did a hobby become an obsession? When was the final line crossed? Perhaps when he spent ungodly sums buying an aeronautical engineering company, designing and building a UFO-hunting aircraft capable of reaching above the atmosphere.


    Or when he bent, and then broke the laws, acquiring military-grade stealth technology and engine designs.


    Or perhaps when he sold his domestic holdings, and fled to an island in the Caribbean, whose local despot he bribed and befriended.


    Or when he began routinely crossing into airspace where he was not allowed, gambling that his detection gear could safely keep him away from traffic that could not see him.


    Or when he began running regular patrol flights in his dark plane, hour after hour, unseen by radar, haunting whatever spot on the globe from which came any report of UFO abductions, or strange lights in the sky.


    If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    And then one night, a disk was seen over the Florida Keys, heading to sea. He did not think of himself as reckless man. But it was without any second thoughts that he followed the flying disk out into the ill-rumored waters of the Bermuda Triangle, and then down into the boiling clouds of a freakishly sudden storm.


    And now he was here. The air was stuffy, hot, and close. There was an aching in his right hand.


    With a groan, he tried to sit up, but banged his head on some unseen projection above.


    He turned his head, and saw the flap of his pack was glowing. One of his two chemical glowsticks was lit. It must have been struck or bent during his fall. In the narrow beam of dim light, he saw why his hand was aching. His fingers were clutching his rifle so fiercely that his knuckles were white. How long had he been unconscious? Less than twelve hours, assuming the glowstick had started to glow when first he fell.


    He fished the glowstick out. The fitful green light cast a tiny circle. Bones were piled under his back. He was in a tomb.


    The slanted and dank stone roof was only inches above his head. He craned his neck and held the glowstick out as far as he could reach. The angle of the shadows to one side hinted that there might be a broader space in that direction. There was not enough room to turn and get his hands and feet under him. Grunting, swearing, and squirming in an awkward, crablike motion, he pulled himself across the layer of bones. He found himself at the bottom of a chimney of rock. It led upward at a steep angle, and the surface was a slope of sand, small pebbles, and scree. It was unclimbable.


    He lit one of his two tub candles. He had one candle and forty-nine matches remaining. He rested the candle atop a skull that he nicknamed Johnson.


    He resisted the impulse to light the second one. He resisted the impulse to talk to Johnson.


    Groping, he explored the straights of the tomb. One by one, he picked up and moved bones, rib cages, skulls and white debris from one side of the crowded space to the other, examining the walls and floor. The bones were frail and snapped under the least pressure, filling the air with bone dust. He donned a balaclava to cover mouth and nose.


    The toil was painstaking and backbreaking.


    In one place, he caught a hint of odor. He picked up Johnson and held him aloft. The candle in its pool of wax atop the skull sent up a tiny trail of smoke. Preston held his breath. It did not rise straight up. There was a tiny motion of air in the enclosed place.


    Time passed. His candle died. He dug through the bones. He ate some of his rations bar and drank a 4 ounce packet of water (five remained). Once he fished the pocket sized Bible out of his survival kit. He did not want to waste a match reading it, and he did not remember it very well, but said such prayers as he recalled from his childhood. He wept angry tears, and asked why he had been brought to this freakish future world, if only to die here in the dark.


    More time passed. Eventually he found the source of the air: a square opening in the floor. It was blocked by what felt like a grating of metal bars. He smelled fresher air. This was not a natural cave. That gave him hope.


    He lit a match and looked. He shoved a femur through the crossed bars of the grate. There was a slight noise as it fell further, then a rhythm series of clicks as it bounced first from one wall then the other some unseen drop. No sound returned from the bottom.


    He tore a page out of his survival guide, crumpled it into a ball, and used another match. He ignited the paper wad and dropped it through the metal bars. It receded to a bright dot in the distance, but it came to rest on some flat surface far below before it flickered out.


    He heaved a sigh of relief. It looked like no more than twenty feet. He could reach that.


    The pocket chainsaw was meant to cut wood, not metal, but these bars were surprisingly soft. He saved his remaining candle and glowstick, and worked in the dark.


    Hours passed, and he had no way to count them in the dark. He nibbled from his rations and drank another packet of water (four remained) only when he felt himself going faint in the head.


    Finally the last bar was severed. He shook the final glowstick into cool, green light. He lashed his parachute cord securely to and through the stubs of the bars. He slung the rope around one of the bars he had left intact. One length of rope he held in his hand. It passed over the bar and came down again around his hips in a bowline. Slowly releasing the first length allowed him to lower himself into the darkness, keeping his feet on one wall.


    At twenty five feet down, he was out of rope. He had misestimated the distance.


    He lashed the free end in a slip knot to the line supporting his weight, clung to rough stones in the wall, and secured his pack in the bowline. The lower the pack weight went, the higher the slipknot climbed.


    At thirty feet down, the walls around him slanted sharply away. He lowered himself through an opening in a cavern roof.


    When the slipknot was against the bars twenty five feet above, he climbed down the rope hand over hand.


    At fifty feet own, at the end of the rope, he hung for a moment. Where was the floor? He dropped the green glowstick. It fell twelve feet and came to rest. It cast only the smallest circle of illumination. It was impossible to see any details.


    He sighed in relief, lowered himself to the very end of the rope where the pack was. He supported his weight by one strap, and hung by his hands. He was a six foot tall man, and his arms were half that, so the floor was at most four or five feet below the toes of his boots.


    With a savage motion of his knife, he cut the parachute cord where it was knotted to the pack strap.


    He fell. He landed and stumbled. The was a boom of metallic noise as he crashed to his side. The glowstick rolled. His arms and head were hanging over some brink. The glowstick went spinning into the abyss, and dwindled from sight.


    Carefully he sat up. He brought out his last candle, lit it.


    (No candles remained. Forty-six matches remained.)


    He was standing on the upper surface of a metal cube roughly two yards on a side. There was a sheer drop one pace away, whichever way he stepped. The scrap of burned paper was also resting here.


    The cube was hovering in midair with no means of support.


    Designs of raised trigrams, made of tiny straight or broken lines arranged in squares covered each face. Perhaps it was writing, perhaps ornament, perhaps circuitry of some sort.


    No matter how far over the edge he leaned, or where he held the candle, the shed light showed there was no pillar, no post, no floor, nothing underneath. There was nothing to any side.


    Trapped. There was no way off the cube, no way down, and no way to reach the rope left dangling above. All hope was gone. He uttered every curse he knew and invented new ones. He pounded the stubborn surface with his fists until his knuckles bled.


    The letters of the rectangular script lit up. A dispassionate, nonhuman voice spoke.


    "The speech centers of your brain have been adjusted to allow for total communication. What are your instructions?"