THE WHITE BEASTS
“Light!” Magic was in the cry. “Sunlight ahead!”
Renny, perched on a protective runner near the bows, was first to make the discovery. They had been wending along the river for a long time. The chronometer in the control room said it had been days. They had barely kept ahead of the rising water.
Each twenty-four hours, Doc had taken his regular two-hour exercise routine. He had just finished. He increased the Helldiver’s speed slightly.
It was like the dawn, the blooming of that sunlight ahead. It whitened until it hurt their eyes. Fifteen minutes later, the submarine nosed into the solar-irridated outer world.
For a short distance, they sailed through a sheer-walled canyon. The rock sides, although not fabulously high, were water-polished so smooth as to be unclimbable.
A rocky island appeared. It was like a tongue upright in the gullet of the canyon. It was as bare and rounded as an egg. It stood in the canyon center.
The walls spread. A second island came into view, also in the channel middle. This one was less worn, spotted with boulders, and considerably larger than the first.
The stony walls fell away suddenly. Ahead lay a vast mirror—a mirror of salt water.
“One of the great salt marshes in the interior of Arabia,” Doc decided. “This river must be an outlet for all the marshes!”
“Huh!” Monk seemed somewhat disappointed. He waved an arm. “There ain’t nothin’ here but sand, rock, salt water, and plenty of hot sun!”
“What were you expecting?”
“The Phantom City.”
Ham, who had not yet complied with his promise to kiss Habeas Corpus, sniffed audibly. “It looks like the Phantom City is a phantom.”
Down below, Mohallet and his men set up a howling. They had been doing that often of late. They were really hungry by this time.
Doc and his men had bored several holes in the steel bulkheads, and had thus kept tab on the white-haired girl’s welfare. Mohallet had treated her surprisingly well, especially after Doc had demonstrated how a machine-gun pistol muzzle would fit through the loopholes. Through these, the girl had received liquid food.
Surplus cloth from several burnooses had contributed to curtaining a recess in one corner of the prison cell, where the young woman could have privacy.
Going down now, Doc conversed briefly with Mohallet. The outlaw chief refused to do anything unless given his liberty. Doc left him, knowing hunger would eventually do its work.
The Helldiver was bent a few degrees to port when Doc returned to deck.
“Thought I seen something moving,” explained Monk, who was at the helm. He pointed at a low knob just off the bows.
The water ended against a range of bare, sun-scorched hills. These supported only the scrawniest of desert vegetation. Even close in, the water was fairly deep.
They managed to maneuver the submarine within jumping distance of the shore.
“Even if we did go aground, we’d be lifted off later,” said Johnny, who had clipped colored sun lenses to his glasses. “The lake is bound to rise, because of the closed river.”
“Renny will remain aboard,” Doc decided.
The others went ashore. They had donned tropical sun helmets, pocketed extra ammo clips for their guns. They took no food. They expected to be away no more than an hour or so—long enough to see if Monk had really seen anything, and to climb a hill and look at the country.
The spot where Monk thought he had perceived movement was not far from the larger of the two islands at the river entrance.
“It might have been an animal,” he explained. “I couldn’t tell.”
“Probably the heat!” Ham sneered.
“Or maybe a pig,” Monk retorted.
They worked around a low headland, over a small ridge. Doc, in the lead, halted.
“What Monk saw seems to have been plenty!” he said dryly.
* * * *
Bodies lay side by side, about the same distance between each. They numbered eight. Seven were large, grotesque; the eighth was smaller, more symmetrical. All of them were stiff and dead.
“Seven of the White Beasts—and the body of a white-haired man!” muttered Johnny, suddenly wrenching off his glasses and their sun shield.
Doc surveyed the vicinity, then advanced at a run. He examined the forms of the seven white-furred, apish men—for men they were! Each wore a breech cloth of stiff camel hide.
The eighth man was of excellent physical development, with a fairly intelligent face. His skin was sun-browned, his white hair, and a flowing white beard giving him a striking appearance.
His garb was interesting.
“Look at his duds!” gulped Ham, who was naturally intrigued by such things.
The attire consisted of a short tunic and shorts, with a close-fitting head covering. The garments were made of flat plates, none larger than a silver dollar, loosely riveted, together so as to be flexible. The workmanship was excellent.
The color of the weird mail was that of silver, only richer.
Stooping swiftly, Doc eyed the stuff. He touched it, bent one of the plates between his powerful thumb and forefinger.
“What’re they made of?” demanded Ham.
“We’d better analyze it and make sure!” Doc told him. A rare thing had happened to the big bronze man’s voice. It sounded puzzled.
Whipping erect, Doc began to circle rapidly. His course spread over a wider area. Sand lay among the rocks. He found prints—the feet of the hairy, apish man. He followed them a short distance.
They suddenly told him a story. He raced back to his fellows.
“We interrupted some kind of a ceremony!” He gestured at the eight bodies. “All of these fellows, if you’ll notice, were killed with sharp instruments, probably spears. They’ve been dead some time. But there were many more of the white-furred creatures here not many minutes ago. Sand particles are still tumbling into the tracks they left. And they circled around us—headed for the Helldiver!”
“Huh!” Monk gulped. Wheeling, he sprinted back in the direction of the submarine.
The others followed. Heads down, silent, they ran. Sweat began writhing in pale rivulets down their frames. It was oppressively hot.
Long before they came in sight of the submarine, they heard Renny’s thunderous voice boom out; heard howls, the bull-fiddle moan of Renny’s rapid-firer.
* * * *
The White Beasts had attacked the Helldiver. There was a horde of them, at least a hundred. They swarmed over the submarine hull like pale flies. Forward of the conning tower, Renny’s giant form centered a fighting cluster.
“Use the mercy bullets!” Doc directed.
He led his four aids in. They came close before they began firing. They had latched their guns into single-shot, to conserve ammunition.
At the first rapping shots, the big, white-furred men spun upon this new menace. Bellowing in a strange, guttural dialect, they charged.
They were less inhuman when seen alive, these apish fellows. They were, in fact, not a great deal nearer missing links in appearance than Monk. The hair of some was not a true white, but ranged to yellowish and even a pale brown.
They carried spears armed with primeval tips of stone, and crude bludgeons.
They dropped like flies before the mercy bullets, which were little more than soft-metal shells filled with sleep-inducing drug.
Renny, still fighting, was toppled off the submarine. He hit the salty water with a great splash, sank, came up, and struck out at hirsute foes who had followed him in. His huge fists were as effective as blacksmith hammers.
In front of Doc and the other four, the bestial men wavered and began to give way. The little guns seemed to carry terror.
Suddenly, a new courage swept them. They bawled in their coarse lingo.
From behind Doc came a great roll of yells. The sound of hundreds of brutish voices, all screeching at once. The beat of feet became a mumble like the noise of stampeding cattle.
Doc and his four aids veered around.
“Blazes!” Monk gulped. “There’s so many of ’em they look like a snowstorm.”
The hills were emptying a swarm of the hairy men. They had been congregated back there.
“These fellows are not entirely ignorant!” Doc said grimly. “They set a trap. And we tumbled right into it! They’ve got us cut off! Try to make it to the sub!”
That, it speedily developed, was a Herculean task. It defied accomplishment. Their foes at the Helldiver made a concentrated rush, hurling spears, throwing clubs. They came faster than they could be put to sleep with the mercy bullets.
Johnny went down, bony limbs thrashing. Monk, his snorting and bellowing surpassing the uncouth cries of his foes, waded in and got the gaunt geologist to his feet. Then they both vanished under an avalanche of snowy forms.
Doc plunged to their aid. He was met by a determined cluster of the hairy men. They seemed to sense this bronze giant was the chief of those they had attacked. They concentrated on him—and got a surprise of no mean proportions.
Spears thrust at the bronze man impaled only sun-heated desert air. Smashing clubs encountered space. The speed with which Doc weaved and dodged was uncanny.
The brutish men emitted cries, shrill bleats like the whimpering of puppies thwarted in some desire.
* * * *
The swarm charging down from the hills arrived. A white tidal wave of fighting men, they overwhelmed what resistance Doc and his men could offer.
Dodging, twisting, dropping an occasional hulking fellow with rapier blows which impacted before they were seen, Doc sought to keep in the clear. Diving, a hairy man got him around the knees. There was tremendous strength in the anthropoid arms. Another hirsute figure launched upon his shoulders. Arms with a wrenching, animal-like power inclosed his neck.
So mightily was the bronze man muscled that it was seldom he encountered human beings capable of meeting him on even terms. He had met them now.
They crashed down in the sand, thrashing, striking. Doubling, Doc got corded hands upon the creature who held his knees. His fingers probed for nerves, found them. With a hideous bleat, the fellow flopped to the earth, temporarily incapable of more motion.
Reaching up and back, Doc seized the head of the one who gripped his neck. He pulled, doubling simultaneously. The hairy man gyrated through the air, and splashed into deep water.
Half a dozen figures charged Doc. It was almost magic, the way he slid through their clutches, leaving only parts of his garments behind.
One snowy man got Doc’s rapid-firer, however. He knew the little black implement was a weapon. He fumbled foolishly with it, lacking the intellect to operate the thing.
Doc’s eyes roved. What he saw was far from pleasant. All his men had succumbed. Battered, bruised, skinned, they were in the grips of hairy captors. None seemed seriously damaged.
Doc knew that it was only a matter of moments until he would himself be captured. The odds were hopeless.
Escape landward was out of the question. The hairy men were so many there that they resembled a drove of sheep.
Whirling, Doc leaped into the water. He filled his lungs in the air, stroked deep, and sought to get under the keel of the Helldiver. He found it necessary to swim downward steadily in order to remain beneath the surface. He felt light as a cork. That meant the water was heavy with salt in solution, literally a brine.
He collided with the Helldiver hull, pulled himself downward and under the keel by gripping the steel runners. On the other side, he bobbed to the surface.
The hairy men were not watching here. Unnoticed, Doc clambered up. They saw him just as he dropped down the control-room hatch. Yelling, they rushed for the sub.
Doc ran to the compartment where Mohallet and his followers were imprisoned. They were shouting, beating on the steel door, anxious to know what was going on outside.
Doc loosened the metal dogs which held the panel, then whirled and sprinted back. He was sheltered in another cubicle before Mohallet and his men got the door open.
The swarthy men fought each other to be first outside. Not one remained in the prison they had occupied for days.
The white-haired girl did not appear.
Doc ran into the prison compartment.
At sight of him, the girl cried out in her strange tongue. Her voice was glad. She crouched in a corner. Despite her long imprisonment, she had managed to keep her exotic garb remarkably neat.
She spoke rapidly, then realizing Doc could not understand her words, she reverted to abbreviated deaf-and-dumb finger signs. She wanted to know what had happened.
“The White Beasts!” Doc informed her with signs.
She shivered. The gladness seemed to ooze out of her.