Lankar of Callisto

But I regretted the loss of that ring keenly. It was an ancestral talisman to me, representing a link with my forefathers over generations. It had been a possession of the Carter family for perhaps longer than I could guess; my father had worn it, and my grandfather before him. I certainly hoped it had not been damaged or destroyed by the light ray. I wondered if someone in Sir Malcolm’s camp would be thoughtful enough to search the bottom of the Well and find it.

Almost in the same instant it occurred to me, helplessly, to wonder about my wife. Surely, Noel would be worried sick when she awoke next morning and found my cot empty. She wouldn’t have any way of knowing what had become of me―or would she? It wouldn’t take her long before she noticed my clothes were missing, and the pack of Viceroys I had put down beside my cot. She would know I had gone for a strolclass="underline" but would she guess I had fallen into the Gate Between the Worlds, or would she assume I had strayed into the jungles outside of Arangkor, perhaps to be slain or carried off by some wild beast or Rebel guerrilla?

She would be worried sick about me, I knew with a pang of guilt that made me curse myself for falling into the same trap as Jandar, after his own account should have warned me to be more cautious. There wasn’t much I could do about it now: I was here, whether I liked it or not.

I got to my feet. I felt perfectly all right, although I was physically tired after the long day. But the excitement of what had transpired kept the adrenalin pumping through my system, and I was more alert and wide-awake than ever. I noticed that the Band-Aid I had put on my leg last night was also missing; it must be nonorganic like my rings. I was aware of a slight toothache which puzzled me, until I realized that every filling in my teeth must have vanished like my rings, when I dematerialized. That might be troublesome, if I was going to have to remain here on Callisto for very long. I was sure there were no dentists to be found on the Jungle Moon!

The breeze on my bare legs was uncomfortably chilly. I looked thoughtfully at the edge of the black-and-scarlet jungle; once behind that screen of trees and bushes I would be out of the wind, but there was no telling what savage beasts might be prowling the jungle aisles in search of dinner, who might regard a stringy and slightly underdone sciencefiction writer as an appetizing morsel.

The confusion of my thoughts was such that it was only with a firm, conscious effort of will that I calmed my agitation. It was perfectly true, I reasoned to myself, that my predicament was grim and my position not without peril. I was alone, naked and unarmed, on an alien world teeming with ferocious predators and savage warnors. And even fully clothed and with a pistol holstered on my hip, I would have been in a position of considerable danger, for I was certainly no steely-thewed man of action, no burly, two-fisted adventurer. I grinned again, rather wryly: for years now I have been writing stories about men in just my predicament―but I never expected to find myself in such a spot!

A writer’s life is one of lazy, self-indulgent comfort interrupted by periodic episodes of furious activity―of a literary nature, that is. I’ve never been much interested in sports, nor in exercise, my idea of a hard day’s work being writing a chapter of a new novel or maybe turning out a short story. It’s been more years than I care to think of since I last came face to face with physical danger, unless you want to count the times I’ve gotten in between two of my dogs, in an attempt to stop a dogfight. And the only savage warrior a New York science-fiction writer ever expects to face is the ever-possible street-corner mugger or holdup man.

So I was certainly not in any condition to hew my path through a jungle filled with ferocious monsters! True, Jandar had faced the same perils and gotten through them unscathed; but he had been a young, hard-muscled daredevil aviator and professional soldier, not a sedentary writer who begrudges the physical effort it takes to paint the front porch or mow the lawn ….

Then it occurred to me that, after all, I was in a way better equipped to face up to the hazards of this adventure than Jandar, when he had been, so to speak, in my shoes, for all that he was ten years younger than I and more the two-fisted fighting-man. Because I had read his Callistan memoirs and had a .pretty good idea of just where I was and of just what I was likely to be facing in the hours or days ahead of me. I knew, from the maps he had sketched, that the Callistan terminus of the Gate was along the southernmost borders of the jungle region he called the Grand Kumala; and I knew that the nearest human settlement where I was likely to find a friendly welcome was Shondakor. And, remembering that map, I even knew where Shondakor was in reference to my present position. It lay on the eastern side of this southern tip of the Kumala jungles, on the shores of a river called the Ajand. It might take me a couple of days of foot-weary walking to get there, but at least I knew where I was and where I wanted to go, which is more than Jandar knew when he had stood on this same spot, a year and a half ago.