Later on I discovered some more of this stuff and decided that, since it was my only clue. I would look for more in the hope that Hool Haji's captors - or murderers - had left it behind them, though why they should and what it was I had no idea.
I hardly realised, as night was falling, that I had come to a city.
The city seemed to be one large building sprawling through the jungle. It appeared to grow out of the jungle, merge with it, be part of it. It was of dark, ancient obsidian and, in crevices, earth and seeds had fallen so that small trees and shrubs grew out of the city. There were zigguarats and domes all appearing to flow together in the half light. It was easy to believe that this was some strange freak of nature, that rock has simply flowed and solidified into the appearance of a city!
Yet here and there were windows, entrances all obscured by plants.
As night fell the city glowed very, very dimly, catching the few faint moonbeams that were able to penetrate the forest roof so far above.
This must be where my friend's enemies had brought him. It was a daunting place.
Wearily I entered the city, climbing over the heaped, glassy rock, searching for some sign of the inhabitants, some indication as to where my friend was hidden.
I clambered up the sloping sides of buildings, over roofs, down walls, searching, searching. Everywhere were deep shadows and the feel of smooth, lumpy rock beneath my hands and feet.
There were no streets in this city, simply depressions in the roof which covered it. I entered one of these gullies - a deep one - and began to inch along it, feeling desperate.
Something scuttled up the wall to my left and I felt sick as I saw what it was - the largest spider I had ever seen in my life.
Now I saw others. I took a firm grip on Hool Haji's sword and prepared to draw my own as well. The spiders were as big as footballs!
I was just preparing to leave the gully and ascend another sloping wall of green rock when suddenly I felt something drop over my head and shoulders. I tried to strike it away with the sword but it clung to me. The more I moved the more entangled I became.
Now r understood why there had been no corpses at the scene of Hool Haji's capture!
The thing that had fallen on me was a net of the same fine, sticky silk I had seen in the forest. It was strong and clung to everything it touched.
Now I had fallen face downwards and was still trying to disentangle myself.
I felt bony hands pick me up.
I looked at those who had trapped me. I could not believe my eyes. To the waist they were men, though considerably shorter than me, with wiry bodies bulging with lumpy muscles. They had large eyes and slit mouths, but were still recognisable as human beings - until you looked beyond their waists and at the eight furry legs that radiated from them. The bodies of men and the legs of spiders!
I now made jabbing movements at the leader - my arms were so restricted it was all I could manage.
The leader was expressionless as he pointed a long pole at me. The end of this pole seemed to be fitted with a needle-like tip some six inches long. He stuck this into me - but only a short way. I tried to fight back and then, almost at once, felt my whole body go rigid.
I could not move a muscle. I could not even blink. I had been injected with a poison, that was plain - a poison that could paralyse completely!
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Great Mishassa
Lifted on the backs of the strange, repellent spider-men, I was borne deep into the interior of the weird city.
Lighted by faintly luminous rocks, it was a labyrinth that seemed to have no plan or purpose to it.
We passed through corridors and chambers that sometimes seemed little more than conduits and on other occasions opened out into great, balconied halls.
I became convinced that this was not the work of the spider-men - not the work of men at all, but of some alien intelligence created, perhaps, by the affect of atomic radiation. That intelligence - half mad ever to have conceived this city - had probably perished long since, unless these spider-men were their servants.
Somehow I thought not, because the corridors and halls were full of dirt, cobwebs and the decay of centuries. I paused to wonder just how these spider-men had come into being - whether they were cousins of the huge spiders I had seen outside. If they were related, what unholy union in the distant past had produced such fruit as these?
They scuttled along, bearing me in their strong arms. I did not dare speculate what fate had in store for me. I was convinced they intended to torture me, perhaps eat me in some ghastly rite - that I was, in fact, to be the fly in their parlour!
My guess was closer than I at first realised..
At length we entered an enormous hall, far bigger than anything else. It was all dark and illuminated only by the 196 dim radiance of the rock itself.
But now I could feel the drug beginning to wear off and I flexed my muscles experimentally - as much as was possible since the sticky web - drawn, I now guessed, from the actual bodies of die spider-men - still restricted my movement.
And then I saw it!
It was a vast web stretching across the hall. It shimmered in the faint light and I could just make out a figure spread-eagled in it. I was certain then that it was Hool Haji.
The spider-men themselves were evidently unaffected by their own sticky webs, for several of them began to haul me up strands of this web towards the other victim who was, I saw, indeed Hool Haji.
And there, hanging in space, they left us, scuttling away into the gloom on their furry legs. They had made not a sound since I had first encountered them.
My mouth was still stiff from the drug but I managed to say a few words. I had been placed below and to one side of Hool Haji and so could see little of him save his left foot and part of his calf.
'Hool Haji - can you speak?'
‘Yes. Have you any indication what they intend to do with us, my friend?’
'No.'
‘I am sorry I led you into this, Michael Kane.’
'It was not your fault.'
'I should have been more cautious: It I had been we should all have been away by now. Is the aircraft safe?'
'As far as I know.'
I began to test the web. The actual net in which I had been caught was becoming brittle and broken until I was at last able to fling out my hand. But my hand was immediately trapped immovably on the main web.
'I tried the same thing,' Hool Haji said from above. 'I can think of no possible means of escape.'
I had to admit he was probably right, but I racked my brains nonetheless. I had begun to get a feeling that something horrible was in store for us unless I could devise a means of escape.
I began to try to work my other arm loose.
Then we heard the noise - a loud, scraping noise like the sound of the spider-men moving, but magnified greatly.
Looking down, we suddenly saw two huge eyes, at least four feet in diameter, looking unblinkingly up at us.
They were the eyes of a spider. My heart lurched.
Then a voice sounded - a soft, rustling, ironic voice which could only have issued from the owner of the eyes.
'Sso, an appetissing morssel for today'ss feasst . . .’
I was even more stunned to hear a voice coming from the creature.
‘Who are you?’ I demanded in a none too firm voice.
‘I am Mishassa - the Great Mishassa, lasst of the folk of Shaassazheen.'
‘And those creatures - your minions?'
There came a sound that might have been an unhuman chuckle.
‘My sspawn. Produced by experimentss in the laboratoriess of Shaassazheen - the culmination of . . . But you would know your fate, would you not?'
I shuddered. I fancied that I guessed it already. I did not reply.
'Quake, little one, for you are to be my ssupper ssoon...’
Now I could see the creature more clearly. It was a giant spider - plainly one of many produced by the ato
mic radiation that had affected this part of the country all those thousands of years before.
Mishassa was slowly beginning to climb the web. I felt the thing sag as his weight went on to it
I continued my effort to release my other arm and at last managed to free it of the net without trapping it on the web. I remembered the little skinning knife in my harness and decided I must try to reach that if I could.
Inch by inch I moved my hand towards the knife... Inch by inch...
At last my fingers gripped the haft and I eased the knife from its sheath.
The spider-beast was coming closer. I began to hack first at that part of the web holding my other arm.
I worked desperately but the web was tough. Then at last it parted and I was able, moving cautiously, to reach my sword.
I stretched my arm upwards and sliced away as much of the web around Hool Haji as I could reach, then turned again to face the giant spider.
Its voice whispered at me:
‘You cannot esscape. Even if you were abssolutely free you would not esscape me - I am sstronger than you, sswifter than you...'
What he said was true - but it did not stop me trying!
Soon its horrible legs were only a few inches from me and I prepared to defend myself against it as best I could. Then I heard a yell from Hool Haji and saw his body fly past me and land squarely on the back of the spider-beast
He clung to its hair shouting for me to try to do the same.
I v/as only dimly aware of what he intended to do, but I leapt, too, breaking free of the last of the strands and dropping towards the spider-beast's back to land there and hang tightly with one hand to the weird fur. In my other hand I held my sword.
Hool Haji said, ‘Give me your sword - I am stronger than you.'
I passed it to him and drew my knife.
The beast yelled in fury and shouted incomprehensible words at us as we began to hack at its back with our weapons.
It had probably been used to more passive offerings in the shape of its own minions - but we were two fighting men of Vashu and were prepared to sell our lives dearly before allowing ourselves to become a banquet for a big, talkative spider!
It hissed and cursed. It darted about in fury, dropping from web to ground. But still we clung on, still driving our weapons into it, seeking a vital spot.
It reared up and nearly toppled over so that we should have been crushed beneath its great bulk. But perhaps it had the instincts of the originals of the species - many of which, once on their backs, cannot get to their feet again. It recovered its balance just in time and began to scuttle backwards and forwards at random.
Sticky, black blood was spurting from a dozen wounds but none had, it appeared, been effective in slowing it down. Suddenly it began to run in a straight line, a thin, high wailing sound coming from it.
We lay flat as its speed increased, looking our puzzlement at one another.
It must have been moving at a good sixty miles an hour - probably more - as it darted along the tunnels, carrying us deeper and deeper into the city.
Now the wailing increased in volume. The spider-creature had gone berserk. Whether it was exhibiting a madness, a heritage of its mad ancestors that it had only now failed to control, or whether our wounds were driving it berserk with pain we were never to know.
Suddenly I saw movement ahead.
It was a pack of the spider-men - whether they were the same who had taken us to the hall of the web I could not guess - looking plainly panic-stricken as we rushed at them.
When the huge, intelligent spider paused in its mad rush and began to fall on them, biting them to death, taking a head in its jaws and snapping it off at the neck, or biting a torso in two. It was a grisly sight
We continued to cling as best we could to the furry back of the incensed beast. Occasionally it would shout a recognisable word or phrase but they made no sense to us.
Soon every single spider-man had been destroyed and nothing was left but a heap of dismembered corpses.
My arm was aching and I felt I could not hang on to the fur much longer. Any moment I was going to drop and become prey to the spider-beast. From Hool Haji's grim expression I could see that he, too, was feeling the strain and could not bear it much longer.
And then, quite suddenly, the spider-beast began to sag at the leg joints. The legs were slowly drawn up under its body and it sank down amongst the broken bodies of its servitors.
It had destroyed them, it seemed, in its death-throes, for it cried one word: 'Gone!' - and died.
We made sure that the heart had ceased to beat and then virtually fell from the beast's back and stood looking up at it.
‘I am glad it died and not us,' I said, 'but it must have realised it was the last survivor of its aberrant species. What actually went on in that crazed, alien brain, I wonder? I feel sorry for it in a way. Its death was somehow noble.'
'You saw more than I did,' Hool Haji broke in. 'All I saw was an enemy that nearly destroyed us. But we have destroyed it - that is good.'
This pragmatic statement from my friend shook me from my somewhat speculative frame of mind - possibly out of place in the circumstances - and made me begin to wonder how we were to find our way out of this maze of a city. I wondered, also, if all the spider-men had been killed in the death-throes of the beast.
We picked our way through the ruin of corpses and followed the tunnel until it turned into a large hall.
We discovered a further tunnel leading off the hall and plodded on, simply hoping that we should eventually find a room with a window or exit - for there had been some visible from the outside.
The tunnels were difficult for Hool Haji to negotiate most of the time - only a few of them were large enough to take the spider-beast, for instance. This led me to conclude that the creature we had destroyed had been, even amongst his own kind, a 'sport.'
Once again something in me awakened sympathy for the misshapen creature that had been so ill-fitted for the world and yet plainly possessed an excellent intelligence. In spite of its having threatened my life, I could not hate it in any way.
It was while I was still in this philosophical mood that we stumbled upon the vats.
The first indication of their existence that we received was the smell. Breathing in the vapour, we felt a slight stiffness in our muscles. Then we entered a hall over which crude gangplanks had been placed, for the floor, which was sunken, was full of a noisome, bubbling fluid.
We paused beside the gangplank, looking down.
‘I think I know what this is,' I said to Hool Haji.
‘The poison?'
'Exactly - the stuff which they coated on those needle-poles to paralyse us.'
I frowned. 'This could come in useful,” I said.
'In what way?' my friend asked.
'I'm not sure -I have a feeling that it might. It will do no harm to take samples.' I pointed to the far wall.
On a shelf stood several pottery flasks and a heap of poles with six-inch needles at their tips.
Carefully we crossed the vat by means of the gangplank, heading towards the shelf. We breathed in as little as possible for fear that our muscles would become paralysed altogether, causing us to plunge into the vat, and we should either drown or die from an overdose of the stuff.
At last we reached the shelf, feeling stiffer with every moment that passed. I took down two flasks of good, if weird, workmanship, and handed them to Hool Haji, who stooped and filled them. We rammed stoppers into the flasks and attached them to our belts, then we took a number of poles and left the hall of the vat by the nearest exit.
Now the floor of the tunnel rose and this gave us some hope.
I could see light glimmering from somewhere, though I could not see its direct source.
Just as we turned into a small passage and saw daylight coming through an irregular opening to one side of the passage, the light was momentarily blocked out by the sudden eruption into the place of a number of the
large spiders I had seen earlier.
I drew my sword, which my blue friend had returned to me, and he used one of the poles to flail about him at the disgusting creatures. They paused only for a short time to attack us and then scuttled past, disappearing into the depths of the city.
What I had at first thought to be a direct attack was, in fact, nothing more than the nocturnal creatures returning to the darkness of the city.
We clambered out of the window and stood once again on what I can only call the 'surface* or roof of the city -a place of unnatural cliffs and canyons all of the same darkly shining, obsidian stuff. It still looked as if it had been moulded whilst malleable rather than constructed in any fashion men would employ to build a city.
Our feet slipping on the smooth surfaces, we stumbled along, now realising we had no real idea where our ship was in relation to us!
I imagine we would have wandered like this for many more hours - perhaps days - if we had not suddenly caught sight of Jil Deera's stocky figure framed against the jungle beyond. We yelled to him and waved.
He turned, his hand on his sword-hilt, his stance wary. Then he grinned as he recognised us.
'Where is Vas Oola?' I asked as we walked towards each other.
'He is still with the aircraft, guarding it,’ the warrior replied. 'At least' - he looked distastefully around - 'I hope he is.'
'Why are you here?' asked Hool Haji.
'When you both did not return at nightfall I became worried. I thought you had been captured since I heard no sounds such as a wild beast might make, and as soon as it was dawn I set out on your trail - and found this place. Have you seen the creatures that inhabit it? Huge spiders!'
'You will find the remains of even stranger denizens below the surface somewhere,' Hool Haji said laconically.
'I hope you left yourself markers for your way back,’ I said to Jil Deera, thinking myself a fool for not having done just that myself.
'I have.' Jil Deera pointed into the jungle. 'It is this way, come.'
Since ill-luck had, for the most part, dodged us since we had left the haunt of the Yaksha, we were in some fear for the safety of our craft We should have been in a far worse predicament, stranded on a land we had absolutely no knowledge of at all, if the balloon had been attacked and wrecked.