The Red Skull

X — Man Bats

Some 16 hours later, a lonely sheepherder in the rugged mesa and canyon country of Arizona was witness to something which he did not soon forget.

This shepherd had bedded his flock for the night on a shelf-like bit of ground near the crest of a gently sloping butte. He was sitting up with a shotgun in hopes of getting a crack at a pair of coyotes which had been molesting his sheep.

Suddenly, there came to the sheepherder’s ears a shrill hissing. The noise mounted with startling abruptness until it was a tremendous scream.

Over the mesa top flashed a monster apparition! It blackened the stars. It seemed to travel with the speed-of-light for it was quickly gone, leaving behind a dying whistle not unlike the sound of a motor siren running down. The shepherd saw only that the thing had a shape vaguely resembling a legless, headless bat of a distinctive bronze color.

The sheepherder was astounded, puzzled for no motor roar had accompanied the fast-flying night phantom. If the thing was a plane, it was one of unusual type and traveling at least 250 mph.

The night monster was just that! A plane of remarkable design.

It was Doc Savage’s speed ship.

The extremeness of its streamlining marked the craft from others. Three great motors were contained entirely within wings and fuselage. The landing gear — even the tail skid — disappeared so as to offer no wind resistance.

Doc and his 5 aides rode in the fore part of the cabin. They were somewhat crowded for room. The cabin was spacious but at the moment filled with a bulky cargo. A brownish cloth covered the load.

The 3 motors were fitted with efficient silencers. The propellers were of a radical design which reduced the customary air scream. Traveling at reduced speed, the plane was practically noiseless. At full throttle, it made only a shrill hissing sound.

The cabin was built like a vacuum bottle — airtight and noise-proof. Conversation could proceed in ordinary tones.

“We’re about 80 miles from Red Skull canyon,” Renny offered, looking up from a pad on which he had been figuring their location.

Renny was navigating. His engineering knowledge fitted him for the job.

Doc himself handled the controls.

Long Tom — the somewhat unhealthy-looking electrical wizard — was working with the powerful radio equipment, in touch with airport stations along their back trail. Now he turned away from the loudspeaker. Headphones were unnecessary in the silenced cabin.

“No luck,” he reported. “A plane answering the description of the green, all-metal crate carrying Buttons and his gang took on gas at an airport near Kirksville, Missouri. The girl was along. The airport attendant had the description we broadcast and he sent for the sheriff. But the gang got away before the officer arrived. They haven’t been seen since.”

“We should be at least 4 hours ahead of them,” Doc decided. “This ship is much faster than theirs.”

Monk had been peering downward.

“Whew!” he grunted over a sloping shoulder. “This country we’re gettin’ over looks like a pilot’s nightmare!”

Gray clouds were bunched in the night sky. The moonlight crowned them with beautiful silver.

But underneath, they were black and ominous. The moving Moon shadows cast by the clouds showed they were being swept along at a rapid clip by high air currents.

Penetrating through breaks in the clouds like searchlight beams, the luminance from the Moon disclosed flat-topped mesas; slopes shaggy with mesquite and sage and cactus; gulches that might have been gouged by a gigantic knife; and canyons which seemed yawning and bottomless cracks.

Doc decreased the engine speed.

“We’ll land around here somewhere,” he said.

He moved a lever, causing vanishing flaps to appear on the plane wing. These enabled the craft to cruise at very low speed without loss of altitude. Another lever lowered the landing gear.

Doc selected the table-like top of a mesa… circled twice… and dropped the plane in for a landing. The ship leaped wildly as it hit a sage clump. The wheels struck a growth of jumping cactus, causing thorny fragments to shower high in the air. Wheel brakes pulled the ship to a stop.

“We’re now about 15 miles from Red Skull canyon,” Renny announced.

No more was said. The men knew the task ahead. They went to work with silent efficiency.

The brownish cloth was pulled off the cargo. Unfolded, the piece of fabric proved to be of considerable size. It was streaked in lighter hues to imitate the veining in rock. Spread over the plane, it could be used to camouflage the craft as a large boulder.

Latches were operated, permitting one whole side of the plane cabin to hinge outward. This formed an inclined runway to the baked mesa top. Down it, the men rolled the bulky article of cargo.

This contrivance resembled the fuselage of a small, stubby airplane. But instead of having elevators and rudder, the tail was fitted with rudder alone. The undercarriage had 4 doughnut-like wheels mounted in caster-fashion to permit the craft to roll in any direction.

Above the fuselage projected a streamlined hump — perhaps 4 feet in height and tapering to a tub-like cluster of sockets and connecting rods. From the cabin of the huge speed ship came vane-shaped wings which were secured in the sockets. The outer tips of these were equipped with what resembled miniature elevators and rudders.

Into this unique craft, Doc placed parachutes and several compact boxes of apparatus. He and Renny occupied the tiny 2-seated cockpit.

A strong, chemically-cooled motor started within the vehicle. The vane-like wings began to revolve, windmill-fashion. They increased speed.

The ship lifted straight off the ground. It was a true gyro-plane of Doc’s own development. Like the more prosaic autogyro, it was not capable of tremendous speed.

Manipulating the controls, Doc sent the gyro northward.

In addition to the usual throttle and navigation instruments, the controls of an auto type wheel-mounted on a rocker arm. Turning the wheel steered the ship; pulling it back caused a climb; and shoving it forward produced descent.

The gyro was a perfect craft for service over the tortured land that lay below.

Angry wind currents glancing up the sides of buttes and boiling out of abysmal canyons caused the gyro to toss about. The motor was well-muffled and the spinning wings made only a faint moan.

To better survey the terrain below, Doc donned light, high-magnification binoculars mounted in a spectacle frame. These closely resembled the conventional “sportocular”.

“There’s the valley which will be flooded by the dam!” Renny exclaimed suddenly.

Although their departure from New York had been sudden, Doc and his men had been able to learn something of the dam being built by the Mountain Desert Construction Company. A trade journal had supplied their information.

The valley to be flooded was several miles wide and a number of times as long. Ages ago, it had no doubt formed the bed of a vast natural lake, hemmed in by mountainous country. The waters had drained away, cutting a deep channel through a range of the mountains. The channel — a sheer-walled gash — was Red Skull Canyon.

The dam across the entrance of the canyon was intended to turn the valley into a miniature replica of the great lake it had once been. Electricity generated at the dam was to be sold to cities and industrial plants in Arizona, California, and other states.

Doc turned his aerial vehicle toward the canyon mouth. Moving patches of moonlight furnished faint illumination. Cliffs shoved up walls of solid stone, dark, forbidding. Here-and-there were detached formations resembling giant cathedral spires.

The entrance of Red Skull canyon yawned a great mouth. In the bottom of this draped strings of electric lights. Work was evidently proceeding day and night. Clouds of dust rolled like steam in the glare of electric bulbs.

Red Skull River — held back by coffer dams and diverted through tunnels — was remindful of a fat brown snake.

“The dam is not far from completion,” declared Renny who had himself superintended the building of not a few such structures. “They’re running the final concrete.”

Doc now pulled the gyro up into a cloud. He had swung to the Northward for a reason.

Wind was carrying the clouds South.

Without trouble, he kept the craft within the vapor. He dropped down from time-to-time to have a look at what was beneath.

They passed over the busy dam scene. The canyon gaped below. It was a crevasse in stone of tremendous depth. Moonbeams — penetrating rifts in the clouds — slanted far into it as if striving to reach the thundering river that was its lifeblood. But the bottom remained in darkness.

Doc descended more often below the concealing cloud. His eyes roved intently, seeking something to indicate the lair of his enemies.

“There is the rock formation from which the canyon and river were named,” he told Renny at one point of the flight.

Staring, Renny saw it distinctly. Rounded and hideous, a great knob of stone jutted up beside the canyon.

This had a striking likeness to a huge human skull!

Its color was pale, unwholesome, contrasting to the darker hue of the surroundings. It seemed a foreboding sign of Danger and Death!

The gyro floated on. Miles dropped behind.

“There we are!” Doc clipped.

His sharp eyes had picked out 4 pinpoints of light. They formed a long, narrow rectangle.

At a height of nearly a mile, hugging the blackness of the cloud, Doc guided his craft into position above the lights. He donned a parachute after surrendering the controls to Renny.

About his middle he strapped a wide belt. A number of rather bulky, padded boxes were already affixed to this.

There was no dramatic leave-taking although both knew Doc faced deadly peril. The leap alone held incalculable danger since a man dropping by parachute has a limited choice of landings.

“Go back to the others and wait for orders,” Doc commanded.

Then he stepped overboard.

Air screamed past his ears as he fell. He began to turn slowly over-and-over. But an expert forward fling of both legs stopped that.

The monster rent of a canyon seemed to leap apart like giant jaws and swallow him.

Even then, he did not tug the chute ripcord. He did not want air currents to toss him about and perhaps carry him wide of his mark.

Darkness increased. Below, the 4 lights spread as though carried by an invisible hand. They evidently marked the limits of a landing field.

At one end, a faint glow appeared — reflection of a campfire upon rock.

The instant he saw this reddish beach, Doc cracked his ‘chute. It opened with a yank which might have seriously damaged an individual less muscular than Doc.

Grasping the shrouds on one side, he slipped the ‘chute away from the bilious glow. In the black abyss, he could judge his nearness to the ground only by position of the marker lights. He kept his leg muscles tense for the shock.

It came a bit sooner than he expected. But he was able to keep his feet.

Running with the ‘chute, he emptied it of air. Crouching on the folds, he shucked off the harness.

He listened. There was no alarm. Evidently the men here did not expect a visit from the air. The firelight, he saw now, was at least a hundred feet above the level of the field. It shone out of a square opening on the sheer side of a cliff!

Doc bundled the parachute. Stepping cautiously (for a cloud had blocked out the Moon face and the gloom was intense), Doc moved to one side. Sandy ground lay underfoot, indicating this was a shelf well up from the canyon bottom. Possibly at one time it had been the river bed.

He encountered a gulch some distance beyond the rectangle enclosed by the lights. He descended to the bottom and crept down it until his way was blocked by a sheer drop of at least 100 feet as gauged by a pebble tossed over the depth.

From one of the belt pouches, he removed various tubes and bottles. With the aid of a hooded flashlight, he worked washing his face and hands with a chemical which gave his skin a pale, unhealthy cast. A dye darkened his hair. A chemical cleanser would remove this make-up.

He concealed parachute and pack belt in a crack in the rock, covering them with boulders. Then he returned to the level ground.

Silently, he approached the glow on the cliff… only to be surprised by the discovery that the rock rose sheer and unscalable.

He purposefully made a little noise.

A revolver instantly roared from above!

With a loud, vicious thud, a bullet planted itself in the sand at his feet!