by Lin Carter
“Señor Crawley,” murmured the old hidalgo, “there is no need to worry. Over on the big island there is a first-rate modern hospital, fully, staffed and equipped to deal with island fevers.”
“Yeah, by golly, that’s right,” rumbled the fat little man in his bullfrog voice. “Savage Memorial Hospital, right? Heerd of the place myself. So don’t you go a-worryin’ — we’ll see the young feller gets well again!”
Phoenicia Mulligan blinked back tears, sniffed loudly, and peered with misty eyes at her avuncular relation.
“B-but, Uncle B-Braxton, I th-thought you didn’t like Johnny! You s-said he was just a fuf-fortune-hunter!”
“Well. Hrrmph!” snorted the fat man shamefacedly. “just you ne’mine what I said. Guess I sorta misjudged the young feller ... now I got me a chance t’ make up f’r figgerin’ him wrong th’ fust time around.”
“Yes, I wouldn’t worry, miss,” drawled Nick Naldini comfortingly. “Our chief’s got a degree in medicine and is reckoned a brilliant physician. Bet you he can fix the boy up good as new! Chances are he just needs a good stiff dose o’ quinine and a few days’ bed-rest and some good food in him. In no time he’ll be up and around, good as new —”
“I’m afraid not,” said a quiet voice from behind them, as soon as Phoenicia Mulligan had said her goodnights and gone off to bed. They turned as Zarkon emerged from the shadows of the doorway.
“How’s the kid, chief?” inquired Menlo Parker brightly. The skinny little scientist usually maintained a glum-faced, sour-eyed silence when women were around, but cheered up quick as a flash once the pretty creatures were out of sight. Old Menlo was such a confirmed and devout misogynist that his comrades on the Omega team often jokingly suggested he had a physical allergy to silk stockings and soprano voices.
“Not good,” said Zarkon in a serious voice. “We’d better get him to the big hospital on the main island. But right now I don’t want him moved. He’s quite ill; his experience has taken a heavy toll.”
“Aw, shucks, the poor kid,” grumbled Scorchy. “Well, we’ll sic Fooey Mulligan on him t’morra for a nurse. With a blond cutie like that t’ hold yer hand and stick a thermometer in yer kisser, it’s almost worthwhile bein’ sick!”
“So what d’we do now, chief? Call it a day and turn in?” inquired Ace Harrigan. The handsome aviator looked glum. He thought he was getting places fast with the gorgeous young heiress, but now that her boy-friend had turned up alive after all, his chances looked about nil.
Zarkon suggested that they all get a good night’s sleep. Then, pausing by the window of the room where poor John James Jones lay sleeping under a heavy dose of sedative, the Ultimate Man looked grim.
“Best we all get some sleep now,” he said firmly. “With dawn tomorrow I mean to descend into the crater of Mount Rangatoa —”
Nick licked his lips. “Chief, you can’t go down in that devil’s soup-pot! Not even an insulated suit c’d keep a man alive in that hellish brew!”
Zarkon shook his head determinedly.
“I came prepared, Nick. I packed along in the equipment cases a new experimental heat suit. The new plastic boron-fiber insulation should prove sufficient, even against molten lava. I am confident of it, at any rate.”
“What the heck you gonna do down inside the volcano?” demanded Scorchy curiously.
“Find the secret lair of the fire-devil,” said Zarkon. “Or try to, anyway!”
CHAPTER 11 — It Walks by Night
Night fell, purple-winged, across the calm waters of the Pacific. As the sun died gorgeously on the western horizon, one by one the first few timid stars ventured forth. First only a few; then dozens shone and twinkled.
The purple vault deepened to black velvet. Now the stars blazed and shimmered in numberless legions, turning the night sky to a jeweler’s display. Like heaped and scattered ice-blue diamonds, the innumerable constellations of the tropic sky displayed their dazzling splendors.
The small village of Tarapaho slumbered beneath the starry blaze. In their thatched huts, the native fishermen and farmers slept beside their women and children. They were raised a little off the ground on pilings, those huts. Chickens huddled together, clucking sleepily from time to time, under the porches. Bony-ribbed dogs whimpered and kicked in the alleys between the huts, dreaming their doggy dreams of running, hunting, eating.
In all the village, nothing stirred.
But within the black depths of the jungle, a strange, hulking shape was on the prowl.
It lumbered clumsily, on heavy, stumpy feet, cracking through the underbrush. From time to time it paused, its massive, neckless head turned a little to one side, as if listening. It had no face, that head — no eyes or ears. But somehow it seemed to be listening, to be snuffling the air, to see if its approach was noticed.
In the sleeping village, nothing moved or walked or seemed aware that hulking horror lurked monstrously within the jungle aisles. Only one or two of the starveling dogs whined in their sleep, wrinkling their pointed noses, scenting on the breeze the approach of the monster.
It had not the smell of living flesh. Instead, it smelled of burnt rock. The dogs sneezed, rolled over, began to snooze and dream again.
The huge shape appeared at the jungle’s edge.
It peered this way and that, up and down the length of the village street.
At the end of this street, with its back up against the volcano, stood the trading-post of Señor Valdez. It was a large, rambling structure — the largest and most imposing of the buildings which composed the little village of Tarapaho.
Therein slept Phoenicia Mulligan and Braxton T. Crawley, the Omega men, and Señor Valdez himself.
A monstrous, hulking shape in the darkness, the ogre began to move with slow, dragging steps towards the trading-post. It kept just within the edge of the jungle, as if it feared to expose its hideousness to the pure light of the clear, luminous moon. Brush crackled and leaves rustled as the monstrous thing moved slowly through the bushes.
The rear wall of Señor Valdez’ trading-post was built smack up against the slope of the mountain. The beginnings of the rocky incline angled beneath the flooring of the back of the building, where the storerooms were. The monster lumbered heavily through the shadows, pausing from time to time, its huge, featureless head lifted, questing from side to side, as though listening.
Then, satisfied that none had observed it, it stepped into the black gloom between the pilings on which the rear of the building was raised, and vanished into the darkness.
Slowly, feeling its way step by step, the weird figure strode underneath the platform on which the trading-post of Señor Valdez was built.
When it had reached the back end of the building, where the rocky ground began to rise on an inclined plane, it reached up, fumbling with thick paws at the flooring. The heavy boards creaked as the huge paws tested them one by one. Eventually the black shape in the shadows found one that was looser than the rest. Monstrous paws closed about one end of this board, tugging and twisting. With a squeak of nails torn loose, the board gave way.
The next board came loose easier and more silently than had the first. Before long the bulky shape had made an opening in the floor large enough to accommodate its girth.
Bracing its stumpy feet against the inclined plane of rock, and reaching up to grab hold of the edges of the opening it had made, the ogre climbed clumsily into the storeroom and was lost to view.
Oblivious to what had come prowling from the blackness of the jungle night, the village slept on.
Even the slumber of the bony-ribbed village hounds was undisturbed. Had the massive, slow-moving intruder smelled to their sensitive nostrils like a living creature, the wary mutts might have roused the sleeping villagers with their nervous yapping.
But, living in such close proximity to the volcanic mountain, they were used to the smell of burnt rock, and paid no heed to a whiff of the odor of such fire-scorched stone.
Even when it walke
d like a man....
It was Phoenicia Mulligan who smelled it first. The hot smoke of burning wood and rattan matting, that is.
Worried sick on the behalf of her fiancé, John James Jones, the blond girl had slept but poorly, for all her nervous exhaustion. She had tossed and turned all night, rousing from time to time to pummel the lumpy pillow into a more amenable shape with her fists.
Then she smelled the smoke.
At first the blond girl ignored the acrid odor. Probably, she dismissed it as the last fumes from the feast cook-fires, whose coals still glowed dimly in the darkness of the tropic night. The sleepy girl told herself that the smoke fumes were being brought inland on the breeze that blew from the lagoon.
Eventually the scent of smoke became too strong and choking for the distraught girl to ignore any longer, even though she wished to, for at last she was drifting off to sleep.
She sat up in bed and sniffed the air.
No doubt about it, it was smoke. Thick, pungent, choking, the fumes were filling the room. By the moonlight which streamed in through the bamboo slats covering the window, she could even see the stuff coiling on the air and collecting in layers.
Her pulses thudding with alarm, Fooey Mulligan jumped up, pulled on a dressing-robe over her flimsy nightgown of nylon tricot, and jerked open the door to her room.
The hall outside should have been pitch-black. But it was not. A dim, wavering glow diffused orange light through the gloom. The light was filtering under the door at the end of the hall. That door, she vaguely remembered, led to the storage rooms where Señor Valdez kept his merchandise which had not yet been unpacked and placed on shelf display.
She went down the hall, curious. Perhaps the gentlemanly old Spaniard was conducting inventory, she postulated to herself, and the wavering orange glow, as well as the pungent fumes of smoke, came from a kerosene lamp.
Before she made a fool of herself before Prince Zarkon, by hysterically giving a false alarm, the girl decided to investigate.
She flung open the door to the storeroom, which was not latched.
Then she saw that the room was filled with black smoke, underlit by the licking orange flames.
Then she screamed!
Zarkon was at her side in moments. Oddly enough, although she did not really notice it at the time, the Lord of the Unknown was fully dressed in his gunmetal-gray slacks, pullover, and suede jacket and shoes.
The Ultimate Man took one look into the burning room, then jerked her about and propelled her back out into the hall with an un-gentle push.
“Wake up the others!” he ordered. Then, slipping off his jacket and wrapping it loosely about his face and head, Zarkon plunged into the flames.
For a moment the bewildered girl hesitated. Then she went to the nearest door and rapped on it with frantic knuckles, calling loudly.
It opened and the silver-haired old hidalgo peered out, blinking the sleep from his eyes. He needed no words from the young woman to comprehend the situation, for the hall was filled with drifting plumes of smoke and redly alit by the light of the flames.
Scorchy, Nick, and Ace shared the next room between them. They came popping out in various stages of undress, clutching their pistols. In a few moments Menlo Parker and Doc Jenkins joined them, as did Señor Valdez’ old housekeeper, Maria, who began screaming hysterically at one glimpse of the licking flames.
“Get her outa here, willya?” demanded Scorchy urgently. “Rouse the villagers —”
“Yes! The alarm bell — on the veranda!” gasped the old Spaniard, gesticulating violently. Nodding crisply, Fooey Mulligan spun the old woman around and led her out onto the porch. She had noticed the old-fashioned iron bell which hung there when they had drunk tea on the veranda during the first afternoon on the island. Señor Valdez had explained to her that it was rung for emergencies, and that ringing it would summon the village menfolk.
Snatching up the iron doorstop, Fooey Mulligan beat the bell with it. The clangor was deafening. In no time tousled heads came popping out of huts, staring wild-eyed down the length of the village street to the trading-post at its terminus.
“Fire! Fire!” yelled the blond girl, wishing she could remember what the word was in Spanish. But either the villagers understood her meaning without translation or the smoke was clearly visible in the moonlight as it came boiling out through the cracks in the thatched roof of the trading-post. For in no time at all the villagers came out of the doors of their huts, hastily wrapping sarong-like lengths of cloth around their waists, to come pelting down the street towards the burning building.
One of them helped the hysterical Maria down the steps, while the others formed a line to the beach. Wooden buckets and empty gasoline tins appeared. These were hastily dipped into the calm waters of the lagoon and were passed, sloshing, from hand to hand along the length of the street, right up to the walls of the trading-post, where the village women and children gathered in a crowd to empty the buckets against the smoking walls.
Phoenicia Mulligan had heard of such “bucket brigades” before but had never chanced to see one in action. She found the sight fascinating. She was impressed by the instinctive way the villagers organized the thing without milling confusion or shouted orders. They seemed to know what to do automatically.
It never occurred to the fascinated blond girl that the natives of Rangatoa had probably been fighting fires in precisely this same manner from the dawn of time — or, at least, from whatever period of the past in which the volcanic island had first become settled.
So she got out of the way of the men and watched as the most primitive method of firefighting was demonstrated in action.
Several boys even climbed up on the roof to douse down the smoking thatch with buckets of water passed up to them. As the flames touched the wet roof, the smoke turned vile and poisonously black, the boys retreated, coughing and gagging, unable to breathe the sooty stuff.
Scorchy and Nick Naldini emerged from the burning building, loaded with gear. The two presented an unconsciously comical appearance, both clad only in their shorts. While the pint-sized boxer had a well-developed physique, in miniature, as it were, the lanky stage magician was all skin and bones by comparison. All dressed up in his usual natty finery, the Mephistophelian magician looked sardonic and impressive: seen in his skivvies, he presented a rather ludicrous appearance, especially when the muscular bantamweight boxer stood beside him, similarly stripped for action.
After them, Braxton T. Crawley and Señor Valdez came stumbling out into the open, followed by Ace Harrigan, Menlo Parker, and Doc Jenkins. Prince Zarkon was nowhere to be seen.
Suddenly the blond girl uttered a piercing shriek and clapped her hands to her face guiltily.
“You okay, toots?” panted Scorchy.
“Johnny!” the girl shrilled. “I forgot to knock on his door!” The fact that the room occupied by the sick young geologist was on the farther side of the building, and did not have a door which opened onto the central hall, as did all the ones on whose doors she had pounded in order to rouse their sleeping occupants, did nothing to alleviate the guilty feelings the girl suffered.
“Cheez,” gasped the little Irish boxer. “And the chief knocked him out with a heavy dose o’ sedative, too! Th’ poor gink’s slept through the whole thing! Well,” he gritted determinedly, “here goes nuttin’!”
“What are you g-going to d-do?” wailed the girl in alarm.
Scorchy snatched one of the buckets as it was being passed from hand to hand down the firefighting line, and up-ended it, dousing himself with cold lagoon-water from head to foot.
“Gotta git th’ poor guy outa there,” growled the pugnacious Pride of the Muldoons through chattering teeth.
And before either Nick Naldini or Phoenicia Mulligan could think to move or speak a word to stop him, the midget prizefighter sprang up the stairs to the veranda porch, plunged into the open doorway, and vanished in the boiling clouds of smoke.
CHAPTER 12 — The
Murder Monster
Only a few moments after Scorchy Muldoon plunged into the smoke-filled doorway of the burning building and disappeared, a black shape came around the porch of the veranda with a gaunt burden in its arms.
It was Prince Zarkon, his face and clothing black with soot and smeared ash, bearing the half conscious, feebly-struggling body of John James Jones.
The Omega Man jumped down the steps, depositing the limp figure of the ill geologist on the dewy grass. Then he began slapping sparks from the smoldering scorched places in his clothing.
“Is he all right?” inquired Phoenicia Mulligan in an anxious voice.
Zarkon bent to examine the famished figure, whose bony face gleamed with perspiration and was smeared and dirty from smoke and soot. Then he nodded.
“I found him on the ground underneath the window to his room,” said the Man of Mysteries.
“Gosh,” exclaimed Nick Naldini worriedly. “We figgered th’ poor guy’d still be knocked out from the drugs you gave him last night, chief, and’d be overcome by smoke by this time!”
“He musta choked an’ coughed himse’f awake, when the smoke got thick enough,” rumbled Braxton T. Crawley in his deep voice. “An’ managed to climb or fall outa his window! Pore feller! Shore din’t do him much good, in his sick condition! Quicker we c’n git him to a hospital on the main island, th’ better for my future nephew-in-law!”
“Oh, Uncle Braxton!” squealed Phoenicia Mulligan ecstatically, “does that mean what it sounds like? You’ll let me and Johnny get married, after all, with no objections?”
The fat man flushed scarlet, scowling ferociously as his happy niece twined her arms around his neck and gave him a resounding kiss on one plump cheek.
“Well, heck,” grumbled the industrialist, blowing out his walrus mustache with a snort. “After all this young feller’s been through, I’d be an ogre myself, t’ stand in the way o’ you youngsters any longer.”
