Apparently, it was. The great bird soared in circles for minutes. Then it dived lower, for a better look. Tony stood as still as his topcoat. He could see the shape of the huge flying thing. It was like a giant eagle, only vastly more terrifying. Its body would be seventy or eighty feet long. Its wings would have the spread of a four-motored bomber. Its claws would have the grip of half a dozen steam shovels in one. And its talons would be needle-sharp and more than three feet long. Decidedly, at close quarters, it wouldn’t be anything to argue with.
It vanished. Completely. Es-Souk had turned himself into a small round stone hurtling downward from the sky.
Tony counted:
“One—two—three—”
Give the stone time to pick up speed in free fall. The time a parachuting flier waits before he opens his parachute.
“Eight—nine—ten—Geronimo!” said Tony.
He ran like the devil for fifty yards, stopped, and watched the spot where he had been. Then his jaw dropped open. His topcoat was running like the devil, too. The bush on which he had draped it was in full flight. As he stared, he saw the twinkling of pink legs under it. Then his topcoat stopped, and turned, and he saw Nasim in human form inside it. She waved gaily to him.
“Hello!” she called brightly. “I’m helping, too!”
WHOOOOOSH!
Something smacked the desert a mighty blow. Dust arose as from a bomb explosion. A concussion wave spread out with such power that Tony felt a puff of wind, and the topcoat went sailing from around Nasim. She had been forgetful again. She went after the coat and picked it up, swinging it cheerily in one hand as she turned to watch.
Es-Souk arose from the crater which he had made as a stone. He had a new form. He was huge and—now—black and terrible to behold. He was a giant of ebony flesh with four-foot tusks and hands whose clawed fingertips were feet in length.
Tony ran toward him, blowing on the wick of the cigarette lighter.
The giant bellowed, but Tony sprinted even faster for hand-to-hand contact. And the djinn could not quite take it. Tony’s challenge had included so furious an insult to the entire djinn nation that it could not possibly be a bluff—and now his confident rush to close in on Es-Souk was daunting.
Es-Souk spurted upward into a whirlwind half a mile high. He materialized as a roc at the top of the column of misty whirling air. The rest of the whirlwind flashed upward to be absorbed in the bird’s body. It was an admirable technical solution of the problem of a quick take-off for so large a flying creature. Gigantic flappings of mighty pinions sent the roc soaring away. Es-Souk was uncertain. He did not quite know what to do. To cover his indecision, he suddenly swooped and made what looked like a dive-bomber plunge for Tony.
It was utterly horrible to watch. The monstrous creature, its incredibly curved beak gaping, plunged for him in ravening ferocity. Its claws were stretched to rend and tear. It was as perfectly calculated to inspire panic as any sight could possibly be.
Tony faced it. He had a phial of lasf in his handkerchief, now. In the handkerchief, too, were the small stones he’d pocketed. He held the cigarette lighter in his left hand. His right gripped that singularly innocuous bomb. At the last instant he’d squeeze, crush the phial between the stones, and hurl the dripping handkerchief—weighted by the stones—deep into the gaping throat. He didn’t know how quickly it would work, but—
The roc zoomed just as Tony was sending the message to his fingers to tense and smash the lasf-phial. The great wings beat horrifically. Sand rose in clouds about Tony, blinding him. He found himself almost buried to his knees as the sand settled about him.
The roc was flapping into the sky again. Nasim ran up to Tony, beaming and offering him the coat.
“You’re wonderful!” she said adoringly. “What are you going to do next? And what do you want me to do?” He said indignantly:
“You shouldn’t mix into a private fight like this, Nasim!”
“Oh, do let me help!” she pleaded.
“Hell!” said Tony. “Put on something! Put on the coat! How do you expect me to keep my mind on fighting?”
The roc which was Es-Souk made a steep, banking turn. It power-dived at Tony again. And this time Es-Souk had a purpose, a new purpose. He’d seen Tony struggling up out of the sand. So Es-Souk came back only yards above the desert’s surface, his monstrous wings beating almost straight back to give him the absolute maximum of speed. Then, only fifty feet from Tony, he swept his wings violently ahead, and not only checked his own speed and sent himself hurtling upward, but set up such a furious smother of swirling sand that Tony was buried breast-deep before he realized what was happening. Es-Souk had made a sizable sand dune with one stroke of his mighty roc’s wings. It was sheer fortune that its deepest part did not overwhelm Tony.
He worked his way clear, Nasim pulling anxiously at him—with the topcoat lost again. Tony swore furiously. Something like a bubble appeared in the sand dune’s flank. Abdul appeared and arose, with sand grains dripping from his turban. He sputtered and wailed:
“I know I spoke too soon!… Lord! Next time he will bury you, and you will smother, and then what will I do?”
Es-Souk whirled again, low down, and shot back toward Tony again. Nasim said firmly:
“Don’t be so stupid, Abdul! Turn yourself into a griffin, with a saddle, and let him ride you to fight Es-Souk in the air!”
Abdul blinked and hastily drew a deep breath. He expanded, to a large round object with no identifiable features. He contracted to something that Tony could not identify, and which at the moment he did not examine. He saw wings and a saddle and a long, serpentine tail. He made a dash for the saddle, swung into it, and hung on.
Chapter 15
And he felt himself shooting skyward with breath-taking velocity! There was one instant when a huge, feathered body was directly below him—a body so huge that it gave him a queer sensation of being an insect chased by an infuriated hen. Then he was clear and rising. There were great, veined wings beating on either side, there was a scaly body below him, doubtlessly a serpentine tail behind him, and a long, snaky neck in front with a head he could not see clearly.
That neck twisted and a specifically indefinite face appeared—or rather, did not appear. It looked like mist, yet there were eyes in it, and Abdul’s plaintive voice came to Tony above the beat of mighty wings.
“Lord,” said Abdul miserably, “if you have some weapon to use against Es-Souk, if you tell me how you wish to use it, I will try to give you the opportunity. If you do not win this fight, lord, I am ruined!”
“I’ve got a weapon, all right,” said Tony. “I’d intended to use it on the ground, away from you and Nasim. It’s pretty deadly to any djinn anywhere near by.”
Abdul make a moaning sound.
“But if anything happens to you,” said Tony, “I’ll have a nasty fall. So—hm… get us some height, and then if you can let Es-Souk dive at me from behind, I think I can use my weapon so you won’t be affected.”
The desert shrank as the unnamed creature into which Abdul had transformed himself strove desperately for height. Tony found a strap hitched to the saddle, intended to make the rider secure in his place. He fastened it and felt better. He saw the roc, far below, beginning to beat upward with furious strokes of its long pinions.
He tucked away his cigarette case and got out his two stones and the handkerchief and the full phial of lasf. He rearranged the stones and the phial in the handkerchief. He tied the whole together, tugging at the corners of the handkerchief with his teeth. The combination made a fairly handy if eccentric hand grenade. But of course it could not possibly explode.