Jandar of Callisto

3. WORLD OF MANY MOONS

Nature is, in many ways, a merciful mother. When the flesh of her puny children has endured shock upon shock to the very limits of the intolerable, she extends to them the benison of unconsciousness.

From a heavy coma, I awoke slowly.

Awoke to a torpor of body and soul―a languor that lapped me soothingly in its folds. For a long while I simply lay without thought or feeling, in a dim stupor like the aftereffect of some powerful narcotic. I lay flat on my back against some slick, cool stone surface, staring up at the moons in the dim golden sky. Sleepily I blinked at the three shining moons in the darkly golden sky above me.

Something clamored in my mind for attention. But it felt too good to lie here motionless and numb. So I firmly closed my mind against the intrusion of unwanted thoughts and idly gazed at the triple-mooned sky of golden vapor―for now I could see that it was indeed vapor, a crawling, curdled film of dim gold light that wrinkled and glided and whorled and eddied above my head like foam on the surface of a disturbed pool, or the coiling and panchromatic arabesque of an oil slick on the pavements of New York.

There was something about that sky that obscurely troubled my placid semiconsciousness. A sky, I reasoned, ought not to be gold vapor, but some other color―blue?

I could not remember.

But there should not, I felt most definitely, be three moons aloft in that strange sky. And especially not such moons as these. For moons should be pallid white, not like these three monstrous orbs, one of which was cold lime green, the second dim rose, and the third a luminous blend of azure and silver.

And then I woke fully, tingling with shock as if a drenching gush of ice-cold water had sluiced my naked body from head to heel

My naked body?

Wildly, I cast an involuntary glance down at myself and saw that I was bare as a new-born babe. I stared around me at the broad disk of milky jade whereon I had lain upon awakening, the broad disk of jade that lay athwart a field of thick-leaved grass that was the crimson of fresh blood

A gold sky―three moons―and crimson grass!

I sprang to my feet with an inarticulate cry, and reeled, staggering for a moment. My body felt numb, as if the circulation had been suspended in every extremity. Pins and needles lanced through me with excruciating pain as the circulation began. I lurched to the edge of the milky disk of stone and fell sprawling in that springy field of thick-leaved grass that was so impossibly crimson.

Panting, my heart racing with shock, I stared around me wildly.

From dreamless sleep I had awakened into―nightmare!

The jade disk was ringed about with nine towering monoliths―featureless pillars of dark, smooth stone. All about, a field of heavy-bladed crimson grass stretched away. To one side it sloped down to a gurgling stream some fifty yards below.

Behind me, and to my right, a wall of dense foliage blocked my view of whatever lay beyond―a heavy jungle, but like no jungle I had ever seen. For the trunks of the trees, and the branches, even to the most minute twigs, were black―black as any velvet ―and gnarled and twisted into knotted, malformed shapes unlike any terrene trees with which I was familiar.

And the leafage of those trees was, again, that impossible, incredible, fantastic crimson!

It was a scene of nightmarish strangeness and phantasmagoric beauty, like something from the dreams of a painter like Hieronymus Bosch, or Hannes Bok.

And yet it was real! There was no question of that. Every detail of the scene lay clear and sharply defined before me, limned in the triple brilliance of those impossibly huge, fantastically colored moons. No dream or vision, no illusion or hallucination, could possibly have sustained such a detailed and lucid reality.

Another thought struck me as I lay there, my stunned mind striving to grapple with the impossible scenes that lay to every hand.

Could it be that I was―dead? And that this weird world of uncanny beauty and strangeness was the Afterlife? I uttered a mocking burst of laughter. Perhaps . . . perhaps . . . but, if that were so, the religions of my world were thoroughly wrong in their conceptions of the Afterlife, for this weird place of black, monstrous trees, golden sky and triple moons, and blood-colored vegetation, this was neither Hell nor Heaven, Purgatory nor Limbo.

It didn't look much like Valhalla should, or any other world that myth described beyond the portals of life and death.

These first few moments of my life on the surface of Thanator (as I later discovered to be the name by which its strange natives called their curious world) are a blur to me. But I know this: I never for one moment entertained any serious doubt as to the state of my sanity. Never once did I really question that what I saw about me was not actual but some sort of dream or hallucination.

I knew that I was alive, sane, and that the scenery about me was a real place, no figment of a mind driven into the refuge of madness. I could feel the crimson blades of grass tickling the soles of my bare feet; I could feel the warm sunlight (or what I took to be sunlight) beating upon my bare body; a slight breeze stirred the unruly locks of yellow hair that fell over my brow, and passed invisible hands over my nakedness. My nostrils drank in the unfamiliar spicy aroma of jungle growths such as I had never seen or heard of before. My ears heard the faint clashing of thorny-edged leaves struck together in the light wind, the gurgling of the brook below, the coughing grunt of some unknown creature of the jungles.

This world was real. And I―however I had come here―was here.

I examined myself curiously.

Every article of clothing had somehow been stripped from my body. Even my underwear, my socks, the wristwatch on my arm, the ring on my right index finger, given to me when I was a boy by my father on some forgotten birthday―everything I had worn was gone.

Putting my hand to my chest, I discovered that the identification tags which had hung about my neck on a chain were also missing.

Most baffling of all: I'd cut my thigh on a tool a day or two ago, and had affixed an adhesive bandage to the cut.

The cut, half-healed, was still there. But the bandage was―gone!

Memories came tumbling back to me now, as if the shock of these discoveries had driven everything else from my mind, making room for the recent past. I remembered the helicopter crash on the Mekong, the trek through the Cambodian jungles, the way I had stumbled by accident upon the lost city, the pillar of throbbing light into which I had fallen

Could it be―

That ancient verse from one of the old epics of Indochina, that reference to Arangkor

Wherein doth stand the Gate Between The Worlds

It was fantastic, incredible―like something out of the wildest, most imaginative piece of science fiction ever written, but―could it be? Was that beam of throbbing radiance that flung up against the cold glitter of the stars some weird means of transportation between worlds―some surviving mechanism of an elder science otherwise lost to the knowledge of man?

Almost instantly my mind came up with a term―transporter beam. I recalled the sensory illusions of speed and flight across dark and frigid immensities at frightful speed―the sensation of being not solid heavy matter, but a dematerialized cloud of electrons.

It was a staggering conception. All I had ever read about the mysterious scientific wizardry of lost and legendary peoples of the Dawn Age came tumbling back to me. Ancient Atlantis, whose glittering cities the green throat of the sea drank down before history began―primal Mu, whispered of in dark surviving myths―Lost Lemuria, whose colossal stone cities are long since submerged beneath the mighty waves of the Pacific, save for the cryptic ruins on Ponape and the huge, enigmatic stone faces that stare forever out to sea from the legend-haunted, lonely hilltops of Easter Island

Did the Ancients possess the secret of transmitting matter across space?

Had I stumbled onto the secret of a lost science forgotten for uncounted aeons?

Was there a network of intangible pathways linking the planets together? Pathways of unknown force down which one could travel at unthinkable velocities to materialize upon the face of another world?

If so, what world was I on? What planet of the solar system had three moons?

I cudgeled my wits, remembering that Mercury and Venus were not known to have any satellites. Mars, I remembered, had two moons called Deimos and Phobus―it was no use: no planet known to me had three great moons to light its golden skies!

After a while I went down that sloping crimson lawn to bathe my face in the rushing stream below.

In a world of weird and terrifying strangeness, it was curiously heartening and gratifying to discover that water was still―water. Cold and pure, the water of this stream, as I drank from cupped hands, tasted no different from the water I had drunk from a score of jungle rivers back on Earth.

I went back up the hill to investigate the black and crimson jungle. It was thick and dark and I did not care to venture within its depths. There was no telling what savage predators might roam those gloomy aisles ―and I had no weapons.

Neither did I care to squeeze through that thick foliage unclothed. The thick, broad leaves were edged with sharp, thorny serrations like a saw blade. My naked body would show the red trace of those razory thorns before I had penetrated a yard―and who could say what unknown venom such leaves might secrete?

Yet I could not stand in this place forever.

And the sky was darkening now. The gold vapor dimmed. The luster of the three immense moons brightened slowly, like goblin lanterns. I resolved to explore the edge of the jungle, and began walking.

I had become aware of two curious facts.

One was that the gravitation of this planet was the same as the gravitation of the world on which I had been born, or very similar. This suggested that the red and black planet must be nearly the same size as Earth ―which seemed impossible. For, unless I had incorrectly read my astronomy text in college, the only planet in the solar system that is anywhere close to the size of our own world is cloud-wrapped, moonless Venus.

And the three moons that lit the darkening skies reduced to zero any chance of this planet being Venus.

The other fact was the air. I had been breathing it now for half an hour. I felt no ill affects there―from; in fact, the air seemed to be the same as Earth's atmosphere―perhaps a bit fresher, perhaps even a bit richer in oxygen.

And my astronomy classes had given me to understand that no other planet in our solar system had an atmosphere breathable by human lungs. Mars, they said, had a cold rarefied atmosphere like that of the crest of Everest; the outer planets were supposedly wrapped in smothering blankets of poisonous methane and ammonia.

But my chest rose and fell calmly, and I breathed this air without discomfort.

It was a mystery, and but one of the myriad that surrounded my experiences thus far. I gave over as fruitless the attempt to puzzle it out, and resolved to wait for further data.

Night had fallen now, and with the advent of darkness came new mysteries―and a marvel beyond comprehension.

Glancing up, I glimpsed a fourth moon ascending above the horizon! It was very small and faint, compared to the three great orbs whose multicolored light illuminated the darkness―but it was visibly a disk, and adrift on the tides of night.

I could think of no planet with four moons. Did this mean the mysterious transporter beam, as I called it, had hurled me beyond the limits of the solar system into the orbit of some unknown planet which revolved about a distant star? .

The answer to this new riddle was very swift and definite!

As I prowled along the margin of the dark jungle, the world about me was suddenly illuminated by a rich red glow that lit the sky like some unthinkably colossal explosion.

I turned to witness this new marvel and cried out in my astonishment.

Above the horizon a titanic arch of brilliance rose into view.

The fifth moon, if moon this was, must be either unthinkably huge or incredibly close to the planet whereon I stood―for the arch of its sphere bisected a considerable span of the dark horizon. If any body so huge were so close, it was difficult to understand why the gravitational forces did not bring the two globes together in a terrible collision.

As I watched, I became aware of an incredible fact. The arch of light was broadening visibly. As it rose steadily in the skies of this jungle world, instead of rounding into a globe, it became ever more obvious that this new fifth moon was even larger than I had at first imagined.

More and more of this luminous globe arose above the horizon. Now it seemed almost to occupy one-quarter of the visible horizon!

I stared at this astounding vista with an awe so vast and thrilling as to be beyond description.

No stargazer of ancient Babylon, no great astronomer in his mighty observatory, has ever looked upon such a marvel of the skies as rose before me now. '

Brilliant beyond belief, vast beyond comprehension, beautiful beyond dreams, the titanic globe rose at last fully above the horizon. Its surface was banded with horizontal zones, and an infinity of colors made it radiant with hues. Vast portions of its surface were colored an indescribably beautiful peach. Stripes of brown and glowing amber, rich orange and luminous ocher, brick-red and velvety purplish gray marked off the surface of the colossal glowing shield into ten belts or zones, of which the central or equatorial belt was easily twice the width of the others.

And burning like an unholy blemish, like a colossal pit of flame, the southern hemisphere bore into view a terrible glaring crimson eye.

And I knew now where I was.

This was not the unknown planet of some distant star.

There was no mistaking that brown and yellow-banded giant with his glaring Red Spot.

The mysterious beam of force had transported me to the surface of one of the twelve moons of Jupiter.

Suddenly, a hissing snarl arrested my attention. The bestial sound had come from the edge of the jungle. Although I could see nothing but gnarled, ebon trees and crimson, fanged foliage, I knew that they concealed a prowling predator. I felt the pressure of unseen, burning eyes upon me.

And it came to me that I was in deadly danger. I had been acting like a fool―wandering about this enchanted landscape like an awestruck dreamer, when I would have been far wiser to have sought to return to my own world at once.

That disklike stone that lay amid the ring of columns like some great altar―was it not fashioned of the same sleek, lucent jade as the mouth of the mysterious well in far-off Arangkor? The transporter beam, or whatever it was, must be a link between this strange world and that lost city in the jungles of Cambodia. If I were to stand in the center of that circle of monoliths, would I not make the return journey to the world of my birth?

I turned and began to run for the Gate Between The Worlds, but it was too late.

Again the air resounded to that terrible hissing cry, and now a fantastic beast out of nightmare came crashing through the crimson foliage directly towards me.

Imagine a saber-toothed tiger crossed with some colossal reptile from prehistoric ages, and you will have an image of the thing that came hurtling from the underbrush with eyes of blazing yellow flame. It had a lithe, catlike body that rippled with steely strength. But instead of the striped fur of a jungle cat its sinewy length was clad in serpent scales. Bright emerald green was this scaly hide, paling to tawny yellow at the belly plates. Its feet were armed with bird claws, and a jagged line of sharp-edged spikes ran down its spine to the very tip of the lashing snakelike tail.

The monster's head was a snarling mask of fanged horror. Fierce cold eyes of lambent yellow flame were riveted upon my running figure. Giving voice to another hissing roar, the incredible thing flashed after me. And I was running for my life!

Strange unlikely thoughts pass through a man's mind when he stands on the brink of eternity. The thought that passed through mine was that that fanged horror, that sinewy engine of destruction, armed with that bladed, whiplike tail and saw-toothed spine, must be a predator of dread and all-but-invincible ferocity. Yet how cleverly nature had given a measure of protection to her weaker children on this strange and awful world, for that glittering scaly hide of emerald mail could not well slink hidden through the underbrush of the jungle, whose crimson foliage would clash with the green-scaled cat-thing! Thus the monster must depend, not upon camouflage, but the speed of an irresistible charge to secure its meat.

I later learned that the thing at my heels was the fearsome yathrib, the savage dragon-cat of the Thanatorian jungles―deadlier by far even than the prehistoric sabertooth of my native world.

I ran like the wind, but the yathrib was almost upon me before I had covered half the distance to the circle of stone pillars and the jade disk of the Gate. I could feel the hot breath panting against my bare legs as I ran. Another few yards, and my adventures on this amazing world would come to an abrupt and gory finish

And then, charging up the slope of the hill along whose crest I raced for the haven of the Gate stone came a party of even more incredible beings!

At first, so swiftly were events moving, I had no time to look at them clearly. I cast a hasty glance at strange, pale, attenuated figures clad in some glistening armor and mounted upon weird steeds like wingless and gigantic birds―then the foremost of the gaunt riders reined up in my path and loosed an arrow from the great war bow it held in lean, glistening arms.

Behind me I heard a choking grunt. Then, as I swerved aside to avoid running full into the mounted figures, I struck a root with my bare foot and fell on the crimson turf. At any second I expected to feel the claws of that fanged horror at my heels ripping my flesh. But nothing happened.

I rolled over, sprang nimbly to my feet, and saw the yathrib squirming and wriggling amid the grasses, clawing with its hind legs at a terrible black arrow that thrust from the very base of its soft unprotected throat!

The pale attenuated rider had slain the beast even as it had reared erect to pull me down!

The grim shaft was all of a yard long-hewn, no doubt, from the same black wood as formed the gnarled and twisted trees of the jungle behind me. With incredible skill, the armored rider had struck the yathrib in what I later learned to be its only vulnerable spot―the soft tissues at the base of the throat, where the tough emerald mail did not protect the vital organs.

Even as I watched, the dragon-cat belched a fetid flood of black gore from between its fanged jaws, twitched once or twice, and stiffened in death.

Shakily, I turned to thank my rescuers. And as I did so, something like a lasso settled about my shoulders, slid down my upper arms, and was tightened with a jerk. The leader of the mounted band had flung it from a slim tube. Now lie tightened his grip on the cord and pulled. I was flung prone on the crimson grass, my arms held helplessly at my sides.

Grim irony. I had been rescued from the yathrib's slavering jaws―only to be taken prisoner by my very rescuer!

Dismounting, he bent over me, uttering harsh metallic words in some unknown tongue. I caught a vague glimpse of an inhuman visage―an expressionless mask of glistening silver-gray horn, like the shell of a gigantic crab―huge eyes like flashing black jewels―and a strange, sharp, medicinal odor that seemed vaguely familiar came to my nostrils from his slender form.

He seemed struck with the color of my hair and eyes, for although I could not understand the words of his clacking, guttural speech, his horny hand touched my hair again and again, and one horny finger lightly touched my eyelid.

The next moment I was swung up into the air and found myself face downward behind the saddle, dangling over the feathery cruppers of the strange bird-horse he rode. Then my captor swung astride, jerked the reins about, and the whole party went cantering off.

I cast one despairing glance behind as the jade disk and ring of pillars that represented my only hope of returning to my own world receded and were lost in the distance.