Lankar of Callisto
- Автор: Картер Лин Спрэг
- Серия: Callisto #6
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Lankar of Callisto». Краткое содержание книги:
...in the mysterious and treacherous domain of the insidious Mind Wizards. Searching for him is a fearless armada of his loyal friends, and a stranger who knows him better than anyone on Callisto. The stranger, Lankar, is none other than Lin Carter, accidentally transported through the Gate Between the Worlds to the land of the Thanatorians. Aware of Jandar's plight, Lankar joins the search beyond the world's edge and suddenly finds himself battling for his own existence against the most nightmarish creatures on the planet - the gruesome flesh robots of Kuur and the fiendish Mind Wizards of Callisto themselves...
“If Noel could only see me now!” I grinned to myself. My wife would hardly believe her eyes, for she has often complained that my habitual breakfast―three strips of well-done, crisp bacon, one slice of buttered toast and one-half cup of cold grapefruit juice―is fixed and unvarying, whatever the season. But here I was, striding along in quite a cheerful manner, on several mouthfuls of raw squirrel-rabbit, a handful of bitter walnuts, and two overripe mangoes!
Which reminded me to worry―about her worrying! I knew she would be sick with fear for me, thinking I had gotten myself lost or killed somehow. And, remembering the look on Bozo’s face when I left him behind in the clearing, made me think of our dogs, McGurk and Sir Dennis and Rowrbazzle and Molly Brown. I was missing them as much as they were missing me by now, I knew. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to cross the jungles and get to Shondakor―maybe I would have been wiser to just stay in the vicinity of the jade disk!
The trouble with that idea was that I didn’t know the rhythm of the dimensional gateway that linked this world of Callisto with my own world. It might be days―or weeks―before that sparkling beam of force formed itself between the two, far-distant planets, and I could get home safely. I had needed food and shelter, something to wear and something to drink, and something to defend myself with. And the only place to find those necessities had been the jungle; and once I was actually in the jungle, it had seemed logical to simply keep on going, knowing in a rough manner that if I kept going’ long enough I would come out on the far side, probably within sight of the walls of Shondakor, or at least of the river Ajand on which the city of Jandar and Darloona was built.
“When in doubt, or lost, keep moving,” I said to myself, coining the adage on the spot. And then I grinned again: alone and friendless and half-naked, armed only with a piece of wood, wandering through an alien jungle, after a night spent curled up on the bare ground beside a fearsome beast―and I was still cheerful and could crack a joke, however feeble. I felt terrifically proud of myself and wished Noel could see me, fearlessly trekking through the wild like someone in a novel by H. Rider Haggard.
Just then, as I was happily complimenting myself on my ability to survive in the wild, one of my homemade shoes fell apart, worn through, and I stepped barefooted on a sharp twig.
I sat down on a convenient root, removed the tattered scraps of my leaf-shoe, and examined the cut on my foot. Then I began trying to put together another shoe out of the fibrous leaves I had been carrying with me for just that purpose. My foot ached where I had run the twig into it, and I was grimy and sweaty. My stomach still grumbled hungrily to itself; I still wanted a cigarette badly, and my teeth were beginning to ache where the fillings had vanished out of them and I had unwisely crunched down on a mouthful of those dry, tough nuts. I began to wonder just how Robinson Crusoe had managed to do it, after all.
Then something came halfway through the bushes, stopped when it saw me sitting there fumbling to put together a new set of footwear. And it squealed angrily―deafeningly―and shot at me with the speed of an express train!
I caught a swift impression of something gray and leathery and built rather like a dwarf-elephant, but with a wrinkled, snarling snout, a sharp yellow tusk, and a ‘wicked little red eye full of bloody murder, as it came hurtling at me.
I yelled, half stood up, and fell backwards over the root I had been sitting on the moment before.
I landed flat on my back, neatly managing to knock all the air out of my lungs, and lay there sucking and gasping for breath, my eyes watering.
The elephant-boar, for it must have been one of the savage vastodons, it looked like nothing else―made another lunge in my direction, but couldn’t quite figure out how to get around the tree in order to get at me. If once it did get near enough, I somehow knew, it would disembowel me with one vicious, sidewise swipe of those curling, evil-looking tusks.
And against four hundred pounds of infuriated vastodori, my little cudgel would be only a flimsy toy
Dizzy, panting for breath, I struggled to my feet just in time to see Bozo the othode launch himself out of the bushes behind me. He whizzed through the air, a blurred form, like a purple thunderbolt. Straight at the nape of the vastodon he hurtled, for the enraged brute had its huge head down, swinging from side to side, fierce tusks glinting in the bright gold of daylight, pawing at the turf before flinging itself upon me.
Down on the back of the monstrous elephant-boar came the growling othode. Mighty as it was, the vastodon staggered under the impact as Bozo crashed down upon its shoulders. The big fellow was in a fury, growling deep in his chest, his hackles bristling down his back, his goggling eyes blazing with killer-madness. Crunch went those heavy, underslung jaws, blunt tusks sinking deep into the flabby, loose, leathery hide of the vastodon. Muscles bunched along Bozo’s terrible jaws, went rock-hard as those crushing tusks sank deep into the nape of the vastodon’s neck.
The elephant-boar shrieked ear-piercingly, like a steam whistle. Then the massive beast went into a whirling, bucking, rearing dance as it strove to dislodge the growling killer crouched upon its back. Slathering foam splattered from its working jaws as it chomped those curling yellow tusks in maddened fury. Bozo was unfooted in seconds, sliding about. But his terrible jaws locked grimly, tusks slicing deeper and deeper into the nape of the monster’s neck. The vastodon had a huge, humped back like that of a buffalo, but those great tusks sank ever deeper, and the othode hung on, remorseless as death itself. Like the relentless and untiring bull-mastiff he so much resembled, Bozo would cling with those jaws until death claimed him, I knew. And 1 was doing nothing to’ help him!
I was horribly afraid, shaking with terror, but the thought of standing by, a mere spectator, while the great, faithful othode went to his death defending me was more terrible than the thought of facing that wriggling, hairy proboscis and those chomping, vicious tusks.
I sprang forward, snatching up the heavy, knotted length of my cudgel, and sprang directly in front of the infuriated vastodon. I swung the cudgel back over my shoulder and brought it down full in the face of the elephant-boar with every bit of strength I had in me. The first blow made him squeal in fury, one red eye glaring madly at me; the second broke one of those horrible tusks to splinters; the third smashed an eye into gory, dripping ruin. But then, in his whirling dance to dislodge the growling othode tearing at his spine, the vastodon swerved about, giving me only one sweatlathered side to hit at.
The vastodon was like a whirling hill as’ he spun about, his great buffalo-hump looming above my head, all running with blood, the snarling purple othode still clinging to his back, those terrible jaws locked deep in its very spine by now. Bozo was flying through the air as the maddened brute whirled in his frenzy, and the great purple body slammed into branches and went smashing through thorny bushes, as the monster spun about, trying to dislodge him, to break his hold. But, once locked in killing fury on the body of a foe, those mighty jaws would relax their hold only in death.
I got in another smashing blow as the bloody devilmask of a face whirled past me. A moment later I brought the club down a second time, crushing the other eye to scarlet slime. Blinded now, blood spurting out of its mouth with the bubbling foam, the vastodon was staggering, its knees jellylike. Then I saw an opening and sprang forward directly into its face. Hairy bristles and rubbery, wrinkled flesh rasped against my middle as that writhing, obscene proboscis closed about my hips, dragging me forward into the reach of those dripping jaws. But then. I brought the cudgel smashing down, directly atop the monster’s blunt skull. There sounded a loud, sickening crack, like a coconut splitting in a vise.