The Greatest Works of Otis Adelbert Kline - 18 Books in One Edition. Otis Adelbert Kline
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When I bad once more become aware of my surroundings, I was lying in semi- darkness on a cold stone floor. The top of my head was bruised and tender, and my neck so lame that a sharp twinge of pain shot through it each time I turned my head to look about. The belt, to which my tork and scarbo had been fastened, was gone.
I sat up, and my brain swam dizzily for a moment. My vision cleared presently, and I saw that the source of the light which but faintly illuminated the spot I occupied was a jagged opening—evidently the mouth of a huge cave.
Quite close to me on my left, I became aware that some creature was breathing heavily, apparently in sleep. Turning, I beheld the recumbent form of a gigantic hairy female—head pillowed on arm, and knees drawn up as if for warmth, sleeping not four feet from me.
The face was neither ape nor human, but partook of the characteristics of both. The form, slender of waist, full-breasted and broad-hipped, was more like that of a human female than a she-ape, though covered with short, reddish-brown hair. The limbs were not ungraceful, but the toes were long and evidently prehensile. I judged that the creature, when standing erect, must be at least eight feet in height and so powerfully muscled as to be a formidable antagonist.
Stealthily I stood erect, then tiptoed toward the mouth of the cave. I had not taken more than a dozen steps when something tripped me and I fell headlong to the jagged floor. At the same time there came the sound of a fearful growl behind me.
Before I could scramble to my feet I was pounced upon from behind and jerked erect. Then, with my arms pinioned behind me by two powerful hairy hands, I was marched out into the sunlight. Looking up, to the considerable inconvenience of my injured neck, I saw that my captor was the big female who had been sleeping so peacefully a moment before. She had been awakened by a thin but exceedingly tough twisted string of gut, tied to my ankle and her wrist.
We were high up on a rugged hillside which seemed honeycombed with caves. In the valley far below us, I saw the waving fronds of huge tree-ferns above the tangled mass of jungle vegetation.
“So, food-man, you would escape Chixa, and thus have Chixa slain,” said my captor in a peculiar, clucking Patoa.
“It is high time you were taken before Rorg. Perhaps he is hungry.”
“Release my wrists,” I replied, “and I’ll be glad to go with you before Rorg. Who is he, and what has his hunger to do with me?”
“Rorg is the king, the Rogo of the Cave-Apes.” The tall female released my wrists and stepped up beside me, taking a firm grip on my right arm. “If he is hungry he may want to eat you.”
“What makes you think I will be good to eat?” I asked.
“I have tasted the flesh of many food-men, and most of it is good, though it is sometimes too salty. Are you very salty?”
“Very. I’m afraid your ruler would be displeased.”
“If you are very salty he will be greatly pleased,” said Chixa. “He likes salty food-men, though I do not.”
About the furry waist of my captor there was a string like the one bound to my ankle. Swinging from this string on the side opposite me, by a short hook in the handle, was a weapon I greatly coveted.
It was a club of hard wood about three feet in length, shaped something like the blade of an oar, but thicker and heavier, and pointed at the end. Set in the two edges of this club were small bits of sharp flint which gave it a formidable saw-like appearance. It was heavy enough to crush a skull or break a limb, and sharp enough to lacerate the toughest muscle. A large flint knife also swung between her breasts from a cord around her neck.
The cave-ape walking beside me was in some ways like a woman, and because of that faint similarity I hesitated for a moment to carry out the plan which had come to me. But life has ever been dear to me—even though I love adventure so greatly that I have risked death in many terrible forms on three planets—so my hesitation was but momentary.
Suddenly turning with my right arm bent at the elbow, I put all my weight in a blow that landed in the furry solar plexus. With a terrible sound— half scream, half roar—my tall captor clasped her hands to her abdomen and bent over. As she did so I pivoted the other way with a left to the point of her jaw, and she fell unconscious at my feet.
Quickly slipping the knife cord from around her neck, I sawed the gut tether from my ankle. Then I seized the club which dangled from her belt, and looked about me for the most likely avenue of escape.
To my surprise and horror, I saw that there was none, for at the sound of Chixa’s voice, the caves had suddenly spewed forth not less than a thousand of these gigantic creatures, all armed as I now was, with flint knives and sawedged clubs. The mature females varied in height from seven to nine feet and the males from ten to twelve.
Those nearest me had spied me as I got to my feet, and now approached menacingly from all sides with bared fangs and low, throaty growls—the males displaying long, downcurving tusks which greatly increased their ferocious appearance.
With the club held swordlike in my right hand, and the flint knife gripped in my left, I leaped for a great leaning boulder, one side of which could afford me protection from above and behind.
A huge tusked male sprang forward to bar my progress, and swung his saw- edged club in a terrific blow. He was fully eleven feet in height, and towering above me as he did, offered no opportunity for quick club work.
There was, however, a chance to use the knife, which I did without compunction. Leaping beneath his swinging arms, I buried it in the right side of his abdomen and ripped him across the belly. While he swayed drunkenly, I completed my rush to the temporary protection of the boulder, and as I turned with my back against it to meet the attack of the others, I saw him topple to the ground.
A moment later I was confronted by a semicircle of growling, roaring cave- apes, swinging their clubs menacingly, but a little different about approaching me too closely—probably because of what had happened to their companion. Nixed with the growling and roaring I could distinctly hear the Patoan words “kill” and “meat,” which sounded ominous enough.
The great tusked males seemed to be working themselves into a frenzy of fury as they came closer and closer—evidently their primitive way of attempting to overcome their fear of me.
Presently one leaped out ahead of the closing line, and swung his club for my head with a terrific downward, two-handed stroke. I stepped to the left, and forward, and as his club was shattered on the stone where I had been standing, the flinty edge of my own bit deeply into his cervical vertebrae. He fell on his face without a sound.
I sprang to a new position, brandishing my club menacingly, and the line of attackers moved back a little.
“Kill! Kill!” The word was repeated constantly now as the savage semicircle closed in once more.
“Come and be killed!” I replied.
“You will be next to die, food-man,” roared a huge male who stood near the center of the line, “for Urg is about to kill you.” Urg stood at least twelve feet in height, a head taller than the other males in the front line, and his great downcurving tusks, fully seven inches in length, gave him a most ferocious aspect.
He seemed about to spring forward, and I had braced myself for his attack, when there was a sudden commotion behind him. The milling crowd of apes drew back respectfully to make way for a huge male, taller and heavier even than Urg.
Just behind him walked two young females, one waving a fern front to keep annoying insects away from him, while the other carried a huge gourd-like fungus with a bottle neck and a bowl made from a split sporepod. Behind these two walked more ape-maidens, some carrying fresh meat, while others bore bowls heaped high with fragments of edible fungi or sporepods, cracked, and ready for eating.
Coming up behind Urg, the newcomer carelessly pushed him aside and stood in the front line,