The Land of Terror ds-2 Page 12

  "There’s the village!" barked Long Tom.

  The cluster of thatched huts had been lost among the coconut palms at the lagoon edge. They looked like shaggy, dark beehives on stilts.

  Natives dashed about, excited by the plane. They were well-built fellows, gaudy pareusof tapacloth, made from the bark of the paper mulberry, girded about their hips. Many had tropical blooms in their hair, a number of the women wearing a blossom over an ear. Some of the men had scroll-like designs in blue amaink upon their bodies, making them quite ugly, judged by civilized standards.

  Several prahusappeared on the lagoon, each boat filled with perturbed natives. The brown men grasped spears, and knives of bamboo as sharp as a razor, which could be sharpened again simply by splitting a piece from the blade.

  "They seem kinda excited!" Monk grunted.

  "Yes — entirely too excited!" Doc replied thoughtfully.

  * * *

  DOC’S big plane wheeled over the atoll as gracefully as a mighty gull. It dipped. With a swis-s-s-hof a noise, the floats settled on the glass-smooth lagoon.

  The prahusfilled with natives fled as though the very devil was after them. Thousands of koi, a black bird which travels in dense flocks, arose from the luxuriant jungle. As Doc cut the motors, they could hear the excited notes of cockatoos.

  "I don’t like the way they’re acting," Doc warned. "We’d better keep our eyes open, brothers!"

  He grounded the plane near the cluster of thatched huts. Tall palm trees showed evidence of being cultivated for coconuts — at least, they were fitted with the ingenious native traps for the destructive tupacrab.

  The traps consisted of a false "earth" well up the tree. The crabs, wont to descend the palms backward, upon touching these "earths," would release their grip on the tree under the impression they were on the ground, thus falling to destruction.

  Suddenly Ham gave a startled yelp, and dropping his sword cane, clapped a hand to his leg. An instant later, the fiendish, chuckling echoes of a rifle shot leaped along the lagoon.

  Some one was sniping at them!

  More bullets buzzed loudly near the plane.

  Ham was barely scratched. He was the first to dive out of the plane and take shelter among the palms. The others followed, guns ready.

  Doc’s golden eyes noted a surprising thing. The shot seemed as much of a shock to the natives as to the flyers!

  After a moment, Doc’s perceptive ears caught a word or two of the native language. He recognized the lingo — it was one of the myriads of vernaculars in his great magazine of knowledge.

  "Why do you treat peaceful newcomers in this fashion?" he called in the dialect.

  The natives were impressed by hearing their language spoken in such perfect fashion by the mighty bronze man. Soon they replied.

  For some minutes, strange words clucked back and forth. The tension subsided visibly. The very power of Doc’s pleasant voice seemed to spread good will.

  "This is strange!" Doc told his fellows, none of whom comprehended the native tongue. "They don’t know who fired that shot. They’re trying to tell me they thought there were no rifles on the island!"

  "They’re liars!" Monk grinned. "Or else the bumblebees here are made out of lead."

  "They’re wrong, of course," Doc replied thoughtfully. "But I’m sure they did not know there was a rifle here. There was apparently but one gun, at that."

  "We’d better stop gabbing and hunt for the sniper!" Ham clipped waspishly. "In case you’ve forgotten, he nearly winged me!"

  "Keep your shirt on, Ham." Doc indicated natives who were prowling off through the tropical growth. "They’re instituting a search for the hidden marksman."

  * * *

  THE sniper was not located, though. The natives searched briskly for a time, but the natural languidness common to tropical folk soon caused them to lose interest when they found nobody. Standing around in groups and staring at the white men, especially their mighty leader of bronze, was much more interesting.

  "It never fails!" Monk chuckled. "Doc is a sensation wherever he goes!"

  Ham cast his eyes over the crowd surrounding Monk. This was only slightly smaller than the group about Doc. Monk’s incredible homeliness and titanic, apelike frame had them utterly agog.

  "You don’t do so bad!" Ham jeered. "They figure you’re the missing link!"

  But he regretted the insult a moment later when Monk cornered a native and gravely explained, by gestures, that the tribe must watch the many pigs running about, or Ham would steal them. It didn’t help matters when fully thirty natives ran up with squealing porkers in their arms and tried to thrust the gifts onto Ham.

  Renny was entertaining and overawing the islanders by the amazing feat of crushing hard coconuts in one vast hand.

  Johnny and Long Tom, well-armed and alert, moved into the jungle to get breadfruit which weighed several pounds apiece and were pitted on the surface like a golf ball. Delicate, beautiful orchids were like varicolored butterflies in the shadowed, luxuriant growth. The hunters also gathered coconuts, so as to make feikai, or roasted breadfruit mixed with coconut-milk sauce.

  Oliver Wording Bittman wandered alone into the jungle, but returned soon and kept close to Doc, as though for protection.

  Doc busied himself performing a minor operation upon an ill native. He was thus engaged when an exciting development occurred.

  A machine gun blatted a procession of reports. By the terrific swiftness of the shots, Doc knew it was one of the guns he had himself invented.

  A man screamed with a mortal wound.

  Kar-o-o-m!

  A tremendous explosion brought a tremor to the hut in which Doc was operating upon the native. He and Bittman rushed out.

  Near the plane, a sooty cauliflower of smoke had sprouted. Bits of dйbris still swirled in the air. It fell about a gruesome, torn thing upon the lagoon edge. The dismembered body of a man!

  "It was one of Kar’s gunmen!" Renny called. Renny held a smoking machine gun. "The fellow had a bomb, with the fuse already lighted! He was running to throw it in the plane when I saw him and shot."

  "Sure it was one of Kar’s men?" Doc inquired.

  "You bet. One of the four we hoped to trap on the Sea Star!"

  "

  That is too bad," Doc declared regretfully. "It means the yacht which took them off the Sea Starwas speedy enough to get here ahead of us."

  "You think Kar is right here on this coral atoll?"

  Instead of replying, Doc proceeded to question what his accurate judgment told him were the most intelligent of the natives. What he learned cast an important light on the situation.

  "Listen to this!" he translated for his friends. "I asked the natives if they had seen a ship, but they haven’t. Then I asked them if they had sighted a man-made bird that flies, such as ours. And the answer explains their terror at our arrival."

  "You mean Kar came around in a plane and bombed or machine gunned them?" Ham queried.

  "Nothing so simple as that! The reply they gave me was utterly fantastic. They claim great, flying devils nearly as large as our plane sometimes come from Thunder Island to seize and devour members of the tribe. They thought we were such a flying devil."

  "They must drink caterpillar liquor!" Monk snorted.

  "Eh?" said Ham.

  "Two drinks and the birds are after you!"

  "Furthermore," Doc continued, "they claim they sighted such a flying devil only yesterday. Questioned closely, they admit it did not flap its wings, and that it made a loud and steady groaning noise. That means they saw a plane. And what craft could it be but Kar’s?"

  Renny growled, "Kar is — "

  "Already at Thunder Island! The man you just wiped out was landed here by Kar for the specific purpose of stopping us in case we visited this atoll. He has been hiding from the natives. No doubt, Kar intended to pick him up later."

  "But where did Kar get a plane — "

  "Honolulu, New Zealand, or even Australia. They
had time. Remember, the storm delayed the Sea Staron which we came. It is possible Kar evaded that storm, and his boat was faster."

  Ham slanted his sword cane at the sun. "What do you say we fly over and have a look at Thunder Island? There’s barely time before dark."

  "We’ll do that very thing, brothers," Doc said swiftly. "Every one of you will put on parachutes. Kar’s plane might attack us and have the good luck to slam an incendiary bullet into our gas tank. In such event, ‘chutes would be pretty handy."

  * * *

  PREPARATIONS were quickly completed. The big speed plane skimmed down the glassy lagoon and took the air, watched by an awed crowd of natives. Doc opened the throttles wide and boomed for Thunder Island at better than two hundred miles an hour. Night was not far off.

  The volcanic cone gathered majestic height as they flew nearer. Its vast size was astounding, impressive. The steaming clouds piled like cotton above it. It was as though the world was hollow and filled with foam, and the foam was escaping through this gigantic vent.

  "One of the most striking sights of my life!" said the artistic Ham.

  Even the prosaic Monk was impressed, agreeing, "Yeah — hot stuff!"

  Doc’s mighty bronze hand guided the plane around the stupendous cone of bleak stone that was Thunder Island. Nowhere was there a blade of green growth. The titanic, rocky cliffs could not have been more denuded had they been seared with acid. The lifeless aspect, the baldness of the waste, was depressing.

  "Even a goat couldn’t live there!" Renny muttered.

  "Unless he formed an appetite for rocks," snorted the irrepressible Monk.

  Nowhere did they see sign of Kar!

  "That’s queer!" Ham declared. "There are no canyons or great caves in which he could hide his plane. If he was here, we certainly would have seen him."

  "Do you think he has secured a fresh supply of the element from which the Smoke of Eternity is made, and gone back to civilization?" asked Oliver Wording Bittman. "He most naturally wouldn’t tarry here."

  "Impossible to tell — except that I doubt he would have deserted his man on the atoll," replied Doc. "There is one chance — we’ll try the crater."

  "Into that terrible steam!" Bittman wailed. "We shall perish!"

  Bittman looked terrified at the prospect. He even moved for the plane door as though to take to his parachute. But Renny’s great hand restrained him.

  "You’ll be safe enough with Doc," Renny said confidently.

  "We shall be scalded — "

  "I think not," Doc assured him. "The top of that cone is many thousands of feet above sea level. Indeed, you will notice traces of snow near the rim. At that height, it takes little more than moist, warm air to make a cloud like this ‘steam’ over the crater."

  "You mean we may be able to fly down into the crater?" Monk asked.

  "We’re going to try just that," Doc smiled.

  * * *

  UP and up climbed the powerful speed-plane, motors moaning an increasing song of effort. The first wisps of steam whipped grizzled pennants about the craft. Doc opened the cockpit windows and kept an accurate check on a thermometer.

  "This is nothing but cloud formation caused by very warm and moist air lifting out of the crater!" he called, raising his voice over the motor howl — for opening the windows nullified the soundproofing of the cabin.

  The vapor thickened. It poured densely into the cabin. The very world about them seemed to turn a bilious gray hue. Visibility was wiped out, except for a few score yards, beyond the wing tips.

  "Long Tom," Doc’s energetic voice had little trouble piercing the engine clamor, "set the danger alarm for five hundred feet!"

  Long Tom hastily complied. This danger alarm was simply an apparatus which sent out a series of bell-like sounds very distinctive from the motor uproar, and another sensitive device which measured the time that ensued until an echo was tossed back by the earth. If this time interval became too short, an alarm bell rang.

  With it in operation, if the plane came blindly within five hundred feet of the crater bottom or sides, an alarm would sound. Doc had perfected this device. It was little different from the apparatus all modern liners use to take depth measurements.

  Deeper into the crater moaned the plane. It spiraled tightly, as though descending the thread of an invisible screw in the crater center. It might have been a tiny fish in a sea of milk.

  "Let’s go back!" wailed Oliver Wording Bittman. "This is a horrible place!"

  "It does kinda give a guy the creeps!" Monk muttered.

  " Ye-e-ow-w! Look at that thing!"

  Monk’s squawl of surprise was so loud it threatened to tear the thin metal sides off the plane. Every eye focused in the direction both his great, hairy arms pointed. What they saw was little, but it chilled the blood in their veins.

  A black, evil mass seemed to bulk for an instant in the gray domain of vapor. It might have been a tortured, sooty cloud from the way it convulsed and changed its shape. Then it was gone, sucking after it a distinct wake of the pigeon-colored vapor.

  "I c-couldn’t h-have s-seen what I d-did!" Monk stuttered.

  "What was it?" Ham shouted. "What was that thing in the cloud? It looked big as this plane!"

  Monk panted like a runner. His eyes still protruded.

  "It wasn’t quite that b-big!" he gulped. "But it was the ugliest thing I ever saw! And I’ve seen plenty of ugly things!"

  "If you own a mirror, you have!" Ham couldn’t resist putting in.

  Monk made no reference to pigs — which was in itself demonstration of what a shock he had just received.

  "I saw one of them flyin’ devils the natives on the atoll told Doc about!" Monk declared. "And what I mean, flyin’ devil is the name for it."

  "You must have had a swig of that caterpillar liquor," Ham jeered.

  "Quick!" Doc Savage’s mighty voice crashed through the plane. "The machine guns! Off to the right! Get that thing! Get it! Shoot it!"

  Every one gazed to the right.

  "It’s comin’ back — the flyin’ devil!" Monk bawled.

  The black, evil mass had appeared in the misty world again. It convulsed and altered its shape, as before. But now the aviators had the opportunity to see what it really was — they could drink in the awful horror of the monster with their eyes.

  * * *

  THE thing was flying along — keeping pace with the plane! Terrible eyes appraised the ship, as though deciding whether to attack.

  It had a ghastly set of jaws — nearly as long as a man’s body, and spiked full of foul, conical teeth. The body had neither hair nor feathers — it was like the skin of a dog denuded by the mange.

  Most awesome of all were the wings, for they were membranous, like those of a bat. As they folded and unfolded in flight, the membrane fluttered and flapped like unclean gray canvas. On the tip of the first joint of the wings were four highly developed fingers, armed with fearful talons.

  The appalling monster suddenly gave vent to its cry. This was an outrageous combination of a roaring and gargling, a sound of such volume that it reduced the pant of the plane motors to insignificance. And the noise had an ending as ghastly as its note — it stopped in a manner that gave one the sickening impression that the noise itself had choked to death the gruesome thing.

  "A prehistoric pterodactyl!" screamed Johnny. "That’s what it is!"

  "A what?" grunted Monk.

  "A pterodactyl, a flying reptile of the Pterosauri order. They were supposed to have become extinct near the end of the Mesozoic age."

  "They didn’t!" snorted Monk. "You can look for yourself!"

  "Use those machine guns!" Doc directed. "The thing is going to attack us!"

  The hideous flying reptile was slowly opening its huge, tooth-armed jaws!

  Rapid-firer barrels poked through the plane windows. They spewed. Empty cartridges rained on the floorboards. Bullets found their mark.

  The aлrial reptile started its blood-curdling cr
y. The sound ended in a drawn, piercing blare. The thing fell, bones broken, foul canvas like wings flapping. It was like a dirty gray cloth somebody had dropped.

  Monk grinned. "What a relief that it — "

  The plane lurched madly as Doc whipped the controls about.

  A second of the prehistoric pterodactyls had materialized out of the vapor. A gigantic, eerie thing reminiscent of a mangy crocodile clad in a great gray cape, it plunged at the plane.

  Its horrid, conical teeth closed upon the left wing. A wrench, a gritty scream of rending metal — and the plane wing was ruined! The ship keeled off on a wing tip and began a slow spin.

  The pterodactyl hung to the wing it had grabbed, like a tenacious bulldog.

  "The parachutes!" Doc barked. "Jump! We may crash any instant!"

  * * *

  Chapter 16. THE AWFUL NIGHT

  IN quick succession, Doc’s five men piled through the plane door, hands on the ripcord rings of their backpack parachutes.

  Renny was first to go. Monk paused to grab his can of tobacco out of a seat, then followed. Long Tom, Ham and Johnny dived after him.

  Only Oliver Wording Bittman held back, trembling.

  "I don’t want — " he whined.

  "Neither do we!" Doc said firmly. "There’s no choice!" Then, before it should be too late, Doc swept Bittman up in bronze arms of vast power and sprang with him into space.

  As calmly as though he were on solid ground, Doc snapped open Bittman’s ‘chute, then dropped down a few hundred feet and bloomed his own mushroom of silk. A jerk, and he floated gently. He had time to view the astounding domain about him.

  The vapor, as he had half suspected would be the case, was becoming less dense. At the same time, the warmth increased. The hot, moist air, suddenly striking the cool strata above the crater, formed the steamlike clouds, which had curtained whatever additional shocking secrets the place held.

  A stutter of machine-gun shots below drew Doc’s golden eyes. He hastily plucked his own compact rapid-firer from its belt holster.

  The pterodactyl had released its silly hold on the falling plane and had attacked Johnny. The lanky archaeologist’s bullets had driven its first dive aside. But it was coming back. The repellent jaws were widely distended. Each of the many odious, conical teeth could pierce through a man’s body.