MAGIC FIRE
Clambering into their ship, Doc started the three motors. The others also tumbled into the cabin, Monk carrying Habeas Corpus. Doc taxied to the far side of the clearing.
Before taking off, he pointed out another eerie circumstance. This had to do with the clearing itself, its lack of vegetation.
“We’ve been taking it for granted that this clearing is the work of human hands,” he pointed out. “We may be mistaken. Do you see any stumps where brush has been cut off?”
“That’s right,” Monk agreed thoughtfully. “It just looks like nothin’ grows close to this thing.”
Doc starved the throttles until the plane stopped rolling; then said, “Monk, suppose you hop out and scoop up some samples of that earth. We’ll analyze the stuff later.”
Monk complied. A small sample jar from his chemical laboratory he filled with soil.
“Do you think there may be somethin’ in the ground that kills vegetation, Doc?” he queried.
“There is some reason for the jungle not encroaching on the pagoda,” Doc replied.
The bronze man held the plane back with locked wheel brakes until the motors were revving at top speed. When the brakes were released, the ship lunged ahead. There was little room to spare. Collision with the wall of jungle seemed imminent an instant before Doc backed sharply on the control stick. They skidded up into the air.
“You’re gonna leave the girl’s plane where we found it?” Renny asked.
“The young woman might escape from her captors and return,” Doc replied. “Without the plane, she would be marooned.”
They flew along above the stream. Its bamboo-flanked banks rapidly became narrower and soon reached a point where jungle monkeys could be observed swinging completely across the rivulet.
Doc and his men, watching closely, had seen nothing but buayas and, in the pools close to the surface, an occasional large fish of the pa-beuk variety.
“Nothing here,” Doc concluded. “We’ll try downstream.”
He banked around. Going back, they kept above the fog-like layer of jungle steam and studied the heavens. Nowhere could they discern Sen Gat’s three ships.
“Say,” Monk grunted unexpectedly, “could them sky-wagons of Sen Gat’s have landed and picked up the girl and Maples?”
“Not a chance,” Renny rumbled. “Do you think so, Doc?”
“Hardly possible,” Doc agreed.
The steam over the jungle shut out vision to a surprising degree; they did not sight the Pagoda of the Hands until they were within three-quarters of a mile of the structure, and it showed, a sinister, yellowish knob, above the jungle. They winged close, following the stream.
Monk, who had been watching the rear, muttered, “That’s funny.”
“What is?” Ham grunted.
“Three or four lang birds were following us,” Monk explained. “Now that we’re gettin’ close to that pagoda, they’ve turned back. Kinda uncanny.”
“Holy cow!” Renny yelled suddenly. “Lookit!”
Lucile Copeland’s plane still stood in the clearing beside the pagoda. But it was now strangely awry. The undercarriage had collapsed. Both wings had been wrenched partially free of the fuselage. The tail control surfaces were crushed. It was as if a monster foot had stepped upon the ship—except that the cabin was intact.
Doc landed hastily. They ran to the plane.
“I’ll be superamalgamated!” exploded Johnny. “What mashed the wings down?”
“There’s no tracks,” Monk declared, small eyes protruding.
“The ground in the clearing is remarkably hard,” Doc pointed out. “It would not show the prints of bare feet. A large number of men standing on the wings of the plane could have crushed it in this fashion.”
They started a second search of the pagoda vicinity, and soon Long Tom’s shout drew them toward the river. They ran to where he stood.
“Look!” he pointed.
The big caymans were still in the water, resting against the bank. But now they were weirdly motionless.
“Dead!” Long Tom muttered. “All three dead, and not a mark on ’em!”
Doc and his men stood in silence; of the six, only the bronze man maintained an inscrutable mien.
The appearance of the strange pagoda alone was conducive to a creepy feeling. Discovery of the scores of skeletons inside had not helped. They had been gone only a few minutes, but in that interim Lucile Copeland’s plane had been mysteriously crushed and these giant reptiles inexplicably slain.
“We better post a guard over our plane,” Doc said quietly.
They turned back. Monk suddenly yelled; his tone was shrill, unnaturally so.
“Lookit!”
Each of them saw it—a flame, a bundle of flames, rather. It was some six inches thick and a yard in length. The fire was in the air above the plane. It seemed to drop straight downward. They could hear the hiss and crackle of the flames, then the straight, elongated plume of fire struck the plane amidships.
Who-o-o-sh!
Ravenous, leaping scarlet enveloped the plane in the space of a finger snap. Smoke crawled. A fuel tank let go with a roar.
“Fire—out of thin air!” Monk squawked unbelievingly.
They raced toward the now burning ship, hopeful of saving some equipment. But it was too late. The exploding fuel tank had splashed gasoline through the cabin and the fuselage interior was a roaring furnace. They could only stand by and watch.
Ham peered upward. His features were usually ruddy—Monk had on occasion accused him of using rouge—but now they were quite pale.
“I saw it with my own eyes,” he said hoarsely. “Flame out of the sky! It wasn’t a thrown torch or a firebrand—just a flame!”
“And what made the plane catch on fire like that?” Monk grumbled. “It was an all-metal ship.”
Renny knotted and unknotted his huge fists. “I’ve heard a lot about the mysticism of the East. Always figured a lot of it was hooey. But—I dunno. This gets me.”
Doc Savage, saying nothing, moved toward the jungle. The wall of leafage took him in silently. The underbrush was not as thick as he had expected. He listened. Flame roar from the burning plane was sufficient to cover any other sound. He heard nothing.
The bronze man glanced upward. The dark mass of cloud was lower; it seemed to have thickened, darkened. A sudden jungle rainstorm was brewing.
The downpour came swiftly, even before Doc Savage could continue his search. Streaks of lightning appeared in wriggling, crisscrossing tongues. Thunder cackled. Very big raindrops came first, shotting on the jungle foliage; they grew smaller, fell more rapidly, and seemed to turn into a solid sheet. Lightning struck a small palm tree, showering down coconuts and palm fronds.
Within a few seconds Doc was standing in water more than ankle deep. He ran for Lucile Copeland’s plane.
The other ship, still burning furiously, sizzled and threw up clouds of steam. Doc’s five aides were already in the cabin of the girl’s ship.
“Blast the rain!” Renny rumbled. “If there were any tracks in the jungle, the storm’ll wipe ’em out.”
Ham peered out moodily at the storm. Only by shouting did his voice raise above the roar of water on the fuselage. “I can’t stop thinkin’ about it!” he yelled out.
“About what?” Monk demanded.
“That flame—the way it dropped out of thin air. I tell you it wasn’t—natural.”
The rain stopped suddenly after about five minutes of heavy downfall.
Examining the supplies in the girl’s plane, they found certain equipment which might prove useful—tents, insect nets, preserved foods. They made packs of this stuff.
“Our searching seems to have turned up no sign of the girl,” Doc announced. “The thing we had better do is go on in an effort to find the city of The Thousand-headed Man.”
The small river was now a roaring torrent, a lead-colored rope of water which writhed along in its bamboo-walled groove.
The men sought higher ground and moved in a westerly direction. Shortly after they left the strange pagoda behind, the jungle became thicker, almost impenetrable.
Tropical birds appeared, gaudy dapplings of color; some scolding hoarsely, but more fleeing at sight of the human invaders. Their cries made a weird conglomeration of sound.
Monk was letting Habeas Corpus walk, and the pig soon came scampering back in agony, having made unwise contact with a voracious type of ant. The men themselves found it necessary to keep a continual watch for these insects.
“Some ants!” Monk grumbled. “They bite like lions!”
Flies, species of jungle nyamoks, made going miserable. There were kutus—bugs which evidenced a liking for human diet. Chameleonlike sumpah-sumpahs clung to bamboo boles—tiny, picturesque lizards which fled with the speed of light. There were kumbangs, beetlelike insects larger than mice.
“I have encountered jungles of diversified varieties,” offered verbose Johnny. “Comparatively speaking, the others were city lawns.”
After an hour of superhuman exertion, they had progressed appreciably less than a mile. Doc called a halt to consult the map.
“The chart does not show the river,” he pointed out. “This is unexplored territory, but the river seems to run in the direction we wish to take. We’ll make better time with a raft.”
They changed their course and soon reached the river banks. Several tree boles, lashed together with suitable crosspieces, gave them a raft of sorts. They got aboard and used long bamboo poles to shove their craft along.
The river had already subsided to a degree. By keeping close to the shore, where they could shove against the bottom with their poles, they made fair progress. They were traveling with the current, anyway.
The river twisted frequently. They were rounding one of these bends when Doc, steering, abruptly sent the raft shoreward. He pointed, and the others followed his arm.
“Holy cow!” boomed Renny.
A man lay on the bank of the river, near the water. He was a short man, almost as wide as tall, with very long, thick arms. He seemed far gone, for he was using both arms to prop himself in a sitting position.
A few yards from the man two huge reptiles had pulled themselves up out of the water. They were of the buaya species, man-eating crocodiles. Each had a length of more than a score of feet. The reptiles were dividing their attention between the man and each other.
Monk, eyeing the man, growled, “Boy, oh boy, I’ve been wantin’ to get my hands on this cookie!”
It was Evall—the fake Monk, on the river bank.
Doc grounded the raft a few yards from Evall.
“Stay perfectly quiet,” he called to the fellow.
The anthropoid man was too terrified to take advice. He reared upon his feet and staggered toward the raft. Too weak to hold himself erect, he sagged to all fours and crawled madly.
The two buayas promptly started for him.
Evall, observing the charge of the crocodiles, screeched in mortal terror. It seemed a certainty that he would be taken.
Doc Savage, stooping swiftly, wrenched at two short sticks which were a part of the raft’s structure.
Monk and Renny opened fire with their machine pistols, but on the armored coating of the buayas the bullets had no appreciable effect.
“A high-powered rifle wouldn’t stop them in time!” Doc yelled, and got his two sticks loose. He sprang off the raft, sank ankle-deep in sand and mud, and ran.
Evall, in his mad terror of death, tried to grab Doc Savage, probably for the same reason that a drowning man will clutch at a bit of flotsam, be it as small as a straw. The bronze man evaded him.
One of the charging crocodiles led the other slightly. Their speed was terrific. Their jaws were distended, the afternoon sunlight aglint on rows of hideous teeth.
Doc Savage’s movements seemed to become somewhat unreal, so quickly were they executed. He held one stick upright, lunged, and shoved it into the jaws of a buaya. The reptile bit down, with the result that the stick was jammed upright between its jaws.
An instant later, the second crocodile also had a stick wedged in its hideous mouth.
The monsters sought to rid themselves of the sticks in traditional fashion. They spun over and over on the sand, for all of their huge size, their whirling almost too fast for the eye to follow.
Doc scooped Evall up and flung him onto the raft.
“Quick!” he rasped. “The sticks weren’t sharpened. The crocks will get rid of them in a minute. Push off!”
Lusty pole shoves propelled the raft out into the river, and the current caught them and swept them on around the bend. Looking back, they saw first one crocodile expel the wedging stick, then the other.