BLUE TERROR
A yurt, strikingly like an inverted gray bowl a dozen feet in diameter, had been erected in the lee of a cluster of house-sized boulders. The chill wind whooped and moaned. It seized the mumdah covering of the yurt and clapped it against the wooden skeleton. It made the fire of teyzak burn more briskly, more bluely than it should have.
The Cockney, John Mark Shrops, crouched over the fire. He was not there for comfort exclusively. He was warming belts of machine gun ammunition. In this intense cold, the fulminate in the detonators sometimes froze, causing a cartridge to misfire. Three machine guns lay where the heat would blow upon them, in order that the grease in the mechanism would not become too stiff.
Shrops looked up and scowled when Monk was shoved into the yurt.
“Blister me!” he exclaimed sourly. “So you’ve joined my ’appy family.”
“T’blazes with you!” Monk growled.
Soberly, Shrops listened to his two henchmen tell, not without much bragging, how they had captured Monk. The pair made their feat sound like a tremendous accomplishment.
“Hum-p-h!” snorted Shrops when they had finished.
“But are you not pleased, O Master?” one of the two asked anxiously.
“Get outa ’ere!” Shrops snarled, then translated the command into profane p’al-skad.
The brown men retreated out into the cold, minus the praise they had expected for their work in apprehending Monk.
“You don’t seem happy to see me,” Monk said dryly.
“Shut up!” gritted Shrops, and whipped a gun out of his clothing.
For a moment, Monk had visions of receiving a bullet. But Shrops reconsidered, and restored his weapon to its hidden holster.
A rather brittle silence followed. Occasionally the wind popped the mumdah against the yurt frame. The fire smoked and smelled up the habitation.
A Tibetan squirmed into the yurt.
“The scout which you sent to examine the Village of the Mad Ones has returned,” he reported.
“Send ’im in, you barmy goat!” rapped Shrops.
In his ill temper, the Cockney spoke English. The Tibetan only looked puzzled, not comprehending the words.
“Usher him to my presence, O one without sense,” Shrops said, lapsing into the language of the country.
A scrawny, yellowish fellow entered. Considering the chill of these heights, he wore astoundingly few clothes. He was breathing loudly and heavily from a long run.
“The Village of the Mad Ones is deserted,” he reported. “But there are signs which show Mo-Gwei’s men were there only to-day. Cooking stones were still warm when I felt of them.”
“Gone to ’is other ’angout!” snapped Shrops.
The messenger took his departure, after looking longingly at the teyzak fire.
“What is this Village of the Mad Ones?” asked Monk, who had listened curiously.
“It’s a town where everybody went barmy,” Shrops growled.
“They went mad because the blue meteor had buried itself somewhere near?” Monk persisted.
“What d’you think, you ’airy ape?” Shrops grunted. “Now, keep still! Hi’ve got me worries, Hi ’ave.”
“You’re afraid Saturday Loo has gone over to Mo-Gwei, huh?” Monk asked.
The resounding Limehouse profanity which this elicited from Shrops told the homely chemist that his guess had been correct. The Cockney was fearful that his partner had double-crossed him.
* * * *
Time dragged. Twice, Shrops went to the yurt door and bellowed a question.
“’As any word come from the other scout—the one Hi sent to Mo-Gwei’s second ’angout?”
In each case the answer was a negative, and the Cockney scowled, muttered, and stamped about the yurt.
Monk watched the fellow. Several times he saw Shrops feel of a certain pocket. Once, the Cockney drew from the pocket what seemed to be a metal cylinder with a screw-on cap. Whatever the material in that cylinder, it was evidently important.
Monk fell to wondering when Doc would go into action. The bronze man, he believed, was lurking somewhere near. Possibly Doc was biding his time, in order to gather more information before closing with Shrops.
The Cockney, it appeared, had scouts out seeking to locate Mo-Gwei.
Monk’s thoughts were interrupted. A shout mingled with the whooping wind.
A Tibetan dived into the yurt, breathless, perspiration steaming on his tobacco-colored features.
“Saturday Loo has turned traitor!” he howled.
Shrops had shown a command of profanity before, but it was nothing to the repertoire which he exhibited now. The air crackled, jarred and sang. Finally, he calmed down.
“The yellow scut!” he gritted. “Hi should ’ave known ’e’d fail in a pinch.”
The messenger shifted feet uneasily and panted.
“There was something strange about what I saw, O Master,” he said.
“Whatcha mean?” Shrops growled.
“Saturday Loo did not go in fear and trembling,” reported the scout.
At this speech, a blank look overspread Shrops’s applelike features. He sank down on a rolled sleeping mumdah, and his jaw sagged. Steam poured out of his open mouth for a time, then he swallowed.
“Blimme!” he gulped. “’T’was Saturday Loo who first came to me an’ invited me t’ join Mo-Gwei.”
“It was the same in my case, O Master,” said the scout, who evidently understood English. “It was Saturday Loo who recruited much of Mo-Gwei’s force of men.”
Shrops’s eyes roved and finally came to rest upon Monk. In his perturbation, the Cockney seemed to forget that Monk was a prisoner.
“D’you know what it looks like?” he asked hoarsely.
“No,” said Monk. “What?”
“It looks like Saturday Loo is Mo-Gwei,” Shrops mumbled.
* * * *
After this statement, the Cockney took several stamping turns around the yurt, expressing an opinion of Saturday Loo and all of his ancestors back to the legendary monkey, abode of the chen-re-si or Compassionate Spirit, which mated with a she-devil to produce the first Tibetan, according to the local belief.
“Saturday Loo is Mo-Gwei!” he yelled angrily. “What a blind ’arfwit Hi’ve been! The clever devil fell in wit’ my suggestion to steal part o’ the blue meteor an’ some o’ the cure——”
Shrops paused to feel of the pocket which Monk had noted him exploring earlier.
“We are in danger here, O Master,” reminded the scout. “The location of our camp is now known to our enemies.”
“Righto,” Shrops agreed. “An’ we’ll blame well move. Tell the bloody men t’ break camp.”
The scout went out. Then, as if he had been struck a great blow, he came flying back inside.
“The blue meteor!” he bellowed.
Monk shed his lethargy. Heedless of the fact that he was a prisoner and that any sudden move might draw a bullet, he plunged outside. His gaze roved, then fixed on the northern sky.
What he saw might have been a blue sunrise, had it been in the east. It was faint now, the most lucent of zaffer flushes, but the color was becoming more pronounced. Soon the boulders began to cast pronounced shadows in the unearthly luminance.
Monk’s ears picked up a faint squeal, a whistling note such as had characterized the blue transient in South America.
Shrops had not come out of the yurt. Wondering about that, Monk wheeled and peered inside.
The Cockney was on all fours above a cluster of boxes over which a mumdah had been reposing. The boxes had black insulating panels, dials, knobs, and switches.
With a frenzied haste, Shrops manipulated the controls on the mechanism.
Leaping to his feet, the Cockney dived out of the felt tent of a shelter. He glanced to the north, from whence the blue glow was approaching. Then he peered fixedly into the west. It was apparent that he expected something to come out of the west.
Nothing appeared.
“Blimme!” he wailed. “Blimme!”
His apple of a face blanched. He kneaded his hands together in an agony of suspense.
Still nothing came out of the west.
The blue in the northern sky changed from a haze to a glare, and this became a glitter which ached the eyes.
“Blimme!” croaked Shrops. “Saturday Loo ’as taken my part o’ the blue meteor. It should be comin’, but it ain’t!”
Brown men were yelling in excitement, and shielding their eyes against the screaming blue terror in the north.
They ran toward Shrops. “The cure, master!” they cried.
Shrops slapped his left hand against the pocket which he had touched so often.
“Hi ain’t got enough t’ go around!” he barked. “The main supply o’ the stuff was wit’ our part o’ the blue meteor. An’ Saturday Loo must’ve made off wit’ that!”
“Divide what you have!” barked a swarthy man.
Shrops dived a hand into his clothing and brought out a revolver.
“Back, you bloomin’ dogs!” he grated. “Hi’ve only got enough t’ fix one man up!”
The Tibetans milled in front of him. Some were belligerent, casting longing eyes at their weapons. Two or three fell on their knees and stuck their tongues out in attitudes of meek supplication.
Monk, taking advantage of the tension, sidled toward Shrops.
Shrops saw him.
“Blarst you!” the Cockney yelled. He jutted his gun at Monk and pulled the trigger.
The bullet, however, climbed off in the direction of the oncoming blue meteor, its sound a feeble squeak in the face of the overpowering scream which the blue mystery was making.
A rock, small and jagged, had collided with Shrops’s wrist, and knocked the gun aside. Agony made Shrops drop his weapon. He looked in the direction from which the flung stone had come.
A giant of bronze was approaching, seeming to move with the terrific speed of light.
Shrops whirled, yelling in fear, and ran.
Monk had ducked at the prospect of receiving a bullet, although the act would never have saved him, had Doc not thrown the rock. Down on all fours, he tried to rear up and pursue the Cockney. But small, rounded stones under him rolled and delayed him.
Doc whipped past.
Terror had lent speed and cunning to Shrops’s flight. Several yaks were near by. Shrops sprang upon one of these.
The yak is ordinarily not a speedy animal, but this one was scared. It bounded away from the vicinity with an agility which no horse could have equaled on such precarious, rocky footing.
Doc pitched in pursuit. Monk also followed, but was soon left far behind.
The blue glare in the north became more painful to the eye, and its shriek racked the ears.
For some seventy yards, Doc barely held his own with Shrops and the cowlike steed, for the going was especially treacherous. Then he gained rapidly. Without slackening his pace, he scooped up a rock and flung it.
There was no sound as it hit Shrops—the thump was as nothing compared to the banshee squawl of the blue meteor. Shrops, his breath jarred out, toppled off the yak.
An instant later Doc was upon him. A short mauling stroke of a bronze fist reduced the Cockney to senselessness. Doc dipped a hand into Shrops’s pocket.
He brought out the metal cylinder with a screw-on top.
* * * *
Straightening, Doc sprinted back toward Monk. Possibly he intended to administer some of the antidote for the blue meteor’s evil spell to Monk.
Perhaps, also, he hoped to be of some assistance to his other four aides and Rae Stanley. The latter, following Doc’s radio directions, had kept close to Monk’s captors, and were now lurking near the yurt.
Doc could see Rae Stanley in the shelter of a boulder where, until the azure glitter had come out of the north, there had been darkness. The young woman had both hands pressed over her eyes to shut out the awful light.
The bronze man stumbled, almost fell. Recovering his balance, he went on more sluggishly. His metallic features bore frozen determination.
Again, he tripped. His usual agility seemed to have vanished. The weird power of the blue meteor was descending upon his brain.
It came to Doc with certainty that he could not reach his friends in time. Long before he could even gain Monk’s side, he would be down, overcome by the power of the meteor. And even should he accomplish the impossible and join them, there was, by Shrops’s attestation, only enough of the antidote in the metal cylinder to save one man.
However, not until he went down a third time and could not arise, and unintelligible rumbling sounds came from his great lungs when he tried to make words, did he open the metal tube. He had waited nearly overlong. His fingers, possessed of a strange aimlessness, could hardly remove the cap.
The instant the cap was free of the cylinder, a fantastic blue aurora appeared at the mouth, a glow brighter even than the hell-blue in the northern heavens. The flare leaped upward like flame, played there a moment, then vanished.
Doc Savage seemed to lose all vestige of his remaining might and vitality. He sank as if stricken between the eyes with a sledge swung by a brawny arm.
He was on a steep slope at the moment—the region where the pursuit of Shrops and the yak had been so difficult. He collapsed, and there was no level spot to prevent his huge frame from rolling.
Over and over, he tumbled downward. Boulders were loosened, and bounced against other boulders, and all the rocks joined in a dancing procession down the declivity. Dust climbed up from the turmoil, and snow mingled with it in a gray swirl as drifts were disturbed. The giant bronze body of Doc Savage was lost to sight.
There grew a great landslide which traveled for thousands of yards down the mountainside before it piled stone, shale, clay, sand and snow in the valley to a depth, in spots, of a hundred feet.
But long before the avalanche ceased moving, the blue meteor betook itself overhead with a whiplike snap and was gone into the night sky.