The Land of Terror

Chapter 21. HUMAN MONSTERS

WITH the swiftness of a trade wind, Doc took up the new trail. It was broad, plain. Entirely too plain!

Doc knew Kar would expect him to follow. Probably the man would set a trap. He would hope that Doc’s excitement over the capture of his friends would dull his keen senses.

But the shocking knowledge served only to sharpen Doc’s perceptive powers. He kept wide of the trail, his keen eyes locating it by the most vague of signs. A stalking leopard could not have gone more silently than the bronze giant.

A tiny patch of thorns appeared. Discovering the trail of Kar’s men and their captives — Doc’s friends — led directly through the burry growth, Doc approached furtively to investigate.

"They’re not overlooking any bets!" he said grimly.

For a considerable distance into the thicket, the needle-tipped thorns were daubed with a brownish substance. Undoubtedly a deadly poison!

It was the first of Kar’s traps!

Doc went on, not lessening his caution.

Kar’s men had taken their prisoners along the crater side, traversing a region Doc had not yet explored. They held a course as straight as possible. It seemed they had a definite objective.

Doc’s golden eyes picked up the tracks of Renny, Monk, and Ham in one spot. The trail of Long Tom and Johnny appeared soon after. None of them seemed to be wounded. At least, their footprints did not show the uneven depth and irregular spacing characteristic of a badly injured man.

Oliver Wording Bittman was lagging behind the whole group. However, his tracks also seemed normal.

But Doc knew he would have to make speed. His friends were being kept alive for only one reason, he believed. Kar was using them as a bait to decoy Doc into a trap.

Rather, into a series of traps! For Doc’s adamant gaze located a creeper across his path. The vine stretched just a bit too tautly. He investigated.

The creeper was attached to the trip of a machine gun! Had Doc as much as touched it, a stream of lead would have riddled him.

He detached the machine gun and took it along, to use on Kar if necessary.

Sometime later, he found another of the poisoned thorn reception committees arranged for him. There was a deadfall which probably wouldn’t have broken his back, considering the speed with which Doc could move. A more dangerous snare came next.

Doc noted a peculiar, dragging movement Monk’s big feet made at intervals.

"Good boy, Monk!" Doc smiled.

Monk was making those marks with his feet just before each trap. He was warning Doc!

The mighty bronze man now made better time.

The ground here was higher than any upon which Doc had stood within the crater — excepting only the rim of the mud lake up on the crater side. And this spot was so far from the point where he had surveyed the crater bottom that the ever-present fog of moist, hot air had prevented him seeing much of the detail.

The jungle growth abruptly became scattering. Small glades appeared. Then larger meadows! A rank, crude sort of grass floored these. The ground felt less spongy.

A mass of rock jutted up before him. It lay close to the sheer, nearly two-mile-high cliff of the crater wall. No doubt it had fallen from the wall centuries ago.

To Doc, the rock looked big as a sizable cut off Gibraltar. Others were behind it, too. They were nearly as large. All had toppled from the hulking cliff.

The trail weaved among these. Doc kept fully a hundred yards to one side, wary of bushwhackers. He came to a vast dornick which had a deeply corrugated surface. This would offer shelter to a climber. Doc mounted to reconnoiter.

He saw Kar’s plane!

THE craft was an amphibian — could land on ground or water. It had two motors, both very large. Its cabin would accommodate eight or nine passengers. The long upper wing and the bobbed lower wing and rudder and elevators were joined in a spidery box kite of a framework.

With black fuselage and yellow wings, it looked like a bloated dragonfly crouched in a natural hangar formed by the leaning together of two great stone blocks.

Huge timber had been employed to build a massive fence to keep out lesser carnivora. The cavern between the two blocks of rock was too small at the entrance to admit the king-giant of the killer reptiles, the tyrannosaurus.

The construction work had been done some time ago! Months past, at least!

"Kar built the hangar on his other trip!" Doc concluded.

Clambering down from his lofty perch, Doc approached the plane. He was not molested. Kar probably had no more than three men surviving. At least, only three had captured Doc’s friends. As for that capture — how had a mere three thugs managed to get the upper hand on Doc’s men?

Doc had his suspicions. They were far from pleasant!

Doc investigated the craft. He found a few boxed supplies in the cabin. These proved to be canned goods and dried fruit. Although Doc was hungry, having had nothing but meat since entering the crater, he did not touch the grub. He knew in just what subtle forms poison can be administered.

Doc quitted the strange hangar. Tall grass outside the massive timber gates absorbed his bronze figure.

Kar’s headquarters should be somewhere near. Doc was hunting it. His men would be prisoners there, since they had not been in the hangar.

In the distance, faint spots in the moonlightlike day within the steam-covered crater, the fearsome bats of reptiles still circled. Probably they had not quitted the thorn patch where they had chased Doc. They were more tenacious of purpose than he had thought.

Somewhere, a prehistoric beast emitted a series of hideous cries. The echoes were taken up by another reptile. For a moment, a bedlam, remindful of the awful night sounds reigned. Then comparative quiet fell.

It was a ghastly spot — this lost land of terror which reposed within the cone of Thunder Island.

DOC came suddenly upon his imprisoned friends. They were being held within another natural cave resulting from the massive blocks of stone piling together. Doc heard voices first.

"You guys just make one move — you’re finished!" A strange tone. It must be one of Kar’s men.

With no noise at all, Doc’s bronzed, giant figure floated nearer. His golden eyes watched the cave mouth — and all the surrounding terrain.

"I’ll rush him!" Monk’s big, amiable voice offered. "He can’t get us all!"

Evidently only one man watched the prisoners within the cavern!

"No need of that, yet," rumbled Renny. Thunder gobbling out of a barrel would have had a close resemblance to Renny’s vast voice.

"Let him be a hero!" clipped Ham. The quick-thinking lawyer seldom got in a spot so tight that he neglected to razz Monk.

"Can’t you see what they’re doing?" Long Tom demanded. "They’re holding us as a bait to get Doc!"

"Bait or no bait," Johnny, the geologist, put in, "Doc will take care of himself. And if we went and got ourselves shot, we’d still be bait. I’m in favor of stringing along for a while to see what happens."

"That’s a wise guy!" snarled the coarse voice of Kar’s gunman. "You birds behave, an’ we’ll do the white thing by you, see! We’ll let you keep on livin’! We’ll leave you behind in the crater when we take off in our plane!"

He laughed uproariously at this. He knew life in the crater would be one long living hell! A more perilous domicile would be hard to imagine.

"I gotta notion to rush ‘im!" Monk rumbled.

"You have no such idea — you’re just working that noisy mouth!" Ham sneered. "I wonder what they’re doing to Oliver Wording Bittman?"

"Hard to tell," said Renny. "They took him away shortly after we reached here. I can’t imagine why."

Monk made an angry hur-r-rum of a sound. "What’s still puzzlin’ me is how they got us! We had Ham, Long Tom and Johnny on guard. If they’d have sneaked up on Ham, I could understand how they got near enough to cover us before we could put up a fight. But the way it was — "

"Pipe down!" rasped their guard, tired of the talk.

Monk continued, " — but the way it was we — "

"Pipe down, you funny-lookin’ baboon!" the guard snarled. "I’m gettin’ so I don’t like to watch that ugly phiz of yours when you jabber!"

At this, Ham laughed.

"And the muffler goes on you, too!" gritted the guard. "You cocky shyster mouthpiece!"

Silence fell within the cave.

Doc waited a while. His keen brain worked. His five friends were here in the cave. But Oliver Wording Bittman was somewhere else.

Doc decided to find Bittman. Monk, Ham, Renny, Long Tom, and Johnny were in no immediate danger.

Away from the cavern entrance, Doc crept. The tall grass, coarse as the leaves of cattails growing on a pond bank, concealed him.

He encountered a tiny mound. Starting to go around it, he stopped.

It was a grave! The tombstone was a stone slab. A name and brief inscription had been painted upon it. Doc read:

Here Lies

GABE YUDER

Trampled to death by a Tyrannosaurus

Doc examined the grave. It was months old!

For quite an interval, the mighty bronze man did not move, but remained as quiescent as a statue of the solid metal he resembled.

MEN approaching drew Doc Savage’s attention from the grass-grown burial mound. Although his mind had been elsewhere, his full faculties had never deserted the business at hand. He had not relaxed his alertness to danger.

"He probably ain’t had time to get here yet," said a coarse voice.

"You don’t know that bronze guy!" growled the other. "I tell you, he may already be hangin’ around here. He may be waitin’ to jump onto us like a cat onto a mouse."

"Listen!" sneered the first speaker. "He never made it past them traps we left! Especially the poisoned thorns! That was good! And the machine gun we left with a vine hooked to the trigger! That wasn’t bad, either."

"But supposin’ — "

"Supposin’ nothin’! If he gets here, we’re gonna have our eyes open!"

"He may be too smart to even try to trail us. He may decide to let his men take care of themselves. What then?"

"So much the better! We’ll go off an’ leave him here! He’ll be where he’ll never bother Kar again."

"But he might find where we mined the ingredients for our fresh supply of the Smoke of Eternity. They say the bronze guy is quite a chemist. Even a second-rate chemist like you was able to make up a fresh batch of the Smoke of Eternity after Kar told you how!"

"Who’s a second-rater?" snarled the other man. "I don’t like that crack! Next to Kar, I’m the fair-haired boy in this scatter! Damn you, I won’t have — "

"Aw — don’t get on fire! I know you’re a great guy in certain lines, but only a fair chemist. Supposin’ the bronze guy figured out how the Smoke Of Eternity was made? With enough of the stuff, he could open a tunnel right through the side of this crater. He might get out — "

"What if he did? Kar would have a new gang together. There’d be no slips like there was this last time. Doc Savage wouldn’t have a chance against Kar."

"Maybe," the skeptical one mumbled. "But I’d rest easier if I had the bronze guy in front of a machine gun for about a minute. I just wish I had that chance!"

He got it almost before the words were off his lips. Doc stood up!

But did the Kar gunman shoot? He didn’t!

He gave a squawk of surprise and terror and fell on his face in the grass.

DOC SAVAGE never shot a man except in actual defense of his own life, or that of some one else. Hence, he waited for the loud-mouthed one to lift the submachine gun he was carrying. But the man whipped down.

Coarse grass shook as the fellow crawled away. He was taking to his heels!

The second gunman was sterner stuff. He tilted his rapid firer. Bur-r-r-rip!It was spewing lead long before it came level. The slugs chopped grass to bits halfway to Doc.

The big bronze man’s pistol spoke once. The report was like that given off by the popper of a hard-snapped bull whip.

The gunman melted down as though all the stiffening had been drawn from his body. On his forehead, exactly between his eyes, was a blue spot that suddenly trickled red. The man fell on top of his weapon and it continued to rip off shots until the drum magazine had emptied.

Doc Savage flashed for the cave where his friends were held. He must not let the guard kill them in his excitement.

"What is it?" the guard in the cave was bellowing. "What’s goin’ on out there? What — "

Doc reached a spot a yard from the cave mouth. He stopped there. Off his lips came a changed voice — a voice exactly like that of the Kar gunman who had just died.

"The bronze guy!" Doc’s altered voice called. "We got ‘im! Come out an’ watch ‘im croak!"

"Sure!" barked the fellow in the cavern. "Here I come — "

He crashed headlong into a set of mighty bronze hands. He saw them closing over his face. They looked bigger, more terrible than the whole crater of Thunder Island. The golden eyes behind them were even worse. They radiated death.

The man sought to use his gun. He got a few wild bullets out of it.

Then his neck unjointed! He died quickly. His actual going was painless, whatever the terror of the moments before might have been. For Doc’s sinewy hands had brought a merciful end.

Renny, Ham, Monk, Johnny, and Long Tom — all five howling their pleasure — piled out of the cavern prison in a hurry.

"Did you get Kar?" Ham clipped.

"No." Doc put a sharp question. "Have you seen Kar yet?"

"Not yet. They took poor Bittman off to Kar. Or that’s what they said. I don’t know — "

Doc’s uplifted arm stopped Ham’s flow of words.

Then, as they all heard what Doc’s sensitive ears had been first to detect, horror seized them.

Kar’s plane was starting. The engines were already tossing salvos of sound against the gigantic cliff wall of the crater.

Doc Savage left the spot as from a catapult. No word did he speak. None was needed. His men knew that, should the plane get off, their lot would be very hard indeed. It might take them years to escape the innards of Thunder Island.

Renny, Ham, Monk, Long Tom, Johnny — all five trailed in his wake. But from the way they were left behind, they might have been at a standstill in the rear of the bronze master of speed.

Seemingly gifted with unseen wings, such fabulous leaps did he take over boulders, Doc bore down on the makeshift hangar between the two masses of stone that were larger than skyscrapers. He caught sight of the plane.

It was in motion.

Already, the tail was lifting. Another two hundred yards for speed, and the craft would be off. Doc could see the features of the man in the control cockpit.

Kar was handling the plane!

* * *

DOC veered left. He put on speed — although he had been traveling faster than it seemed a human could.

He was trying to intercept the plane! Kar saw his purpose. He kicked rudder. The ship veered a little. But it couldn’t turn enough to evade Doc. The runway was rather narrow. Great rocks spotted the sides. The plane could easily crash among these.

For a moment, though, it did seem the ship would escape the mighty bronze man. But a great leap sent his herculean figure sailing upward.

Doc seized a strut which braced the empennage — the rudder and elevators. The plane must have been going forty miles an hour. The wrench would have torn loose the grip of lesser fingers. But the bronze giant held on.

Kar now began to shoot with an automatic pistol. He was excited. He had to aim from a very difficult position. He missed with all his slugs — then had to devote his attention to getting the plane off the crater floor, before it reached the runway end.

The craft lurched. With a moan, it took the air!