THE SWIMMING GIANTS
Like a thing frightened by the glare of the landing lights, the other plane scudded away. It banked and came back. Again the cowl-mounted rapid-firers opened red eyes.
Doc Savage hung the gyro motionless in the night sky and watched the thread of tracer bullets warily, prepared to maneuver the gyro clear if it came too close.
The sight of the steel-haired girl in the other plane had kept Doc from driving bullets into the engine of the enemy ship while the pilot was blinded by the floodlight.
“The hussy!” Monk complained. “Who’d have thought this of her?”
“You were making calf eyes at her in New York,” Ham snorted.
Monk grinned sheepishly. “I’d probably do it again, too. She’s a looker.”
The tracer bullets drew too near. Doc dropped the gyro straight down. The move was so abrupt that the men grabbed at their chairs.
Tracers ran strings of phosphorus fire through the space they had vacated.
“What are we gonna do about this?” Monk pondered.
Doc sank the gyro rapidly. The other ship followed them down in a tight spiral. Doc flattened some fifty feet above the lake surface. Advancing the accelerator, he streaked along above the lake.
It looked as if he had generously helped himself to suicide, for the other plane swooped down upon their tail, its two cowl guns lipping flame.
The lake surface was fairly calm, and the small geysers knocked up by the bullets were visible ahead of Doc’s windmill. The tracers, as they ricocheted, seemed to be sparks bouncing from the water.
Doc waltzed the gyro right, then left. The other ship, attempting to follow these maneuvers with its sight rings, merely succeeded in firing wide of the target.
Renny used his enormous hands to mop perspiration off his forehead. He knew the danger they were in. Even Doc’s consummate skill could not avoid the pursuing bullets for long.
Abruptly, for no visible reason, the plane behind gave up the attack. It wobbled off to one side, careening in the sky.
The pilot seemed to control his craft with the greatest difficulty. Trying to fishtail to reduce speed, the ship nearly went into a spin. Then it sought to land.
“Bet the gal don’t know what happened to her!” Monk howled gleefully.
* * * *
If the steel-haired girl was mystified, she was not the only one. The dapper Ham was also puzzled.
“What did happen?”
Monk slapped his bulging chest with a furry fist. “Give me credit for that.”
“I didn’t see you do anything,” Ham sneered.
“Doc turned the stuff loose, of course,” Monk admitted. “But I mixed it before we took the air. It’s gas. The stuff is in a tank in the back of the bus. Doc simply pulled a valve cord and released some of it. In the moonlight, our steel-haired lady friend didn’t notice it.”
Ham glanced at the other ship. “You can have the credit!”
“Huh?”
“The gas doesn’t seem to have worked!”
To their astonishment, they saw that the other craft had straightened out and was climbing into the air.
“The glass enclosed cabin of the crate!” Doc said. “Just enough of the gas got in to cause temporary dizziness.”
The bronze man hurled the gyro toward the other ship. His metallic features were expressionless. He reached a corded hand back into the cabin.
“Your rapid-firer,” he requested of Long Tom.
The slender, unhealthy-looking electrical wizard passed over his compact little supermachine pistol.
“Every third slug in the ammo drum is a tracer,” he vouchsafed.
The other ship, instead of turning back to give battle, was flying a straight course not far above the water.
“Givin’ her head a chance to clear!” Renny boomed.
Conversation was possible inside the gyro because of the unusual efficiency of the silencer on the engine. The rotating wings had also been designed to create a minimum of wind-whistle.
Doc Savage drove after the other ship. It was flying slowly; he overhauled it rapidly.
“This is gonna be simple, after all,” Monk said optimistically.
The fight had drifted through the sky until they were now hardly more than a mile from the island which they had intended to investigate.
The isle seemed to be nothing more than an expanse of rock, spotted here and there with stunted, wind-twisted trees. There were many large boulders on it.
Doc Savage opened the cabin window. Air rushed in, together with the loud hiss of the silenced motor. He aimed with his machine pistol.
But before he could fire, a tiny rip appeared in the fuselage of the other plane. This had apparently been made by a knife or an ax.
The muzzle of a machine gun poked through the opening, its snout slavering flame. The shooting was more accurate than previously.
Clattering, gnashing, lead chopped at the underside of the gyro. Long rips opened in the fuselage.
Monk’s pig, Habeas, squealed in alarm.
Doc juggled the controls with a dazzling speed to get away from the deadly leaden hail eating at the fuselage. He succeeded; then the lead storm found them again.
This time, the slugs snapped in the region of the gas tank. They chattered with an appalling noise.
Again Doc maneuvered clear.
“Holy cow!” Renny thundered. “That last burst opened the fuel tank!”
An instant later, colorless gasoline washed over the floorboards. It reeked in the cabin.
The other pilot had been more fortunate than he knew. The fuel tank of the gyro was coated thickly with a fireproofing and extinguishing compound—it was practically impossible for it to be fired by incendiary bullets. A burst must have struck, opening a leak through the spongy protective coating.
A stark grimness had settled on the faces of Doc’s men. The sky brawl had progressed to a point where chivalry had somewhat lost its appeal.
The gyro flung in alongside the enemy ship. They made a discovery which was nothing if not interesting.
“Hey!” Monk howled. “The girl ain’t flying that bus!”
* * * *
The steel-haired girl was lashed in one of the bucket seats in the pilot’s cockpit. They could see that now, because she was pitching about madly, and apparently was on the point of freeing herself.
“I knew she was all right,” Monk chortled.
The actual pilot of the other plane was a squat fellow in a tan blazer. Due to the shadows inside the plane, they could not tell much about him.
“He ducked out of sight and flew blind whenever he was close to us!” Monk decided, his usually small voice a great yell. “That’s why we couldn’t see him!”
The other pilot discovered that the girl had loosened her bindings. He flung himself toward her. Using the machine gun, he clubbed at the girl.
The young woman threw herself from under the descending weapon, then clutched its fluted barrel with both hands.
Pitching about in the fight that followed, one or the other disturbed the controls. The plane reeled over on a wing tip, motor bawling.
The squat pilot saw his danger. He released the steel-haired girl. Wildly, he battled the controls. But there was insufficient time.
The girl took one look at the water, then covered her head with her hands to break the force of the crash.
A wing tip knifed the water first. The wing crumpled. The plane hit the water and jumped end over end. The other wing left the fuselage as if sliced off by an invisible razor. The battered hulk wallowed a few yards and came to a stop. It began to sink.
Doc Savage drove the gyro toward the wreck. The windmill plane could land with equal facility on earth or water. Doc, however, did not intend to land. He hovered over the wrecked and sinking plane, the water some ten feet below. He turned the controls over to big-fisted Renny.
“See what you can do about that gasoline leak!” he directed. Then, head-first, he pitched overboard.
Doc struck the water cleanly, with a minimum of splash. His powerful frame curved expertly an instant after the moment of impact, and the result was a perfect shallow dive. He seemed scarcely to wet his back.
Doc stroked to the wreck. A hole gaped in the fuselage. He grasped the edge of this, hauled himself up and glanced into the cabin.
The body of the pilot was being tumbled about by the water that poured into the cabin. There was a crease nearly three inches deep across the top of his skull, where he had smashed against a strut.
A few feet from the dead flier, the steel-haired girl paddled feebly. She was dazed, but seemed otherwise not seriously damaged.
* * * *
Doc Savage reached into the sinking plane and hauled the girl out. He was none too soon, for the stricken craft, weighted by its engine, sank. The whirl drew Doc and his burden beneath the surface. Powerful stroking on the bronze man’s part brought them up again.
Bubbles the size of water buckets arose from the sinking plane and, bursting, made plopping noises.
Doc glanced upward, then around. The gyro was on the lake surface! It had settled there during the momentary space when the bronze man was under water.
“You’ll sink!” Doc shouted warningly. “Those bullets all but tore the bottom out of the fuselage!”
“The gas is gone—leaked out!” Renny boomed. “We couldn’t plug that hole. It was in an inaccessible position.”
The men in the gyro were bringing out collapsible canvas boats. They tossed these into the water, then flung articles of equipment into the little shells.
The gyro settled, rocking a little. Doc’s men voiced no more words; the business of transferring their paraphernalia to the boats was too urgent.
Monk moved Habeas Corpus from the stricken plane.
They completed the shift with only fragments of seconds to spare, and clambered hastily into the folding boats, barely escaping from under the great wings of the gyro as it went down.
Doc Savage paddled to the nearest folding boat. He lifted the steel-haired girl in; then, careful not to upset the shell, clambered aboard himself.
The steel-haired girl, recovered now, stared at Doc in the moonlight. She spoke, and her voice was calm for all of the ripping excitement of the last few minutes.
“They tied me in the cockpit,” she said. “They wanted you to think I was your attacker.”
“We guessed that,” Monk put in, anxious to get the favor of the entrancing young woman.
Doc seemed about to ask the steel-haired girl questions, but withheld them. He leveled an arm.
“Our trouble seems to be just starting!”
The pig, Habeas, reared up from his position near Monk’s feet. He looked toward the island. His tremendous ears shot straight in the air. He emitted a procession of staccato, excited grunts. Then he ducked below the gunwales of the boat, as if to shut out the sight.
In the direction of the island, three gigantic human heads projected above the lake surface. Huge black arms appeared and disappeared in measured swimming strokes.
“They’re coming after us!” the girl shrilled.
* * * *
Clipped to the light metal frame of the collapsible boats were telescoping oars. The men hastily freed these and began to paddle.
“One consolation,” said bony Johnny, “is that those freaks can’t swim as fast as we can row.”
They paddled briskly. All six were men of more than average muscular development. The steel-haired girl, insisting on wielding a paddle, exhibited strength somewhat beyond the ordinary. The swimming pinhead giants dropped farther back.
“They’re not wearing their armor,” Ham remarked. “If they come close, we’ll see how bullets affect ’em!”
Without interrupting his paddling, Doc addressed the steel-haired girl.
“The gang wanted you to teach them the pinhead language so they could issue commands to those three black fellows, didn’t they?”
She nodded. “Yes. They made me repeat numerous commands until they understood how to issue them. I found out why they were so anxious to be able to give them orders. It seems that the blacks hated Bruno Hen. He had done them some injury. One night they escaped and murdered him. They wouldn’t have done this, had their chief ordered them not to do so.”
“Why was the giant murdered in the New York mine tunnel?” Doc questioned. “Or did you hear of it?”
“I heard,” said the girl. “That particular giant had been stubborn about taking orders from Pere Teston. They were afraid of him.”
“Pere Teston!” Doc asked sharply.
“He is the chief,” the girl explained. “I did not see him. But his name was mentioned numerous times.”
“What about Griswold Rock?”
“He’s on the island somewhere. I didn’t see him.”
Monk put in, “What I fail to understand is why they seized Griswold Rock the second time?”
“I don’t know why they grabbed him,” the girl replied.
“Do you know any of their plans?” Doc asked.
“Only that Pere Teston intends to send his giants against Detroit to-morrow night.”
To their ears came the mutter of a motor boat. It was a fast craft; it appeared a moment later, scudding around the end of the island. It veered to one side in order to keep clear of any bullets they might launch, and circled to get ahead of them.
“Holy cow!” Renny groaned. “That thing is making sixty an hour, at least.”
The motor boat was soon ahead. A tripod, mounted on its bow cowling, supported a machine gun. This went into action, sending a ribbon of lead across the lake surface.
Doc’s men tried returning the fire with their small supermachine pistols. The range of the other weapon, however, was too great. They were driven to back water, their own bullets falling short.
The swimming pinheads speedily overhauled them.