Doc Savage: Death's Dark Domain (22 page)

“This is
too
easy,” muttered Long Tom.

“We ain’t there yet,” commented Monk.

They hailed a taxicab, and directed it to take them to the airport. After going a
few blocks, Monk prevailed upon the driver to pull over.

“What for?” the hackman wondered as he slowed down.

“I need to tie my shoe,” said Monk, stepping out.

“You need to stop to tie shoe?”

“Humor him, O.K.?” Long Tom suggested.

The driver slewed to the curb. Monk exited.

By main strength, Monk yanked open the driver’s door and hauled the hapless hackie
out into the street.

“No, I guess I don’t after all.” He bopped the driver on the top of his head, then
as an afterthought, stuck a ten-dollar bill into his open hand. “That’s for your trouble,
guy.”

Leaving him on the sidewalk, Monk pulled the door shut and took the wheel. He sent
the cab hurtling away.

“Couldn’t very well have him blabbin’ our destination to the local cops,” explained
Monk.

THEY made the airport in good time. Apparently, no alarm had been given.

They rolled into the place unchallenged. It was not very busy. A plane had just taken
off. No others crowded the tarmac.

“Where’s our bus?” asked Long Tom, scratching his pale locks dubiously.

Monk replied, “Probably in a hangar. Look for one with a lot of guards.”

Ham Brooks spotted the hangar in question. A large structure of corrugated sheet steel
tucked away in one corner of the large flying field.

“Only three guards,” he said. “Even odds.”

Monk waggled his supermachine pistol. “I don’t need you two to handle only three guards.”

Long Tom objected, “Shouldn’t we wait for Doc to show up before we start trouble?
Be pure hell getting off the ground if we’re in the middle of a ruckus.”

Ham said, “Long Tom makes sense. I vote we wait.”

Monk latched the safety of his superfirer and looked disappointed. “O.K. We’ll hold
off until Doc shows.”

They hunkered down in the cab to await the bronze man.

They did not have to loiter very long.

Long Tom happened to be glancing in the direction of the guarded hangar. One of the
sentries suddenly wilted at his post. Then another. The third joined him. It was as
if tall corn stalks were being scythed down, one at a time. Not a sound reached their
ears.

Elbowing Ham beside him, Long Tom said, “What got into them?”

Ham started to exit the vehicle, peering about thinly.

“They dropped.”

“I can see that!” Long Tom said peevishly. “What dropped them?”

A moment later, a resonant voice spoke at their side. It had a quality of restrained
power they all knew.

“Come on. The others are already on board.”

A colossal figure towered in the darkness. There was no mistaking him.

“Doc!” cried Monk. “Where’d you come from?”

The metallic giant pulled open the door. “Just arrived. We have no time to waste.”

The trio piled out and followed the bronze man to the formerly guarded hangar. They
entered through a side door and Doc led them to the open aircraft.

Once on board, their eyes fell upon Fiana Drost, seated quietly. No one looked surprised
or, for that matter, appeared very pleased to see her.

She looked away guiltily.

Long Tom dropped into an apparently empty seat, gave a howl of surprise followed by
a nimble jump, landing back on his feet.

“What did I sit on?” he complained. “A pincushion?”

“Me,” a disembodied voice murmured. “Sorry.”

“Who are you?”

“Simon Page.”

Long Tom’s jaw sagged. The others goggled.

“Where are you?” Ham wondered, swishing his sword cane about the apparently empty
seat. The stick encountered an obstacle. He could now see that the cushions were mashed
down under the weight of something that could not be discerned. “Jove!”

“What the heck happened to you?” Long Tom asked thickly.

“I am a victim of Ultra-Stygia,” Page said, pushing the cane aside.

“Take seats,” ordered Doc Savage. “We will go over developments in the air.”

They grabbed seats while Doc warmed up the motors. This was a risky thing to do. Planes
of this size are normally pulled from hangars by tractors, but there was no time for
such formalities. They had to risk raising an alarm.

Propeller blades churned, rattling the thin walls of the hangar. Radials spilling
bluish exhaust, the amphibian gave a forward lurch, began rolling.

Long Tom got out and pushed aside the hangar doors, then scrambled aboard.

Props howling, displacing cold air, the aircraft inched ahead, blunt nose emerging
from the open hangar. Doc turned toward the runway, advanced the throttles. The air
wheels began rumbling along.

In the gathering dusk no one seemed to notice this unusual event for the longest time.

When an alarm was raised, it was smothered by the charging plane as it fought to get
into the air. The wheels soon left the asphalt, clawing skyward.

Banking, Doc turned the aircraft north.

“Smooth,” complimented Ham.

“Yeah,” seconded Long Tom. “No one noticed until we were up in the air.”

“We are not out of danger yet,” warned Doc.

Sure enough, less that a minute later, a trio of warplanes took to the air. They fell
in behind Doc’s charger, propellers snarling like spinning swords.

Gun muzzles mounted in the wings began turning red. Tracer slugs went shooting past
Doc’s plane, becoming visible from the control cabin. Spent, they fell to earth harmlessly.

The next burst of rounds made hammering noises against the amphibian’s tail section.
It sounded like rivets being driven into sheet metal.

“Want me to open the door and blast ’em out of the sky?” offered Monk.

The bronze man shook his head in the negative. “No need.” Doc instead reached for
a set of levers that were not part of the ordinary aircraft controls. He yanked one,
then another, and finally a third.

“What are those?” asked Fiana Drost, curiously.

Monk explained, “There’s a tank of chemical in the tail. Doc is releasing the stuff.
It will be sucked into the motors, and choke ’em good.”

“What if it does not? What then?”

The question proved premature.

Behind them, the trio of warplanes slammed into the hazy cloud and their air-greedy
engines gulped the stuff in.

It was not long until the engines began missing, propellers faltering in their swift
revolutions.

One by one, they ceased spinning.

Thrown into confusion, the pilots hastily sought clear spaces for landing. All thought
of pursuit fled their consciousness. Preserving their lives and their winged steeds
was all that mattered to them.

They soon fell behind.

“That settles that,” said Monk, pleased with himself.

Fiana commented dryly, “You sound as if you were the one who defeated our pursuers.”

“I helped formulate the concoction,” Monk admitted proudly.

Silence fell as Doc Savage sent the amphibian winging north over the desolate frontier
that was Ultra-Stygia. It had a cratered look that might have been the dark side of
the moon. Here and there, sunset reds shimmered where frost clung.

“Back over this forsaken place again,” grumbled Ham. “I don’t like it.”

“It is Hell on Earth,” sighed Simon Page.

The others turned in their seats to get a good look at the rescued journalist.

All they saw was a pair of tired green eyes, which blinked every so often, like an
owl hiding in a dark tree. The odor of rankness emanated from unseen fur. Fiana pinched
her nose shut with two fingers to keep out the offensive aroma.

“Perhaps you should put on some clothes, fellow,” suggested Ham.

“Have you any to spare?” asked the unnaturally round green eyeballs.

Monk went in back, rummaged around, and produced some extra stuff.

“Try these duds. Might fit you. They belong to Renny.”

Renny was Colonel John Renwick, the civil engineer of Doc Savage’s group of adventurers.
At present, he was sojourning in France, there lending his expertise to the construction
of a network of advanced flying fields large enough to accommodate transport planes.
With archeologist William Harper “Johnny” Littlejohn—himself busy plumbing the moldy
entrails of a lately-discovered Pharaoh’s tomb in Egypt—Renny had been alerted to
watch for any signs of the missing and believed-dead John Sunlight.

Simon Page accepted the commodious items of clothing. The others watched in amazement
as the clothes floating in the aisle between seats, jumped and jerked, seemingly wrapping
themselves around a semi-human form.

Semi-human, because once they were buttoned in place, they seemed to envelop a body
whose outlines appeared more bear than man.

Curious, Ham Brooks reached over and encountered stiff bristles.

“Jove! This man is hairier than even you, Monk.”

His own curiosity aroused, Monk felt about the clothing.

“Ye-o-w-w!
What happened to you?”

Page gulped, “This—fur has been growing every day, ever since I woke up in that castle
dungeon. I have no idea why.”

“Perhaps you are cursed,” suggested Fiana dolefully.

“No such thing!” barked Long Tom.

“Then you explain it,” retorted Monk. “He’s as bristled as Habeas here.”

The pig had been watching with fascinated eyes all through the proceedings. Now he
jumped up and began sniffing Simon Page. Evidently, he did not like what his snout
took in. Hackles rose up along his skinny back, and the shoat began backing away.

“Even animals fear me,” moaned Page. “Perhaps I
am
cursed.”

In the cockpit, Doc Savage asked, “It is time to hear everyone’s story in detail.
Miss Drost, to whom do you owe allegiance?”

“I was born in Egallah,” she returned sullenly. “I admit this now.”

“Then why did the authorities there attempt to execute you?”

“For this reason: I was instructed to assassinate you.”

“Blazes!” exploded Monk.

“It was my duty to liquidate you,” Fiana continued. “But after you rescued me from
the auto wreck, I found that I could not. So instead, I injected you with a sedative
designed to put you to sleep.”

“What good did you expect that to do?” challenged Doc.

“The sedative was formulated to plunge a man in a coma for three weeks—no less. I
thought this would be enough. I do not know how you escaped that fate.”

Doc Savage said only, “My constitution may be more tolerant than the chemist who made
the stuff expected.”

This was an understatement. Doc Savage was inured to colds and other physical ills.
He also made it a practice to imbibe antidotes to many of the more pernicious potions
that an enemy might employ to overcome him. Conceivably, his trained physique simply
shook off the preparation much faster than any ordinary mortal might.

Doc passed over this. “Why did Egallah want me out of commission?”

Fiana admitted, “I was not told. Only that they feared you for some reason.”

Simon Page spoke up. “Fiana, you mean that you aren’t from Tazan, after all?”

She shook her luxurious hair. “No, I was a spy. Now I am a woman without a country.
Both nations would shoot me on sight.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Ham Brooks, “due to your unsavory profession, you had that coming
to you.”

Fiana compressed bloodless lips. There appeared to be nothing to say; it was the truth.

Long Tom said, “I think we all know what the dictator of Egallah was worried about,
Doc.”

Ham nodded. “Prime Minister Ocel was expecting you, Doc.”

No one offered a further explanation. They did not wish to talk about the darkness
machine. It was a secret they hoped to keep from the world. Doc Savage especially
did not want it to be publicly known that a menacing war weapon had been stolen from
him, only to fall into dangerous hands.

Before anyone could question the logic of that, Simon Page said, “Of course, Doc Savage
has a reputation for stopping wars before they start.”

That satisfied the concern.

“It is clear,” Doc imparted, “that Simon Page was subjected to a process that rendered
him invisible.”

“Obviously,” said Fiana Drost dryly. “But what about the horrible hair which is growing
on his body?”

“The answer to that will have to await further investigation,” said Doc. “Unquestionably,
this is connected to the one-eyed ogres which are roaming Ultra-Stygia.” Doc turned
his head. “Miss Drost, are they creatures of Tazan or Egallah?”

“Neither. They are monsters of blackest Ultra-Stygia.”

Which, while it was hardly a satisfactory answer, smacked of the truth.

“Tell us how you survived the fall from our plane,” invited Doc.

Fiana was a long time in answering. “I transformed into a winged bat and glided safely
to earth.”

Doc eyed her steadily. “Just like that?”

“You are familiar with the legend of the
vampiri
—vampires? Need I say more?”

“Fiana,” blurted Simon Page in a shocked voice. “What are you saying?”

The cold-blooded woman eyed him unflinchingly. “That I am—how do you say?—one of the
Undead. A creature of midnight.”

Floating green eyeballs goggled. “Great stars! What have you become?”

“You should speak!” she hissed back. “Look into a mirror, Simon Page. Tell me what
you see there.”

Simon said nothing. Fiana turned her head and stared out the window. All were silent
for a very long time.

Long Tom broke the thick gloom by saying, “I, for one, take no stock in vampires.”

“You have nothing to worry about, scrawny one,” said Fiana. “You are too pale to contain
very much red blood. No one would want you.”

“I resent that!” snapped Long Tom.

“I’m with Long Tom,” said Monk. “Vampires are the bunk.”

“You also need not worry, for you possess no neck to fasten teeth upon,” Fiana said
frostily.

Ham started to laugh at that, but subsided when he discovered Fiana Drost looking
at him with undisguised interest. He adjusted his cravat nervously.