The only element of uneasiness to mar the mood of victory was that the whereabouts of young Tomar and of the Jungle Maid, Ylana, were still unknown. The two youngsters had not returned from their mission. As yet, their absence had caused no consternation among their friends. No one as yet knew of any reason to worry about their safety. The fact that they had not yet returned was merely deemed unfortunate.
So little attention had been given to their absence, in fact, that no one had mentioned it to the Tharkolian lieutenant, Kadar, who had volunteered to serve during the occupation of Kuur. Had he been asked, the young officer could have told how he had dispatched the two to search the cellblock and its adjacent chambers, thus yielding the first clue as to where the missing youngsters had been going when they had so mysteriously vanished from their comrades.
WHEN the golden skies of Thanator were illuminated by the brilliance of dawn, the last men ascended to the ships of the fleet in gigs, which were stored away in their deck-houses, and the ships themselves were made ready to depart.
The ornithopters Conqueress and Arkonna, which had been slightly battered and damaged when they had been captured by the Mind Wizards, had been hastily repaired during the hours of darkness, and were now ready for the long flight home.
Without further ado, the mightiest air-fleet ever assembled in the skies of Callisto spread its great wings to catch the winds of morning. From the beach of the Dragon River below, the warriors of Lukor’s company waved and cheered as the royal colors of Shondakor and Tharkol and Soraba broke from the flag-masts of the Xaxar, the Avenger, the Conqueress, the Arkonna, and the Zarkoon. The five gigantic galleons of the skies rose weightlessly into the golden heavens, floated in a grand and stately curve, circling once the Valley of Kuur, then drew into an arrowhead formation, pointed their prows westward, and lifted their jointed and mobile vans in salute to the warriors below.
Like a flotilla of clouds, the great Armada drifted slowly from view, soaring grandly over the length of the vale, and disappeared from the view of those on the beach. One by one they dwindled to tiny motes in the west and were gone.
And now there was work to be done!
Lukor wasted no time in setting his men to their tasks.
“Friend Koja, take twenty men into the caverns and bring up all the bodies of the dead. We shall burn them in a funeral pyre, as the best means of disposing of the corpses. Our own dead are being flown back home for a state funeral, but we must dispose decently of the bodies of our enemies. I want a complete roster of the dead, with descriptions of each, mind you!”
The ungainly arthropod saluted and withdrew to select his work-party. They descended into Kuur to their grisly task.
The master-swordsman then turned to gruff, burly Ergon, the former Perushtarian slave, who had fought beside Jandar of Callisto in the gladiatorial arena of Zanadar and was now a member of the Shondakorian court.
“Ergon, old comrade, I will give you the task of checking through all of the storerooms and laboratories and arsenals of the Mind Wizards,” said Lukor. “Any weapons, gear, provisions or supplies of food or drink which you deem we can put to good use, I want brought up and added to our supply depot up the beach, there. Then the laboratories and storage chambers are to be sealed off. Some of the devices and ma. chines of the dwarfish yellow devils are doubtless dangerous to tamper with, and I desire no untoward accidents!”
“Aye, komad,” grunted Ergon, saluting his captain. “Jandar has already warned that the chemical laboratories have explosives and acids and poisons, and others such-like devil-stuff. Seal ‘em off, I will!” He ambled off to choose a team for the job.
Some of the others were given the task of drawing up a precise map of the underground facilities of the Mind Wizards, and departed at once in search of drawing implements and measuring tools.
These assignments given out to worthy and competent men, Lukor posted guards at lookout stations and turned to the task he had reserved unto himself.
The finding of Tomar and Ylana!
THE day wore on, slowly. It is not a Thanatorian custom to indulge in a midday meal; however, Lukor decided that he would break with tradition this once and see that his men partook of that Earthling innovation Jandar of Callisto had introduced, which was called “lunch.” After a morning spent in the dank underground tunnels, he decided they required an interval of rest in the open air, at least.
By late afternoon, the corpses of the slain had been fetched up from the labyrinthine ways of the Underground City and sanitarily disposed of on a huge funeral pyre at the other end of the beach. Those weapons and gear that Ergon. had found in the subterranean storage-chambers, and that he decided could be of use to the occupation force, had either been added to the stores held at the supply depot, or had been stored away aboard the Jalathadar.
The laboratories and machine shops had been sealed off, as Lukor had ordered. As an additional precaution, Ergon had posted guards at their entrances.
The underground passages and chambers had, by evening, been thoroughly explored and mapped. The cartographers had added descriptive captions as to the nature and use of each chamber, as far as these could be deduced. A number of secret cubicles or previously undiscovered tunnels had also been found, so thorough had been the work of the officers assigned to this task.
Over the evening meal, by the light of flaring torches, Lukor examined these charts. Dividing his attention almost equally between the hot stew prepared aboard the galley of the flying ship that hovered aloft, and the annotated maps, he studied the designs of the subterranean system of chambers with a certain dissatisfaction and uneasiness gnawing at his heart, a feeling that had nothing to do with the the maps of the Underground City.
The reason for this growing dissatisfaction was quite simple―in his own task, Lukor had failed.
Tomar and Ylana had not been found.
THE men slept that night in blanket rolls on the beach, while a huge bonfire flared against the dark,, and alert guards strolled the perimeter of the camp or stood sentinel at the Gates of Kuur.
The night was clear and mild, almost warm. But that was not the reason the men voiced for sleeping out-of-doors. None of them had the slightest desire to spend the night in those dank, grim, underground rooms where once the fiendish Mind Wizards had held sway.
Lukor alone did not sleep.
It had finally occurred to the gallant, old Ganatolian to announce to all his troops that the two young people were missing, and to inquire if any of the warriors had a notion of what might have become of them.
Kadar had looked up with surprise etched on his handsome features. The Tharkolian lieutenant had not, until that very moment, realized that the Shondakorian boy and the jungle Maid were among the missing.
“Sir Lukor,” he spoke up, “I last saw them in the cellblock where Prince Jandar and all of us who survived the capture of the First Armada were held.”
“When was that, precisely?” Lukor demanded keenly. The officer told him.
The young juru-komad then recounted how Princess Zamara had instructed him to assign to some of the warriors the duty of searching all of the cellblock and the adjacent guardrooms and storage-chambers, in order to make absolutely certain that none of the Kuurians or their slaves were hiding there.
“Which cellblock do you refer to?” inquired Lukor. “Show it to me on the map.”
The lieutenant studied the chart by the light of the torches, and then laid his finger on the area he had described. Lukor looked over the map carefully: no known tunnel or hallway stretched beyond that region. The corridor, lined with cells on either side, ended in a blank wall. There was only a small store. room of weapons beyond the last pair of cells, the one where Ergon had discovered a variety of hand-weapons and warriors’ gear obviously stripped from former captives.