"I should have waited," he said miserably. "Indeed, the king will call me a traitor. But if you are truly the most powerful-I am your steed, lord!"
He was. There was a rippling, a shifting, a bewildering alteration of plane surfaces and colors, and he was a highly suitable horse, fully saddled and caparisoned. The horse came trotting to Tony"s side and waited for him to mount. He put his foot on the stirrup and heaved his leg over.
"Okay so far," he said grimly. "Full speed ahead."
The horse-Abdul-broke into a headlong run which was convincingly like real panic. It headed away from the palace at a pace even thedjinncamels of the trip across the desert could not have bettered.
And, as a matter of fact, the appearance of things was enough to justify some apprehension. Word of the approaching duel to the death had evidently spread. Out of the gateway of the palace thedjinns poured. They wore every one of the eccentric shapes Tony had noted in the line of courtiers welcoming him the night before. There were still some wearing the shapes of human women-those who had danced for him the night before. And as they poured out of the palace, thedjinnswhose shapes were adapted for speed retained them, while others dissolved into forms capable of more miles per hour. The whole a.s.semblage looked like a glorified zoo in flight toward one distant spot. Even the palace began to come apart and join the rush. Item after item of its structure vanished from its place, swelled into a tall and somehow ghostlike whirlwind, and swept away in eager compet.i.tion for good seats at the spectacle.
When the horse stopped, Tony swung out of the saddle, and the short, fatdjinnof the turban reappeared.
He was utterly doleful.
"Lord," he said bitterly, "my life is in your hands! If you do not win this battle, the king will surely execute me in Es-Souk"s stead! I beg you to conquer in this battle!"
Tony wetted his finger to gauge the direction of the wind. He made sure of his handkerchief. He stooped and picked up a pair of medium-sized stones and slipped them in his pocket. Then he waited.
He was in a huge, natural amphitheatre some four miles long by two wide. Its floor was practically desert sand. All about, on the mountainsides, were perched thedjinn.The foremost rows were dots, but successive rearward rows were larger to get better views, until at the very back tall whirlwinds spun eagerly, reaching ever higher for full vision of what was to come.
The last arrivals settled into place. The entiredjinnnation watched. Abdul despairingly shivered, and turned himself into a small stone, indistinguishable from any other. Tony waited in the center of the vast open s.p.a.ce. And waited.
And waited.
Chapter 14.
Tony"s conscience said bitterly that since he was going to be killed anyhow, he might as well make a fight for it; but if he"d only listened at any single instant since Mr. Emurian offered him two thousand dollars for that ten-dirhim piece- He swore softly. He felt singularly absurd, standing in the middle of a dusty, sandy plain with a cigarette lighter clutched in his hand, two small stones in his pocket, and with a mult.i.tude of lunatic shapes watching intently from the mountainsides about, and misty, ghost-like whirlwinds spinning expectantly beyond them.
For a long time, nothing happened.
"War of nerves," he muttered indignantly.
The small stone which was Abdul quivered, and seemed to inflate like a balloon. Abdul appeared in his customary shape, very much agitated.
"Lord! Do you see him?"
"Not yet," growled Tony. "I suppose he"ll fly to contact as a mosquito and then materialize as a boa-constrictor at close quarters. Stand clear if he does."
"He cannot do it, lord," said Abdul, nervously. "He can take the shape of an insect, but as an insect he will be too heavy to fly. Our weight is the same regardless of our size, lord."
"Good!" said Tony, gratified. "Then in sand like this he can"t crawl up as a centipede, either. He"d bog down." Abdul wrung his hands.
"I spoke too soon when I offered you my allegiance," he said bitterly. "It is my opinion, lord, that he will fly to a great height as a giant bird-he will need great wing-spread to fly-and then turn to a stone and drop upon you. That is an accepted form of combat."
"Hm . . . thanks," said Tony. "If anything else occurs to you, by all means mention it."
Abdul began to shrink. He wailed again: "I spoke too soo-"
He was a stone once more. Tony could not possibly identify him among the other small stones scattered about. He began to search the sky, and remembered to wet his finger again and recheck the wind direction. There was very little movement of air, but he walked downwind from Abdul and snapped open his cigarette lighter.Lasf,as prepared in Barkut, had a distinct, slightly aromatic odor. Tony surrounded himself with a faint fragrance of the stuff. He could smash one of the phials oflasfyet remaining and make himself effectually unapproachable by Es-Souk. But he would certainly have to walk home if he did. And besides, Es-Souk could pick up stones and drop them, bomber-fashion, as easily as he could drop himself. Apparently, though, that was not an accepted form of combat. It appeared thatdjinnswere so endowed that they could make anything they chose out of themselves, and therefore did not need to think of using inanimate things. It would not be good strategy to make Es-Souk so desperate that he might begin to have ideas.
And still nothing happened. There was what seemed to be a single dark bird in the sky, far away over the mountain tops. Tony wondered how far away. The larger a pair of wings might be, the more slowly they would tend to flap. Tony watched. The great bird"s wings went downward only once in five seconds-it took five seconds for them to make their downward sweep, and recover, and begin another stroke. It looked as if it were flying in slow motion. Therefore the bird was very large, and very far away.
Tony nodded his head. At a guess, Es-Souk had adopted the outward form of a roc, and would gain an alt.i.tude of some ten or twelve thousand feet in that shape.
Then he might transform himself into a heavy small stone and try to brain Tony. But it wasn"t likely that, as a stone, he could see where he was going or correct his line of fall once he was started. Even U.S.
Army bombers, equipped with bombsights, suffered a certain amount of dispersion in their shots.
Inspiration struck Tony. He took off the camel"s-hair, belted-in-the-back topcoat. When in human form, djinnswore clothes-when they remembered. Nasim was apt to be forgetful. But the clothes they created were a part of them, like their jewels and their weapons. They might know the theory of clothing, but in practice for Tony to take off his topcoat might confuse Es-Souk. He mightn"t know whether to aim at the coat or at Tony himself. And besides, if that slowly flapping bird was a roc, and if the roc was Es-Souk, he probably couldn"t see too clearly at the height he"d obtained. Tony draped his coat over a small, spa.r.s.ely leaved bush that startlingly grew in the middle of this waste. He stood back. He was giving Es-Souk two targets to choose from, and the need for choice might be upsetting.
Apparently, it was. The great bird soared in circles for minutes. Then it dived lower, for a better look.
Tony stood as still as his topcoat. He could see the shape of the huge flying thing. It was like a giant eagle, only vastly more terrifying. Its body would be seventy or eighty feet long. Its wings would have the spread of a four-motored bomber. Its claws would have the grip of half a dozen steam shovels in one.
And its talons would be needle-sharp and more than three feet long. Decidedly, at close quarters, it wouldn"t be anything to argue with It vanished. Completely. Es-Souk had turned himself into a small round stone hurtling downward from the sky.
Tony counted: "One-two-three-"
Give the stone time to pick up speed in free fall. The time a parachuting flier waits before he opens his parachute.
"Eight-nine-ten-Geronimo!" said Tony.
He ran like the devil for fifty yards, stopped, and watched the spot where he had been. Then his jaw dropped open. His topcoat was running like the devil, too. The bush on which he had draped it was in full flight. As he stared, he saw the twinkling of pink legs under it. Then his topcoat stopped, and turned, and he saw Nasim in human form inside it. She waved gaily to him.
"h.e.l.lo!" she called brightly. "I"m helping, too!"
WHOOOOOSH!.
Something smacked the desert a mighty blow. Dust arose as from a bomb explosion. A concussion wave spread out with such power that Tony felt a puff of wind, and the topcoat went sailing from around Nasim. She had been forgetful again. She went after the coat and picked it up, swinging it cheerily in one hand as she turned to watch.
Es-Souk arose from the crater which he had made as a stone. He had a new form. He was huge and-now-black and terrible to behold. He was a giant of ebony flesh with four-foot tusks and hands whose clawed fingertips were feet in length.
Tony ran toward him, blowing on the wick of the cigarette lighter.
The giant bellowed, but Tony sprinted even faster for hand-to-hand contact. And thedjinncould not quite take it. Tony"s challenge had included so furious an insult to the entiredjinnnation that it could not possibly be a bluff-and now his confident rush to close in on Es-Souk was daunting.
Es-Souk spurted upward into a whirlwind half a mile high. He materialized as a roc at the top of the column of misty whirling air. The rest of the whirlwind flashed upward to be absorbed in the bird"s body.
It was an admirable technical solution of the problem of a quick take-off for so large a flying creature.
Gigantic flappings of mighty pinions sent the roc soaring away. Es-Souk was uncertain. He did not quite know what to do. To cover his indecision, he suddenly swooped and made what looked like a dive-bomber plunge for Tony.
It was utterly horrible to watch. The monstrous creature, its incredibly curved beak gaping, plunged for him in ravening ferocity. Its claws were stretched to rend and tear. It was as perfectly calculated to inspire panic as any sight could possibly be.
Tony faced it. He had a phial oflasfin his handkerchief, now. In the handkerchief, too, were the small stones he"d pocketed. He held the cigarette lighter in his left hand. His right gripped that singularly innocuous bomb. At the last instant he"d squeeze, crush the phial between the stones, and hurl the dripping handkerchief-weighted by the stones-deep into the gaping throat. He didn"t know how quickly it would work, but- The roc zoomed just as Tony was sending the message to his fingers to tense and smash thelasf-phial.
The great wings beat horrifically. Sand rose in clouds about Tony, blinding him. He found himself almost buried to his knees as the sand settled about him.
The roc was flapping into the sky again. Nasim ran up to Tony, beaming and offering him the coat.
"You"re wonderful!" she said adoringly. "What are you going to do next? And what do you want me to do?" He said indignantly: "You shouldn"t mix into a private fight like this, Nasim!"
"Oh, do let me help!" she pleaded.
"h.e.l.l!" said Tony. "Put on something! Put on the coat! How do you expect me to keep my mind on fighting?"
The roc which was Es-Souk made a steep, banking turn. It power-dived at Tony again. And this time Es-Souk had a purpose, a new purpose. He"d seen Tony struggling up out of the sand. So Es-Souk came back only yards above the desert"s surface, his monstrous wings beating almost straight back to give him the absolute maximum of speed. Then, only fifty feet from Tony, he swept his wings violently ahead, and not only checked his own speed and sent himself hurtling upward, but set up such a furious smother of swirling sand that Tony was buried breast-deep before he realized what was happening.
Es-Souk had made a sizable sand dune with one stroke of his mighty roc"s wings. It was sheer fortune that its deepest part did not overwhelm Tony.
He worked his way clear, Nasim pulling anxiously at him-with the topcoat lost again. Tony swore furiously. Something like a bubble appeared in the sand dune"s flank. Abdul appeared and arose, with sand grains dripping from his turban. He sputtered and wailed: "I know I spoke too soon! . . . Lord! Next time he will bury you, and you will smother, and then what will I do?"
Es-Souk whirled again, low down, and shot back toward Tony again. Nasim said firmly: "Don"t be so stupid, Abdul! Turn yourself into a griffin, with a saddle, and let him ride you to fight Es-Souk in the air!"
Abdul blinked and hastily drew a deep breath. He expanded, to a large round object with no identifiable features. He contracted to something that Tony could not identify, and which at the moment he did not examine. He saw wings and a saddle and a long, serpentine tail. He made a dash for the saddle, swung into it, and hung on.
Chapter 15.
And he felt himself shooting skyward with breath-taking velocity! There was one instant when a huge, feathered body was directly below him-a body so huge that it gave him a queer sensation of being an insect chased by an infuriated hen. Then he was clear and rising. There were great, veined wings beating on either side, there was a scaly body below him, doubtlessly a serpentine tail behind him, and a long, snaky neck in front with a head he could not see clearly.
That neck twisted and a specifically indefinite face appeared-or rather, did not appear. It looked like mist, yet there were eyes in it, and Abdul"s plaintive voice came to Tony above the beat of mighty wings.
"Lord," said Abdul miserably, "if you have some weapon to use against Es-Souk, if you tell me how you wish to use it, I will try to give you the opportunity. If you do not win this fight, lord, I am ruined!"
"I"ve got a weapon, all right," said Tony. "I"d intended to use it on the ground, away from you and Nasim. It"s pretty deadly to anydjinnanywhere near by."
Abdul make a moaning sound.
"But if anything happens to you," said Tony, "I"ll have a nasty fall. So-hm . . . get us some height, and then if you can let Es-Souk dive at me from behind, I think I can use my weapon so you won"t be affected."
The desert shrank as the unnamed creature into which Abdul had transformed himself strove desperately for height. Tony found a strap hitched to the saddle, intended to make the rider secure in his place. He fastened it and felt better. He saw the roc, far below, beginning to beat upward with furious strokes of its long pinions.
He tucked away his cigarette case and got out his two stones and the handkerchief and the full phial of lasf.He rearranged the stones and the phial in the handkerchief. He tied the whole together, tugging at the corners of the handkerchief with his teeth. The combination made a fairly handy if eccentric hand grenade. But of course it could not possibly explode.
Then he watched with an unnatural calm. Just as in an airplane one has no sensation of height, so on this peculiar mount he felt as if he were in some sensational illusory ride in an amus.e.m.e.nt park. He even examined the creature he rode, while the mountain tops grew level with him and then sank a thousand feet or more below.
"Abdul," he said. "What on earth are you, anyhow? I"ve never seen anything like this!"
Abdul said miserably: "I had indigestion one night, lord, and dreamed this. So I practiced making myself into it. It has been much admired. The touch of having the creature possess no actual, visible face is considered very effective, and I-I thought at one time that Nasim was much impressed by it. But she became betrothed to Es-Souk. I think, lord, that the form I wear might be called a chimaera."
Tony said: "Nasim liked it, eh? . . . here comes Es-Souk! Level off, Abdul, and let him get on our tail. When he comes diving in I"ll do my stuff, and when I yell you put on the heat. Get away from there fast!
Understand?"
"Aye, lord." And then Abdul wailed from that misty emptiness which was the chimaera"s face, "If I ever get out of this, I will never speak so soon again! I will never offer allegiance to any other-"
The very mountains seemed like toadstools below them. Tony could see over uncountable square miles of desert and foothills. He even thought he saw a dark smudge against the horizon which might be the oasis and the city of Barkut- Tony felt a shadow fall upon him-the shadow of the roc, a thousand feet above. It screamed at him.
"Get set now," said Tony, between his teeth. "Ready-let"s go! He"s diving, Abdul!"
The roc flattened its wings, partly folding them, and came rushing down in a deadly plunge. Actually, Es-Souk was still at least partly bluffed. Tony had been too confident, and Es-Souk was a cageydjinn.
He"d had one experience of hand-to-hand fighting with Tony, and he had sneezed so horribly that-knowing what he knew-he had been scared to the very last atom of his fissionable being. But since Tony was now some twelve thousand feet above ground-level, on chimaera-back, it would be possible to kill him even more surely than by tearing him limb from limb. A furious a.s.sault upon Abdul, in some tender member, should make thedjinn-chimaerareact in typicaldjinnfashion-by metamorphosis.
Abdul could definitely be forced to change to something else. And if he failed of absolute presence of mind, he would forget to include Tony"s saddle and safety belt in his new shape, and Tony would thump into the desert below in a completely conclusive finish to the duel.
So the roc plunged savagely-seemingly for Tony, but intending a last-second swerve and the chewing-up of one of Abdul"s chimaera-wings. In sheer self-defense Abdul must repair the damage by changing form, and- "Brakes, Abdul!" commanded Tony. "He"s not gaining fast enough!"
Abdul slowed-and the roc gained. Closer-closer-its great beak gaping. It was almost time for the swerve and the slashing attack which would send Tony plunging some two miles and more to death Tony shouted, "Now, Abdul! Brake hard! That"ll make him overshoot-"
Abdul braked. Chimaeras are extraordinarily maneuverable creatures. Abdul seemed practically to stop short in mid-air. The roe almost crashed into him, its cavernous beak widening in awful menace.
Actually, the roc"s beak was no more than twenty feet away when Tony squeezed hard on his improvised bomb, felt the gla.s.s crunch-and heaved the cloth-wrapped missile into the gaping throat. It was an excellent shot. He saw the little object go flying down the two-yard, open gullet to its maw.
"Roger!" roared Tony. "Step on it! Move!"
Then he felt as if his neck would snap off. Abdul took evasive action. It began with an outside loop that made the safety belt creak hideously, was followed by a wing-over at the bottom, and then continued as a power dive in which the wind went pouring into Tony"s open mouth until he felt as if he were being forcibly inflated.
But even then he looked back.
The roc was motionless, as if paralyzed by some awful shock. But the paralysis lasted only for seconds.
Suddenly the already huge form expanded still more. It struggled convulsively. It sneezed. In its struggling it had not stayed on an even keel. The sneeze had all the propulsive effect of a high-temperature jet. It kicked the suddenly shapeless object violently higher. It writhed. It struggled again, very horribly. It ceased to be a bird, it was impossible to say what it was! Another convulsion even more violent than the first. The almost amoeboid object shot higher-it had pseudopods now, which appeared at random and flailed aimlessly but with terrific force. A second convulsive sneeze ejected so huge a volume of air with such violence that thedjinnwas shot up a good five thousand feet.
Es-Souk was maddened, now, with the knowledge of his doom. He went into lunatic gyrations which turned into flight straight upward. But he flew now not by wings or any motion of any members, but by the lightning-swift protrusion of a threadlike pseudopod far ahead and the equally lightning-like flowing of all his substance up to and into it, and the instant repet.i.tion of the process.
Even huge as he now was, he rose so swiftly as to dwindle as Tony watched. At ten miles alt.i.tude there was a convulsive sidewise jerking of the climbing thing. Another sneeze. He continued to shoot frantically skyward. Twenty miles up . . . he was probably a quarter-mile across, but he became a speck which could barely be distinguished Then he blew up. He must have been fifty miles high, at least. He was in the upper troposphere. And he must have weighed several hundred pounds. Perhaps not all his substance disintegrated. Even human atomic bombs do not detonate with one hundred percent conversion of their ma.s.s into free energy.
Es-Souk"s efficiency as a bomb was probably less than that of purified U235 or plutonium. But the flare was colossal. There was a sensation of momentary, terrific heat. No sound, of course. The explosion took place where the air was too thin to carry sound. For the same reason there was no concussion wave. But the flash of Es-Souk"s detonation was several times brighter than the sun and a dozen times the sun"s diameter.
Minutes later, Abdul came rather heavily to a landing on the desert. Tony dismounted. Abdul seemed to dissolve suddenly and run together, without any intermediate state, to restore thedjinnto his short, swart, human form, with the turban atop his head. He was trembling.
"Lord!" he said in a shaking voice. "I did not know how terrible was your weapon! I did not know that you were so much more powerful than the most powerful ofdjinns.Indeed, lord, I apologize for regretting that I offered my allegiance. I did not speak too soon, lord! I did not speak soon enough! And by the beard of the Prophet, I swear that you are my king and my ruler for always!"