“Why does lie not strike and have done with it?” Ergon growled at my side. I shrugged helplessly.
And then, quite suddenly, the answer came to me.
The monster was puzzled! He had never seen anything like the floating balloon and its dangling basket before. He was not certain what we were, nor whether we were good to eat. He was―curious!
He flapped about, circling us at a safe distance, eyeing us warily. The dim, small brain of the flying reptile was baffled by our ungainly shape and our peculiar odor. He was hesitant to attack us, not knowing what we were, how we might defend ourselves, nor even if we were edible.
And suddenly, I knew we had a chance.
Galvanized into action, I let out a yip, attracting the attention of the others.
“Yell―wave your arms―make noise!” I commanded. And, suiting my actions to my words, I began capering about the basket, screeching at the top of my lungs and windmilling my arms in a wild, maniacal fashion.
The ghastozar flinched aside and withdrew, peering at me warily.
Ergon and Darloona instantly got the idea and sensed my thoughts. Solemn, glum-faced Ergon began an awkward dance from side to side, booming out loud cries and my Princess yelled with all the lungpower at her command. I could have laughed at Ergon’s self-conscious expression, as he soberly pranced about, waving his arms like a maniac, had not the situation been so serious and our danger so deadly.
The balloon wobbled and swung widely from side to side, almost pitching us out. The uproar we three made was deafening. And, true to my theory, the flying reptile withdrew to a safer distance, but continued to eye us in a puzzled fashion.
Never in all its days had the winged predator of the skies seen a flying thing that bobbed about so madly and voiced such a cacaphonous battle cry. It was baffled. And it began to get angry. My plan, it seemed, was not without its flaws. .The tiny brain of the ghastozar had room for only one thought or emotion at a time. Wary puzzlement had driven out hunger; and now anger drove out wariness.
It swung towards us, fanged jaws agape, striking out with bared bird claws. At the last possible moment it swept to one side, but one flashing claw caught the swinging basket a mighty buffet, knocking us from our feet.
I staggered backwards, the rim of the basket striking me in the backs of the knees, and fell over the side!
A dizzy vista of grassy plains and wooded hills flashed before my eyes as I fell like a stone.
My hands thrust out automatically, clutching on empty air.
Then something slapped me across the face. I snatched at it with that utter desperation wherewith a drowning man is said to clutch at a straw.
In my case, however, the “straw” proved to be the end of a dangling line. It was the rope whereby the Tharkolians had tied down the balloon, anchoring it to the palace tier, but only later in retrospect did I manage to identify it. When Ergon had hacked it through, cutting the balloon loose, the severed line hung free. It was the end of this that my desperate hands now encountered and to which I clung by one hand with all my strength.
I hung about eleven or twelve feet below the basket, clinging to the very end of the line with both hands by now. The world swung giddily beneath my heels; the wind tore at me with impalpable fingers, screaming in my ears like a banshee as I clung for dear life to the end of the line.
Peering up I saw a row of frightened faces staring down at me from the edge of the basket. Ergon had his wide, froggish mouth open and was yelling something inaudible to me. Darloona was pale and wide-eyed, staring down at me, her knuckles pressed against parted lips. Even little Glypto was there, his scrawny, beak-nosed face white with terror.
As for myself, I must confess to feeling no fear at all. This is not vapid braggadocio, nor am I attempting to portray myself in an heroic light. Indeed, if anything, I felt furious and embarrassed at having fallen out of the basket like a stumble-footed clown. No, I have never thought of myself as being particularly heroic. It has always been my sorry lot to get into trouble, from which I then have to extricate myself as best I can. It has always seemed to me that I have simply done whatever seemed the only thing to do at the time, and generally in such hazardous or precarious positions as my present plight, I have simply been too busy trying to figure out what to do to have sufficient leisure in which to be afraid.
Looking backward on such moments, having somehow or other escaped from them, I have usually been ludicrously weak-kneed with reaction. After the danger is past, then you have plenty of time to be frightened at the danger. But while you are suffering through it you just haven’t got time enough for fear.
I have often wondered if other men who have led exciting lives of action and peril have found this to be true, or if the experience is uniquely my own.
At any rate, I was boilingly angry at my ludicrous position. I began trying to climb up the rope, but this proved very difficult to do. Each time I shifted my weight, the free-hanging basket swung widely to one side while I, hanging like a weight at the end of the dangling line, swung in the opposite direction. The dizzying business of swinging about, the vertiginous vista of hilltops spinning madly below my heels, the screaming wind that buffeted and tore at me, combined to make it difficult and dangerous to try to climb the rope hand over hand.
But there was nothing else to do.
And then another factor entered into the situation to further complicate it. And that was the ghastozar itself.
The flying reptile had noted my fall from the basket, and now as I swung temptingly to and fro like a fat worm on a fishhook, the winged monster made a savage stab at me.
Fanged jaws snapped sickeningly close to my legs as the thing whirled by. It passed so near me that the wind of its passage flung me about in a dizzy whirl. I kicked out with both boot-heels the next time it came at me and I think it must have gotten a kick in the head for it flinched aside, shaking its head numbly.
As it veered away one great black batlike wing dealt me a terrific blow.
Stunned for a moment, my grip on the line was loosened.
And I fell free.
For a dreadful, endless moment the sky was beneath me and the world was far above.
Then my legs slammed into something and I instinctively clung to it with all the strength of my desperation.
My eyes were weeping from the stinging wind, and I could see nothing. I had come crashing down atop something and the impact drove the wind out of my lungs. Gasping for breath, blinking blearily, I clung blindly to whatever it was that I had fallen astride.
A moment later my vision cleared and I sucked air into my panting lungs and saw what it was that I had landed upon.
And then it was that I felt fear, you may be certain.
Numbing fear … hopeless fear … such as I have seldom known, and would prefer never to experience again.
For I found myself seated astride a rounded, enormous bulk, my legs clasped about its under-curve, and my arms wrapped tightly and desperately about a long extension that branched off the parent body. It was rough and cold to the touch, with a leathery texture most peculiar and difficult to identify.
In another breath, however, the world righted itself and I had time to discover my predicament. And, believe me, dear reader, the blood ran cold in my veins.
For I had fallen upon the ghastozar, and was nom seated astride the dreadful monster of the shies!
Book Three
BORAK THE YATHOON
Chapter 9
The Scarlet Arrow