She shrugged wearily. “I tried to get through the jungles to the south in order to reach the country of my mother’s people, but I got lost. The hunters of my tribe may know these jungle paths well, but I am less acquainted with them. I have been stumbling around in circles for many days, as well as I can guess. A big lizard treed me for one whole day before giving up and ambling off in search of a dinner that could not climb trees―”
“I thought you told Jandar there were no dangerous beasts in the jungle?”
“Well, I did. The big lizards are troublesome, but fat and slow moving. They would eat you if they could, but a person can easily outrun them, or simply climb a tree and wait for them to move along,” she said.
“Very well―please go on.”
“There’s nothing much more to tell you, Elder,” the girl said, finishing her repast. She evidently assumed we Shondakorians, for all our amazing flying ships, were a tribe essentially like her own; and, come to think of it, she was not far off the mark in addressing me as “Elder,” for my years, and the small store of wisdom I have managed to accumulate during those years, have earned me a position of respect as a senior counselor to my prince and princess: hence I am, in her sense of the word, very much an “Elder.” But I digress―the fault of old men given to garrulous habits, I fear.
The maid continued her story.
“I wandered through the jungle for days, or so it seemed. I tried to slay a beast with my spear, but it got away, taking the spear with it. I ate lizard eggs and some fruit and berries. Then I came out here, almost exactly where I had gone in. I would have ducked back and tried again, but I could not help noticing that the village was empty of people, and the caves deserted. This puzzled me―as you can imagine. And then I saw your―” she fumbled for a word to describe the Xaxar, but, as her primitive vocabulary evidently lacked any term which would adequately apply, she merely gestured around at the cabin.
“It looked very much like the flying log Lukor and the insect-man were riding when they rescued us from the caverns of the Zarkoon,” she said. “So I let myself be noticed, hoping that I was right and that you were friends of Jandar and Tomar.”
“So you know nothing whatsoever about the possible recapture of our lost friends?”
“Nothing at all, I’m sorry to say,” she admitted.
“If Xangan had succeeded in capturing them, would he have taken them to Kuur?” I asked.
“What is Kuur?”
“The country of the Mind Wizards,” I said.
“You mean the Unseen Ones? I don’t know. If there is some reason why the Masters would be very interested in Jandar, they might have done so.”
“Do you know where their country is?”
She shook her head.
“Do you know in which direction it lies, or how far away it is, or how to get there?”
The answer to all of these questions was negative.
I let her rest and bade the steward lay out fresh garments and hot water so that she might wash herself and change her raiment, and went up to the bridge to report to Captain Zantor.
There was nothing more we could do here, he decided reluctantly. And we were overdue to rejoin the rest of the armada. We would take Ylana with us, however. That much at least we could do, for she was desperate to escape from the marriage with Xangan which the Elders of her tribe were adamant in forcing upon her.
We flew across the plateau into the east and before the daylight was extinguished we had traversed the ravine which encircled the jungle plateau and were soaring above the unknown mountains which rose on its further side.
Zantor kept the wheel-gangs working all night to make up for lost time. Under the light of the many moons, we flew for hours over previously unexplored mountains without sighting any sign of human habitation. Over a midnight lunch with Dr. Abziz, neither of us being able to sleep, we discussed the mysteries of this unknown hemisphere. The irascible little geographer was puzzled to find that this side of Thanator, or “Callisto,” as Jandar sometimes called it, was so unlike the side we knew. Most of the known hemisphere is occupied by plains and seas and jungles, with only two ranges of mountains; but the far side seemed almost entirely given over to mountains, and on the whole was harsh and infertile, for the jungles of the plateau were the only extensive regions of lush vegetation we had yet encountered.
“Odd, too, that the side of our planet most familiar to us is the home of so many nations,” the doctor pointed out, tugging thoughtfully on the little spike of beard which was his pride and joy, “while this hemisphere, insofar as we now know, is so very sparsely inhabited. Why, we have yet to find a single city! Nothing here but savage tribes, and those befeathered cannibals!”
By day we reached the meeting-place previously decided upon, but the skies were clear in every direction and there was no sign of the armada. This was a trifle strange, but not necessarily a cause for alarm.
For two days more we lingered at the rendezvous without any sign of the armada. Then, growing increasingly alarmed, we began exploring the territory from the air in an ever-widening circle. We found no sign of human habitation, and no sign of the missing ships, not even their wreckage. Neither did we discover the land of the Mind Wizards, although, from a study of Dr. Abziz’s map, we had a fairly accurate notion of what the terrain in its vicinity should look like from the air.
As time dragged on, it became increasingly evident that something had happened to the armada. We had been a bit late in arriving at the rendezvous-point ourselves; but the armada was very late. We began to speculate that the three missing ships had run into serious trouble.
“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” Ergon growled over dinner one night. “They found Kuur, and attacked it, and were somehow captured or destroyed! If that hadn’t happened, they would surely have met us at the place and time we had agreed. Maybe we were a little late, but they would have waited for us―if they could! But they couldn’t, because by that time they were either dead or imprisoned.”
“Maybe,” Zantor said slowly, rubbing his heavy jaw in a thoughtful fashion. “But if they found Kuur―why can’t we? We’ve been flying around for days, and we have, thus far, covered very many korads. There are mountains beyond numbering, and winding rivers aplenty, but none with the configurations matching those on the silver medallion. How much longer can we continue looking, without finding either the armada, or the Mind Wizards, or both?”
“Eh, sirs,” Dr. Abziz interjected at this point. “I would put the same question, but in a simpler manner: how much longer can we continue looking? Period. For, as you must have noticed from this meager fare set before us, our supplies of food and drink are almost exhausted.”
At this, Glypto spoke up, a gleam of mischief twinkling in his shrewd black eye.
“As Sir Lukor would say, were he but here, perhaps the good doctor thinks too much of his stomach, and not enough of our missing friends! I, for one, will gladly tighten my belt a bit, in order to keep on searching …”
“A scholar of my repute,” Abziz said huffily, fixing one eye on the smirking master-thief with a supercilious expression on his scarlet face, “cares little for the fleshly pleasures, among which is the gross matter of nutriment! But we cannot realistically expect a ship full of young fighting-men to stay in trim for long on such skimpy rations.”
Before long it became distressingly obvious, even to the die-hards among us, that it was futile to continue the search. The quest of the Xaxar had doubly failed―failed not only to discover Jandar’s party, but failed to find the armada, as well.
So there was nothing to do but turn back, and retrace the long voyage back to Shondakor in defeat. We could not prosecute the war against Kuur all by ourselves, for a single ship against a city made for unequal odds. And whatever magic the Mind Wizards had used to destroy the three ships of the armada, they should be able to use against our lone vessel with ease.