THE LIVING SHIELD
Shots rang out! But Doc Savage had covered many yards, and was traveling like a desert wind. The bullets snicked harmlessly through the night.
Doc veered slightly to one side and seized the cage which gave protection from the vampires. Chances were excellent that he might need it.
A light spotted him. Lead pattered like vicious hailstones.
Dodging into a rocky hollow, he lost the light, then went on, the somewhat unwieldly cage held above his head.
“Hazir ol!” The shouts spread with telegraphic speed. “Alert!”
At scattered points, electric lanterns spat glaring white funnels. Then, at three widely separated spots, brown men propped hydrogen cylinders up so they pointed at the night sky, opened petcocks and ignited the escaping gas.
The terrain became entirely too bright for safety. Doc’s figure was sighted. He became the focus of volley after volley from the automatic rifles.
His means of return to his friends was securely cut off.
Shooting with uncanny accuracy, Doc doused a few electric lanterns. But that did not help much. The flaming gas gave the greater illumination.
Doc found himself driven to retreat toward the encircling jungle. It speedily became evident that his only escape was into the deadly vegetation.
Once this was apparent, Doc wasted no time in useless debate. Dropping the rattan cage over his form, he entered the unlovely growth. The contraption had been built for a man of much smaller stature. Doc was forced to crouch as he walked.
For some yards, the lights on the rocky hill brightened his way. And for some yards, nothing untoward happened. He might have been penetrating an ordinary tropical maze of plants. Then the horror of the place began to make itself apparent.
There came a slight tug at one side of the cage. Doc used a small flashlight which he drew from a pocket—and came as near shuddering as he ever did.
The tentacles of a huge carnivorous plant had grasped the wickerwork of the cage. Bilious and unwholesome in hue, the prehensile shoots closed slowly. They might have been embodied with a sluggish life!
Doc wrenched free. The plant arms were far from being strong. Indeed, most small animals could have struggled clear. The growths reacted rather slowly, judged by human standards, making them dangerous only to the unwary.
As Doc progressed, however, the very numbers of the carnivorous verdure became a menace. Clutches upon the cage came in increasing succession, until at last there was almost a continuous drag.
Doc kept his flash on. Some of these plants were poisonous, Lady Nelia had warned. Using his knife, Doc sliced through such of the tentacles as projected through the cage bars, doing so with quick slashes. Uncanny as the behavior of the grisly shrubs might be, they closed only upon such objects as touched them.
Furthermore, they did not seem to have the ability to distinguish between animal and plant tissue—between Doc and his cage, for instance, and other herbage of their own species. At times the plants were shoved in contact and attacked each other with a slow ferocity, cannibal fashion.
There came a low hiss. Through the thin bars of the cage projected a blunt, green-dappled serpent head. A venomous snake, the color of which blended closely with the surrounding hideous jungle!
Doc used his knife before the reptile could wriggle in far enough to reach him. A single quick stroke severed the repellent head.
After that, Doc kept a sharper watch, the incandescent eye of his flashlight blazing unwinkingly.
* * * *
The light furnished a faint glow visible to Yuttal’s men. They drove bullets at the spot. Most of the slugs were stopped by the jungle, but a few glanced unpleasantly close.
It had already been noted by Doc that passage through the strange jungle was an impossibility, even for his vast strength, unless many hours were spent with a long-bladed machete, hacking down the carnivorous plants and the entangling creepers. He had, however, no wish to get out of the oasis.
The shooting at his light suggested a plan. Working carefully, he plucked numerous slender, harmless vines and wove them into the mesh of his cage. Soon he had the lower half of his refuge closed tight enough to keep out snakes.
He planted his flashlight, still glowing, in the spongy earth, so that the beam played upon the jungle in a fashion to attract Yuttal’s marksmen.
Slowly, Doc pushed along at right angles to his former course. Behind him, the flash drew flurries of automatic rifle slugs.
Progress was slow, laborious, dangerous. To avoid noise, he had to slash through such of the tentacles as seized his cage. He struck matches often, cupping the tiny flames carefully so that they might not be discovered.
Once something grated underfoot. Stooping and using a shielded match, he saw he had come upon a yellowed human skeleton. The bones were still enmeshed in a mass of the carnivorous plants.
This, Doc realized, must be the remnant of some unfortunate slave who had sought to escape through the jungle.
It took him the balance of the night to get out of the fearsome vegetation. He left the jungle at a point some distance from where his enemies still sniped at the flashlight. The glow of the light had faded a great deal, due probably to the battery nearing exhaustion.
Carrying the useful cage, Doc rejoined his friends. He had little difficulty working through the ring of besiegers.
The embattled group greeted him with exclamations of relief.
“The young lady, here, just about had us persuaded that we should launch a hunt for you,” Monk chuckled.
“I thought you might be trapped—they’ve been shooting all night!” Lady Nelia explained, trying to keep her voice from showing just how relieved she was.
Doc imparted the information that the bullets had been aimed, for most of the night, at his flashlight.
“They evidently think I’m sitting out there waiting for daylight,” he finished.
“What did you accomplish before they discovered you?” Renny wanted to know.
“I’ll be badly disappointed if they can use their airship to bomb us,” Doc advised, and elaborated about the hiding of essential motor parts.
* * * *
Dawn came shortly, and with it—heat. The lack of water had been no more than unpleasant during the night. Now it assumed the proportions of torture.
Johnny, looking somewhat more bony than usual, studied their rocky surroundings. His glasses were still in place, tied around the back of his head with the string.
“This stone is of a very imporous nature,” he said thoughtfully. “I notice it is pocked in spots with potholes. There’s just a chance we may find some rain water near. I think I’ll look around.”
“Keep your head down,” Monk warned.
Johnny scuttled off, flattening as close to the terrain as he could, lizard fashion. He experienced little difficulty. No bullets stung the boulders near him, although at one point he thought certainly he had exposed himself by accident.
On the far side of their rock-pile fortress, he found a rain-carved groove down which he could crawl without great danger. He proceeded to do so.
In a circular pit in the groove bottom, he found water!
The pool was clear, somewhat too clear! There was none of the usual moss on the bottom. Had Johnny looked closely, he would have observed that there were no encircling rings stained on the pool sides to show that the level of the liquid had receded through the past weeks.
All of these things might well have indicated that the water had been poured into the rock pit the previous night.
Johnny, however, was too dry to be suspicious. He was suffering more from thirst than the others, despite his remarkable qualities of endurance. It was a peculiarity of Johnny’s gaunt physique that he needed more drinking water than the average man.
The bottom of this little gully was where one might logically expect water. So Johnny drank. He only downed several swallows, however, knowing better than to overdo it.
Scooping up a quantity of the liquid in his hat, Johnny retraced his steps.
He slipped two or three times as he neared the others.
“Must be the heat!” he muttered. He felt a little dizzy.
The dizziness became more pronounced. Then came a dull sensation in his stomach.
He suddenly understood what had happened. A wild look on his features, he plunged recklessly forward. He staggered. A deadly paralysis seemed to be seizing him. He collapsed, entirely, a moment after he came in sight of his friends.
“Poison!” he gulped. “I’ve been poisoned!”
No medico in an emergency hospital ever worked with greater speed than Doc had in the next few minutes. His small medicine case held all the restoratives necessary.
The others stood around anxiously.
“What about it, Doc?” Monk muttered. “Is he too far gone?”
Doc worked in silence, making no reply. Bottles tinkled together as he concocted necessary potions.
* * * *
An hour later, Johnny awakened. He sought to sit up, could not quite manage it, and wrapped both hands over his middle, grimacing painfully.
“You’ll be all right,” Doc assured him, and offered a collapsible flask filled with a clear liquid. “Here, drink this!”
Johnny cocked an eye at the flask contents. “What is that stuff?”
“Water,” Doc told him.
Johnny groaned. “I don’t want any more water!”
“This won’t hurt you.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“From the same pool you drank out of!”
Johnny’s big jaw fell. “Say—you wouldn’t be trying to finish me off, would you?”
Monk snorted mirthfully at Johnny’s surprise, then explained: “Doc analyzed the water and found out what kind of poison was in the stuff. Then he added chemicals which neutralized the poison, making the water drinkable.”
“You mean,” Johnny gulped, “that Yuttal’s gang planted that poisoned water, hoping to do us in—and Doc made it harmless?”
“That’s the idea,” Monk grinned. “It turned out that they kindly furnished us with a supply of water.”
“And are their faces red.” Ham laughed.
As the hour dragged on, there was sporadic shooting. The firing seemed but an attempt to convince the besieged they were far from being clear of their difficulties. None of the bullets inflicted damage or even more than mild uneasiness.
Lady Nelia, after a bit of casual maneuvering, engaged Doc in conversation. As a matter of fact, Doc had maneuvered a little himself in an unsuccessful effort to avoid just that.
Lady Nelia was an extremely attractive young woman—Doc had seen few of the feminine sex more entrancing. She was educated, polished and finely mannered. But Doc could read the signs. The young lady was in the way of falling for him.
Doc had had this sort of thing happen before. It embarrassed him no little. There was no provision for love-making in his scheme of things. The ladies, however, never saw his viewpoint. As a result, they risked broken hearts by letting themselves become enamored to the big bronze man. All of which, Doc sought to avoid.
Noon came with its vertical, blazing sun rays. They crowded under what shade they could find and suffered.
“This,” Monk said emphatically, “is beyond a question the hottest spot on earth! I’m as roasted as a turkey!”
To which Ham sneered: “No—you’re not! You can still gobble.”
More bullets were impinging upon the boulders. Whereas the shooting through the morning had been erratic, there was a machine quality about the firing now.
Doc Savage detected this fact at once.
“The sniping is a bit too organized,” he declared. “It has all the earmarks of being part of a plan!”
He moved about carefully, returning a few shots when he could place the bullets without killing. None of the brown men had died at his hand thus far, although there was ample justification for slaying them. Nor would Doc kill—although his enemies had a way of meeting fate in death traps of their own concocting.
“They’re trying to get our nerves on edge,” he decided aloud. “But I am unable to learn the reason.”
The answer came like an echo to his words.
From half a dozen different points, compact groups of men appeared. They advanced, moving with a slow, scuffling tread—a tread of men going to their death. Some of them shrieked wildly and sought to break away from the groups! But chains held them back.
These men were the slaves. They were being used by Yuttal and his gang as living shields.
“Holy cow!” Renny groaned. “Now they’ve got us! Our gas is no good! Yuttal’s thugs are masked!”
* * * *
Doc and the others held their fire. They could not, of course, shoot down these defenseless, shackled men—although most of the slaves seemed to think that might happen. It was a study in human emotions to watch them advancing. Some had steeled themselves to a sort of exaggerated unconcern. Others trembled until they could hardly walk. Many strode mechanically, like men already dead. A few had collapsed and were being dragged.
It was no time, though, for delving into psychology and human behavior.
Doc’s powerful voice crashed through the rattle of automatic rifles! So mighty was his tone, such sharp command did it carry, that the shooting halted.
“Auz eyh?” a yell pealed. “What do you want?”
Doc replied in the native jargon, wishing all the attackers to hear.
“As you have learned by now, your airship is useless because of missing parts!” he informed them. “I alone know the whereabouts of those parts. And if one of my group is slain, you’ll never learn the hiding place!”
“Wallah!” barked a man—it was Hadi-Mot himself. “We can find the motor parts!”
“I do not think you can,” Doc replied. “And without them, you fellows are doomed. You cannot escape from this place. Your supply of food will be exhausted eventually.”
This was stretching possibilities a bit—the gang might easily inflate the airship and free-balloon it into the desert, from which a trek to civilization could be made.
There was a good deal of talk among their enemies. Finally, an angry shout gave the result.
“Surrender and tell us where the motor parts are, and your lives will be spared!”
“We’ll surrender!” Doc called back, without hesitation.
“Hey—Doc—they won’t keep their part of the bargain!” Monk wailed.
“Of course not,” Doc told him. “But they’ll keep us alive until they find out where the engine parts are cached. And believe you me, brothers, it’ll be a long old day before they get the information!”
Howling delightedly, the brown men ran forward to disarm and seize Doc and his friends.