Tomar brought a steaming mug of mulled, spiced wine and a dish of crusty, warm meat cakes to me on the bridge. Wrapped in my cloak, I stood munching these and sipping the hot wine, while staring down at the enthralling vista which gradually unrolled before my eyes.
First impressions can easily be wrong, of course, but the more I studied the unknown hemisphere beneath us the more I became convinced that the terrain immediately to hand was uninhabited. Nowhere could I discern the slightest traces of human habitation. We were, just then, flying over a wooded tract, a thick mass of scarlet foliage a shade or two darker than the red meadow-grasses of the plains. It was obvious no woodman’s ax had touched those gnarled and mighty forest monarchs, nor had the underbrush been thinned out. And, as for the plains themselves, I could discern no road or pathway, no caravan track; neither were there any domesticated cattle browsing on the meadows, nor the smoke of cooking fires ascending on the morning breeze.
We flew on for an hour or more. I remained in the pilothouse, riveted to the scenery below, hoping that at any moment a trace of human habitation would come into my view. Such, however, was not the case. Gradually the land thinned out to bare, harsh soil, scrubby trees, rocky knolls. Here and there a river glittered, but never one which presented the distinctive configuration engraved on Ang Chan’s silver medallion. Poor, thin little rivulets they were, trickling meagerly between banks of naked, eroded soil. This was a grim, hostile, barren land whereover we now flew by midmorning, and the lack of any signs of human habitation were not at all surprising.
By noon the situation had changed only in that we were now soaring over a rugged land of broken rock and naked hills.
By early afternoon, we observed a mighty range of mountains on the horizon, and, altering the approximately due west direction of our flight, we headed off into the north to investigate this range, which could very easily be the one depicted on Ang Chan’s medallion.
In all, it was a tense, dreary and uneventful day, one of continuous suspense and waiting, which failed to eventuate in discovery.
Evening, however, was to prove remarkably different!
After many hours of silent vigil I had wearied at last. Leaving the bridge in the capable hands of Captain Haakon, I went down to my cabin, took a brief nap and brought these journals up to date. My officers and I had an early dinner that evening, and, at the conclusion of the meal, before retiring, I again ascended the narrow winding stair to the pilothouse for one last look around at the nighted landscape before taking to my bed.
The many-colored moons of mighty Jupiter were aloft. The green sphere of Orovad, or lo, glowed like a Chinese paper lantern through the dusk, and the frosted azure globe that was Ramavad, or Europa, flooded the land with dim radiance. Imavad, as the Callistans call Ganymede, was a crimson disc on the horizon, and the remote gold fleck of Juruvad, or Amalthea, burned like a glittering sequin against the night.
In the shifting and multi-colored rays of the many moons, the rocky scarps, profound chasms, sheer cliffs and sharp peaks whereover we now flew stood out in clear detail. I stood, wrapped in my cloak, one hand resting on the pommel of my sword, absorbed in the savage spectacle. Beside me on the bridge the duty officer at this hour, young Tomar, stood gazing down on this fantastic vista of broken rock and barren sand and fang-like peaks and pinnacles. The land below us looked as bleak and sterile as might the surface of Earth’s cold, dead moon.
Such, however, was not the case: for there was indeed life on the mountainous land beneath us, as we soon discovered.
I was roused from my reverie when the youth Tomar touched my arm, pointing off to starboard.
“Something’s coming, sir―look!”
I followed his pointing finger. In the tangle of conflicting rays of different-colored moonlight it was difficult to make out moving objects, but something was indeed approaching the armada from beneath. Something that flew.
It was ascending from a forest of needle-like pinnacles and for a moment I could make out nothing concerning it.
“Could it be a flight of kajazells, admiral?” the signal officer, who shared the bridge with us, asked.
The kajazell is a smallish winged lizard found mostly in the desert countries or in mountainous regions. But that which floated up towards us on the winds was no kajazell.
“I don’t think it likely, Drango,” I replied. “It’s too big; we couldn’t even see a kajazell from this distance.”
Then the flying object seemed to break apart or scatter, and to our even greater mystification we saw that the unknown thing which arrowed up towards us was not one creature, but several, perhaps eighteen or twenty or even more. Even scattered, the flying creatures could now be discerned to be of considerable size.
A cool breeze was blowing up my spine and I was conscious of an inward alarm I could neither ignore nor explain.
It was a sense of danger. Many times in my perilous and hazard-filled career of adventure I have felt that inward sense of imminent or oncoming danger; and never has it proven a false alarm. Still, I hesitated, waiting for more proof of approaching danger before giving the signal and rousing the armada.
“Whatever they are, they’re bigger than the zell and smaller than the ghastozar,” Tomar observed tautly. And he was quite right. And whether the flying creatures were related to either of the two winged predators he had named, we were entering a zone of extreme peril. Of the ghastozar, I have elsewhere recorded that they are dragonish flying monsters which closely resemble the tremendous pterodactyls of Earth’s nightmare Jurassic. The zell are much smaller but not any the less dangerous. Usually, but not exclusively, denizens of the desert-countries, they are small winged reptiles the size of terrene doves. On an individual basis they are relatively harmless, but when they hunt in enormous flocks they are very dangerous indeed. A sort of Jekyll-and-Hyde creature, when they assemble into gigantic flocks they become half seagull, half bat-winged piranha, and a flock of them can strip a human being to naked bones in seconds.
But these were neither kajazell nor ghastozar, but some third species of flying creature perhaps equally dangerous.
The signal officer on duty, one Drango, was ready to flash the alarm. By day signals are exchanged by means of colored flags run up the shrouds to the crows’ nests atop the double masts amidships, but by night similar signals are given by means of coded colored lanterns. Drango looked to me for my orders. But still I delayed, hesitated, temporized. In retrospect I admit to have made a serious error, but at the time my delay seemed reasonable. I had no knowledge of what the flying creatures were nor of whether they might be dangerous, and I was reluctant to rouse from their well-earned rest my weary mariners of the sky who would spring from their beds to the emergency stations on Drango’s signals.
And while I hesitated, disaster overtook us!
The winged creatures were strung out across the heavens in a long curved line, each creature spaced about twenty feet apart from its fellows.
Now that they were nearer, we could see them better. Smaller than the monstrous ghastozar, they were still somewhat larger than men, measuring about eight feet from barbed, sinewy tail to cruel, hooked beak. Their wings resembled those of immense vultures or condors, and were covered with long feathers of a metallic azure. Their heads were crested with a stiff topknot of blue feathers, touched with crimson at the tips; their bodies, however, did not seem to be feathered at all, but were covered with swarthy, brownish-yellow hide which paled to a bright canary-yellow at throat, breast, belly and thighs.