SLAVES OF TERROR
Doc Savage, in spite of their deadly peril—they were only six men against scores of heavily armed opponents—went through a formal routine of introductions.
The fact that they took the situation so calmly obviously strengthened Lady Nelia’s already fine courage. She acknowledged the presentations, saying to Renny: “It is unfortunate we did not know we were allies when I rode from the New York water front to the Hotel Rex in the taxi you were driving.”
Renny’s usually solemn face wreathed in the widest of grins. He liked this young woman. She possessed a nerve that was surprising for one of the feminine sex.
“We’ll have to postpone Lady Nelia’s story a bit,” Doc said.
He clambered out on top of the dirigible to reconnoiter. The airship was barely moving. Landing was a ticklish business, for care had to be taken that the gigantic craft did not rub against the rocky cliffs and tear her sides out.
Somebody took a shot at Doc with a rifle.
Yuttal or Hadi-Mot—both were certainly conscious by now—must have dropped a note, divulging the situation to those below.
The bullet missed Doc by a few feet, tearing a small hole in the Aëromunde. It had been fired from a spot near the stockade which held the chained slaves.
The big bronze man dropped back inside the hull before a second slug could be discharged. He had seen enough.
“Here is our plan of action!” he declared, calling his aides together.
He spoke rapidly, each clipped sentence conveying an abundance of meaning. When he finished, no questions were asked, so clearly had he outlined their immediate work.
Long Tom leaped to his bundle of electrical apparatus, opened it and began to assemble the device which Doc had requested.
The other four spread out along the ridge catwalk, taking up widely separated posts. In their hands, they held stout pocketknives.
“You had better stick close to me,” Doc told Lady Nelia.
The young woman nodded quietly, not taking her eyes off Doc. She had, as a matter of fact, been watching Doc almost steadily, averting her gaze only when she thought the bronze giant might notice.
She seemed fascinated by Doc’s strapping physique, his quietly gentle manner in the face of danger, and—not by any means the least point—his undeniably good looks.
Men seldom noted that Doc’s features were extremely handsome, being drawn more by his nearly superhuman muscular build and his mental attainments. But women noticed—and could not help but be fascinated.
Long Tom straightened from his task. “I’ve got it!”
He had assembled a powerful induction coil. The input terminals of this he had connected to the electric light circuit which extended to a searchlight mounted in one of the machine-gun emplacements. One of the output wires, he grounded to the metal frame of the dirigible.
To the other output terminal, Long Tom connected a long, heavily-insulated wire, to the free end of which was a metal weight—he had dismounted one of the machine guns and was using a part of it for the weight.
* * * *
The men waited. Of the six, Doc and Johnny understood the language of their enemies. Renny had once handled an engineering job on the Nile, and possessed a smattering of the tongue.
They were alert for a certain command from below. The dirigible was now very near the ground—the landing lines should soon be seized by the handling crew.
At last, the shouted words came:
“Shidd! Shidd! Ishtaghal ya walad!”
“Pull! Pull! Work, oh boy!”
The wire cable landing lines had been grasped. The groundsmen were being ordered to haul the air monster down.
“All right!” Doc told Long Tom.
The electrical wizard dropped the weighted end of his wire to the earth. Current from his induction coil would now make a circuit through the wire, the earth, the dirigible frame, the metal landing lines and the bodies of the men handling the lines.
The airship frame was bonded, a protection against static and lightning, so there was no great chance of a spark igniting the hydrogen. Long Tom had calculated the strength of his current, too, so as to lessen the chances of a spark which might prove disastrous.
He threw a switch. A whine came from the induction coil interruptor. Invisible current spurted into the circuit—not a killing current, but one which would deliver a robust shock.
A salvo of yells arose from the men holding the landing lines! Taken by surprise, they wrenched their convulsing hands from the metal cables.
The Aëromunde, free of restraint, was swept slowly and ponderously down the chasm.
Long Tom shut off his coil.
The shouts had been the signal for Doc’s other helpers. They went to work with their knives on the gas ballonets. Slashing madly, they opened great rips in the linen and goldbeater-skin cells. They wore gas masks, that the escaping hydrogen might not suffocate them.
The dirigible began to sink, her buoyancy dissipating through the rents. In the control cabin, ballast levers were wrenched furiously. But there was not enough ballast aboard to lighten the airship sufficiently.
Down—the ship settled. She touched the sandy floor with a loud scraping noise. She keeled!
Doc’s bronze arm kept Lady Nelia from being flung into a tangle of girders and brace wires.
She rewarded him with a ravishing smile for the service.
The Aëromunde finally scraped to a stop and lay as if mortally wounded. The airship was not greatly damaged—the rips in the gas ballonets could be quickly repaired. And no doubt there was a large supply of hydrogen on hand in this weird, lost oasis.
Doc Savage’s silken line, with the grapple on the end, came into use. Rapidly, his friends slid down it, over the bulging flanks of the dirigible, to the ground. They carried the packs which held their equipment.
Doc was last to go down. Doubting that Lady Nelia could navigate the line without injury to her slender hands, Doc had her cling across his shoulder.
Reaching the ground, he found his men industriously pegging gas bombs at the crew of the airship. Nobody dared begin shooting, because of the leaking hydrogen.
“Let’s get away from here!” Doc’s powerful voice rapped.
* * * *
They retreated, taking a direction such that the keeling hulk of the Aëromunde would shelter them from the landing crew who had not yet caught up with the wind-borne ship. These latter men were out of the hydrogen gas area, and could shoot without danger of causing a fire.
“We’d better lay a few eggs as we go!” Doc declared.
Suiting action to the statement, he lobbed one of Monk’s gas grenades far behind them.
“Set the time fuses for three or four minutes!” he warned.
The grenades were fitted with a tiny clockwork fuse, whereby detonation could be delayed for as much as several minutes. Their pursuers would be over the bombs, or ahead of them, before they released. Thus the breeze would not sweep the vapor harmlessly away.
The ground crew rounded the extremities of the giant airship. Some encountered the first gas barrage which Doc’s men had lain down, and collapsed. Others ran on, and clear of the hydrogen, turned loose with automatic rifles.
Bullets ripped lines through the sand, made shiny smears on the cliffs or snapped past the running group with piping, sudden whistles.
Doc steered the retreat to the right. He did not offer to return the fire, nor did his men. They were fighting men; they knew when the odds were too great.
Large boulders, masses of stone toppled from the cliffs above down through the ages, offered them shelter. They worked ahead, and left the crack.
“Do not try the jungle!” Lady Nelia warned. “Escape by that route is impossible!”
“We’re not trying to escape,” chuckled the homely Monk. “The idea is to get set some place where we can fight off an attack!”
They swung around and mounted the rocky hill which the crack bisected. The going was easy, their pace correspondingly rapid. They crossed a comparatively smooth stretch and came to a cluster of wind-carved rocks. These stood clear of the surroundings, comprising a natural fort of sorts.
“We’ll camp here a while,” Doc said dryly. “Long Tom, let’s have a coil of fine insulated wire.”
Long Tom extracted the wire from his pack.
Moving as swiftly as possible, Doc strung the wire around the rock pile at a distance of perhaps three hundred feet, carrying the two ends into their shelter.
Pursuit seemed to have come to a sudden stop—the work, doubtless, of the timed gas grenades they had strewn along their back trail.
To the ends of the wire, at Doc’s direction, Long Tom attached a device of vacuum tubes working on the principle of the early-day radio sets which squealed when a hand was brought close to them. Only in this case, should any one come near the wire, a squeal would sound from a small loud-speaker.
“May come in handy after dark,” Doc explained. “It’ll tell us if any one tries to sneak in close enough to throw a bomb.”
Two or three glances went skyward. The sun was nearing the horizon, although still blinding in its superheated glory.
They worked in silence, piling small stones in breastworks which would stop bullets. It was very hot—so hot they did not perspire a great deal. Or perhaps the lack of perspiration was due to the fact that they had been without water nearly the whole day. Nor was any water to be had at this spot.
Ten minutes saw a fair defense.
A few bullets drifted past shrilly, or spanged on the rocks. The belated pursuit had arrived.
Doc’s men did not return lead. The sharpshooters did not try a charge, showing they had become wary.
“We might as well have your story now,” Doc told Lady Nelia.
That Lady Nelia Sealing was a young lady with a nerve as unusual as her beauty, was becoming more and more evident. She ensconced herself in the lee of a boulder and began speaking as calmly as though she were in a London drawing-room. The qualities which had made her one of England’s outstanding aviatrixes were evident.
“Yuttal and Hadi-Mot have been partners for many years,” she said. “Some fifteen years ago, they were engaged in the ivory and slave trade in this part of Africa. The slave trade was outlawed, of course, and both men got into trouble with the law. There was a price on their heads—charges against them which would have meant long prison terms.”
She paused to glance up at a procession of shiny freckles which had appeared magically on a spire of rock—splattered bullets from an automatic.
“I am giving you their history as I learned it while a prisoner,” she explained. “The fact that Yuttal and Hadi-Mot were outlaws drove them to remote districts. In their evil moving about, trafficking in ivory and slaves, they came upon this oasis.
“The jungle surrounding this spot is impenetrable, due to the presence of carnivorous plants of huge size as well as poisonous thorn trees and creepers. Nothing lives in the growth.” She glanced upward and shuddered. “Nothing—except the vultures—and many venomous snakes, upon the carcasses of which the vultures feed.
“While exploring the edge of the oasis, Yuttal and his partner saw the vultures fly out of the place bearing shiny objects in their beaks. These shiny things proved to be diamonds. The birds—crowlike—were evidently attracted by the glitter.”
At this point, a shrill squeal came from the wire warning device. One or more of the besiegers were creeping in!
Doc borrowed Renny’s compact little machine gun and began a careful watch. He soon located a leg projecting from behind a rock.
The gun roared—firing so swiftly that it set the air throbbing as if a Gargantuan bull fiddle had come to life!
Shrieking, the skulker dragged himself back! His leg was mangled.
The piping wail ceased to come from the alarm, showing the man had advanced alone.
* * * *
Lady Nelia continued, seeking to speak as though nothing had happened, but not quite managing to do so.
“For a year or two, Yuttal and Hadi-Mot haunted the outskirts of the oasis, shooting vultures every time they saw one which looked like it might be carrying one of the gems. They gathered a fair fortune in stones.
“But they were greedy. They wanted to get at the lode from which the stones came. They got a plane and flew over the oasis, discovering the deposit of blue ground which held the stones. They knew it was fabulously rich. They could see gems glittering on top of the ground.
“There was no landing for a plane. There is now, of course, because they have cleaned out the rubble in the crack. But the bottom of the gash was originally too rough for a landing field.
“The upshot of it was that they took the money from the diamonds they had already found, and hired a gang of thugs. These men got aboard the Aëromunde and seized the ship. They tied weights to the officers and threw them into the Mediterranean. You will recall that the body of the commander was found years ago. It must have broken away from the weight.”
The sun seemed to be sinking much faster as it neared the evening horizon, a peculiarity of tropical regions.
“The crew of the Aëromunde were enslaved and made to work the diamond mine,” Lady Nelia went on, with a slight shudder. “Other men have been seized and brought here. Yuttal has an organized ring in Cairo which keeps him supplied with victims. You see, the death rate among the slaves is high. This is a horrible climate for a laborer.
“The whole thing has been kept secret, because Yuttal and Hadi-Mot are wanted criminals! They have a gigantic plant here, when you consider its secretive nature. Supplies are brought over the uninhabited desert and into the oasis in the airship. The original crew of the dirigible have been kept alive and forced to maintain the ship in repair, as well as teach Yuttal’s men how it is operated.”
“Where do you come in?” Doc interposed.
“I was making a London-to-Cape-Town flight, and my plane developed engine trouble,” the pretty aviatrix explained. “I landed here. They took me prisoner.
“They didn’t harm me.” She shuddered violently. “Ugh! That was because Yuttal has some insane idea that I’ll marry him willingly in the course of time.”
She gave a grim little laugh. “Instead, I enlisted the aid of Red and Jules Fourmalier. We got to the supply of linen and goldbeater skin kept to repair the airship, and made a balloon, filling it with hydrogen—a large quantity of which is also kept here. We got away—the wind carried us clear of the oasis.”
Bullets were screaming among the rocks with increasing frequency.
Doc interrupted the story while they did a little fighting back, shooting always at arms or legs. They were all accomplished marksmen. They soon discouraged the attack.
“We three managed to cross the desert,” Lady Nelia resumed. “But Yuttal and Hadi-Mot followed us.”
“You had some of their diamonds?” Doc queried.
“Not theirs! Those gems were stones Red and Jules and I had mined ourselves, and smuggled into hiding. The reason we were followed was to kill us—to silence us!
“We got to the coast and took the first steamer, which happened to be the Yankee Beauty, bound for New York. Our pursuers learned we were on the boat. They tried to overtake us in the airship, but fortunately the weather was too foggy for them to find the boat.”
Darkness came—very suddenly, it seemed to the men enrapt in the strange tale the young woman was telling.
* * * *
“We knew Yuttal and Hadi-Mot would stop at nothing to end our lives!” Lady Nelia said in the murk. “We decided against appealing to the law for help. Even had our story been believed, the authorities could not have protected us from devils as clever as Yuttal and Hadi-Mot. Too, justice might never have reached the pair. This part of Africa is so remote it is almost like another world.”
“You decided to get hold of me?” Doc said quietly.
“Yes. I had heard of you. We radioed—and you know the rest. You were not to be found. We each contributed part of our diamonds to my pool to offer that tremendous reward. You see, the diamonds meant little to us. If we didn’t find you, we would be killed, and money from the sale of the gems would be of no use. If we did find you—there are plenty more diamonds in this oasis.”
Her voice lifted, became emphatic. “Diamonds! Yuttal and Hadi-Mot have untold wealth in the stones! Bushels of them, almost! They have been selling them, a few at a time, down through the years. But only a few in each sale—so as not to glut the diamond market and bring prices down.”
“Holy cow!” Renny muttered, overcome by the magnitude of the thing in which they were involved. “When I first heard of that million-dollar reward, I thought it was about the most fabulous thing I had ever heard of. Now it turns out that that was just a starter!”
“Well, I hope it don’t get too big for us to handle,” Monk grinned.
Squirming about, Monk projected his gorillalike head and shoulders above the bulwark. It was dark; he had no fear of being selected as a target.
Standing furtively erect, Ham swiped his sword cane above Monk’s head, causing the blade to make a bullet whistle of a sound.
Monk ducked wildly, then discovered the hoax and emitted a roar!
Ham promptly scuttled away, with Monk prowling in pursuit.
Lady Nelia managed a strained laugh. “They do not seem greatly worried.”
“They haven’t got sense enough to worry!” Renny chuckled.
This was punishing the truth somewhat, since Ham and Monk were leading lights in the fields of law and chemistry, respectively.
Johnny was tying his glasses on with a string around the back of his bony head, a precaution against losing them in a fight in the darkness.
“Things are a little too quiet!” he grumbled. “I wonder if Long Tom’s whistler could be out of whack——”
The words froze on his lips. A faint, grisly shuffling sound had reached their ears. It came out of the sky—came from a dozen different directions! From every side!
Lady Nelia screamed hysterically.
Against the stars—the moon was not yet up—weird, hideous creatures appeared. They seemed like bundles of dirty cloth folding and unfolding in the air. They swooped for the rock pile which sheltered Doc and his friends.
Near by, Monk and Ham howled simultaneously: “Watch out! They’ve turned their infernal night killers loose on us!”