Korak at the Earth's Core (Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe - The Dead Moon Super-Arc, Book One) by Win Scott Eckert & Christopher Paul Carey

Author:Win Scott Eckert & Christopher Paul Carey [Eckert, Win Scott & Carey, Christopher Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.
Published: 2024-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

19

ON THE DEAD MOON

ABNER PERRY’S BIPLANE, engine sputtering and spinning out of control, spiraled downward toward a dense green forest. Plummeting toward the upper terrace of the trees, Korak pulled desperately at the control stick, finally managing to partially level the plane, but he and Akut were out of time.

The plane’s landing gear caught on the upper branches, and the aircraft flipped and tumbled end over end, tossing the ape-man and the Mangani unceremoniously from their respective cockpits. The two managed to keep a grip on their weapons, Korak his rifle and bow, and Akut his stone ax.

The two fell through the upper terrace, and toward the middle terrace of the thickly treed forest, bouncing to and fro from branch to branch like uncontrolled pinballs. Eventually, each shot out a strong hand and managed to find and keep a grip on thick tree branches. Korak’s shoulder was almost wrenched from the socket, while Akut, swinging gracefully round and round his branch like an acrobat on a trapeze, dispelled the energy of his fall until finally he perched on the branch and gathered his wits. Korak pulled himself up and rested on his own thick branch, and looked down at his friend, some ten feet below and six feet to his right. At least they were safe and relatively uninjured.

Their attention was drawn by a loud explosion, and both jerked their heads upward and to the left, where they saw a massive fireball engulfing the greenery of the upper terrace. Their plane’s internal combustion engine had combusted. There would be no returning to the surface of Pellucidar that way—not that the flimsy aeroplane had been in any shape to make the return trip anyway.

The two adventurers slowly made their way down through the middle terrace and to the lower levels, finally reaching the loamy soil of the Dead World. They found themselves in a closely packed forest of extremely tall trees. Here they saw that the very upper terrace from which they had descended formed a dense canopy, shielding their view above and likewise screening from view the surface of the Dead World from the inhabitants of Pellucidar.

The trees were oddly shaped, with trunks that spiraled upward rather than being cylindrical in shape. Similarly, the branches extended horizontally, for the most part, but also in an ever contracting spiral the farther they grew from the trunk. The boughs were thick with blue-green leaves, creepers, and vines, contributing to a sense that the forest was well-nigh impenetrable on all points, as well as overhead.

By silent agreement, the two marched in a random direction, and after some time had passed, Korak labeled this direction “west,” for Pellucidar’s primeval sun was not eternal here, and it was setting in the general direction they had set for themselves. Soon, the sun would set below the tall trees and the shadowed twilight in which they had been trooping would descend into darkness. It was not, Korak admitted to himself, a prospect he dreaded, for he had

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