 
# The Valley of Despair

Chris L. Adams
Written by Chris L. Adams

Cover concept and artwork by Chris L. Adams

Copyright 2016

All Rights Reserved
Contents

Introduction

01: Disaster

02: Lost

03: A Bizarre Valley

04: City in the Sphere of Time

05: In the Dungeon

06: Peenemünde

07: In the Mines

08: Gateway to Deneb

09: People of a Star Afar

10: Love midst Despair

11: Lafalldor

12: An Interesting Discovery

13: Origins

14: To the Palace

15: In the Throne Room

16: A Desperate Plot

17: Escape from the Cell

18: At the Portal

19: Chaos

20: Flight

21: On the Plains

Acknowledgements

About the Author

An Invitation

List of Works

Bizarre Tales

Introduction

As with other works of mine, this story hearkens to the golden age of pulp writing. Imminent peril, intrigue, mystery, lost cities, dreadful monsters—even the obligatory damsel in distress—no element has been omitted.

This story invokes all the required ingredients Farnsworth Wright might have looked for when evaluating the latest Conan tale by Robert E. Howard or a piece of outré horror by Clark Ashton Smith or H. P. Lovecraft. For fans of these and other authors of the pulp era, this story will hopefully be like sitting down with an old friend.

I am constantly laboring on new works with an ever-expanding host of stories in planning. All of them work toward the goal of appeasing the hunger of the fan of pulp era stories by catering toward that side of our nature that longs to read stories of adventure.

Chris.
01: Disaster

Darkness was falling upon the forest. Fatigued from a full day of marching through the dense heat of the African interior, Lieutenant Erik von Mendelsohn sought a place to hole up from the predators that come out at night to hunt.

This he found in the branches of a cyclopean Kapok tree that overhung the game trail he was following. The tree was a veritable monster that must been several hundred years old. But what interested Erik most was a split he spied in the trunk, high up on its bole, from a past lightning strike. The crevice was wide enough at its base to permit the passage of his body, with it then tapering upward for several meters until it narrowed to but a hand's breadth in width.

Spotting this feature from the ground, Erik saw in this hollowed cavity a possible sanctuary from the wildlife which had sought his life on every hand since setting out from the wreckage of his plane the day prior. Hoping there were no ants, he clambered into the interior of the tree and ascended until the hollow cavity became too snug to proceed further. The constricted size at this point would keep him from falling, while the split in the tree's bole would allow in fresh air.

Through the vertically running crevice he could look down through the leafy verdure and see the game trail far below him. There was a rough ledge here, and so here he determined to crouch for the night. The narrow confines of the cavity would not easily allow his drawing his sidearm should the need arise so he left his pistol hanging from one shoulder by its lanyard in case he had need of it.

For all his discomfiture, he instantly drifted off to sleep from sheer weariness. For how long he had been asleep he knew not, when a subtle sound impeded upon his consciousness. It was only a hint of a sound, as of the dislodging of a piece of bark that fell and rebounded from limb to leaf as it made its way to the soft undergrowth at the base of the tree. Still, it awakened him.

Through the crevice shone the merest gleam of light from a just-under-full moon that was visible through the maze of foliage. As he struggled to open sleepy eyes, this faint illumination slowly disappeared from above. He perceived that a dark body was descending the exterior of the tree, and that its shadowy bulk was straddling the crevice through which he now gazed, wide-eyed and fully awake.

He knew it was this thing, entering his tree from above, that caused the sound that woke him. The reek of the thing was overpowering in its closeness and potency. Scarcely breathing for fear of arousing the unknown thing to a realization of his presence, it continued to descend. He gauged, from the length of the cleft from which illumination was being blotted, that this was a creature of some size.

Quietly, the man lowered his hand toward the butt of the automatic dangling from its lanyard. Before he could close his hand on the grip, however, the thing smelled his presence, or detected his movement for all his caution. He was deafened by a roar so close that he felt its spittle on his face, and smelled its hot, foetid breath—a smell that nearly gagged him.

An immense arm shot violently through the narrow opening. Powerful fingers clutched him about the throat, choking and crushing him. The thing could not extract him through the narrow split in the bole of the tree, so it opted instead to shake him vigorously. Erik felt his life being throttled from him and his senses begin to blacken.

By sheer will he raised the handgun within the awkward confines of the narrow cavity. Shoving it through the cleft, he felt the barrel sink into flesh at which point he fired a handful of rounds; he never knew how many. There was a yowl of agony, and the arm rapidly withdrew. He heard thumps and scrapes, followed by a heavy crash as of a body falling from great height to the jungle floor.

The next day, the thing was gone. At the foot of the tree were dark pools of blood where it bled from the wounds it had received. Trampled undergrowth, smeared in gore, plainly showed the path along which it had dragged itself away during the night.

Thereafter, he found himself harassed by a band of immense apes whose size staggered the imagination. So dogged were they in following him, that he felt he must have slain their king, for he spotted none among the living who acted as though they'd been recently injured.

It must have been the strange and, to them, unknown scent of his guns that prevented them from attacking him en masse. Perhaps members of the tribe had smelled burnt gunpowder on the hairy corpse of the one he had slain, and now associated the aroma with the man? When they ventured too close to him, he drove them away with gunfire, expending in that manner many precious rounds of ammunition.

He had been hiking east for two days. The grade had been increasing steadily, and he'd had very little to eat. But he would not let himself rest for long, pausing only when necessary. He knew he pushed his limits but, being pragmatic, understood as well that the longer he remained exposed in this primordial forest the less likely it was that he would survive to tell of it. Considering what he'd passed through already, he thought it amazing he yet lived.

It was the unnerving and incessant pursuit of the swelling ranks of anthropoids that eventually steeled his nerves to scale the cliffs when he exited a thick patch of undergrowth and found himself staring up at their majestic immensity. Running to the foot of the vertical cliffs, he turned to stare toward the edge of the forest which was lined with angry apes. The din of their cries was deafening and frightening, causing the man to feel his bones would lie at the foot of this cliff, for he felt his end was upon him because their numbers had grown into the hundreds.

A handful who had goaded themselves into a frenzy of rage ventured forth from the cover of foliage, but the remainder seemed reluctant to follow their lead. Hoping to thereby escape their deadly embraces, he fired a brace of shots into the faces of the most persistent of these. The remainder gave off the chase and retreated to the brush.

As Erik walked along the foot of the cliff, the anthropoids paced alongside him, albeit remaining just inside the forest. Reversing course, Erik walked in the opposite direction but with the same effect—the apes paralleled him inside the wood, but made no further attempts to approach him.

It was this last experiment that caused him to cast his eyes reluctantly upward at the distant edge of the top of the vertical face of rock that rose suddenly just beyond the forest. Still worried that they might pursue him (for what he might climb, they could likewise do with exceeding great ease) Erik was surprised to find that they flat refused to leave the forest. It was an odd sight, seeing the line of anthropoids visible in the woods who glanced back and forth from the cliff to the man, but seeming afraid to follow him.

Having no other recourse, Erik climbed. Occasionally, he would glance down, expecting to find them swarming up the rocks after him. But although they remained in plain sight, they never sought to follow. Arriving at the top of the vertical precipice, Erik took but a half-dozen steps before he slumped to the stony surface in a heap, too weary to go any further without rest.
02: Lost

A merciless, tropic sun beat Erik von Mendelsohn with the force of a hammer, etching his finely chiseled features with runnels of sweat and leaving his mop of thick, wavy hair streaked with wet tendrils. His hand shook with fatigue when he pulled a felt-covered canteen from his service belt, grimly noting the faint slosh of liquid within.

_Not enough to last the day_. He twisted the cap from the container.

"Verdammt!" It felt good to express his frustration aloud. His voice sounded strangely alien to him, alone and surrounded as he was by this wide wilderness.

Taking a carefully measured sip of the tepid water, he surveyed the lay of the land below him with keen, blue eyes. He rubbed his neck gingerly where the purple bruises of an enormous handprint encircled his neck.

Combined with the incredible mental strain he'd suffered since setting out on this mission, he was fast approaching a point of complete exhaustion. He looked straight down the steep cliffs he'd scaled, estimating his climb at over two-hundred meters. He felt as though he were on top of the world as he gazed upon the land falling away from him into an impenetrable jungle. The apes were no longer visible, he guessing they had lost interest and left. The man sighed with genuine relief.

From the summit of what he now saw was a series of cliffs rising like a wall out of the jungle floor, Erik strove in vain to find the point in the mass of forest where his plane went down. He half expected to see a ragged, black hole where the bi-winged Fokker ripped into the upper terrace of the forest canopy. Cursing his faulty compass for a hundredth time, he took out his pilot's log and reread the last entry—made just prior to taking off from the airbase near Bismarkburg three days prior.

The entry was dated 0200hrs on 28 September 1917. His orders had been to courier new information regarding British troop movement to Vorbeck's position. The commandant had informed him of a shortage of aeroplane fuel at the bivouac, so Erik conceived the idea of having a maintenance crew install two additional fuel tanks. He estimated it would be just enough to get him there and back.

The crew worked late into the night to complete the installation and get it functioning, having to scavenge parts from two other planes to do so. When he took flight, it was overcast—the sky was black, with neither moon nor star in sight. The fact that his last entry had been made from the comfort of his tent, while this would be made from a clifftop in the wilds, did not go unnoticed by him. Erik wet the tip of his pencil and began writing:

30 September 1917

Compass malfunctioned. Flew in unknown direction all night. Daybreak revealed unfamiliar terrain and jungle. Used sun to set course, but too late. Pressed on until fuel exhausted. Set plane down in forest. Surprised to have survived the terrific crash and attacks by wildlife. Scaled an immense cliff to escape a horde of apes, and get the lay of surrounding land—nothing in sight but more forest. Can't fathom in which direction lay friendly lines.

The lieutenant snapped the leather book shut. Only someone who knew Erik von Mendelsohn intimately would glean from his enigmatic entry anything of the suffering and hardships he'd undergone since his biplane plummeted from the sky and crashed into a tropical forest far to the west of his destination.

The course he had plotted to prevent the enemy from spotting his plane was to take him over vast expanses that remained unexplored and uninhabited. Entire armies could be swallowed by the thousands of square kilometers of forest, mountains and savannah. He had known all of this when he set out, and that it might mean death were anything untoward to happen enroute.

At the time, he didn't care.

In the months since he had received notice of his mother's passing, the young pilot had volunteered for every such dangerous mission. She had been his sole, remaining relative and he had been very close to her. He had been very close to both of his parents, as they were all the family each of them had possessed in the world.

Now, at the ripe age of twenty-five, he found himself atop an African mountain range, hundreds of kilometers from civilization, having only a few meager supplies he had recovered from his wrecked plane which included a canteen, his haversack and a C96 Mauser—the pistol a gift from his father after graduating from the military academy.

While he was still in the academy, his father retired to a small hamlet in southern Germany near the Austrian border. But life in a small village seemed too stale and domestic for Erik's untamed nature. After graduation, he joined the newly formed Imperial German Flying Corps, and had been flying aeroplanes ever since.

From his plane's wreckage, Erik had also salvaged a single-shot rifle he had long been accustomed to carry with him on flights. Later, he was immensely grateful the simple arm survived the wreck after he used it successfully to fight off examples of the largest carnivora he'd ever seen.

Prior to his encounter with the giant apes he had chanced upon a serpent he guessed to be fully fifteen meters in length, drooping over the game trail he'd been following. Sweat had beaded his brow at how close he'd come to walking unwittingly beneath the folds of the behemoth.

He took it with a single shot to the head and watched, fascinated, as it slowly unwound to gradually fall into an immense pile directly in his path. He would later admit it was an eerie sensation to step gingerly amidst the still-twitching coils of the snake's remains as he continued his way.

Remaining to him now were but a dozen or so cartridges for the rifle. He had expended several in his defense against snakes, carnivora and the horde of humungous baboons of unknown variety from whose clutches he counted himself blessed to have escaped at all.

The brief respite, and the sips of water, invigorated the young man. A refreshing breeze drifted over the cliff tops that soon dried his sweaty locks, and cooled his face. He tucked his log book back into his canvas haversack, stood and dusted himself off, and prepared to descend the other side of the narrow ridge.

Backing away from the edge, he approached the opposite side where once again he found a precipitous drop, causing him to again curse. From his location he could see the cliffs vanishing in the haze of distance in both directions. They were narrow for all their height, and appeared as an immense wall upon the top edge of which he stood. A similar winding cliff was visible on the opposite side of a valley that beckoned below.

"Hopefully, it opens-up to the north," he muttered. "No matter. There's no food or water up here, so descend I must. Hopefully those apes don't know a shortcut to head me off, the fiends."

He cinched his belt and adjusted his equipment where it would not impede his descent. Glancing into the depths of the valley on the inside of the barrier cliff, he estimated the foot of the cliff on this side to be at least fifty meters less in height as compared to the side he'd scaled. He welcomed the news, realizing he did not have quite so far to descend.

He anticipated reaching the bottom in short order where he hoped to be able to quickly locate water and game. Of course, this was providing he didn't meet with any impassable locations in the descent that would require he move further north or south to make additional attempts.
03: A Bizarre Valley

Prior to putting his plane down in the forest Erik had never been in a situation where he'd gone so long without food. He was now learning just how quickly lack of nourishment sapped one's strength.

When he stretched forth a hand to grasp a piece of fruit he'd stumbled upon, he discovered that his hand was shaking tremulously. Hungrily, he devoured the ripe, life-saving viand, the sweet juice running to drip from a chin grizzled with two and a half days growth of stubble.

It had taken him three hours to reach the bottom of the cliffs on the inside of the valley. He had chosen the worse possible point from which to begin his descent. After many false starts, and finding himself at too many impasses to count, his flyer's boots finally touched the soil at the foot of the cliffs. His limbs were shaking with fatigue.

Many times, he'd found himself hanging by his hands and—if he was lucky—a foot crammed in a crevice as he sought in vain for purchase further down and with more than a hundred-meter free fall below him. Being a pilot, he was certainly no stranger to heights. But he found there to be a distinct difference in flying several thousand feet above the ground in an aeroplane and clinging to a cliff by one's fingernails over a perpendicular drop.

Devouring his fill of fruit, he now required water, having finished off hours before what little remained in his canteen. The forest before him was dense and dark—Erik might have said it was ominous in appearance, after his recent experiences. But he knew he must move on. To pause here would be to invite death. Shouldering his rifle, he started into the thicket, the heavy brush of the forest floor scratching his arms and face, and swallowing him from view of the cliffs as he pursued his way along his chosen path.

He never knew at what point he sensed eyes upon him. One moment, his only concern was in finding a stream or other source of water to slake a thirst that had by now become maddening. Moments later, the hackles on the back of his neck were screaming at him that someone, or something, was watching him. He paused in mid-stride, only then realizing what an enormous amount of racket he'd been making as he tromped through the dense undergrowth when he at last heard the silence of his lonely surrounds.

Seeing nothing untoward, he was about to write the feelings of suspicion off as simply the overwrought nerves of one who suffered deprivation. Perhaps his previous encounters had made him jumpy; the snakes and baboons with which he'd tangled had certainly been the right mixture to cause the onset of deep paranoia at the slightest sound. Then he detected movement behind him and turning, found himself staring at the stuff of nightmares.

It is an odd thing that occurs in the brain of mankind when he is confronted with something of the supernatural or the unknown that, being unable to categorize and process it, he will with almost predictable regularity do one of two things. It might be he goes mad, screaming in fright and horror as he flees with utter disregard to his surroundings until he is run down from behind by the very thing he seeks to escape. Or again, it might be his brain shuts down his fear center, and it is then with the coldly calculating mind of a machine that he fights that which has shocked his senses.

In Erik's case, before he had time to fully consider his options, he snapped his handy single-shot carbine to his shoulder and delivered a lead slug full into the face of the beast confronting him.

But he did not pause to note the effect of his round. Perhaps it was with a modicum of the first reaction now that caused him to spin about and flee into the brush where within twenty steps he came to a lightly graveled stream which, his terrific thirst forgotten in his flight, he scarcely even noticed. He leaped the bubbling waters in a single bound, seeing in the rill only an obstacle to his escape from the beast behind him.

One often hears that in times of stress the training one has undergone will come into play automatically, without conscious volition or thought. This the pilot found to be true as, while in mid-flight, his fingers instinctively retrieved one of his precious few remaining cartridges and instantly worked the action on his rifle. The motion ejected the spent casing and the man immediately inserted a fresh cartridge in its place.

Slamming the action home to seat the fresh round, he glanced over a shoulder to note if he was being pursued. Horrified, he discovered that not just one but a half dozen of the bizarre, purple-furred beasts were now upon his trail.

Upon seeing him look in their direction one paused. The hackles on its shoulders rose in vertical barbs at which point it released a shriek the sound of which struck a chord of horror in the man that he never experienced when facing a charging lion or a human opponent—each a feat he'd accomplished upon many occasions since his advent to the colonies of German occupied East Africa.

"Gott hilfe Mir!" he cried in his native German tongue.

He had discovered in the various countries in which he'd lived that he had a natural inclination to submerge himself in the local culture, mechanically speaking and replying in the natively spoken language, enjoying the cultural immersion his capricious lifestyle lent. Of late he'd begun learning the language of the askarii—the natives who fought alongside the troops of Deutschland.

But when faced with stressful situations he would, as do most, revert to his native tongue without any conscious thought. Whether it be anger, frustration, or that moment a combatant realizes his life is in imminent danger of being extinguished, it is always in his own native language that he cries out for God to save him. In that moment, his mind will ignore the dozen other tongues in which he might be fluent, for of these there is only one that is ingrained in that portion of the brain where the emotional center is hardwired to that of speech.

In almost a detached manner, as though acting on pure instinct, he fired into the oncoming beasts, spun, and then fled in the opposite direction on legs wobbly from privation. While running he would automatically load a fresh cartridge and fire; but he never paused long enough to note the effect of his barrage, thinking only to flee his pursuers.

The creatures chasing him were six-legged, of about the size of a charging rhino, horned exactly as that engine of destruction and possessed four eyes spread evenly across wide, flat foreheads. Purple fur, dappled with black, covered their great feline-like bodies, ending in black tufts on their long tails and above each padded foot.

But these were details he recalled only later. For now, fleeing through the dense brush of this horrid valley, he thought only of finding a place from which he might make a final stand—a place where he could point the muzzle of his rifle where it could destroy anything that approached. Before he knew it, he came to such a place.

Seeing a brightening ahead of him, he thought perhaps he drew near the marge of the forest. He could not guess if this would work in his favor in this instance, or not. It might be that he would be run down in the open with no place to make a defense. He briefly considered scaling one of the enormous trees surrounding him. Then, recalling the claws that tipped the great pads on the ends of the legs of these unearthly creatures he tossed that idea, realizing any arboreal path would be a freeway to such as these.

Bursting through the last thick underlayment of the forest floor, he saw a sight nearly as shocking as that of the great beasts that stalked him. Before him, a hundred meters across a clearing of savannah-like grass, rose the cyclopean columns of a city.
04: City in the Sphere of Time

With but a moment's hesitation, Erik von Mendelsohn impulsively started at a jog for the broken columns and decaying foundations of the unknown city upon the plain beyond the edge of the forest.

His feet followed an erratic, stumbling path for the man suffered greatly from lack of sleep and nourishment—the same privations suffered by all who find themselves stranded far from civilization and who must then survive against great odds in the wilds of merciless nature.

Glancing over one shoulder, he saw that the great beasts stalking him had halted at the marge of the trees as though fearful to exit their protective bounds, reminding him of the anthropoids that chased him through the jungle. Growling fiercely, they slowly slunk back into the darkness of the enclosing verdure.

Thinking it but the instincts of the wild beast to avoid the habitations of humanity, the weary man staggered on amongst the blocks of granite and marble. He found himself faltering up the steps of what aforetimes had been a mighty edifice that would have stood as testament to the equality of grandeur and attainments of this long dead race as compared to the mightiest of constructions erected by any other of the Earth's ancient races.

The exterior of the marble and stone structure reminded him of his mother's homeland, specifically the Parthenon of Athens, with its classic lines and striking columns. Above these pillars, intricate designs had been carved—the scrollwork of first-class artisans depicting beasts that would have walked the Earth tens of thousands of years in the past.

His mind still tried to make sense of the purple beasts that had pursued him, but it was also with the eye of an explorer that he took in his surroundings, admiring the lovely construction of the ruins whose very existence in this unpeopled valley was most likely undreamed-of by the outside world. It seemed the further he made his way into the city the better he found to be the state of preservation.

Upon the walls were many vivid and colorful murals depicting the lives of a happy people of a bygone age. The yet-sound roofs had acted miraculously in protecting the interior from the ravages of sun and storm, with only time having left its mark in the dust beneath his feet. This caused him to press on toward the interior, his curiosity peaked.

He felt surprised when he reached a passage to be overcome suddenly by a dizzying feeling of nausea and vertigo so intense it caused him to stumble against the side of its splayed entry for support. The nausea was accompanied by a sensation where he felt every nuance of a single beat of his heart that felt as though it lasted for centuries.

The feeling passed, and he pressed on, coming to an immense doorway. The stone beams of this caused him to immediately marvel and guess at what methods the ancients might have used to move these fantastic members into position.

The size of these, in this remote locale unknown to civilization, stunned the mind. As he passed beneath the lintel, his eyes strained upwards, admiring its staggering proportions. He did not notice the exact moment when the sounds of his own labored breathing and the echoes of his footsteps upon the decaying vegetation clinging to the blocks of stone beneath his feet became swallowed by the noisy bustle of a city.

Glancing sharply back to his surroundings, he was shocked to discover a bazaar full of people of all manner of costume, engaged in the lively work of a metropolis where they labored in all manner of vocations. Their way of dress indicated times from the past—of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, of the Dark Ages of Europe and the early colonization of Africa by the various nations of Europe. His modern pilot's uniform stood out in stark contrast—his booted feet, in comparison to theirs of soft-hided sandals, glaringly obvious.

Astounded, he glanced back the way he'd come, noting the still, deathly quiet halls he'd traversed and the empty walks leading back toward a forest where beckoned sedate sanity—at least, if he didn't consider the purple beasts that'd pursued him. Looking in the direction he'd been walking, he beheld again the busy bustle of a pre-historic city, a flurry of activity that had been neither visible nor audible before he stepped between the gargantuan frameworks of the peculiar doorway.

As he stood there, the people in his vicinity took immediate notice of him, as though he were the first person to step through that particular entry for centuries. They paused, looking at him aghast and with the oddest expressions on their faces.

Amongst these, too, were others who witnessed his entrance—tall, gangly, creatures of parchment skin the color of volcanic ash, with peculiar proportions and oddly configured skulls set with cruel eyes. These approached him from every angle in crouching, hunkered poses as if poised to leap at a moment's notice, their postures serving to exaggerate the protracted look of their lengthy limbs.

Erik was taken aback by the creatures closing in on him from every side, for their mien was hideous in the extreme. Appearing roughly human in their basic conformation, their bodies then took a turn for the nightmarish. They had the lean, gaunt look of a predator that'd went too long without feeding, an avarice extending to the single-mindedness of purpose he could see plainly expressed in their narrowed eyes whose depths reflected the profound blackness of an abyss.

They possessed a slightly stooped appearance in the rounding of the spine between their shoulders, this perhaps exacerbated by their extremely tall, lean frames upon which gravity must surely wreak havoc, for their musculature was lean, their limbs longish—too long.

It was their faces, however, which mesmerized him. For these were downright frightening—one might say, ghoulish. Their skulls were as elongated as were their bodies, their eyes set too closely together while the back of their hairless heads ascended to a puckered seam in the form of a ridge running to their napes.

Before he could bring his rifle to bear it was snatched from his hands by one of the skulking, gray creatures that approached him at a sharp angle from his blind side. He knew he had no time to wrestle open the holster containing his pistol and so, going completely on the instincts of years of training, he immediately clutched at and grasped the sling of his rifle upon which he gave a tremendous wrench as he sought to pull the carbine free.

The thing howled in agony when the man's desperate tug dislocated the arm holding the rifle from its socket. Not stopping there Erik drew the creature in and delivered a staggering punch that sent the hideous beast sprawling backwards, the unearthly thing unconscious before its skull rebounded from the stone flags of the courtyard. From every side now they surrounded him, barking at him with strange words in a tongue in which he recognized not a single syllable.

"Verdammt, help me!" he cried out to the onlookers.

But as well cry out to the stone for support. The people in the bazaar stood mutely by, apparently unable to come to the aid of one of their own—or too fearful to do so.

He knew that in his current state of weakness and privation he would be unable for long to carry out his one-man stand against the strange beings attacking him. His fists flew in rapid succession, connecting with the throats, chins and proboscises of a-many of them, but his actions causing him to succumb the more quickly in his current state of flagging strength. He blinked his eyes hard to clear them when his vision went momentarily blurry.

Closer and closer circled the crouching, lean gray beasts with Erik staggering now as his flying fists only served to unbalance him as he consistently missed his targets. A hard object suddenly struck him from behind upon the side of the head. All went black before his eyes and he knew no more.
05: In the Dungeon

To those who have neither experienced nor imagined what it is like to awaken on the floor of a dungeon, Erik would advise them to count themselves blessed among men.

His entire body cried out in pain from lying in the same position for some indeterminate amount of time upon the stone flags of what he immediately surmised to be a prison. Along his arms were the painful wounds of having been fed upon by whatever kinds of small creatures find their way to these dark places far below ground. His nose, throat and eyes suffered painfully from dehydration although runnels of water were to be found upon the walls and floor of the dank and chilly place.

The grating sounds of the groans of someone in pain and suffering were what at last awakened him—sounds he realized after a few moments issued from his own throat. The man rolled over and attempted, through eyes made blind by darkness, to survey his environs, but of them he could see nothing.

Every so often (but not frequently enough) someone, or something, would bring him a small vessel of food and another of the water of which he could not seem to get enough, although he found its odor questionable. Whatever the person or thing was it spoke not nor carried with it any light, seeming to know these underground passages by rhyme and rote and needing nothing to guide its feet.

Often Erik would awaken to the scraping sound made by the vessels of revolting mush serving for food being scooted along the stone flooring beneath whatever opening his prison's walls afforded the one responsible for supplying his sustenance—the sound ripping the man from delusional dreams of the cafés of Paris, Antwerp, Berlin and other gay capitals of the world in which he'd been no stranger.

In those bright and colorful places, he had entertained beautiful and fashionable members of the opposite sex in happier days on festive evenings where they ate and made merry, drinking wine and sampling the many local breweries that abounded. The scents and smells of bratwurst, schnitzel and fresh baked bread mixing with the strong aroma of _dunkel Bieren_ filled his nostrils—but only until he fully awoke.

For when he awakened it was to the real-world smell of mold and the clammy aromas that seems to cling to darkness; the odors of earth and raw stone and root—the scent of the grave; these it was filled his senses.

He'd been stripped of everything, even to the clothes that hid his nakedness. Weapons, haversack, canteen, all had been taken away, the man tossed, nude and unconscious, to shiver in this dark and stony cell with none willing to vouchsafe him an explanation as to what was to be his fate.

But as often happens in these situations, where the waiting seems interminable, a different sound eventually impinged on his hearing. Opening his eyes, he saw light for the first time in weeks in the form of ruddy torchlight approaching along what he only now saw was a narrow passage just outside the door of his prison. The torchlight he found blinding, the glare of it stinging his eyes to the point he could barely open them because he had by now become accustomed to the impenetrable darkness and obscurity of the underground. Blurry figures dragged him forth.

Stumbling weakly up several flights of stone steps, he eventually arrived at a small chamber where someone handed rough made clothes to him. Before his captors allowed him to don them, however, they had his body scrubbed in the absolute coldest water he ever felt upon his body but for one time when, on a dare, he'd taken a dip in the sea during a brief stint above the Arctic Circle.

His skin ruddy from the experience but cleaner than it had been in days, his jailers roughly dressed him and then hauled him into an adjacent chamber he found to be filled to repletion with beings both human and not.
06: Peenemünde

Here Erik saw again the gray-backed creatures he had encountered prior to being stricken unconscious. These had haunted his nightmares in the dungeon where he had hoped they were merely the conjurings of hardship and nightmare—that they weren't real.

He saw now that they were all too real. He saw, too, his fuzzy recollections of them were accurate. They were tall beasts, with bodies roughly cast in human conformation, but that beyond having legs, arms and a torso, any further resemblance to humanity ceased. There was not a one of them that wasn't at least a head taller or more so than was he, and Erik was slightly above average in height.

His mind was yet cloudy from his sufferings as they dragged him before a dais upon which sat another of those inconceivable creatures. _It_ crouched upon a prominent, throne-like furnishing, from which point of vantage it might survey the entire chamber that lay below its gray feet with its encompassing gaze.

The gray creature addressed his guards who replied to it in like fashion in their barbaric tongue. At last, the creature, one of obvious status, addressed him personally. To this query, of which he could not understand a word, Erik replied in his native German, but saw instantly that they could not understand him.

Luckily for Erik, when he turned sixteen, his mother announced she and his father had decided to send him to an institution of higher learning. Although loathe to do so at the time, he spent three years in Berlin attending university.

His mother was determined that he learn fine arts and language, to which she felt a civilized man should be no stranger. He'd learned his mother's native Hellenic tongue at an early age, and in those years at university was tutored in Latin, French, English and Spanish. He could, with equal ease, quote Goethe, Plato, Caesar, and Shakespeare in each's native tongue.

Thus, failing to get a reply when he addressed the _thing_ in German, the pilot reverted to the other languages at his command. Lastly, he tried his smattering of Swahili—all to no affect. Losing patience, the monstrosity addressed a human at its side. This person disappeared briefly only to return with the most captivating girl Erik had ever seen.

He had escorted many beauties on ball room floors before the war, but the loveliness of this wan girl, amid such horror as now surrounded him, was such that mere words, in any language, were foredoomed to be found inadequate. He knew the thought was ridiculous, but he suddenly found himself grateful of the forced bath he'd endured that had cleaned him of much accumulated filth.

The girl's blonde locks fell in cascades to chalky shoulders and poured over a blouse whose style was current two centuries earlier. Her features were classic in beauty, and accented by a pair of the most riveting and vibrant, blue eyes he'd ever seen, perched as they were in perfect proportion over lips the color of St. Valentine's blood and shaped like a cupid's bow. Erik's eyes widened as he took in this unexpected, but welcome, vision.

He soon discovered, though, that she hadn't been summoned to entice him with her undeniable gifts of pulchritude. Rather, she had been called because she spoke at least one of the languages in which he had addressed the obvious leader of the frightening gray men. When she spoke, her rendering of the tongue rang with a flare far from modern.

"Garmakalok wishes to know how you arrived here, as none have been summoned for some time." Her English was heavily accented, reminding Erik immediately of the coastal lands of Germany.

"Oh, thank God! Someone who understands me!"

"Of course, I can understand you. Why shouldn't I? It's why I was summoned."

"Your accent—it reminds me of the coastal folk near Bremerhaven, or Wilhelmshaven, perhaps."

"Oh, Bremerhaven!" the girl sighed.

From listless disinterest, her sparkling eyes now appraised the man more carefully, eyeing his form from head to heel. The clothes weren't flattering, but she saw they disguised what would otherwise be a fine figure.

"I haven't heard that name spoken for longer than I know! As a little girl, I spent much of my time in Bremerhaven. And my father named me after another coastal area, where I was raised."

"And where was that?" encouraged the pilot.

"I was born in Peenemünde," she replied.

"Peenemünde," he repeated. "I've heard of it. I would have never thought to consider it for a girl's name; but it's beautiful! You speak German, then?" he asked, switching to that language.

"Ja, natürlich," she answered, responding in Deutsch. "Now, if you would, Herr...?"

"My name is Erik—Erik von Mendelsohn," he said. "Oh, you asked why I was here. You see, my aeroplane crashed in the jungle—"

"I'm sorry. Your—aeroplane?" she asked, seeming confused.

"Yes," the man continued, not noticing her confusion. "After I set it down in the tree tops, I hiked nearly three days to this place. I was being hounded by beasts when I reached the foot of the cliffs surrounding this valley. I escaped them by climbing the cliffs only to be driven here by strange monsters I can't begin to describe in the forest surrounding this city."

"Ah—you refer to the purple loknovarloks of Deneb," she nodded.

"The purple whats-of-what?" he stumbled.

After her last comment, however, Peenemünde turned to Erik's inquisitor—the gray creature upon the throne who'd begun to grow restless during the discourse of the two natives of the Fatherland. She passed on Erik's words about becoming lost in the jungle, but left out any mention of the aeroplane with which she seemed unfamiliar.

The creature on the throne uttered a few sentences in his bizarre tongue which sounded unlike anything the man ever heard before. The girl spoke quickly in reply, answering in the same tongue and appearing much as an attorney coming to the defense of a client. The gray-back half rose out of his seat, shouting. The girl nodded, cringing, and turned to face the man.

"Peenemünde?" His eyes went from her ashen face to the enraged expression of the gray-back. "What is it? What did he say?"

"You are to labor in the mines, and I am to teach you their tongue when you are not," she translated. "But first, they wish you fitted with a restraint."

"A restraint?" he started. "What sort of restraint—"

He found himself seized suddenly from behind, and held in the inexorable grip of these gray creatures who were so unlike anything he'd ever seen. He struggled, yet he was weak from privation and there were four of them holding him while a fifth fastened something about him.

When they finished, he wore a silver band of dense metal about his neck, a tight-fitting piece, and wide and thick. These gray-men released him then and withdrew, while armed ones approached and took their place, apparently an escort.

"Peenemünde, what is this?" he asked angrily.

He glanced from the surrounding gray-backs to the girl, his fingers reflexively clutching the metallic band. Only then did he note the girl wore a similar piece of apparel about her own shapely neck. He glanced about the room, noting for the first time that all the humans in the chamber were adorned thus. The girl's tone, when she answered, was one of listless hopelessness.

"This is what they use to prevent us from leaving this place, Erik von Mendelsohn. You can no longer cross beyond the boundary of the sphere of influence—of Deneb!" she revealed.

This collar, then, was the mark of a thrall—he had become a slave!
07: In the Mines

Erik felt a debt of gratitude to the nameless antecedent who bequeathed him a strong back once his captors introduced him to the mines in which he spent his days slaving for his new masters.

The implements they utilized for their work, although ancient and well-used in appearance, were roughly of the same design one might encounter in any excavation—pry bars, picks, spades and the like. The tunnelings were a vast network and unbelievably old if their complexity of layout, in combination with their breadth and scope, were any indication.

The area they currently excavated was at extreme depth, possibly a half a kilometer or more below the surface, and so Erik knew some system of air filtration or replacement was at work. This he discovered to be the simplistic manner of cross tunneling and drilling in combination with convection used to move warmer air out, allowing cooler, outside air to take its place.

The cunningness of the support structure he saw in the tunnels Erik found intriguing for a people living in what had all the indications of a city dating to the Stone Age, if not earlier. Rather than wood taken from the nearby forests, the roofs were supported utilizing the very stone in which they quarried as master stone workers carved buttresses directly into the walls and ceilings overhead at specified intervals, thus utilizing the native in-place stone for structural reinforcement. In addition, material taken from the ground was used directly at its point of removal to fabricate any additional support columns deemed necessary.

All in all, although a man of the skies and understandably nervous about working deep underground, Erik came to trust in these seeming infallible methods of mining, especially after being informed no one in living memory could recall a collapse of any sort.

Gradually he became inured to the idea of digging precious ores and stones from the hollowed earth beneath the ancient city, storerooms of which he passed through on his way to his work site each day. His eyes widened at the first sight of cavernous rooms of pure, raw diamond, emerald, platinum and gold sitting in open caskets and stacked up by the thousands.

No one knew the intended purpose of the precious caskets, other that they were for the masters' use and destined for the place they called Deneb. On occasion, these storerooms would be found to be depleted, after which Erik and his band would begin the task of replenishing the hoard, for apparently the avarice and greed of these cruel, gray-backed fiends was unrelenting and insatiable.

Eventually, however, the sight of piled-up plunder ceased to impress him. Although he slaved amidst the greatest wealth of treasure he might have ever imagined he would trade it all for a pfennig if it could be used to purchase his freedom. He often pondered that he would gladly pull a lever and dump every single jewel and nugget into the deepest portion of the sea could he but leave this God-forsaken place, taking Argos and Peenemünde with him.

Since he did not yet speak the language, they'd paired him with someone to point and illustrate what he was to do. This happened to be a friendly chap who called himself Argos, who happened to be a Greek—the only language in which Erik hadn't tried to speak with his jailers. Erik was astounded to come across the bearded man and instantly gratified to have been partnered with one whom, out of the thousands housed in the city, spoke a form of Hellenic—one of Erik's first languages.

Although the man's enunciation sounded different from his own, and some of the words Erik used the man was unfamiliar with, they got along famously. Before long, Erik considered the man more than a fellow slave, thinking of him rather as a friend whose own abiding hatred for their masters gave Erik one in whom he might in safety confide, with Erik gladly standing in for confidant when Argos must vent.

With their backs weary from toil, he and Argos sat at the foot of the hole in which they dug, breathing heavily as they took the brief respite they were allowed once each period.

"What of escape, Argos? Surely you must have hatched plans by now?" Erik asked, his voice low.

None among the gray-backs were aware Erik could speak the language of Argos—none but Argos, and Peenemünde. The bearded Greek took a deep swig of water and passed Erik the clay jug.

"I tried to sneak away, once." His voice was low and Argos didn't look directly at Erik when he spoke, so any gray-back who happened to glance their way would not realize they conversed. With a grimy finger nail, he scratched his neck and then surreptitiously tapped on his metallic slave collar. "Neck band brought me back."

Erik did not look at Argos as he raised the jug to his own dust-caked lips. Two gray-backs strode through the ranks of miners, spears in hand and swords of odd make hanging on their sides, rousing the workers from their breaks.

"On your feet!"

"Back to work!"

The gray-backs strode on, remonstrating the humans to return to work. Argos smiled at his friend, his beard thick, bushy and black as pitch. Shining between his mustachios and the wild growth upon his chin were teeth whiter than summer clouds.

"Ready?" he asked.

His voice, had they been anywhere else on Earth, would have sounded gleeful. His eyes, though, were moist and told a different story.

"I'm ready, Argos."

Stooping to pick up their implements where they leaned against the stone, they returned to their toil.
08: Gateway to Deneb

Not yet understanding how the collar was to prevent his leaving, the handsome, young pilot also spent his next several weeks undergoing the most grueling instruction he'd ever received in any foreign language. After completing his shift in the mines, his captors would then take him to an above-ground room in the city not far from the throne room. Here he would meet with Peenemünde, the girl always accompanied by a pair of the hideous and unearthly denizens of this awful place.

That the lessons were carried out by the beautiful girl whom they assigned to stand in as translator reduced not by a sliver the unwholesome task to which his new masters put him to learn their tongue. If he did not learn a word perfectly it was not the girl, but rather these grotesque, gray beasts who administered the beatings to which they daily subjected him.

While bound in servitude, and during the administration of these beatings, he developed a massive hatred for these gaunt, gray men. In unison with his hatred, however, he discovered a well-spring of adoration for the lovely and gentle German lass. Her eyes would fill with hot tears of compassion when forced to witness his body beat black and blue if he so much as stumbled in pronunciation or the modification of a verb tense or failed to recall a word.

Although he might have furthered his tutoring by utilizing Argos as a Rosetta Stone of sorts, he steadfastly refused to do so as it would mean truncating the number of lessons with Peenemünde for whom he was fast developing an affection. Not to mention, the work he and Argos performed was so physically exhausting they only barely chatted during their break. Mostly, they were too fatigued to speak or do anything other than sip their meager allotment of water. As well, it would be dangerous to do so; were they caught speaking a language other than Denebian it would not go well for either of them.

Fortunately for the German pilot he'd learned so many languages in his youth that to learn yet another he considered a trifling, although the language he studied today he considered by far to be the most bizarre and complex he'd studied to date.

After what he guessed to be the passage of several weeks, he making the calculation based on his number of sleeps, with the passage of time being difficult to gauge in a city where one spent all one's time either indoors or below ground, he had gained what he considered to be a moderate level in the mastering of the strange, new tongue.

By now, however, in speaking the human languages with the girl and Argos, he had learned these creatures hailed, not from Earth, but from a world impossibly distant. Their own planet circumambulated a far star called Deneb, an astronomical body of which Erik had never heard.

"You're sure of this?" he asked the girl, doubtfully. "Isn't it possible this Deneb is just some remote area here on Earth? Why, it could even be their name for this very valley."

She shook her head. "Do they look like they come from Earth to you? No, Erik. I've seen the portal chamber near Garmakalok's throne room. It is through this they carry away the jewels and other ores you mine. At first it looks like a tunnel, a very long, dark tunnel disappearing into the ground. But you can see stars along the path, and at the other end is a sky that looks different from how I remember the sky of Earth. I haven't seen the sky for so long!"

She went on to say she'd heard Garmakalok claim that more than two thousand Earth years ago they had discovered the gateway that led from their world to this, a gateway opening into this verdant valley that lay buried in the heart of the Dark Continent. Although the distance to their world was staggering to the mind, it could, via the conduit located in this city, be traveled in a trice.

The girl informed him the Denebians believed the prehistoric peoples who built this ancient city had stumbled on the science of this hole through time and space, but that they'd long since died out before the Denebians discovered the entry on their own world. This entry was located, she said, inside a volcano on the gray-backs' planet that only within the last few millennia had fallen dormant, allowing of its exploration. A group of Denebian scientists studying the interior of the dead volcanic mountain discovered the doorway and scried its strange properties.

Time acted differently on the world these beings hailed from, and only within the sphere of its influence might they safely exist here at all. Otherwise, she said, they would have swarmed over the Earth and brought it beneath the heel of their merciless dominion millennia ago. Since they could not leave this ancient, dead city, they were forced to use technological wiles to lure people here, where they were then enslaved upon arrival.

"When they have a need for more slaves, either here or on their own world, they utilize various means to lure and snare people from the outside into coming here. But they do so in such a devious manner that they come only in small numbers—numbers such that they may not run the risk of being overrun by inundation, or draw attention to themselves from the outside world," she told him.

The occasions were rare indeed where he and the girl could sit and chat, when the aliens would lock them in a room for mysterious purposes of their own. During these times they would indulge in speaking their native tongue while he would tell her of the outside world, of the war ensnaring the nations at the time he lost his way and found this place. She was saddened to hear it, having been in the city for a very long time; just how long he would be shocked to learn.

He could scarcely believe it when she informed him she'd been born in the early 1700s and had traveled into the interior of the Dark Continent with her father, a scientist. Her father had fallen victim to the many calculating means by which these creatures lured men to this dismal and remote place.

Although the girl had been a prisoner in the city for nearly two centuries she barely looked twenty, thanks to the miraculous aura of the time differential that came from living within the sphere of influence of the space and time warping portal to Deneb—where time crawled by with infinite slowness as compared to the sprightly, riotous bounding of the pace of time on Earth. But great as her revelation had been to him, the girl was equally as stunned to hear the current date of the outside world.

"I can hardly believe it, Erik. I've been here for two hundred years!" she said in awe after he informed her.

"I have no idea why it should matter," she continued wistfully. "My mother is long dead. And my father—God rest his soul—they took him straight to Deneb the moment we arrived here to slave in Heaven alone knows what foundry or Hell hole on that forsaken place. He's long dead by now, I imagine. And there are no others. I've never had anyone other than Father."

And then, her heart breaking anew, she burst into tears. The sudden realization of the immense passage of time in the outside world had brought home how utterly alone she was in the world, and how hopeless was her situation. Erik draped an arm about her quivering shoulders in sympathy, holding one of her hands with one of his own.

"I'm sorry, Peenemünde," he said softly. "I didn't know. I'm all alone in the world, too. When my mother passed, loneliness caused me to throw myself at every dangerous mission that came available. It must be counted a miracle I've survived some of the close scrapes I've been in. Either that, or fate ordained long ago that I come here to find you."

The girl looked up quickly, meeting his eyes in which she saw only earnest admiration and empathy. She smiled but looked away, embarrassed. But Erik did not. His heart pounding, he slowly turned her face back until she faced him, and then he covered her mouth with a kiss.
09: People of a Star Afar

The man embraced the girl, holding her clasped in arms of banded iron forged in the gray-backs' mines as if she alone in the Universe anchored him to this point in time and space, held her sweet, warm form pressed tightly against his own until rough, gray hands hauled them apart and returned him to his cell.

From the lips of Peenemünde, and his time spent in the slave pens conversing with Argos, he learned more about the sphere of time influence. The time-stopping bubble flowed through the gateway whose origin was on the world of the gray men, which orbited the star, Deneb.

Via the gateway, the portal extended the influence of their star to this hemmed-in valley, fashioning a sphere approximately a kilometer in diameter and enclosing virtually the entirety of the city. The population of this ancient metropolis was thereby governed by the time influence of the gray-backs' planet, where time progressed at a much slower pace than it did on Earth. As such, Erik knew it to be within the realm of possibility that some of the human inhabitants had been here for millennia.

The slow passage of time within the city Erik had witnessed whenever he glimpsed out one of the enormous gates leading from the inner city toward the outer limits of the ancient pile where he could see what appeared to be the flashing of a strobe. This effect was in fact the rising and setting of the Earth's sun and the passing of the Earth's moon overhead.

As he exited the mines after his shift, a weary Erik was selected for a work detail in the outer city near a postern gate. Here, just for a moment, he caught a glimpse of the nearby jungle. It lay but a couple dozen steps distant; so close did it seem, he felt he might reach out and grab a fistful of leafy fronds. Shockingly, the forest seemed alive with movement, it being alternately revealed and concealed by flashing illumination overhead, interrupted by rapidly contrasting darkness.

He then realized the ethereal glowing was cast by the movement of the sun by day and the moon and stars by night outside this despondent place. The perceived motion of the vegetation he deduced to be the rapid passage of the Earth's time causing, from his perspective inside the time-bubble, gently swaying leaves to appear to be in high-speed movement, as though their branches were in the clutch of a violent grasp and being shaken like a dog shaking a snake.

Peenemünde told him how the gray men dragged her father through the portal as soon as they arrived and she never saw him again. Many slaves were taken thus, she said, but the gray-backs maintained a population of some two-thousand for their needs in the city for use as interpreters for new captives until they could be instructed in the language of Deneb, for manning the mines and as personal attendants to the gray-backs.

In this colony on Earth these creatures lived like kings, never lifting a finger to perform the slightest chore, with everything being accomplished by natives captured on this planet. Slaves were also kept for various other uses, she informed him, things hinted at in hushed whispers—things the girl seemed reluctant to discuss or reveal.

When Erik asked her about the beasts that chased him through the forests to the steps of the city she told him the Denebians brought the monsters here from their world, creatures they had somehow adapted for life beyond the sphere of influence—the purple loknovarloks.

These they released into the valley to not only discourage escape on the part of any slave who managed to slip his restraining ring, but also to drive quarry toward the city. The girl informed him the only reason he'd lived to make it to the front gate was due to the fact these beasts were trained to thwart and discourage escape attempts—not to prevent someone from making their way here from the outside.

He'd already suspicioned the clever beasts had herded him in the direction of the city and, their job done, they'd returned to the forest to await the next blundering explorer to scale the great heights of the cliffs surrounding their domain. Peenemünde also told him these creatures must needs have their numbers frequently augmented. Outside the sphere of influence of their home star, their lives were greatly shortened, and so they perished rapidly from the dissolution of old age, a process even the arcane science of the Denebians might only briefly stem.

He asked the girl if a similar sphere of influence existed on the other side, a condition which should have rendered the passage of the gray inhabitants of Deneb improbable were the Earth's time pace rendered in a similar fashion there as was Deneb's here. The girl told him the creatures believed the portal originated on their planet, and because of that reason no similar sphere of disrupted time existed on their side. It was a condition Erik lamented, but one he found interesting to know.

The time spent in her quarters while she tutored him in the language of Deneb were the only moments of their gloomy lives they looked forward to with expectation. This day had been particularly demanding, with Erik and Argos having shuttled more than fifty loads of ore to the surface between them. His Denebian escort marched him to the girl's quarters and there left him alone with her while they sought entertainment elsewhere. Of late they'd been relying on her for a report of his progress. For this he was thankful as he saw a distinct downturn in the number of beatings he must endure.

"What do they want with us, Peenemünde?" Erik was weary—wearier than he could remember feeling in quite a while. And his state of exhaustion made him irritable. "And why do they need so much raw ore? They had us mining a quartz today—not gold, not platinum, not diamond; just worthless rock."

The fact he was bone weary wasn't the only thing causing him to feel moody. After that first kiss where they'd been pulled apart by their Denebian guards the girl had become cool and aloof, telling him it mustn't occur again. Fearful he'd be harmed, she'd kept him strictly at arm's length ever since—a situation he found maddening.

"They want us for what they can take from us, Erik," she said. "They already sap our strength and take our lives. If they could strip our humanity I have no doubt they'd take that as well. As to the ore, I have no idea. They're mostly secretive about what they do—as if they were gods and considered their thoughts so lofty they found it a waste of time to enlighten us about anything."

"Well, it would certainly be a waste of time as far as I'm concerned, because I could care less what they do with it," he replied sulkily. "I'm just sick of digging it for them."

"At other times they go on about themselves," the girl continued thoughtfully, as if he hadn't spoken, "as if to illustrate the delta between their knowledge and our own lack thereof. They do like to preen about their vaunted intelligence."
10: Love midst Despair

The girl's glance lingered on the man after he turned to peer out a window overlooking a courtyard, her eyes pausing on his handsome profile far longer than necessary. When he turned his face in her direction she looked away quickly, appearing to be studying a sheaf of papers in which she notated his progress for their masters.

Of late she'd found her eyes drawn to the man to such an extent she found it difficult to focus on the work at hand—that of teaching him the language of their captors. That kiss! Try as she might, she couldn't get it out of her mind. The memory of it made it difficult to keep up her front of seeming disinterest.

As to the task, her pupil was learning the language more swiftly than anyone she'd ever tutored—absorbing it in almost miraculous fashion. He explained his natural ability to do so being due to his having learned so many languages in his youth; he felt his mind had grown adapted to learning them. And for that he was glad, as it gave him additional time he might spend chatting with the beautiful German girl in their native tongue, where less astute pupils would have had to spend that same time studying.

Now it was his turn to study _her_ profile. She scribbled furiously in her papers—an attempt, he guessed, to prevent him from taking any more beatings with the girl keeping diligent notes on his behalf. She seemed so disinterested in him now that it caused him to feel slightly awkward and nervous around her. The feeling was something he'd never experienced in the presence of those of the female persuasion—and he'd been in the company of many of them in various situations, both public and private.

Didn't the kiss they'd shared mean anything to her? Obviously not. He would risk any beating the gray-backs cared to dish out if he could kiss that beautiful mouth once more, so long as it did not endanger her. The girl sensed his eyes upon her, and felt a blush of embarrassment suffusing her neck and face. She hoped he didn't notice.

While she wrote he studied her, watching her lips as she silently read back to herself what she'd written, his eyes dropping involuntarily to her exquisite décolletage. Gods, she was beautiful! Seeing her every day like this was driving him mad with desire for her. He longed to take her in his arms, to press her body against his own and cover that Cupid's bow mouth with kisses.

To take his mind off the trend of his thoughts, he looked around her small apartment for the hundredth time while she continued to scribble in Denebian hieroglyphs, realizing an instant later that this was a mistake.

The ancients who constructed the city left no writings that he'd seen, but their artistry abounded. Whereas his people were prone to paint on fragile canvas that might be burned up and destroyed or stolen or sold off in desperate times, these people instead crafted beautiful murals directly over delicately carved embossments of the image in the stone, yielding a layered, dimensional effect he found striking; as such they were permanent fixtures. Indelibly carved and painted, protected from destruction by sun and rain, they were as bright and colorful today as they'd been thousands of years ago when they were first created.

Erik was a man of the world; he'd seen firsthand works of art fashioned by the skilled hands of those generally accepted as the chiefs of their trade. Seeing these murals, however, he realized that only now did he truly look upon creations painted by master artisans for which no comparison might be drawn for pure dynamism and scope and lifelikeness. They exuded such quality of depth and realism he felt as though he might step into the wall and join the players depicted in the various scenes which took place thousands of years in the past.

As he looked again at the vividly detailed murals, however, he recalled he would have to look elsewhere to cool his ardor than to the walls of the chambers of Peenemünde. Whatever sultress lived here in times gone by had had painted on the walls of this suite what was obviously her favorite activity, and that in life-size depictions. Everywhere he looked he found recreated the arousing, animalistic enactments upon which he specifically sought to prevent his mind from dwelling. To step into any scene of these would be to step into ecstasy.

" _Stimulating_ choice of decoration," he remarked.

At the sound of his voice the girl looked in his direction, not needing much of an excuse to once again regard one whom she found so appealing. She knew she had hurt him with her reluctance to embrace him after they shared the kiss, but she couldn't risk seeing him harmed.

Noting he was staring at the wall across from him she followed the direction of his eyes. On this wall was depicted the same courtesan whose astounding beauty and form graced the other murals in this chamber. Vivacious, nude, her full breasts having captured the attention of her obviously aroused counterpart in the fresco, her eyes seemed to invite the participation of any whose eyes lingered too long upon her image.

Erik left his seat, preparing on impulse to join Peenemünde upon the dais upon which she sat writing which doubled as a settee and her sleeping platform, when Lafalldor, Garmakalok's chief lieutenant and majordomo, entered as swiftly and silently as a ghost.

"What language were you speaking just now?" he demanded.

Behind Lafalldor were the two guards who escorted Erik here earlier. Erik's ardor wilted like a flower in Fall.
11: Lafalldor

Lafalldor stood in the entrance to the girl's rooms, his stare passing from the man to the girl and back again. When he next spoke his tones were icy, carrying unveiled promises of impending violence. "Any language but Denebian is forbidden!"

"Lafalldor, I—" began the girl.

"It was my fault," Erik interrupted. "I had forgotten a word I learned weeks ago; I only asked the question to refresh my memory. It will not happen again as this conversation has permanently etched the word in my memory."

"I do not pretend to understand your barbarous tongue, but that did not sound like a question to me a moment ago; it sounded more like a statement. Since you tend to forget it, perhaps you need a memorable reminder of this term by my men. What word was it? But wait!"

His expression becoming one of devious cunning, he turned to the girl and motioned her to follow him, leaving his men in the room with Erik. After a moment in the outer hall Lafalldor returned with a pale Peenemünde.

"Now, let us see if both your versions of what you claim was said as I entered correspond. What word exactly did you ask this woman to give you the Denebian equivalent of?" Lafalldor demanded.

The girl's face looked fearful. If Erik got this wrong there would be no escaping the beating he would receive in just a few moments. The last word he spoke to Peenemünde came to mind. But then he looked past Lafalldor to a fresco of the beautiful courtesan whose living, breathing presence once graced these rooms and whose essence yet remained. Erik didn't hesitate. There could be only one word that was fresh in both their minds. Summoning a cockiness natural to most pilots, he eyed the majordomo.

"Stimulating. The word was stimulating."

Out of the corner of his eye he caught the faintest glimmer of a smile at one corner of Peenemünde's beautiful mouth before she hid it. He kept his own face perfectly neutral, and his eyes never left those of Lafalldor. A look of disappointment briefly crossed the gray-back's face, and then his eyes narrowed in vindictive cruelty.

"Perhaps it would further cement the word in your memory were both you and the girl flogged."

Erik recalled a comment Peenemünde made before the gray-backs entered her chambers, something about them preening about their intelligence. He had met others like them in the past, men who were not so different from these gray-skinned beasts; condescending men who would puff up when one played to their egos. When accosted by such men, they would often forget the cause of their complaint could one but divert their attentions to their favorite subject—themselves.

"I must say, Lafalldor, the complexity of your tongue, bespeaking as it does a high level of evolutionary attainment and erudition rarely encountered, is such that I am surprised anyone on Earth could possibly learn it to fluency. Why, even Peenemünde admits she at times struggles with it—and she is your chief instructor! Forgive me, Lafalldor! It shall not occur again."

The gray-back had perceptively puffed up with the compliments, exactly as Erik suspicioned he might. As the human fell silent, Lafalldor eyed the apartment, as though seeking somewhat else that might be considered suspicious. Finding nothing, he looked at Peenemünde.

"His progress?"

"I have it here." She handed him the sheaf of paperwork she'd been updating just before they entered. This Lafalldor quickly skimmed.

"Satisfactory. He shall continue for a few more sessions, at which time I deem his instruction in our language shall be complete."

He eyed Erik. "See that you never again speak other than Denebian."

Turning on his heel he exited the room, his henchmen following suit. The two humans shared a look, both grinning in relief. Peenemünde slid quietly to the entry where she peeked at the retreating backs of the Denebians. She eased the door shut.

"Erik! How did you know—"

She turned to find Erik standing directly behind her. His arm went about her waist and drew her to him while with the other he braced himself against the wall. This time the girl did not resist her heart's desire. She'd lived in horror for a very long time and was now very much alone in the world. The pilot was a ray of light in an otherwise bleak landscape.

She slid a hand slowly up his back to his shoulder, while with her other she sought behind her for the latch to her door. It would not do for Lafalldor to return and find them exercising somewhat other than Erik's vocabulary.
12: An Interesting Discovery

The man returned to his work in the quarries far beneath the city foundations where he and his fellows mined gold and diamond and sapphire and other riches to be exported for use by the good citizenry of Deneb. Whereas the miners might not pass beyond the boundary of the time influence in their delvings, still they could dig to nearly half a kilometer in depth. And this the Denebians seemed determined to do. At great depth he and Argos and a handful of others chiseled in a long disused branch of the mine where Erik made a discovery.

The man had noticed that although artistry and statuary remnants from the original occupiers of the city abounded, he had yet to see even a single example of their writing, its distinct lack causing him to wonder if the people who built the city might not have been illiterate. Every ancient city he ever visited, from Rome to Egypt, had been replete with chiselings in the builders' native tongue—yet not here.

Deep in the primordial shaft they came upon the remains of a bronzium door of elaborate make. Long disused, this tunnel had likely not been trod since the days of the original excavators. It had been due to a problem with a ventilation shaft in another section where they were to have worked that brought them here, instead.

Given their instructions at the entry to the shaft by a Denebian detachment, and led by Argos, they made their way into the dark recesses of a tunnel in which they hoped to find diamond or platinum. Reaching the end of the tunnel, they began clearing debris when Erik uncovered the door. Covering portions of the hammered paneling were the familiar artistry, examples of which abounded in the city far above their heads. But in addition to ornate imagery, he now for the first time discovered narrow, vertical lines of hieroglyphs the sight of which caused him great excitement.

In style the symbols reminded him of the Egyptian writings he'd seen in Cairo and Luxor. Yet these were so different he could assume no relation existed, with any apparent kinship to Egyptian being strictly in arrangement and not in the actual characters. This did not discount the fact he found them to be remarkably familiar, as though he'd seen examples of the style, and that recently.

"What do you make of it, Argos?"

"I wish you hadn't found it," the Greek replied. "We need to dig, not puzzle over mysteries that were centuries old before we were born."

Erik ignored his friends disinterest. A feeling of recognition, driving a sensation of deep familiarity, would not allow him to completely force thoughts of the bronzium door and its mysterious hieroglyphs from his mind. He felt sure he had seen them before, he just couldn't put his finger on when and where. Setting the door to one side, the miners continued their work, excavating a gold seam they discovered instead of the platinum they sought.

Later in the same work cycle, he and Argos and the others of their party took a scheduled respite from their labors to break their fasts. Instead of squatting in the narrow confines of the dusty tunnel in which they labored, they returned the short distance to the entry where the bronzium door had been discovered; here the space was wider and the air not so stale and dusty. The troupe of some fifteen men sat, the men eating mostly in silence, for they were weary. Once again Erik studied the perplexing door.

At the end of their short break a trio of Denebian guards waded through their midst, goading the men to return to work per the shift schedule. Their sudden appearance reminded Erik of Lafalldor's entrance of a few days past when he was being tutored by Peenemünde in her quarters. The recollection also brought a searing memory of what followed after Lafalldor and his men vacated the beautiful girl's rooms.

But just now it was not the few moments of bliss he shared with Peenemünde upon which his mind focused, but rather the scribblings she made in her papers where she wrote, in Denebian, updates as to his progress—in hieroglyphs nearly identical to the ones on the bronzium door. With that grunt of satisfaction that all experience who strive to recall something elusive and unexpectedly catch the vagrant memory, he sat up and looked at Argos with a grin.

"I know where I've seen the hieroglyphs!" he hissed, careful a guard didn't overhear.
13: Origins

"What are you going on about?" Erik's bearded companion oozed indifference.

The men stood and formed lines preparatory to returning to the site of their labor. "The writing on the door, Argos! It is the same as I've watched Peenemünde write in her records—which she records in Denebian."

Erik's excitement, however, was not infectious. Instead of replying, Argos only shrugged as he made his way back through the dark tunnel, using a primitive firebrand to light his way since the guards' disdained allowing use of their more technical light sources, these being of chemical make. Once out of earshot of the guards who remained behind in the larger chamber, Erik took up his argument once more.

"It eluded me at first as to where I'd seen those markings," he began.

"Let me guess—because you were staring at Peenemünde and not at what Peenemünde was doing," Argos suggested drily.

"No! I mean—actually, you might not be so far off base about that. But, there are also subtle differences in the writings –like comparing two-thousand-year-old Hellenic characters to those of modern day," Erik hinted.

Argos harrumphed. "Now it is you who are talking riddles."

"Oh, come on Argos! Do I have to spell it out for you?" Erik burst, vexed.

Argos cast a beetle-browed look back over one shoulder. "Although you cannot see it for my great beard, there is a brain between my ears."

"Argos, it is beyond the pale to believe modern Denebian writing has such similarity to these ancient writings left by the builders of this city and the two not be related."

"Then I'd guess the Denebians made the door—there's your explanation."

They arrived at the head of the tunnel and the men began picking up their tools.

"The Denebians don't create murals and statuary," Erik replied, exasperated. "And you know it!"

Argos said nothing. After a bit, however, the bearded Greek eyed the young man working at his side. "I advise you to drop this fascination you have with this, Erik. Digging into this city's past—into the Denebians' past? Nothing good can come of it, my friend."

Erik made no reply. He found himself unable to think of anything else. When they left the mine that day he shuffled out last, pausing by the prehistoric relic once more to study the writings, memorizing many of them. Over the next several work periods he studied them further, deepening at the same time the aggravation felt by Argos for whom such things held no interest.

At last it dawned on him to ask for pieces of parchment of Peenemünde and, sneaking pieces of burnt cinder from a cook fire, he made rubbings of the writings. When Erik was again taken to the girl's chambers for tutoring, he smuggled with him the rubbings he made, these including examples as well of the embossed artwork. The girl was amazed.

"You're right, Erik, they are the same! See here." The girl pointed to a line of hieroglyphs on the scratching he brought to her. "Here is their word for gold. Here it says the door was to be used to seal a gold seam, marking it to be mined at some later point in time. Apparently, they never returned to it as you have said the vein is yet virgin, with only the walls showing the signs of chiseling but the gold remaining untouched."

As the two secretly studied the rubbings he'd made of the hieroglyphs, and compared these writings to the modern derivations of the gray creatures with which Peenemünde was conversant, they began to harbor a suspicion. It was obvious the horrid beings of Deneb were somehow the original builders of the city—the people who had formerly lived here, and whom had supposedly gone extinct or otherwise mysteriously disappeared. They now had cause to believe them to be one and the same.

"I tell you, Peenemünde," he said excitedly. "How else might one account for the similarities between the written language of the people who built this city, and the modern hieroglyphs of these strange creatures? Consider this hypothesis: the ancient builders stumble by happenstance onto this path to another world. They migrate to Deneb for some unknown reason, possibly out of simple curiosity or to flee some enemy, and then find themselves unable to return, eventually forgetting their natal world—the Earth."

The girl nodded her head in agreement.

"I have heard them say they discovered the gateway inside a volcano on their world. If the volcano erupted after a mass migration, it would have marooned them on Deneb. Later, they rediscover the gateway and return to Earth after the city had fallen into ruin and begin harvesting human beings for slave labor, little knowing these are their fellow descendants they enslave. But what of their strange appearance? They're nothing like the beautiful people in the paintings and statuary. And their language? There exists no tongue like it on Earth."

"I'm no physician, Peenemünde," Erik said, "nor am I an anthropologist, being but a simple fighting man—but, one with a brain. The world that orbits Deneb is different from ours, with even time advancing differently there. They have undoubtedly evolved along differing lines than we have on Earth."

"As to their tongue, obviously, they developed a language that never left this geographical locale and so nothing remains on Earth of it today—a language they took with them to the stars, if my theory is correct. From comparing their writings, I'd guess their language is practically identical today to that which they spoke eons ago, when they yet dwelt on the Earth."
14: To the Palace

The conversation in which he and the girl discussed the possible origins of those of Deneb became permanently fixed in the man's mind.

As he labored in the mines the following days he had the recurring thought that if the gray people were made aware of the idea that their roots lie on Earth, an idea they'd possibly never considered, they might forego the enslaving of members of their own ancestral line and reconsider the relationship between the people of their world and this.

For of such he felt to be true—that these were descendants of the people who built this city; that they left in the dawn of time only to return some two thousand years ago to enslave the people they found here—people who were perhaps remnants of their own antecedents. From that time hence, they had lured folk from the outside world and enslaved them, sending many of them on to Deneb to labor there.

Thoughts along those lines were running rampant through his mind as their masters drove him and the others of his work party across the square after a grueling day in the mines. Before they could exit the busy bazaar down a small side street that led to their cells, he called out to his guards. At the sound of his voice, they stopped the men and approached Erik.

Argos, in line directly ahead of Erik, looked back over one shoulder at this friend. His expression was worried. "Erik!" he hissed, keeping his voice low. "Do not do this!"

Erik glanced from his friend to the approaching guards. "I have to, Argos. This could mean freedom for all of us. We'll never know if I don't try."

The guards stopped before Erik, their faces wearing a heavy scowl. "What would you, slave?"

"I would speak with Garmakalok. I made a discovery in the mines he'll wish to hear about."

Garmakalok was their leader, he who ruled from the throne of supremacy, the position from which their most high sat in solitary authority over the city, a position of governorship whom none dared gainsay ought. At first, they were reluctant, wishing only to return the slaves to their pens that they might seek entertainment among their women and their food stalls. But Erik was persistent and, although reluctantly, they agreed to take him to the majordomo who would decide if he spoke with the governor or not.

"I will tell you this, slave. And you prevail not to prick Garmakalok's interest, or if you do prevail to bring to Garmakalok the slightest frown of displeasure, then yours shall be a scourging such as history has not seen the like of," growled one. "Take him to the palace."
15: In the Throne Room

With that he was separated from the others, the jailer who responded to the order hauling him by his neck chains in the direction of the inner sanctum where sat the palace. Helpless to do otherwise, Argos watched as his friend was led away.

Arriving at the throne room, Erik was taken to the majordomo of the palace, Lafalldor, the same as he who oversaw the instruction of new captives in the Denebian tongue, and the same who had accosted him in Peenemünde's quarters. The guards relayed Erik's claim to know something of value the governor would wish to hear. Lafalldor stared at Erik before he spoke.

"What is it you wish to tell Garmakalok?" The Denebian's unflinching stare was cold and penetrating.

"It is for his ears alone." Erik stared back. He felt his words must be heard by the highest power in the land. If he told Lafalldor and then was dismissed by the majordomo his words might never reach the ear of Garmakalok.

"We shall see." Turning to Erik's escort, he said, "You are dismissed. I will take him before Garmakalok myself. Another shall return him to his cell."

When they entered the throne room the women of the court, female beasts such as Garmakalok himself, were seen to be laving and fawning upon Garmakalok who was a bestial, debased monster who undertook to enjoy in their entirety the fruits of his exalted position as governor of this, to him, far-flung world orbiting a far-flung star.

Slaving in subjugation to Garmakalok's sycophants were men and women of Erik's race who served these 'ladies in waiting', the slaves of slaves as it were. Among them he saw Peenemünde, who blanched when she saw her friend being brought before the debased administrator of the city. Her lips parted in fear, the girl made her way toward the throne that she might overhear what was said.

"Why for, Lafalldor, if thou wouldst vouchsafe me to ask, hast this quarry slave been dragged hence? Seest thou not I am engaged?" Garmakalok growled. The Denebian's face wore a heavy scowl.

Lafalldor bowed before the governor. "Yes, O Garmakalok—and yet the crime be perpetrated, not by I, yet by this slave who claims he has knowledge of somewhat thou shalt surely wish to know. I informed him he placed himself in grave peril in interrupting your overseeing of your duties to Deneb, my governor."

Garmakalok waved a limp-wristed hand, a signal for Lafalldor to desist and say no more. "Well, slave, what is it you wish to inform me of, and be quick about it."

In his yet-halting speech of these people, Erik attempted to tell the story as he fathomed it. But, he did not mention Peenemünde as he did not wish to risk bringing Garmakalok's displeasure down upon her if anything were to go amiss. When he began speaking, the girl's face froze in fear for he had not warned her he intended to seek audience with the governor regarding his discovery in the mine shaft.

He told of his finding of the hieroglyphs upon the door of hammered bronzium in the tunnels beneath the city, and how they were nearly identical as those used by Garmakalok's people today. He spoke of how he believed the original inhabitants had migrated to the distant world to which the gateway led, and alleged they had become stranded there by the eruption of the volcano in whose innards the portal on Deneb reposed.

"Garmakalok, I ask only that you consider that we might be more akin than anyone guessed. The possibility exists that our races spawned from the same seas—the seas of Earth. There is no need for us to be enemies when in the beginning we were fruit of the same tree—"

Before Erik could finish his impassioned speech, the governor stood to his full height upon the throne, on his face a graven mask of anger. Seeing the response of his ruler, Lafalldor jerked Erik's neck chain, causing the pilot to cease any further importations.

"You dare accuse us of being the descendants of slaves? What you suggest is blasphemy!" hissed Garmakalok. Fuming, he stabbed a finger at the gray man holding Erik's chains. "Lafalldor—you dare bring this desecrator, this defiler, before my throne?"

"Garmakalok, I beg of you—clemency! The slave didst avow it had news of import that should reach thy honorable ears! I only knew if it spoke truth and I had not brought him before you, I had committed a grave error for which I must then atone. The slave refused to tell me what it wished to tell you, so the blame falls wholly upon the head of the slave!" a cringing Lafalldor professed.

For added emphasis the majordomo applied a kick to the now prostrate Earthman who had been pulled off his feet by the savage yanks on his neck chains. The kick acted as a catalyst, propelling Garmakalok down the steps of the throne, high malice in his eyes.

With his wind knocked completely out of him by Lafalldor' s cowardly blow, Erik found himself beset by both the majordomo and the governor, the latter having descended the steps of his throne for all the world like some debased beast who could not resist striking a helpless victim. Each gray-back seemed to vie with the other as to who might land the most brutal blow upon the man's defenseless body.

When Erik essayed to rise, Lafalldor jerked him roughly off balance by his chain while Garmakalok, who was now joined by members of the equally degraded women of his hareem, attacked and kicked him viciously from every side. At last, with foam specking his lips from his efforts, Garmakalok called a halt.

"Nay—stop! Instead, let him be dragged into the courtyard! I wish a public flagellation of this man as a lesson to all."

The Denebian females were reluctant to cease, having become even more rabid in their exertions than the males. Yet when an escort was called to drag the man hence, they had no choice but to desist. Aided to his feet by two Denebians, one on either side, Erik was taken from the throne room. He was nearly unconscious.

Denebian warriors were sent to every corner of the city to usher the slaves to the square that they might witness the punishment. Shortly, Garmakalok ascended a pedestal from which he might look down upon his unfortunate subjects, his chest yet heaving from the physical exertion of nearly kicking a man half to death. He stabbed an accusatory finger at Erik who had been tied to a whipping post.

"This man had the indigestible gall to accuse us of Deneb of being somehow related to you of this lowly world. Lest any think to follow in his footsteps, that one had best consider what follows. Lafalldor!"

Tied to a post constructed in the past for just this purpose, Erik now found himself on the business end of a beating to end all beatings. With a leather whip, the ends of which were embedded with bits of metal and volcanic glass, they flayed and lacerated his back until consciousness passed from him. Dimly to his ears came the cries of outrage and cursings from the mouths of the gray monstrosities whom he now truly knew to be beasts of the most debased kind.

Although he only barely heard it, for it was nearly drowned by the angry shouts of the Denebians, were also cries of anguish and importunities for mercy—outpourings in a voice he knew now as intimately as he did his own—a sweet voice that belonged to Peenemünde. But her supplications were destined to be ignored. Her words, rather than softening the hardened heart of Garmakalok instead caused him to stride to her side where he backhanded her to the stone flags of the city square.

"Spineless vermin!" Garmakalok scoffed savagely at the shrinking girl. "It is only by the firm administrative hand of rule that slaves hearken to their station. Mercy breeds insubordination and has no place in society. Lack of respect for one's betters must be remunerated in kind—and that by suffering of the most virulent type possible."

At last, merciful providence caused Erik's senses to blacken. Only after his body fell limp did the debased creatures cease their efforts. They commanded two slaves to lift the body and carry the man back to his cell where he might recover from his ghastly wounds.

Begging to be allowed to bind his flayed flesh, Peenemünde, at last granted permission to do so, followed them—her face stinging from the merciless blow she received from Garmakalok. Her mind was numbed and her thoughts were leaden by the awful act of violence, perpetrated as it had been upon one for whom she now realized she loved.
16: A Desperate Plot

Erik never knew exactly how long he lay in his cell after suffering that terrible thrashing. He had been kicked and scourged with a whip, with the entire city called out for witness to set an example of what befell those who dared insult the masters. In terms of time on the outside world, it might have been weeks he lay recuperating.

In the beginning, Peenemünde was permitted to nurse his wounds, rubbing a Denebian salve into his wounds which probably saved his life, the medicinal a product of the gray-backs' strange world and testimony to the arcane science of the wise among them. But near the end of his convalescence, his cruel taskmasters refused him further aid so that the man found he must succor himself—tend to his own injuries and mop his own brow. His back would bear the scars of his beating for the remainder of his days.

Although he was still weak, the masters deemed him well enough to return to the mines, beginning anew the daily drudgery of chiseling jewels and valuable ores from the stony underlayment beneath the city to enrich the most debased race that tread the surface of any planet in the known cosmos. At least, they were as far as Erik was concerned.

Argos had not been permitted to visit Erik during his convalescence so he was eager to speak with the pilot. When the opportunity arose, he was surprised at the change in the younger man. Whereas before Erik seemed to have accepted his plight of captivity, speaking often and happily of the moments he spent with Peenemünde, he now seemed filled only with a great bitterness.

Often, he wouldn't speak at all, working his shift in silence, remaining mute during their breaks and shrugging off any attempt on Argos' part at conversation. When he did speak, he showed interest in one topic only—that of escape.

Argos understood the feelings of bitter hatred consuming every thought of one who suffered the type of savagery Erik had endured. And he knew well the hopelessness generated by captivity. He had himself spent a great deal of his life held captive for the amusement or benefit of others. He had tried to prevent the risk Erik took to secure freedom for them, so when Erik spoke of escape, Argos decided the man would not stand alone this time.

Sometimes when he and Erik talked, it was more of Erik lashing out in pent-up anger. Here the pilot seemed to forget Argos was unfamiliar with Erik's day and age. At these times, Argos didn't understand all his young friend's ravings.

"Erik. I know everything seems dark right now—"

"I was crushed, Argos, when I lost my father two years ago. He was one-half of the sum total of all the family I had in the world. _That_ was a dark time. And when my mother passed recently, I felt it was the end. It's why I'm here, actually. I believe I secretly hoped I'd die. But I didn't."

"My parents both had several brothers and sisters each," Argos mumbled. He didn't know what else to say. "I had a lot of cousins. We played. You know, as kids."

"My mother's kin died out years before she and my father met. He was on holiday in Crete, I think it was in 1890, convalescing after Abushiri. They married and moved to Hamburg." Erik stared at the gritty floor at his feet.

"Erik. I am not sure what we are talking about here. I never knew him, but this man, your father—he does not sound like a man who would simply give up."

Erik started like he'd seen a ghost. His eyes raised from the floor until he was looking at Argos.

"You're right, Argos. My father would be ashamed of me."

"No, Erik, I did not mean that. I believe your father would be proud of his son."

"Gods, what a fool I've been, though! My father was raised in an orphanage, Argos. He rose from the severest level of poverty, lacking everything, to become an officer in the German Army. He earned merits in two conflicts for bravery and from being wounded in action. And look at me—feeling sorry for myself and wishing I could die—when I have Peenemünde and a friend like you to live for."

Erik looked his friend in the eyes. "I apologize, Argos. None of this has been your fault, yet I've treated you like it was. But with your help, I plan on getting us out of here. Are you with me?"

Argos grinned. This was more like his friend. "By Athena, yes! And here is my hand on it."

As devilishly cruel as were their masters, so Erik became fiendishly crafty in his inner workings—plotting the downfall of these monsters, and crafting an escape from this valley of despair, as he'd come to call that dreadful place. Together, he and Argos lay the groundwork of a rebellion, with Argos carrying word to others he trusted, men at whose sides he'd labored for what unknown length of time he would never know.

"Are you ever afraid, Erik?" Argos eyed the younger man as they spoke of their plans. Since Argos threw in with him in planning an escape, the pilot had become galvanized once again, seeming more like the old Erik the Greek had come to know.

Erik sat, his back to a mine shaft, staring at the dusty, rock-strewn floor. "I'm terrified," he admitted.

He looked at his friend. "But fear is just an emotion, and one which I am master of, not a servant to. The sensation will make me cautious, and careful, but it will not sway me, Argos. In fact, it is what spurs me to act, because I'm determined I will not live my life in fear and slavery. None of us will. This has gone on long enough. It's got to end."

Argos nodded his head in agreement.
17: Escape from the Cell

Erik spoke to Peenemünde of his intentions, thinking initially the girl might beg him not to make such an attempt for fear of reprisal. But in this he was wrong, finding in the girl a form of obstinacy he never dreamed could exist in the frame of one who, on the surface, appeared so delicate and fragile. He hated to involve her in the actual bid for freedom, but she had knowledge they intended to put to good use; she knew where lay the entry to the gateway.

The bulk of the duration they spent planning was to give Argos time to feel out his conferees. Their strategy was relatively simple and needed no protracted planning to work out the details; soon the moment arrived to act. It was useless to wait for nighttime here as evening came and passed in a very short time within the sphere of influence of Deneb, causing the sky to have a strange flashing effect to which Erik never quite grew accustomed.

At the mid of an agreed-on cycle, he would meet Peenemünde near her rooms at the palace. At the top of the same cycle, Argos and the others were to attack the Denebian forces and begin making their way toward the front gate, ushering as many slaves along with them as possible. Erik hoped a half cycle (a cycle being a period of time used by the Denebians) was enough to complete the task he'd set himself. If he were not successful, then neither he nor Peenemünde nor Argos, nor anyone for that matter, would be passing through that gate.

For weapons the miners smuggled iron bars out of the mines at high risk. If they were discovered with these in their possession it would mean death by torture, the preferred method of the gray-backs. For nothing one might say could possibly explain the presence of implements that would have all the earmarks of weaponry in the eyes of the masters.

And for Erik the pry bar was a necessity as well to escape his prison. Of all the prisoners, he alone was chained by the neck in his cell, a continuation of his punishment meant to frighten the others into submission. By means of the bar he pilfered from the mines, he was able to pry loose the chain attaching his neck to a metal ring set in the stone floor of his cell.

The resultant _pop_ terrified him for a moment, fearing recapture as it would mean the end of any chance of escape. But it wasn't for himself, or the others, that he feared, but rather it was for Peenemünde, the girl at whose feet his heart now lay. Having freed himself from the floor, he paced to a position just to the side of his door, which was unlocked, and waited with his bar poised to strike. No one came to investigate. Emboldened, he slipped from his cell.

The loose ends of chain he wrapped about his waist and crisscrossed over his torso so that it did not drag the stone flagging with which the city was paved. Swiftly and quietly, he made his way toward the palace where he was to meet the German lass. He'd long since sworn that, for all his love, their bliss would not be spent in slavery. He'd now taken the first step on the path toward keeping that oath.

Desperately hoping they were not committing folly, yet committed to what must follow, he slunk along the ancient paths of the inner city, knowing the moment drew nigh when Argos and his men would pour from their cells and attack the various points where were quartered the warriors of Deneb. He must hurry.

As he passed a street entry leading to one of the mines—the very mine, in fact, in which he had that very day labored—he heard the approaching voices of two of the gray fiends. The fact they joked about the beating he received weeks before did not disturb him; but when one casually suggested they pay him a visit in his cell and give him a few kicks, he saw he must interfere lest his absence be discovered.

One iron bar he propped against the side of a building in the alley in which he sought refuge. He had taken two of the utensils so he might arm the girl if a more fitting weapon for her was not forthcoming. With the other in hand, he stepped out behind the two warriors after they passed the dark opening of the alley and immediately imbedded it in the back of the skull of the nearer gray-back.

Without a sound, other than the heavy _thunk_ made by the blunt instrument, the fiend sank to the stones of the street. Erik pulled the bar from the crushed skull with a savage wrench while the dead man's gore spread in a puddle about his still-twitching form.

"What do you do there, slave?" On the face of the remaining creature was a look of stunned disbelief.

"This!" hissed von Mendelsohn fiercely.

Before the creature could gather his wits about him the man slammed the bloody bar into the forehead of the remaining Denebian. Without a sound he, too, sank to the flagstones of the cobbled street. Worried the shouts might draw curiosity seekers who were not involved in their plot, he stepped quickly into the alley entrance and retrieved the other bar so he might continue his way.

The route seemed interminable with having to hide from the monsters when he encountered them. At last, he found himself at the meeting place where he was to rendezvous with Peenemünde, having entered the palace by a door the girl was to ensure remained unlocked. There remained one thing he must do before he and the others could leave the city.

He had once strolled too close to the doorway through which he originally entered the prehistoric metropolis and felt the awful vibrations. From the girl he had heard stories of others who attempted to flee only to have the silver band about their necks, under the power of the perimeter of influence and the strange science of the gray-backs, return to its own sphere of existence—that of Deneb.

Drawn by the inexorable and undefeatable power of that distant star, upon attempting to exit the sphere of its influence the silver band would return in such immediate and forcible fashion it resulted in the instant and grisly decapitation of the wearer. This the young man had no intention of experiencing firsthand.

Making his way to the throne room, the timing of his arrival having been chosen because the girl assured him it would be vacant now, he glanced this way and that for the girl, but didn't see her.

"Peenemünde," he hissed, risking calling out to her.

"I am here!" The girl answered immediately, stepping from behind the very throne of Garmakalok. "I feared another might come, and so hid behind the throne. Come! We have but a cycle."

"We don't even have that much," replied the man. "Argos begins his attack soon. Lead the way."

Nodding, she took the man's hand and led him into the room behind the throne and then down capacious halls where lay the circle of wizardry linking this world to that of the planet orbiting Deneb, a world so far removed no man might fathom or gauge the distance to it.

Approaching the fabricated circle of metal sitting at an odd angle upon the floor he saw what appeared to be a near vertical tunnel, plummeting into the depths of rock beneath the city. The depths were unfathomable but, oddly, he discerned movement at the end of the interminable looking tunnel, as of beings or creatures walking by the opening on the other side.

To the man it seemed he was not looking downward so much as he gazed upwards, rather, through starry fields of night out the opening on the other end. He was peering, then, into an alien sky—a garish firmament of the deepest orange—the reflection of Deneb! Visible on that other side were indications of a craggy wall, undoubtedly a portion of the interior of the volcano in which he had been told the gateway had been discovered on the planet orbiting the distant star.

As he stared, momentarily mesmerized by the strangeness of the gateway to another world along whose path could be seen sidereal space, an unfathomable hole crossing light years of distance but which had an eerie, unexplainable feeling of closeness, he noticed a motion in his peripheral vision.

He turned just in time to see the rushing form of Garmakalok—charging him with bared teeth and upraised sword!
18: At the Portal

The gaunt creature, his lips pealed back to reveal grayish teeth in a snarl of pure hatred, charged Erik. In his swept-back arms was a sword of Denebian origin, its blade, wider at the tip than at the guard, a shiny finish, sharp and highly evocative of a be-header's axe. When he saw he was discovered, his snarl turned into a scream.

"Foul human! I should have killed you before!"

The acidic words sounded like pure hatred literally torn from those hideous, blackened lips, so replete were they with venom. Armed with only a rough iron bar, the man sought to defend himself. But, although an airman, Erik was no novice to this type of fighting.

Until he was fifteen he lived on military bases all over, including Africa, where he came of age. He had lived around fighting men for much of his life. He was accustomed to the curses of soldiers, listening to war stories and was no stranger in the use of arms—his father, a decorated veteran of the Abushiri Revolt and the Second Samoan Civil war, had seen to that.

Erik ducked as Garmakalok took a swipe at his neck with his broad sword. Leaping in, he slammed his iron bar across the gray-back's left forearm, breaking the skin and eliciting a yowl of rage and pain. He learned much from his father while he was still alive, but most of his technique came from a grizzled, older sergeant, an emigrant from Macedonia.

He'd served in both Boer wars, and fought tooth and nail in nearly every conflict in which his adopted nation had been entangled until being wounded in an artillery incident during the Siege of Antwerp in 1914. Afterward, he was sent to Tanzania where he guarded a munitions depot in the colonies which was where Erik met him.

He'd taken an immediate liking to Erik, and for the last year had schooled him in the fine art of slaying his fellow man. It was the teachings of the Macedonian that helped him now in this moment of need. In the violence of the fracas, their weapons struck sparks from the floor and columns, while here and there glazed tiles, dating to before the recording of time, were smashed asunder.

Swinging a mighty swing that missed its mark, Erik found his iron bar rebounding from an ancient marble statuary, one arm of which shattered and fell away from the edifice to skitter in pieces across the flooring. The noise of the battle became such that Peenemünde feared it might summon others from their quarters to investigate who, arriving at the throne room, might hear the thunder of their fight and, coming to investigate, wreck their plans of escape.

The girl, armed only with a pry bar like that wielded by Erik, did not see how she might be of assistance to the man, for the two whirled like dervishes about the chamber such that she feared striking her lover unintentionally. And yet, for all her frailty, she swung the heavy bar at one of Garmakalok's legs when she spotted an opening, but unfortunately only grazed the beast with a painful furrow.

"Wench!" he hissed. Still wielding his sword, he backhanded her to the floor before she could recover. "You'll pay for that."

"Beast!" Erik snarled and charged in swinging.

They locked horns again, the man and the demon from the far, orange star out of time spinning and gyrating from one side of the portal room to the other. At times the man found himself standing perilously on the edge of the precipice, with a fall that looked so distant he could scarcely fathom the depth of it.

"You fear, slave, to venture to Deneb? Then that is exactly where you shall go!" taunted Garmakalok.

But for the man's part he fought in silence now, the silence of focus and determination. Although he had years of studies in the arts of killing one's fellow man to his credit, he was in nowhere near the peak physical form he had been when he put his plane down in the African jungle the Lord alone knew how long ago. Today he looked half-starved, had been beaten nearly to death and overworked, having performed hard manual labor for he knew not how many weeks on end. Mayhap years had spun by under the strange influence of the cursed star.

In an act of sheer desperation, he at last hurled his iron bar at the alien and observed in grim satisfaction and a measure of relief as one sharpened end buried in the Denebian's chest. Garmakalok's blade fell from his fingers as he collapsed. He struggled to stand, but again fell to the flags.

Erik ran over and kicked the fallen blade away, turning to see the creature at last rise to its feet with immense effort. There he stood, teetering on the brink of the time tunnel. Erik cursed the alien then and leaping at it, planted both feet in the pit of its stomach, catapulting it over the edge.

He rushed to the girl and helped her to her feet. Together they stepped to the precipice and watched as the body, with eyes locked wide open in realization of its own impending doom, fell to the surface of another world—a world thousands of light years removed from them.

Later, Erik couldn't recall if Garmakalok appeared to be falling down a hole or rather floated upward toward an alien sky. They heard a distant clamor; Argos had struck. They must act quickly, as the palace would soon erupt with activity.

Although they had won a reprieve with the slaughter of the gray-backs' governor, they were still unable to escape the city. There remained the bands of silver encircling all their necks with which to be concerned, the marks of thralls the material of which, should they venture beyond the gate where ended the sphere of influence of Deneb, would return to the city much as a piece of raw iron being drawn to a powerful magnet.

Looking back to his immediate surroundings, the man studied the elaborate metal boundary of the portal, seeing at last a section of the framing that, to his trained mind, resembled the intricacies of machinery. The two humans were aware they could never leave the city while this portal, this gateway to a distant world, remained intact. Erik hoped these gears and dials on the portal were somehow involved in the gray-back technology used to return the neck bands to the influence of the orange star, but had no way of knowing with certainty.

"Erik, what will you do?" cried the girl. "We haven't much time. Garmakalok's men will soon come to the palace to seek their leader. When they do not find him in his rooms, they will come here."

"And we will not be here."

Snatching the fallen sword of Garmakalok from the floor and bringing it to bear, he brought the blade down resoundingly time and again. Beside him the girl joined in, swinging the iron mining bar with all the pent anger, hatred and frustration at her command.

At last they were rewarded with a smashing of otherworldly gears and the shattering of strange crystals and metals who's fashioning had been made complete before mankind had risen to the status of troglodytes. Instantly, he noticed a fading of the glaring, orange emanations coming from the other world, as of a long tunnel collapsing into darkness.

"It is done," cried Peenemünde triumphantly.

"Is that it then?" he asked, out of breath. "Will they be able to repair it?"

"I doubt it. No, I do not think so. And anyway, they will not live long enough to complete any repairs. Even now the influence of time from the distant star is fading with the closing of the intergalactic passage; I can feel it. They will die now," she said confidently.

But a sudden realization came over the girl, and she burst into tears. Turning to the man, she collapsed into his arms.

"Why—Peenemünde! What is it—what's wrong?" he asked in alarm. Supporting her light frame with one muscled arm, the man gently brushed her hair back from a sweat and tear streaked face as though they had all the time in the world.

"My Father! I always knew I would never see him again—but I have now helped seal his fate beyond any shred of hope. He is exiled forever—on Deneb!"

She wiped her eyes with determination, and grabbing him by the hand she led the man toward the exit. When they had climbed the wide halls back to the throne room she paused. Bidding him await her there, without a word she rushed into an anteroom. She returned in a trice with his haversack, tunic and the web belt containing his automatic.

Erik was thrilled to have the pistol, a gift from his father, once more in his possession. This he quickly buckled about his lean waist, and they left that place to continue their way toward the outer edge of the city.
19: Chaos

The man grasped the girl by the hand and together they rushed from the room, out into what now were swarms of confused slaves and the gaunt, gray beasts of Deneb.

At the top of the steps at the front of the palace he came face to face with a mob of Denebians fleeing up the steps toward them, most likely seeking Garmakalok in the throne room. Their faces shredded with fury and confusion, they made for the pair, forcing Erik to fight in defense of himself and the girl. He carried the sword of Garmakalok, but it was primarily the bark of his automatic that vanquished many of them, causing those who remained to panic and flee.

"We need to find Argos!" he shouted to Peenemünde. The clamor of rebellion, shouts of pain and rage and fear, filled the air. "Head for the gate."

The slaves were a pitiable sight in their panic-stricken state; desperate to save, them Erik and the girl shouted for them to follow. At last making themselves heard, they made their way toward the outer columns of the city with many of these now following in their wake.

There were many others they sought to bring away with them who instead fled in fright and confusion back into the ancient city, back to the only life they'd ever known. Erik's voice became hoarse from urging them to follow until at last he gave them up to a reprobate mind—they made their own decision regarding their fates.

But the gray ones, not yet understanding the calamity that had overtaken them, sought to prevent their escape. These the desperate slaves revolted against, at last finding the courage and passion to fight for their freedom. Seeing one of their own in the form of Erik, armed and hewing the hated taskmasters with a sword of the gray-backs' own forging, they were emboldened to do likewise.

One and all they fought, the men, the women—even many of the children who had been born into this hideous servitude leaped at the throats of their taskmasters after once catching the blessed scent of freedom. Those who lacked a weapon used what they were endowed with by nature. Many a gray-back found himself dragged down and pulled apart by the hands of an enraged mob, his body left rent and unrecognizable on the stone flags of the city streets. The gaunt gray-backs were no match for them; they were outnumbered against a multitude Hell-bent for revenge.

Those were awful scenes of carnage that night. And yet, no slaughter in history had ever been so honestly earned nor so anxiously anticipated. The wrath unleashed by the humans upon their hated masters was a brew steeped for two-thousand years beneath a merciless yoke, and the day of accounting had finally arrived.

Behind them, toward the center of the city, could be heard a crushing sound as of a maelstrom, sucking the earth and stone into the hungry vacuum of its maw as the time and gravity of the far star filling the tunnel-like passage began collapsing, creating a miniature black hole that physics had, as yet, little understanding.

Soon, the multitude came to the great doorway through which, excepting those born here, they had one and all passed through as slaves, and through which they'd long since given up any hope of passing again as freemen. To cross this point before, with the bands of silver attached about their necks, would have been to invite instant and hideous death. Ahead of them they saw Argos, the crowd waiting with him the arrival of Erik. To pass through the gate until it was deemed safe would be to invite death.

It was here Erik's nemesis and jailer of old, Lafalldor, caught up with him. The first he knew of the beast's presence was when someone yanked him off his feet from behind by the simple expedient of grasping the chains he had wrapped about his body. The force jerked his head back severely where it attached to the manacle about his neck.

"It is you who engineered this!" The hulking, gray beast was livid.

The sword of Garmakalok fell from Erik's hands, dropped during his fall where he'd been forced to let it loose to catch himself. He started to rise but Lafalldor jerked the chains again, spinning Erik off his feet to once more fall concussively to the stone paving. The chains, which had been his lot since undergoing the harsh, public flogging, unraveled in a cascade to the flagstones.

"You cannot win, Lafalldor!" Erik grated, assaying once more to come to his feet.

Lafalldor retrieved the fallen sword of Garmakalok, a sword of fabulous and exotic make coming as it did from another world and time. This he used to menace those who would press him too closely. Nor did he find it difficult to cause their wrath to turn to fear and their courage to fade like a vapor, having at his fingertips thousands of years of combined fear and obedience to bring to bear against them.

Seeing the crowd hesitate at the appearance of one of their gray tormentors, the pilot urged them to flee through the doorway.

"You are free!" he cried. "The influence of Deneb is fading! Lafalldor knows it—and he knows his fate is sealed. Argos and Peenemünde will take you!"

Whilst distracting Lafalldor with his words he attempted to drag his pistol from its holster but the latch defied his efforts.

"You lie!" Lafalldor cried. The majordomo was unable to admit what he deemed inadmissible.

"Erik, I won't leave you." The German lass took a two-handed grip on her iron pry bar.

"Nor I," roared Argos. "It's over, Lafalldor. You'd best lower the sword. Look around you, gray fiend. You're all alone."

Something unbidden, an inspiration from a training bout in his past perhaps, sprang to Erik's mind. Abandoning his efforts to retrieve his pistol he instead leaned over and grabbed a handful of the chain to which Lafalldor still held. Thinking the human was going to attempt to wrench himself free Lafalldor tightened his grip with a snarl, not yet realizing Erik's intentions.

A quick flick of Erik's wrist sent a wave dancing along the length of chain—a wave that ended in a loop about Lafalldor's wrist. This time it was the Denebian who found himself jerked from his feet when Erik gave the chain a sudden tug. The Denebian crashed thunderously and painfully to the stone paving. The sword clattered to the stones, lost from his grip.

"Peenemünde—help me!" Erik cried.

The girl ran to her lover's side and together they grabbed the chain and began dragging the Denebian along behind them, his flailing gaining him naught as those he'd persecuted for lifetimes assailed him simultaneously with kicks and curses. Inspired, others grasped Erik's chains and aided him in dragging the struggling body of Lafalldor while the chains dug into their jailer's gray flesh, preventing him from escaping its steely and ever-tightening embrace.

Fighting the instinct to turn back against the vibration of the ring about his neck, Erik grit his teeth and continued forward. He knew the collapsing tunnel would shut off all influence of the distant star; but would it occur in time? The vibrations in his collar as he neared the lintel stone of the doorway were diminishing but still distinguishable.

With himself and Peenemünde leading the way they passed through the portal. He felt a pulsing in his neck collar, felt the silver ring pulling backward against his throat... but becoming became weaker and weaker.

He flashed the girl a grin which she returned; they now knew their pathway to freedom to be free and clear. They could safely leave the city without the dread of being beheaded in the gruesome manner engineered by the fiends from another world. One and all, as they passed the giant doorway, they beamed in smiles, the smiles of those who'd been prisoners but now were freemen and freewomen.

Lafalldor, however, was not so fortunate. Once hauled beyond the waning influence of the portal the creature began gasping. His attempts to drag himself back over the threshold reached new heights of violence and desperation. The people would not allow him to return, though.

Dragged along by the chains Erik had wrapped in knots about his wrists, the gray creature rapidly wasted away before their eyes as the ponderous weight of Earth's time fell heavily upon his gray frame. While the crowd looked on his muscle sloughed from his frame, his skin sagged, his eyes sunk inward and he seemed to age centuries in only moments.

"Here," Argos said. He pressed the sword of Garmakalok into Erik's hands. "End him."

Grimly the pilot looked down at the sword in his fist while Lafalldor's dimming eyes glared hatred and terror. Erik strode over to where the Denebian lay and, with a single swipe, took his head.
20: Flight

The humans fled down the ancient marble steps into the forest. Close on their heels, the dust and mayhem of the crumbling city worked its way outward from the location of the portal beneath Garmakalok's throne room.

Of the purple loknovarloks they saw only mouldering, skeletal remains. Erik guessed that, with the complete collapse of the star's influence, their specially adapted bodies had followed suit. Who could explain the strange and bizarre particularities of such mind-bending physics?

Upon exiting the city, Erik turned the multitude north where he perceived the forest to be freer of underbrush and with only a gentle acclivity. Many perished in the forest to strange, unheard of beasts against which they had little with which to make a defense. Erik had his pistol and the sword of Garmakalok, while others possessed miscellaneous weapons of iron stolen during their escape. As the band of refugees made their way up the valley in a northerly direction, following the path of least resistance, they paused and looked back the way they'd come.

The city was slowly disappearing into the cavernous maw of the collapsing portal to be replaced with raw and torn earth in the form of an immense crater, the underlying strata exposed as the city was swallowed to some distance below its foundations. Beginning at its center and working its way outward, the columns, plazas, buildings and other structures were slowly and completely devoured out to the edge of the sphere of influence.

Beyond this boundary there remained only the outer periphery of the city, resembling an immense prehistoric henge made up of fragmentary columns and portions of the metropolis, neatly cut away from the original edifices as by an immense scalpel. Beyond these last remaining standing portions lay the untouched boles of acacia and kapok, giant ferns and swaying jungle grasses—all as unharmed as if the primordial forest had never felt the touch of man, nor knew of any city built by an extinct race in the long ago.

Who could explain the strange forces that were unleashed with the blending of the varying times of two vastly different stars and worlds? No one there could account for it, but none doubted the veracity of what they with their own eyes witnessed. When the rumblings ceased, only the outermost structures remained, those outside the sphere of influence of mysterious and haunted Deneb.

Hand-in-hand, the pilot and the girl from the coastlands of 18th century Germany led the people they had helped free from awful servitude north of the sinking sun which the man was grateful to note now remained visually steadfast in the clear, blue vault of sky. He was beginning to feel hopeful they might actually survive to reach civilization.

Overhead, the streak of a ship of bizarre configuration flew at a puzzling altitude. He found it puzzling because it sailed far higher in elevation than modern-day aircraft might attain. It also reminded him of the war he'd inadvertently left, and to which he must soon return.

"My commanding officers must think I'm a deserter by now." He glanced wryly at the girl walking at his side.

"Well, I know you are no deserter. You are far too brave for that. " She smiled up at him.

Her smile was infectious and he found himself smiling in return. Such is the way of youth that, having survived ordeals many might have found maddening, and with their freedom firmly in hand and their tormentors destroyed, these two felt happy as spring lovebirds and worried over naught, concerning themselves only with the moment.

And yet they could not focus only on their affection. The struggle to guide hundreds of refugees out of the valley was one of monumental proportions, nearly as much so as was feeding and finding water for them. They must seek out a path the weakest among them could negotiate—the oldest, the youngest and the infirm who had felt the tender strokes of Denebian floggings. The escapees clutched captured weapons in the forms of swords, spears and daggers, taken as they fled the city; with these they sought prey to feed themselves.

Acting as scout, Erik, with Peenemünde who would not leave his side, sought the way forward, finding routes the feeblest might trod in safety. In this fashion, they reached the summit of the cliffs and beyond, at last descending into a verdant vale on the opposite side, a quite different topography than that through which Erik trekked upon wrecking his aeroplane what seemed to him eons ago.

After crossing the barrier cliffs, they turned east, hiking for weeks until they found themselves before a welcome topographical feature: a savannah. They breathed a collective sigh of relief to exit the dangerous forest which had accounted for many of their number, these having fallen to various examples of the multitudinous predators of the African interior, some of which no one could identify.

On the plains they made camp amongst a large copse of umbrella trees from which they hoped to attain fuel for their campfires. Soon the hunters among them returned with a quantity of a small antelope they took with their spears. They had become quite proficient in their use during the weeks where their lives had depended on the accuracy of their casts.

Although they now had food, and an exploration of their surroundings revealed a nearby source of water, Erik was still concerned for the people who looked to him for guidance and protection. He must lead them out of this wilderness and return to civilization as soon as possible. Many had fallen ill and required medical attention—attention and medicinals they could not provide in the wild.
21: On the Plains

A couple days after pitching camp on the savannah, Erik determined to set out with a small scouting party and trek north to see if they could find evidence of civilization. Leaving Argos, the Greek, in command, he and Peenemünde departed with two spearmen. They'd discovered they must be ever-vigilant against the tawny predators who sought the small antelope of the grassy plains, and so no party of less than four-to-five was allowed after two men left on a hunt and never returned.

Erik initially determined to march no further afield than they could cover in three days. But at the end of this distance, as they perched upon yet another knoll of seeming endless, waving plains, they still saw no sign of man—only more scattered herds of the tiny antelope, waving grasses and the occasional tree rewarding their view.

Dejected, they made camp near a stand of trees. While Erik and the two hunters gathered dead-fall limbs, Peenemünde ascended one of the trees for whatever additional vantage its short height might add to act as a watchman for the cunning predators who were wont to sneak through the tall grasses and attack the unwary. Night approached swiftly; already the stars began to twinkle to the east, but the moon had not yet risen.

"Erik! Wait!" The man was just preparing to light the campfire.

Erik stepped from beneath the tree to a position where he could see the girl who stood upon the highest limb in the tree strong enough to bear her weight. She wasn't looking at him; rather she stared steadfastly north. Fearing she'd spotted a group of predators, he warned the hunters and then called out to the girl that he would come up.

As deftly as one of the small monkeys of the forest he fairly flew upward through the limbs until he assumed a position behind the girl, one hand bracing himself against a nearby limb and one arm encircling the girl's waist to support her.

"Just there," she said. She pointed without turning. "I thought I saw something, but now I'm not sure—over those hills, just over yonder way."

He followed the direction she indicated with his eyes. Soon, Erik thought he saw something. Just the smallest hint of movement—or was it a dancing light? Distant, low-lying clouds were obscuring and blurring the skyline. Patiently, they waited, hoping the scene might clarify.

"What do you see?" hissed Dakar, a hunter. "Is it the cats?"

"No," Erik replied, not taking his eyes from the foothills to the north. "I'm not sure yet."

"It's a city!" the girl declared triumphantly. "Look further west, toward where that low hill begins to merge with the mountains."

Erik looked. The darkening sky was clearing, the clouds moving eastward. And then he saw what Peenemünde had spotted—tiny dots of lights rising into the sky much as might a myriad of windows adorning a tall structure.

Elated, Erik felt his heart swell with relief—it was a city! This discovery spelled salvation for his people, ensuring all their survival. He sighed a heavy sigh that didn't go unnoticed by the girl. He hadn't realized just how heavily the weight of responsibility had sat upon his shoulders. Peenemünde spun in his arms, a smile on her beautiful face.

"They're saved, Erik," she said softly.

"By Zeus," he declared, emulating Argos with a grin. "We did it, Peenemünde! I can't put into words how happy I am to see those lights. We still have days of marching ahead of us, but the goal is in sight. It's right there."

Now Dakar scrambled excitedly into the tree. With each passing moment, the sky grew darker while the distant city became brighter and brighter as its denizens prepared for nightfall. While they watched, the entire northern skyline became dotted with the lights of a mighty metropolis.

Erik had no idea what city it might be. He had become so turned around during his ill-fated flight that he realized they could be anywhere. No matter, he didn't care. Even if he inadvertently marched into the hands of the enemy, that would be preferable to life as a quarry slave for Deneb. And anyway, had he made it back to his own lines he would very likely be shot as a deserter—not an endearing prospect. On second thought, he hoped it _was_ the British.

After descending the tree, he finished building the fire while Dakar and Frediker, the second hunter who had accompanied them, prepared to grill steaks cut from a fresh kill. At day break, they would strike out south to fetch the people and bring them to this city.

Later that night, curled on bedrolls of antelope skin, Erik and the girl lay in one another's arms where they fell fast asleep and dreamed dreams. For the first time since escaping the city in the valley, the man felt truly hopeful. The heavy weight he'd carried all those long weeks in the wilderness began to dissipate.

He could hardly wait to tell Argos the good news.
Acknowledgements

I wish to extend my heartfelt gratitude to my wife for listening to me go on and on about my stories. Gads—I know she has got to get tired of hearing about it. But she always listens and offers what advice she may—so thanks!

I wish to express my gratitude to my good friend, Scott. I've often sought Scott's opinion in ticklish situations and he's always helped me out of my conundrums. We both have a hearty love for pulp era authors and have spent many an evening discussing our favorite yarns and writers.

I must acknowledge the many fine authors who, after devouring their written material for years and years, influenced me from beyond (for many of them have sailed the Darkling Sea, as McKiernan would say) to begin writing myself—to simply give a little something back to the world for all those rich, well-spun tales I've read since I was young. They are legion.

And I also wish to thank God for giving me whatever it is that drives me to write stories. I have only one favor to ask: keep 'em comin'!
About the Author

I was raised on an isolated, 80-acre horse farm in West Virginia that is nearly surrounded by the Bluestone river. The only point it is connected to 'dry land' is an old railroad tunnel I used to walk through. On a couple of occasions, I exited only moments before a train did. That farm was covered in cliffs, wooded trails, wildlife, old home sites and abandoned vehicles full of copperheads \- in short, practically every kind of danger a kid can grow up around except a city street.

We didn't have cable, and my folks refused to pay for satellite, so I ran the countryside, rode horses, climbed trees and cliffs, waded in the river and shot guns till dark. Then I'd read. I read everything I could get my hands on, from classics to romances. When I discovered the old pulp authors, I left the other genres behind. Like many before me, I succumbed to the allure of science fiction, fantasy and horror. That lifetime of reading led me to eventually begin writing while in high school where I wrote a piece that won 1st place in the county for a creative writing contest, a macabre story called Forbidden Fruit.

I spent years playing guitar in and out of bands, and became for quite some time more of a voracious reader than a writer. After that last band collapsed, though, I went back to writing, eventually turning out a half million-word Barsoom trilogy as a tribute to Edgar Rice Burroughs, and a handful of short stories and novels. I decided to self-publish the short stories while my Mars novels were being considered for publication.

My favorite writers will always be those pulp authors I discovered as a young kid - you know, those guys who created Tarzan, Conan the Barbarian and Cthulhu. Something in my persona drives me to create, and so together with writing stories and playing guitar, I also dabble in poetry and painting. I plan to one day release a book of my poems which are largely dystopian fantasies in the form of short stories in verse. I find them immensely fun to write as I can quickly finish a 'story' in that format although those also pose their own unique challenges.

You may find me on my website, www.ChrisLAdamsBizarreTales.com. There, you'll find pertinent links, information on available stories and where to download them, and other things you might find of interest. And please feel free to contact me. I enjoy a healthy discourse.
An Invitation

My dear reader,

I do hope you enjoyed this despairing little tale.

I wish to extend an invitation to leave feedback for this story in the form of a review should you be so inclined. As an independent author, you should know your ratings and reviews are crucial. It is through your opinions that one who writes stories gains much coveted encouragement to continue to write and publish.

So, join the discussion about The Valley of Despair. Revisit the site from which you downloaded this story and let me know what you thought of it.

If you enjoyed this story, you might be interested in my other works. Please visit my author page at Amazon or my website at www.ChrisLAdamsBizarreTales.com for descriptions of stories you may find appealing. I'm working to add to my published library, so check back often for any new additions.

And thanks.

Best regards,

Chris
List of Works

Currently available (in order of release):

  * The Valley of Despair (Tales of Despair Book I)

  * On A Winter's Eve

  * The Treasure of Akram el-Amin

  * The Blonde Goddess of Tikka-Tikka (Tales of the Tomahawk Book I)

  * The Cosmos of Despair (Tales of Despair Book II)

  * Atlas of the Serpent Men (A Tale of Conan of Cimmeria)

Coming Next

  * The Banshee of the Atacama (Tales of the Tomahawk Book II)

Bizarre Tales

To keep up with what I'm working on, check out my blog on GoodReads—Bizarre Tales.

 https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15259542.Chris_L_Adams/blog

Or visit my website at www.ChrisLAdamsBizarreTales.com.

Look for the Bizarre Tales logo on the cover!
