Doc Savage: The Ice Genius (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 12) (7 page)

Knuckles white with anger, his sour face crimson with repressed fury, Long Tom Roberts ground his teeth audibly and reluctantly returned to his seat.

Another minute passed before anyone stirred. They were getting a grip on their frayed nerves.

It had been one of the most arduous landings they had ever experienced. A crash out here, a thousand miles from any civilized settlement, would have put them in a bad spot.

Coming out of his seat, Doc Savage went to the cabin door and flung it open. He carried with him a pair of goggles of unusual construction.

Outside, Doc Savage gave rapid instructions.

“Long Tom, you remain here and guard the plane from bandits. The others follow me.”

“What about me?” asked Monzingo Baldwin.

Doc Savage told him, “Best that you remain here with Long Tom.”

The little man gave a sideways glance in the direction of the pallid electrical expert. “But I—I’m afraid of him,” he quavered.

“Very well. You may accompany us. But stick close.”

Monzingo Baldwin gave the big bronze man an angelic smile. But the look he bestowed upon Long Tom Roberts was dark.

They set off on foot, Monk, Ham and Renny brandishing supermachine pistols. Doc Savage did not carry one of the intricate weapons, preferring from longtime experience to rely on his wits rather than become dependent on firearms.

They were a fair distance from the cave; it took them more than a half hour to reach the spot.

There they found Johnny’s camp, abandoned.

Doc Savage picked through the remnants of the camp, and said simply, “Johnny’s camp lantern is missing.”

Renny grunted, “Bandits probably made off with it.”

Doc said nothing, but led them toward the ice cave.

They entered by scrambling over tumbled rock and dirt. It was a testament to the power of the explosive bullets Johnny’s supermachine pistol had disgorged that so much natural debris had been ripped loose from the side of the ridge that it formed a small hill by itself.

By this time it was becoming dusk. They found it necessary to produce their special flashlights, which operated on a spring-generator system. Simply by winding a small crank on the barrel, current was generated that would last several minutes.

They entered, Doc Savage leading the way.

THE place appeared to be a natural cavern. Even though it was cool outside, it was much colder within. The reason was the interior walls of the cave were rippled with ancient ice. The stuff had a dark greenish quality, as if it were not natural ice.

Monk and Renny rubbed at the ice with their sleeves, removing the grime of centuries. Beneath, ordinary-looking ice was revealed. The stuff was striated and not very transparent.

Doc Savage spoke up, “Natural ice caves such as this one have been found in other parts of the world. They are rare, but not terribly unusual.”

The bronze giant pointed his flashlight at the ceiling. Suspended overhead were great icicle-like stalactites that resembled icy fangs. Some of these were quite large. A few had been broken by the explosion that had revealed the cave, and were lying in great conical sections on the dirt floor.

As they worked their way deeper into the cavern, Doc Savage found a pick axe that had been carelessly tossed aside. It was a special tool machined with fangs and a pike extension at the top.

“Johnny’s, no doubt,” he said. Then the bronze man’s ever-active golden eyes went to the wall of ice by the pick axe.

It was clear that the bony archaeologist had been attempting to excavate something from the ice. He had done a great deal of chipping in one spot, then in another section several feet away.

In the center, framed by these vertical excavations, something shadowy loomed within the deep greenish ice.

Doc Savage directed the beam of his flashlight toward this shadowy shape.

The others crowded around.

Renny boomed, “Looks like a man stuck in there.”

“Jove!” added Ham. “He appears to have been entombed in ice.”

Monk asked, “Did the old Mongols bury their dead this way?”

Doc Savage shook his head. “Not according to history.”

Then the bronze man’s golden eyes saw the script.

It was excusable that he did not notice this at first glance. The ice was wonderfully rippled, and cloudy within, having veins and occlusions. This was not pellucid ice, such as covers a frozen pond in winter.

The script writing on the wall stood high up, above the shadowy form entombed within.

In the eerie silence of the place, with their breaths showing cold, the sound of Doc Savage’s trilling came as a sudden shock.

They were used to this, for Doc Savage had displayed this habit for as long as they had known him. Perhaps it was the dank atmosphere of the place. Possibly the flavor of the sound this time was different.

Whatever the truth, Doc Savage’s trilling manifested as a low melody, which impinged upon their ears and carried throughout the ice cave, as it mounted the musical scale in its characteristically tuneless yet melodic fashion. Its ventriloquial quality was also very marked in the cave confines. It seemed to be coming from nowhere yet everywhere, saturating the cold confines of the cavern.

Often, Doc’s trilling swelled from a subtle sound to a more awesome cadence. But in this instance, the sound climbed only so high and lingered at that pitch, wandering about like an insect lost in a barn.

It took a long time to trail off. This meant that Doc was so struck by what he saw that the bronze giant failed to notice that he was issuing the trilling. It was a habit he picked up in the Orient, and it always embarrassed him. So naturally, Doc stifled it whenever he realized he was emitting the strange susurration.

Ham demanded, “What is it, Doc?”

Doc Savage was slow in replying. “The writing is in the old Mongol script of long-ago,” he said quietly.

“Is that so?” squeaked Monk. “What does it say?”

“ ‘If I still lived, mankind would tremble.’ ”

“Holy cow!” thumped Renny. “What’s trapped in that ice? A blamed monster?”

“Yes,” said Doc Savage steadily. “One of the worst monsters in recorded history.”

Doc Savage’s straightforward response stunned them for a moment. The bronze man was not given to exaggeration, or hyperbole. Nor did he joke about serious matters.

It was abundantly clear to all of them that Doc was very grave indeed.

Renny rumbled, “Well, let’s hear it.”

Doc Savage did not reply. He stepped close to the wall of ice, which had been wiped clean of all grime and dust.

The bronze giant’s eerie flake-gold eyes were peering deep into the matrix of ice.

The figure there looked human enough, although very squat and broad of build. The skull of the thing seem larger than it should, and its outlines were grotesque and defied comprehension. It looked human, but in a general way. That is, it possessed the requisite limbs in their proper places and proportions.

The thing in the ice was possibly only a foot and a half deep into the block of frozen matter.

Doc’s flashlight shifted its intense beam, attempting to illuminate it.

The others watched, crowding close. They were very curious.

The penetrating ray of Doc’s flashlight found the eyes of the creature within. They were a pale yellow color—as yellow as a cur’s eyes. But these were not canine orbs. They looked human.

These sulfurous orbs seem to be staring back, as if the thing within yet lived.

It was unnerving, and made some of them shiver in spite of themselves.

Monk spoke up. “Blazes! It’s like he’s lookin’ right at us.”

“Nonsense,” snapped Ham. “Whoever or whatever that thing is, it has been dead for very long time.”

Others looked to Doc Savage for confirmation of that bold assertion.

Doc Savage only said, “It appears as if Johnny was trying to remove the block of ice single-handed, but ceased or was interrupted.”

“Why would he do that?” asked Ham. “Why not expose the body, if he was so interested in it?”

“To preserve it for posterity,” replied Doc. “Or possibly it was because he was afraid to unearth the being entombed in the ice.”

The gravity of Doc’s words held them all in a momentary silence.

It was then that the earsplitting hooting of one of Doc Savage’s supermachine pistols split the gathering night.

“That’s Long Tom!” howled Monk. “He’s in trouble!”

Chapter VII

THE DEVIL IS A DWARF

DOC SAVAGE and his men made a concerted rush for the mouth of the uncanny ice cavern.

Plunging outside, they were met by a deepening dusk under a rising moon. For the afternoon had grown long during their exploration of the cavern.

The lunar orb happened to be full, climbing in a sky scoured clear of clouds. Sufficient illumination poured down from the open sky to show Long Tom Roberts perched on the folding steps of the big flying boat, firing his supermachine pistol at an oncoming horde.

“Bandits, blast them!” roared Monk.

Evidently, a knot of horsemen had come galloping down from the hills, alerted by the sight of Doc Savage’s landing plane.

Now they were thundering toward the aircraft, their ponies picking up speed.

Pistols and rifles boomed and cannonaded. Tufts of grass and dirt clods kicked up under the plane’s broad wings.

Long Tom was hosing the onrushing bandits with the supermachine pistol. He was doing a good job of knocking horseman off their steeds, but an unfortunate consequence of the efficiency of the rapid-firing pistols was that the ammunition drum tended to empty in an amazingly short amount of time, forcing Long Tom to have to change canisters in order to resume firing. In these intervals, he was exposed and vulnerable.

Seeing his predicament, Doc and his men charged for the plane.

They immediately attracted bullets.

A rifleman who was either an expert shot or plain lucky, selected the largest target, who was Renny Renwick. He fired once, and Renny was hurtled backward as if kicked by an invisible mule.

Ham halted, and knelt beside him, aristocratic features dark with concern.

“How badly are you hurt?” the dapper lawyer demanded anxiously.

“Not as badly as that bird when I get hold of his neck,” rumbled Renny, climbing to his feet. He commenced coughing, but was otherwise unhurt. His bulletproof undervest had turned the slug.

They raced to catch up with the others.

By this time, Monk was sounding as if he were waging a one-man war against the bandits, who were now pulling their horses to a stop, dismounting with alacrity.

The bandits were well-drilled, for they did a remarkable thing. They pushed their horses into a prone position, and dug in behind them, using their steeds as living sandbags.

From these novel defensive positions, the raiders lay down and started firing over the sleek, sweat-lathered sides of their horses.

Apish Monk was methodically hosing these positions while emitting a bloodcurdling yell that would normally have struck fear into any ordinary foe. But the hairy chemist’s war whoops seemed only to encourage the Mongols to return fire more rapidly.

The barrage of answering bullets was remarkable, considering that the weapons employed were not the most modern. A few even qualified as blunderbusses. Some were muzzleloaders. No doubt many of the whizzing slugs that sought human occupancy were hand-poured.

Doc Savage was the first to reach the aircraft, as Long Tom got his machine pistol back into operation. The puny electrical expert managed to put a few of his foes to sleep, but seemed to knock out more horses than men.

Doc urged Long Tom into the plane, whose sides were bulletproof. The bronze man pulled from his person several small items which he armed, then pitched them in the direction of their foes.

These devices ranged from smoke bombs to compact tear-gas generators. Doc hurled them overhand, and they begin detonating among the men behind the whinnying horses. The pyrotechnics seemed to have more effect on the horses than their riders, because the horses abruptly struggled to their feet, exhibiting signs of a growing panic. Prior to this they had been remarkably nerveless, which showed that they had been trained for this sort of raid.

Even through the growing smoke and the choking, swirling, moonlit gas, bullets continued to snap in the direction of Doc Savage and his men. But these were necessarily going wilder than before.

Monk, Ham and Renny reached the aircraft unscathed, and clambered aboard. The last to climb in was the big-fisted engineer, who slammed the cabin door shut. It drummed and vibrated in its frame as arriving bullets pounded it relentlessly.

Monk grinned broadly. “Made it! For a while there I wasn’t so sure that we would.”

It was then that an awful realization came to them.

Oddly, it was Long Tom Roberts who noticed it first.

“Where is that fool midget?” he barked.

They looked around wildly, then realized that Monzingo Baldwin had not followed them out of the ice cave.

“What do we do about this?” demanded Ham Brooks.

Doc Savage said, “He will have to wait. Too dangerous to fetch him now.”

It was a strange sensation they felt at that moment. Through the long hours of the flight to Mongolia they had not become accustomed to the company of the little man who had been the cause of so much trouble in the past. Now that he was in imminent peril, some of them felt a little queasy about the matter.

Doc Savage moved briskly to the cockpit and reclaimed the control wheel. But he had no intention of taking off just yet. It was just that the cockpit afforded him the best view of the besieging band of bandits.

Sepia smoke mixed with whitish tear gas was swirling around the broad, moon-washed steppe. Horses, whinnying madly, were breaking in all directions. Well-armed bandits were rushing to recapture them. It was not exactly a rout, but it was a remarkable break from the former iron discipline of the Mongol attackers.

Doc Savage watched this panic for some time, counting the number of foes, tabulating their weapons and considering options.