Early that morning, well past sunrise, the ground in and around the small Berbil village rumbled in the heaves of a violent earthquake. Signals and alarm bells had sirened in Cat’s Lair but by the time the Thunderians arrived at the scene there was little for them to do other than helping the sick, injured survivors or tending, mending the broken and destroyed property.

By the afternoon hours the hardworking felines had managed to prop-up and restore most if not all of the fallen, damaged homes. Tygra and Panthro installed a new device in the center of town that would signal -- that would hopefully signal -- in the event of an oncoming tremor. Some of the grateful villagers looked on in wonder while the instrument was set in place and calibrated.

"When the buzzer goes off," Tygra began, "that means that there’s an earthquake bound in about ten seconds or so."

RoberBill was silent.

"There is no way to predict exactly when an earthquake will happen so there is no way to alert for one sooner."

"We will have to drill for just such an emergency," the small creature said.

"Once the alarm goes off the machine can be reset by pressing the green button."

"Your generosity is kindly appreciated but I would like to show you something."

The earth had caved in along a wide, circular expanse fifteen miles in circumference that cut across rich and bounteous farm land. RoberBill turned to Panthro and Tygra and pointed while he spoke, enshrouded in the cover of tall mounds of rock where no one else could hear.

"Mumm-Ra? No, you never told us that!"

Tygra put his arms around Panthro to hold him back. "That big, blue plush toy, just what is that lovable mummy up to?"

Bengali and the kittens in the meanwhile -- having little else to pass the time with -- began to play a quick game of tag in the open fields.

"But I wanted to play hide-and-seek!" WileyKat objected.

The tiger poked him in the ribs then he and WileyKit darted away.

"I’m going to get the both of you!" he shouted angrily.

"I’m on base, you can’t catch me!"

Bengali jumped back and forth mockingly -- his left hand never left the grasp if had of the brittle bark of the tall oak that he himself had designated ‘home base.’

WileyKat growled: "I’ll get even with you yet!"

A ray of lightning, a clasp of thunder.

"You can’t catch me!" His sister taunted him while she swooped down past him on a thin vine that could have, no, that should have snapped in two before she had landed safely in the tiger’s awaiting arms.

The young boy fumed, his clenched fists shook in the air in the worst impersonation of Mumm-Ra ever. "You guys never play fair! I don’t know why I always hang out with the two of you!"

WileyKat began to walk to them slowly and in so doing he came to tread on over the upheavaled mess that the earthquake had made of the countryside, the strange crink in the soil that ran like a seam in the ground for as far as the eye could see. He did not notice until it was too late, until the voices reached him that Tygra and Panthro ran to him in terror.

His sister yelled out "WileyKat!" and he stopped.

The newly-installed siren called, the land began to vibrate. Rocks rolled in the distance, trees swayed and fell in the local scene, the seam that ran like a scar, opened though lips parted. Where his feet were once on terra-firma there was now only air. He stumbled in a panicked confusion, he fell into the gapping mouth-hole. He tried to hold on to something, to anything, the others tried to come to help but instead arrived in time to see WileyKat fall backwards into the darkness of the earth beneath.

The shouts and the screams, more than the earthquake alarm caught the attention of those below, of those who toiled in the shadows of blazing torch light. Slythe looked up and pointed. "A Thundercat has fallen in! Mumm-Ra!"

"Silence! Keep your voice down, fool, they already suspect, do you want them to know, too?"

The red-robed mummy approached closer to inspect the scene. A thousand feet above, a gray, cloudy sky appeared strangely inviting. With the weak light that shone down from there he saw that indeed a Blundercat had inadvertently fallen and was headed screaming, headlong into view, into doom.

The mutants were more than morbidly excited at the prospect of what they were about to witness but just then, the mummy realized that the victim -- or would-be victim -- was none other than the same youngster who he had been watching only a few moments before, before the last explosion. Mumm-Ra extended his hand, his forefinger pointed at the tumultuous boy. Almost instantly the kitten’s rapid fallen began to ease until at last it appeared though he was not in motion at all. The boy landed softly on the ground.

The earthquake had ceased and the rent along the earth above had once again sealed.

"You mutants best try harder. Next time I want that village destroyed!" the mummy shouted. He and Slythe walked over to the side of the helpless Thundercat. The boy had been knocked unconscious, no doubt, from having hit his head against the inner walls during the fall, before Mumm-Ra had saved him, or perhaps it had happened under fear. The mummy knelt down over the slumberer and ran his bandaged hands across his puffed, red mane. He felt something wet and pulled back -- the white cloths around his fingers were dabbed in blood. "Hmm," he whispered.

Slythe interrupted: "I don’t see what this accomplishes! You should have let him die, Mumm-Ra."

He smiled back evilly while he retorted: "Your job’s not to question me, reptile!" He picked up and held the boy across his arms. "Your job’s to do what you’re told: destroy that Berbil village. Or is that task too difficult for a race of savage plunderers?"

"It’s not difficult, but to make one more earthquake would mean to blast away all the dynamite we have left."

Mumm-Ra turned and glared at the mutant with sparkling, shimmering eyes, eyes of red lightning fresh and ready to strike. The mutant stepped back, the mummy needed to say not a word more.

"We will do better next time."

"I’ll be in my pyramid -- watching."

Mumm-Ra whisked away. The boy began to groan softly and turned his head sideways. The mummy put him down in the darkness and began to unravel some of the bandages that covered his arms and wrapped them across the small wounds on the small cat’s head above the ear.

"There, now, there, that should stop the gash. I don’t want you to bleed all over me!"

The boy opened his eyes somewhat and began to murmur words incoherently.

"No, no," Mumm-Ra said -- he had the youngster up over his shoulder that time -- "back to La-La Land you go." He patted him on the back though he was a baby about to burp. He caused a deep sleep to fall upon him, to keep him at bay for the meantime while he tended to nurse the boy’s injuries. "Let’s get out of here before those oafs have an accident with the explosives."

La-La Land. La-La Land. La-La Land.

La-La Land. La-La Land.

La-La Land.

La-La.

La.

.

The tunnel wound for miles. Cool air vented softly in a gentle breeze. Mild light sprang from overhead, from the ceiling. The carved, stone ceiling. Dull, brown light.

In the whole universe the only sounds came from his echoed footsteps. Fantastic shadows danced around him. By instinct he knew he was being followed but out of fear he dared not look back. He could not stop, he could only shuffle his feet forward while as long as there was no end to the passage.

The ground rumbled.

He was able to stop -- he turned to see. Behind him was darkness absolute. It was void. It was not existence. Growing, advancing, enveloping him in terror. He ran through the tunnel and though his footsteps echoed louder than before he could still hear it approaching like a predator its prey stalking.

The tunnel ended in a flood of light so sun-bright that he could not hold his face up from the ground.

Complete at last he was awake.

Sprawled all around him was a cavernous room with an incredibly ceiling. He was in a rail depot -- he had seen and remembered such things from way back on Thundera. A single, littered track divided the platform into two parts. Toward the far end he saw a lone trolley car, a long, still line began from its folding, front doors.

In the distance, faraway he heard a creepy, splash of water.

He stood at the end of the line for what must have been hours. It advanced slowly, agonizingly slowly, one person at a time -- each Thunderian. When he was closer to the trolley he began to make out more of its details. Strikingly was the sign above the windshield and another by the front door that read with the words: ‘Third Earth #7.’ The black and white vehicle swung slightly whenever someone boarded. Within he saw a tailored figure -- Tygra -- showing passengers to their seats. A second, uniformed man up front -- Panthro -- was no doubt the driver.

Something, something, something else.

He realized why the line took so long to advance. In front of the line and right next to the trolley there was a large and deep pool. The splashing came from the conductor who swam in it, swam laps around it. He dove in, he bobbed up and down in utter euphoria. Only when thoroughly satisfied did he emerge to punch a whole in the next passenger’s ticket, then he would return for another dip.

The conductor himself was quite an oddity. While he had arms, he had no legs only a fish tail that gave him the appearance of a mermaid but neither was he green nor remotely attractive. Rather the figure was a pale gray, a ghost gray. Eyes, ears, lips, nose, his facial features as a whole blended into the mass of his head in an indiscernible blur.

He had no ticket.

Panicked, there came a loud rumble and the whole platform shook violently. From a pipe that jetted out of a wall spewed an onrush of fresh sewage, steaming sewage, with clumped, gooey, oozy wastes of all variety. Even after the bulk of it was flushed some solid wastes still trickled out from the pipe’s lower rim. The pool’s water level had risen to the platform but not higher. Strangely, the greenish, bubbly water had no odor.

It high enough for him to see what the conductor was doing when he swam in it. In the pool were strong currents, rotating, revolving vortexes, swirling the wastes around. The conductor glided through it, reveling, smiling while the sewage spread over his body. It appeared that he could breathe the liquid without difficulty like a fish. When he completed his aquatic ballet he shot right up to the surface, some of the sewage sprayed from his head and torso onto some of the line-standers, the rest trickled in a stream from the platform to the drain.

It was closing in on his turn and he had no where to turn, there was nothing he could do. In the course of time he had been waiting on line more prospective passengers had come to stand behind him. In general everyone was much taller than him and entirely inanimate. He felt a different sort of terror when he realized that he was the second person on the line.

The conductor resurfaced -- the pool’s water level had steadily decreased. The man before him handed over his ticket, got it punched and returned, then stepped aboard the awaiting trolley. It was his turn and he could not avoid it -- his hands trembled.

The conductor did not submerge, instead he looked at him, half-in, half out of the pool. "Ticket, Kat?" he said and for the first time he could see the conductor’s lips and teeth, even the tongue. Evidentially he had been savoring the waters not merely swimming in it -- his teeth were smeared by solid wastes.

The conductor had a passing air of similarity to Slythe.

"I don’t have one," said WileyKat.

"Move along," the conductor spoke with an evil smile, dull eyes glowed red.

With that he entered the trolley. The uniformed man led him by the hand to a comfortable back seat next to a rolled-up window. Other passengers, pale and dead-looking, entered immediately afterward. They, too, were escorted to their seats by the tiger who then stepped out of the trolley along with the man WileyKat believed was the driver.

He was tense, very tense, for he feared the worst would happen. Until at last the trolley’s doors shut and it went along the way. As it advanced from the bright depot he noticed that the line he had stood on had grown incredibly long. WileyKat looked right into the conductor’s frustrated red eyes. In anger he knocked several people, including the familiar, uniformed men into the sewage pool.

He had gotten away, the trolley had made it out and for the first time he felt utter and complete relief.

The tunnel that he now traveled through was painted in darkness, a darkness so inexplicably different from what he had felt earlier in his first conscious moments. There was a faint trace of green haze outside, a slight mist dense enough to obstruct his thoughts. The car was so quiet it, too, produced an unsettling distraction. Though he knew he was not alone in that packed trolley the others were unresponsive, motionless, trapped in their own little worlds.

Only WileyKat had cared to notice that there was no driver.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the fragmented profile of Mumm-Ra reflected from his partially open window. The mummy was in his transformed state, much taller and larger than all the others on board. He thought it was strange because he did not remember anyone sitting next to him before. Still, he was not going to be rude.

"So, where are you going?" he asked while he faced the rolled-up window. A misty breeze hit his face. Mumm-Ra turned his head to him but said nothing.

The darkness lifted and just like that the trolley was free from the underground tunnel. The sun was out overhead but not in view. The sky was bright but not blue for there were soft gray clouds above. The track was elevated from the broad waters by a good ten feet. Out in the distance was what he believed was long, large complicated highway draw bridge. Perhaps it housed another set of tracks. He saw small, multicolored objects moving within the guts of its infrastructure.

"Been here before?"

"No," he said.

"Neither have I. Do you know to where this takes us?"

"Away, I suppose."

Outside that faraway bridge turned to the horizon and there was nothing but water.

WileyKat turned to face his seat partner. The big, blue mummy was a good seven feet in height. He faced forward, back straight up at attention. His eyes did not wander but were wet and blinked quickly at times.

The other passengers had slumped over each other in a haphazard, chaotic fashion.

WileyKat left Mumm-Ra alone for a while. Every now and then he snatched some looks. His eyes wandered from his head to his chest -- over that odd, red tattoo -- to the old Egyptian wardrobe. His body was covered in well-defined muscles -- he should have been in many ways afraid or at the least feel inadequate but was neither.

"Where did you come from?" he asked.

"From the same place as you."

The water was promptly replaced by a large canyon. They were headed toward the foot of a mountain whose lower innards had been hallowed out to form an outdoor train depot. More Thunderians stood around the edge of the platform but none paid attention to the passing trolley.

That scene was soon gone, melted away to form a rolling plain with few, if any structures.

The sun was now cast before the trolley and slowly descending.

"We are the only ones, alive, here," Mumm-Ra said.

WileyKat was getting tired, he was bored and found it hard to keep his eyes open. Trees formed around the car, there was even a lake yet in his wandering mind he saw that the whole terrain consisted of nothing more than a grid of lines forming perfect squares all the way out past the horizon and to infinity. That image soon faded.

His stronger, gentler seat mate put an arm around him.

"Mumm-Ra, what do you dream about?"

"I remember darkness only."

"I haven’t dreamed yet, I think."

"You will soon enough. Are you comfortable?"

"Yes."

The car stopped suddenly and its front doors folded open on its own account since there was no driver, there was no one visibly in control. An older-looking woman entered -- WileyKit. She stepped forward and she looked around. "No, no, this can’t be right. No. I’m alive! I’m alive! Don’t you understand? I’m not dead yet." She got off. Two others boarded and took their seats -- they had punched out tickets in their hands.

"Did you have a ticket?"

"No."

"I didn’t have one either." He looked right into the mummy’s eyes, his bright red eyes. Mumm-Ra helped his small friend to sit on his lap, he wrapped his heavy, agile arms around him.

The train stopped and the doors opened, nothing happened until it occurred to the two that they should get up and out of the trolley right then and there.

The car sped along without a further moment of pause.

WileyKat and Mumm-Ra had exited in a densely rural area with no improvements except for the tracks and a dirt road that crossed it. The mummy led his friend by the hand down toward the foot of a dark, green hill. Though they were in a forest, nature was silent. Only the cool air whispered as a soft winds blew gently.

The sun was no longer visible in the sky by the time they met up with a pebble road. There they turned and walked on to its terminus where a small, one-story house stood. It struck WileyKat and he wondered why there would be such a thing amidst trees, shrubs and a crystal-clear lake.

An old woman -- was it Cheetara, was it Pumyra, the face was so aged, so aged -- sat on the porch dotting over a dog busy chasing its tail. Overcome with curiosity he broke away from Mumm-Ra and ran childlike to them.

His friend followed closely, cautiously. "Where are they?" he asked when he arrived.

"I don’t know, they disappeared like a mirage."

They looked around in confusion.

The sun set, the sky darkened, there was no old woman or dog that night.

"Should we go in? It’s getting cold out here."

Thinking a little, the mummy at last approached the door. It opened without difficulty. They entered the dark interior -- a spacious living room. There were two red sofas, an arm chair next to the door by the window. A coffee table, large and square-shaped, with two large lamps, magazines and potted plants on it. The farthest wall held two wide bookcases stuffed to the brink with books and loose, yellowed papers.

Mumm-Ra let WileyKat explore the rest of the house once he felt sure that no one else was within. WileyKat took a few steps forward and made a left turn into a large hall. The first door he encountered was that of the kitchen. That room was warm and brightly lit. The countertops where granite and all the appliance, from the refrigerator to the dishwashers had a shinny, metallic finish that though over all plane it was very beautiful and familiar in a remote and disconnected way. There was a small wooden table with three chairs in utter contrast by its older-looking style.

A modest bathroom followed and after that, all the way at the end of the hall, was the bedroom. To his surprise it was the coldest room in the house. Central to the room was a large bed. On the sides of its head were night tables, each with its own lamp. Two chests and an ample desk with a chair were the only other articles of furniture.

The desk was stuffed with pens, papers and other office supplies. There were journals and calendars, a camera and film. There was also money, lots and lots of money. One drawer in particular was full of maps, another with small memo pads. The items were fresh and unused.

Back in the kitchen he found the mummy over the stove.

"I hope you’re hungry."

"I’m starved."

"Good. I’m making you a small dinner."

WileyKat sat on one of the chairs, Mumm-Ra served him fried eggs and mashed potatoes. He was given one glass of water and another of juice.

A few hours later he was in the living room reading one of the books. When he finished he began to write in a journal. His letters were smooth and neat and he was very proud of it. After twenty pages of narrative he took a shower and changed in to some new, looser clothes for the night.

In the bedroom Mumm-Ra sat at the desk, studying maps, unaffected by the dreary forces of sleep. There were keys on the tabletop that WileyKat had not seen before. He hugged his friend good and gave him the journal to read and write in if he wanted to. With that he snuggled himself in bed alone.

The next morning he awoke to his friend’s persistent shaking.

"We have places to go, we can’t stay here."

"I know, I knew from the start. Will you leave me?"

"No. Never. Now come on, it’s time to get up."

WileyKat fixed himself a bowl of serial in the kitchen while the mummy packed supplies into large, green backpacks. There were three of them: two that he would carry and one for the youngster.

Outside in the back of the house Mumm-Ra was waiting, folding some of the maps he had taken from the desk. WileyKat stumbled on his way over while carrying that heavy load. Without a word spoken the two began to walk.

In his decayed, mummified form he said to the kitten: "It’ll be a long trip, but there’ll be plenty of stops along the way."

"Where are we going, Mumm-Ra?"

The mummy smiled for the first time: "To where the sun sets."

The pebbled trail snaked across the land toward the greenish mountains. The sky was blue though covered sparsely with white clouds. The air was silent, the world had not yet awoken, greeted the new day.

An omnipresent over-silence hung oppressively in the hot, dry air.

Two Thundercats lumbered through eerie, murky passages. The stonework everywhere was covered in the thick, dust-encrusted remains of spider webs. An arcid sand with the texture of talc was spread around the rough floors. It did much to deaden the sounds of their approach but it also produced its own, telltale alarm.

"Where are we now, Tygra?" Panthro asked to the air. He looked to his left -- even if his friend was not invisible he could have never seen him. The blackness of the darkness was almost a substance in itself, an ethereal, liquid mass that engulfed the interior of the pyramid.

"We’re just under the crypt. The stairs are around here, somewhere."

They continued to roam, feeling the walls with their outstretched hands. True to his word and past experience, the staircase was there, further down the length of the hall. The cold steps led up to a flat lid of wood, decayed and brittle. Tygra was nervous -- he had never encountered that before.

"Are you sure this is the right place?"

"It is, Panthro, we just have to be careful."

Panthro was afraid that the lid was connected to hinges in dire need of oiling but that was not the nature of the mechanism. The board was just something that had been placed over the opening and it slid with a slight noise only under their very careful guidance.

The darkness of the main vault was hardly alleviated by the dull incandescence of the red flames of the torches that adorned the support columns. The small fires roared in a low howl though neither wood nor any other fuel was consumed.

The walls were cast in shadows that gave the engravings an extra dimension of texture. Even the lifeless, painted Egyptian figures seemed to dance in the quivering flicker of the light.

The crawled between the tall statues. The four representations of evil that encircled the pool. The figures were tall and loomed into the shadows of the upper ceiling. The heads remained obscured and invisible except for the eyes that glowed with the intensity of the torches.

Mumm-Ra’s sarcophagus was open, its cover upright against the tomb. It was whole for the most part although the edges were cracked and chipped. A blurred inscription was carved into a small, thin line across its form around that part that corresponded to the ‘neck.’

The crypt was empty but none stared into it long enough to tell for sure.

The purple waters of the pool bubbled but not violently -- Tygra remembered some of the earlier times. The turbulent surface seemed to have an oily slick that emitted a pleasant odor. On occasion something long and intertwined with pulsating veins would surface, swim around for a while and then sink once again.

Tygra and Panthro walked to the back where there was a small shrine built around the statue of a bronze half-human, half-jackal. Its arms were parallel over its lap -- WileyKat rested on them, wrapped tightly in a red blanket. The tiger examined the boy. Bruises along his forehead had been padded by linen bands. Dried blood had trickled from his mane but the wounds, too, had healed. He did not seem to be further harmed or under any spell, but of course, no one could say for sure without a complete exam back in Cat’s Lair where they could have a better look.

Panthro undid the blanket slowly, softly -- he did not want to disturb him awake too soon, not while they were still within the pyramid. The boy stirred but quickly resumed his slumber. He mumbled under his breath but the words were faint, formless.

WileyKat clasped in his arms a teddy bear, brown with black eyes.

"What by Jagga? Where did this come from?" He looked it over after he had removed it from the youngster’s grasp. He let it drop on the floor then took the boy into his arms.

He and Tygra left as swiftly and as stealthily as they had been allowed to come.

Allowed because Mumm-Ra had overseen it all along, he had let the pair infiltrate his lair after the last of the great earthquakes had done its work. The Berbil village had been eradicated and with it the luster of the Thundercats had been tarnished a little more. Already there was talk in the Treetop Kingdom, among his agents and operatives, about severing the bonds that tied them to the protection of Cat’s Lair.

"My plan has worked perfectly," he whispered.

He had watched the scene unfold from a distance and when he was certain that the three were gone he stepped forward to the shrine. On the ground he noticed the plush top. He picked it up and held it under the light. Around the neck was a linen cloth with word written in red ink: "Homage to thee, Osiris, Lord of eternity, King of the gods, whose names are manifold, whose forms are --" he stopped and, with the bear still in his hands, he walked to the open tomb.

His hands trembled when he tugged at the warm, fuzzy thing -- he held it tight to his breast while the lid slid in place and the world was dark once again.