IN THE FIRST PLACE please bear in mind that I do not expect you to believe this story. Nor could you wonder had you witnessed a recent experience of mine when, in the armor of blissful and stupendous ignorance, I gaily narrated the gist of it to a Fellow of the Royal Geological Society on the occasion of my last trip to London.

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Cutting through the earth in an extraordinary burrowing device, David Innes and Abner Perry fear they may be incinerated in the plan et"s fiery core. Instead, they come upon Pellucidar--a savage, pri mordial world hidden several hundred miles beneath the earth"s crust. There, in an eerie, subterranean realm of vast oceans, lush jun gles, and eternal noon, they encounter primitive humans and their beautiful, courageous queen, Dian.

Living in a land where evolution has taken a freakish turn, the people of Pellucidar exist in a constant state of terror, struggling desperately to survive as slaves of their dreaded reptilian rulers. Enchanted by the lovely queen, Innes resolves to help free these people and pits himself against their cruel and inhuman masters.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, renowned as the creator of Tarzan, invented a strange world within a world in this hair-raising drama. Brimming with adventure and heroism, this gripping tale will captivate today"s young readers and tantasy Duffs as much as it held audiences spell bound generations ago.

Prologue

1. Toward the Eternal Fires

2. A Strange World

3. A Change of Masters

4. Dian the Beautiful

5. Slaves

6. The Beginning of Horror

7. Freedom

8. The Mahar Temple

9. The Face of Death

10. Phutra Again

11. Four Dead Mahars

12. Pursuit

13. The Sly One

14. The Garden of Eden

15. Back to Earth