reverted to the girl at my side; and I could not but recall her courage during our escape and her generous willingness to delay her own flight that we might search for Duare. It was apparent that her character formed a trinity of loveliness with her form and her face. And I did not even know her name!
That fact struck me as being as remarkable as that I had only known her for an hour. So intimate are the bonds of mutual adversity and danger that it seemed I had known her always, that that hour was indeed an eternity.
'Do you realize,' I asked, turning toward her, 'that neither of us knows the other's name?' And then I told her mine.
'Carson Napier!' she repeated. 'That is a strange name.'
'And what is yours?'
'Nalte voo Man kum Baltoo,' she replied, which means Nalte, the daughter of Baltoo. 'The people call me Voo Jan, but my friends call me Nalte.'
'And what am I to call you?' I asked.
She looked at me in surprise. 'Why, Nalte, of course.'
'I am honored by being included among your friends.'
'But are you not my best, my only friend now in all Amtor?'
I had to admit that her reasoning was sound, since as far as all the rest of Amtor was concerned we were the only two people on that cloud-girt planet, and we were certainly not enemies.
* * * * *
We were moving cautiously along without sight of the river when Nalte suddenly touched my arm and pointed toward the opposite bank, at the same time dragging me down behind a shrub.
Just opposite us a corpse had washed ashore; and a short distance below, two others. They were our pursuers. As we watched, they slowly crawled to their feet then the one we had first seen called to the others, who presently joined him. The three corpses talked together, pointing and gesticulating. It was horrible. I felt my skin creep.
What would they do? should they continue the search or would they return to the castle? If the former, they would have to cross the river; and they must already have learned that there was little likelihood of their being able to do that. But that was attributing to dead brains the power to reason! It seemed incredible. I asked Nalte what she thought about.
'It is a mystery to me,' she replied. 'They converse, and they appear to reason. At first I thought they were motivated through the hypnotic influence of Skor's mind solely—that they thought his thoughts, as it were; but they take independent action when Skor is away, as you have seen them do today, which refutes that theory. Skor says that they do reason. He has stimulated their nervous systems into the semblance of life, though no blood flows in their veins; but the past experiences of their lives before they died are less potent in influencing their judgments than the new system of conduct and ethics that Skor has instilled into their dead brains. He admits that the specimens he has at the castle are very dull; but that, he insists, is because they were dull people in life.'
The dead men conversed for some time and then started slowly up river in the direction of the castle, and it was with a sigh of relief that we saw them disappear.
'Now we must try to find a good place to cross,' I said. 'I wish to search the other side for some sign of Duare. She must have left footprints in the soft earth.'
'There is a ford somewhere down river,' said Nalte. 'When Skor captured me we crossed it on our way to the castle. I do not know just where it is, but it cannot be far.'
We had descended the river some two miles from the point at which we had seen the dead man emerge upon the opposite bank, without seeing any sign of a crossing, when I heard faintly a familiar cackling that seemed to come from across the river and farther down.
'Do you hear that?' I asked Nalte. She listened intently for a moment as the cackling grew louder. 'Yes,' she replied—'the kazars. We had better hide.'
* * * * *
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.'
The explanation had already occurred to me, but I did not wish to even think about it. 'Nevertheless,' I said, 'we might as well cross over to the other bank. If we are going to follow the big river down stream we shall have to cross this affluent sooner or later, and we may not find another ford as it grows broader and deeper toward its mouth.'
* * * * *
The ford was broad and well marked by ripples, so we had no difficulty in following it toward the opposite bank. However, we were compelled to keep our eyes on the water most of the time as the ford took two curves that formed a flattened S, and it would have been quite easy to have stepped off into deep water and been swept down stream had we not been careful.
The result of our constant watchfulness approached disaster as we neared the left bank of the stream. The merest chance caused me to look up. I was slightly in advance of Nalte as we walked hand in hand for greater safety. I stopped so suddenly at what I saw that the girl bumped into me. Then she looked up, and a little, involuntary cry of alarm burst from her lips.
'What are they?' she asked.
'I don't know,' I replied. 'Don't you?'
