Wrapping my arms about the snaky neck of the ghastozar, I clung to the back of the monster with desperate strength.
Below my heels the wooded landscape swept by at dizzying speed. Above me, the balloon careened along, basket swaying drunkenly from side to side, a helpless plaything of the rushing winds.
A terrible fear possessed me. I could taste it, sour and metallic, in the back of my mouth. Fear, I discovered, had an oily taste like brass.
My heart thudded painfully against my ribs. I panted for breath, lungs burning. The wind lashed my bare arms and thighs, whipping my hair, making my eyes water until my vision blurred.
Would this terrible voyage into the unknown never end?
And how else could it end … save in death?
The flying monster flapped its ungainly bulk in wide circles around the balloon. Gradually it penetrated into the dim, small brain of the winged reptile that it bore an unaccustomed weight on its back. The dreadful head craned about, peering at me, fanged jaws agape. Eyes of red flame glared into mine―eyes empty of thought, eyes filled with blood lust and furious rage.
I crouched lower, clinging between the brute’s shoulders, burying my face in the base of its neck. It craned and twisted, madly striving to reach me with those yawning jaws that bristled with razor-sharp fangs. Gusts of putrid breath blew in my face sickeningly. The clash of those chomping teeth rang in my ears. Droplets of drooling spittle sprayed my arms and shoulders as the maddened ghastozar strove in vain to reach me. But its coiling, snaky neck could not quite twist back far enough so that those hungry jaws could sink in my flesh, to rip and tear.
In its wild, careening flight, the ghastozar had forgotten about the runaway balloon and as it strove to get at me its outstretched wings struck and snagged the gasbag.
The wings of the flying monster, like those of the terrene bat it so resembles, or those of the prehistoric pterodactyl it resembles even more closely, evolved from the forepaws of the brute. The ribs of the wing are really elongated fingers, ending in hooked and Tazory claws, with thin membrane stretched between them, taut as a drumhead.
It was one of these fishhook claws that brushed the wobbling gasbag
Brushed―and snagged and tore!
So close were we at that instant that I heard Ergon’s deep voice, cursing, and Darloona’s shrill cry of alarm.
In the very next moment, the maddened monster veered away in a long gull-like curve to one side. But the damage was done. A long rip, about two feet in length, scored the smooth, tight rondure of the gasbag. And the vapor gushed from it in a torrent.
I have no idea what the gas was that Zamara employed in her aerial invention, whether it was hydrogen or helium or some gas peculiar to Callisto and unknown on my native planet. But it was lighter than air and served to lift the balloon aloft. Now, as the unknown gas rushed from the bag, it shrank in upon itself, wrinkling, sagging, losing tension. It began to empty swiftly, and as it did so the balloon began to sink toward the ground below.
I had a horrible picture in my mind―a vision of the balloon hurtling into rugged, wooded hills at terrific velocity, mangling and crippling its helpless occupants. And, surely, had the vessel continued at its original speed, the flight would have ended with tragic swiftness.
But as the vapor escaped from the collapsing gas bag, the balloon sank toward the ground. As it lost altitude, it left the region of the howling winds, and fell into a layer of calmer air. Thus its velocity lessened rapidly as it sank lower and lower.
And by this time we had left the wooded hills behind and were flying over an immense region of level, grassy plains―doubtless an eastern extension of the Great Plains of Haratha. We could see clearly by this time for dawn had long since lit the vaporous skies to luminous golden fires. We had flown all night in the grip of the winds, it seemed.
So when the balloon eventually struck the ground, it would come down in the flat plains. And there was a good chance that those within the basket would survive unharmed.
My aerial steed, stung to fury by the unexpected and maddening sensation of being ridden by one of the little two-legged creatures from the flying basket, lost interest in the rapidly deflating balloon. It soared about the skies, hurling through a series of aerial maneuvers designed to dislodge me from my precarious seat between its shoulders. I have never ridden a “bucking bronco” in a rodeo, but I have no doubt the experience was similar. I clung to the enraged reptile, retaining my seat at times with the greatest difficulty.
And suddenly I found myself flying over an immense cortege that wound across the plains for miles, or so it seemed. Beaked, restive thaptors drew great rolling chariots or huge wains laden with folded tents, stores, and gear. In the forefront of the vast procession, and to either side, an armed host of peculiar beings rode astride the bird-horses. These warriors were naked, their attenuated limbs clad in a shiny chitin like the shell of the lobster. Knobbed antennae sprouted from the horny ovoid casques that were their heads, and eyes like globular clusters of black crystals peered solemnly skyward to observe my flight.
I recognized the procession for one of the vast migrations of the Yathoon Horde, a barbaric race of coldly intelligent but humorless and emotionless giant creatures evolved to reason from some species of insect as we humans are from the higher primates.
During the first weeks after my arrival on Callisto I had been taken captive by one such clan of the Yathoon, and during that captivity I was instructed in the one language spoken universally across the face of the jungle Moon by all intelligent races. My memories of that period of enslavement, which was brief in term, are clear and sharp, because it was during that interval in my adventures on this mysterious world that I made my first friend and first met the woman to whom my heart was sworn.
But I had not the slightest desire to repeat the experience again, for the second time I should probably not be so lucky as the first. That is, I had established friendship with a Yathoon chieftain, Koja, whom I had rescued from certain death. The cold, logical, emotionless arthropod had learned from me a concept alien to his weird, uncanny kind: the concept of friendship. Thus, to repay me for my kindness in saving his life, he had set me free. Had things not eventuated in that manner, I might to this day be a naked, hopeless slave of the nomad insectoid warriors.
We swept across the Yathoon line of march, and the mighty procession halted in its tracks to observe this curious phenomenon. Never had the Yathoon warriors seen a human riding a monster ghastozar through the skies as if it were a thaptor. And doubtless, in their cool, unemotional way, the arthropods were curious.
I had by now lost sight of the balloon. Perhaps it had come down somewhere behind me; at least it was no longer visible aloft. I was grateful for this small favor from the inscrutable fates, for the sight of the drifting balloon with its basketful of human riders would have puzzled and intrigued the Yathoon yet further.
As it was, a party of mounted warriors detached itself from the main body of the nomads and rode across the plains in pursuit of the aerial dragon and its human rider.
The bird-horses of Callisto are capable of bursts of surprising speed, as I have mentioned elsewhere, but are seldom able to sustain it for long. And the winged dragon upon whose back I rode could easily outdistance them, I knew. Thus I expected the nomad warrior troop to fall back after a time.
This, however, did not happen. My reptilian steed was flying sluggishly, and was descending lower and lower. Vast, ragged batlike wings drummed and boomed, flapping like sails. Perhaps the brute was wearying rapidly from my unexpected weight―there are few flying creatures on this world who could bear two hundred pounds of human rider without tiring. Or perhaps …