Kenneth Bulmer: The Key to Irunium

Fritzy gasped, “So it’s you! You came to this mad world, too!”

“Yes—I’ll tell you all about it later—right now I’ve got to get in there and kill that Trug.”

“This is where I was,” Fritzy said, still holding onto Prestin with a drowning grip. She was nowhere near as calm as she appeared, “Cino brought me back here—where I landed after falling out of the airplane. He was not a nice person.”

“You’re—you’re all right, Fritzy?”

“Of course. The Contessa looked after me. She wouldn’t let anything happen to me.” She laughed shrilly and then gulped it off. “Violet was killed. I saw it. Poor Violet.”

“Let go, Fritzy—the Trug—”

Pietro had fired away all his magazine. The Trug waved its clawed talons, the deep and terrifying scarlet of its eyes twisting in its head, its whole frame instilled with primal life energy. Dalreay shouted high and laughing and strong and moved in with his sword…

Prestin saw all that. He also saw the parachute harness slide off Cino’s lax frame, saw the floor unroll away from him, felt it scrape past his chest. He made a futile grab at a railing, and then he and Fritzy were falling freely into the rain forest.

The tree house receded above him. Below, the green canopy jumped clear.

Fritzy hung on to his legs and her scream echoed a long descending shrill down the airlanes.

He had to get them out of this, somehow, for they couldn’t live without protection in the Cabbage Patch. He shouted as he felt that steel band pressing in around his head, like a bacon slicer threatening to trepan.

Above him stretched blue sky and a few clouds. Below him lay a smiling land with the environs of Rome to the south.

So he pulled the rip cord.

“What do we say when we get down, alf ?”

He laughed. He laughed helplessly, hanging on to the chute as Fritzy hung on to him. He didn’t care what they said. The police might ask searching questions, but publicity stunts came in all sizes these days. Anyway, Dave Macklin and Margie were there to help. He looked forward to seeing them again. He felt, somehow, that they were alive and well and waiting for him.

And, he felt with passionate sincerity, so was Todor Dalreay still alive, bloody sword uplifted with the Trug dead at his feet. People like Macklin, Alec, Dalreay and Nodger were not easily disposed of. Free men usually made more of a mouthful than Borgia-type autocrats like The Contessa di Montevarchi could swallow.

He didn’t care if she waited for him below in person.

The sun shone and there was Fritzy and there was Margie. And there was Rome.

Life in this one dimension promised to be pretty lively.

A Porteur?

Never heard of it.