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The Valley of the Flame
Henry Kuttner
1946
I. FACE OF A GIRL
II. DRUMBEAT OF DEATH
III. GATE TO PAITITI
IV. JANISSA
V. VALLEY OF WONDERS
VI. MAD KING
VII. DREAD FLAME
VIII. KHARN, THE TERRIBLE
IX. ASSASSIN'S PLOT
X. NIGHTMARE GARDEN
XI. CREEPING MENACE
XII. POWER OF SCIENCE
XIII. FLYING DEMONS
XIV. RAFT CHOOSES
CHAPTER I.
FACE OF A GIRL
FAR OFF IN the jungle an animal screamed. A river-moth flapped against the screen, nearly as large as a fruit-bat: And very far away, subsensory, almost, Brian Raft could hear the low pulsing of drums. Not unusual, drums on the Jutahy, in the great valley of Amazonas. But these were no signal messages.
Raft wasn't an imaginative man. He left all that to Dan Craddock, with his Welsh ghosts and his shadow-people of the lost centuries. Still, Raft was a doctor, and when those drums throbbed in the jungle something curious happened here in his little hospital of plastic shacks, smelling of antiseptic. Something he couldn't ignore.
When a sick man's blood beats in rhythm with the distant drums, slow or fast as the far-off echoes set the pace, a doctor has reason to wonder....
The great moth beat softly against the screen. Craddock bent over a sterilizer, steam clouding up around his white head so that he looked like a necromancer stooping over a cauldron. The drums throbbed on. Raft could feel his own heart answering to their rhythm.
He glanced at Craddock again and tried not to remember what the older ma