FIGHT IN THE SKY
Trouble was ahead. Doc and his men sensed its coming. It could not be more than an hour or two distant. There was nothing they could do but wait. They did that, grimly.
Two days had gone. A third was well under way. The dirigible had met favorable air currents for most of the route across the Atlantic. No storms. Engines had been run at an economical speed, yet progress had been excellent, due to tail winds.
It sailed the sky lanes like a modern ship, did this craft which had been lost to the ken of mankind for many years. The Aëromunde had been the queen of her day; she was still far from outdated.
They had entered Africa somewhere beyond the Canaries, flying fairly high to avoid attention. They were now far in the interior. For hours, desert had been swinging below. The heat and the glaring sun made the earth like a platter of molten copper.
The Aëromunde had lost much of her buoyancy—the flight had been a very long one. Much water ballast had been expended. Practically all of it was gone from the tail water sacks. But the ship was still tail-heavy.
Yuttal, Hadi-Mot and their crew of villains were becoming suspicious. Several times, men had ventured aft to search for the trouble. They seemed to think there was a leak in one of the aft gas ballonets.
Ham, who had been up scouting the ridge catwalk, clambered down to report. He still carried his sword cane.
“Several men are making another inspection,” he advised. “They are going over every ballonet thoroughly as they can. There is not a chance of them missing us.”
Renny knobbed his big hands into fists and inspected them. “Well, it was too good to last. And I can stand a fight. In fact, I’d be glad to see one.”
“Yeah,” Monk grunted. “About three days we’ve been in here. I never put in three longer ones, what I mean! I could do with some water, too!”
The last of their water had trickled down their throats some hours ago. They still had concentrated rations, although these were not what could be called delicious eating. They tasted like wood.
Long Tom juggled one of the marvelously compact little machine guns, then placed it aside, a thoughtful expression on his somewhat unhealthy-looking features.
“We dare not do any shooting in these catwalks and inspection tunnels!” he declared. “They’re loaded with leaking hydrogen gas. A spark would blow the works!”
Doc put in dryly, “Don’t get worried. I think we can hold them off. The narrowness of these catwalks will prevent them rushing us. And they won’t dare use firearms, any more than we will.”
Taking several of Monk’s gas bombs, Doc worked up to the ridge catwalk. He donned a mask—his five friends had started putting on theirs as he left.
One of the ring tunnels gaped ahead. Down the one to the right, he saw a man working. He unkeyed one of the grenades and tossed it near the fellow.
The man whirled at the mushy smack of the grenade—they opened mechanically, by a spring effect, and made no flame and little sound. A knife and a pistol decorated his belt. He ignored the gun, showing he realized the fatal consequence of a shot, and clawed his knife from its sheath. The blade was long and curved. He sprang for Doc.
As he came down after the first leap, the fellow’s legs became limber as strings. He sank, weaving from side to side, and tumbled backward a few yards down the steeply-curving ring tunnel, to become wedged in brace wires. It worked swiftly, that gas.
From forward on the ridge catwalk, an excited yell pealed.
“Wallah! Ta’ala hena! Come here! Quickly! The bronze devil has come back from the dead!”
* * * *
Doc flung a grenade at the shouting man. Almost instantly, the fellow caved down.
More swarthy figures leaped out of girder tunnels and catwalks as the trouble-shooting party answered the alarm cry. But the gas accounted for them in swift succession.
Monk popped into view—a milky light penetrated the doped cloth skin of the great gas bag lighting the catwalks faintly. He signaled deaf-mute talk with his hairy fingers.
“The jamboree has started!”
The other four men trailed Monk. They all wore gas masks.
Doc produced a flat case from his coat, opened it and distributed the contents. These were metal thimbles which fitted tightly on the finger tips. And each held a needle so sharp that it could penetrate a man’s skin without causing noticeable pain.
The needles were hollow; through them Doc’s remarkable brain-paralyzing drug was forced.
Doc’s men donned them, and their mere touch became capable of producing instant unconsciousness.
Ham bared his sword cane, flourished it and the fine steel twanged like a guitar string. Since the gas made use of firearms unfeasible, Ham’s sword was the best weapon in the group.
Doc placed an ear against a girder, gesturing the others to do the same. The vibration of the five motors was a throbbing moan. But over that came erratic thuds and patterings. Feet! Men climbing to the attack!
Two husky brown knifemen came mincing down the catwalk from the direction of the bows. They gripped singas with razor-sharp blades half as long as their arms. Both wore gas masks.
Fierce grins wreathed their toast-colored features as Doc advanced to meet them—bronze hands empty. They knew how to use those singas, did these two. Many a desert Arab and bush country trader had been spitted on the blades.
They were so confident that they elbowed each other on the narrow catwalk to be first to slide steel into the bronze man.
They never did find out exactly what happened next. One got Doc’s neck within easy reach; he stabbed viciously, aiming for the jugular. He missed, his arm passing over Doc’s shoulder.
Bars of steel seemed to trap the fellow’s arm and wrist. The arm disjointed. The singa flipped up and stuck in the dirigible skin. But the man did not suffer long—Doc wrenched off his mask.
The second knifeman never even struck the first blow. A flashing movement, and he found himself without his gas mask. Surprise caused him to inhale the vapor. He collapsed, falling atop his gassed companion.
Doc removed boots and belts from his victims. He tied the boots into a tight bundle with the belts.
The ring tunnels and a few vertical shafts extending from keel to ridge spewed attackers. They closed in slowly, watching each step, for the cramped ridge catwalk had never been intended as a battleground. Too, few of them had gas masks. They were wary.
Behind Doc, Ham’s sword cane suddenly engaged a knife, to the tune of a high-pitched clicking and rasping.
A scream! The knife wielder plunged in flight, wrist tendon slashed.
Some one threw a knife at Doc. He twisted aside, but instead of letting the blade go by, caught it in the bundle he had made of the shoes. He did not want the steel to pass him and perhaps find lodging in one of his five friends.
Another blade came like an arrow. He caught it in the same fashion.
“Wallah!” shrieked the swart men, and began squawling their personal opinions of Doc, his five aides, and their assorted ancestors. They used many expressive camel-driver words, expletives which would have made a Yankee mule skinner blush. But they were in no hurry to charge. There was no gas where they stood.
* * * *
In the background, far way along the dimly illuminated catwalk, Doc caught sight of fat Yuttal. The man evidently thought he was out of danger.
“Hugum!” he brayed angrily at his reluctant followers. “Charge! Charge!”
Two more razor-sharp singas came hissing along the cramped, girder-and-wire-walled corridor.
Doc caught them in his bundle of boots—so close together that the sound of steel biting leather was a blended thud.
“By the life of my father!” howled one who had flung his blade. “The man is in truth a ghost! No son of a woman could move so swiftly! He is a ruh! A spirit!”
“Hugum!” shrieked Yuttal. “Charge! Are you offspring of scared dogs, that you are afraid of a little magic?”
Doc had been waiting for the gas to reach the gang, but now he decided it was not going to penetrate that far. There was a fairly strong draft along the catwalk tunnel, due to the forward motion of the airship. This had evidently swept the vapor back.
His great right arm turned into a bronze blur as he flung one of the long-bladed singas.
The brown men saw it coming. They ducked as though pulled by a single string.
Yuttal suddenly found himself to be plainly exposed—which was what Doc had calculated upon. Yuttal was too fat to dodge quickly.
Chink! The steel glanced off Yuttal’s shoulder—Doc had intended to maim rather than kill—and passed completely through the envelope fabric. Yuttal wore, under his blouse, some sort of a jacket of chain mail.
Like an overgrown desert rat, Yuttal popped from view.
Behind Doc, Ham’s sword cane was singing and clicking again.
Monk emitted a great roaring and bellowing, the sounds he always made when in a fight! His fists smacked! Men howled and groaned! The taut metal of the catwalk jarred to the stamp of fighting feet.
The attack from the rear suddenly ceased. Doc’s men were victorious.
The gang in front of Doc got up nerve enough to charge.
He flung a gas grenade.
The men who did not have masks, promptly fled. Those with masks wavered.
Doc flung two knives. Both blades lodged in leg muscles.
That settled it for the time being. The cinnamon-skinned crew retreated, dragging the pair who had steel in their legs.
* * * *
They encountered Yuttal, perspiring and somewhat pale, in a vertical shaft. This shaft was a yard in width and extended perpendicularly from the ridge to the keel, terminating in a hatch which admitted to the control cabin.
“Wallah!” gritted Yuttal, addressing them in their native tongue. “You are rabbits!”
“La!” was the muttered reply. “No! By your father’s beard, we are wise men who know well when to retreat!”
Fuming, Yuttal descended to the control cabin. He traversed the ladder with an agility that was somewhat surprising, considering his figure was nearly as round as a ball.
His men followed. The only casualty of the fray then occurred. One fellow lost his balance and fell upon the gas ballonets. Unfortunately, he was holding his knife in one hand and it cut through the netting retaining the bag, as well as through the linen fabric and goldbeater skin of the ballonet. He fell in the bag and the hydrogen gas suffocated him before he could be hauled out.
Yuttal sent a volley of profanity, much of it English, up the shaft when he heard of the big leak in the ballonet. The fate of the man did not seem to bother him as much as the hole in the bag. They were already shy on buoyancy—thanks partly to the added weight of strapping Doc Savage and his five men.
Slender, handsome Hadi-Mot was in the control cabin, where he had been handling the big dirigible.
“I gather that you were unsuccessful,” he chided Yuttal.
Yuttal glowered, then scowled at Lady Nelia Sealing.
The pretty young woman, bright-cheeked and extremely attractive, sat at the chart table. The only incongruous note was the light chain which ran from her slender neck to an alloy girder.
She looked happy, and she was. Her delight was not because of her own lot, however, but came from the recently acquired knowledge that Doc Savage was far from being as dead as Yuttal and Hadi-Mot had claimed.
“You lied to me!” she told them, almost triumphantly. “You told me Savage had been killed by a bomb in his plane, but you knew all the time he was alive!”
Yuttal’s scowl became darker. “Nobody was more surprised than me to learn the guy was still kickin’!” he disclaimed.
The four aviators who had set the bomb trap for Doc in far-away New York State now put in a sheepish appearance. They took a bitter tongue flaying from Yuttal and Hadi-Mot.
“We thought we got him!” was all they could mutter in defense.
“Bass!” Hadi-Mot finally interrupted the wordy exchange. “That’s enough! While we talk, we get very near our destination. We must think of a way to dispose of this bronze man. Wallah! He has caused us much trouble!”
“And he will cause you more!” Lady Nelia cut in sharply. “He will smash this whole devilish business you are conducting! He will free those poor slaves!”
“You have great confidence in this Savage!” sneered Hadi-Mot, speaking fair English. “Yet you have never seen him.”
Lady Nelia nipped her upper lip with white teeth. It was true she had not yet seen Doc Savage. Her one encounter with the bronze man had been when she was blinded by a flashlight on the Yankee Beauty in New York harbor. Moreover, on that occasion, she had mistaken him for an enemy.
“I have heard enough of him to know what he can do!” she retorted. “He once did a great favor for an acquaintance of mine in England, and the man who was helped, told me, should I ever be in terrible trouble, to get hold of Savage. At the time, little did I think that the advice would ever come in handy!”
“But it did,” Hadi-Mot said absently.
“It did,” the young woman said pointedly. “And I have succeeded in getting him to work against you and your infernal plans. You’ve noticed he’s around, haven’t you?”
The last was nothing if not a nasty dig.
Hadi-Mot and Yuttal glared at her.
Suddenly a pleased leer overspread Yuttal’s oversize, hideous features. He scratched his tremendous nose, pulled at his huge, thick lip.
“I’ve got it!” he gloated. “We’ll use our little pet in the wicker basket. It ain’t so light in them catwalks but that the thing will go to work!”
The words caused Lady Nelia to become very pale. She sank back in the chair beside the chart table, the chain about her neck clanking on the table as she did so. She blinked in dull horror. Then, unexpectedly, she flung back her head. A piercing scream tore from her throat.
“Savage—watch out for——”
Yuttal’s puffy hand over her mouth choked off the cry. She struggled desperately, but the fat man held her and managed to insert an effective gag between her even white teeth. This eliminated her last chance of shrieking a warning, in hopes her voice would carry to Doc Savage and his friends in the distant stern of the gigantic gas bag.
* * * *
Orders were now issued and relayed to the farthest reaches of the dirigible. Obeying the commands, men came weaving along the delicate catwalks.
Most of them went to a long compartment in the keel, which was fitted with bunks and served them as quarters. Entering, they closed the doors, which were of light veneer wood. They took great pains to see that the panels were securely fastened.
Other men clambered into the motor gondolas and shut the hatches, securing them tightly.
It was as if they were barring themselves from some horror which was to be loosened on the air monster. Some deadly terror of which, knowing well what it was, they were in great fear!
Yuttal, Hadi-Mot, the four villainous American aviators and three other men remained in the control room. They drew their guns and inspected them thoroughly. This showed that, so frightsome was the thing about to be released, they were willing to risk firing shots which might ignite the inflammable hydrogen, if only they could defend themselves against it. They drew their knives.
Lady Nelia sat, white as paper, trembling from head to foot and fighting the gag. There was little possibility of her getting it out of her teeth, for Yuttal had also tied her hands behind her.
Yuttal now went to a storeroom. He returned with the bulky wicker basket.
He pressed the lid of the basket to the perpendicular inspection shaft which led straight upward to the ridge. Then he turned an uneasy face to Hadi-Mot.
“You get over here,” he said thickly. “The thing will come back to your call. You’re the only one who can control it!”
“Very well,” agreed Hadi-Mot.
Taking his position, he jammed the basket to the shaft mouth. A single jerk would free the lid, letting the thing in the wicker container go free to make its way up the shaft.
“Hurry up!” Yuttal mumbled. He was plainly scared of the caged horror.