Conqueror of The Center of the Earth

 Conqueror of the Center of the   

                     Earth                       

                                     or     

                   The Adventures of Michel Dufrenoy 

                      In the Lost Land of Lidenbrock  

         By Sean E. A. Phillips

   The young man lay face down in the snow.

     He had fallen prostrate in an ancient cemetery, on a hill. Deep in the valley below, there glimmered the lights of Paris. Snowflakes drifted down through the darkness, over the ice-encrusted tombstones.

    Faintly, from a far off cathedral, there sounded the chimes, ringing out the end of mass and the end of an old year.

    An old man and a child, on their way home from mass, and bundled against the bitter cold passed by on a winding path. “Look! Look, grampa! A man! A man has fallen in the snow!”

      “Hush, child!”

      “But there he is! Look!”

      The old man dared a closer look. “You’re right, by Jove!”

     “Can we help him? We have to help him!”

       “Now, now, child. There’s not much we can do. Besides, it looks as if the poor fellow fell dead of cold!”

       “He’s dead grampa?”

      “I think so, yes.”

       “But maybe he’s not!”

     “He isn’t.” said a voice. It was deep baratone, and quite resonant. It also seemed to materialize in the frosty air, making both the youngling and oldster jump.

     “Who’s there?!” cried the old man, raising his cane. Then for the first time, both of them noticed the tall, shadowed form beneath a looming skeletal tree, a scant difference from where the young man lay.

    “No one you need to know,” said the stranger. “But you need not concern yourself with this man. Be on your way, and leave him to me.”

    Something in that resonant voice made them do exactly that. The old man, arms sheltering the child, hurried both of them on their way.

 

   The tall form detached itself from the shadows. The stranger was cloaked in a long coat of thick fur. He strode to where the young man lay. The tall stranger lowered himself, turned over the body of the young man. He was more a boy than a man, actually, all of sixteen years of age. He had a fragile appearance, and delicate features that made him appear even younger. The lad’s straw-colored hair lay splayed-out in the snow.

     The boy’s name was Michel Dufrenoy, and he had just spent the evening staggering about Paris in a daze in search of his lost love.

    The cloaked stranger swept the lad up into his great arms; the lad, though a teenager, was thin, fragile, and did not way much. The stranger seemed powerful, and was able to bear off the lad through the frozen winterscape as though he weighed nothing.

   Through the frozen monuments of crosses and angels the tall man carried his frail charge, then down the hill, through a copse of skeletal trees, and to a roadway. There waited a bizarre vehicle that appeared strangely out of place in 1960s Paris. It was a car, and yet it was not. It was more massive  than the small sleek cars of these times, with ornate fin like appendages on either side, and a domed carapace above. A door slid open and he placed the still-comatose lad on a richly upholstered seat. The man entered himself. The vehicle took off, slowly at first, then at an astonishing speed, even by the standards of modern craft. Even on the ice-covered roads, the stranger’s car was blindingly fast. A great gout of red-orange flame roared from the exhaust tubes, as the machine streaked through the blue-dark snowy night.

   A great crag rose up in the distance. The car-thing streaked off the ran off in its direction. And when this happened, so did something amazing. As the stranger’s car tore off the road and across the snowfield, the wheels retracted, to be replaced by sleek steel runners, designed to streak over snow! The craft doubled its fantastic speed, and reached the base of the crag in no time. Had Michel Dufrenoy’s eyes been open, and had he been peering out the window of the strange carriage, the lad would have been astonished to observe a large and extensive mansion situated in the crown of the low cliff.

     A great steel door in the cliff faced slid massively back. The vehicle entered, and the door closed.

    For several seconds, all was darkness, save the lights of the machine, and the dying flare of its exhaust pipes. The carriage ground to a halt. From everywhere within the vast darkness, electric lights blinked on. They were in a vast room within the cliff, so huge, in fact, that one could fit the entire library of Paris, and the grand opera house within. The floor and walls were fashioned of steel. Other fantastic crafts set parked within the chamber, including one that appeared to be a full-sized arial version of a clipper ship, outfitted with a myriad of great propellers.

     The cloaked man lifted the still-comatose boy from his fantastic vehicle, and carried him across the breadth of the place to a door. His gloved hand pressed a button, and the door slid open. He carried him through and up a great, coiling staircase that spiraled up, up and up further still, to a seemingly fantastic height, before another door slid back. The man carried the limp form into a richly furnished mansion, one ornate enough to have befitted royalty.

     Some unfathomable time later, Michel Dufrenoy’s eyes fluttered open. As the boy returned to hazy consciousness, the first things he became aware was warmth and light. The numbing subzero cold of the Parisan winter night was no more. Though still weak, he felt warm and invigorated. Slowly he saw the room around him in a haze of soft, yellow and gold light. The precise nature of where he was took a little longer to focus. Gradually, the boy saw that he was in a large room, possibly a great drawing room like the sort you would find in a great mansion. He saw that the room was richly furnished, with great lacquered tables, chairs and a spacious sofa, gold enameled and upholstered in something like red velvet, and looking wonderfully soft. Michel realized that he must be lying on another such sofa himself, for it felt heavenly after his freezing ordeal on the frigid Paris streets. But the most amazing thing Michel saw, as his senses recovered and his surroundings tightened into focus, was that he was now in, not a drawing room as he had initially supposed, but an enormous library, filled with innumerable volumes. The blazing ceiling arched high above him. The room was circular in shape. A richly red carpet covered the floor, and the gilded twin staircases arched up to a lower balcony, where bookcases lined with volumes filled the great circular walls. Other brief stairways ascended to higher balconies, the walls stuffed with volumes upon volumes, clear up to the arch of the ceiling. Never before had Michel beheld such a vast assortment of reading material. The entire room was suffused with a warm glow which came primarily from a great hearth situated in the wall between the twin stairways, Within, a great yellow-red fire blazed, filling the room and Michel with marvelous warmth, and the room with leaping shadows against the crimson luminance.

       “What…how did I come here?” Michel murmured.

       “I found you, brought you here," said a deep, resonant voice.

      It was only then that Michel noticed the great form situated in a vast plush armchair straight across from him. The form was very tall, and rather wiry, though large. Whoever it was remained cloaked within shadows wrought by the cavorting flames of the hearth.

    “Greetings, Michel Dufrenoy,” Michel’s rescuer told him.

    “How did you know--?”

    “I know all about you, Michel,” he said. “By virtue of my spies. I know how you left your cabin tonight, on a fruitless search for your sweet Lucy, only to find her and her father evicted. How you wandered until you fainted from the cold. But I know even more about you. I know that you’re the only real poet left in 20^th century, or the only one known, that is. I know of your love for Lucy, and your work at the theatre, of your musician friend Quinsonnas, and how the company fired you both for spilling ink on that ledger.”

      Michel had not the faintest idea how this man, whom he surely had never encountered before, had come to know so much about his life, or why he had rescued him and brought him here.

    “Who are you?” the boy trembled, “Why did you save me from freezing?”

    “You are the last person alive in Paris, perhaps the world, who might actually care. Tell me boy, what would you give to leave all of Paris far behind—to venture to a new unspoiled world to call your own. Imagine you will find plenty to inflame that poetic imagination of yours. Paris! She is ancient and decayed, her masses starving and impoverished. Are you ready to leave all of this behind?”

       Yes!! Michel wanted to scream. Then he remembered; How could this be possible? The man before him might well be mad, or more likely, speaking metaphorically. But even if such a miracle as he suggested were possible, what of Lucy! Lucy! His only love. All the nightmare hours he’d spent on his odyssey through the 20 below December darkness, he’d never found her! Where were Lucy and her dear father now?

    “Ah, you worry about your Lucy even now,” the man said, as though sensing his thoughts, “Do not. Knowing your feeling for her, I have made arrangements to bring her here as well.”

    “Y-you have?” quaked the boy, daring to hope that all was not lost. “But where is she? How do you know?”

    The stranger raised a hand. “Not now. First, I must introduce myself. My name is Robur,”

     Robur…. Michel thought he recalled that name from somewhere. It took several moments of hazy recollection, but then it came to him. “Robur! Not Professor Robur, not the one I remember from history class!”

     “The very same,” the stranger told him.

    “But…I read that you vanished off the face of the earth, way back in the early part of this century!”

    “And so I did, my young friend,” Robur said, and as he did so, he shifted position in his great armchair, so that he became more discernible to Michel. The man was clad in an expansive suit and jacket of finest silk of deep blue color, which shone and glimmered with the flickering light. Of his face, Michel could clearly discern only one half, the other etched in shadow, but the picture this presented of his savior was a face of most sinister quality, a chin sporting a jet-black goatee, piercing black eyes, and slicked back hair of the same midnight hue. There was not, so far as Michel could tell, any trace of grayness around the edges, or of any creasing of skin that would suggest aging. But Robur had vanished many decades ago. How was this possible?

    “I vanished beneath the ocean, my vehicle, the Terror, damaged and unable to surface. But there was more—still more!—to my invention then those pathetic fools thought! It was capable of great proficiency on  land, in the air, and on the water. But they did not know it was also made for travel beneath the waves, and boring beneath the earth’s surface!”

     “Beneath the surface, sir?” asked Michel, dazed and perplexed.

     “Indeed, for I guided my wounded craft into the turgid depths of the ocean until I reached the continental shelf. And a great boring drill replaced the nozzle of the Terror, and I bored deep, deep below the surface of the earth. I broke out at last through the mighty wall of a huge cliff, and the Terror again took flight, spreading its wing-sails, as we glided for through caverns you would find unimaginably vast! The ocean torrent raged through the cliff, dissipating to mist within the unguessed depths below, where vast clusters of jewels cast shimmering waves of rainbow-hued light!  I was now guiding my craft through the center of something like the inside of vast geode or amythyst, with shards of blue-purple crystal, some of these the size of the buildings of Paris, gleaming and shimmering within some eerie, unkown light source. I journeyed further, of course, through a myriad of other hollowed out spheres’ some gigantic enough to swallow all of Paris and London combined. Some of these were composed of crystals of milky-white, others a crimson ruby, some of emerald, or some like stone. But this far beneath the surface the stones swell to inconceivable proportions. Hah! To hear surface treasure-seekers talk of wealth! But it was not mere material wealth I was seeking at the moment! Not at all! For I had long planned on venturing beneath the surface, to find out of what Professor Lidenbrock claimed was, in fact true!”

     “Professor Lidenbrock!” Michel exclaimed suddenly. “Yes, I remember him! He was an explorer of the nineteenth century. He descended into an extinct volcano in Iceland, and claimed to have reached the center of the earth.”

      “That is correct!”

       “But Lidenbrock brought back no proof with him, so his story was never verified.”

       “True, but many noted geologists and paleontologists debated over Lidenbrock’s claims for decades. It was agreed upon by more than half that his claim about the earth being hollow and much cooler than previously thought, was true, in fact. There were plans, not merely for further explorations, but a  possible tramway to the center of the earth, if such an engineering feat were possible. I believe—no, I know—that such a feat would be possible! But the world became too caught up in other inventions, the ones you see all around you in modern Paris today: carriages and trains that run on air pressure, long distance communication, heavier-than-air airships. Such innovations have solved the world's problems—or so many fools thought, until the current famine.”

      “Oh, but the libraries!” cried Michel. “The books! So much knowledge, but gone are the classics by Proust and Balzac, and Hugo! Poetry—no one even cares anymore. And the theatre—it is most dreadful today! Nothing but lewdness and vulgarity!”

    “Aptly put,” Robur said, “for a man borne decades, perhaps a century, after his time.”

    “Yes, yes,” wept Michel. “That, I believe, is certainly correct. Some mishap, it seems, has cast me into the wrong world. I often have felt that I belong to another time, another age. To have lived among the great poets and playwrites of the past Golden Era!”

    “But there is another world than this frozen, famine ravished one of ours, lad. And it exists, kilometers beneath our feet.”

     “So—you found it? Lidenbrock’s lost world? It truly exists?”

    “It does. Every bit as much as you and I, this room around us, and frozen Paris beyond.”

     “He described a hidden paradise, didn’t he? A verdant world where the sun always shone, and a sea and forests filled with prehistoric life. Giant mushrooms! Whale-like lizards! Giant mastodons!”

     “There is no inner sun, boy, nor did Professor Lidenbrock say there was. Magnetic currents within the earth’s hollow core are what provides the light source. Ah, but all the rest is very true, boy! I commandeered the Terror through many more vast and spectacular caverns, until at last I was sailing out over a vast landscape. I was now, I realized, within a hollow portion more grand than any other. The luminance here was dim, and much of the land far below was shrouded in a kind of twilight, but emitting an eerie, bluish glow. I guided my craft lower, until I had a good view of a vast forest that extended for kilos over the cavern floor. But great swaths of it were composed of what appeared to be gigantic mushrooms, not unlike the ones described in the Lidenbrock journal. But these, I saw were the source of weird blue radiance. The entire forest of them was lit up thusly, bathing the world below in a kind of bioluminecnce. And it was then that I observed that the air about me was filled with miniscule glowing lights, like tiny glowing flakes of luminescent stardust! I soon realized they drifted across the window that they were some sort of midge or gnat, that created their own light-source, the way some deep-sea dwelling fish do. And then I beheld something still more marvelous. The great glowing shape of a huge flying beast, a living pterosaur past by in the air, gulping up the midges!”

     “A pterosaur?”

    “A type of pterodactyl, or flying lizard such as the ones preserved in shale from earth’s remote past. Here was a living example, and I knew then for certain that the Professors tale of a lost world where prehistoric life-forms still throve was verifiable fact. The creature had perhaps five-meter wingspan, and great beaklike jaws, with a large beak-pouch, which acted as a kind of net, as the creature scooped up the hordes of minute glowing insects. The body of the thing was covers in snow-white fur, silky by the look of it, becoming much finer on the wings. Not quite what I would have expected of a reptilian. And this silky fur was bio-luminous as well, and the source of the creature’s radiance! It hove through the air, gulping the swarming midges, if that’s what they were, and I soon saw other such beasts, netting other luminous clouds of midges with their oversized beaks. As I rode on through the strange twilit world, I encountered other bizarre denizens! Some of these were like nothing you would familiar with. They resembled arthropods, or the odd trilobites that are found as fossils, only these were larger, and possessed whirring wings—as well as their own glow. Some of them had strange segmented bodies, and huge luminous eyes. They glowed green, red, purple, ochre, and many other colors. But soon I past beyond that band of relative darkness, and into a world lit up fantastically by what appeared as sunlight to my astonished vision! Part of me believed that I had somehow reached the surface! But of course, my intellect knew better. The light source was an alien one, caused by the magnetic currents I mentioned earlier. But it was so like actual day! Great forests stretched beyond below me, with mighty rivers wending their way through! The heavy forests were composed of grays, blue-grays, and blue greens, for here in the subterranean realm, the flora have other means than photosynthesis for deriving their nutrients. Beyond the forests there stretched vast plains, and beyond that other forests, and soaring mountains. And soon, on the horizon, I beheld a silvery, shining scrim—the rim of the fabled Central Sea, as I soon was to discover! Oh, I found Professor Lidenbrock’s lost world all right! The sky about me was rife with flying dragons, the pterodactyls of the prehistoric era. These were very much larger than the creatures I’d encountered in the twilight band, dragons of terrible appearance, and as it turned terrible ferocity as well! Four of them attempted to attack the Terror, but fortunately we were able to drive the monsters of with our artilary.”

    “’We’? There were others with you?”

     “I still had some of my able crewmen aboard, the ones that had survived once my craft had been damaged. Once we had driven the flying reptiles off, the others of their kind regarded the Terror with a healthy respect—wise of them! We made for the Central Sea, and soon we were soaring over the breadth of the that subterranean ocean, the mighty swells heaving below us.”

    “Did you see any of the ichthyosauri? The great fish lizards described by Lidenbrock.”

     “Oh, yes, there were many of them. He and his companions witnessed a terrific battle between a ichthyosaurus, and plesiosaurus. We saw no combat, but saurian life teemed in the across the breadth of that ocean, and several times did we witness the dark forms of whale-lizards, their nasal orfices spouting twin spumes of water, heaving their bulks above the waves. The swan-necked plesiosauri there were in abundance, as well as many other forms of reptilian life which we could not identify all, but there were a great many turtle and crocodile like forms, but much larger than their modern counterparts. I hove in over the ocean and the Terror transformed back into its aquatic form, and soon we were plowing across the surface of the subterranean sea, water spuming in our wake! The marine saurians, fortunately for them afforded wide birth to this strange metal monster.”

     “I thought your sea vessel was damaged.”

     “Not beyond repair, boy! I was able to repair the swimming apparatus during our flight through the crystal caverns.”

    “Then what?”

    “After many leagues we breached land. Perhaps it was the very shore that Lidenbrock and his nephew reached, where they witnessed the heard of mastodons and the giant shepherd. Perhaps not. The country we ran ashore on was covered in a luxuriant forest, primarily of conifers, such as had existed on the surface in Tertiary times. Armed with our rifles and my own laser pistol, we ventured into the forest…”

    The man’s voice trailed off.

    “And then what?” Michel asked him.

      “Eh?” said Robur, his mind seemed to have suddenly become lost amid fathomless layers of geologic time. Suddenly his eyes focused back, black and bright once more. “Oh, many things. “We encountered peril upon peril the further we ventured into that primeval forest. Periodically, we would return to the Terror, and on the beach where he had run aground we made camp. Once we had hacked our way a a few kilometers into the unspoiled wilderness, we drove the Terror through the forest, and set up a new camp. Beasts and flying creatures fled at the sight of the strange new metal monster which had invaded their prehistoric realm. But even with the Terror, we faced many, many dangers in the lost land before my eventual return to the surface. Three more of my surviving crew perished in that world. Two of them to the giant reptilia that infest the forests, the third to a saber-tooth tiger. Only two members of my original crew remained. But we battled our way through primeval terrors and prevailed. Is the inner world a paradise, as you call it? That depends upon one’s perspective, boy. It is, I would say, if you have the raw courage and perseverance to survive.”

    “In Lidenbrock’s journal,” Michel said, “he wrote of encountering a herd of mastodons and giant human. That is difficult to credit. A giant man! Even he dismissed it as possibly a hallucination afterward. Did you—“

    “It was Axel, his nephew, who actually wrote the Lidenbrock journel. But true, I found that incident hard to credit as well. There have been legends of giants since the dawn of history, but no evidence they ever existed. The giant elephants I could believe, but the giant shepherd? I put it down to a typical, traveler’s embellishment, or indeed a misperception. But we soon discovered that the giants are real.”

   “Giants? You saw more than one?”

    “Indeed! There is an entire race of them, as of course there would have to be. They are a brutish race of primitives, just as the journal suggested, the males averaging twelve feet in height. They are more akin to the Neanderthal, than to any modern type of man, with great muscled arms, nearly anthropoid, and great flat skulls, with heavy brutish faces. They are powerful brutes, capable of breaking the jaws of the great saurians that infest their world, or felling one with the tremendous wood staffs that they carry. They herd the giant mastodons like sheep, just as journal suggested. Their entire way of life, in fact, is derived from the mastodon. The animals provide them food, and their huge tent-like dwelling are constructed of mastodon tusks, bones and hide. The rich milk of the mastodon provides much of their nourishment. Brutish in appearance though they are, the giant primitives are no dullards; they have bred the semi-wild herds of mastodon, in a fashion similar to how we breed cattle. I have many times sampled some of the milk produced by the Thari mastodon cows, and found it to be rich, creamy, and quite the equal, if not the superior, of any quality milk produced by our dairy herds. They have made a kind of butter, as well from it. It, too, is extra thick rich and creamy, and includes a sweet taste, absent in types of butter we are familiar with.”

    “Imagine that! A butterchurn that gigantic!”

    “Indeed, the butterchurns made by the Thari are huge, and though a bit primitive, are certainly functional, and produce the best quality mastodon butter. It would take at least four surface men to operate one.”

     “You said the Thari. You mentioned that once before. Is that what the giants call themselves?”

     “Yes it is. The Thari is their name for themselves in their native language. It may surprise you to know that they also have an actual system of writing.”

     “Writing? No, surely not primitive brutes.”

     “Do not underestimate the Thari, my boy. True, they are not only brutes in appearance, they are most savage and awesome in combat! But they are far more cultured a race than their appearance would suggest. They have devised a sort of brush, fashioned of wood and mastodon hairs, and the ink they use is produced by the ink of nautilids, coiled shelled squid of the Mesozoic era, which still thrive in vast multitudes throughout the Lidenbrock Sea. I have observed the Thari scribes as the they write, which they do on stretched and cured canvas of mastodon hide. The written language itself consists of symbols for their few spoken words, and is actually quite crude and simplistic by modern language standards, as is their spoken dialect. But yet, that they had already mastered a form of written language was most impressive to me. There were symbols for mastodon, crops, mountain, river, man, woman, child, and so forth.”

      “Crops? Have they managed agriculture, as well?”

     “Actually,” Robur told his young guest, “agriculture is something they learned from me!”

     “No!”

     “Yes! They did have the start of what might be called agriculture, but the Thari, as one might suppose, lived a semi-nomadic lifestyle before my arrival. But I taught them the art of growing and cultivating by modern technique. The Thari now grow their own  fields of corn, and wheat, and even vineyards filled with huge lusciously sweet grapes, each one the size of a football. The most marvelous and delectable wine I was able to produce from that! A vintage unknown to the upper world all my own! The Thari already had a type of alcoholic beverage that they crudely brewed. But believe me, the wine I invented had them guzzling it by the gallon. I fear that all I accomplished there was not for the best however, for I saw many among the Thari become terribly drunk as a result. I placed limits upon their intake, and did my best to insure my new invention was not abused.”

     “You talk almost as though you ruled them.”

     “Rule them? I certainly did rule them. The Thari were uncertain of us at first. But our rifiles, and my own laser-ray pistol, and the weapons and capabilities of the Terror made them revere us, and especially myself, as near-gods!”

    “That's amazing!” cried Michel. But he was beginning to have his doubts. Though a bit of a naive dreamer, and still technically a boy, Michel was finding Robur’s entire tale difficult to swallow. Lidenbrock’s fantasic tale, real? That was, he reflected, incredible enough. But all that Robur was saying stretched even Michel's youthful credulity too far.

   What of Robur himself? Was he really who he claimed? If so, than the man seemed not to have aged barely at all for decades since the dawn of the century. Was there something about the climate of the inner earth, assuming his tale was at least partially the truth, that prolonged youth and vitality? Indeed the man not only looked young but appeared as strong and vital as ever.

    “How…” the lad asked finally. “How can you really be Robur the inventor, the man who called himself Master of the World. It’s been more than fifty years since—“

    “Ah,” said his host. “I was wondering when you’d ask. You see, among the myriad botanical specimens native to the inner world, there is a species of wild flower which I have named the Purple Lotus on account of its rich, deep purple shade. We discovered that the blossoms exude a powerful aroma with narcotic properties. It is actually a rather mild, and fortunately non-addictive drug in small quantities, but understand the blossoms are huge, the great pliant petals and stamens gigantic in scale, just like many of the flora and fauna of the inner earth. It was easy to became intoxicated. But taken in minute doses, I discovered a thing even more remarkable about Purple Lotus pollen; it greatly prolongs health and longevity. My companions and myself passed many seasons within the hollow earth, and demonstrated no sign of the ravages of aging. Now think boy—what the surface world would pay for that pollen.”

     The lad suddenly realized, and immediately became alarmed. All he had read about this man Robur—if this man were truly he!—came flooding back. “You—you mean to take control of the world, resume mastery over it—with this Purple Lotus!”

     “Not exactly, my young friend. I intend to resume mastery of the surface world, yes. But the drug of Purple Lotus blossom is too dangerous in large quantities; I will not rule over a population drugged into a stupor. As well, the longevity properties of the lotus might spawn a few very hazardous consequences. I intend to keep the drug a secret, and make it available to the very few—at least, to start with. But do you see what I can do with the rest of my discovery? Even discounting the lotus, the Lost Land holds more than enough resources to establish me as master of this currently poverty stricken surface world!”

    “What do you mean?” cried Michel.

    “Well! I’ve told you that the conditions of the  lost world permit lifeforms, both plant and animal to attain sizes gigantic in stature. Imagine, boy, wheat growing fifty feet high, ears of corn a meter long, sheep the size of cattle. I have already solved the worlds hunger problems, boy. And I, Robur will control all, for only I hold the proof of the Lost Land’s existence.”

    “Then why haven’t you already done it?”

    “My companions were mostly deceased by that time, and I returned to the surface with the two survivors. I intended to assemble a new team to return to the center of the earth, there to gather my crops and livestock to  bring back to the surface. You boy, are to be the first. You and your friends.”

     “But why?” Michel asked. The youth was visibly perplexed. “Why me? Why us?”

     “Because you are unique, or nearly so, in all the world today. I am a man of science as you know, and so are some of my other crew. But you represent the other side of the coin! I promise you, you find much to inspire you, much to romanticize beneath your pen, once you have reached the center of the earth. This world no longer has use for you. But a new world awaits you and your friends, Michel! A world thousands of kilos beneath us, even as we speak!”

     “Lucy! You mean Lucy will go with me?”

     “Yes, certainly! And her father! And Quinsonnas! I’ve made arrangements to have him brought here!”

    “But where is she? She and her father were evicted! I wandered about Paris for hours and never found them! I don’t even know if she is alive…”

     “Oh, she is. She and her father both. My spies were able to locate them, just as I did you.”

     “Then bring her here, now!”

    “Easy, boy. For now you need to get your rest. I will summon the maid. She will bring you hot tea, which you are in need of.”

    Robur summoned the maid and she did just that. Michel thanked her, and sipped the wonderfully hot beverage gratefully. He then sank into blissful sleep.

   When he awoke, Michel set about exploring the great library. He found that the majority of the volumes were tomes of the sciences—physics and mechanics mostly, including more than a few authored by Robur himself, though Michel wondered which house had them published. Were they available anywhere else? And there were volumes on zoology, geology, botany, and astronomy as well. He found the section stocked with history books, and some of these he poured over with great interest, including one on the Napoleonic wars, and another on the great names of the 19^th century. Few of the great poets, novelists, and playwrights of the period were mentioned here, somewhat to his disappointment. He next found, to his surprise, a volume chronicling the life and explorations of Professor Otto Lidenbrock. He became immersed in this. According to the author, Lidenbrock’s supposed findings at the center of the earth were profoundly genuine, though the absolute truth was unknown. Michel also located the account written by Lidenbrock’s nephew, Axel, which he was already somewhat familiar with. He seemed accurate enough. But Robur seemed absolutely convinced, claiming to have been there himself, having experienced wild adventures. Michel was not entirely convinced of the veracity of the tales, but he knew that Paris—indeed this entire world –had nothing more left to offer him. This world was finished with him, and he was finished with it. If there was even a small chance that another world lay within this one, he was ready for it.

     At last, Michel found a section of his host’s collection devoted to poetry and the arts. Robur didn’t seem very much the literary type, but at least he apparently found them worth preserving, as valuable historical artifacts if nothing else. Here were Proust and Balzac; Voltaire, Dumas, Hugo, Dumas and many more. The delighted Michel explored further, and discovered  shelves devoted to English authors like Dickens, Thackeray, Collins, Keats, Blake, Doyle, Wells, and the rest, and then the American greats: Poe, Pound, Lowell, Rothke, Melville, Clemens. Michel wound up spending hour upon hour within the vast library, pouring through the volumes, as his strength recuperated. It was becoming late in evening when Michel took notice of the sun dimming outside the vast window pane that looked out over the sprawling countryside; the blue-gray shadows of encroaching night had already begun to cast their pall over the land.

    Michel realized then that he was alone in this great treasure trove; no other person had entered the great library all day. No servant, and not his host.

    He was about to venture out of the library, and begin exploring the other reaches of Robur’s mansion in search of other members of humanity, when he heard the door of the entrance to the library creak open. Michel had reached the base of the stairs.

    He stared in astonished joy as his Lucy walked in the room, followed by her father, and then Robur.

   “Lucy….!” Michel exclaimed.

    “Michel?” Lucy breathed.

     The two young people flung themselves into each other’s arms.

    “Oh, Lucy!” cried Michel, tears of joy leaking from his eyes, “I thought I’d lost you!”

   “Michel, I thought we’d never see you again! The landlord kicked us out, and we set out for your place—but we found we found the door open, with you gone, the writing desk unattended, with the single candle blowing in the dark!”

    The two were now holding each other, weeping with relief.

     “I—I went looking for you!” Michel stammered. “I bought a bouquet of roses for you, but they’re now dead from the cold. They told me at the apartment that you were evicted. I didn’t know what else to do. So I just kept wandering about the city. But I never found you.”

    “Why, Michel? You would have died of the cold!”

    “I nearly did! I collapsed in the snow. I surely would have perished, if not for….if not for this man here.”

    The eyes of Michel, Lucy, and her father turned upon Robur. The great tall man was merely standing there in his extravagant blue coat, hand folded behind his back, his black eyes regarding the party solemnly.

   “Well….” said Lucy, to Robur. “I suppose we owe you all our lives! Michel’s as well, just as you said!”

    “We certainly do,” Monsieur Richolet said. “He found us in the snow. We may not have gotten to one of the government shelters. Well, perhaps we would have, but..”

   “You are here now,” Robut finished for him. “I trust that all of you are most pleased to be reuinted.”

    “That we are,” Lucy’s father answered, as the two young people clung to each other.

    “Good! I shall have the servants attend to your needs, and I shall see you all when dinner is served.” With that, the tall man left the room.

    

     There were more hugs and kissing among the rescued. Michel gave Lucy a tour of the wonderful library of Professor Robur.

     When the bell rang for the evening meal, a servant came, and summoned them all to dinner. He led them out of the library, and through the halls of the great mansion. He led them down two flights of stairs. At last, they entered a great dining hall, where they were made to sit along a great long table. There were other men there, and Michel guessed that they must be members of Robur’s crew. Robur himself was seated at the head of the great table in a position where he could address them all. Michel and Lucy had settled into chairs next to each other. Monsieur Richolet took a chair across from there. Napkins and silverware were laid out in front of them. The food had yet to be served.

    “My friends,” Robur told them, “As young Michel Dufrenoy has no doubt informed you, we are all to embark on a fantastic adventure. You are all to accompany me on a journey to the earth’s center.”

    “But why us?” Lucy inquired.

    “Young Michel was the one man I know of who has literally nothing left to live for in this world. Unless, of course, it is you, his dear Lucy—and you sir.” Here he nodded at Richolet. “He nearly died, and if not for me, he surely would have. As it is now, you will accompany me to a new, New World. Unlike our own, it is rife with rich mineral ore. Conditions there permit grain crops like wheat and corn to attain colossal proportions. I do plan on us returning to surface, though I have not ascertained when. I shall then be Master of the World, as I have already once proclaimed myself. This time the nations of the world will have no choice to submit to me, given the sorry state of world economy. The food and fuel shortage problems will be solved. No more hunger. But dangers lie ahead for us in Lindebrock’s lost world, and I intend to prepare you. It takes a high powered rifle to take out a fully-grown megalosaurus, as I myself did on one occasion. So I have hired a new team of men to accompany me.”

     He introduced each of the men who would accompany them on their journey.

    Soon the meal itself was served. They were treated to fresh-cooked lobster, slathered in sauce, sliced  roast beef, and then great golden earsof what looked like sweetcorn, only many times too large, with kernels the size of billard balls! These were slathered in rich melted butter. Mastodon butter? Was this a sample of corn Robur had brought back from the lost land? It must be, incredible though it seemed. Michel didn’t voice the question though, and neither did the rest of them. The kernels, if such they were, proved to be filled with deliciously sweet milk, better than any French food Michel had tasted. Then they were treated to some manner of seafood, that tasted rather like shrimp and rather like lobster; the meat was white firm and pliable, but none of the could identify it.

      “These grubs certainly taste terrific,” said one of Robur’s crew a burly fellow named Lars Johonson, his mouth stuffed full with the meat.

    “But what is it?” inquired Michel, innocently.

    “Grubs is what we call them, son,” he said. “But they’re some sort of land trilobite they have around the shores of the Lidenbrock. They swarm around the underworld beaches. They still need to lay their eggs in the ocean you see.”

    “I….see,” said Michel. That was what they were eating? Something prehistoric. Michel had heard the word “trilobite,” and though he wasn’t sure exactly what they were, he associated the word with deep time and prehistory.

    Then they were served heaping silver bowls of French vanilla ice cream. It was very good as well, and Michel was glad to be eating something a bit more familiar.

   “Oh, by the way, Mr. Robur, sir,” asked Michel, as they were finishing their repast. “Since you you are including us in your expedition, there is another friend of mine, whom I would like to suggest for you to include among us: my friend Quinsonnas He and I were employed by the Ledger. He is living in Germany now, but I don’t know where. I lost contact with him a while back. Oh, and my Uncle Huegenin. He shares my appreciation for the arts. Can you bring them here as well?”

    “I know of them, my young friend, and I've thought  of it.  I do believe that it may be arranged.

    “Oh, I would thank you, sir, if you could!”

   

    After the evening meal, Robur gathered his companions in the drawing room and told them further about his grand plans. It sounded to Michel as if Robur was giving them no choice but to accompany him on his venture. If that were so, however, Michel didn’t really care. He’d had all he could take of modern Paris. Afterward, the servants showed them to their pre-arranged quarters. They all slept soundly within Robur’s great mansion, while the freezing wind howled and bellowed out in the 30 below zero night.

    For the following weeks, as Paris continued to grown under the bleakest, darkest winter it had ever known, Michel and his reunited friends recuperated, nursing one another back to health. As their host promised, Robur was able to obtain the address numbers of Quinsonnas, and Michel’s uncle. Michel himself wrote them both telegrams, explaining his present situation, and his desire for them to accompany them. Both men willingly complied, and Robur provided transportation for both of them to his palace. The two were educated as to Robur’s intentions and their grand venture. Robur showed all of them his invention, an improved version of the one he had dubbed the Terror, capable of land, marine, and air travel, as well as capable of boring for miles beneath the earth’s crust, within the vast, steel-walled chamber within the cliff beneath his mansion. He also showed them the laboratory where the captive trilobites were raised and bred for the table. He had only been able to procure two of them on his return, but they were very prolific. Then there was the underground arboretum where he was able to raise a small crop of the super-sized sweet corn. But he was intent on procuring and producing a great many additional crops this time.

    At last, they were ready for their journey.

   They packed all of their provisions into the New Terror, and boarded it. Robur pushed a button, and a great, steel door opened in the wall of the chamber, which was large enough to encompass several good-sized warehouses. Michel and his friends were gathered behind Robur in his cab. They found themselves staring down an impossibly large tunnel that had been hollowed out of the rock of the cliff.

    “My original Terror bore through the solid rock of this very cliff,” Robur clarified. “I have taken pains to widen and heighten it since. It’s a bit like a prototype for the tramway I intend to have constructed upon our return to the surface.”

     “Will it be like the air-trains that run in tubes from Paris to London, and all over the continent?” Michel asked.

      “Exactly!” Robur told him. “I will have a tube built running all the way down to the Lidenbrock world! I will transport cargo back and forth from the lost land.”

    “Why not build many such tubes?” put in Quinsonnas. “An entire network, perhaps. You could enhance commerce between the surface, and the lost world—if it exists, that is.”

     “Oh, I definitely do plan that!” Robur told him. “Eventually, once I have established myself as global dictator, and I have complete control of the economy!”

     Robur pulled a lever to his right. The great turbine engines of the Terror roared to life. They felt the very floor quake beneath their feet. The craft lept forward in a mighty surge. The tunnel engulfed them, and for a moment, Robur and his companions were all engulfed in impenetrable darkness. But seconds later the lights of the craft flared on, and two great beams of dazzling light speared out from the fore of the craft. They now were traveling a great, accelerating speed, down the shaft of the tunnel. The vehicle was now zooming at seventy kilometers an hour, then eighty, then a hundred, then one hundred and fifty. Finally, they were zooming at 240 kilos, and with hardly a sound. Michel could tell, also, that they were at the same time making a gradual descent in their passage. They were, indeed, plunging at a slight angle but one increasing in steepness, deep into the center of the earth.

     Michel had hardly dared even imagine such a craft as this one before, as used to the gas-cabs and air-trains of Paris. It was a thrill like nothing he had ever before experienced in his young life. He and his friends remained in cab during this time, entranced.

    But then Robur announced, “We now are approaching the end of the tunnel.”

     “What do you mean?” Lucy asked.

   “It can’t just end,” Michel said. They could hardly have reached their goal yet, even with the speed they were traveling.

       “The tunnel is closing in on us. We are where I originally bore through crust. There may well have been cave-ins since, and the radiometer indicates that we will need to do some boring to return to the Lost Land.”

    Sure enough, they felt the craft shake as an apparently low portion of the ceiling scraped the top of the craft’s metal hull. Robur pressed a button. The metal plates covering the nose of the craft elevated and slide back smoothly. The plates parted, providing clearance for a great iron corkscrew-drill, twirling powerfully, that pushed out from between the headlights.

    The Terror had now been forced to reduce its' speed given the current narrowness of the passage. Soon they encountered the obstruction which Robur had warned them off. But it presented very little obstacle for the Terror, with its nose now transformed into a giant drill. It made short work of the collapsed section, the grinding noise of the borer grating on the companions from where they stood in the cabin.

     Deeper and deeper they tunneled through the planet. Soon, they realized that Robur’s fantastic craft was bearing them at a much steeper angle, the effect making Michel dizzy. This vertiginous state diminished somewhat, however, as they became used to the angle at which the craft was bearing them. Robur told them that they were already seventy kilos beneath the earth’s crust.

   As Michel and the others adjusted to the logistics of the craft, they retreated from the cabin, and were at last to spend the long hours of burrowing through the crust in more casual pursuits; the Terror was an astonishingly vast craft, considering its multipurpose capabilities. There was a drawing-room, a dining hall, a pantry, a kitchen, and even a recreation room, in addition to the many apartments for Robur’s guests and crew. They passed the time in conversation, enjoying fine wine, a stock of which Robur had made certain to bring along. Being kilometers below Paris (they had in fact traveled far enough that they were most unlikely beneath city at all at this point), they had no indication of whether it was day or night aside from the clocks. When the hour was right, Michel found he was able to sleep, along with his companions, and certain members of Robur’s crew, while other members remained vigilant for whatever potential hazards they might encounter. The interior of the craft was air-conditioned, with plenty of recycled oxygen.

   On and on plunged Robur’s bizarre craft, drilling deeper and deeper toward the very core of the earth.

    Michel was sleeping when a great rattling shook the New Terror. The boy was awake in an instant. He leapt from his bunker, and dashed down the hall to the drawing room compartment. There seemed to be no one else around. 

    “Lucy!” he cried.

    “Michel!” Lucy answered, as she dashed into the room.

    Michel took her in his arms. “What’s happening?

    “Robur’s stuck!”

     “Stuck?” asked Michel.

      Then they saw Lars and another of Robur’s crew making for the cabin. They followed, and found their other companions gathered there.

     Through the cabin windows an amazing sight greeted them.

      The powerfully spiraling nose of the craft had broken through the crust and was spinning in empty air. What lay beyond was hay and indistinct.

   “Are we there?” asked Michel. “Have we reached the center, as Lidenbrock did?”

    “Not quite!” said Robur. And then Michel saw that the nose of the terror was suspended over a vast chasm within some incredibly vast hollow chamber. Layers of vapor-like mists partially obscured the view of an unthinkably gargantuan, dimly glimmering wall, like the inside of a monstrous geode. Michel was stunned by the implications of what he was seeing.

    “We have reached one of the mighty crystal caverns near the core itself!” Robur. “We will sail through many of them for the rest of our journey!”

     “Sail?” asked Quinsonnas “You mean—“

     “Correct! We are hardly stuck, as some of you might have supposed. I have merely shut off the propulsion. But observe….!”

      Robur pulled another lever; they watched as mighty drill drew back within, as the plates slid apart. The original nose of the craft slid back into position, as the craft shuddered, and surged forth into the great cavern.

    The company gasped. Michel was terrified for several awful seconds that they were going to plunge to their deaths. He realized then that they were traveling across the vast length of great spear of rock, a mighty ledge, which jutted out into hollow space of the crystal cavern. No! It was not of rock. The great plank was of solid crystal of a milky-white, partially translucent quality. And through the window to the side, he observed, other gigantic crystals, some the size and dimension of the sky-scrapers of Paris, spearing out into the carver in magnificent clusters. The chamber was strangely illuminated from within, with a weird bluish light, and the mighty lengths of white-silver, building-sized mineral shafts glistened, flashed and shimmered in the fey light.

   It was then that Robur’s craft shuddered again. Gasps and exclamations of awe were voiced by the company, as vast red tarpolined wings, ribbed with steel, folded out on either side to the Terror, which had increased its' speed. Robur was using the mighty crystal shaft as a runway.

   Everyone gasped as the Terror roared off the plank into the vaporous air. Michel, dizzy with terror, still half anticipated a fatal plunge into the mists below. But the bizarre craft bore itself and its company aloft. There was the sensation of dipping down slightly, as when an elevator levels to its destination. Michel was dizzied by the effect. Then he shook his head to clear it; and he saw that they were now flying through the air within the gigantic hollow chamber.

   It was the most incredible sensation Michel had ever experienced. Traveling by air-tram that whooshed their passengers all over Paris in plexiglass tubes could not begin to compare with what Robur’s Terror could accomplish.

    And the chamber through which they now soared!

     Michel felt as if they were a gnat flitting through a gigantic hollowed-out gourd or coconut. He gazed in uncomprehending wonder at what appeared to be vast forests of the tower-sized blue-white crystals carpeting the great curving walls, also composed of sheer crystal. The thick air outside the craft, appeared to be heavy and rich with oxygen, as attested to by the swirling and shimmering curtains of vapor.

   "The temperature outside is up to ninety degrees, with a great quantity of humidity," Robur told them.

    Then, through the window, Michel noticed a subtle difference in the distant, slightly luminous clouds, which he had presumed were also of mist or vapor. But as they drew nearer, the boy discerned that these were of an altogether different composition; they seemed composed of a luminescent substance, a source of the ripples of light that shimmered over their surfaces in waves. He now saw that the clouds appeared to alter their shapes swiftly, as though at will; tendrils would form, snaking out, then draw back within the mass, only to reform in a different region, and take on a new shape. It began to dawn on him that these peculiar clouds were some sort of living beings, composed of some bioluminescent material. But no! They were not singular, organisms—but some sort of vast, composite organism. The clouds were made up of thousands, perhaps millions of individual tiny creatures, all of them bioluminescent, yes, each one producing its own light. They were tremendous glowing swarms, the light produced by their

individual members, shimmering up and down in scintillating waves of organic yellow-white.

    These creatures, in part, Michel realized, were the source of light in these cavernous regions.

     The scintillating clouds hove nearer the Terror, as though curious, as to the strange metal creature which had invaded their realm.

   “Wh-what are those things?” Michel asked.

    “I’ve encountered them before in these crystal caverns,” answered Robur. “Biology is not my area, so I’m not certain just what they are. But they may be an aerial form of life related to trilobites found in Paleolithic seas. Land forms of trilobites are common on the main continent of the inner world. Not bad tasting either.”

    “And…these produce their own light?” Michel asked.

    “Indeed they do, just as we can observe. Much like many species of deep-sea fish and squid. The life-forms found in deep undersea trenches take a great variety of grotesque and nightmarish forms, in addition to producing their own organic lamination. I know it well, for the Terror, as you know, has voyaged many leagues below the sea. I have braved depths unplumbed even by Captain Nemo himself!”

    One of the swarms had now drawn very near the cabin, and the creatures of which it was composed were now flashing their luminescent bodies in slow rhythmic pulses, invading the cabin with light, then leaving it dark, then light again.

     A few of the creatures detached themselves from the whole, and hovered near the glass. As they zoomed across the surface, Michel saw that they were larger then they first supposed; they looked similar to large versions of the common woodlouse or sowbug, with rows of translucent-white, insectile legs on their undersides, and upper carapaces that looked from what he could see, to be composed of a row of armor-like scutes. Twin feelers protruded weirdly from their head-region, questing about the surface of the glass, as the creatures hovered there. It was their undersides that gave off the soft, yellow-white glow, indeed, not unlike that of the common firefly. Unlike the woodlice they most nearly resembled, they possessed a pair of whirring, translucent wings, rendered near invisibility by their blinding motion.

    The few, curious, members of the swarm cloud (scouts, perhaps?), returned to their number, and the entire cloud of creatures grew bright in unison, rendering the interior of the cabin blinding. The cloud then dimmed, and drew away, dipping and hovering, spitting apart and drawing together, flashing and shimmering in the misty atmosphere of the crystal cavern.

    And then Michel and his friends drew another collective gasp, as a much vaster flying beast swooped through the humid air. At first, Michel mistook it for another sort of flying machine, perhaps a craft similar to the Terror itself. But no, he now saw that it, too, was a vast flying creature, though it most resembled a giant, triangular hang glider in general shape as it hove the air. Its wingspan must of stretched twenty feet or more, consisting in its entirety of taught, stretched membrane, through pulsed an extensive red-purple arterial network,  held by elongated extensions of the beast’s forefingers. The entire beast was a ghostly white in color, and Michel realized that the reason it was so plainly visible within the dimness of the cavern was that this large vertebrate monster, as well, gave off its own light, a an odd, bluish-white luminance. The triangular head, which reared upon a wattled, snake-like neck, was nearly entirely a long, spear-like beak, like that of a gigantic pelican, and this was held partway open. Michel, as he continued to observe, was soon to discover why. The creature’s beaked jaws extended wider, and a white shaft of light shot forth. A few stray cavern-lice drifted into the light. The aerial monster’s beak snapped shut, extinguishing the bio-light and consuming its victims. It was one of the giant prehistoric flying reptiles Robur had spoken off the beasts that preyed on the swarms of midges.

      Suddenly, there came the sound of claws scraping the hull of the ship.

      "Can they crash us?" Michel asked.

       "No, lad certainly they can't," Robur told him sternly. " This is no airship. And anyway, their beaks and talons cannot possibly penetrate--"

    There was a ghastly sound of canvas being torn asunder.

    "The wings!" Robur shouted. "Blast me! I forgot about the wings!"

    "What will happen?" asked Michel.   

     "They will crash us!" cried Lucy, suddenly clutching Michel's arm. "How can we drive the dreadful  things away!"

    "Get to the deck!" Robur commanded. "All of you men! Get the rifles, and fend those monsters off, before they crash us!"

   "Oh, Michel, don't--" Lucy begged. "I couldn't lose you!"

   "I've got to help them, Lucy! I wouldn't have you think me a coward."

 "Oh, but Michel--"

  "You just here, Lucy, where you'll be safe! Trust me--I'll be back!"

    The men seized up the rifles from the rack, and pounded up the steel stairs to the Terror's deck.

     An entire flock  of  glowing, screeching winged saurians sailed back and forth on the thermal air levels. Their harsh cries filled the thick, humid air.

     Robur  clicked his rifle, and fired. Quinsonnas and the others did the same. But Michel, to his horror, found that his gun was empty. He thought momentarily of fleeing back down the stairs, but was immediately ashamed of entertaining what would seem an act of brash cowardice. He seized his rifle in the manner one would a club; raising it over his shoulder he awaited an attack.

   Almost at once, a winged reptile hove the air straight in the young poet's direction. Beaked jaws lined with bristling teeth agape, the pterodactyl hove toward him. Michel swung the gun like cudgel, smashing it into the pseudo-avian skull. The beast gave out a raucous cry and flapped brokenly off into the ruddy darkness.

    "Way to go, kid!" Lars told him. Encouraged by the boy's feat, Lars gripped his own gun by the barrel, and following Michel's lead, swung it about massively at the winged brutes. "Have at you all, winged devils!"

   One of the winged reptiles flapped too near him and Lars took it out, the handle of rifle smashing into its left wing membrane and ripping open a wide gash. The pterosaur screamed and fluttered backward, to begin and injured spiral down into the crystal cavern's depths.

    The other men continued to fire into the horde of flying saurians. The bullets punched and ripped through the frail, membranous wings and riddled the finely furred, silky breasts. The pterosaurs, giving vent to hissing shrieks of protest. Injured beasts collapsed and plummeted into the depths; their surviving comrades thinking better of their attack, and flapping off to join their swarming flocks.

    "Ah!" bellowed Robur in triumph. "We've turned the blighters! Good work, men!"

   The men lowered their weapons as they watched the last of the pterosaurs flap away to join the main flock.

   There was sudden rush of air, followed by a thrum of vast, membranous pinions.

    Young Michel Dufrenoy felt steely talons seize his shoulders.

    The shock was so great, and Michel had been so relaxed, that the boy didn't think to swing his rifle up in defense against his primeval attacker. He lost grip of the rifle, and it clattered to the Terror's deck. Michel felt pterosaur's bird-like talons hook into his flesh. In the next instant the dazed youth felt himself yanked aloft. The monstrosity beat its mighty wings, as Michel was pulled to dizzying heights above the craft.

     Below him, the men were shouting.

    "It's got the kid!" shouted Lars.

     "Michel!" Quinsonnas cried. 

    "Lord!" gasped Lucy's grandfather. "It's got him!"

    "What are you waiting for, then!" snarled Robur, training his rifle on the pterosaur. "No! Hold your fire! It's too far away, blast him! If he drops the boy now, Michel is finished."

      "We've got to save my nephew!" implored Huguenin. "You've not just going to let that monster bear him off are you, Robur?"

     Robur grinned at him. "Let it bear him off? Of course not! We're going to chase it! Set the course for that thing!"

     "We've got to save him!" cried Richelot. "My granddaughter is set to marry that young man!"

    "We will! We will!" Robur shouted, as he made for the stairs leading below deck.

    But then they saw that Lucy had ascended the stairs and was now staring at them in stark horror. "Michel!" she cried. "One of those things got him! I saw the horrid thing carrying him off!"

    "Get back below, lass!" snarled Robur. "We're chasing that thing."

    Lucy, now blinded by tears of terror and grief flew back down the stairs. Robur pounded down after her, followed by the other men. Once they were again gathered in the Terror's cabin, Lucy collapsed in her grandfather's arms, sobbing. "I was sitting here," she wept, "Listening to those awful things up there. And then I heard you screaming out about Michel! And...and ...I saw  one of those things...it had Michel! Oh, it's dreadful, I can't look!"

    Richelot held her, stroked her hair but said nothing, his eyes focussed hopelessly on the cabin window.

    The pale form of the winged reptile was still within sight, but it was diminishing in the distance. It still gripped Michel.

    Robur was storming the Terror madly in its direction. Their gazes riveted on the window. Gradually the pterosaur grew larger; they were gaining on the beast. The reptile flew swiftly, but the Terror was closing the gap.

     "Ah yes! We're gaining!" sneered Robur in triumph.

      The others were less confident. Even if they managed to keep up with the beast, how could they possibly rescue the boy? Michel seemed done for.

     They saw now the pterosaur was making for what had appeared to be section of wall of  a different pattern and shade, but was now clear to be a vast gaping fissure.

    The pterodactyl, Michel Dufrenoy still clutched in its talons like a captured hare, dipped and flattened its wings, then hove through the gaping fissure. The pursuing Terror, though its wings were somewhat damaged, closed the gap as it zoomed through in pursuit.

   The company aboard the Terror gaped. They were now within a cavern immeasurably more vast than any before, huge nearly beyond comprehension. Around in above them, misted and hazed by the vast distance, arose the mighty walls, curving up beyond the streaming clouds of vapor which filled the air. And far below spread the gray-green carpet of vast jungle stretching as far and wide as the eye could perceive. Through this wound the shining threads that were mighty rivers, winding toward a the shimmering plain of a vast ocean on what passed for the horizon. It was a world half-shrouded in dark, a land of weird twilight. But a great brilliance shone from the direction of the ancient sea, making it shine like a sheet of molten silver. They could not discern the light's source.

   This was the Lost Land itself, the land Axel Lidenbrock had written of in his journal. Great flocks of flying reptilians flew below them in vast blankets.

   But the reptile they were pursuing did not join the flocks of its monstrous fellows. It was now slowly descending over the heavy blanket of jungle, toward a distant range of granite peaks rearing forth from the carpet of forest.

 

      The great albino pterosaur  kited in low over the vast prehistoric forest, which spread out like thick grayish carpet. The foliage of the trees was predominately a bluish gray, much in contrast to that of the world above.

    Michel Dufrenoy felt the harsh gusts of inner-world wind whip through his long blond locks. The young man felt despair grip his heart in cold fingers once again; once more he had been snatched away from his beloved Lucy! Surely, this mad flight could not end save in death; and even if he were to survive, he saw now how vast the inner world was. How could he expect the others to find him?

   Then he heard, over the rush of the wind and the roaring of the monster's wings, the answering roar of  the great turbine engines of Robur's Terror! Michel craned his neck about. Yes, he could see the Terror in the distance, still far but gaining.

   This filled him with fresh hope. He had been unsure Robur would even attempt his rescue, so bleak appeared his plight. But they hadn't given up, and neither, Michel resolved, would he.

   The dragon of the dawn-world now swooped low in a great cup-shaped dive over the gray-fronded forest canopy. Michel remembered his pen--the very same one he used to scrawl out his heartfelt verses in his solitary apartment, and snatched it from his vest pocket. It seemed terribly futile to use his writing stylus as a weapon against the breast of the monstrous bat-bird; but he had nothing else. If he had merely held onto his weapon....

     Michel looked down. As the monster bore him, he was now rushing over the crowns of the trees, which seemed a mix of Quantatary and early Carboniforous, but Michel had no time for further botanical observation. His immediate concern was getting the monster to release him, and whether he could survive his resultant plunge. The mere contemplation of plunging through the aboreceont canopy increased his dizziness to near-madness. But it might be his best change. If Robur managed to shoot the reptile, how could that save him? Unless he managed to get the Terror directly beneath, but Michel decided not to wait to see if Robur would keep up. What if he didn't manage to escape? The beast might carry him to its nest in the mountains it was flying toward, where Michel might be devoured, perhaps by the monstrous reptile, and perhaps by a brood of monstrous, dragonish young. Much as the prospect frazzled his nerves there was more than a chance he could seize hold onto a branch and climb down to the forest floor, or else wait for Robur to save him.

   Now he saw that they were gliding over a great swath of forest composed of some very bizarre trees. They looked nothing like any arboreal life forms Michel had ever seen or heard of, not even in illustrations of the World Before the Flood. Their crowns were wide, circular umbrella-like platforms of glistening white-gray flesh.

   In a flash, Michel recognized what they were; they had to be the gargantuan mushrooms that Axel had described in his journey. Was this the very same forest Axel had reported? No--likely not, as the great shining disk that looked like a vast ocean remained at great distance. If Michel could persuade his abductor to let loose its talons.

     Michel struck upward with his pen. But the scales beneath the beast's breast was too tough. Michel was then struck with a sudden fear that his precious men might be damaged. He might never gain another one, depending on how long he remained in the Lost Land, and he shoved back in his pocket. The pterosaur flapped on, unfazed. But Michel was not about to give up his life for the sake of his future compositions. The boy twisted himself about, as far as he could in the grip of his captor's talons, and sank his teeth into the mailed flesh of the pterodactyl's leg.

     The pterosaur screamed and released its hold.

    Not fully anticipating that his attack would have the desired effect, Michel screamed as he found himself hurtling toward the canopy. The lad spread out his thin arms and legs as the monstrous, blue-glowing caps or the gigantic fungi  rushed up toward him.

   He plunged into the soft surface. Michel found the material to be soft, resilient and yielding. The fungoid cap acted as a vast, spongy trampoline; Michel bounced backward to land a few feet away, where the extremity of the mushroom cap began a downward slope. Michel felt himself begin to slide off the soft surface and the boy scrabbled for purchase. But the surface was smooth and slightly slick, offering nothing. Michel cried out as he found himself plunging into the darkened, eerily glowing chasm. Above ,he heard the screams of the flying reptile as it dove toward him.

   The weirdly blue darkness of the mushroom forest enveloped him, as Micheal found himself plunging past the  massive fungoid stems. Once more, he smacked into the soft surface of one of the smaller mushroom caps. The material cushioned his fall once more, and also made him bounce off. Michel found himself  falling again until he plunged into another of the smaller fungi and then a cushiony self lichen, which was less yielding and promptly crumbled beneath his fragile wieght. Michel tumbled another few feet, to smack into a soft, mushy carpet of detritous that was the forest floor.

   The cry of the pterosaur resounded from far above.

   Michel rolled over, coughing. Dazed, stunned, his world whirling and tilting madly, the young Parisan lay there, drawing the moist air of the underworld forest into his lungs. After innumerable seconds had passed, Michel blinked away the flashing colored lights that stupified his vision. Above him the distant rotunda-like fans of the mushroom forest spread to shut out the wan light of the world above, their striated undersides mitting an eerie blue illumination, which bathed the forest. Michel shook his head to clear it, and staggered to his wobbly feet. The bewildered boy gazed about, his face painted blue by the soft radiance, marveling at the mighty works of nature which soared about and above him; the vast stems of the fungoid giants rose  like spongy, white-gray pillars of flesh, soaring to massive height as though in imitation of modern Parisan skyscrapers. Here in the Lost Land, where lifeforms throve in a world befret of true sunlight, such as these were free to grow to unchallenged heights.

   The forest about him was vast and dark, blue-shadowed, seemingly without end. Michel knew he was out of reach of the winged pterosaurs. What about his friends, aboard the Terror? Michel strained his ears. He heard the distant thrum of the craft's motors. Had they witnessed his plunge? Perhaps, as the engine sound was growing louder. He now found himself wishing desperately for some means to signal to them.

    Then--no!--the engine began to grow faint. Or--had he imagined it--it had sounded like the craft was nearly above him. Now, where was it? It sounded slightly off to the west.

   A sudden panic gripped the youth, and he dashed off in the supposed direction of the sound. "Robur! Lucy! Quinsonness! I'm here!!" he cried at the top of his tortured lungs, hoping frightfully they were on deck to hear. Maybe Robur would keep searching this area until he was found. Robur was not one to give up, once he'd set his mind to a task. But despairingly, Michel also realized there seemed to be no region for Robur to land the Terror. From above, the forest had seemed to continue unabated for leagues upon leagues, terminating at the edge of the  distant ocean.

   Michel continued to cry out, to no apparent avail, as he wove in and around the pallid trunks of the giant mushrooms. He was lost amid the depths of a twilight world; a dim, faintly blue illumination reigned about him, permeated by wierd croakings ,distant screams and eerie calls of a teeming, unseen multitude of unknown wildlife.

    Something unnervingly large whirred past Michel's left ear. Michel stopped and glanced in its direction. A huge dragonfly the size and wing-spread of a hawk buzzed past him, then angled about in mid-flight, and zoomed back in his direction on furiously beating, glassy wings. The creature had a tubular body of brightly patterned and glowing blue and yellow. Its massive compound eyes were of pallid blue, and these too emitted a faint but distinct and steady glow from their multitudinous facets. Michel ducked as the monstrous insect went zooming over him and off into the deepening gloom.

        Michel stood trembling, as he gazed after it. The wails, shrieks, squals and other weird cries continued to sound about him. He could no longer hear the sound of Robur's craft.

    Panic seized Michel he began to plunge madly through the fungoid forest, crying out.

   Suddenly, the young poet burst out into a dimly-lit clearing. Michel came to an abrupt halt, as he stood there stunned and goggle-eyed.

    Before him, crouching upon a slain reptilian carcass of mastodonic proportions in itself, was a gigantic, albino-scaled monstrosity such as he had never imagined.

   A strangled gasp burst forth from Michel's throat.

  The thing was similar to a half-grown elephant in size, but of proportion far more massive, with heavy hunched shoulders, and gigantic columular legs, each foreleg terminating in blunt heavy claws. The head of the creature was a nightmare; it resembled a crocodile of freakishly gigantic proportion, only its vast jaws were much more robust and massive; each elongated jaw was lined with rows of teeth like steak-knives, as Michel observed, as the beast parted them wide. He witnessed also that the thing's jaws were slick  and lathered with crimson. The beast's tiny eyes were of the same lurid color as the blood of its kill, as they glittered in the dim light, as the creature turned its vision in Michel's direction. The whole of the thing's gigantic body was covered in pallid scales ofalbino-white. This was a monstrosity produced by this eerie, twilit realm, by the same pressures of Darwinian evolution that had brought forth fungi on the scale of outer-world trees.

    Suddenly, Michel realized, that in spite of its bizarre appearance, he had seen a creature like this before. His mind reached involuntarily back to a distant journey across the sea by tramway to London, where he'd visited the Crystal Palace. He'd gaped at the sculptured replicas of the beasts of the past, the antediluvian monsters that had ruled the pre-Adamite earth. One such beast had been the megalosaurus, a massive monstrosity like a reptilian rhino with mighty crocodilian jaws.

   Here was the beast in real life, only slightly different from its representation in stone, but far more awesome and terrible to behold in its scale and flesh incarnation, having survived the ravages of the Flood, here in this vast underworld. Or had it and its scaly brethren been swept here as a consequence of the deluge, when gigantic vents opened in the mighty cavernous ceiling, and vast floods had thundered through?

    It was a question that, at the moment the young Parisan had no further moment to contemplate.

    The megalosaur yawned wide its giant jaws and gave vent to an unearthly scream like the amplified squeal of a 19th century Parisan steam-engine.

 Michel whirled and ran. The boy plunged back through the forest, fleeing into the depths. Behind him, he heard the megalosaur in pursuit, crashing  through the fungi forest. He heard the thick soft stems of the fungus-trees, snapping and breaking before the monstrosity's onslaught as it surged after him. Incredibly, there came to Michel's ears the unmistakable sound of gigantic mushroom trees crashing to the forest floor.

   The reptilian juggernaut was hot on his heels. In a few more seconds; Michel knew, he was as good as devoured. Lucy! he cried in his mind. He knew he'd never see his love again. Unless...

   He swerved sharply to the right, deflecting the monster's charge. Soon, it bore down upon him once more, giving vent to another deafening scream.

    Then Michel came upon a gaping hollow log--a fallen remnant of one of the monstrous trees, and not a mushroom, part of him realized--and into this he plunged. The teen wriggled madly the last few feet until he was fully within. The tree had been gigantic, a true giant of the primeval forest, and it afforded Michel enough space to swivel around. Through the opening, he saw the monstrous, crocodile-like snout and tiny wicked eyes of the monster, as it regarded its mammalian prey through the orifice.

    The megalosaurus gave vent to another screeching roar like a steam-whistle, and began ripping at the rotted opening with its gigantic talons. They were, Michel realized with a vast shudder, not unlike those of a gigantic badger, and his adversary was likely very capable of digging its way in...

 

      "No!" cried Lucy in sudden fright. "It's dropped Michel!"

       "Dropped Michel?" asked her Grandfather?"

      "I believe it did, at that!" Quinsonnas exclaimed.

        "Did you not see it?" asked Lucy frightfully.

      "It did," affirmed Robur, "though I rather think Michel made the beast release him. Right above that forest of gigantic mushrooms! I'll wager he survived, but there is no place here we have to land the Terror."

    "Can't you do anything?" asked Lucy, in tears.

   "I wish we could , lass," Robur answered grimly, "but it appears we have more pressing worries at the moment."

    "What do you mean?" she asked.

     "Those blasted winged devils," Robur answered. "They'd damaged the wings  of the Terror before we fought them off. We're descending at an alarming rate."

 "We're going to crash!" cried Lucy.

     "I'm going to make for that distant sea," replied Robur. "Once we're there, I can convert the Terror for sea travel. Until then--well hang on, all  of you!"  

    Lucy and her father clutched each other, their gazes fixed on the world rushing toward them beyond the glass outside.

    The Terror was now zooming like a torpedo over the crowns of the colossal mushrooms. Robur's passengers now got a dizzying taste of the speed at which they had been traveling! Only now, the rudder had been damaged, and the great, fan-ribbed wings had been partially shredded by the claws of the pterosaurs, the Terror was rapidly losing altitude.

   The mushroom forest, as they now saw, was extensive, at least in the direction they were rushing--straight in the direction of the Central Sea. They were leaving behind the strange twilight that cloaked this portion of the underworld. The surface of the sea glimmered over the great parasol-like fans of fungoid gargantuans. And now the rushing world around and below them flooded with brilliance as intense and glorious sunlight, rendering the fungoid wonders rich with color, vivid russets, yellows, wild blues and violets. But the Terror's passengers had little time to admire natural wonders.

     "Hold on!" Robur shouted, as he fought to maintain the Terror's course as they descended. They had nearly reached the edge of the sea, when the Terror grazed the tops of the mushroom caps. The craft shuddered, prompting a shriek from Lucy, and some of the men to cry out. They now were surging into the forest, the craft slashing through the thick, spongy stem-like trunks of giant parasols. The Terror's wings, though their membranes now bore rents and rips, had frames constructed of hard, condensed steel, acted exactly as giant sythes and slashed the mushroom stems cleanly through. The Terror plowed on, cutting a great swath through the thick forest. The great trunks snapped and crashed, causing the inhabitants of the craft to cry out and clutch the rails for purchase. Lucy buried herself in her grandfather's arms.  The strange, gooey sap of the pulverized stems splatted thickly against glass. But Robur remained solidly on-task, as  they burst suddenly out of the forest gloom and unto a stunningly bright gravel-strewn shore.  Wipers folded out and cleared the sticky, maroon-colored sap oozing down the glass. The vast beauty of  the Lidenbrock Sea spread gloriously before them.

   "Now--Robur said. He pressed a button. A great thrumming and whirring sounded around them, as gears and axels turned and folded, grinding  sliding into place, forcing the Terror to convert into its water vessel form. The amazed passengers now saw that  they were surging over and through the tossing waves, the Terror casting up great plumes of water in its wake, heading for the open sea. The strange, sourceless light shone brightly and full open the silver-gray surface of the sea as it heaved and rolled mightily. The passengers craned their necks up to locate the source of the light. It looked very like sunlight, but upon this ocean neither sun nor stars had ever shone.

    The Terror sliced across the waves, heading for the high sea.

    "Lord!" Quinsonnas exclaimed. "It's the Lidenbrock Sea! Axel's journal was true all along--everything that young man wrote down was the truth."

      "Well, what did you expect, man?" Robur grinned. "You've already seen the world is every circumference as hollow as the good Professor Lidenbrock theorized. You've seen the Lost Land with your own eyes, seen genuine pterodactyls from the Jurassic. Though this world perhaps should be named for its original pioneer, Arne Saknuseum."

     "Saknuseum Land, then, if we are ever in a situation to name it properly?" Huguenin ventured.

   "Perhaps," Robur answered. "And we will be in such a position, let me assure you. It was Lidenbrock and his companions that first brought this world to the public eye, but he was largely ignored. We, I tell you shall not be!"

    "But Mr. Robur!" cried Lucy. "What about Michel? Shouldn't we be heading back to shore to look for him?"

    "We will head for shore, my lass."

    "Then please do!"

    "Ah, but first--"

     Robur drew back a lever. The passengers exclaimed as the Terror began to submerge. The heaving waves beyond the glass were now replaced by a world of darkly glowing jade-green. They gasped in unison as they beheld the myriad forms of weird scaly life teeming below the surface of the Lidenbrock. There were shoals and shoals of strange armored fish, forvescoiled nuatilids of the cretaceous, propelled by their waving tentacles, and these, like the flying midges, glowed of their own organic light in their oceanic realm. There were other things that appeared to be genuine trilobites and ancient sea-scorpions. Once, the shimmering shoals parted as a gigantic, massive-shelled marine turtle swept past the glass awesomely. In the distance, they could other, dimmer shapes of apparently colossal size, some with gigantic jaws, others with fantastic necks. It was a Paleolithic ocean, unchanged since the Flood came down upon the world. Through vents in the mighty, cavernous ceiling had poured forth the origins of this sea, and with it the primordial titans of a vanished world.

     "Robur!" Lucy exclaimed. "There's something out there--" she pointed toward the side of the ship.

    "She's right!" exclaimed her grandfather.

     "Yes--can you sense it?" asked Huguenin.

      And they did. Though they could see nothing of it through the pane of glass, they all could sense the heavy passage of a massive object swimming directly alongside the Terror on its right, just out of their sight. Abruptly, the entire craft shook  and shuddered to the impact the unseen object, surpassing, apparently, the Terror itself in mass.

    "Whatever it is, we'll outmanuver it!  No beast can match the Terror!" Robur pushed the level. The craft surged upward, breaking the surface. Sunlight streamed into the cabin.

    In nearly the same instant, something else, huge, dark and savage, broiled through the surface alongside and slightly to the fore. The cabin's inhabitants snatched a glimpse of a vast elongated skull, gaping, prehistoric jaws lined with deadly teeth, and a vast, goggling eye, before the monstrosity plunged back beneath the waves.

   "Lord!" exclaimed Hugguenin. "Was that--a real, live ichthyosaurus?"

    "It was!" answered Quinsonnas in awe. "The very ancient sea-beast Lidenbrock described in his Voyage Au Centre de la Terre."

  "I've seen them in illustrations--and in London's Crystal Palace Gardens. But to encounter the brute of the ancient world in real-life! It confounds the senses!"

   "Will it attack us?" ventured Lucy.

    "NO!" Robur shouted. "No monster can damage the Terror! We will outdistance him! Observe!"

   Lucy recalled how the flying dragons had impaired the Terror, and that gave her apprehension. The others felt similarly. But they felt the floor of the cabin jolt beneath them, as they switched into high speed. They were now slashing across the waves of the ancient ocean at an incredible clip that no monster of the paleolithic sea could overtake.

     Kilometer upon kilometer of ocean was now passing by. In the hazed distance they saw the swan-like necks of distant sea-monsters, likely the colossal plesiosaurus of Axel Lidenbrock's account.  Quinsonnas recalled the dramatic battle between the ichthyosaurus and plesiosaurus Axel had described with such vividness in the journal. He half-hoped that they would not be chance witness to such a mighty conflict themselves.

    "Why are we not going back? To find Michel?" Lucy asked Robur.

    "We are, my girl, we are," the mad inventor told her."Or rather, we're heading for shore. You might not have noticed, but I am guiding the Terror in a wide arc, toward the east rim of the subterranean continent.

    Lucy nearly protested that they turn back in the direction they'd come, but she realized she could hardly command such as Robur, and the man certainly seemed to know what he was doing.

    Their journey continued. Once they past a small, black island resembling the hump of a whale or marine saurian. As they surged past the island's flank, they witnessed a colossal geyser spume up to an incredible height above the rock.

  "Behold! The Geyser of the Lidenbrock sea!" Robur exclaimed, like an enthusiastic tour guide.

  "Yes, the very same!" Quinsonnas remarked.

    As they sped on, they saw more, though somewhat lesser geysers in the distance, spouting fantastically from other basaltic outcrops. And out of the distant hazes, a great volcanic mountain loomed massively into view. It was clearly active, glowing scarlet and yellow lava seeping from the cone, to ooze in lurid rivers down the mighty slopes in sluggish, zigzaging courses. The atmosphere of this region rained thick with volcanic ash. Robur sped the craft around the circumferance of the area. A smaller volcano, one of very recent formation, reared its basaltic cone, spuming bright gouts of sizzling crimson, in the waters to the side of its more ancient parent. The water of the vicinity hissed and fizzled violently; the Sea of Lidenbrock was massively turbulant, as though the paleolithic ocean was yet in the throes of its primeval birth at the close of the pre-Adamite world.

    The Terror tore across the heaving sea in a great circular arc about the volcanoes, the water thereabouts hissing and bubbling. Steam and hot vapors rose from the bosom of the Lidenbrock sea in billowing curtains, which Robur's craft knifed through.

   "The volcanoes!" Lucy cried. "They're heating the hull!"

     "The ocean grows hot, indeed," replied Robur, "The turbulant geologic upheavals here have heated the ocean to the point no fish or marine monsters or even plankton can survive within the radius. But do not fret, any of you. I'll soon have us clear."

    Lucy's grandfather held her and comforted her. "Easy, my girl. We'll be fine, just as  Mr. Robur is saying."

    Lucy believed that they would. But she feared terribly for Michel. He was out there somewhere, lost in this savage world at the earth's core. Had he even survived...? She would not allow herself to believe otherwise. But already she'd witnessed enough terrors of this land! She recalled with a frightful shudder the awesome jaws of the monster they had glimpsed from the cabin. If the land were infested with similar monsters as that, what chance had her lover of surviving, alone and unarmed. Also, she did not exactly trust Robur. She had to respect the man, and trusted his knowledge. But at the same time, the man frightened her.

   On sped the Terror, across the heaving bosom of the ocean primeval. At length a dark scrim of shore became visible. As they sped nearer through the tossing waves, it came into focus, and a tangled jungle of weird vegetation reared up from the land before them.

    As the Terror pulled up on shore, they saw that the jungle  was even more bizarre. There were none of the gigantic mushrooms here. Instead, gigantic coniferous trees of the Jurassic loomed up before them, mixed with giant arboracent  ferns and gigantic club mosses, mixed in with vegetation representative of the Quanatary age.

    The Terror, now converted into a land-roving machine, rolled up the shore to edge of the verdant forest of prehistoric trees. All of them got out and marveled up at the primeval forest. The bizarre plants were a mix of several disparate geological ages, but the color was all wrong for any botanic specimen known to science. It varied in shade from silvery to slate-gray to bluish, and stark white, for unlike the flora of the upper world, plant life here thrived in a world permeated by a weird, alien light source, and created energy from some means other than photosynthesis.

   "Ah!" exclaimed Robur. "What did I tell you? Behold our earth in its infancy!"

   "Mr. Robur!" Lucy exclaimed, running to his side. "Are we going to search for Michel!"

    "We are."

    "Then shouldn't we head back in that direction? That is where he fell!"

     "Michel, assuming he survived-- and we all must!-- would not have remained in the same  place, and might well heading in this direction. We will circle about, and see if we don't run into him! He doubtless attempted to follow the sound of the Terror."

   "But what if he's injured!" cried Lucy. "Oh! When he fell--it was dreadful! If he's hurt he wouldn't be able to find us at all."

    "Then we'll find him," Robur assured her. "One way or another."

    "I think I might know where we are," Quinsonnas said. "That volcano we saw might have been the very one Lidenbrock used to return to the surface. And judging by the distance and circumference we've traveled, we might have reached the very portion of the continent where Axel witnessed a voracious herd of primeval elephants, and a giant human shepherd. This forest does appear similar to the one he described."

    "I think you're exactly right, Quinsonnas," Huguinen said. "Look there!"

     "By Jove!"

   To their right, several paces distant, there spread out upon the shore of the mighty sea a vast  animal bone yard. But the skeletons all appeared to be the wrong size--the skeletal remains of titanic monsters.

     Entering the mass graveyard of pre-Adamite behemoths, the humans gazed about in stunned wonder. Even after witnessing the primordial sea-monster, it was difficult to imagine such beasts had lived. Some of the skeletons appeared ancient and partially fossilized, but many were evidently more recent, some appearing very fresh, even bearing the marks of scavenger's teeth. The great rounded domes or shells, which were numerous, Lucy first fancied were the shells of gigantic turtles, but Robur pointed out that they were the carapaces  of giant extinct relations of the New World armadillo, called glyptodonts. There were even more impressive remains, including the skeletons of what had to have been massive, elepantine monsters with vast curling tusks of pure ivory. These Robur identified as the extinct mammoths, or possibly the great mastodons Axel claimed to have observed. There many other representations, including the bones of monstrous ground sloths, of the like Darwin himself had discovered during his voyage to Argentina, and the great grinning skulls of huge, dragon-like lizards. Lucy shuddered at mere sight of these, and the mere notion that living examples of such might yet lurk in the mighty forested fastness of the primeval continent they were now standing upon filled her with horror. Her dread for her lover's welfare now tripled. What might they encounter among the verdant aisles which lay before them?

   Having crossed the boneyard, they entered  the forest. Within, it was gloomy, damp and moist. The floor was thick carpet loam and humus. They stepped cautiously into this strange new, ancient world, especially Lucy, who stepped carefully around and over fallen, rotting logs, and tangled clumps of fern. There were unnervingly huge insects scuttling about, she noted with a fair amount of nausea. She saw suddenly a thing like a meter-long black and yellow-banded millipede slithering across the earth to vanish behind a long. Lucy shuddered and drew near her father. At least she was with a company of men, all of whom had armed themselves with rifles.

     Strange calls that might have belonged to anything sounded around them in primeval gloom. They had gone several paces when the party began to relax, though, they remained wary.

     "Well, " Huguinen said, "There's no sign of giant mastodons yet."

     "Or any giant humans," Quinsonnas added.

     "Just keep your eyes peeled," said Lars. "This forest might harbor anything."

     "Oh, I assure you that it does," smiled Robur who was still acting ironically like a mad tour guide.

    Lars was clutching his rifle and glancing about furtively in the shadows, as though anticipating a sudden attack from something at any moment. Then he suddenly exclaimed, "Yo, Look here!"

   All of them clustered about the burley Swede.

   "See here," the man said, and pointed.

   There, impressed by vast weight into the thick mold was a mighty footprint. It was roughly circular, and bore the prints of blunt, hoof-like nails.

   "What do you suppose made it?" Monsuir Richolet asked.

    "I'll wager one of those very mastodon monsters you were talking about," Lars answered. 'Looks enough like it was made by an elephant, but look at the size. "I say we follow the brute, and shoot it for dinner! A monster that size is enough to feed us all!"

     There was an abrupt rustling of ferns and a slight shriek from Lucy. The men turned to see the girl back as a miniature herd of tiny mammals, russet in shade, and marked with cream-colored longitudinal stripes along their flanks,  galloped across her path leaping one at a time across a fallen log. "Oh!"she cried. "They're like tiny horses!"

   "Yes, they are!" exclaimed her grandfather.

   "Protorohippus of the Eocene," identified Robur. "The great ancestor of the noble European stallion."

   The watched as the stream of tiny horse-like ancestors scurried off, vanishing into the depths.

  "They're rather charming," Lucy observed. "I wonder what they would say if I were to take one back to Paris?"

    "I hope you'll get the chance, dear," her father said.

    "Oh,yes. Still...I rather not so fond of Paris, what it's become. They've made Paris a perfectly horrid place."

   "Oh, when we return," Robur said, "we'll remake Paris--and the world! Or  I will. And we'll live like the new Royalty, all of us! For that is what we'll have become!"

    "And Michel? Will he too?" Lucy implored.

    "He will! He will!" replied the conqueror. "Now let us press on..."

 

 

      The roars of the maddened megalosaur, and blast of rancid stench from its open mouth overwhelmed Michel. Dazed, he saw within the dagger-lined jaws, a gigantic pulpy tongue of red-pink writhe and squirm as if in anticipation of tasting his flesh.

   The young Parisan scrabbled back. The primeval monstrosity roared again.

   He can't reach me, Michel told himself frantically, I'm safe...

   The great reptile's claws began ripping into the wood, widening the aperture.

   Michel pulled back, eyes wide, as the beast massively forced its giant bulk toward him.

   The young man scrambled about on his belly, then scrambled madly for the other opening. His refuge shook and shuddered about him, and the megalosaur tore into it in pursuit of the small, thin mammalian. Once free of the log, the boy scrambled to his feet and dashed off through the ferns. He heard the monster bellow tremendously in his wake. Glancing back over his shoulder, he had a vision of the behemoth  bounding mightily around the great log and charge tremendously after him, a living engine of primordial fury.

    And then...

    As he fled among and around the thick boles of giant conifers, he hear a reptilian shriek of some ancient denizen of the forest, disturbed by his flight, followed by a roar from his pursuer. There was the sound of the beast changing its course.

   Michel stopped and whirled about, to see the albino bulk of the great lizard-beast, crashing through the ferns and saplings in pursuit of some other prey.

     Heart hammering in his slim chest, it occurred to Michel that the great lizard had apparently caught enough food already; whatever it had been feeding on had appeared enough to satiate the appetite of even so monstrous an animal. But mayhap monsters such as thrived in the perilous conditions of the earth's dawn were of necessity so voracious they were ever alert to slay and devour anything incessantly.

    There came to his ears the fatal snapping of the reptilian jaws, followed by a shriek from the smaller victim.

    Michel fled, not wishing to remain near the beast and its kill, nor attract another of its monstrous kind.

    Once he had traversed a good distance between himself and the megalosaurus, Michel came to a halt, gasping. He sat down on a rotted log to catch his breath. Michel gazed, wonder-struck about him. He had left the fungi forest far behind; he was now within a realm of gigantic conifers which rose, cathedral-like, into the vaporous curtains above. Weird squalls and hoots of a teaming multitude of underworld life resounded throughout the twilit gloom.

   Michel was beginning to appreciate the stupendous wonders of this new world. They were  wonders alien to the world he knew; but no less wondrous and awe-inspiring in their majesty. Indeed, the beauties of the Lost Land were a new, fresh source of poetic inspiration. Michel's mind was thrumming with verse waiting to flow from his pen in tribute to the mighty visions of this incredible new world, frozen in the era of creation's dawn. And he contemplated: why would he ever have need to return to the surface? Paris? He had no desire at all to return there. He had just narrowly evaded death by a primeval monster. But even that incident was worthy of a poetic saga to rival Beowulf, at least so far as his pen could craft it! It was in virgin realms such as this that poetics were born and nurtured. The surface had no longer anything save scorn and contempt for artists. Why should he return? Why should he want to return?

   And Lucy! They could begin a new life here. Both of them Yes! That's what they would do. Paris and its vast, lifeless enterprises, bereft of anything of spirit or meaning, held nothing for them, and they knew it. A fresh, incredible world now had revealed itself in all its savage splendor!

    But where was Lucy? Was there any real hope for him and her after all, if they remained separated, as much as they were on that frigid night in Paris?

    She was with her grandfather, Robur, and the others, Michel assured himself. She was safe. She had to be with Robur in charge. Even if he met his demise in this Lost Land, his love, he was assured, would survive. But how could he find them? How, in the vastness of an entire world, an entire continent? But Robur! He felt certain that the man would not give up on him. The inventor might be driven by his own ambition first and forest, but he had selected himself and Lucy for a purpose, he was sure, and already the Terror was searching for him.

  But he had heard nothing of the mighty thrum of the Terror's engines since his plunge into this forest of twilight wonders. Had Robur given up, believing him beyond rescue? No! Even if he would have, Lucy would not let him! Never!

   Michel stood up. He realized that he had more immediate problems. He had to find water and fast. Already his mouth had been growing dry. His flight from the megalosaurus had left his tongue parched. Michel resolved that even if he were to meet his demise here, he would be grateful, at least to have drunk of the wonders of this place, known the accompanying freedom from the crushing, spiritless monotony of Paris.

    There had to be streams or rivers in this woods; he had seen the winding silver threads of major tributaries from the cabin of the Terror, and dizzyingly, when the pterodactyl was bearing him aloft through the gusty heights. Possibly they ran toward the Central Sea. He remembered the knowledge that to locate a stream in a wilderness, one must  travel downhill. He could not immediately discern a definite slope in the forested terrain. But as he began to walk he soon located the direction in which there was a gradual downward trend. He began following its course. Dreadfully, Michel realized he lost all sense of direction. Chances were slim to none he could find his way back to the site of his plunge. There had been a compass on board the Terror, but he did not have one with him; not that south, north, east and west might register down here.

    His thoughts never strayed far from Lucy, Michel continued on. For her, if nothing else he would make his every utmost effort to remain alive. Thoughts of her, and that she was well and counting on him, invigorated the young man.

    Lichens and huge mushroom-like growths proliferated in this damp, steamy realm, though none as large as those he had encountered previously. Large, glowing insects, seeming to generate their own organic luminescence droned and buzzed throughout the moist gloom, as did swarms of diminutive winged reptiles, clinging to the boles of trees and constantly gliding among the glowing droves of insectile life, tiny cousins to giant monster which had  borne Michel to this realm.

    At last, he found a thing that filled him with vast relief. In the impression of a vast shelf-fungus encumbering a third of the girth of one of the arboreal giants, there was a pool of condensed water; Michel cupped his hands into the pool, and lapped the water greedily. He found it wonderfully refreshing; the pristine coolness was like heaven on the boy's dry tongue. He laved some of it refreshingly onto his face.

    He then continued on, still following the downward slope of the forest floor.

    There was an abrupt crashing of ferns and splintering of branches. Michel took refuge behind the bole of a tree, and peered around it. The massive, pale shape of giant animal heaved through the ferns and brambles, into the view of the dazed young Parisan.

   Like the megalosaur, this beast was the pale shade of an albino, with a faint pinkish tint to its  hide. Though Michel initially expected another of the giant reptilia, this was evidently a monstrous mammalian, exceeding in bulk the upper world rhinoceras, which Michel had only observed in a Parisan zoo, though similar to that African and Asian beast in general outline. It had a curious, trunk-like proboscis, and heavy downward pointing tusk-like canines. It lumbered through the ferns and cycads on massive columular legs, and the brutish skull sported, not a single or pair of horns, but a quartet of grotesque, knob-like growths, to the rear of which a pair of horse-like ears twitched. The beast's tiny scarlet eye glittered like a ruby in the forest's wan light. The awe-struck Parisan observed in wonder, as the mighty mammal from another time seized a thick conifer branch in its toothy maw, and began loudly crunching and devouring it, needles stems and all. It was a giant herbivore, and for this Michel thanked the Lord! The beast passed on, crunching its way monstrously through the forest.

   Shaking in awe from the brief encounter, Michel rounded the tree and continued on. The world around him remained cloaked in twilight, but it seemed steadily to be growing brighter.  

   He encountered other such behemoths. This entire forest, apparently, was thick with monsters, and Michel, unsure as to which presented a dire threat, made certain avoid their sight. Once, he came across a gigantic shaggy brute which reared up impressively on its great hindquarters and thick tail, and pressed over one of the arboraceous ferns with its mighty clawed forelimbs, in order to strip the feathered fronds with a sticky, curling tongue. Though the monster was evidently herbivorous, Michel gave it wide birth, wary of the sheer power of those great sweeping claws. This was one monster, that, with a thrill of wonder, the young poet thought he recognized; in fact he was certain of it; the legendary megatherium or giant ground sloth, which he recalled dimly from the Liddenbrock journal, and whose massive skeletal remains he had once goggled at in the Parisan museum. Oh, thought Michel, Why oh why, did they ridicule Axel and his uncle so? Why was Professor Lidenbrock not taken seriously? Had he not discovered this place, or at least brought it to the light of the much vaunted science of the modern world? Everything, everything written in the journal is true, so true! Every bit, I am certain! Any doubts he might have harbored before had long perished! A land of living wonders of a vanished world sprung to incredible life, this!

   The mighty sloth, the boy observed, was not of the pale, albinistic hue of the behemoths of his previous encounters. The thick shag of monster's coat was a rich mahogany color, as the dazzling rays of gold light that penetrated the forest realm rendered apparent.

   He had now left the twilit portion of the jungle behind. The world above the dense forest canopy held the brightness of day, and sliced through the rents in it like spears of molten gold, dazzling and glorious. Now more than before, Michel's poetic inspiration was set blazing. Lines of verse coruscated and sung through his mind with each fresh wonder he beheld!

     Oh , glorious Edenic Paradise

     New as the first dawn

    Blooming vast and bountiful

    Within the womb of world

   Riven by ice and the vacant

   Titans of industry,  bursting

   Pheonix-like in recreation!

   The garden God fashioned for Adam,

   Father of our race, born anew!

   Sing, oh harps of angels, sing!

  The words came to him without effort, and he began reciting them to the world, as the incredible, alien beauty of the Lost Land, its unspoiled forest realms, the glorious blossoms blooming in the forest aisles, the raging behemoths who roamed here.

   And suddenly, Michel nearly stumbled; an abrupt slant in the terrain, threw the boy off his feet, disrupting the flow of his thoughts and words. The lad shook his head, clearing it. He saw then that he had arrived at last where he was seeking. In a shallow ravine below flowed a clear sparkling stream. Michel grinned. He pulled himself to his feet, and made  his way down to the stream's edge. Michel had grown thirsty once more, thanks in no small part to the length of his journey and his thrill at the awesomeness of the beasts he'd encountered. The boy lay down on his belly and lapped and lapped the clear, cool water of the spring until he was fully satiated. Even with the forest's precipitation having sustained until now, he had  been mightily thirsty.

   Michel scrambled back up the slope, and began following the direction of the spring, in hopes that it would lead to a larger tributary, and perhaps to the famed Central Sea. If he then followed the sea's shore, he might be able to catch sight of the Terror, and perhaps signal to Robur.

  He not ventured much further, keeping with the wind of the spring, before he was startled by the sudden crashing of some unseen creature of vast bulk through the trees, merely a few meters to his left. He could see nothing but the waving and shaking of the trees and foliage, accompanied by the massive snapping and cracking. Then he beheld, at distance, a vast gray-green bulk loom monstrously through the tangled thicket, then vanish from sight again behind the screen of disturbed vegetation. Another stunning example of this land's gigantic fauna!

  Michel could not as yet discern what manner of giant behemoth the creature was. Perhaps it might have been wiser to put as much distance from it as he could, and at once! But as the sounds of ferns and twigs crunching, as though by a monstrous reptilian beak, he realized the monster had to be of the herbivorous kind. His curiosity was powerfully ignited, Michel made his way cautiously toward the creature.

  The thin, frail boy pried his way through and under the brambles, until he stood within a shallow clearing.

    Before him, he beheld a titan of the pre-Adamite world more stupendous in dimension than any thus far.

     The sheer massiveness of its scaly bulk made the young man draw his breath in incredulity. It was an immense, armor-scaled quadraped, outbulking the mightiest of elephants. Its legs were thicker than stone columns. Though built on a plan suggesting a giant mammal, it was clearly reptilian, with a great dragon-like tail, and the head of lizard magnified to overwhelming proportion. It tore and ground the ferns and conifer branches, with heavy, beak-like jaws, very like the bewildered boy had so recently envisioned. A short, blunt horn rose from the scaly snout, after the manner of a terrestrial rhinoceros. The entire animal suggested a bulky, reptilian rhino, in fact, though it dwarfed in any rhino that had ever lived.

     Michel knew what it was. He recognized it clearly, just as he had the megalosaurus, and the incredible realization so stunned the boy, his legs threatened to give out under him.

   This was an iguanodon, a real, living, breathing, chewing iguanodon, exactly the same beast whose sculpture he had once beheld in London's Crystal Palace garden. The creature had seemed awesome enough as a mere image cast in stone. But nothing on earth or within could have prepared him for the vision of the statue's living representation, in all its awesome, primal glory!

  There issued then a bestial scream of mindless, primal hunger from deeper within that forest. Michel knew it at once as that of the megalosaurus, the beast he had barely escaped becoming devoured by.

    A strangled cry erupted from the boy's throat, as the great carnivorous reptile, and mortal enemy of the iguanodon, burst from the trees, a giant engine of fury the bulk of a saurian whale. The scream of the megalosaurus blasted Michel's ears. The herbivorous Titan answered with a roar like a volcanic explosion, as it reared about on its mighty limbs to answer the attack of its foe.

  The young Parisan whirled and ran. A suddenly vine snared Michel's right leg, sending the youth  crashing to the ground.

   Screams and roars, drowning out the world, erupted from the thicket behind him. Michel wriggled frantically another few feet, before flipping over on his back. Half-raised up, his elbows  in the wet, mulchy earth, the Parisan youth starred spellbound by the vision of the dueling titans.

    He starred, scarcely daring to credit his eyes, as the megalosaurus (clad in armored scales of olive green, not the pallor of its counterpart of the band of twilight) fastened its vast jaws onto the scaled leg of its adversary. The herbivorous lizard screamed in agony, then sank its own beaklike jaws into the ridge of the megolosaur's spine. The flesh-eating reptile responded in kind, sinking its great battery of steak-knife fangs deeper. It was a saurian combat no man of upper world had ever witnessed since the vanished Pre-Adamite world of before the Flood.

   The carnivorous reptile pulled back, the titanic strength of those mighty, reptilian jaws ripping the entire gigantic limb of its victim clean from its socket.There was the sound of ripping muscular tissue being pulled apart and a vast deluge of rich crimson soaked the pallid ferns.

   Not yet dead, but mortally wounded, the herbivore screamed thunderously, then collided with its foe, goring the megalosaur with its single horn, and smashing the carnosaur up against the bole of a Jurassic conifer. The megalosaur screamed in rage and agony.

   But the iguanodon was losing blood in stupendous volume. The giant herbivore collapsed with a weak whine, sounding strange issuing from such a tremendous animal. The megalosaur placed its great forelimbs upon the slain carcass of its fallen foe, and screamed mightily in triumph, its cry of victory filling the forest primordial!  

        Michel whirled and ran. He ran and ran from that scene of brutal majesty of the primordial world.

    He ran through the great coniferous forest, the squalls and screams of the teaming multitudinous thrall of primeval life about him.

  At last the young poet slowed to a walk. He kept on following the stream, which he had maintained pace alongside. As he continued, the stream widened. At length, he began to hear the crash of breakers on a primal shore, the cry of birds that sounded faintly like seagulls, yet were not. And also what might have been the distant screams of pterodactyls.

    He could slowly discern, the gray shimmer of water through the trees, and he finally emerged onto a pebble-strewn shore of a vast underworld ocean. The mighty splendor of the Central Sea spreading east and west and to what passed for the horizon, partially screened by distant hazes and spumes of salty spray. At last! Michel was overwhelmed. Here, at long last, he was setting his own eyes on the very primordial ocean Lidenbrock had so vividly described in his famed journal.  The heavy rollers heaved their way massively toward the shore, which composed entirely of smooth-worn pebbles, and, as Michel observed, also the massed shells of primeval mollusks. The awe-struck young poet walked out along the winding shore; he examined the shells. Faintly, Michel recalled seeing such fossils in Paris; but those, of course, were eons ancient. These were newly discarded by dead creatures who'd washed ashore to rot away or be devoured. Though the boy knew not their name, they were called ammonites by scientists, and they had flourished throughout the bygone Mesozoic. Their symmetry and beauty drew Michel to  them; he picked up one of the ornate shells and examined it. The spiral pattern of the ammonite seemed to suggest infinity. Or mayhap the ever-expanding creation of the world throughout history and prehistory. Or the tiers of heaven. Or hell. It was natural work of artistry, fashioned by God Himself.

     Michel went on marveling at the shell's intricacies, and since it was moderately sized, placed in the pocket of his jacket. He made his way to the edge of the conifer jungle, the shells of smaller invertebrates crunching and snapping beneath his tread.

    Michel sat down on a partially petrified log of driftwood, and gazed out across the heaving bosom of the Lidenbrock.  After a few moments, he took out his journal, and his slightly damaged pen (which fortunately still worked).Taking it in hand, the boy began to write:

    I have now reached the shore of the fabled Lidenbrock sea; the time I spent journeying through the forest might have lasted hours, days, or even weeks. In this realm, lit by an unknown luminance cast by neither sun nor stars, time is rendered nil. I have thus far encountered wonders and terrors within the pre-Adamite forest, and recently witnessed a terriffic battle between two of the most celebrated and terrific saurians of the pre-historic age, non-other than the fabled iguanodon and the awesome megalosaurus. Am I the only human ever to look upon such a combat? Robur, my rescuer, the man who saved my life, and brought us here, mentioned a race and giant men; I recall the mention of one such individual in Axel Liddenbrock's journal, but so far I have seen none.

    I am alone within this realm of stupendous dangers; already I have witnessed sights that few men of the surface have ever dreamed. Still, I have no clue as to the whereabouts of my companions. They were on board Robur's Terror, last I knew of them. I long to see my Uncle Hugunien and dear Monsuir Richolet, and my friend Quinsonnas. My thoughts are never far from my sweet Lucy. Where, or where is she now, at this very moment. Hopefully, and I pray, she is safely in the company of my companions. This land left over from the pre-Adamite ages is rife with ferocious danger. God save that she is well! How I long to experience the honeyed sweetness of her lips once more! Our separation from her in Paris was dreadful. Here, there is a vast new world my beloved may be lost in! But at least this realm is not frozen and dead, in a state of utter despair. No, I've found here a realm untainted by so-called scientific and rational Man, a world of wonders waiting to be experienced and sung in verse, just as Robur had promised me. We are all most grateful to the inventor for delivering us from the frozen hellscape that Paris had become. Even so, I am not certain that I entirely trust the man. He saved me, yes, and Lucy and her grandfather! And that I am most grateful for! But I know that the man is greedy beyond measure, and seems to be out for himself most of all. He plans to gain control of the surface world by ending the famine to some means of enlarging food produce. What will happen when we return Paris? Will we return? And what, especially, of myself and of Lucy? Will we--

   At that moment, the boy faintly heard off within the forest depths, in back and to the side of him, the distant cry of a human voice. Michel very nearly dropped his pen; it sounded like someone calling his name! That could only mean that Robur had landed the Terror, and they were out searching for him!

   The voice, or another like it came again. This time Michel firmly recognized his name; he might also have recognized Monsuir Richolet's voice. Then there came to his ears the sweet feminine voice of his sweet Lucy, faded by distance, but still clear enough!

  Michel sprang to his feet and began to run in the direction he thought the voices came.

       

    "Michel!" cried Huguinen.  "Michel!"

   "Michel!" echoed Quinsonnas. "Can you hear us?"

  "Michel!" Lucy cried. "Oh, Michel! If you can hear, please answer us!"

  "Not sure he can, lass!" said Robur. "The forest is vast, and he might be leagues away, assuming he survived."

    "He did survive! H-he had too! And you said we could find him."

   "We will, lass, and we must! And keep your ears perked, all of you! The lad is undoubtedly searching for us as well!"

   "Unless  he fell victim to one of the monsters of this forest!" said Lars. The burly Swede clutched his rifle, pointing it about in the shadows of the weird colorless jungle or prehistoric trees. The man's eyes shifted warily, scanning the dense recesses of the ancient forest.

    Lucy's terror that she might never be held by her lover again rose horridly. Suppose Michel had been devoured by one of this land's monstrous inhabitants?

    They had encountered, at a relatively safe distance, a few such gigantic denizens thus far. Earlier, they had glimpsed a huge mammal, which Lucy and her friends had first supposed to be one of the giant mastodons of the Lidenbrock  Journal, but which Robur correctly identified as a deinotherium, of colossal side branch of elephantine evolutionary development. It stood twice as high as the modern pachyderms of the surface, and it was distinguished by the mighty, downward-curvatures of its tusks, unrepresented by any extant proboscidian. The pallid wood of the great trees snapped and splintered as the giant mammalian clove them in twain with its mighty projectile molars, then used its coiling trunk to shove entire huge branching, crackling and crunching, into its monstrous maw.

    On another occasion, they had beheld a mighty ground-sloth of Paleocene South America. And then, a great lizard-like brute with a head like that of a giant turtle, and a row of sharp spines extending over and down its humped back. Lucy had cried out when they had blundered upon it, and the party came up short. Robur identified it as a hyleosaurus, one of that fabled family of ancient terrestrial reptilia coined as 'dinosaurs', by the famed Richard Owen. It was clearly a placid herbivore as it munched the cycadic fronds of the primitive forest. The edged their way around it and continued their journey.

    "You see?" said Robur. "The animal life here mirrors the botanical life. It heralds from every prehistoric age! We've seen maples, oaks, and yews eucalyps, flourishing alongside tree-ferns conifers, cycads, and club-mosses from great eons of time their predecessors. And the great reptiles of the Mesozoic age coexist alongside Tertiary mammals."

    "How in Creation did they all find their way down here?" Huguinen asked.

    "I have a few theories as to the origins of the Lost Land," answered Robur. "But nothing definite, not as yet! There may have been passageways leading to the underworld before the advent of the flood. In Africa, as you may know, there are certain salt-caverns, in which whole herds of elephants often congregate. Similar, much more extensive passages may then have allowed the passage of other giant animals at different ages of earth's natural history."

    All of these monstrous Antediluvians were herbivorous, and posed no threat, so long as they kept their distance. But might there be other forest dwellers of a more predaceous nature, lurking somewhere? Certainly they might.

   "We've had no encounter with the mastodons Lidenbrock and his uncle sighted," Quinsonnas said.

   "Oh, but they're here, man, let me assure you," Robur told him. "And so are those who shepherd them."

   "Yes!" said Quinsonnas. "The Axel and the Professor weren't imagining it apparently. Michel told me you'd discovered an actual population of giants."

    "Ah, yes! That is so. I've a feeling we'll encounter them soon," Robur said wryly.

     There came to their ears, in the jungled vastness of the underworld forest what sounded not like the scream or roar of some mighty monster of the past, but a faint human voice.

    "Michel!" exclaimed Lucy in sudden joy. "It's him. I know it! I recognize his voice!"

    "But hold!" said Robur. "Listen--do you not hear that as well?"

    It was heavy crashing and crunching through the pale vegetation, the sound of some tremendous animal trundling its way through the vines and branches just ahead of them.

   "It's one of the monsters!" Lucy cried. "I've got to find Michel--now!"

    The girl dashed ahead.

    "Lucy, wait!" called Monsiour Richolet.

   The men raised their rifles and strode forward.

  But the girl was already fleeing through the tangled  branches and twisting vines.

    "Michel!" she cried. "Michel! It's Lucy! Can you hear me?"

   "Lucy!"called the distant, young  male voice. To Lucy it was sweetest voice in all creation. She recognized at once as that of her sweet young lover. "Lucy, my sweet, I'm coming!"    

     Suddenly  Lucy's eyes flew wide. She shrieked and came to a halt. A few feet ahead of her, shouldering its way massively through the trees was a gigantic reptile more than twice the height an girth of the hyleosaurus. It seemed built more upon a mammalian plan, its column-like legs supporting the prodigious body directly beneath. The head was similar to a lizard or gigantic turtle, sporting a short curved nasal horn and a beaked maw, with which it was snapping up crunching a large branch.

    Robur and other men rushed to her side. Richolet seized hold of his granddaughter's shoulders. "My word, Lucy!"  he cried, "What is it?"

    "Another herbivore, thank heaven!" Lucy breathed.

   "Is...is that an iguanodon?" gasped Quinsonnas.

   "It is!" Robur exclaimed. "By the power, it is! Keep your guns ready! It shouldn't attack if we don't provoke it."

    The giant reptile lumbered on, and was lost in the tangle of pallid vines and waving branches, but the crashing of the enormous bulk, and the crackling of branches as they were devoured rendered its presence distinct.

    "Lucy!" cried a voice they all knew. "Monsieur Richolet! Uncle Huguinin!"

    The young man burst out through the trees. Michel was still wearing his jacket and trousers, though now they were terribly worn and smudged. His blond hair was tangled and matted, and he looked terribly worn by his experience.  "Lucy..."

    "Oh, Michael!" Lucy cried. the girl rushed forward and flung herself into his arms. The two lovers embraced, and kissed warmly. They held each other in their arms for several moments.

    "Oh, my dearest!" Michel gasped Michel. "I've searched for you for I know not how long! Are you alright? "

    "Am I alright?" she told him. "Oh, Michel, I've worried myself sick over you. What happened after that...what was it called?...pterodactyl...carried  you off. I was so afraid."

    "Oh, don't be. I survived well enough! I'll tell all of you all about it!" Michel looked about at all of his friends.

   "Yes you will, I'm sure, and first I believe we must make can't. There is no night here, as some of you have noticed."

   "Glad to have you back, kid," Lars told him.

   "We certainly are," said Monsuoir Richolet, as he ruffled  Michel's blond locks, and embraced him and Lucy, hugging both of them.

     They all greeted the reunited lovers. Then one again, the party set off, back in the direction of the Lidenbrock Sea, and the Terror. A short distance further in a dense grotto of trees, one in which Robur assured then they would remain relatively save from predacious wildlife, they made their camp.

   The overhead canopy shut off the magnetized light so effectively, that it nearly appeared dark. It was a bit chilly in this dim, moist world of the forest floor. They actually built a fire with the ghostly white twigs that littered the area. As they all sat around it, Michel related all that had befallen him since the winged reptile had borne him off. Lucy shuddered as he related his witness to the colossal battle between the two reptilian brutes.

    "The megalosaur, yes! " said Robur "I have managed to shoot myself with my elephant gun! But let us hope we don't encounter another."

    The next day, they broke camp, and made their way once more toward the shore. They had not ventured far, when, during a journey across a clearing, a terrible reptilian scream resounded.

   The party turned in shock to see a great reptilian brute, bulkier than a bull mastodon, with the gaping jaws of a dragon, crash massively into view through the trees.

   "Oh!" cried Lucy, clutching at Michel. "Is--is that--?"

   "It's the megalosaur, Lucy!" gasped Michel.

    "Let's see how well he withstands a well-placed round from this!" said Robur, as he hefted his laser rifle. "Aim for the brute's open throat, men!"

    Screaming like a 19th century steam engine, the beast began his charge.

    It was immediately answered, not by the whine of Robur's laser, or the cracking of the mens' rifles but by a roar, like that of an enraged bull gorilla!

  And before the incredulous vision of the humans, there crashed into the clearing before their eyes a man of sorts, a being like themselves. But such a man! He was at least twelve feet in height, with a head as large as a buffalo, sporting a long shaggy mane of tangled hair, blue-black in color. He was built on the same titanic scale, with the girth and musculature of a dawn-world Prometheus. About his great loins he wore a cloth from the hide of a mastodon. He brandished a mighty club, crudely fashioned what appeared an entire tree.

    The primeval giant glimpsed by Axel Lidenbrock and his uncle!

    Michel, Lucy and his friends from Paris stared in awed bewilderment, as the giant and dragon charged one another.

   The gargantuan human pivoted massively, sidestepping the megalosaur's charge with an agility that belied his awesome size. He swung  his great cudgel, smashing it into the lizard's brutish skull, felling the giant reptile.

  The giant stood back. The great reptile regained his feet, nearly at once. The megalosaurus gave vent to a thunderous hiss that seemed to shake the trees of that mighty forest to their roots. And he charged, much like the reptilian rhino he resembled.

    The giant man once more bellowed an answering challenge, as he swiveled his club around so that the haft, which the observers of this duel of Titans now saw, had been sharpened like a mighty stake, was pointing toward the charging, hissing saurian.

   The primitive giant charged, roaring at his Mesozoic adversary. The two primordial titans clashed, the man ramming the haft of his club directly between the distended jaws, straight through the skull, pulverizing the brain, before punching through the back of the megalosaur's skull. The  dinosaur's hiss became a hissing whine, not unlike that  of a tea kettle, as it crashed to the loamy forest floor, dead.

   The human giant pulled free his cudgel and raised it high, as he roared at the arching,vapor-misted granite ceiling of his primitive world.

  "Mon Deu!" cried Monsouir Richolet. "Such a combat was never surely witnessed by mortals!"

   "Not by mortals of the surface, perhaps!" grinned Robur. "But we are no longer surface dwellers are we?"

   The gigantic hominid turned toward them, glowering down at his strange, diminutive cousins, who stepped back in fear--save for Robur that was. The would-be conqueror seemed even more fearless than usual.

   "Oh, he's looking at us!" Lucy cried, still clutching Michel's arm. "How terrible!"

    "That he is!" exclaimed Rubor, as though in heady triumph. "You know something my friends? I do believe that I know this man!"

   Now Michel began to fear Robur had gone finally and totally mad, as the inventor stepped forward, his weapon lowered, as he confronted the giant of earth's primal dawn face to face.

   The brute was gigantic, a living representative of Man in his primal state; his structure and facial features most nearly resembled the Neanderthal Man of Germany, with his prognathus lower jaw, and great, sloping forehead, with its' mane of tangled hair.  Smallish eyes wondered down at them from beneath a pronounced and massive brow ridge.

    "Gurt!" exclaimed the inventor with gusto. "Gurt my friend, is that you?"

   And Gurt, if that indeed was the giant's name, grinned. It was a crooked, ghastly parody of a grin, but one likely intended to be friendly.

    "Hah!" exclaimed Huguinen. "Robur's friends with that thing?"

    "He's surely gone mad!" gasped Quinsonnas.

    "Surely!" agreed Richolet.

    "Now, now!" assured Robur, turning to his awed companions with a wave of his hand. "I've told you I've friends among the Thari. That's what they call themselves. I'm on good terms with many of their people. Is that not right, Gurt?"

    The giant, still bearing his crooked mile, nodded slowly, then bowed his massive head slightly, as though in reverence to the Conqueror.

   "I know their ways, their customs," Robur went on. "I speak the Thari tongue, and I've managed to teach them a bit of English, my native tongue. "

     "Does that brute speak a civilized tongue?" asked Huguinen. 

     "You recognize English, do you not, Gurt, my friend?" asked Robur of the giant.

    "Greetings...." the great brute murmured in a vast tone.

     "My word!"  Exclaimed Quinsonnas.

    "Are these other small mean...friends?" rumbled Gurt.

    "They are indeed," the inventor answered, "they are fellow adventurers from my world. I insist that they be well treated!"

  "Do they have the same powers as you, Great Robur?"

 "Their magic is not so powerful as my own," answered the great scientist. " but they do have magic of their own, which is why the tribe must treat them with respect."

   "Yes, great Robur," boomed the giant.

   "We are on our way to the Terror, on the shore of the Lidenbrock Sea, Gurt. I ask you to accompany us."

   "A mazaj herder dare not dessert his flock," replied Gurt. "Gurt has just killed a great zarg, a forest-dragon, who was after my prize bull. The zarg has trailed my flock for leagues, and managed to bear off one of the calfs.  Now Gurt has finally slain the beast."

   "Then lead them with you. We will provide extra eyes, to look after your flock's safety."

   The giant bowed his great-maned head. "It will be as the Conqueror wills," the great shepherd rumbled.

   He then turned titanically, and led them from the clearing.

   "Lord!" Huguinen exclaimed. "They know you well, do they not."

   "Ah, yes, I've let them know I am their conqueror, so I did!"

    Huguinen was not sure he wanted to hear all of that story, not now anyway. But he was certain he would learn it long before their underworld adventure was over.

   The presence of the towering giant lumbering along at their side through the gloomy, pallid jungle of primeval flora was unnerving.

   Slowly, they heard the crackling and crunching of bark and conifer branches, and the passage of mighty hulks plowing their way through the dense thickets. Then they saw them, not herbivorous dinosaurs this time, but the giant predacessors of the modern elephant, the mighty mastodons, the same such mighty-tusked brutes as once roamed the great broadleaf forests of the eastern United States! They were more massive than the African elephant, with great shaggy hides, terrible tusks, and huge flattened skulls.

  "Incredible!" Monsieur Richolet exclaimed.

  "Quite, quite!" Robur exclaimed. "The very same monsters that President Thomas Jefferson believed would be living somewhere in the vastness of the American Continent! Alongside giant sloths, which we have also witness with our own eyes, here within the bowls of the planet."

   "Such terrible beasts!" exclaimed Lucy, her arm entwined with her lover.

   "I think they are rather beautiful," Michel told her. "Such as they are. Terrible, yes, you're right, but majestic in their terrible might. The stuff of poetry! Like many things down here. I've been inspired many times over, here!"

    "I imagine you have, Michel," she told him. "Everything is so...different here! But the plant life is as beautiful as it is strange!"

   "The flora is magnificent here!" Michel exclaimed. "So is the terrain."

   "And the animals," Lucy said, "Certainly you think they are too."

   "Certainly, dear," said Michel. "I will write volumes based on our experiences and the sights I have seen, once we are back in Paris."

    "You wish to return to Paris?" Lucy asked in slight surprise.

    "Now that you mention, no, I don't have any desire to return. Not as long so Paris remains a poisoned, famine-stricken wasteland, such as when we left it. This is the New World, Lucy. The New New World. It's all our own. We'll start all over here Lucy. Not just us, but the entire race of Man! Mr. Robur, I'm sure, is capable of building a new civilization here. A new France! Perhaps that's what we should name it. New France."

  "But Robur says he can end the famine in France! Maybe he can. Then, perhaps the world will be cured of its sickness, and we will want to return after all!"

   "If he manages to transform world when he conquers it," said Michel, "then will the world remember the beauty of verse, of literature? Will they hail me as a new master of the arts, and give credence to the old masters! If so, I will wish to return. Sometime, at least. But if not--"

    "Oh, but if he can," Quinsonnas said, "then Robur truly is a genius, and miracle worker, perhaps even more so than he himself supposes. And he'll certainly have my lifelong gratitude as well as yours. If he gets industry going again, wonderful! I'll have my job back, and yours as well. If he can make give appreciation back to poetry? Then posh! Let others with no interest in art have our professions! We will be rich, Michel, at least in spirit, perhaps in finance as well!"

   "I'll have a whole new volume of verse ready to publish by then," Michel told him. "But if they remain as dead to the wonder of the written word as they were when we left Paris, we'll have a new world here. And whatever wrong course  history took in the twentieth century that made the upper world forget literature, we'll make sure it never happens here. Our children--mine and Lucy's!--will grow up embracing the beauty of creation, and they'll treasure the verse I will write in its praise."

  "Yes," agreed Lucy, "They certainly will. Whatever Robur plans, we can't allow industry--at least that industry, to kill poetry, like it has on the surface."

    "History need not take the same course here, Michel," Huguinen said. "So long as we do not allow it."

    "It won't, Uncle," said Michel. "Lucy and myself won't allow it. Not in our lifetimes anyway."

   "Just look at those brutes," commented Lars, pointing his rifle toward one of the mastodons. "One well placed round, and we'd have enough elephant steak to feed us all!"

    "No!" cried Michel, having overheard him. "They are magnificent animal wonders! Don't do that!"

   "Indeed, no," snapped Robur harshly, flashing his black eyes toward the man. "Do not be mad! Gurt could well kill us all if you dared to harm any of his flock!"

    "Forgive me," said Lars, "but I was only saying--"

    "Keep words like that to yourself!" said Robur. "The Thari depend almost entirely upon the Majaz, the giant mastodon, for their every requirement, similar to how the nearly extinct Sami people of your own native Sweden depend on the reindeer. They revere and very nearly worship the mastodon. Shepherds such as Gurt guard the giant beasts from the great predacious reptiles of the forest, often at risk of their own lives, just as we have so recently seen. They relish combat with the most voracious predators of the underworld, the great megalosaurs and smaller dryptosaurs. They often make meals of the slain predatory dragons as well, though mostly the flesh of mastodons themselves provide all the meat in their diet."

    "I only hope they do not take to munching on smaller humans!" Lars snorted.

    "Do not worry," Robur assured him with a laugh. "That is rather taboo among the Thari. They very rarely do that."

  This did little to soothe their apprehension toward the giants.

   What? thought Michel. Are there other, normal sized humans down here, that the Thari rarely prey upon? He decided to give it no further thought for the moment.

   The giant man and his flock of gigantic charges lumbering alongside them, they at last reached the extremity of the forest, and emerged out upon the shore of the Paleolithic ocean.They again had a vast view of the mighty granite ceiling that domed the Lost Land.  There set the Terror,  exactly as they had left it, its streamlined bullet-shape gleaming in the electro-magnetic underworld brilliance.

   Michel had half-feared that one of the giant monsters, either of the land or the primeval ocean, might have destroyed it. As much relieved as he was to see the vessel thankfully whole and undamaged, Michel was given a brief startle, as he beheld, at a distance, one of the titantic marine leviathans rear up like hill out of the gleaming gray waters. It appeared to possess the head and jaws of a crocodile magnified many times, and he witnessed twin jets of spray spume upward from the monster's blowholes like cascading fountains. It was the ichthyosaurus, Michel knew at once; he was beholding the fabled marine predator recorded so very frightfully by Axel Lidenbrock!

     "Here we are!" exclaimed Robur.   "Lead us to your village, Gurt!" exclaimed Robur to his towering acquaintance.

         They began making their way back through the jungle, this time aboard the Terror, with the giant striding alongside their progress. The machine traversed the terrain well, plowing its way through the thickets. They traveled slowly, though, Gurt's mastodon herd muching its way through the forest to their left, crackling and crunching tree-limbs as they went. There was one further incident of a forest predator attacking, a great cat with 12-inch curving fangs--a saber-toothed tiger. It was of nearly ursine bulk, but when the monstrous felid sprang from the waving, pale fern-fronds at one of the young mastodons, Gurt swung his mighty cudgel, sending the predator flying, to crash, either winded, crippled or dead, back into the forested recesses.

     They kept journeying in what passed for northeast through the colorless jungle. Finally, they broke the forest, emerging onto a wide, grassy plain, the forest marched off on either side, receding in the distance in wide curves.

     There were other herds of mastodon lulling about here, and each one, they observed was tended by a giant shepherd, of the same hominid type as Gurt.

   They came to the Thari village itself. There were a series of great corals partially encircling it, and these were constructed of the gigantic boles of ancient conifers. They needed to be sturdy in construction, as individual flocks of mastodon were currently penned within.

   The village consisted of tremendous huts, not dissimilar to the wigwams of the Red Indians found in America, only many times the height and girth. Each one had a framework constructed of the giant bones, tusks, and skulls of the mastodons, covered in mastodon hide, and fortified with hard-baked mud and clay, grass, and stones. It was as Robur told them; the Thari's every need they derived from the mighty-tusked herbivorous behemoths they penned and herded.

   There were many more of the giant humanoids about, both men and women, all with the same, shaggy mans of dark hair, and slope-browed, Neanderthaloid features,clothed in loinclothes of fashioned of mastodon hide. And children as well, many peering and thrilling at the sight of the Terror. The half-grown giantlings, boys and girls both, stood higher than seven feet. There too, were infants, some folded in the arms of their giant mothers, and others held in huge child-carrier baskets strapped on their mother's backs, again in the manner of some Amerindian tribes. The adult members of Gurt's tribe were gazing in awe at the Terror as well--awe mixed with recognition. Those on board Robur's craft watched in awe as the gigantic villagers halted in their tasks at sight of the bizarre surface craft, and began getting down on their knees, raising their hands and bowing prostrate to the grassy earth, as they murmured in awed praise.

    "Look at them, my friends!" Robur said. "They all know their god has returned."

    "Do they truly worship you as a deity?" Monsieur Richolet asked him.

    "As good as!" the conqueror answered. "They realize I wield powers far beyond anything they could conceive, prior to my coming! To the Thari, I am the same as a supernatural being, and as such these primitives regard me."

     "Such terrible creatures!" exclaimed Lucy.

     "Terrible but wondrous!" said Michel.

     "Are you certain that you have control over them?" Huguinen asked.

     "Ah, you shall see my friend," Robur said. "Now let us disembark. Men, retain  your weapons. But do not point them at any Thari, and do not even think of firing at them!"

     The hull of Terror opened, and Robur and his crew disembarked into the bright, eternal daylight of the Lost Land.

   The Thari continued to murmur and bow before the diminutive surface-worlders.

    "Arise, my primitive friends!" exclaimed the conqueror. "I, your friend and ruler from the world above, have returned at last. No need to keep praising me. Arise! And celebrate our reunion."

    Then, one and then another and another of the giants got to his or her feet.

    "Oh..." murmured Lucy.

     "Do not worry," whispered Michel. "They won't attack. And anyway, we have our rifles."

    "As you can see," exclaimed Robur to the towering natives, "I have brought others of my race along with me. They are to be treated well. Do you understand?"

    One of the giant men answered in his own language, Robur answered him in turn, and they began to converse in Tharian.

    Michel, Lucy, and the others looked at each other in confusion, wondering what was passing between them. Gurt then said a few booming words of his language.

    At length, Robur told Gurt, in English, "Take us to the chief!"

    The giant, still clutching his tree-sized cudgel, began lumbering toward the center of the Thari village. Robur and his Parisan companions followed, the gathering of awed Tharians parting before them.

    The hut of the chief stood at nearly twice the height of the other dwellings, a massive edifice of mastodon bones and tusks, with the skull of a tusker looming above the entrance.

    Gurt lifted aside the mastodon-hide flapped and ducked within. He held back the flap, as his smaller companions entered. Robur's friends gazed about themselves in the gloom.

   To Michel and Lucy, the giant's hut seemed vast in the manner of a Parisan cathedral; the ceiling receded high above them, and was massive, supported as it was by the bones and tusks of prehistoric monsters, though of far more primitive construct. A spicy sent, of some burnt leaf matter, pervaded the hut. The floor of structure was carpet with the hides of mastodons and other beasts. Now they discerned the form of a giant Thari woman, sitting cross legged in the floor to the left of them, cradling her child. And before them, in the center of the great hut, seated on massive throne of mastodon bones and arching tusks, and bathed in a golden shaft of electro-magnetic light which streamed in from an open rent above, sat the glowering chief.

    He was a massively muscled representative of his race, the chief, larger in girth even than his brethren. Above his sloping brow-ridge, the giant chief wore the monstrous skull of some giant primitive carnivore, possibly a giant cave bear, and if so, more than twice the size of any living ursine creature of the surface. This supported a magnificent head dress, made of a multitude of feathers taken from the trains of innumerable unknown species of birds. The chief's primitive visage was brutal, though he brightened as he recognized the small man from the surface.

    "Greetings, King Tharg, mighty chief of the Thari!" exclaimed Robur, "I have returned with friends."

      "Robur!" rumbled the Thari king, in a voice like primitive thunder. "So it is so! My shaman, Org, foresaw your return. We are most grateful. You must tell us of your adventures in the world above."

   "And thus I shall, old friend," said Robur. "As you can see, friend Tharg, I have brought friends of my own. See that they are as well received as myself."

   "They shall be!" thundered the chief. "Welcome, friends of Robur the Conqueror! You will be grandly treated among theThari. Our homes are yours, and the food and drink of the Thari are yours as well."

   Robur went on conversing with the mighty chief. Twice, they switched from English toThari and back again.

   "I will bring even greater riches and food to the Thari this time!" Robur promised the chief. "And my comrades will help make it so. May your crops and herds prosper, as I shall see to it that they shall!"

   Tharg showed Robur and the other surface-worlders a place they could sleep in the hut. They lay down slept for a period of time (in the endless daylight of the Lost Land, who could say how long?).

     When they woke, Gurt and Chief Tharg guided the surface humans to the center of the village, where there was a great feast being prepared. The whole carcass of an adult mastodon was being roasted on a gigantic spit over a pit of coal. And also being roasted and prepared was the carcass of a dinosaur, one of the mighty sauria that preyed on the giant flocks. Occasionally, as Robur explained, one of the megalosaurs the giants slew in defense of their herds was eaten as well, to supplement the Thari diet of mastodon meat. There were beverages as well, the surface worlders took part in, the juice of an exotic fruit which Michel found indescribably flavorful, and a fermented wine brewed by the Thari, distilled from gigantic prehistoric grapes, each as large around as a cantaloupe. They partook of actual fruits as well, some gigantic versions of their surface counterparts, others new, alien, and exotic, all of them delicious.

     They stayed among the Thari for what amounted to what amounted to days and then weeks on the surface. Robur showed them the crops that the giants raised on the opposite side of the village from the mastodon pens. They were gigantic, ; wheat and maize twenty-feet tall, and grapes the size of tennis balls, and apples oranges, tomatoes, etc. the size of basketballs or larger. Robur explained how some of these naturally grew immense in the lost land, but he had increased the already awesome size vastly by means of selective breeding. The Thari already had slightly different breeds of mastodon, that varied in size, shade, and tusk shape. But they possessed no knowledge of Mendelian genetics, as had the inventor.

        "You see, now," he said to Michel, as the youth gazed up in awe at the towering tree-sized stalks of the forest of grain. "How the Famine of Paris, and most of Europe, will come to an end!"

     He also took them on a tour of the wine brewery, a striking modern building for that village, constructed of great slabs of pine-wood, and showed them how he had taught the Thari the art of brewing fine wine. He was also able to teach them some of the Thari language, and even Thari writing. Michel, in particular, took to the writing, and soon translated nine of his own poems into the native language.

    They spent many months among the giants, as Robur made preparations to transport his creations to the surface world.

   Here in the Lost Land at the earth's hollow center, Michel and Lucy found their love for one another growing. They would explore the verdant edges around the plain of the Thari, but did not venture into the deep woods. They would climb into the low foothills, and would often sit together on a high rock overlooking the plain and forest, gazing out upon the strange, awesome beauty of the panorama laid out before them. They watched the flocks of pterosaurs sail in majesty across shimmering, glowing sky under the vast roof of granite.

  "This land certainly is beautiful, Michel, " Lucy murmured, her pretty blonde head pillowed on her lover's shoulder. "I wish we could stay here forever...almost."

    "I know what you mean," Michel murmured dreamily. "This world has never known the beauty of a sunset. I shall always miss the grandeur of the surface sky in the evening. But this Lost Land has an alien magnificence I never knew, never experienced. And certainly a freedom I never tasted, until now!"

   "Oh, yes," Lucy answered, "I miss much about earth as well, even Paris; but I could never return to that dreadful, frozen tomb that Paris had become. Could you, Michel?"

   "Never! But Robur does plan to return. Perhaps we should remain here when he does."

   "But if he can remake our world, as he claims?" asked Lucy. "I would so much like to return then."

  "I would still be an outcast in the world above," said Michel. "Unless the world rediscovers poetry, I will never belong there. There is no place for me. Nor for Quinsonnas."

  "Then let us spend the rest of our lives in this world before the beginning of time."

    "Yes! We will, Lucy. We, will start all over here. Even original sin, the Fall of Man, never happened in this world! It's the same as a Second Creation! Perhaps God Himself intended this world for us."

   "Yes, Michel. I believe that He did."

 

     In the ensuing weeks, the surface worlders explored the countryside, while Michel and Lucy's romance  blossomed, as did their appreciation for the land. Lars, Huguinen, and the other men, in addition to subsisting on the mastodon steak, and the fruit grown by the Thari, took some hunting forays. Lars was able to shoot a few animals for food, once a giant tapir, and once a half-grown ground-sloth.

   And sometime around then, the others began to notice that Quinsonnas had been straying from the village for brief periods of time. They thought little of this at first. But on his third and fourth foray, they began to wonder. Why should the musician be out exploring by himself. The man always retained his rifle; but all of them understood the hazards of wandering off by oneself in this land.

  At last they confronted him.

  "Why are you going off by yourself, Quinsonnas?" Richolet asked him. "Is it some business of yours you're not telling us?"

   Quinsonnas sighed, and his shoulders slumped. "Perhaps I should have told you.  Let me tell you now. I have caught glimpse, when I was out exploring the eastern forest near the foothills, about two weeks time ago."

    "A glimpse of what?" asked Huguinen.

    "A beautiful young woman," he said.

    The others laughed. "Cetainly you did!" said Huigwenin. "You know, I might have guessed that, Quinsonnas--if there really were any beautiful young things here at the earth's core. Except for Michel's Lucy, of course."

   Quinsonnas set his jaw and glared at him. "You might not have seen her, but I certainly did! I fairer young beauty you never saw! I have been composing songs that I will someday sing in her praise!"

   "Are--are you serious, Quinsonnas?" asked Michel. They were all sitting in a stone circle at the edge of the village. Robur was conductiing experiments in the Terror.

     "Most certainly! And I could just by looking at her--and the manner in which she looked back!--that she is unlike those women of the outer world, of modern Paris, that I told you of, my young friend! She is unspoiled woman, boy, they way all women were meant to be. I'm not just talking about her looks. But those were wondrous. She had the face of young princess!  She was slim, graceful, and lovely, dressed only in a leather thong braw and loincloth, leaving most of her bare. She had long, flowing locks of rich chestnut. I've glimpsed a primal Eve, and I mean to find her!"

   "And did you ever catch another sight of this girl?" Monsouir Ricolet asked him.

  "Yes, in fact! The second time I went searching that same area, I saw her again. I saw her at distance, peering about the bole of a small tree, like I glimpsed her before! But when I called out to her, she vanished, and when I attempted to pursue her flight, she was gone."

   "Really, Quinsonnas," Huguinen said. "I fear you're in pursuit of a figment of your own wild imaginings. I say that girl is an after effect of that Thari wine we've been guzzling. I knew you were drinking too much of it. And that, combined with your desire for an ideal woman, both on the surface and here, made your own mind conjure one."

    "No! She is real! She has to be!"

    "You mean you want her to be," Richolet said. "There are no humans like us here. Robur would have told us if there were."

    "No, wait!" Michel exclaimed. "Remember from Lidenbrock's journal? Wasn't there a chapter where they came upon the skeleton, partly fossilized, of a normal-proportioned Paleolithic human?"

   "By Jove, you're right!" exclaimed Quinsonnas. "It's hazy to recall, but I do believe you are right. See? There's proof for you."

   "Evidence, not proof," said Huguinen.

   "Perhaps," said Quinsonnas. "But if evidence it is, please take my story seriously. And Robur explored only a relatively small portion of this land! As did Lidenbrock, as did Saknusseeum before him! Who can say what lies out there in those vast forested hills, or over the eastern mountains. Or across the Central Sea to the east and north!"

    Richolet sighed. "We do not really care to find out what's out there. Myself, I've witnessed enough of the horrors of this frightful land."

     During their next "sleep" period," Michel felt someone shake him by his shoulder. The boy  sat slowly up, blinking heavily. "Quinsonnas?"

     "Michel," his friend told him,"I'm letting you know I'm setting off in search of that young beauty of whom I spoke. I did not want the others with me. I intend to seek her out alone. But I wanted you to know of it. You may came with me if you wish."

     "Then come I will," said Michel. "You may need another man if you find trouble."

    Lucy had now woken beside Michel and was rubbing her eyes. "Michel?" she murmured sleepily.

   "Quinsonnas says he's going in search of that woman he thinks he's seen," Michel said. "And I'm going with him."

   "I didn't think I saw her," Quinsonnas insisted. "I did see her! You, at least, should believe the truth."

   "Very well," groaned Michel.

  "If Michel goes, I'm going with him," said Lucy.

   "I did not intend to endanger a girl," Quinsonnas said sternly.

  "I've got along well enough this far, haven't I?" Lucy said.

   "So you have, lass," Quinsonnas said in a low voice; he did not intend to rouse the others. "But there will be only two men with you, and Michel and I are not veteran gunman like Lars and Robur."

    "I don't care," Lucy said. "I will not leave Michel."

     Lucy scribbled out a note for her grandfather explaining where they had gone, and left it on Richolet's  slumbering form.

    They left the chief's hut and headed across the Thari plain and toward the beckoning foothills to the east.

   The entered the forest, and followed the path that the men had traversed before, when Quinsonnas had first had his enchanting encounter. The land began slowly sloping upward as they entered the foothills. Life was abundant here, as elsewhere in the Lost Land. The encountered bizarre animals, such as two large quadrupeds, which sported prehensile trunks like those of the tapir, and whose heads surmounted bizarre, antler-like horns positioned  laterally to a series of four spikes. Their legs were thick and column like, and their weirdly ornamented heads reared on long thick necks, making them look like a mixture of different beasts, fashioned by the leftovers of creation. The great animals, herbivorous as were most of the Lost Land's fauna, paid the humans no heed, as they crackled and crunched through the clubmosses and conifers. The surface-worlders wisely kept their distance.

    Reaching the edge of a great river which wound its way through the hills, they began to follow its course.

    "Michel, look!" cried Lucy suddenly, pointing.

   The men gazed out upon the far bank, where they witnessed a small herd of gigantic reptilia. These beasts belonged to the dinosaur order, it was evident, but with their lizard-like heads high above the ground, they lumbered bidpedally, on their powerful, kangaroo-like hind limbs and their powerful tails. The tail-dragging monsters foraged their way along the shore, their vast scaled bodies shining like burnished copper in the bright light of the inner world.

   "I believe that I recognize those beasts!" Quinsonnas exclaimed. "They're hadrosaurs. I've seen their likeness in the sculptures cast for the Hawkins Paleozoic Museum, in Central Park, New York. I was there when I visited my cousin in America."

   "Hawkins!" said Michel. "Wasn't he the fellow who created the beasts of Crystal Palace?"

    "Yes, he was the same," Quinsonnas verified. "The New York statues were almost destroyed back in the day by William "Boss" Tweed, but they were saved at the last moment."

    "Are the sculptures there now?" wondered Michel, knowing how art was so depreciated in the modern world.

   "I believe so," said Quinsonnas. "Though I don't suppose they get many visitors these days. But at least they're representative of the Natural World, and thus something the scientific establishment tolerates."

    "At least there is some appreciation for art left in the world above us, then," said Michel gloomily.

    The trio had not ventured much further, when they encountered a herd of giant enormous deer-like creatures, the mighty stags bearing freakishly gigantic, but magnificent racks of antlers, crossing the river. Their coats were of the russet shade of cinnamon.

   Michel and his companions stopped short, gazing in awe at these new living wonders.

   "They're nothing like I've seen on the surface."observed Lucy.

   "Of course not," Michel said. "They're something prehistoric, like everything else in this land."

   "You're right, Michel," Quinsonnas said."Those are Megaloceras."

  "Mega-what?" asked Michel.

  "Giant Irish deer. I saw one myself, or the likeness of one anyway, at the Hawkins New York exhibit, the same as the hadrosaurs."

    On they ventured, leaving the river, and heading onward and upward into the forest hills. A pterosaur screamed above, gliding on transparent wings. The forest here was of primeval silagarias, scale-barked williamsonias, and relatives of the modern horsetail, as well as the conifers. Giant dragonflies hummed among the forest aisles, similar to the one Michel had encountered when he first entered the Lost Land.

   "I think we'll split up here," Quinsonnas told Michel when they had stopped to rest.

   "Split up?"

   "See that tree up there?" the man pointed. "That is where I first saw the girl. If I do meet her again, I'd prefer it was alone."

     "So do you wish us to remain here?"

     "That would be fine, if you wish. Or you may continue searching in that direction," he pointed north west. "That way is where I glimpsed her the second time."

     "We'll stay here, I think," Lucy said. "Won't we Michel?"

      "Yes, we will," Michel said flatly.

      "In any event,"  Quinsonnas said. "We'll meet back here in a half-hour's time, in front of this rock." He referred to a low, flat slab of granite, half-buried in the forest loam.

      Michel and Lucy sat down on this rock, while Quinsonnas ascended the slope, vanishing into the forest above.

    "Do you think he'll find her?" Lucy asked.

    "Who knows?" Michel said. "He certainly thinks he's seen her, whether he has or not."

    "You don't believe him?" Lucy asked.

     "I'm rather skeptical," Michel told her. "I do believe he thinks he saw someone."

    "But you said that Lidenbrock's journal..."

     "That's true. Oh, it might be so, but the skeleton might have been of another surface traveler lost in these regions ages before Saknusseum. Or maybe there was a race of humans down here long ago, now extinct. We just don't know. It's entirely possible he saw what he wanted his imagination to tell him was true."

     "But shouldn't we take him at his word?"

     "I suppose we should," Michel answered.

      Michel and Lucy put their arms around each other. They kissed, and Lucy pillowed her head on her lover's shoulder. She loved their times alone together in this strange new world.

    After a spell, Michel said, "Let's look on ahead. If Quinsonnas is right, and there really are other humans here, maybe we can find some sign."

   "I do hope they are the friendly sort, then," said Lucy.

    They set off in the direction Quinsonnas had indicated. This trek, also, sloped slightly upward as they were journeying into the foothills. The path led Michel and Lucy along the edge of a low  cliff wall of pinkish sandstone. There were shale-like layers in the rock, and they both could fossils preserved and imprisoned within. Most were the coiled shells of ammonites, smaller, more ancient ones then they had seen heaped and strewn on the shores of the Liddenbrock Sea. Ages ago, this countryside had apparently been immersed beneath a surging,   primordial ocean; perhaps the underworld ocean had been far more extensive in ages past, then retreated to its present extensions. As they ventured higher, they began see embedded fossils of primitive land animals. The trail angled upward, and they emerged into the light, and onto the summit of a low hillside. As the hill rose, the deeper the cliff-wall became sunk within. Only a low ridge remained on this level.

    "Michel, look!" cried Lucy.

    Michel did. "Yes, it looks like---I'm not sure..."

   Embedded into the sandstone at eye-level, was a skull, or sorts. At first, Michel took it for human; it bore forward-facing eye-sockets, that stared vacantly from beneath a narrow brow-ridge and high-domed skull. But they were two large; the shape wasn't quite right. As he examined it further, he saw that the teeth of the upper mandible were not human at all, or even mammalian in appearance; they more resembled the even, conical teeth belonging to the reptilian class. The lower jaw was not present.

   "What--what is it?" gasped Lucy.

   "I-I've never seen anything like it,"  said Michel."I think...could it have belonged to a some extinct member of some inhuman, pre-Adamite race, some form of intelligent, thinking being that pre-dated humanity? Remember the Edenic serpent possessed the power of speech. Perhaps the Holy Bible did not speak of a "serpent" as we know serpents, but of some vanished race that left no fossilized trace. At least that surface men have ever uncovered."

    "Do you suppose there are creatures like it still living--maybe they could be watching us from the trees, even now!"

   They both shuddered, and peered uneasily about at the trees.

   But the skull was embedded fast in the rock. Whatever creature had owned it had lived long ago. It appeared to be at least partially fossilized.

   Then again, so did many of the less-recent remains of primeval monsters that composed the  vast graveyard on the shore of the Central Sea.

   Two gun shots rang out.

    Lucy nearly screamed.

    "Come on!" shouted Michel. Gripping Lucy with one hand, tightening the grip on his own rifle in the other, the young man made in the direction of the shots fired. They heard Quinsonnas shout their names, and ran faster.

   As they topped a ridge, overlooking a wie, cup-shaped depression, they beheld their friend shaking his firearm and beckoning at them wildly.

   Then--wonder of wonders!--Michel, stunned, beheld the shape of a slim young woman sparsely clad in tanned animal running ahead and vanishing within a copse of trees. He and Lucy dashed down the slope into the valley.

     "Michel--" started Quinsonnas.

     "I know!" breathed Michel "I saw her, too!"

     A shrill reptilian screech rent the air.

    Michel and Lucy whirled in the direction of the sound.

    Another scream tore at their ears, as there burst into the air out of the arborescent ferns surrounding the clearing, an extradinary bipedal reptile. The beast landed, thudding merely yards away, and advanced upon them, hissing like a Parisan steam-kettle.

   Lucy screamed. The men pointed their rifles shakily at the creature's advance.

   For a single, dreadful instant, Michel supposed they might be facing a horrific living representative of whatever bizarre creature whose skull he and Lucy had so recently happened upon. But no-- whatever being to whom those remains once belonged had possessed an eerie similarity --perhaps a diabolical mimicry, even--to humanity. What faced them now was merely a beast, one of the carnivorous reptiles which infested these primitive fern-forests, of the sort the famed Sir Richard Owen christianed 'dinosaur'. Unlike the great iguanodons and mighty megalosaurs, this one stood upright on powerful hindlimbs in strikingly kangaroo-like fashion. It was merely man-sized, but that was sufficiantly huge enough to be terrifying--and lethal. The thing was mailed-over from blunt snout to the tip of its lashing tail in pebbled scales of brilliant yellow-gold that flashed and glittered in the perpetual daylight that pervaded the lost realm. The clawed forearms were short but powerful, and each hind limb was armed with toes like daggers. A crowning ridge of jagged serrations extended from the lizard's crested head down its back to its tail-tip.

    Quinsonnas fired point-blank, hitting the reptilian beast squarely in the mailed flesh of its chest. Fortunately for the humans, the bullet penetrated, and the beast emitted a hissing cry, and flopped over with a thud. It continued hissing and thrashing wildly, hind-limbs churning and tail lashing, writhing out its incredible tenacity of life. The creature's coiling tongue, Michel noted, was bright crimson.

  "A dryptosaur," said Quinsonnas, not taking his gaze from the thrashing saurian. "Also known as Laelaps, if I recall. Smaller and fleeter than the megalosaurs, but no less deadly."

  An answering shriek pierced the air to their back. They turned to see a second reptile, seemingly identical in appearance to the first, perhaps its savage mate, burst into the clearing from another copse of fern trees. Razor-toothed jaws gaping, crimson tongue writhing serpent-like, the beast landed on its mighty hind limbs and raced, shrilly hissing, in their direction.

   Quinsonnas and Michel raised their rifles.

   Before either of the men could fire, a slim, half-naked form interposed between them and the saurian. The surface-worlders gaped, as the chestnut-haired girl Quinsonnas had been trailing  now crouched between them and the predacious reptile, wielding a stout spear-like shaft.

   The voracious saurian halted, hissing a challenge at the human. Then the beast leapt, bounding screeching at the girl.

   The savage female leveled her spear to meet the creature's death-leap. The raging beast bore down on her, impaling itself squarely upon the woman's staff by its own inertia; the wood shaft punched through the mailed breast, penetrating the beast's vitals.

 The woman rolled lithely aside, as her raging assailant crashed to the earth. Gasping, the girl regained her feet. Mortally injured, the laelaps collapsed to the ground, thrashing madly.

  The two beasts continued to spasm until their waning lives were extingusihed.

   Wordlessly, Michel, Lucy, and Quinsonnas, faced the young woman, their rescuer.

   They saw that she was very like the man had described her, indeed if this were the same girl, and not another beautiful example of her race. She was very much human, as "normal" size as were they, and very much Caucasian, as Lidenbrock had described the skeleton in Axel's journal. Her long, flowing tresses were of rich chestnut. Her face was oval, her features were fine, well-chiseled, very pretty. Her limbs were slim and well tanned from the light of the Lost Land's electro-magnetic radiance. They now saw that her bra was fashioned from some dark-green lizard hide, as was the clothing encircling her loins. Her eyes were a fine, rich aqua-green.

   As the wild contortions of the dying reptile lessoned, the girl approached the saurian cautiously. She seized hold of the heavy stake, and yanked it free. The creature gave s strangled cry, gouting blood from its gullet, and then lay still.

  Then the woman took a keen-edged stone knife from the dragon-hide belt that encircled her waist. She then knelt beside the carcass of the slain dinosaur, laying down the spear. To the amazement of the onlookers, she took the knife, and began sawing and slicing through the creature's neck, severing hide, musculature and tendons, until the head of the carnivorous reptile was cleanly severed from the body. She then took her spear shaft and shoved it into the gaping aperture in the severed neck. She raised her spear proudly, the grisly, ghastily grinning trophy impaled upon it

   The woman approached the three outlanders, holding her bloodied staff bearing the head of her slain quarry. She regarded them steadily.

  Quinsonnas stepped forward to greet the underworld beauty who had slain the rapacious beast. Michel and Lucy clutched one another.

   "You saved us," the man told her. "Why?"

   The girl, who clearly did not understand, merely regarded him with curiosity, perhaps wondering at the strangeness of their clothes.

    "You have our thanks, anyway. Can...you tell us your name, girl?" Quinsonnas asked, trying not to frighten their rescuer.

     "Loana," the girl said.

     "Loana!" exclaimed Quinsonnas, "Why, Michel, did you hear that? She understood me. Her name is Loana."

     "I guess so," said Michel.

     "Can you tell us how you got here, Loana? Who your people are?

     "Zed pre ara lo?"said Loana, clearly not comprehending.

    "She doesn't understand our language," said Michel. "And I can't understand her, either."

    The young woman's eyes burned with apprehension, and she leveled her spear-shaft at them. But she did not seem hostile, only cautious.

     "Can we trust her?" asked Lucy. "She is obviously of a savage people."

     "We mustn't frighten her," Michel said. "It's her that doesn't yet trust us."

     "Easy, Loana," Quinsonnas said. "I've seen you twice before. And I know you've seen me. My name is Quinsonnas. This young man is Michel, and his girl is Lucy. We are strangers in your land. There are more of us," and here he pointed back toward the plain of the Thari. "We would like to be friends of you and your people, whoever they are."

  "Kia," Loana said, beckoning to them."kia,"

"I think I understand that!" Quinsonnas said.  "Come on, Michel."

   "We don't know where she's leading us," Lucy said, still not trusting her.

  "Doubtless to her people!" Quinsonnas told her. "And since she saved us from the beast, we've no reason not to trust her." He motioned for Michel and Lucy to follow.

   Though still uncertain, it was obvious that their friend was not about to be dissuaded. It was obvious to the young poet that his friend was smitten by this savage girl. Knowing themselves how this felt, Michel and Lucy followed.

    Loana led them on a winding pathway through the fern-forest. At last they reached a low valley within the surrounding foothills. It was the site of Loana's village. It was composed of circular huts of animal hide, and wattle roofs overlaid with fern fronds. They were much smaller than the huts of the Thari, of course. All of the villagers were of same size as modern surface world humans. They had not the brutish, neandertaloid features of the mastodon herders. They were all light-skinned, with European features, definitely the Caucasion type identified by Lidenbrock. They had dark chestnut or reddish hair. Some possessed freckles. If they represented any prehistoric human type, it was the Cro-Magon, fully homo-sapiens, and the direct ancestors of modern Europeans. Had they evolved separately in this realm, or were they relatively recent arrivals? There were women who sat weaving mats and baskets, children bearing bundles of sticks, men and women tanning megaloceras hides, or cleaning small, newly caught coelacanth fish. Some village men were butchering and cleaning the carcass of a giant tapir, hanging and smoking the cut strips of flesh.

    The villagers halted their tasks to gawk at the three interlopers following Loana; the people seemed to find the strangers more curious, and less striking than a woman of their own tribe bearing the severed head of a carnivorous dinosaur on her spear. Michel and Quinsonnas noted that, although most of the women of Loana's tribe were engaged in domestic tasks, there were a number of young war-maids among their warriors. These were lithe, athletic women of approximately Loana's own age, which might have been early twenties by surface measure. The girl led them to a large hut in the center of her village, whom they supposed was the hut belonging to the chief. It was surmounted by the massive antlers of a megaloceras, as the house of Chief Tharg bore the skull of a giant mastodon above its entrance.

   "Ju-wa,"said Loana, as the girl drew back the tent flap, beckoning for her guests to follow.

  They entered the interior. Before them, the chief of Loana's people sat upon a solid throne of mastodon ivory. Like Tharg, this chief was also an imposing figure, though he was a modern human of accustomed proportion. He was a solid muscled man of perhaps early middle-age, which made him the elder of most men in the village. He wore innumerable necklaces strung with beads and the teeth of carnivorous dinosaurs. His head was crowned with a regal headress of the vibrant feathers of many species of ancient birds.

    On either side of the room, there were gathered tribal warriors, mostly young men, but some women warriors as well. They regarded the strangers with sternness mixed with curiosity. Loana set her spear with its hideous prize stuck on it in the earth, then she bowed before her chief.

   Lucy clung to Michel's arm all the tighter; somehow these warriors of normal height unnerved more them than had the giant Thari.

    "Carna vei atu," Loana spoke to her chief, as she gestured at the strangers she had brought among her people."ana wa. Na Tu vee." The girl prattled on, and though Michel, Lucy and Quinsonnas could not understand, they could sense that Loana was well intentioned, and spoke on their behalf.

   At last the chief grinned. He stood up, and though his words remained foreign, through gestures he made it clear that the strangers were welcome. They stayed for a while in the house of the chief, whose name they learned was Kovar, and they were introduced to his wife and children. Though the Parisans and the humans of the Lost Land could not understand the other's tongue, Loana was able to show them, through sign language, and pictures traced in the dirt with a twig, how she had been trailing the two Laelaps that had attacked them, and how she had saved them from one of the attacking dinosauria. She also made clear that Quinsonnas had slain the creature's mate with his strange weapon. Since the strangers had aided her on her hunt, she was grateful to them, as they were to her.

    Quinsonnas was able to explain to Kovar that there were other men like them dwelling among theThari. Kovar's people were not over fond of the giants; they did not regard them as enemies, however, and the two races basically avoided one another.  He attempted to explain that they came from a world entirely separate from the Lost Land. He tried to draw a diagram in the earth for Loana, she was unable to comprehend, so he gave up. But he was able to explain that they needed to return, but he promised they would return and bring the others with him.

   Quinsonnas, Michel and Lucy returned to the plain of the Thari and explained all that had befallen them on their venture. The others had been worried about their extended absence, and had been searching the forests. They were much relieved upon their return.

    Robur, in particular, was delighted to learn of a race of humans like them in the Lost Land. Richolet and Huguinen were relieved to discover Quinsonnas was not half-mad.

   After their next rest period, following another feast of mastodon flesh among the Thari, they all boarded the Terror and set off for the village of Loana's people. Once there, Robur astonished them. The people reacted in fear  and wonder at the sight of Robur's marvelous vehicle, but the inventor was soon able to calm them, then awe the people with wonder by means of his weapons and devices.

  They spent nearly a week's time in the village of chief Kovar. Quinsonnas and Loana grew close to one another during this time. Michel and Lucy's relationship continued to flourish and grow. The young lovers worried a bit that Robur would exploit or seek to rule over Loanna's people. But the inventor made no attempts to overthrow Kovar; he seemed more interested in making the people his allies, as he had the Thari.

   At last, after spending many months in the Lost Land, Robur announced he was returning to the surface. Michel, Lucy, her grandfather, Lars, and Huguinen agreed to accompany him. Quinsonnas resolved to remain in Kovar's village, for he and Loana had fallen in love. The Thari helped them load the botanical specimens into the Terror.

     Michel and Lucy both missed Paris and the surface world that now seemed so distant to them; so distant seemed the world they had grown up in that it nearly seemed dream-like--and nightmarish. The Paris that they remembered had become a bleak hell, and despite his ties to the world of his birth, part of Michel held no desire to return there.

   But Robur assured the young pair that he would return them to the Lost Land as soon as possible, if they so wished.

   With the Terror transformed into its "mole" form, they burrowed back through the earth's crust, breaking through the surface in Vienna, Austria. From there, it was a speedy overland course, and partial flight, back to Paris.

  Upon arriving, Robur's appearance predictably drew a huge crowd. It was now autumn of the following year. The worst ravishes of the Great Famine had passed, but the people remained in its grip. Though the starved and haggard, the surviving Parisans were intimidated by the arrival of the Conqueror, they gathered in the city square to hear him speak, at the behest of the Mayor.

   "Citizens of Paris!" exclaimed Robur. He stood tall on the Terror's deck, his arms raised. Michel and Lucy stood on right, Richolet, Lars and Huguinen on his left. Some of the awed, murmuring crowd might have recognized the outcast poet, whom many of them had long presumed dead.

      "I return to you this day, with the means to end the famine that has plagued you all! Do not inquire my secrets of production. Only rejoice that I can give you the means to feed millions. If you will consent to my rule over this fair city, and eventually, every nation on earth!"

   Robur's servants were unloading the stores of gigantic fruit, corn and grain from the Terror. The populace rushed to gawk upon the specimens.

   "All this and much more will cleanse all of Europe of famine," said Robur. "I will cultivate vast acres of such gigantic crops. Miracles of modern breeding known only to myself and my comrades! What, my good Parisans, shall be your answer?"

    There was loud murmuring and excited babble among the great crowd. It was not long, though, before they reached an agreement. So worn by famine were the Parisans that they consented to the Conqueror's rule. The Mayor of Paris had little choice but submit to his people's wishes.

   Robur had soon power over all of France, and was preparing to extend his rule across the continent.

    But he returned Michel, Lucy, and the others to the center of the earth. Back in the Lost Land, Michel and Lucy knew they could return to Paris any time that they chose.

    But it was among the savage beauty of the world within the hollow earth where they young lovers chose to live out the rest their lives together.