The Land of Terror ds-2

by Kenneth Robeson

  The gunman melted down as though all the stiffening had been drawn from his body. On his forehead, exactly between his eyes, was a blue spot that suddenly trickled red. The man fell on top of his weapon and it continued to rip off shots until the drum magazine had emptied.

  Doc Savage flashed for the cave where his friends were held. He must not let the guard kill them in his excitement.

  "What is it?" the guard in the cave was bellowing. "What’s goin’ on out there? What — "

  Doc reached a spot a yard from the cave mouth. He stopped there. Off his lips came a changed voice — a voice exactly like that of the Kar gunman who had just died.

  "The bronze guy!" Doc’s altered voice called. "We got ‘im! Come out an’ watch ‘im croak!"

  "Sure!" barked the fellow in the cavern. "Here I come — "

  He crashed headlong into a set of mighty bronze hands. He saw them closing over his face. They looked bigger, more terrible than the whole crater of Thunder Island. The golden eyes behind them were even worse. They radiated death.

  The man sought to use his gun. He got a few wild bullets out of it.

  Then his neck unjointed! He died quickly. His actual going was painless, whatever the terror of the moments before might have been. For Doc’s sinewy hands had brought a merciful end.

  Renny, Ham, Monk, Johnny, and Long Tom — all five howling their pleasure — piled out of the cavern prison in a hurry.

  "Did you get Kar?" Ham clipped.

  "No." Doc put a sharp question. "Have you seen Kar yet?"

  "Not yet. They took poor Bittman off to Kar. Or that’s what they said. I don’t know — "

  Doc’s uplifted arm stopped Ham’s flow of words.

  Then, as they all heard what Doc’s sensitive ears had been first to detect, horror seized them.

  Kar’s plane was starting. The engines were already tossing salvos of sound against the gigantic cliff wall of the crater.

  Doc Savage left the spot as from a catapult. No word did he speak. None was needed. His men knew that, should the plane get off, their lot would be very hard indeed. It might take them years to escape the innards of Thunder Island.

  Renny, Ham, Monk, Long Tom, Johnny — all five trailed in his wake. But from the way they were left behind, they might have been at a standstill in the rear of the bronze master of speed.

  Seemingly gifted with unseen wings, such fabulous leaps did he take over boulders, Doc bore down on the makeshift hangar between the two masses of stone that were larger than skyscrapers. He caught sight of the plane.

  It was in motion.

  Already, the tail was lifting. Another two hundred yards for speed, and the craft would be off. Doc could see the features of the man in the control cockpit.

  Kar was handling the plane!

  * * *

  DOC veered left. He put on speed — although he had been traveling faster than it seemed a human could.

  He was trying to intercept the plane! Kar saw his purpose. He kicked rudder. The ship veered a little. But it couldn’t turn enough to evade Doc. The runway was rather narrow. Great rocks spotted the sides. The plane could easily crash among these.

  For a moment, though, it did seem the ship would escape the mighty bronze man. But a great leap sent his herculean figure sailing upward.

  Doc seized a strut which braced the empennage — the rudder and elevators. The plane must have been going forty miles an hour. The wrench would have torn loose the grip of lesser fingers. But the bronze giant held on.

  Kar now began to shoot with an automatic pistol. He was excited. He had to aim from a very difficult position. He missed with all his slugs — then had to devote his attention to getting the plane off the crater floor, before it reached the runway end.

  The craft lurched. With a moan, it took the air!

  * * *

  Chapter 22. A LOST LAND DESTROYED

  THE plane climbed over the great boulders and the high fern trees. It circled once. Then Kar lifted his pistol to shoot at Doc Savage once more. The plane could fly itself for a time.

  Doc had been making good use of the respite. He had mounted to the main tail struts, which extended to the upper wing. He was swinging with a simian ease along these.

  Kar’s first bullet missed. His second also — for Doc had twisted in a miraculous fashion and gotten atop the wing.

  A hollow clackcame from Kar’s automatic. He jacked the slide back. The weapon was empty. Wildly, he started reloading the clip.

  The roof hatch whipped open. A mighty bronze form dropped inside. It towered toward Kar.

  In a frenzy, the master villain sought to get just one bullet into his empty gun. But the weapon was flicked from his shaking fingers. It was flung through the plane windows.

  Kar’s voice lifted a screech, "Please — I did not know — "

  "Talk will do you no good!" Doc Savage’s remarkable voice, although not loud, was perfectly audible amid the engine roar. "Talk will never save you! Nothing can save you!"

  Kar looked at the plane windows, longingly.

  He had donned a parachute before taking off.

  Next, the master villain stared at a large leather suitcase which stood in the rear of the cabin. But he dared not make a move to jump out of the plane or reach the suitcase. He feared those bronze hands that were more terrible than steel.

  "I was deceived for a time," Doc Savage’s vast voice said grimly. "Your method of deception was clever. It was bold. It worked because you hit me in one of my soft spots. Perhaps I should say in one of my blind spots."

  Kar began, "You got me all wrong about — "

  "Silence! Your lies will serve you nothing! I have too much proof. I suspected who you were last night, when I saw you signaling from the top of a tree fern with a lighted cigarette.

  "You were ordering your men to decoy the big prehistoric beavers to the attack. You had carefully chosen a tree from which you could reach safety."

  Doc’s face was set as metal; his golden eyes ablaze with cold, flaky gleamings.

  "I became suspicious before that," the bronze man continued. "When I was shot at! When you pretended to faint! Actually, you hoped I would come to your motionless body and your man would shoot me."

  "I didn’t — "

  "You did! After the prehistoric beavers had been frightened away last night, I climbed your tree and removed the skinning scalpel you carried on your watch chain. That scalpel was poisoned. I put it on a spear tip and tested it on the ancestor of a common porcupine. The animal was killed by a scratch. You hoped to use that weapon on me, but could not muster the courage, and failed at the last minute."

  Kar was now trembling from head to foot. He quailed from each word as from a knife stab.

  The plane, no hand at the controls, was flying itself — proof it was excellently made. Straight across the crater, it boomed.

  "You had many chances to slay me," Doc continued. "But you did not have the nerve to do it with your own hand. Like all criminals, however clever, you are a coward. You are like a rat. You remained with me, cannily checkmating my moves when you could, and seeking always to have your men kill me. But you dared not to do the deed yourself.

  "Your craven nature was shown when we landed in the crater. You became a sniveling coward."

  * * *

  KAR was a sniveling coward again now — probably to a greater degree than ever before.

  "Your lies were ingenious!" Doc’s relentless voice went on. "It was not alone Jerome Coffern who came to Thunder Island with Gabe Yuder. You came also. You and Gabe Yuder found this crater. Jerome Coffern never knew of its existence."

  "You got me wrong!" whined the craven before Doc. "Kar is Gabe Yuder — "

  "Gabe Yuder is dead! He found the unknown element or substance from which the Smoke of Eternity is made. He probably perfected the Smoke of Eternity. You saw it could be turned to criminal purposes. So you killed Gabe Yuder, and took his chemical formula. I found his grave!"

  "You can’t prove �
� "

  "Granted. I am merely guessing what happened on your first visit to Thunder Island. It does not matter how near I come to the truth. But I cannot be missing the facts far.

  "Jerome Coffern saw something suspicious about your actions. He must have remarked on it. So you tried to kill him. The first time, you shot at him and missed. He suspected you of the deed. He wrote a statement, which you searched his apartment and found. I discovered a few lines of that statement upon a fresh typewriter ribbon in Jerome Coffern’s apartment. But the important part was illegible — the part which named you!

  "The part which said you, Oliver Wording Bittman, were Kar!"

  Kar — or Bittman — quailed as though this were the greatest blow of all.

  "Yes, you are Kar, Bittman!" Doc continued. "You are a skilled actor, one of the best I ever encountered. And you had aroused my blind confidence in you by exhibiting that letter from my father showing you had saved his life.

  "You listened in on an extension phone when I called Monk from your New York apartment, and promptly sent your men after Monk. You also sent one of your gang, a flyer, to kill me as I walked. I recall I told you I was going to walk after I left your place.

  "You ordered your men to get the specimens from Thunder Island out of my safe. You ordered the elevator death trap which nearly got Monk, Ham, Johnny, Long Tom, and Renny — and you didn’t make a move to enter the cage that had been doctored. You tipped your men to get off the Sea Star, and probably hired the yacht which removed them, by telegraphing from New York.

  "You even disappeared into the jungle on that coral atoll long enough to tell your man hidden there to bomb our plane. I could name other incidents when you checkmated us. You deceived us. But you did it by taking advantage of the most despicable means to get yourself into my confidence. You knew my affection for my father. So you showed me the letter which said you had saved his life.

  "You knew my father — you knew the affection that existed between us. You were certain your trick would blind me to any faults you might have."

  Bittman whined, "It was no trick! I saved his life — "

  Doc Savage’s voice acquired a strange, terrible note, a note of strain.

  "Did you? Or was that letter faked in some manner?"

  "It was a genuine letter!" gulped Kar — or Bittman. "I saved his life! Honest, I did! I’m not such a bad guy! You read that letter! Your father wouldn’t be fooled in a man. I’m not — "

  "You can’t talk yourself out of it!" Doc said savagely. "I do not think my father did make a mistake. Perhaps you were the man he thought you were — then!You have changed since. Perhaps some mental disease, or prolonged brooding, warped your outlook on life.

  "There are many possible explanations for a hitherto honest man becoming a criminal. But we will not discuss that. You ordered my friend, Jerome Coffern, murdered. For that, there can be but one penalty!"

  The plane was slowly careening off on a wing tip, threatening to crash. Doc’s powerful hand, floating out, stroked the controls and brought it level. A wall of the crater was ahead — perhaps five minutes flying away.

  Directly in front of the plane, an eruption was occurring in the strange horseshoe-shaped lake of boiling mud which extended nearly around the crater, but high above the jungle-clothed floor.

  Kar — or Bittman — suddenly made a frantic leap. He was seeking to reach the leather suitcase back in the plane cabin.

  He brought up against Doc’s bronze arm as against a stone wall. He struck at Doc repeatedly. He missed each time, for the bronze form seemed to vanish under his fists, so quickly did it move.

  Increased terror seized the man. His eyes rolled desperately.

  "You’ll never kill me!" he snarled.

  Strange lights glowed in Doc Savage’s golden eyes.

  "You are right," he agreed. "I could never kill with my bare hands a man who saved my father’s life. But do not think you shall escape with your crimes because of that! You will receive your punishment!"

  Kar rolled his eyes again. He didn’t know what fate Doc planned for him. But it could be nothing pleasant.

  Suddenly the master villain dived headlong through the plane window!

  * * *

  TWO hundred feet below the ship, the man cracked his parachute. It bloomed wide, a clean white bulb in the sinister gray of the crater atmosphere.

  Doc Savage gave the oncoming wall of the crater a glance. It was only two minutes away now. Back into the cabin, he flung. He got the leather suitcase at which Oliver Wording Bittman had glanced so longingly.

  He did not open the suitcase. The contents might have interested him not at all, judging by his actions.

  The speeding plane whipped over in a vertical bank under his mighty hand. It had been almost against the crater wall. The ship seemed to slam against the cliff, then leap away.

  Doc’s golden eyes ranged downward. They were a cold gold now, determined. They judged accurately.

  Doc dropped the suitcase overside.

  The piece of luggage revolved slowly as it fell. It hit just below the lava dike which confined the great lake of boiling-hot mud. It burst.

  It had contained Kar’s supply of the Smoke of Eternity! The crater wall below the lava dike began a swift dissolving. Vile, repulsive gray smoke climbed upward in growing volume. It was such a cloud as had arisen at the destruction of the sinister pirate ship, Jolly Roger, in the Hudson River.

  The smoke pall hid what was happening beneath. The play of electrical sparks made a weird glow within the squirming mass.

  Suddenly, from beneath the cloud crawled a brown, smoking torrent. The lava dike confining the lake of super-heated mud had been destroyed. The molten liquid was running into the crater!

  Banking, engine moaning, the plane kept clear of the foul gray cloud from the Smoke of Eternity. Doc’s golden eyes searched. They found what they sought.

  Kar! The river of boiling mud overtook him swiftly. The man tried to run. He held his own for a time. Then one of the giant hopping horrors of the crater, the greatest killing machine nature ever made, confronted him. The tyrannosaurus started for Kar with great, bloodthirsty bounds.

  Kar chose the easier of two deaths — he let the hideous reptilian giant snap his life out with a single bite.

  But an instant later, the wall of hot mud rushed upon the prehistoric monster. The stupid thing took a gigantic leap — deeper into the cooking torrent. It went down. It rolled over slowly, kicking in a feeble way with its huge, three-toed feet.

  Thus perished Kar — or Oliver Wording Bittman, the famous taxidermist — and the colossus of reptiles which had devoured him.

  * * *

  DOC held the plane wide open back across the crater. He landed on the narrow runway among the great lumps of stone which had, centuries ago, caved from the cliff.

  Renny, Ham, Monk, Johnny, Long Tom — all five piled into the plane on the double-quick.

  Doc took off again.

  "Look!" Johnny muttered.

  The ruptured lake seemed to contain an inexhaustible supply of boiling mud. It still poured forth. It was flooding the floor of the ghastly crater! The monsters existing there were being enveloped.

  And the surviving Kar gunman would perish with them! Nothing could save him.

  Steam poured upward. It was thickening in the mouth of the crater over their heads — forming a smudge which less and less sunlight penetrated. The growing darkness, the remorseless progress of the mud flood, the antics of the grisly reptilian giants, gave the tableau the aspect of another Judgment Day.

  "Talk about your sights!" Monk muttered.

  Then they fell silent. They were thinking of that arch-fiend, Oliver Wording Bittman, who had deceived them. The fellow was responsible for their recent capture. He had signaled his men where to attack.

  From the very first, he had misled them. From the moment when he came to them with a scratch on his chest which he must have made himself and a clever story of being shot at!
r />   They were amazed at the cunningness of Bittman’s acting. The man had been a master to deceive them as he had.

  Even Doc had not seen through Bittman’s fiendish double-dealing until they had reached this crater. But that was understandable. The affection between Doc and his father was extremely great. And Bittman, as a man who had saved the life of Doc’s father, had received Doc’s gratitude. It had been hard for Doc to look to such a man as an evil villain.

  "What about the Smoke of Eternity?" questioned Monk suddenly.

  For answer, Doc leveled a bronze beam of an arm. They followed his gesture with their eyes.

  The region of strange rocks, where Kar must have mined the unknown element or substance to make the Smoke of Eternity, had already been buried by the hot mud flow. It would never be mined now!

  Monk looked curiously at Doc Savage.

  "Do you know what that stuff — the Smoke of Eternity — was?" he inquired.

  N="JUSTIFY"

  Doc did not answer immediately. But at length, "I have the theory which grew out of my analysis of the metal which was impervious to the dissolving substance. That theory, I am sure, is near the truth. And that is why I deliberately released the flood of mud."

  "Huh?" Monk was puzzled.

  "The Smoke of Eternity can never be made without the rare substance which Kar mined here. And the supply of the stuff is now buried hopelessly. As for what the substance was, no one shall ever know. I intend to keep my theories to myself."

  Monk nodded. "Guess I see the reason for that."

  "The world can get along without the Smoke of Eternity!" Doc’s voice seemed to fill all the plane.

  The ship rammed its howling propellers into steam. Up and up, it climbed. The heat nearly took off their skin. But only for a while; it became cooler at last.

  So suddenly that it was like a gush of flame into their faces, they were in brilliant sunlight. Their eyes, becoming adapted to the glare, picked up the coral atoll some fifty miles distant.

  "No need of even landing there!" Doc decided.

  He banked the plane for New Zealand. Ample fuel for the flight sloshed in the gas tanks, thanks to Kar’s foresight.