The Zanthodon MEGAPACK ™: The Complete 5-Book Series Read Free Page B

reprovingly.
    Then, brushing aside the ashtray and the now-empty glasses, he began to trace lines and curves on the tablecloth with the stub of a broken pencil fished from an inner pocket.
    “In February,” he said breathlessly, “the constellation passes over this belt of North Africa—thus and so—upon this latitude—”
    “Latitude 25,” I murmured, studying the rude chart he had sketched.
    He tapped a bony forefinger on one particular spot.
    “Here, I believe.”
    I mentally reconstructed the location from maps I had seen.
    “The Ahaggar Mountains,” I said. “In Targa country, surrounded by Tuareg lands. One of the least known, least explored, least visited and most completely inhospitable regions of the entire African continent.”
    “Precisely.”
    “And just what do you expect to find there?”
    His voice sank to an eerie whisper:
    “ A hollow mountain, leading to the center of the world. ”
    CHAPTER 2
    INTO THE AHAGGAR
    During the next two weeks I got to know the Professor quite well. His full name—to quote a grubby, thumbprintsmeared visiting card he flashed to overawe customs officials—read:
    Professor Percival P. Potter, Ph.D.
    He was suspiciously reticent on the question of what that middle initial stood for, but it was on his passport, which I saw by accident.
    “‘Penthesileia’?” I read, incredulously.
    He fixed me with a frosty, reproving glare.
    “You peeked .”
    “Well, I didn’t mean to…but— Penthesileia ?”
    Professor Potter cleared his throat and gave a little sniff. “My late father was a highly esteemed classical scholar,” he informed me coldly. “Penthesileia was the Queen of the Amazons, in an old Roman epic about the Trojan War, by Quintus Smyrnaeus. My father was perhaps overfond of the epic, which is minor and rather florid…”
    I chuckled. “Your dad was also a bit overfond of alliteration,” said I with a grin at Professor Percival Penthesileia Potter, Ph.D.
    The Prof was a comical old geezer, all right, but there were a lot of good things you could say about him, as I soon found out. For a skinny little bundle of bones I could pick up in one hand, almost, he had enough guts and courage and boldness for fifty wildcats. During all of our adventures together—and some of them were grueling ordeals, even for a man of my youth—I never once heard him gripe or whimper or complain. He was resourceful, staunch, brave to the point of being foolhardy, and a good man to have at your side when the chips were down.
    He was also the smartest guy I’ve ever known. In fact, he knew more about more things than just about anybody this side of Isaac Asimov. I never did quite figure out just what he was a professor of .
    For some odd reason, he was rather reticent on that point. Digging around for maps and stuff in the Cairo Museum library, I saw him sight-read a scroll written in old Coptic, and then make a critical remark about the ancient scribe’s sloppy use of diacritical marks. Impressive! But his main interest in finding this mountain gate which (presumably) led down into Zanthodon was to search for fossils and minerals. Strolling through another wing of the museum, he rattled off the names (you know, Latin and Greek stuff) of all the dinosaur skeletons we passed.
    “What are you, anyway, Doc?” I asked, somewhat baffled. “Here I thought you were a geologist or a mineralogist, and now you’re making noises like a—whaddayacallum—fossil hunter, dinosaur expert—”
    “Paleontologist?”
    “Right: paleontologist,” I nodded. “So which is it, anyway?”
    He cleared his throat with a little apologetic cough. “Well, a bit of them all, I’m afraid. A bit of a dabbler, you know…”
    A paleontologist and geologist, who also knows more about ancient Coptic than the old scribes who used to write in it? Well, that was the Prof: a man of parts, as they say.
    Later, as I got to know him better, I found out he had equal qualifications in archaeology, ancient