Thunder Jim Wade

by Henry Kuttner

  It was a super-convertible all-around machine. The wings were retractable and there were caterpillar treads that could be pumped out when necessary. With only a few moments between, the Thunderbug could be a plane, a tiny submarine, or a fast tank. Just now it was going to be an amphibian tank.

  WADE touched the controls and the wings slowly vanished into the hull, to be covered by plates of the super-strong alloy. As he retracted the pontoons, the plane lowered toward the water, till it was resting lightly on the surface. Wade let water into ballast tanks as he pumped out the caterpillar treads.

  The murky red-brown current crept up over the windows, but soon shields were covering them against possible gunfire, pierced only by narrow slits for vision. The streamlined ovoid of the Thunderbug rested on the river bottom, quivering gently with the vibration of the powerful motors.

  Wade guided it out into the current, slanting upstream. It was too light, he soon discovered. The amphibian tank tilted in the river’s thrust. He hurriedly let more water into the tanks. It settled to an even keel, the cabin floor once more level. Wade let out a long breath of relief and began to work at the controls.

  Gradually the Thunderbug crawled upstream on the river’s bed, under the surface of the red-brown, murky water. It was a test even for Wade’s marvelous craft. Only the extremely powerful motor made the feat possible at all. Luckily the river, being broad, did not flow too fast and the bed was fairly smooth, without boulders that might have blocked the way. It was like flying a plane blind against a strong wind.

  Wade kept to the river’s center. Whenever the cabin floor tilted too much to left or to right, he knew he was climbing toward the bank and adjusted his course accordingly. From time to time he glanced at his instruments. He had estimated approximately how far he would have to go before reaching his destination.

  The barbed wire net proved to be no barrier for the tank. Wade plowed through it almost before he realized it was there. It went downstream behind him, supported by its bobbing buoys. That might warn Dellera’s men at the pill-box, but they might attribute the accident to a tree-trunk rushing downstream. In any case, they couldn’t stop the Thunderbug now.

  There were few things that could stop the Thunderbug, armored as it was by the amazing alloy. It was most vulnerable as a plane, of course, but it was strongest as a tank. Heavy artillery could wreck it, but its speed and maneuverability guarded, to some extent, against that danger.

  Presently Wade slanted in toward the right bank. He loosened the revolver he had buckled to his belt, nodded and sent the Thunderbug careening on. The black back of the tank rose from the river, water cascading along its sides. Like some prehistoric monster it dragged itself to dry land.

  Wade turned a valve that released the now unnecessary weight of water from the ballast tanks. Lightened, the Thunderbug moved forward. Peering through the vision-slits, Wade saw that his estimate was right. He was almost opposite the mouth of the mine. Farther up the gorge was the temple, ghostly in the gray, chilly twilight.

  As yet, he had not been seen. He sent the Thunderbug swiftly up the slope, lurching over rocks and dodging around higher boulders, speeding toward the mouth of the mine.

  A bullet thunked abruptly on the tank’s hull. The time for concealment was over. Wade touched a trigger and the staccato crackle of machine-gun fire lashed out, startlingly loud in the quiet.

  THAT was the signal. Within the mine, Marat and Argyle would hear it, and know Wade had arrived. They would act swiftly. Wade had, during his few minutes with them, told them exactly what to do. By this time they must have passed the word along to the other prisoners. The sound of machine-gun fire was the signal for mutiny!

  Gunfire came from within the mine. The cable-car came out, hesitated and dropped swiftly toward the temple, vanishing through the gap cut for it in the side of the building.

  A man staggered out of the mine’s entrance, sent a snap shot toward the Thunderbug and collapsed on his face. It was Pedro. He dragged himself to his knees, reached into the crevice of a rock and fell again, this time to lie still.

  But he had accomplished his purpose. There was a distant grinding of machinery. Something like a gleaming curtain was lowering itself to block the tunnel mouth. It was an emergency door of solid steel, designed to keep the prisoners captive in case of revolt!

  Wade jerked at the controls, sent the Thunderbug racing up the slope. He was too late. Through the narrowing gap he caught a glimpse of men racing toward the entrance, Argyle’s giant figure in the lead. Then the door crashed shut.

  The mine was sealed!

  The Thunderbug turned in a half-circle and stopped. Wade looked back toward the temple. No one was in sight, but puffs of smoke mushroomed from the windows as lead sang, deflected from the tank’s hull.

  He had to dynamite the mine open and that would be dangerous work. He would have to estimate his charge with unerring accuracy, lest the explosion bring down the whole side of the gorge, burying the prisoners forever. Moreover, tall rocks blocked the Thunderbug’s path so that it could get no closer to the mine. Wade would be working in the open, exposed to gunfire from the temple.

  He stopped the engine, slid from the pilot’s seat and hastily opened a compartment. The Thunderbug carried a complete light arsenal. Wade selected a dozen pistols and as many rifles, laid them aside and drew out several sticks of explosive. Instead of dynamite, he selected a powder he himself had perfected in his South Sea hideout. After a brief hesitation he found a larger stick, greenish-black in color, and looped a length of wire over it. Pulling out a rock-drill, he was ready.

  The fire from the temple had not stopped. Wade gingerly swung open the cabin door, carrying the explosive in his arms.

  If a bullet hit him now—

  He forced his mind from the thought. He sprang out, dodged between two tall rocks and sprinted for the mine door. Bullets whistled around him, but he reached his destination safely.

  Working with desperate speed, he selected the greenish-black stick and looped the wire that bound it over the cable which had previously carried the car from the mine to the temple. The descending steel door had, of course, snapped it, but the thick cable had caught in a crevice of rock and was still taut, anchored securely. It led down toward the temple.

  The stick of explosive, swinging from its wire, slid swiftly along the cable. Once it slowed and Wade’s heart jumped as he watched from his hiding place between two rocks.

  Then it speeded up again, disappeared into the gap in the distant temple’s wall.

  WADE had gauged the length of the fuse correctly. From within the temple came a roaring explosion and a crimson flash. Glass shattered. But Wade knew that he had done little damage. The explosive was designed to frighten rather than destroy. It made plenty of noise, yet it was comparatively harmless.

  The trouble was that Astrid was probably in the temple. He could not risk her life in order to kill Dellera and his men. But at least the explosion would give him a few moments’ grace.

  Wade was already beside the mine door, working swiftly with the rock-drill. The hard point bit easily into the weathered stone. It would not need a heavy charge. He gently tapped the explosive sticks into the holes he had drilled.

  A few moments more and he would be safe, but first he had to warn the men within the mine.

  He tapped on the door with his closed fist. An answering knock came from within.

  Hurriedly Wade signaled in a terse code that Marat and Argyle would understand.

  A bullet splashed against the steel and another raked his ribs, but Marat had already answered. The prisoners were retreating, getting out of danger from the blast.

  Wade hurriedly lit the fuses and returned to the Thunderbug, dodging among the rocks amid a hail of bullets. He tossed the rifles and pistols he had selected to the ground outside, where the prisoners would see them on emerging. Then he swung shut the door and headed the Thunderbug toward the temple. It was up to him to create a diversion.

&nbs
p; Something made him look back. Far down the gorge, a half-score of men, their weapons glittering, came racing into view. Dellera’s crew from the pill-box had been hastily summoned by telephone from the temple. The miners would be caught between two fires now!

  One of those fires had to be silenced. Despite the fact that the attackers from below carried submachine-guns, they were outnumbered by the prisoners.

  The real danger came from the snipers in the temple.

  Wade kept the Thunderbug’s nose pointed up the gorge. Then the explosion came. It was not loud, but the concussion brought a sliding fall of rock down from the cliff above the mine. Looking back, Wade felt his heart stop as the whole side of the mountain seemed to quiver. Had he miscalculated the charge?

  The fall slowed and stopped. The mine door was buried. A rock shook and fell away, revealing an open black patch beside the now hidden entrance.

  Red Argyle’s flaming thatch showed as he forced his way through. He saw the guns where Wade had left them. One big hand was raised to wave at the Thunderbug.

  Then Argyle, with Marat at his heels, was racing toward the weapons. Bullets paced them.

  Wade realized he had already wasted too much time. Lips pressed grimly together, he sent the Thunderbug charging toward the temple. Though reinforced concrete was a good shield, the temple was not made entirely of concrete. Dellera had left standing several weathered, ancient walls which had been built long ago by the Aztecs.

  That was his mistake.

  A grenade exploded near the Thunderbug, but the fast tank only tilted up and crashed down again without halting in its onward charge. Wade jammed more power into the motors. Looming ahead was a crumbling wall, covered with Incan carvings. His mouth widened in a tight, hard grin.

  Marat and Argyle had the guns now, he knew, and were distributing them among the mine slaves. Those two, at the head of that group of prisoners anxious for vengeance, would be a match for the men from the pill-box, despite the enemy’s submachine-guns. Just now the business at hand was the temple. Wade had to silence the crossfire coming from it.

  THE carved wall swung dizzily before him, seemed to leap at him as the Thunderbug struck. The armored nose plowed through the weathered rock like a meteor. Dust, stone, fragments of rock rained down. The wall crumbled and the Thunderbug was inside the temple!

  Wade had a flashing glimpse of the machinery that filled the great room, of a balcony high above, where men were kneeling and firing down at him. The tank lurched forward, halted in the center of the stone floor and red fire leaped viciously from its ports.

  Men on the gallery screamed, dropped their guns, fell. They were not throwing grenades now. Probably they were afraid of damaging the machinery, Wade guessed. At least they were too busy now to rake the mine slaves with their withering cross-fire.

  At that thought, Wade glanced back through the gap he had made in the temple’s wall. His eyes widened. He could see nothing but a rampart of coiling, black fog that was drifting relentlessly down the gorge, borne on the chill wind that blew perpetually from the upper peaks.

  Poison gas! Dellera was sacrificing his own men in a murderous attempt to kill the escaping slaves!

  Chapter IX

  Dellera Loses his Head

  THUNDER JIM cursed silently. There was nothing he could do. It would take too much time to improvise gas-masks from the Thunderbug’s equipment. There was only one chance left for the prisoners, provided they broke through the attackers from the pill-box. They might outrace the poison gas to the gorge’s mouth.

  But the jungle was filled with the Poison People. There was the pill-box itself, possibly deserted now and certainly gas-proof. They could find sanctuary there.

  Marat and Argyle would think of that. Wade knew his two lieutenants could take care of themselves and the miners as well. But the chance was such a slim one that Wade felt slightly sick as he turned back to his guns.

  He stiffened. Directly facing him was the door by which he had first entered this factory. Beyond it, Wade realized, was the hall that led to the outside. But two figures were standing on the threshold—Dellera and Astrid.

  The fat man was using the girl as a shield. One bulky arm, clamped around her waist, held her motionless before him. His free hand gripped a pistol, leveled at Astrid’s head. He was watching the tank.

  “Come out, Wade, or I’ll kill the girl!” his voice rang out.

  “Don’t do it!” Astrid shrilled. “Don’t—”

  She gasped in pain as Dellera’s arm tightened. The fat man’s black teeth showed in a snarling grimace.

  “Hurry up, Wade! Come out with your arms up!”

  Thunder Jim hesitated. He knew Dellera would not hesitate to kill the girl. But if he surrendered now, it would mean death for his friends and the miners.

  Wade’s eyes hardened, became black, glacial ice, relentless and grim with controlled fury. Men who saw Thunder Jim Wade’s eyes as they were now seldom lived long after that.

  He touched the controls. The Thunderbug swiveled, pointed its nose toward Dellera and leaped forward like some monstrous beast.

  The fat man had expected anything but that. Insane rage crossed his face and fear supplanted it. The sight of that behemoth roaring down upon him was more than his nerve could stand. Yelling, he let go of the girl, pushed her into the Thunderbug’s path and dodged back through the doorway. Astrid fell, trying vainly to roll away.

  The Thunderbug reared up like a wild horse, swinging aside as it did so. Only the craft’s maneuverability and Wade’s trained hands at the controls saved the girl from being crushed to death. But Wade knew exactly what he was doing. The Thunderbug was a part of him and he understood its powers down to the last inch.

  The heavy treads crashed down. Simultaneously Wade was out of the cabin, hoisting Astrid up. The tank’s bulk protected them momentarily from gunfire as Wade almost threw the girl into the cabin.

  He had seen Dellera behind him, so he did not follow. He whirled, his own body shielding the girl as she stumbled to safety within the tank. A sickening shock numbed his left shoulder, swinging him around. Dellera’s bullet had missed the heart, but only by a few inches.

  The fat man stood on the threshold, black teeth bared, his face a mask of ferocious savagery. The gun bucked and jolted in his hand.

  THUNDER JIM WADE had also drawn his own pistol. Dellera did not see that draw. He felt the impact of the bullet first, smashing through this chest, driving him back. Then he realized that there was a gun in Wade’s hand. It seemed to have grown there in a split-second.

  Wade had fired only once. For a brief moment he stood motionless, smoke drifting from the pistol’s muzzle, staring at Dellera. The fat man’s lips twisted. Betel-juice trickled down slobberingly over the pouchy chin.

  There was no mercy in Wade’s eyes. He watched Dellera die and there was no emotion in the black ice that fury had made his gaze.

  The fat man slumped down in a limp, boneless heap. The shriek of a bullet made Wade leap back into the Thunderbug, slamming the door behind him. He reached the controls and sent the tank racing toward the gap in the wall.

  ASTRID crouched on the cabin floor, watching him.

  “Marat and Argyle and the miners,” Wade grunted over his shoulder. “Got to find out what’s happened to them.”

  “You’re wounded—”

  “Can you stop the bleeding? Put on a tourniquet while I drive. I can’t stop and wait.”

  Astrid obeyed. The Thunderbug plunged down the valley like a mad greyhound. The swift breeze had already swept the poison gas before it. Wade saw men’s bodies lying on the ground. Were they miners or Dellera’s thugs? At least he did not see Marat or Argyle.

  It seemed hours before the mouth of the gorge came into view. The pill-box was debouching armed men. Red Argyle’s blazing thatch towered above the rest. Anxiously Wade looked for Marat’s sleek-hair and sighed with relief when he found it.

  A shout went up from the men at sight of the Thunderbug. Wade s
topped the tank and followed Astrid out. Argyle was grinning happily.

  “You made it, eh? So did we! We licked Dellera’s men and outraced the gas to the pill-box. They’d left it unguarded, the saps! We were just going back to look for you.”

  “How many of you were hurt?” Wade asked swiftly.

  “Nobody killed. Plenty wounded, though. How about Dellera?”

  Wade nodded briefly. “Yeah. He’s finished.”

  “We’d better get back in the pill-box,” Marat said. “The Thunderbug won’t hold all of us.” He jerked his thumb back toward the forest. “We’ve got company.”

  The jungle was spawning dozens, scores, hundreds of naked, bronzed figures, hideous in war-paint, blowguns held ready. The Poison People came pouring up the clearing toward the mouth of the gorge.

  “Right!” Wade said hastily. “Those blowguns are dangerous.”

  He slammed the Thunderbug’s door, locked it and joined the others in the race to the pill-box, only a few yards distant. They made it just in time. Luckily the tiny arrows fell short of their marks. But as the reinforced door slammed behind Wade, the Poison People surrounded the pill-box like a seething wave.

  “Well, they can’t get in,” Marat grunted. “I guess they finally got tired of Dellera’s poison gas.”

  “More likely they had spies up in the mountains,” Wade said. “They must have seen the fight and signaled to the tribes to come and get it. They didn’t waste much time.”

  Argyle was squinting down a gun-barrel.

  “Shall we—”

  Wade nodded toward a window-port, heavily glassed.

  “They’ve gone up the gorge. They know they can’t get at us.”

  There was a brief silence. Marat jerked his head toward a wireless set in one corner.

  “How about it, Wade? We can get some planes from Lima in a few hours. We’ll need plenty to transport everybody back to civilization.”

  Without waiting for an answer he slid into the chair, clamped on headphones and sent out an emergency call.