Doc Savage: The Ice Genius (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 12) (10 page)

Monk turned to Doc Savage. “What do you think?”

The bronze man replied, “The simple fact that they carved a warning to posterity on the face of the ice wall suggests that Tamerlane’s followers anticipated a future resurrection of some sort.”

Monk grunted, “How likely is that?”

“Unlikely, I’d say!” thumped Renny. “It’s been more than five hundred years that he’s been cooling in that icebox.”

Ham shivered. “I get the chills just thinking about it.”

They flew on in silence for a time, until Monk thought of a question.

“How brutal was he back in his day?”

Johnny hesitated to reply. Perhaps he was reflecting on the fact that he had, although inadvertently, been the mortal instrument by which the long-deceased Mongol conqueror might be restored to an earthly state.

“It was said,” he said slowly, “that Tamerlane’s soldiers would sack a city, then remove the heads of most of the inhabitants, stacking them in ghoulish pyramids. But that was not the worst of the atrocities.”

“Yeah?” said Monk.

Johnny nodded somberly. “Tamerlane’s armies often carried the men and women off into slavery, forcing them to abandon their babies and children to starve to death. Prisoners were sometimes flayed alive. And there was one infamous instance when the captives of one conquered city were flung into wet plaster, and raised into a human tower that rose and struggled helplessly until they finally expired.”

A great silence greeted these gruesome descriptions.

Monk remarked, “Well, let’s hope he’s croaked for good—and stays that way.”

Doc Savage did not contribute anything to this discourse, as he was giving his full attention to his flying and the speeding terrain below. His men realized the bronze giant had discovered something only when the plane banked sharply to port, and Doc was looking out the side window. He was wearing his mechanical goggles.

“Find what you want?” murmured Monk.

Doc nodded. “Johnny’s lantern. It is admitting an ultra-violet shine.”

Johnny jumped into the cockpit and looked down, studying the moonlit terrain.

“I was a prisoner in sand hills just like these. I believe this is the locus of my incarceration.”

Monk muttered, “No good place to land out here.”

“Take the controls, Monk,” Doc Savage directed. He left his seat.

GOING to the back of the plane, the bronze man donned a parachute rig, and gave every indication that he was going to exit the plane.

Seeing this, Renny rumbled, “Want some company?”

Doc Savage shook his head.

Johnny protested, “I insist upon accompanying you. After all, I initiated the events that brought about this calamity.”

Long Tom barked, “Why do you call it that? It’s not as if Tamerlane is going to sit up in his icy coffin and begin issuing orders to conquer the world.”

“Do you know he will not?” snapped the bony archeologist.

The vehemence with which Johnny spat those words caused the ever-irritable Long Tom Roberts to bite his tongue.

Johnny continued his plea, imploring Doc, “I speak the Mongol language almost as well as you do. I know the camp. I can be of assistance.”

Not helping matters any, Monzingo Baldwin popped up in his seat and said, “Take me along, too. I could be useful.”

“We have no parachute that would fit you,” Doc Savage told him.

Frowning, the little man smacked down in his seat, folding his babyish arms angrily. He looked like a spoiled brat.

Then Monk Mayfair made a fateful comment.

“There’s a spare chute that we use for Habeas Corpus. It might fit the little runt.”

“I resent being called a runt,” fumed Baldwin. “But thanks for the tip.”

“Too dangerous,” said Doc Savage. To Johnny, he said, “You might be useful at that. If you are up to it after your ordeal.”

“I have been through worse,” said Johnny stiffly. He began wriggling a parachute pack onto his gangling frame. Even after he had tightly buckled every harness strap, it looked ill-fitting.

Monk Mayfair had the ultra-violet scanning goggles now and was using it to pinpoint the bandit camp as he swung the big plane around.

When he was approaching the spot, the homely chemist called back and warned, “This is it! Good luck!”

Doc Savage flung open the door and threw his great frame out into space. Johnny hesitated only momentarily to tuck his lapel monocle magnifying glass into the safety of a coat pocket, then he too launched himself out into the night, long hair flying.

Reaching out with his big fists, Renny pulled the door shut and said to no one in particular, “This has got to be one of the craziest durn undertakings we have ever been pulled into. Looking to rescue a five-hundred-year-old dead man.”

“If he’s really dead,” remarked Ham Brooks without a trace of humor.

“Don’t you start that kind of ghoul talk, too!” Long Tom complained.

“Johnny knows dead things the way I know torts and writs,” mused Ham. “Mark my words. If he thinks that fellow in the ice might not be fully deceased, it is an opinion to take seriously.”

Chapter X

RUSE

DOC SAVAGE LANDED first.

The bronze giant pulled his ripcord late in his plunge, choosing to do so to minimize any chance of a lone sentry spying his parachute bell floating down in the night sky.

Doc had selected a chute that was dark in color, rather than the regulation white, but with a full moon riding high in a cloudless sky, it made little difference.

Johnny followed suit, and the elongated archaeologist followed him down to earth.

Scrutinizing the terrain, the bronze man pulled on his shroud lines, steering himself to the top of a low hill. Johnny did likewise, but landed on an adjoining hill.

Once they got themselves organized, they gathered up their shrouds and the folds of the silken canopies, and set about to bury them. This was easily done, for the hills were very sandy.

The two hills were too far apart for comfortable voice communication, so Doc Savage produced one of his spring-generator flashlights and pointed the lens in the direction of Johnny’s hill. Capping the glass with one hand to muffle its harsh glow, he flashed a simple message in Morse code.

O.-K.?

Y-e-s, Johnny signaled back.

They doused their lights, and settled down to watch for activity below.

The moon bathed a cluster of round felt tents, rather like small editions of circus big tops, about which no one appeared to stir. There were a few spare warhorses picketed in one spot, grazing on the tough grass left over from the summer.

The Mongol camp appeared to be unguarded, but Doc Savage knew that appearances could easily be deceiving. The big tents might well have been occupied by malingering Mongols, with rifles ready at hand.

From his equipment vest Doc Savage produced a slim black tube which was an optical instrument he had long carried. It was a remarkable device, for simply by changing the arrangement of tubes and lenses, it could be transformed from a telescope to periscope and even, in a pinch, a simple breathing tube.

Doc employed the gadget as a telescope, and used it to scan the horizon in the direction of the exposed ice cave many miles distant.

There was no sign of the approaching caravan, but he had not expected there to be. Pack horses are no match for a modern airplane tearing across open sky.

So Doc and Johnny waited as the evening hours stretched into the dead of night.

The surrounding steppe was remarkably barren of life. Few animals dwelled here, owing to the tough terrain, and birds were all but nonexistent.

It was a tribute to the nomadic Mongols that they could live off such arid, inhospitable grassland. But they have been doing it for centuries, and no doubt would continue so subsisting for centuries far into the future.

After an hour of waiting and watching, Doc Savage decided to investigate the camp. He signaled to Johnny on the adjoining hill, and the archeologist sent back a simple response.

B-e c-a-r-e-f-u-l.

Doc went down the back side of the hill, using great caution and seeming to melt into the shadows. Had there been any sentry posted, he might have spied the bronze man when he first detached himself from the top of the hill, but as the metallic giant progressed further, he became all but invisible.

MOONLIGHT picked him out approaching an outlying tent. Doc paused at the flap entrance, listening intently, and using his acutely sensitive sense of smell.

Detecting no occupants, he stepped within. When he emerged, not long after, the bronze man was attired in a Mongol costume that barely fit him, but helped disguise his true identity. Doc applied a combination of coppery make-up and dirt to his features, and did other things that gave his eyes an Oriental cast. His distinctive golden orbs were masked by glass shells the color of black smoke.

So attired, Doc moved from tent to tent, seeking anyone who might be left behind. It was a discouraging search, but at last he discovered a rather small individual sleeping on a
kang
—an ingenious kind of Mongol bed, which was a shelf constructed over a brick stove. This construct allowed the hardy Mongols to sleep comfortably even in the depths of winter.

Slipping up to the man, Doc Savage discovered a short sword—a curved Mongolian
kilij
sabre—and appropriated it, slipping it into the sash of his colorful costume.

Shaking the man awake, he hissed, “Awaken! I bring amazing tidings.”

A round-faced Mongol snapped awake, one hand instinctively going for his sabre. He failed to find the familiar handle.

“Who are you?” he demanded of Doc.

“I am called Batu,” Doc told him in fluent Mongol. “Chinua sent me ahead.”

The man jumped out of bed, demanding, “I do not know you!”

“You will know me well enough in time. Chinua is marching back with the devil he is captured in ice.”

“Devil?”

“A very terrible devil,” Doc assured the man. “This devil has been encased in ice for over five hundred years. Chinua is trying to get him here before the ice melts, and unleashes his devil upon the world.”

The Mongol’s eyes grew as round as silver dollars. “Why is he bringing it here?”

“It is Chinua’s intention to keep the demon trapped in the ice. He has sent me ahead to order all the fires put out, and all fire-making matter disposed of, or rendered useless.”

“Everything?”

“Down to the last flint striker and wooden match,” assured Doc Savage.

“I will see to it at once!” the other breathed. “If that is what Chinua commands.”

“Chinua commands that this be done instantly,” intoned Doc Savage. “If it is not done properly, swift punishment will follow.”

The Mongol immediately went to a bucket of water, and flung it under his shelf bed where it doused the coal fire. A great quantity of gray-black smoke erupted upward and disappeared out a hole in the top of the felt tent, which was for ventilation purposes.

Rushing out of the yurt, the Mongol exclaimed, “Help me do this. Help me get this important task done.”

Doc told him, “You douse the tent fires. Tell me where to find all the fire-making material.”

The Mongol was only too happy to comply, so great was his fear of the devil encased in ice that was being towed back to the Mongol camp.

Between the two of them, Doc and the other managed to put out every fire, and destroy or bury every instrument for making fire or warmth the Mongol camp harbored.

When the deed was done, Doc Savage told the round-faced Mongol sentry, “I will now go to meet with Chinua and tell him it is safe to bring the frozen devil to the camp.”

“Very good,” said the other. “I will await you here.”

Before the quaking man could return to his sleeping tent, Doc arrested him with a metallic hand. “Do not sleep. You will be needed. While you await Chinua’s return, double-check every tent. Make sure there remains nothing that can produce fire.”

The Mongol looked disappointed, for he had not slept very long before being aroused. But he did as the strange new Mongol bid him, for he believed it was the command of his chieftain.

That matter settled, Doc Savage walked off into the steppe, and was soon lost from sight. Satisfied that he was not being watched, the bronze giant doubled around and made his way back up to the top of the hill where he had earlier landed.

Doc waved to Johnny. Johnny waved back in recognition of his return.

Then they hunkered down to await the return of Chinua and his bandit band, and the terrible thing dragging behind his train.

Chapter XI

SOLEMN PROCESSION

CHINUA THE BANDIT chieftain was leading his men in song. It was an old Mongolian song about a young bowman in love with a beautiful maiden.

Every man knew this song, so when Chinua started to sing, his followers quickly joined in.

It was necessary to sing their way through the night, for the going was slow and arduous, with only two shaggy ponies pulling the cumbersome chunk of ice in which was imprisoned one of the greatest Mongol chieftains in recorded history.

The song helped them trudge along, lightening their load—even if it did not increase the pace of the horses, who could only go as fast as the slowest pack ponies.

From time to time, Chinua—that was the only name by which he was known, since Mongols did not give their children last names—wheeled his horse around to examine the cube of ice as it was being sledged across the dry steppe.

Despite the coolness of the night, friction was taking its toll on the underside of the frigid block. Pieces of chipped ice from the rough edges had been scraped off, further eroding the icy extrusion.

Chinua frowned. If this kept up, he knew, the translucent cube might break or be sundered by the monotonous punishment it was receiving. He did not wish for this to happen. Chinua wanted only to bring the great warlord Timur back to his camp, there to discuss the disposition of the find. It was possible that authorities in the capital of Ulan Bator would pay a handsome ransom for this find. Or perhaps the leaders in Samarkand would pay more. Chinua envisioned an important auction for this great prize.