The Motion Menace, page 10
part #64 of Doc Savage Series
* * *
The smashed Munchen was draped across a clump of small trees, many of which had punctured the outer skin of thin metal and the delicate inner gas chambers of special cellophanelike material—goldbeater’s skin had been found inferior of late for gas bag linings. There was not much undergrowth, although the trees themselves were not large. There were no birds close by; all had been frightened away by the strange wrecked air Titan. Some buzzards circled far away, and in the woods the only creature that stirred was a big woods rat; and it was leaving the vicinity furtively. Altogether, there was a great stillness.
Perhaps the most still form was the giant man of bronze. He occupied a bough of a tree from which a view could be had of the control cabin of the Munchen. Held fixedly to his right eye was a small but very strong telescope.
The glass was powerful enough so that the hammer marks on the tiny rivets which held the dirigible skin to the girders could be discerned plainly.
Doc Savage was a skilled lip-reader.
The bronze man pocketed the telescope, after collapsing it to fountain-pen size. He swung down out of the tree with ghostly stealth, and advanced on the wrecked airship.
He circled the entire craft carefully. There was a lookout in the bow, another in the stern. The two were back at the control cabin door.
Doc broke a leafy bush large enough to cover him. It was exactly like the others. He crept forward, holding it over him, moving only when the lookouts were not glancing in his direction. It was a simple trick, but it took time; and he finally reached the underside of the airship.
There was no danger of suffocating from the gas leaking out of the ballonets. The gas, being light, went up.
Doc found a rip, tested to make sure no squeakage came from the girders, and swung inside. He reached the control room, but worked into the catwalk above instead of entering, and went on forward to the radio room.
There was no guard at the radio room door.
Ky Halloc had a scrambler attached to the radio telephone. This was a device in common use by transatlantic and other commercial companies, and simply mixed up the voice so that it meant nothing until unscrambled by a key machine in exact synchronism at the other set.
Ky Halloc was speaking.
“—and then the plane with Savage, Monk, Ham, Long Tom, them two damned animals, and myself, flew into the protective screen,” he said, and stopped for breath.
* * *
When he had his breath, Ky Halloc began laughing.
“They had no idea what it was,” he said. “A little later, I kidded them into thinking it was an invisible monster or something. They ate it up. You can’t blame them. To some one who doesn’t know what it is, it is sure baffling enough.”
A replying voice came out of a loudspeaker on the radio room table.
“But Savage is still alive and free?” it demanded peevishly.
It sounded as if it were an old man’s voice.
“We’ve got him in our own territory now,” Halloc said. “He has no idea what it is all about, and taking care of him will be gravy.”
“You do not really think it will be easy?” demanded the loud-speaker voice sarcastically.
Ky Halloc hesitated.
“We can do it,” he said, and he suddenly sounded more desperate than confident.
“What about the others?”
“Savage’s three men? He sent them on ahead, to decoy our men. Savage will try and pick our men off one at a time. Guerrilla stuff.”
“That should make it easier.”
“Sure it will. You just get him located, lay down walls around him, and take him.” Ky Halloc began to laugh. “He’ll think the invisible monsters have him!”
Halloc’s laughter was not very hearty, and it ended on a false note. It was the kind of laugh a bad ham actor would put out when he had stage fright.
The radio room was quiet, except for the singing of an efficient motor generator unit. Somewhere, a marine clock struck five bells. Just why marine clocks were used on the Munchen was one of those things.
Ky Halloc thought of something to say, leaned forward, but did not say it.
Doc Savage had come forward and taken him by the neck and around the body. Sinews stood out a little in the metallic arms and hands, and pressure pain so paralyzed Halloc that he could not make sound.
Doc leaned close to the microphone.
“Stand by a moment,” he said.
His voice was a perfect imitation of Ky Halloc’s lusty tones. The mimicry was not difficult. The bronze man had been around Halloc a good deal now.
Doc cut the mike out of circuit.
“You did a good acting job,” the bronze man told Ky Halloc quietly. “It was necessary to watch you in an actual double-cross to be certain. Suspicion that you were not what you claimed, however, existed from the first.”
Doc then searched Halloc. He found a tiny, triangular badge of enamel and gold.
The bronze man’s hand shifted to Halloc’s neck nerve centers, preparatory to exerting the skilled pressure which would bring the fantastic, semiconscious paralysis.
“Don’t!” Halloc croaked. “You did that to one of our men in New York! We ain’t—ain’t been able to wake him up—since!”
His eyes filled with horror as he knew that his plea was not going to have any effect.
A man appeared in the door, leveled his rifle and fired.
* * *
The man with the rifle was the fellow who had tried to kill Doc Savage with the mysterious method of invisible attack in New York, on the string of Brooklyn houses which looked just alike. He was also one of the guards who had just stood at the entrance to the control room and heard Ky Halloc declare Doc Savage had more eyes than a fly. He got a demonstration of that now.
The bullet missed. Doc had moved. He flung Halloc aside. The man was too heavy a missile to throw quickly. A modernistic portable loud-speaker wasn’t. He batted that at the rifleman.
The fellow jumped aside. His second bullet missed. He did not fire a third. Instead, he squawked, grabbed at his middle, and put his jaw in the way of Doc’s right fist. He had a strong jaw. At least, it did not break.
Ky Halloc got up off the floor. Doc gave him a shove. Halloc butted a metal wall and sagged down, stunned.
Doc cut the radio mike in.
“Take Savage’s men alive,” he said in Halloc’s voice.
“That is the plan,” the loud-speaker voice said. “As long as they are alive, we have something with which to bargain.”
“That’s right. Anything else?”
“Nothing. Except I thought you might like to know that Captain Cutting Wizer is doing good work.”
The bronze man hesitated briefly.
“Just how much has he accomplished since the last time?” he asked, still using Halloc’s tone.
“The whole job is done.”
Doc waited. To probe further for information would only arouse suspicion. Anyway, the other men were coming.
“That’s good,” he said. “Well, seventry-threes.”
He cut the mike off.
Men were running down the catwalk from the bow, and up it from the control room. They had heard the shots. Doc cut the radio carrier wave off the air. Then he reached into the set, got a fistful of its vitals, and ripped them out. The apparatus would not work for a while.
He gathered up Ky Halloc, clipped him on a temple.
There was a hatch in the radio room roof. The bronze man sprang up with his burden, knocked the hatch open, and found one of the vertical inspection tunnels that ran up through the big gas bag. It was badly bent, squeezed in some places, but would pass him.
Doc went up. His method was unusual, hardly feasible if he had lacked much of his tremendous strength. He held Ky Halloc with his legs and mounted the inspection shaft ladder rungs with the strength of his arms alone. He made fair time.
Gas got stronger. It was escaping from ruptured ballonets. Down below, it was not bad, but up here—— He wouldn’t be able to breathe along the ridge of the airship. The gas was not poisonous itself, but it displaced the air necessary for breathing.
Doc drew in some of the bad air, held his breath, and knocked a hole in the thin side of the inspection shaft. There was a gas ballonet beyond. It had ruptured, and was almost empty of gas. Supporting wires crisscrossed it. Doc swung onto these, still carrying his burden with his legs.
A fall alone would have meant a bad mauling, perhaps mangling, on the network of thin, strong wires. There was almost no light. Yet the bronze man seemed to have no great difficulty. Reaching the other side, he broke through, wedged upward, got on a side catwalk, and raced toward the stern.
When he came to a rip in the airship’s side, he looked out.
A man was standing on each side of the dirigible, well away, rifle held ready.
Ky Halloc stirred.
Doc bent close to Halloc’s ear.
“This raid was largely to help you along with your work of deceiving the Elders,” Doc said.
* * *
Ky Halloc squinted his eyes several times, as if he had not heard aright. Then he swallowed incredulously.
“I’ll be damned! So you know what I am?”
The bronze man said, “In your pockets in New York was a badge which indicated you were a secret agent of the great Soviet secret service, the Ogpu.”
Halloc swallowed.
“On your person a moment ago was a small badge also indicating you were an Ogpu,” Doc told him.
Halloc grinned, and suddenly looked greatly relieved.
“You know the Ogpu,” he said. “Members remain unknown when they’re ordered to do so, or they receive a very serious punishment. That is why I have been keeping quiet.”
Doc nodded. “There is one thing, though: Why did you trap Pat?”
“What was the difference?” Ky Halloc countered. “They were going to seize her, anyway. If I hadn’t volunteered, some one else would have decoyed her, and maybe she would have been killed.”
Doc asked, “Have you learned enough to satisfy the Ogpu of what is going on?”
Halloc gave a violent start.
“So you do know!” he exploded. “Hell! I don’t see how you figured—it took me weeks—look here! I’ve held out on you because the Ogpu will raise the devil if I reveal what I have learned. They’re cranks on secrecy. But now I’ll tell you——”
“Save your breath,” Doc advised.
“You mean you know the whole thing?”
The bronze man’s nod was almost imperceptible.
“What you said over the radio a few minutes ago was the final explanation,” he said.
* * *
Ky Halloc grinned thinly, extended a hand. “Any hard feelings? I had my reasons for not telling you who I was or what my angle was. You seem to know them.”
Doc clasped the hand.
“Forget it,” he said. “Want me to leave you here?”
Halloc nodded. “I think I can do more from this side.”
“Right,” the bronze man agreed. “It would be better if you were left unconscious.”
“Sure.”
Doc knocked him out with a quick blow.
The bronze man dropped three smoke bombs on the ground. They bloomed out a black pall. The riflemen ran to it, watching intently, guns held ready.
Doc studied the riflemen. One of them was large, almost as big as the bronze man himself. Doc seemed particularly interested in the size of the fellow.
The bronze man’s strange, trilling melody was existent for a brief moment, but not in a loudness sufficient to carry to the watchers.
Doc dropped into the brush at the far end of the wrecked airship. But the bronze man did not leave the vicinity. Instead, he crept back, approaching the riflemen. And when he was very near flung a small rock which he had picked up enroute. The smaller of the two riflemen collapsed.
The other gunman whirled. He was not fast enough. There was the impact of two giant forms colliding, and the gunman went down. Doc was upon him, and his metallic fingers got to the sensitive spinal nerve centers.
Doc had the victim over a shoulder and had faded into the brush before any one came out of the airship wreck.
Chapter XIV
TROUBLE PILED UP
Long Tom was lagging behind. Not because he was tired, but because Monk and Ham were making so much noise squabbling that he could not hear an enemy if one got close. Not that there was much likelihood of that.
Monk and Ham had, long ago, trained their pets, Habeas and Chemistry, to range away in the manner of hunting dogs and signal the presence of any one. The animals were doing so now.
Monk and Ham were belaboring each other ferociously—until they ran into a thorny bush. A wild dog, a scrawny creature resembling a jackal, was frightened out of the bush and fled, yipping.
Monk looked around, and started with exaggerated surprise when he saw Ham beside him.
“Goodness!” he said. “I thought that was you ran away, sound and all!”
Ham opened his mouth to bite out a retort, but held it. Something about the noise of the wild dog had interested him.
The wild dog had stopped in the middle of a yowl. Broken it off with an almost impossible abruptness.
Long Tom came running up. “There was something queer about that!”
Monk and Ham thought so, too. They ran forward. Twenty paces brought them to the what-is-it, Chemistry.
Chemistry was balanced strangely, nape erect, little eyes fixed on the shrubbery ahead. The men advanced.
“Blazes!” Monk breathed.
The wild dog was balanced as if starting a leap, forefeet off the ground. The position was unnatural. And the animal was as rigid as if turned to stone.
Chemistry emitted a sound that was probably profanity in the what-is-it tongue, and started for the dog.
“Chemistry, stop!” Ham rapped.
“Sic ’em!” Monk said hopefully.
Chemistry paid no attention to Monk.
Ham snarled, “You know what’s got that dog! You wanted Chemistry to get caught, too, you awful accident of nature!”
Long Tom rapped, “I’m in favor of backing a bit. That’s one of them invisible things that’s got the dog.”
They retreated cautiously, supermachine pistols in hand. The wild dog continued to stand queerly. The brush hid the creature.
“Watch for the leaves to move if that thing comes through after us!” Monk breathed. “It’ll make some kind of sound, maybe, and if it don’t, it’ll sure stir the leaves.”
This was a somewhat difficult order, since there was a slight breeze and it waved the larger leaves gently.
Monk had hardly spoken when his little eyes bugged, and the hair on the back of his neck actually upended. It was a peculiarity of Monk that he had this animal characteristic of hair standing on end at his nape when he was mad or startled.
“Look!” he squalled. “The leaves have stopped movin’!”
This was true. The leaves behind them were becoming perfectly still.
They all saw what happened to a bee. It was a large, fuzzy bee, of a kind to stand this somewhat rigorous climate. The bee was cruising, making a small airplane noise, and suddenly came to a stop in the air. The bee hung there, then began to sink with an exaggerated slow motion toward the ground.
“That thing’s followin’ us!” Monk roared.
* * *
The group of bronze man’s aids had not been moving slowly in retreat. But now they began to set speed records. They came upon the pig, Habeas Corpus. The animal had been bringing up the rear.
Habeas was facing the back trail, hackles up, one forefoot hoisted startlingly like a pointed dog. And the shote was rigidly motionless.
“It’s got Habeas!” Monk breathed in horror.
Habeas demonstrated he was wrong by turning tail suddenly and rushing back to them.
Then they could see what had alarmed the shote. The leaves in a narrow swath across the back trail were not moving!
“Let’s try the left,” Long Tom said grimly.
They knew the truth an instant later. The fantastic monster of stillness had entirely surrounded them.
Monk growled, “Here’s somethin’ we haven’t tried yet!” and changed ammo drums in his supermachine pistol. The weapons were ordinarily kept charged with so-called mercy bullets to cause unconsciousness without great damage. Monk clipped in some of the demolition slugs.
He lifted the weapon.
Ham and Long Tom got down on the ground quickly. The invisible walls, monsters, masses or whatever they were, were not far distant. The force of those demolition bullets exploding would knock them off their feet.
Monk fired. The demolition slug made a sound no louder than a cork coming out of a wine bottle, although it opened less than a hundred feet distant.
“Blazes!” Monk lifted the superfirer again. “First time I ever knew one of them demolitions to turn out a dud!”
The machine-pistol hooted. A number of corks seemed to come out of bottles. Monk looked starkly incredulous.
“The demolitions ain’t hurtin’ the things a bit!” he yelled.
Long Tom peered about angrily.
“Not an enemy in sight,” he growled, “and me, I’m scared stiff!”
The group of Doc’s aids turned squarely around and tried to go in that direction. But they were blocked there, too.
The next five minutes were an epic. They sought desperately to find a loophole in the invisible, encircling ring. Their method was simple. They picked up rocks and threw them. Always, the rocks hit in mid-air, and stopped. There was no hole. The rocks fell to earth with comical slowness.
Through it all, the sun was bright above, and the birds circled peacefully in the sky. Buzzards, they were, and the fleet-winged Mongol variety of hawk. The woodland looked peaceful, and boughs stirred gently with the breeze.
There was no air movement where Monk, Ham and Long Tom fought the fiendish unknown. They became terribly unaware of that. Ham, who had an imagination, began to gasp, as if he were choking, and driven desperate, turned loose a blast from his machine-pistol.
