THE METEOR THAT FAILED
Mo-Gwei gestured to his henchmen, urging them erect.
“Go,” he commanded. “Bind all of the prisoners most solidly, and bring them to the large central room—to my personal quarters.”
The men scuttled off, falling over each other in their haste to obey. Visions of death, which they had held a moment ago, had faded, had even turned to dreams of a rosy future, the chief attraction in which would be much wealth extracted from rich American cities. This would be done by threats of sending the blue meteor over, or by actually sending it, then entering and robbing the helpless towns.
Mo-Gwei himself marched to a portion of the vast structure which was more pretentiously furnished than the outer rooms. A man occupied this. He was not a Tibetan, but of some other Oriental strain, with a mingling of Caucasian blood.
“You will send the blue meteor up,” commanded Mo-Gwei. “Cover all of the surrounding country. That bronze devil, Doc Savage, is at large, and we must eliminate him.”
Mo-Gwei’s manner as he addressed this man was slightly more courteous.
The man departed hurriedly, making his way to the roof of the mountaintop stronghold. The roof was flat, and of no inconsiderable size. At one end was a small shed.
When the door of the shed was opened, a pale blue glare came out. It was very dark where moonlight did not penetrate, and the glare was not pronounced enough to permit a view of what the shed held.
Clanking sounds issued from the structure, noises which indicated wrenches were being used.
Soon the man scampered out of the shed. He carried a small portable radio transmitter, to which was fitted a complicated-looking device. He carried this down from the roof and through the outer door of the ancient building. He had left the shed doors open.
Then he turned dials and switches on his apparatus.
Up on the roof, a whistle started. It was low at first, but became louder after the fashion of a siren.
The man turned another dial. With a scream, something left the rooftop—an object of a pale blue color. This receded rapidly.
When it was almost a mile away, the expert operated still another dial.
A great blue blaze covered all the sky. The blue meteor was abroad!
Manipulating dials, the man sent the blue meteor scooting back and forth across the sky, skimming close to the mountaintops and even dipping into such valleys as were clearly defined in the moonlight.
It seemed like a living hunter, did that hideous blue thing of the skies, as it sought for Doc Savage.
* * * *
Mo-Gwei saw the blue meteor off. Then he betook himself to the innermost recess of his castlelike headquarters. At his order, half a dozen men trailed him.
The cavalcade turned into a room. Doubtless the men with Mo-Gwei had been present in the chamber before, but so great was the Oriental splendor of the place that they stopped to stare, a bit breathless.
Rich rugs overlay the crude stone floor. Costly tapestries covered every exposed inch of wall. The number and plumpness of the pillows scattered about made the place resemble a movie director’s idea of a harem interior.
The most striking feature, however, was a square opening in the floor. A low wall surrounded this.
Blue light came from the opening, a plume of it so brilliant as to cause the eyes to pain.
Arrayed near the shaft mouth, from which poured the azure glitter, were tightly bound figures.
Monk and Ham were close together, and Rae Stanley was next to them. Long Tom came next; then Johnny, more skeletonlike than usual in the unearthly blue glow of the meteor, and big-fisted Renny.
John Mark Shrops occupied a position of honor well to one side.
Expressionless faces and blank eyes showed that none of the captives knew what was going on.
Mo-Gwei strode over and peered into the shaft. The blue light on his purple devil mask made a revolting combination.
“I see many bodies,” he cackled. “Who are they? Not, I hope, any that I would have enjoyed disposing of?”
“Only the men who helped Shrops,” replied one of Mo-Gwei’s cohorts.
Mo-Gwei backed from the evil opening.
“These shall be awake to enjoy themselves,” he said, his parrotlike voice unusually raucous. He indicated the bound and mentally inactive prisoners. “Bring me the cure-cylinders, that I may make them normal.”
A man scampered out, and came back with an armload of the screw-capped metal tubes. Seizing one of these, Mo-Gwei held it close to the head of big-fisted Renny and backed the cap off.
There was a blinding blue flash; a plume of flame seemed to play about the top of the tube, then vanished.
The blankness slowly faded from Renny’s eyes. The expression on his long, puritanical face became sane. He stared at the hideous apparition in the mask of Bron, the yak demon. He noted particularly the long, upcurving, needle-pointed horns.
“Holy cow!” he muttered.
Mo-Gwei went rapidly to the other prisoners, opening a cylinder close to the head of each. All regained their senses.
He had just revived Shrops when an interruption came. A man dashed in.
“Dje li lai!” he cried. “Come here! Something is wrong!”
“Wrong with what, O stupid one?”
“The blue meteor behaves not as it should!”
“Watch these prisoners!” Mo-Gwei ordered, and ran out, yellow robes fluttering, using both hands to hold his purple mask on. The hands were purple-gloved.
* * * *
The man with the radio apparatus was perspiring and working over his dials and knobs.
“Look!” he said, and pointed at the distant sky.
The blue meteor was still emitting its piercing whistle and crawling back and forth in the sky. But, as Mo-Gwei watched, the meteor darted to one side.
“I did not do that,” muttered the man at the controls. “There must be something wrong with the radio control apparatus.”
“Let me see,” snarled Mo-Gwei. “I do not see how anything could go awry. I perfected this apparatus myself. It is foolproof.”
He swooped upon the boxes containing the wireless transmitter and the attendant devices necessary for remote control by radio.
The distant blue meteor whipped off its course again. This time it did not return to its route. It came directly toward the mountaintop stronghold.
“The control transmitter is perfect!” Mo-Gwei shrieked.
“Then what——”
“The bronze devil!” wailed Mo-Gwei. “He is using a transmitter of his own upon it. He has listened to our own sending signals, gotten their wavelength, and adjusted his apparatus accordingly.”
A wild scene now ensued. Repeatedly, Mo-Gwei sought to steer the blue meteor away from the mountain. Twice he almost succeeded, only to have the squealing sky terror head straight for him once more.
“The bronze man’s transmitter is the stronger!” he squawked.
With frenzied fingers, Mo-Gwei felt in his yellow robe for one of the metal cylinders. He found only one specimen in his possession.
Holding the canister in his hands, he watched the blue meteor come toward him.
Behind Mo-Gwei, moon-faced men dashed madly about. It seemed that few of them carried the cylinders which held the cure for the blue meteor’s spell. A mad scramble ensued as they sought to get them.
Only a few succeeded. For, with a deafening wail, the blue meteor screeched overhead.
As it went over, Mo-Gwei opened his canister, holding it close to his face. The pluming blue blaze and the glitter of the azure sky-traveler intermingled.
Mo-Gwei swayed, but managed to keep his feet.
Going on, the blue meteor hit the slope of an adjacent mountain. There was a great burst of blue fragments. Like sparks, they poured down the mountain slope. And like bits of blue-hot metal, they glowed even after they stopped rolling.
Mo-Gwei stared about anxiously.
He was not surprised at what he saw—a Herculean bronze man coming up the mountain side with great leaps.
“Dih-gün!” Mo-Gwei shrilled. “Our enemy!”
* * * *
Wheeling, Mo-Gwei dived into the huge old building. He called out loudly to his men.
“The roof! We can shoot the bronze man from the roof!”
He scrambled up ramshackle stone stairs, trailed by such of his followers as had managed to get possession of the metal cylinders before the blue meteor passed overhead.
From the rooftop, they opened fire.
Men firing downward are prone to overshoot, and Doc Savage heard the first bullets make rat-squeak sounds in the moonlight over his head.
Doc doubled aside, seeking the shelter of rocks. He had gotten closer to the building than he had expected before being fired upon. The walls of the castlelike structure were perhaps a hundred yards distant.
He dipped a hand inside his clothing and brought out a globular metal object two inches in diameter. He flipped this a few feet ahead.
A tremendous quantity of black smoke poured from the metal globe. The chill night wind swept it upward toward the hilltop fortress.
Doc had been careful to choose for his assault the side from which the wind blew.
The giant bronze man arose under cover of the black pall and glided forward. Bullets were searching for him, but few of them came close—especially after he swerved far to the right and approached the high stone walls from the side.
Doc’s garments were torn. In numerous places his bronze skin was broken. In fact, he was more battered than he had been for a long time. It had been no simple task to escape from the landslide which he had started.
Just why he had keeled over when opening the cure-cylinder, it had taken him some time to figure out. He had concluded it was because he had been inexperienced in use of the cure. The stuff, of course, was highly potent.
Doc wore a leather vest which had been in his luggage. This was fitted with innumerable pockets. From one of these, he drew a tiny gas bomb. He lobbed it atop the roof.
No mask was necessary with this type of gas. The stuff, although it produced sudden unconsciousness, became ineffective after mixing with the air for somewhat less than a minute. When using it, Doc had merely to hold his breath until the gas did its work and dissolved in the air.
From another of the vest pockets Doc drew a silken cord, to one end of which was affixed a grappling iron. He sprung the grapple open.
Reaching the walls, he flung the hook upward. It caught somewhere and held. He mounted the silken line as agilely as a spider climbs its web.
Only two rifles were firing from the roof, now. The other gunmen must have succumbed to the gas bomb.
Without hesitating, Doc swung over the roof edge. He came face to face with one of Mo-Gwei’s men.
The swarthy fellow whipped his rifle around, shrieking at the top of his voice as he did so, and pulled the trigger.
Doc toppled backward off the rooftop.
* * * *
“I have done it!” howled the rifleman. “My bullet brought death to the bronze one!”
The squat man jumped up and down several times to celebrate his feat, then scuttled forward to see if he could discern the crumpled body of the bronze man through the smoke and night murk. He got down on all fours and peered over the roof edge.
His eyes all but fell out. His mouth popped wide open to let out a yell of horror. The howl ended, as if his head had been lopped off below the vocal cords, when mighty bronze hands clamped his neck.
Retaining his clutch on the man, Doc Savage regained the roof. He had been clinging to the silk cord, after being forced to dive off the roof to evade the rifleman’s bullet. It had been a narrow escape.
Doc belted his prize alongside the temple with the edge of a hand. The fellow gave one tremendous kick, then became limp. Doc dropped him.
From across the roof a gun coughed lead.
Doc, twisting down, weaving to one side, then the other, drew his flashlight. He scooted the beam across the roof. The luminance picked up Mo-Gwei’s purple Bron mask and yellow robe.
Mo-Gwei had fired with an automatic, but he had a stubby submachine gun under the crook of an arm. Changing to this, he hosed bullets across the roof.
Long before the fellow made the shift from automatic to submachine gun, however, Doc had doused his light and drifted to the left.
A square building reared there. He wrenched the doors open, thinking perhaps that a stairway led downward from the interior.
A weak blue glow met him. He squirted his flashlight beam inside.
Revealed was the secret of the blue meteor.
The thing was a tiny monoplane, too small to carry a man. To this was fitted a large, tubular device. The contraption, secured beneath the fuselage, was fitted with hinges. No doubt it opened wide, actuated by mechanism within, when in the air.
Opening, the cover exposed the substance which composed the blue meteor itself. A faint glow even penetrated the container itself.
Doc took time to glance closely at the metal which composed this cylinder. He decided it was principally of lead, a metal most resistant to strange ray phenomena.
The engine exhaust, after leading into a tank which smoothed out the pressure, was discharged through a simple whistle. That, then, accounted for the weird sound.
The plane was obviously radio-controlled. That in itself was not remarkable, radio control devices having been in use for nearly twenty years.
There were other things of interest: for instance, a parachute which could be opened by a radio impulse, lowering the craft safely where there was no landing field.
Doc, however, did not have time to make a lengthy examination.
Mo-Gwei began peppering the little hangar structure with his machine gun.
Doc studied the guttering powder flame, getting Mo-Gwei’s location. Then he drew a small metal container from his capacious leather vest and flung it.
The thing burst softly near Mo-Gwei’s feet.