The difference lies in the fact that this gifted author imagined the inability to tell one hour or day or month from another would result in a complete ignorance of time itself and thus render his imaginary Pellucidarian natives immortally youthful.
Such was not the case on Thanator, I can assure you.
The repairs of the sky machine had taken twenty days instead of the ten promised me by Zastro.
And in that time I could swear I had aged twenty years. No Pellucidar, this jungle world of Callisto!
But at last the waiting was over and we were launched forth on our voyage into danger.
The streets and squares of Shondakor were crowded with an immense throng of citizenry, eager to witness our departure. The ornithopter was moored to an upper tier of the palace. Secured by heavy cables, it floated free on the buoyant winds. My hand-picked warrior crew was aboard and at their stations. All that remained was for us to take our final farewells.
Our captive, Ulthar, was taken aboard under heavy guard. He was a sleek-faced noble with heavy-lidded, keenly observant eyes, and a quiet demeanor that concealed, I felt certain, an active intelligence. I was also convinced that he would work ill to our cause if given the slightest opportunity.
As he mounted the gangplank under guard, Ulthar swept the deck with a thoughtful and quizzical gaze. There was a quiet smile on his lips and a gleam of ironic, mocking humor in his sharp yet sleepy-lidded eyes as he nodded a light salute to me. Then he vanished below to his locked and guarded cabin, and Yarrak repressed a growl of discontent.
“I am not easy in my mind that you are sailing into danger with a potential spy or assassin aboard, Jandar,” the old man grumbled. “It seems foolhardy to the point of suicide to take that cunning, smooth-tongued snake with you on such a venture.”
I shrugged. “I have taken every precaution against the possibility that he might work us harm,” I reassured him. “For one thing, I have his oath of honor that he will remain our prisoner and will interfere in no way with the safety or the operation of the galleon.”
“His oath of honor, eh?” Yarrak spat, as if the words had left a vile taste on his tongue. “I would not entrust my safety to the honor of a Sky Pirate! The only Zanadarian that a man can safely trust is a dead Zanadarian. I hope you know what you are doing, but, somehow, I doubt it!” he concluded in a troubled tone, shaking his head dubiously.
I strove to reassure him, but, to tell the truth, I was none too easy in my own mind as to the wisdom of including a potential traitor among our crew. Ulthar had gracefully yielded me his parole and his oath of honor to work us no ill, so long as we did not insist on his betrayal of any of the secrets of his countrymen; and he was a gentleman. Yet it was a risky thing, to trust an enemy at his word.
Nonetheless, it seemed worth the risk to have him with us. And I said as much to Yarrak, stressing the safety measures I had taken. Lord Yarrak and the several notables and officials of the court of Shondakor had come, arrayed in all their regal finery, to salute our departure and to offer their heartfelt good wishes on the success of our dangerous mission. Now they wished us well in our venture, praying that our mission should be crowned with every success, and that we should return from our dangerous endeavor safely, bearing with us our beloved princess.
We thanked them soberly and without further ado returned their salutes, accepted the plaudits of the vast throng clustered in the streets below and lining the rooftops and the balconies of adjoining buildings, turned and mounted the gangplank to the deck of our vessel, which we had renamed the Jalathadar.
The term, rendered from the universal tongue spoken across the entire breadth of Thanator, signifies “the desperate venture” in English. And not one of us who were to serve aboard her but doubted the aptness of her new name.
My comrades took their stations.
The gangplank was detached and swung aboard and made fast, while I mounted by a succession of stairways to the openwork control cupola from which I could oversee the entire operation of the aerial galleon.
The commands were given and were relayed from station to station. The mooring lines were cast off. The deck swung giddily beneath our feet. The broad wings were extended to their fullest capacity and caught the fresh morning winds, and we swung our prow away from the towering palace. Rooftops moved beneath our keel as rapid strokes of the jointed vans drove us aloft.
Within moments we were above the tallest tower of Shondakor, and our voyage into danger had begun.
Chapter 3
ABOVE THE CLOUDS
Thrice the Jalathadar circled the stone-walled city of the Ku Thad, gaining altitude with each swing around the city. The streets shrank below us―the palaces and mansions and citadels of Shondakor dwindled. The mighty throng became a many-colored carpet filling the squares and rooftops. We could see the glittering curve of the great river that flows by Shondakor, and from our ever-growing height the dark mass of foliage that was the immense jungled tract of the Grand Kumala became dimly visible on the horizon.
When we had ascended to the height of about half a mile, I gave the appropriate commands. The galleon leveled off and pointed her ornate prow north and west, in the general direction of the mountain country wherein Zanadar rears her castled crest. The wheel gangs settled down to a steady rhythm, the huge vans beating slowly, the enormous rudder holding the ship of the skies steady on her course.
I leaned against the carven rail, staring down at the broad meadows that slowly passed by far underneath our keel. Soon we would be beyond the measureless plains and flying above the great jungles where I had first encountered the woman I had come at last to love.
The air was crisp and cold at this height, the wind fresh and steady. The daylight was clear and brilliant, if sourceless; the entire dome of the sky one vast dome of golden mist.
For the ten-thousandth time I wondered at the strange quirk of fate that had given unto me, of all the men of my distant world, so strange and remarkable a destiny. What inscrutable force had plucked me from amongst the millions of my faraway earth, had hurled me across the star-strewn immensities of infinite space, to this weird and savagely beautiful world of numberless marvels, to fare and battle against curious foes and terrible monsters for the heart of a beautiful and alien princess?
Was I the darling―or the plaything―of the gods?
Would I ever come to know for certain if it had been mere blind chance or the action of some unknown and superior intelligence that had transported me from my distant homeworld to this strange and wondrous world of Thanator?
Ah, well―did it really matter to me, the knowing of the answer to the mystery? Back on my distant Earth I had been but one man among countless millions, lost in the crowd, a faceless nonentity. Here on the jungle-clad surface of mysterious Callisto I had become a princeling and a hero. Here fate or accident or chance or blind luck had thrust me into a role of transcendent importance. Here I had somehow attained to the eminence of a savior of nations. Here I had risen to a place of prominence among the great and the famous, with a voice in the destiny of great empires. Here I had found stout friends and gallant comrades and foemen worthy of my strength. And the love of a passionate and magnificent woman.
Could any man ask for more than had been thrust upon me?