Lost on Venus by Edgar Burroughs

Author:Edgar Burroughs [Burroughs, Edgar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-12-23T06:26:26.252000+00:00

* * *

Acting upon Nalte's suggestion we concealed ourselves behind a clump of underbrush and waited. The cackling grew in volume, and we knew that the kazars were approaching.

"Do you suppose that it is Skor's pack?" I asked.

"It must be," she replied. "There is no other pack in this vicinity, according to Skor."

"Nor any wild kazars?"

"No. He says that there are no wild ones on this side of the big river. They range on the opposite side. These must be Skor's!"

We waited in silence as the sounds approached, and presently we saw the new leader of the pack trot into view on the opposite bank. Behind him strung several more of the grotesque beasts, and then came Skor, mounted on his zorat, with the dead men that formed his retinue surrounding him.

"Duare is not there!" whispered Nalte. "Skor did not recapture her."

We watched Skor and his party until they had passed out of sight among the trees of the forest on the other side of the river, and it was with a sigh of relief that I saw what I hoped would be the last of the jong of Morov.

While I was relieved to know that Duare had not been recaptured, I was still but little less apprehensive concerning her fate. Many dangers might beset her, alone and unprotected in this savage land; and I had only the vaguest conception of where to search for her.

After the passing of Skor we had continued on down the river, and presently Nalte pointed ahead to a line of ripples that stretched from bank to bank where the river widened.

"There is the ford," she said, "but there is no use crossing it to look for Duare's trail. If she had escaped on that side of the river the kazars would have found her before now. The fact that they didn't find her is fairly good proof that she was never over there."

I was not so sure of that. I did not know that Duare could swim nor that she could not, but the chances were highly in favor of the latter possibility, since Duare had been born and reared in the tree city of Kooaad.

"Perhaps they found her and killed her," I suggested, horrified at the very thought of such a tragedy.

"No," dissented Nalte. "Skor would have prevented that; he wanted her."

"But something else might have killed her; they might have found her dead body."

"Skor would have brought it back with him and invested it with the synthetic life that animates his retinue of dead," argued Nalte.

Still I was not convinced. "How do the kazars trail?" I asked. "Do they follow the spoor of their quarry by scent?"

Nalte shook her head. "Their sense of smell is extremely poor, but their vision is acute. In trailing, they depend wholly upon their eyes."

"Then it is possible that they might not have crossed Duare's trail at all and so missed her."

"Possible, but not probable," replied Nalte. "What is more probable is that she was killed and devoured by some beast before Skor was able to recapture her.

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