BLUE MADNESS
Several Tibetans gave John Mark Shrops and Saturday Loo their tribal form of greeting as the pair went below decks—they stuck out their tongues as far as these organs of taste would go.
Saturday Loo and Shrops found big-fisted Renny in a stateroom. The chamber was an inside room, without portholes, and supplied with air piped from the big ventilators protruding from the decks.
A man could yell his loudest in the cabin, and never be heard out on the harbor. Renny knew this. He had tried it.
It calls for terrific effort to break the links of a handcuff chain which is fastened upon the wrists of the one making the fracturing attempt.
Renny knew this, also. He had attempted it—and succeeded. The steel circlets had scraped skin off his wrists. Deep grooves had been cut in the pads of corded sinew. Indeed, the cuts were almost bone deep.
Crimson was creeping from these cuts. Renny was lying on his enormous hands to hide the scarlet drippage, and to conceal the fact that he had accomplished the almost incredible feat of breaking the shackles.
Shrops eyed Renny. The engineer’s size was ordinarily dwarfed by the proportions of his great fists, but now he was reposing upon the hands. In the white electric light of the cabin, Renny looked gigantic.
“’E’s sure a whoppin’ big bloke!” Shrops muttered.
“Yet he has but the stature of a youth when beside the bronze man whom he calls ‘leader,’” murmured Saturday Loo.
Shrop drank in Renny’s bulk with his eyes for a time, then wiped an ooze of sweat off his forehead.
“’Ow’d you get ’im?” he asked Saturday Loo.
Renny took it on himself to answer this.
“Your brown hyenas had some blind luck!” he growled, and his voice was like the thump and rumble of a distant earthquake.
Saturday Loo smirked. “It is as the big-fisted one says. Honorable ancestors poured much luck upon the shoulders of one of my men. He came upon this man of the fists in the twilight, as the big-fisted one prowled our decks. My man had an iron bar. He swung it well. The big-fisted one awakened in this cabin, securely handcuffed.”
Perhaps Saturday Loo intended to roll Renny over to show the handcuffs. Possibly he intended to give Renny a kick in the ribs by way of celebration. At any rate, he stepped forward.
Renny heaved up from the floor with blinding speed. One huge fist hurled out and met Saturday Loo’s head. Fist and head seemed almost of an equal size.
Saturday Loo was knocked backward the entire width of the cabin. The shock of hitting the wall expelled breath from his lungs, causing him to spout teeth, bits of pulped tongue and lips, and a spray of scarlet. He fell forward upon the floor.
In the future, Saturday Loo’s ancestors would have to look closely and long to recognize him.
“Blimme!” squawked Shrops, and fled.
He chanced to be near the door, so he got out before Renny’s great mauls of fists could reach him. Shrops did not even attempt to draw a gun.
Several armed Tibetans were in the passage outside. The wily Saturday Loo had ordered their presence, just in case there should be an emergency.
“’Elp!” Shrops bellowed, and sought refuge among his henchmen.
Renny charged. His monster hands popped two men over as if they had been dummies. He grasped an arm which was drawing a gun, twisted, and the bone crunched.
The corridor chocked with a great wad of fighting humanity. Expletives arose from the fighting cluster, profanity couched in p’al-skad, or low Tibetan.
It was Saturday Loo who brought the fray to a conclusion. He weaved out of the cabin, half-blinded with pain. His pawing hands encountered a cabinet holding a fire ax, for emergency use in breaking down stateroom doors should the Chilean Señorita sink.
Seizing the big ax, Saturday Loo sprang forward. He lifted the ax high and brought it down.
With a hideous bubbling sound, Renny collapsed.
Shrops and the Tibetans—such of them as were conscious—picked themselves up from the floor and felt for injuries. For a few seconds, the passage crackled with p’al-skad profanity. Then they looked at the prone form of Renny, and began to feel better.
“Dead!” chortled one man.
“Blessed be an ax!” said another.
They gathered around, exchanging condolences and reviving those who had been knocked senseless in the fight. No one was seriously damaged, the man whose arm Renny had broken being the greatest sufferer.
Shrops, standing aside and wrinkling his apple face in thought, seemed to become rather unhappy.
“Bad!” he muttered. “The worst that could ’ave ’appened!”
“No, O Master,” Saturday Loo said through almost ruined lips. “The big-fisted one could have escaped.”
“That wouldn’t ’ave been as bad,” Shrops said gloomily.
“This lowly one’s brain must be in a fog, O Master, for I do not see how it could have been a lesser evil.”
“You don’t know Doc Savage’s reputation, you ’arf-crocked scut!” snarled Shrops, suddenly becoming enraged at Saturday Loo for wielding the ax. “Why didn’t you use your ’ead? Doc Savage will bust the bloody world wide open to punish us for killin’ ’is man, Renny. ’E’s the kind of a bloke that can get us, too!”
Saturday Loo squirmed uneasily. Well did he remember his own disastrous experience with Doc Savage, when the bronze man had rescued Rae Stanley at the hospital dedication ceremony.
A buttery-looking perspiration appeared on Saturday Loo’s Asiatic countenance. He mopped at his scarlet-running mouth and nose.
“Ní kàn!” he howled suddenly. “Look!”
Shrops stared at Renny.
“Glory be!” he chortled. “The big-fisted bloke ain’t dead!”
Saturday Loo folded his arms piously. “Some kind ancestor, watching over me, must have turned the ax so that it struck flatwise.”
They pounced upon Renny and tied him securely, using inch-thick hawser which they carried down from the deck, and literally swathing him in the manila cable. Then they felt to see if his skull was fractured. It was not.
“Go get the bloomin’ launch ready!” Shrops ordered.
Tibetans stumbled out to comply with this command. Like most Asiatics, they showed a marked lack of mechanical ability as they lowered the launch. The task took them some moments.
The launch was long and slender, ornamented with brasswork, and equipped with a powerful engine. Forward was a small covered cabin, the sides of which were fitted with long, lidded boxes which served as seats and storage receptacles.
The lowering was accomplished with the aid of flashlights, for it was now quite dark.
The Tibetans returned below decks. Saturday Loo was guarding Renny, but Shrops was not in sight.
“Where is the Master?”
“He has gone to the radio cabin,” Saturday Loo replied.
* * * *
Whatever Shrops was doing in the radio cabin, the undertaking occupied him some ten minutes. He rejoined his men in a great hurry.
“’Urry up, lads!” he barked. “Grab this big-fisted bloke an’ clap ’im in the launch!”
The Tibetans hastily complied with the order. Four of them, grunting and stumbling, carried Renny out on deck.
“Tie ’im on top!” Shrops directed.
This was accomplished by the simple process of lashing Renny to the riding lights atop the cabin. While not extraordinarily solid, the bindings would nevertheless keep Renny from rolling off.
“Shut the gas off at the bloomin’ fuel tank!” Shrops ordered. “An’ hurry, you thumb-fingered scuts!”
“The launch will run but little more than half a mile upon the gas which is in the fuel lines and the carburetor, O Master,” reminded Saturday Loo.
“Don’t Hi know it?” Shrops growled. “’Ump it, you poor blokes. Get a move on!”
The launch engine was started. The valve at the fuel tank was closed.
A Tibetan headed the craft toward the open sea, threw the throttle wide, then sprang overboard. The launch streaked ahead, bows lifted, propeller throwing foam.
The lights of the craft had been turned on. The little cabin, however, was dark.
Inside the gloomy cabin, the lid of the long box, which formed a seat, lifted swiftly.
Doc Savage arose from the recess.
Renny, lashed to the roof, was conscious. He sat up feebly as Doc’s corded fingers plucked the ropes from his arms and legs.
“Holy cow!” he rumbled thickly. “I woke up tied onto this thing. How’d you get here?”
“Followed Shrops,” Doc replied, stripping off the remainder of the ropes. “Swam out to the ship, and as a consequence, did not get below in time to help you out on your fight. You were down, and they were bewailing your death. It was a simple matter to hang around, keep out of sight, and stow away in the launch.”
Doc whipped inside the instant he had Renny free. He clicked off the lights, then stopped the engine.
From the not-so-distant Chilean Señorita, a volley of p’al-skad profanity came.
“They sound mad,” Renny muttered.
“And with reason,” Doc replied. “They obviously sent the launch away from the ship so that it would be in the path of their infernal blue meteor.”
“Were they gonna expose me to that thing?” Renny gulped.
“They were,” Doc told him. “Shrops summoned the thing in some manner, probably by radio.”
Doc turned the launch engine over, got it running, opened the valve at the fuel tank, which the Tibetans had closed, and sent the craft knifing toward shore.
They covered less than a hundred feet before Renny emitted a thumping cry.
“Holy cow!” he gulped. “The blue meteor!”
* * * *
It came up awfully out of the east. It might have been a thing spawned by the Andean mountain fastnesses. Only the faintest of ultramarine flushes marked its first appearance. But the balefire brightened with appalling swiftness, and there became audible the tiniest of whistling noises, which might have been the note of some distant, harpy piper. The sibilant note loudened.
Doc snapped switches. A searchlight sprang out on the launch snout. This waved as Doc jockeyed the rudder and picked up the breakwater, then the shore.
The water front ahead was a particularly bleak stretch. There were no large warehouses, and only a few shacks.
Doc suddenly swerved the launch toward the Chilean Señorita.
“We can get to shore before that blue thing arrives!” Renny yelled.
“But there’s nowhere to conceal ourselves!” Doc told him.
“It’s dark! They couldn’t find——”
Renny left the rest unsaid and clutched for the gunwale, as the launch heeled far over in making a quarter turn. It was now driving in under the Chilean Señorita’s bows.
Rifle muzzles lipped flame at them from the steamer decks. The slugs scooped splinters off the launch, or made whupping noises in the water. They were not wanted in the vicinity.
Then the shooting slackened off. Men began to yell p’al-skad words, first with a vague uneasiness, then with a growing terror. Shriller and shriller became the shouts, until they were a maddened bedlam.
Around the Chilean Señorita, around the launch, the blackness of night took on a corpse-blue tinge. This turned slowly to azure.
Renny looked at Doc.
“Holy cow!” he gulped, and his pet expression was a double thump of horror.
Renny’s enormous hands drifted up and made lids over his ears. The screaming whistle was beginning to cut. There was something about it that made men want to open their mouths and shriek.
Up on the Chilean Señorita’s deck, men were doing just that. They parted jaws to their utter widest and drove shriek after shriek that ripped at vocal cords and threatened to tear the very lining from throat passages.
They knew the full horror of what was coming, did these men. They could not have vented louder or more awful shrieks had fiendish animals been consuming them by slow mouthfuls.
Doc and Renny exchanged glances, for they could now see each other clearly in the unearthly blue glitter.
“You figured the blue meteor would not come close to the steamer,” Renny questioned.
“That was reasonable to believe,” Doc told him. “They sent you away in the launch to make it unnecessary for the thing to come near while it was affecting you.”
The cobalt horror of the skies seemed to be headed directly for the Chilean Señorita!
* * * *
Overhead, against the rail of the boat, a man appeared. The fellow was a Tibetan, and he backed against the rail, facing the whistling blue meteor. The fellow’s arms were rigid, trembling, and he crossed them in front of his eyes as if to fend off some monster.
His jaws were distended wide, contorted; no doubt he was screaming, but no words came down to Doc and Renny in the launch.
Renny stared. There had come into his eyes a weird, awful glitter, a glassy hardness. He made vague gestures with his huge hands, and showed his teeth in a snarling grimace which was sinister and animal-like.
He opened his mouth. His words—Doc leaned close to catch them over the meteor crescendo—were without articulation. They were an unintelligible babbling.
The blue meteor’s spell was gripping him!
Doc Savage leaped for the cabin. There was an uncertainty about his movements which contrasted greatly with his usual smooth agility. Once, he all but fell. His corded, supple hands seemed all thumbs as he picked up the rope which had secured Renny.
Coming back with a weaving unsureness, Doc looped the stout hemp over Renny’s angular shoulders, and jerked it snug.
Renny did a strange thing. He struck himself foolishly where the rope touched. He bent over, teeth bared, as if to bite himself. Utterly appalling was the thing which had happened to the splendid physical specimen and great engineer.
His brain seemed no longer to function.
Doc Savage kept at his tying. Time after time, he encircled Renny with rope, for he had knowledge of the terrific strength which came with the suspension of mental power. Monk and Ham had been unnaturally powerful.
When Renny was bound, Doc Savage looped the rope about himself. He began at his ankles and worked up; then, using his hands, he managed to tie his arms down.
Perspiration shimmered in the unholy blue luminance. It soaked through his clothing. He kept his eyes closed tightly, as if to cover the gruesome effects of the blue meteor which were mirrored there.
He finished the last knot and drew the rope end tight. He was tied now as securely as he could manage, for he had used all of the rope. It might restrain his mighty muscles after the blue meteor accomplished its gruesome work, or it might not. There was no way of forecasting what would happen.
With no possible escape from this unholy blue thing of the skies at hand, Doc had used his last vestige of mental firmness to tie Renny and himself, that they might be helpless to do harm to themselves when fully afflicted.
The meteor scream by now had grown so frightfully loud that ears registered no sound, only pain.
Renny fell over. He had succumbed; his brain had suspended its functioning.
The blue light was hurting Doc’s eyes. The frightful irradiation seemed, in its power, to penetrate through solids, to pierce the very hull of the Chilean Señorita as if it were not there, or as if it were transparent glass.
Doc Savage closed his bronze eyes more tightly than ever. His lips seemed to weld, so firmly did he press them together, and there was hardly a visible line to show where they met.
The bronze man bowed his head.
As though a monster bullwhip had been popped overhead, the blue meteor passed. The wind of its going caused a violent flapping of the limp flag on the Chilean Señorita’s stern.
The bronze man toppled slowly over. His gigantic muscles were drawn so rigidly that the sound as he crashed upon the launch floorboards was that of a great metal statue falling.
* * * *
The blue meteor, after it had passed, swept a whistling semicircle in the sky. Few living beings looked at it, and remembered the act in the hours immediately following. It was a path of awful ruin that the blue meteor left behind as it streaked over Antofagasta.
Physical injury—torn bodies, broken legs, rent flesh—men knew how to combat. But the spell of the blue meteor, being new, and affecting only the minds of its victims, mystified those who sought to help the afflicted.
The blue meteor swooped low over the Taberna Frio, then shrieked a glittering way on toward its western lair.
It was certain that the men in the Taberna Frio had fallen a victim to its inhuman power.