Morgo the Mighty by Sean O’Larkin was originally serialized in The Popular Magazine in 1930. Over the next few weeks I’m going to be serializing it again here. Except for correcting the odd typo, I’m reproducing the text as printed in the original publication.

Morgo listened to my story about Jesperson, who for some unknown reason, eloped with the De Haviland and for whom parties were searching the Nepalese jungles when I took off from Darjeeling for a day’s trip to Kenchenjunga. What a day! I had no reason to suspect that Jesperson intended to assail the Door of Surrilana. There had been no talk, in our trip from Bombay to Darjeeling, of his even being in the mountain.

If Harvey Jesperson were Zorimi, what I could not understand was how he came by Her of the Three Heads – the Shining Stone. That was in Jim Craig’s possession in Darjeeling on a night when Jesperson was supposedly lost in the jungles. Had Jesperson gotten the dacoit to steal it? Somehow, I doubted that. I couldn’t believe it.

But if this message – this warning – was to be believed, Lacrosse was or had been alive somewhere. Probably in Shamman. He might have seen us in the arms of the Bakketes and enticed one of those bat men to bring us this message. Yet it was my hunch that Lacrosse was Zorimi himself. Was this a trick on Zorimi’s part to confuse us? And did he know that we still lived after our descent into the cave of the green fungus?

Morgo listened to my spoken thoughts. At length he said:

“Derro, Zorimi knows all things. If we died in the unclean growth, he would have known. If we escaped, that, too, he would know. He has creatures in Kahli that tell him.”

I laughed. The thought of spies in these caverns filled with primitive beings was amusing. But that was what Morgo meant to convey to me.

“Still. if Zorimi knows we live, I cannot see the point of this message,” I said.

“Zorimi’s ways are strange – mysterious I think you say. If life is spared to us, we may learn more.”

Again we took off to seek the Raba of the Husshas. In the air, I could not shake off the idea that Jesperson might have entered the caves in the De Haviland. In view of what I had come to see and learn in the past fortnight, I believed anything was possible. Jesperson was presumably a prosperous jeweler from New York. I first laid eyes on him in Bombay and undertook the commission to pilot him into Nepal.

Harvey Jesperson, a jeweler! Diamonds in the Himalayas! Was that the tie-up? Did Jesperson get his diamonds from one of these caves and sell them in the outer world? As I’ve written, I’d come to believe that anything was possible now.

It was a clever trick of his, stealing the De Haviland after pretending to know nothing of aviation. His desire was to vanish from the face of the earth, penetrate the Door of Surrilana and make his way to his cache. Then he would leave the caves by some other and safer route. But I found all this hard to entertain. Jesperson with his round rosy cheeks and blue eyes and stubby figure was hardly the adventurous type for such an exploit. I refused to consider him in the role of Zorimi.

I noticed now that the Husshas, felling trees and gorging on the leaves and bark, revealed an open space in their ranks. In this traveled a larger ant than the others with fierce mandibles that tore tree fiber and bark apart and swallowed it, his sides heaving with the great gulps.

Morgo circled over this Hussha and I sensed that this was the Raba – or king of these ants. A mutter – a sibilant clicking sound – came from Morgo’s mouth as he hovered directly above the Raba. The big ant reared up on its hind legs and waved its mandibles slowly, a gesture of peace, I thought. The moan of munching in his vicinity ceased and soldiers and workers alike stopped eating and rested.

Baku brought me down to Morgo’s side. The parleying went on – a clicking language that reminded me of Hottentots I once heard talking the side show of a circus. The Hussha tongue was like the Hottentot. That the ant could talk I accepted as fact, though I only had Morgo’s word for it. Probably it was not speech as we know it but an exchange of word pictures in sound signs.

The Raba’s head was twice as large as a man’s and it glistened like a beady ball of malachite, punctuated near the throat by a wide blue slit, the mouth. It was the most monstrous insect head I had ever seen.

And there were no eyes in the Raba.

I looked at the other Husshas. Like the driver ants of Africa, this black, sinister horde, myriad in number, was blind – stone blind. How curious are the quirks and machinations of nature! They lived lustily and moved with military precision – nevertheless they could not see!

Morgo signaled to Baku and we rose high over the jet river of ant life and flew swiftly toward the door to Kahli. My friend had news for me and I was eager to hear it. We reached Morgo’s cave without mishap and, on landing, I went hungrily for my cigarettes to quiet nerves somewhat disturbed by the sight of the ugly ants. What if we had fallen in their midst? I remembered the messenger Bakkete’s fate!

“The Raba is our friend,” Morgo told me. “He will turn the army of Husshas into Shamman tonight. ”

“They will not pass through Kahli?” I cried aghast, thinking of what might happen in this pleasant land if the black ants marched through it.

“No, they do not come in here, Derro. It is an understanding I have with the Raba. Once I saved him from the river in a lower cavern, and in his strange way, he is my friend. No, the Husshas will enter Shamman through another opening that leads from Verizon.”

“How long will it take them?”

“A day and a night to reach the plateau, I think.” Morgo was fascinated with the idea of mustering such an army for the attach on Zorimi. “The Husshas can hide during the period of light. They will remain in the chalk and under the plant growth in Shaman, moving secretly.”

Again I thought of the Driver ants. They hide from the tropical sun of Africa during the daytime under leaves – often building tunnels across sunny patches – with leaves or the bodies of soldier who were destroyed by the sun. There was no heat to fear in Shamma; only the eyes of Zorimi’s people.

“By tomorrow night,” Morgo went on, “they will be able to swarm over the plateau. But there is another danger, Derro.”

“Surely not Zorimi’s magic?” I laughed.

“Worse than that. The red ants of Shamman. The Rortas. We never saw them. They live deep in the soft chalk, yet they are not unlike the Husshas in the way they live. They have an army life and while they are smaller and less strong, their bite is full of poison.”

“Poisonous to man?”

Morgo nodded. “To all creatures that breathe. Their bite stops the breathing.”

So these Rortas were capable of injecting a poison that, once in the blood, caused asphyxiations. I began to ply my friend with question. Were they enemies of the Husshas? Could Zorimi command them? Were they controllable?

“Yes, they are enemies of the Husshas – and Zorimi can speak to them as I spoke to the Raba. I think that if he knows the Husshas are in Shamman, he will turn loose the Rortas to combat them.”

“Then the Husshas will be destroyed!” I said, feeling that our plan was threatened with failure.

“Unless they kill the Rortas first. Their long killing teeth are not hurt by the Rorta poison – only their bodies. And the Husshas are clever fighters.”

I considered this doubtfully. Were we turning loose forces that might ultimately defeat our ends? Morgo said that the Husshas were treacherous. And now he spoke of venomous Rortas. I feared the more for Nurri Kala’s safety.

“If the Husshas take a day and a night to reach the plateau,” I said, “when will we have to be on hand?”

“Tomorrow night when the light begins to fail in Shamman. The Husshas will travel tonight and all tomorrow. I will send Bakketes to learn of the girl’s safety when it is dark. If she is dead, then I want Zorimi for a prisoner. I mean to learn from him the secret about me.”

This was my first inkling that Morgo was thinking about his identity too strongly. Zorimi’s betrayal of such knowledge had whetted my friend’s curiosity. Yet I wondered if Zorimi still lived. Hadn’t I seen him drop with my parting shot?

We spent the day resting and plotting. And when night came, Morgo went out on the ledge and summoned the Bakketes – four of them – to act as our scouts. I noted that Baku was one of them.

A little later, I missed Morgo and searched for him. He was not in or about the cave. The Shamman servants could tell me nothing when I made incomprehensible signs to them. But I understood. Baku’s presence among the scouting Bakketes was the key. Morgo had gone with him – to make certain that the information we wanted was correct.

But why had he refused to take me along, or tell me of his intention? I worried and tried to keep away and could not.

It was Morgo who aroused me from a heavy slumber the next morning. He had the shower baths ready and made me bathe with him before he would tell me a word of the previous night’s adventure. He parried my questions with laughter and splashed under the cold water the servants poured on us. I shivered and began to regret the introduction of such a custom into Kahli.

At breakfast he broke his silence. “I thought you needed rest, Derro. After what happened to you in the cave of the unclean growths, you were tired. You are not used to our life here – and tonight we will need your strength with mine – for Nurri Kala.”

“Then you did see her – alive?”

He nodded. “Yes, I had Baku carry me to Shamman. I knew if I told you I was going, you would have gone with me. But you needed sleep more than adventure – we were lucky – and went unobserved. None of the Shamman bats smelled us out.”

“But you did see her – Nurri Kala?”

“I did. At the opening to the room with the skulls. She was inside talking with Zorimi, her beauty glowing with the light of The Flame. I am sure she is not a priestess of Zorimi’s evil worship.”

“I  know she isn’t.”

“Zorimi is said to know all things – all that happens in living creatures’ heads.” Morgo gave a little laugh. “He did not know that Baku held me at his window that I might spy upon him. When I saw that the white girl lived, I was happy. We flew back to Kahli immediately. Tonight we shall have her with us.”

“I hope so.”

“You fear the ants? But we have the Bakketes, Derro. They will carry us over the fighting.”

I shook my head, worried.

“If the Shamman bats attack us, we will be beaten to the ground. The ants – red or black – will have us then. And there will be little we can do. What are a few arrows or bullets against millions of onrushing ants bent on making a meal of you?”

“Have courage, Derro. And I have another plan. We must try to take Zorimi, too. I want to talk to him. Make him tell me the secrets he knows – and then remove his evil from this life.”

Morgo’s voice rang with a fierce intensity as he uttered these last few words. He was an avenger now – the scourge of evil things in cave life that had been good to him!

I spent the day cleaning two .38s, mending the torn-out sleeve in my wind-breaker and trying to prevail upon Morgo to use a gun. He would have none of that, however. His arrows, he said, were his weapons and he preferred a knife to all the guns in the world, for fighting in caves was at close grips. He was more accustomed to man-to-man combat and overpowering an enemy than quickly killing him. Decidedly, he was not a killer.

The yellow afternoon light began to wane. Morgo hurriedly gave instructions to Baku. And presently the legions of Bakketes were in the air before our dwelling. The prospect of meeting the Shamman bats held no fears for them. They, too, were fighters, when Morgo called upon them for aid.

I cautioned Morgo not to take off before darkness was well upon the caverns. We must run no risk of being seen. We must avoid the Shamman bats. But Morgo pointed out that the Husshas were undoubtedly close to the plateau – that there was little time to lose. We had, perforce, to be at Zorimi’s mound when the Husshas began their attack.

I committed myself to Baku. The feelings of a man about to go over the top surged through me. I wanted to take Morgo’s hand and thank him for saving my life in the cave of the green fungus.

“Do not let us grasp hands, Derro,” he said to me, his eyes apparently reading my thoughts. “We are not parting. We will meet again.”

“You’re an optomist.”

“Our cause is right. We will come through and see each other again.”

I thought of the ants, and the bludgeoning winged Shamman bats. “I hope so.”

I was filled with dire forebodings. Our luck could not hold out forever. We had tried it deeply, too, in escaping those fingers of decay that coiled about us in the jungle of fungus. My Irish pessimism put me in good spirits.

We went aloft and straight for the tunnel into Shamman. The light began to vanish quickly – the eternal wick being lowered in the rooms of those eternal caverns beneath the Himalayas.

I wondered how the Husshas could travel so rapidly. A day and night to cover at least two hundred miles. Their bodies were great in size, I remembered, and I speculated on their moving with the speed of a fast horse. Little did I know that they could move even faster.

The stalactites of gray Shamman were devoid of the bat men of that cave. Steadily, wary of attack from above, we moved on the plateau. I could barely make out the thread of smoke from The Flame.

The spiked floor was a sea of veiled grayness below us. It moved like a leaden, molten sea beneath us. All was still. There were no signs of a living creature in all Shamman.

Morgo cried out to me and I heard him urging his carrier Bakkete on the faster. Looking ahead, I saw a black line emerging from the gray sea of stalagmites.

The Husshas were leaving their cover. They were attacking. They were ready to swarm upon the plateau of The Flame!

Baku flew lower than the legions behind us. I drew my gun.

I knew that if the Shamman bats fell upon us and we were beaten down into the river of black ants, Shamman and Bakkete alike would perish.

Now the top of the mound was alive with men and women – the Silurians. They had seen the Husshas. They understood. They knew what death in the mandibles of the big warlike ants meant.

Nearer and nearer we moved in narrowing circles. Still not Shamman bats were in sight.

I saw Zorimi now, a puny figure, running hither and yon, exhorting the Silurians. But they move steadily away from him, clambering down the other side of the mound, fleeing into the darkening grayness of Shamman’s ugly floor. They did not mean to fight if they could help it.

A scream burst from my lips.

The Husshas were at the base of the plateau. Their hordes flooded around it. In a few minutes, all retreat from the mound would be cut off by a circle of mandible blades.

Where was Nurri Kala? That was my only thought. Probably within the mound.

The Husshas began to climb the sides of the plateau – their bodies wagging from side to side. They were like flies strolling up a high wall. The precipitous sides were no obstacle to them.

Shrill, pitiable shrieks came from the far side of the plateau to which the Silurians had retreated. The last to leave the mound had fallen into the black crushing tongs of the Husshas. Death was already loose in the home of The Flame.

Zorimi was now a lone figure, standing on high crag, looking up at us.

What was he waiting for? Where were his bats?

I wondered too easily.

The whir of wings sounded overhead. The Bakketes screeched. The Shamman bats screeched more savagely. I could see their onslaught in the thickness of the descending gloom. Thousands met thousands fiercely. Bakkete and Shamman bat, bodies locking mortal combat, dropped into the pools of Husshas. The moan of munching began. The scores of fallen bats were like manna to the marching insects.

Above was the blackness of fighting wings. Below was the jet mass of ants in attacking phalanxes. Morgo and I hung between two brands of death. And Nurri Kala was still invisible.

Following Morgo’s move, I dropped to the plateau.

Heedless of my friend’s shouted warnings, the nature of which I couldn’t make out because of the aerial melee, I ran to the steps I knew of. They led down to the chamber of skulls.

“Nurri Kala!” I shouted. “Nurri Kala!”

A moment later I heard Morgo’s voice behind me, taking up the cry. We reached the smoky blue room of The Flame together. It was deserted on first sight.

Then I saw six Silurians standing guard over the white girl. She pressed her body against the chalk walls, crouching behind them, her eyes freighted with apprehension. She seemed to have some feeling of the danger that beset her. All of us now.

Morgo spoke gutturally to the scale-skinned men. They sprang at him.

I shot two of them. That stemmed their attack and they backed toward the opening that gave on Shamman.

Nurri Kala ran to me and threw herself into my arms.

“To the stairs!” Morgo cried. “We must get back to the Bakketes!”

Holding tightly to the girl, her sturdy grace beneath her silken tunic responding to my guidance, I piloted her toward the stairs we had descended.

The Silurians shrieked, terrified. They ran from the opening, but I saw one of them held fast there. The black ring of a Hussha’s mandibles were about him. He was flicked over backward into the mass of ants below.

The Husshas – blind and hungry and bent on destruction – were about to enter the chamber of skulls. I could see the glint of The Flame’s rays on their massive jet heads. We were all one to them – Silurian and white man – prey!

I stopped halfway up the step that I thought led to freedom.

Coming down, tumbling down, lighted by the fire of the ritual pyre, were the red ants – smaller than the Husshas but more loathsome. These Rortas with their crimson bodies glowed like bulbous balls of illuminated blood.

I drew Nurri Kala back to the floor of the chamber. The top of the plateau was alive with the Rortas. Zorimi had summoned them. Or they had been drawn from their underground borings by the scent of the Husshas, their eternal enemies?

Morgo was close to The Flame, his white body scarlet in its light. He had come to grips with a Hussha, his thews swelling and struggling like fiery snakes in that evil light. I saw him slash the ant’s right mandible from its shoulder with his knife.

My legs were suddenly enclosed in a vise. A Hussha’s mandibles held me fast. I poured lead from my .38 into its great body. Nurri Kala backed against the wall, watching the Rortas who continued slowly to move toward us. Her eyes were glazed with horror.

There were forty Husshas in the chamber of the skulls. Oddly enough, in that moment of peril, my eyes counted them. The Rortas still tumbled down the stairs.

The two tribes of ants met. I saw Husshas recoil. I saw their mandibles peck at the tails of the red bodies. I saw the black ants, bitten by the red, stop abruptly and curl up. Death was upon us all. I could hear the crunch of those huge black insect tongs upon the hard surface of the Rorta’s bodies.

Still the Husshas approached us.

Morgo, Nurri Kala and I back toward The Flame. The heat of that pillar of blazing inferno scorched our white skins. The blistering pain was intense.

A Hussha, rearing awkwardly on its hind legs, threw itself upon Morgo, pinioning his arms to his sides helplessly against its mighty mandibles. He staggered and went down under the heavy black body. I ran to his assistance as his knife slithered impotently over the creature’s sides, glancing off for lack of space in which to strike a blow that would bury the blade.

Nurri Kala screamed a warning to me.

I turned too late. The pressure of another black ant’s tongs caught me at the sides above the hips. The wind was being squeezed out of me in spasmodic tightenings of the Hussha’s grip. I could not turn around to send a bullet crashing into the ant’s vital spots.

The girl, sensing my desire, reached out for the gun.

But instead of taking it, she recoiled with a mute shriek and tottered close to the brink of the fiery pit. I saw a Rorta crawling toward her. Unable to bear the fierce heat, Nurri Kala fought a faintness, induced by horror and physical pain, and then succumbed to it, sinking limply to the floor at the edge of The Flame, its awful heat searing her white flesh.

Morgo’s white muscles quieted in their struggles. Hadn’t he seen Nurri Kala? The Rorta was ready to inject its venom into her beauty, destroying it forever! I saw that his eyes were closed as if in sleep. Was he dead?

I clenched my teeth to fight the pain that flashed through me like liquid fire. My vision faded. The life was being crushed out of me.

To Be Continued!

This ends Part One of Morgo the Mighty. The first chapter of Part Two will post in one month, on April 22.

Morgo the Mighty by Sean O’Larkin was originally serialized in The Popular Magazine in 1930. Over the next few weeks I’m going to be serializing it again here. Except for correcting the odd typo, I’m reproducing the text as printed in the original publication.

In my delirium, evoked by the gases from the red lips on which I lay, I dreamed that Morgo was caught in the coils of fungus, fighting mightily to tear them asunder, to overcome their insidious strength and save me. I could see him, in Baku’s arms, enmeshed in the drooping, swaying threads that held sinews of steel.

Vaguely he moved toward me. Baku’s pterodactyl wings beat sturdily, cutting the threads, sending them in wafting spirals to the floor below. Nearer and nearer Morgo approached.

A lucid moment came over me and I cursed the tricks a dying man’s brain play on him. I was doomed. I knew it. And all of Morgo’s might could not avail me anything in this life.

Again my senses departed and I saw my friend through a haze. He cried out to me to take courage – I dreamed the words – and I could only see his lip moving without sound coming from them. Now he was caught tightly, the thread coiled many times around his body. His bowie knife flashed in the green glow and the thread was severed, the coils still hanging from him. He was urging Baku closer to the lip that were now sinking backward. At any moment I would slide into the heart of the giant red-mouth fungus, to perish, slowly suffocating in the odor of inner putrescence.

My fingers bit into the reddish crust for a hold. The stuff flaked off at each grasp. I was slipping. Only my feet had a small purchase. The lips tilted sharply inward. Another degree and I could hold on no longer.

Why did I fight for life? It was so foolish! I was doomed. The thought of my gun occurred to me. There was salvation. A death that held no qualms for me. It was quick and neat and my consciousness would not then be fodder for this relentless fungus. A bullet would send me sliding into the red maw, unaware of what would happen to my flesh.

I held fast to the flaking lip with one hand while the other struggled for the automatic in my belt. My fingers reached the holster. I got it out. It slipped into my hand and the trigger finger felt its mark.

Quickly, I brought the gun up to my temple. Just one shot! I would remember nothing else!

“Derro! Derro!” A hand touched my wrist, grasped it. “Are you alive?”

I guess I just groaned.

The automatic was knocked from my grasp. Two strong hands caught my wrists. I felt myself being drawn off the reddish lip, the flaky stuff sucking at my clothing.

The rest I don’t remember – and don’t want to.

When I came to my senses again, cool sweet air was being pumped in and out of my hungry lungs. Morgo was pressing my stomach to make me breathe harder. Without his aid, my respiration was dangerously close to stopping.

“Sleep, Derro, sleep,” Morgo whispered. “We are safe now, away from unclean growths.”

I sighed and knew that he and Baku had successfully made the fight from the jungle of fungus to upper Shamman. It was still dark and I feared sleep.  Whenever I closed my eyes I saw those green threads whipping themselves around me, drawing me up to the red lips. I felt those lips turn inward to suck me into the bowels of the fungus itself. I was afraid of sleep now, but my body was sorely tired and its energy spent.

“Baku has gone for another Bakkete to carry us,” Morgo said. He spoke of other things but I dropped into a deep, exhausted coma so deep that even nightmares could not reach me there.

It was morning when I woke up. We were back in Morgo’s cave in warm Kahli. The Bakketes had brought us there during the darkness, through I was sound asleep throughout the trip.

I ate ravenously, as did Morgo. Conversation was imminent but we had to feed our strength first. My flying clothes needed cleaning, being covered with the mold from the green world, and one of the Shamman servants saw to that. And I had to bathe my body to rid my mind of the thought that any part of the fungus still adhered to it.

Morgo was highly amused by my ablutions. He bathed in a river he spoke about but never in his cave. His laughter was merry and boyish while he watched the Shamman servants douche me with cold spring water that made me gasp. Bowl after bowl of the clear liquid was thrown over my head and body, and I scraped myself clean.

Presently Morgo slid out of his skin and submitted his massive proportions to a similar ceremony. He thought it swell and promised more such showers every day. His thews rippled like pythons under his white, gleaming skin as he squirmed under the cold splashes. I noted his strength and was thankful for it – for that, as well as his courage, had saved my life the night before. Then we went out out on the rocks overlooking Kahli, to bask in the warm, yellow light and dry ourselves.

I broke open a carton of cigarettes and smoked. Morgo declined the invitation to join me in this luxury. He had tried a cigarette the week before – with dire results. Tobacco was not for this primitive son of the gods.

“I have been thinking,” I said, “about the girl, Nurri Kala.”

Morgo’s eyes brightened and he looked at me. “She was very beautiful, Derro.”

“I do not believe her dead. The Shamman bats took her. And I’m positive Zorimi has her again.

“Zorimi must want her badly to have a bat take her prisoner instead of killing her.”

“He knows something about her – and you – that neither of us know. But she is white like we are, Morgo – and we cannot let her remain in his hands. I can’t fathom whether he’s a white man who knows the caves or a Shamman who has been in the outer world.”

“I only know that he is evil and must be destroyed. But the girl – we must save her, Derro. We must bring her back to live with us.”

That was in my mind all the while. And I wondered whether I wanted to rescue her from Zorimi because she was a white girl or because she was a woman for whom I felt love. She was beautiful. She was sweet and innocent. She was all a man could ask for. And I refused to admit to myself that I wanted her for a mate. Man are slow to recognizing their love for woman. For they can’t quite understand just how or when or where the process began. Yet I had seen Nurri Kala and had talked to her. I felt that I knew her a little – and wanted to know her better.

“In Nurri Kala,” I said, “we have cause for another expedition to Zorimi’s plateau. But this time we must be more cautious. As for my friends, Harker and Lacrosse, I guess they’re dead.”

But the word “Lacrosse” stuck in my throat a little. Hadn’t I seen Zorimi start when, on impulse, I called him by Lacrosse’s name? Could it be that Lacrosse escaped death in the Junkers crash and was now cast in the role of the magician?

I turned the thought over in my mind. Back in Darjeeling, Jim Craig had muttered about diamonds. He spoke of a mountain-high cache in the Himalayas. And he intimated that the pectoral was the key to the treasure. Now I knew that this key – She of the Three Heads – was called the Shining Stone and that Zorimi used it in his deadly rituals.

The pectoral was stolen from Jim Craig’s body by a dacoit. Was the dacoit in Lacrosse’s pay? Was Lacrosse a man who knew the secrets of these caverns and who went abroad in the outer world with some of the wealth supposedly hidden here? I had only his and Kenvon’s word for it that he was a naturalist from Princeton.

Kenvon was a little mad. It would have been easy for Lacrosse to arrange for the Door of Surrilana map to fall into the millionaire’s hands; for him to finance the flight over Kanchenjunga. Kenvon was gullible, I thought. And it was prearranged that he was to insist on the entrance to the Door. For some reason, Lacrosse might have wanted to hide his hand – even from Harker and me – knowing full well that death was always ahead for us.

The attack of the Shamman bats on the Junkers was unforseen. But after the crash – from which I escaped with my usual Irish luck – Lacrosse produced the Shining Stone and returned to his cave identity of Zorimi. He put Kenvon to death. Hadn’t I seen the decapitated body? And then Harker was carried off to The Flame. Hadn’t I seen his head in frieze of skulls?

Of Lacrosse, there was no trace. And Zorimi betrayed fear when addressed as Lacrosse. My conclusion was not wholly lacking in logic.

Zorimi! In him, I was dealing with a man of flesh and blood like myself, I was confident. He was not a Silurian or a Shamman. His English was too good. And he knew the identities and stories of Morgo and Nurri Kala who came from my world. All this I related to Morgo as we dried and grew warm. He was impressed by the logic of it.

“But, man or magician,” Morgo said, “I am not afraid of Zorimi. And I feel we must do something to save the girl from him. He is evil. I feel that.”

“Since the Bakketes cannot withstand the strength of the Shamman bats,” I pointed out, “we must adopt other measures for her rescue – for ascertaining that she is Zorimi’s prisoner again.”

“I will send three Bakketes into Shamman when the darkness comes. They will be cautious and will seek news of her.”

“Good! But then how can we effect a rescue? Have you no people or beasts with which we can combat Zorimi?”

“There are the ants,” Morgo said thoughtfully, “but they cannot be trusted. Once I saved their leader, the Raba of the Hussha tribe who lives in a cave nearby. They are fearless but very destructive. They might turn on us – or if they kill Zorimi, they might devour Nurri Kala as well as those who try to hold her. Once they are started on warfare and forage, there is no stopping them.”

“We can hover over their advance with the Bakketes and take the girl into the air.”

“To do that we must also fight the Shamman bats. Our Bakketes are not strong enough, Derro. But the Shammans and the Silurians fear the ants. Zorimi’s magic is supposed to keep the Husshas out of Shamman. It is really the dearth of food there which sends them to other caverns.”

“Can you talk to this Raba?” I asked incredulously.

“Of course. These ants have life and manners like our own. They have a language and live in tribes. But they are treacherous.”

I decided without hesitation.

“Then let’s visit this Raba and try to enlist his aid. I’m sure if we can take enough Bakketes into Shamman we can win our point – even against the mightier Shamman bats.”

We went inside and dressed. My clothes no longer reeked with the stench of the fungus and I quickly forgot the experience, helped by events that rapidly piled themselves upon us.

“There is a great cave next to Kahli,” Morgo said, “that is called Verizon. It is much like Kahli but warmer, and there are more beasts and reptiles living in it – beasts such as the small mannizan, the snake you call the python, the dog-headed lizards and catbirds. They prey upon the men and women who live there much like the Shammans. But all flee the ants.”

“We shall see. Let us be off.”

Baku and another Bakkete were summoned from their aeries high above the cliff in which we dwelt by a shrill whistle Morgo gave. It was a weird call, not batlike but rather like a small boy giving a secret code call for a pal. I could not imitate it.

We flew over the luxurious greenery of Kahli, peopled with the Kahlis, foraging mice and insects whose wings hummed like a Sikorsky motor, steadily and monotonously. The saffron light fell on all things, the trees and the shrubs and the wilderness of vines that grew beneath the pink, titillating stalactites in which the Bakketes flitted, hordes descending suddenly upon the swarming dragon flies, gnats and needle insects feeding in the green leaves. Life in these caves was much as life outside – the stronger preyed on the weaker and thereby survived. I could not think but how futile civilization was – for it merely replaced on method of preying for sustenance with another.

Instead of flying lower or higher to another cave, the Bakketes turn to the south and approached a door hemmed with chalk formations – the inevitable teeth with which nature endowed this inner world through the age-long processes of moisture dripping from the Himalayas’ skin into their viscera.

We passed through the great stony gate and entered Verizon which greatly resembled Kahli in its flora. It was a replica of that Cainozoic world of forty million years ago when grass ad land forests came into existence and the mammal began its life.

My eyes feasted on what was spread below and above – greener forests than in Kahli – stalactites that were glowing red embers in the bright yellow light. The source of that light was something I hoped to live to see. When our problem of Nurri Kala was solved, Morgo promised to reveal it to me. He called it The Shaft.

A cry escaped me. Morgo drew closer and pointed downward.

A black belt about thirty feet wide and apparently endless wound its way over the floor of the cave, uniformly covering what was beneath it. At no place in the belt could I see greenery on the cave’s sandy floor.

And this belt moved ever so slowly. On command, Baku went lower.

Now I could the life of this belt – black ants, ugly headed and at least five feet long with yard-long mandibles. These mandibles, projecting from the creatures shoulders, worked like tongs, reaching out, ripping apart the desired food, crushing it and stuffing it into the head’s mouth. A faint moan ascended to my ears. It was that of some one munching food, the sound of this army, several million strong, existing – eating its way through life.

I thought of stories I had heard of the Driver ants of Africa. They could destroy an elephant that fouled their path by swarming over it and picking its bones clean in three days. Men and smaller beasts met with the elephants’ fate, too. My heart echoed in my breast. This sight of the Husshas was terrifying.

And like the Drivers, the Husshas were organized – one of nature’s phenomena. Blacker ants, in columns of ten, formed two lines between which slightly smaller ants moved. These were the “soldier ants” and those in the middle column were the “workers”. The latter pushed leaves and mannizan flesh to the “soldiers”, the latter pushed them back or devoured them.

What awful allies! These were to be our “friends” in attacking Zorimi in Shamman. God help us if we failed to get Nurri Kala out of their path!

Baku swung me around abruptly and I saw another Bakkete flying towards us slowly, weakly. Some sixth sense had told Baku of this other’s approach. Morgo had sighted him, too.

The Bakkete tried to fly up to us. Now I saw that he was wounded. One arm was missing and a leg badly mangled.

But in his sound hand he carried something whitish – a piece of cloth.

The Bakkete tried to reach us, holding out the white cloth. His wings, flapping in exhaustion, failed him and he dropped – straight into the black belt of voracious Husshas. He was lost as the living jet river slid over his body. But the white cloth fluttered in the upheld hand, a hand that quivered in death’s agony.

Morgo shouted to his carrier. They swooped down upon the black line of ants. They were close enough for the Hussha soldiers to strike out at Morgo’s white skin with their pointed black tongs.

Morgo reached the still visible hand, caught the wrist and flew upward. The hand came off the arm, eaten away by the worker ants. He tore the white cloth from it and dropped the lifeless paw.

We flew, at a signal from Morgo, to a mound a safe distance from the crawling black belt and alighted there. Morgo opened the cloth.

“Why, it’s a piece of wing cloth!” I cried. “It might be from the Junkers. From my black bird!”

“There is writing on it,” Morgo said.

I peered over his shoulder and read: “Jesperson is Zorimi.” Below these cryptic words was the name “Lacrosse”.

So Harvey Jesperson was in the cave. And this was a message from Lacrosse – who wanted to inter that Jesperson – the man who took my De Haviland on a solo from Darjeeling, was Zorimi the magician.

I refused to believe it.

To Be Continued!

Morgo the Mighty by Sean O’Larkin was originally serialized in The Popular Magazine in 1930. Over the next few weeks I’m going to be serializing it again here. Except for correcting the odd typo, I’m reproducing the text as printed in the original publication.

When I lost Nurri Kala in the windmill of beating, fighting wings, I think I more sincerely hoped for her death than for her capture and return to Zorimi. Yet she was made prisoner. A Shamman bat had caught her with his taloned feet and, holding her tightly, ripped her away from the Bakkete’s grasp. She was well on her way back to the plateau before the combat ended.

Zorimi, the magician, was waiting for her on the lip of the rock outside the chamber of skulls. She was deposited at his feet.

“My magic is still good,” he laughed down at her. “White skin does not believe, but there is magic in Shamman. And I am its master!”

Nurri Kala opened her eyes.

“The white man can spit death from his finger – but he cannot kill Zorimi,” the skin-clad figure said, the sound of his voice apparently coming from the top of the headless mass of pelts. “I have sent the Silurians to destroy them or to return them to me for the death I designed for them.”

“You are very cruel,” Nurri Kala whispered. “I did not believe this of you until I saw with my own eyes. I thought you were a god.”

“I am that, Nurri Kala. But even gods can be moved to anger, when their domain is desecrated.”

“Their coming to this mound was innocent enough,” she replied. “They came to seek friends lost from a bird that brought the red one to Shamman.”

“You must not believe that, Nurri Kala. They came here to conquer The Flame – to which you are a consecrated vestal. They are my enemies.”

Nurri Kala shook her head doubtfully. “But what is this secret about me – and him who calls himself Morgo?”

“The day will come when I can tell you,” Zorimi said in a cunning tone. “And the day is nigh when I will take you from Shamman to the outer world.”

“The outer world? But why? My life is dedicated to these caverns. You told me that.”

Her eyes were incredulous, suspicious.

“I am a magician. I will change all that when the day comes. In the meantime, I must go to Zaan. But not until I am certain that the white men are dead.”

“Why do you so desire their deaths, Zorimi? You once called yourself the All Merciful.”

“They know of affairs of which they should have no knowledge.” Zorimi rubbed his shoulder and groaned. “The red one put a bullet through my flesh.”

“You attacked him – threatened his life,” Nurri Kala said. “Here in the caverns men must fight for their lives and kill to save themselves. You said that was as things should be.”

“They are my enemies. But my magic is greater than theirs.” His voice cackled. “My magic deflected the bullet from my heart and from the Shining Stone I held.”

“Yet you could not deflect it from your shoulder, Zorimi.” Nurri Kala was interested in this thought. The magician’s powers were not as great as he claimed – or Derro’s was stronger.

“I did not act in time!” Zorimi snapped. “I was taken unawares!”

That, Nurri Kala thought, was odd. Zorimi told her once that he knew all things, all that went on in other people’s minds. Yet he did not know Derro’s finger was going to spit at him. And in that instant, her first great doubt of Zorimi’s infallibility was born.

“You will go to your chamber now, Nurri,” the magician said. “I must wait for word from the expedition that set out to find my enemies.”

Nurri Kala rose wearily to her feet. Her body ached from the struggle to which it had been subjected – a Shamman bat tearing it from the hold of a lesser Bakkete. Zorimi’s voice halted her at the steps.

“There is more that I must tell you, Nurri Kala,” he said. “It is best that you know a little of my plans, my slave.”

The girl’s eyes flashed defiantly at the mass of skins. She was no longer his slave. And though he might hold great power over the Shammans and their world, she knew then that he was as much flesh and blood as other living creatures.

She considered this bent, huddled figure, tinted crimson by the rays of The Flame – that horrible pyre stoked with human flesh and bone. His face was a mystery to her since she had always been denied the privilege of seeing it. Only the voice she knew – and until now had obeyed. This man had been her mentor. He gave her life after that accident had robbed her of those other white people she knew as mother and father and who were so good to her. Of them and the accident that robbed her memory, she remembered nothing. Her life in the caves began with the ministrations of Zorimi who found her near the Door of Surrilana.

Through her growing years, the magician had been good to her. He taught her the ways of the Shammans and Silurians and made them her slaves. He gave her pretty bright stones and the reflecting glass in her chamber and indulged all her minor needs. The Flame, she was instructed, was the source of all life in Shamman, a holy thing, and to its burning eternally she must devote all her thought and prayers. This she had done faithfully.

Zorimi was amusing at times. He told her stories about the strange people and beasts in the other caverns. He delighted her with speculations about an outer world. And while she never felt any love for him such as the white man she once called her father, she liked Zorimi. He was her only friend, a man who spoke a language she knew without learning as she had had to learn the speech of the Shammans. She was dependent on him – and believed him when he told her she was an immortal and a sacred person, a vestal of The Flame.

Her slavery was a subtle relationship between them. It was her bowing to his will, her belief in all he told her, her captivity to the power of his awful eyes. And it hinged on his ability to prove himself greater than the people of Shamman. But now Derro had struck at Zorimi and his blow had been a telling one.

Moreover, Zorimi, a kindly man, had proven himself a destroyer of human life. Till that night, she had no knowledge of what went on at the rituals in the chamber of skulls. She had not been permitted to attend the other ceremonies. Yet now she knew, and Zorimi had commanded her to participate in it – to draw a man’s blood and take his life with the obsidian dagger, all for some incomprehensible reason. She suspected, though, that these pagan rituals were Zorimi’s method of demonstrating his power – a power built on the taking of human life.

She reflected. She might have killed a Shamman in the act of ritual. They were not really men but beasts. Zorimi might have induced her to believe in her godhood to that extent. But he erred in asking her to kill in the presence of a man with white skin, Derro, who was so brave.

Yes, she knew Zorimi better that night. He was a man of evil. He was not to be trusted. He planned her destruction in some way still obscure to her limited knowledge.

Zorimi was talking in high sounding words, many of which she did not understand. He was discoursing on her future, a glowing career in a world of great cities and vast seas of water that was salty to taste, of men and women who dressed strangely in suits and dresses of colors and who drove in things called motors and trains and airplanes, who went under water in boats. He was telling her incredible things and she smiled placidly to disarm him though she did not believe a word he uttered.

“And when I return from Zaan, the Cave of Diamonds -” Zorimi was saying.

“Diamonds? What are they?” Nurri Kala asked. “My mother had a diamond – I remember.”

“You shall have thousands, Nurri Kala. I promise it. You will look more beautiful than all the queens in the world.”

“Queens?”

“Rulers of men, women with great power in the outer world.” Zorimi grew ecstatic. “You shall be the greatest and richest woman in all the world. I promise it. And I shall be the richest man. Diamonds can buy anything?”

“But I do not want that,” Nurri Kala said seriously.

“No?” Zorimi was amused. “What do you want then? You shall have it.”

“I want to have Morgo and Derro for my friends – for they have a skin like mine. And Derro is very brave – and so is Morgo.” She spoke with the simplicity of a child.

Zorimi thundered. “That is something you cannot have! The friendship of those two! They must be destroyed – or they will destroy us! Morgo is a savage and the other seeks my life! Surely you would not be the friend of a savage and a murderer?”

Nurri Kala did not believe him, but she silenced her tongue. Instinct warned her not to betray to Zorimi her new attitude toward him.

“Nurri Kala,” Zorimi declaimed, taking her little hand in his grimy fist, “you are to be the Bride of the Shining Stone!”

She smiled at the sound of the words. They were pleasant. “Bride of the Shining Stone! My mother was a bride – I remember her saying it. And I shall be like her.”

“You shall be what I promise!”

“But who shall be like father to me? Like he was to mother?”

“I shall be that, Nurri Kala. I shall marry you!”

The girl did not understand this but an indefinable fear welled up inside her. She wanted to hurry to her chamber.

“I shall make you my bride before The Flame, Nurri Kala, and then again in a ceremony in the outer world. I promise you that.

She ran up the steps without further comment. She wanted to be alone.

Her chamber, a room off one of the higher corridors in the mound, was spacious though plainly furnished. There was a flambeau for light, stuck in a chalk hole, a pallet heaped with skins, a few dishes from which she ate her meals, a tiny window that fed her the air of Shamman and the reflecting glass – a tall mirror of polished silver.

She beheld her image in the silver and was pleased with it. What a relief from looking at the ugly, scale-skinned Silurians! And only she was permitted to look into it. The Silurian women were forbidden its secrets and she kept it covered when they cleaned her room.

Her hands ran languidly over her whiteness. The silver mirror showed her a pretty picture – the most beautiful she had ever seen. The girdle of shining stones winked and danced in the light of the flambeau. She removed it and the strange flower of diamonds in her hair and, combing her golden locks when they sprawled over her broad shoulders with skillful fingers, she thrilled to her splendor.

And later, lying on her couch in the darkness, stretching luxuriously with the grace of a sybarite, she hoped, in the moment before she fell asleep, that Derro, the red one, though she was good to look at.

The tramping of many feet in the corridor outside her door awakened her. The Silurians who went in search of Derro and Morgo, were returning to report to Zorimi. Perhaps the two men were prisoners again. She leaped to her feet with fast-beating hear and when the last man had passed her door, she crept out and made her way stealthily to the stairs leading to the chamber of skulls.

The leader of the Silurians addressed Zorimi. His voice sounded angry. A man had been killed by Derro, but the two white men were not captives. Her heart bounded with joy. They were free and she might see them again.

The Silurian’s next words left her frozen with terror. Derro and Morgo had dropped into the cave of the unclean growths to be devoured by plants that thrived on human life. They were utterly lost. Zorimi clapped his hands gleefully and chuckled with fiendish laughter. She hated the magician more than ever in that hour for she knew what death in the jungle of fungus meant. It had been described to her by the Silurian women who lost their men in it while they were on the hunts.

Yet Nurri Kala refused to despair. One man, she had heard, came out of that livid green cave alive and told his companions about it. She was not so much concerned with his tale as with the fact that he did live to escaped the creeping threads of growth that devoured flesh and blood.

And while Nurri Kala knew nothing of the God of the outer world, she raised her eyes and whispered: “If one man can escape, let the two – Derro and Morgo – free themselves from that death!”

To Be Continued!

Morgo the Mighty by Sean O’Larkin was originally serialized in The Popular Magazine in 1930. Over the next few weeks I’m going to be serializing it again here. Except for correcting the odd typo, I’m reproducing the text as printed in the original publication.

I kept track of Nurri Kala’s flight in that Cimmerian night by the whiteness of her body in the Bakketes arms. Baku heeded me faithfully and flew as close to her as possible despite the terrific onslaught of the Shamman bats which tried, as usual, to beat us to the floor of the vast cave.

The handless and armless bats, I gathered, far outnumbered our Bakketes. But the latter were fleet of wing and soon we left screeching legions behind us. An instinctive sense of direction on the part of the Bakketes was carrying us toward the tunnel which led to the lower Cave of Kahli where Morgo pursued his peaceful life.

But I shouted before I was out of the proverbial woods. I was too quick to accept safety and the outstripping of the Shamman bats.

The Bakkete holding Nurri Kala uttered a piercing cry and began to sink. Baku flew closer.

Twenty Shamman bats had quietly joined our flight, flying as fast as they could, deceiving us into thinking that we were rid of our enemy. Now they swung suddenly to attack the man carrying the girl.

I saw one bat encircle the girl with his talonesque legs and try to tear her from the Bakkete. The others attacked him with their teeth and clouted him with their powerful wings.

Nurri Kala screamed and her cries were suddenly silenced. Had she been killed? Had she fainted? She was in the thickest part of the aerial fray.

I could not use my gun for fear of shooting her. Morgo was engaged with one of the other Shamman bats. I saw him reach for the flying monster with his bare hands which closed about its throat. Life was hard to rout from the bat, but Morgo’s strength was mighty. The bat pounded Morgo with its leathery wings and tore him with its talons, but Morgo was relentless. The huge bat weakened, gasped and then fell limply out of sight.

The Bakketes were impotent in helping their stricken mate. They tore at the Shamman’s wings with their long fingers, and other screeching creature, unable to fly with one wing ripped off, crashed downward.

Then the fighting mass of Bakketes and bats broke. I could not see Nurri Kala. My fear was that she had been dropped by the man who was beset so strongly. A Bakkete wavered, tried to keep aloft, and then he, too, drooped and fluttered downward, his wings shattered. The Shammans scattered and vanished in an upward rush of air and beating wings.

Morgo flew close to me.

“We have lost her,” he cried. “We have lost that beautiful creature!”

“Did they make her prisoner?”

“I could not see, Derro. But we are not strong enough in numbers to fly higher and search the stalactites.”

“Then let us make certain she did not fall to the rocks below. We will search there,” I said.

And while the army of Bakketes, battered and bleeding from their combat, hovered over us, a protecting cloud of friendly wings in the gloom, Morgo and I descended to the sea of stalagmites. Sight was well-nigh impossible in the darkness, but we carefully flew low over the area which we thought was directly below that of the previous scene of attack. The gray hulks of the chalky fingers were visible but no whiteness – as that of the girl’s body – gleamed in the shadows between those pillars.

The Bakketes took to screeching again. Wings beat on wings, two bodies fell close by us. Another fight was in progress in the gloom overhead. Zorimi had sent his bats back to annihilate us completely, or to make us prisoner, and they had fallen upon our forces noiselessly.

“Can those bats see us?” I asked Morgo.

“They can see anything in the dark.” The Bakkete army fled. We listened, seeing nothing, till the silence of the cave was great and nerve-wracking and devoid of a single stirring wing. We had alighted on a mound, an overturned monolith of rock.

I decided it was best that we seek refuge beneath a pillar of chalk until we had some indication that the Shamman bats had passed overhead in returning to Zorimi’s plateau. Morgo said it was likely that they would fly low in search of us and could be heard. He was confident that they would not follow the Bakketes into Kahli, for they were too great of wing to negotiate the descending tunnel safely.

And then we were attacked. We saw nothing coming. The sudden impact of wings upon us crushed us to the rock, bruising and cutting our bodies. Our Bakketes had been taken off guard again.

The Silurians appeared on every side of us. They dropped from between the legs of the war bats who so silently skimmed over us.

I fired at the nearest scale-skinned creature and darted through the opening, shouting to Morgo to follow me. There was no pursuit, the surprise of the shots momentarily holding the Silurians at bay.

How far we ran I cannot guess. Morgo’s breath was hot on my cheek, our footfalls muffled, noiseless. It was like running on air.

A black hole loomed before us – a small cave – and into it my feet carried me. I found Baku with Morgo. The other Bakkete, Morgo’s carrier, had evidently been destroyed.

The Silurians appeared in the haze of night. They saw the cave and hesitated before entering.

“Baku will lead us into this hole in the ground,” Morgo said. “Join hands with me. Eyes are good in the dark. It is our only hope of escaping them.”

Thirty Silurians, their scaly bodies now weirdly luminous, could be counted at the mouth of the cave. To fight meant defeat for us. Death or being taken prisoner and returned to the tortures that only the evil genius of Zorimi could devise. My ammunition was low, far too low for comfort.

One by one, the Silurians began to file into the hollow that held us. They feared my gun, I knew, but they were probably impelled by Zorimi’s orders to risk death in the hope of overpowering us ultimately. They were to bring us back to him dead or alive. They were to fight, girded with the assurance that their bodies were invulnerable – when my last round was fired.

I saw nothing. I merely took hold of Morgo’s sinewy wrist and moved forward, led by him, as if in a dream. The path twisted, declined, and we had to crawl in places where the ceiling was too low and narrow. The walls of this cave were repulsive to touch. At first I was puzzled and then I discovered the cause. They were not of chalk as were the other formations of Shamman but of something soft like the down on a baby’s head. Yes, they were hairy.

This soft growth, warm and loathsome when it brushed my fingers or face caused me to shudder involuntarily. And from it seeped a faint scent, like that of decay, indescribable decay, but nevertheless the decay of dying things. This odor grew stronger and permeated the air the farther we went.

We could hear the Silurians stumbling, scraping and groping their way after us. I even imagined I could hear their cautious, labored breathing. In actuality, I heard just that. For in a sudden burst of light from the very floor beneath our feet, a glow that threw Morgo and Baku into sharp silhouette, I looked back and saw the nearest Silurian within arm’s reach of me.

I had to shoot him. His falling body, the effect of his death and startling report of the automatic momentarily stayed the Silurians advance upon us as they hissed with fear.

Baku cried out shrilly, terrified. Morgo stepped back abruptly, almost upsetting me – but too late.

The floor of the cave gave way under us, and we fell through a fuzzy, malodorous substance that glowed with a greenish hue. My fingers fought for some support by the substance flew through them, ripped and tore. It was the sensation of being shot through a giant mushroom.

I struck something hard – rock or chalk formation. My body was spun around. Morgo and I became an interlocked mass for an instant, each holding to the other for support, to stay our terrific avalanche downward through this awful suffocating substance that breathed decay into our nostrils. Then we were whirled apart, and I rolled over and over. My head hit a sharp bit of hardness, and I forgot the rest of that descent into the bottoms of Shamman.

Morgo was holding my head in his lap, rubbing the brow, when I opened my eyes again. His features were dim and slowly they cleared. He became recognizable and so did Baku.

“What happened?” I tried to grin. “Who hit me?”

“We are in the forest of unclean growths,” Morgo informed me, a note of concern in his voice. “We cannot stay here too long or our breath will be stilled.”

Our breath? I was aware that my own breathing was impaired. There wasn’t enough oxygen in the air.

“Do not breathe too hard, Derro,” Morgo warned me. “I know of this place though I have avoided it. If you fight for air you will never get enough. Breathe slowly and you will last.”

My vision was better and I saw all. We were resting at the base of a slope of gelatinous matter cut by a deep furrow. That furrow was our path – made by our falling and rolling bodies. Above it was the hole through which we had dropped. The slope and its soft coating broke our fall.

The smell of decay was nauseating. My head reeled and I did my best to breathe slowly. We were in a cave, the walls, every part of which, were a quivering gelatinous mass, the substance coated with downy hair. All was greenish and livid white in spots.

Green mold! I had seen gray-green mold on stale, damp bread! This excrescence in which we were stranded, I now recognized.

Fungus! We were lost in a forest of fungus!

The cryptogamous growth fluttered over us, depending mostly from the roof of the cavern. It fed upon the Carboniferous-looking trees and shrubs in upper Shamman, upon the filth of that upper cave’s flooring. Of that I was certain though my knowledge of such putrescent life was exceedingly limited. Yet mold and fungus did thrive on dead, organic matter.

The bed of the cave was less thickly covered with the undulating growth. Here and there it was punctuated with a titanic mushroom or toadstool like an umbrella for giant leprechauns. I wondered if we could tread our way through it to some exit. The fear of dropping into a deep hole and suffocating to death in its decay made me cold and nervous. I was not afraid of death – but I must confess to a pronounced fear of the means of death.

“Is there a way out of this jungle of fungus, Morgo?”

“Baku says he knows a way, though he is not certain, Derro.”

“Let him seek it out then.”

“It is best that one of us go with him,” Morgo said. “He may find the opening to Shamman or Kahli and may not be able to return.”

“Why not?”

“I have heard strange tales of this unclean growth. It has hands. It feeds on living men and matter. Weapons cannot defeat it. Your gun and my knife are useless in fighting it. But Baku might save one of us – if he can get through to clean air.”

I got up, stretched my legs and felt life surge through me. My lungs, though respiration was shallow, were accustoming themselves to this dead air, perfumed with mold.

“You go first, Morgo. I’ll wait here for Baku.”

Morgo shook his head. “No, Derro, my mind is made up. You got with Baku. I will wait.”

Of course we argued. Neither would be the first to make his fight for life. At length, Morgo held up a quieting hand.

“We are wasting precious breath, Derro,” he said. “Please go.”

“We’ll toss for it.” I took his bowie knife and explained to him that the side bearing the manufacturer’s mark would be the head and plain side the tail. We would spin it in the air. He who called “heads” would stay.

Morgo nodded and, taking the knife in his hand, spun it, calling, “Heads!” The blade flopped on the quivering fungus at our feet. The manufacturer’s mark was uppermost.

“I stay,” he said proudly. “You go with Baku – and hurry.”

“What is the source of the light in here?” I asked, curious over the greenish pall and not too ready to leave my new friend. “It is night above in Shaman and yet here there is luminosity.”

“The Shaft does strange things, Derro. It is the source of all light in these caverns. I meant to show it to you one day.”

“You will.  You’ll come through.”

“I will wait for Baku – and try – if he comes back for me.”

I clasped Morgo’s hand in mine. He took the little cross of twigs from beneath his skin covering and gaze fondly at it.

“I pray for a safe trip for you, Derro.” His eyes met mine and I saw them shining. “You saved my life when Zorimi would take it. I owe it to you, Derro, to save yours – to pray for it. There is a bond between us now that only death can break.”

“To whom do you pray?”

“To a god my father told me about. I remember nothing about him except that these twigs are his sign. He has been kind and merciful to me in the past. He will help you now when I ask him. I am sure.”

Morgo’s simple faith in the Supreme Being was truly moving. WIth the veils of amnesia upon him, with a primitive existence substituted for his civilized youth, he still held fast to a faith he undoubtedly learned at his mother’s knee.

“Baku,” Morgo cried. “Derro is ready. Take him.”

Before I could protest or say more, ask more, the Bakkete slipped his arms around me, under mine.

“Go!” Morgo commanded Baku. And I was swept from the fungus flooring, watching Morgo, a small figure, become smaller and smaller with distance until he vanished in the sinister green light.

“Have you been in here before, Baku?” I asked my carrier.

“No. But I hear about it. There is a way out.”

That information was small consolation. The cavern was far-flung and the fumes of dead matter seemed more asphyxiating in mid-air than when closer to the floor. I felt faint and fought to hold my consciousness. My mind was a cauldron of quivering green and white and unclean grayish spots. We had eluded the Silurians for something far worse than Zorimir’s Flame.

“Look!” Baku cried.

My eyes opened and I saw a darkish cloud ahead in the gelatinous roof of the fungus where the growth, unlike that of the other part of the cave, hung in long threads that flicked at each other like the tentacles of an octopus. Were these the fingers – the hands – that Morgo mentioned? I tried to doubt and could not.

The dark spot beyond the beyond the wavering threads seemed to be an opening. And though the putrid air was stronger than before, I could feel blasts of something cleaner coming from the direction of the darkness. A breeze seemed to stir the depending threads of fungus and I hoped it was air and not the life in them that gave them motion.

“Save breath!” Baku said. “Danger is here!”

He meant to wend his way between two lines of fungus – an avenue offering possible safety. In another moment we were in the divide, flying as low as feasible to avoid any contact with the slithering, green threads and their fuzzy surface.

I struck out with my fists. It was useless.

A thread of the stuff was flung around my middle. Firmly, with perceptible tugs, it slowly drew us off our course, upward and toward a reddish crust – lips!

Baku’s wings were snarled in the stuff and the thought of woman’s eternal fear – a bat caught in her hair, flapping and squealing – flashed through my mind. I was deposited on the red crust.

The Bakkete was whipped away from me out of sight.

The fumes from the parted lips, a stench from the entrails of a monster dragon, suffocated my senses. I fell against the crust.

Heat! Bursting lungs! Reddish crust, hard to touch!

Green pallor! Unclean white splotches! Gray decay!

Black oblivion.

To Be Continued!