Doc Savage: Death's Dark Domain (24 page)

“Evidently, they are not always fatal,” Ham suggested.

Doc got another gas mask and after discovering the mouth and nose by touch, affixed
it in place. It was like trying to muzzle a great wolf.

“He should come to in time,” Doc said, straightening.

Long Tom turned to Monk and quipped, “Well, you called it.”

“Huh?”

“A bat out of Hades, brimstone breath and all.”

Fiana Drost remarked, “Such is the true nature of Ultra-Stygia. There are many entrances
to Hell here. And many kinds of devils that emerge from the dark bowels of the earth
below.”

The mournful timbre of her voice made the flat pronouncement sound like a knell of
doom.

DOC began issuing new orders.

“Monk, your portable laboratory, please.”

“Gotcha.”

Going to the back of the plane where metal storage containers were racked, the hairy
chemist removed a large one that contained as complete a chemist’s laboratory as was
possible to assemble in one receptacle.

Taking this outside, he threw it open, began collecting samples of the air, which
he captured in glass bottles.

At Doc’s command, Long Tom returned to the radio cubicle to continue monitoring the
broadcast transmission that carried the music of the lower regions, it seemed.

Outside, Doc borrowed some tools from Monk and began taking soil samples.

“What’s that for?” asked Ham, who hovered about, having nothing otherwise to do.

“Two nations are contesting to dominate this land, barren and blighted as it is. There
must be a sound reason.”

“You are thinking minerals. Or gold. Maybe uranium.”

“Land is usually valued for what lies in it, or how it can be developed.”

Ham prodded the rocky soil with his slim stick.

“Doesn’t appear to be suitable for farming, I would judge.”

“Therefore, the soil contains a thing of value,” said Doc.

Ham offered, “It is certain that this pocket of godforsaken turf is not coveted because
it is crawling with unclean and unnatural things.”

The dapper lawyer grew thoughtful. He had something on his mind, which was puzzling
him.

“Doc, do you suppose the ‘Dark Devil’ that Emile Zirn spoke about is John Sunlight?”

Doc Savage shook his head slowly. “The Dark Devil is not a human being.”

“How do you know?”

“By looking into the crystal,” Doc said slowly.

His reply caused Ham to look extremely disappointed. Doc’s answer was not serious.
He could not tell any more than the next man by looking into a soothsayer’s crystal
ball.

Because of Doc’s uncanny ability at reading clues and drawing conclusions from them,
someone had once accused him of having the power of a seer.

The dapper lawyer wanted to ask the bronze man for more, but knew that Doc Savage
only spoke of his conclusions when he was ready, not before.

Doc finished his analysis.

Ambling up, Monk asked, “Discover anything, Doc?”

“Nothing of consequence. And you?”

“A gas of some kind.”

“Man-made?”

“Either that, or like nothing that was ever found before now.”

“That hardly answers the question,” sniffed Ham.

“Maybe you can find this stuff down in the hot place,” Monk agreed. “Could be that
big bat-monster brought a dose of it up from down below. But unless you want to be
the first lawyer to go to Hell without dyin’ first, my expert opinion is the best
you have.”

Doc climbed onto the wing and worked his way to the window, balancing himself atop
the aircraft’s roof. He had a chemical sprayer in one hand and a wad of waste rags
in the other. Lying down on his stomach and applying the stuff to the windshield liberally,
he began making inroads on the black stuff. It had begun to thicken. He took out a
pocket clasp knife and did some scraping.

Monk watched this operation with gimlet-eyed interest.

“That sure ain’t engine oil,” he remarked. “Petroleum products don’t harden up that
fast.”

“It appears not,” agreed Doc, finishing the job and climbing back down to the ground.

He toted a sample of the sepia matter to Monk’s portable lab and subjected it to a
battery of tests. When he was done, his trilling sound issued forth from somewhere
deep in his pulsing throat. It struck the ears surprisingly like a whistle of puzzlement.

“What is it?” Ham asked.

Doc replied, “There are several natural substances mixed in, including mucus, but
the primary ingredient is an unusual one.”

Expectant eyes regarded him.

“Octopus ink,” said Doc.

Uneasy glances were exchanged. No one knew quite what to say to that.

“Now what?” wondered Long Tom.

BEFORE anyone could answer, a flock of the huge black harpies flew overhead, elongated,
rat-like snouts pointing south, toward the Tazan border.

Everyone looked up, following them with fascinated eyes.

“Look at the size of them!” Long Tom exploded.

“There must be a dozen of the devils,” breathed Ham.

No expression crossed Doc Savage’s face. “We will take to the air,” he decided.

They climbed back on board. Doc Savage got the engines going, threw the craft around
by releasing only one brake and, after releasing the second, threw the aircraft into
a headlong sprint over the same patch of cinder-strewn ground on which he had landed.

They were aloft very quickly.

Doc climbed to an altitude that placed him considerably over the formation of harridan
creatures.

“Figurin’ to dive bomb them, Doc?” asked Monk from the co-pilot bucket.

Doc Savage shook his head. “I want to observe them carefully first.”

Trailing the unearthly flock proved a simple matter. They did not appear to notice
the big bronze bird flying along in the darkness. The wing-mounted motors could be
silenced by the throwing of a cockpit lever. Doc engaged this. Operation of the silencer
cost the engines some fuel efficiency, but Doc was more interested in stealth than
speed.

Monk had his field glasses pointed downward. Ham was using a second pair plucked from
a starboard seat pocket.

It was difficult to make out much. Black wings flowing over dark terrain. The moon
lay behind a range of mountains. The twinkling of scattered starlight was of no help.

Ham was saying, “Those great wings appear to be… beating.”

“So?” retorted Monk. “Ain’t that what wings are supposed to do?”

“They are ribbed exactly like bat’s wings,” the dapper lawyer added. He sounded skeptical
of his own words.

“Whatever they are,” said Long Tom, taking his headset off for a moment to contribute
to the conversation, “the things are flying in formation.”

“Birds do that,” Ham reminded.

“Bats don’t,” pointed out Long Tom.

That put an entirely different complexion on it.

Doc Savage trailed the chevron of monster bats as they approached the border with
Tazan.

Up ahead, a contingent of soldiers and their vehicles were charging about, raising
Cain.

“This appears to be the bunch that went searching for us after our escape from Jagellon
Castle,” said Doc Savage.

Approaching the steel-helmeted detachment, the bats broke formation, diving and swooping
with grisly intent.

A coiling gray mist began filling the air. Trucks ground to a halt, and men piled
out, fleeing in all directions. Scattering soldiers clutched at throats, began crumpling.

“Want to bet it smells of brimstone and sulphur?” remarked Long Tom.

No one took him up on that wager.

It was the matter of a few minutes before the black bats had finished with their awful
activities.

When it was over, soldiers in uniform—their color was impossible to ascertain in the
evening air—lay in heaps and clusters where they fell.

“What’s goin’ on?” blurted Monk.

From the rear, Fiana Drost intoned, “The legions of Hell are attacking Tazan.”

“Will you knock that off?” snapped Long Tom. “You are giving me the creeps with that
kind of ghoul talk.”

“You’d get bigger creeps if you ever saw her fly through the air like one of them
midnight rodents,” Monk muttered.

Their fiendish work done, the black bat-things wheeled about and, regaining altitude,
flew back toward Egallah. They did not fly in formation this time, but went singly,
as if once their dreadful deeds were accomplished, they had relaxed all discipline.

Their red eyes, skimming over the earth, were horrible to behold. They painted the
surroundings with a lurid light.

DOC SAVAGE suddenly sent the aircraft screaming earthward. Wind in the wing braces
began howling in sympathy with the powerful radials.

“What’s going on?” demanded Fiana.

“It is my intention to throw a scare into these things,” said the bronze man.

“Are you insane?” blazed Fiana. “They are devils. Things from earth’s underbelly.
You cannot—”

Doc Savage snapped the amphibian’s wings about, lining up on the things until they
were directly ahead of the discolored windshield.

With a bronze hand, he turned on the powerful wing-mounted flood lamps.

This illuminated the oncoming monsters. It also had an immediate effect upon them.

They began scattering. It happened very quickly, and perhaps only Doc Savage got a
good look at the many-winged commotion. Abruptly, they were gone.

The bronze amphibian shot through the space where they had been, bore on.

“Man alive!” enthused Monk. “You spooked ’em good!”

“Did you see them more clearly?” asked Ham.

Monk replied, “Yeah. They looked like big bats with devil-eared heads and burnin’
coal eyes. Nothing else.”

“Impossible!” snapped Ham.

“I saw what I saw,” returned Monk. “Don’t say I didn’t!”

Doc was maneuvering the amphibian about, attempting to find the bat squadron once
more.

It took some doing. Doc spied no smoldering red orbs to help pick them out of the
increasing dusk, but in time he found two that were flying close together.

Once he had the ugly pair in view, he snapped off the flood lamps and asked Monk Mayfair
to fetch a pair of scanning binoculars. Monk came back with two sets.

Doc took his in hand. Monk lifted his, too. These ingenious devices were sensitive
to so-called “invisible” light and enabled the viewer to see in absolute darkness.

Engaging an ultra-violet light projector mounted in the nose of the great aircraft,
Doc Savage fell to studying the thing via “black light.” Photofluorescent images began
parading before his eyes, each one produced mechanically.

The world thus depicted had the qualities of a black-and-white movie, but with stark
contrasts. In this uneven illumination, the two bat apparitions looked even more eerily
alive.

“Glidin’ home to roost somewheres,” Monk decided.

“Bats live in caves, don’t they?” asked Long Tom.

“Mostly,” agreed Monk. “Caves or the hollows of trees and attics—when they can find
their way in.”

This particular species of bat proved to live in a cave—or rather several of them.

For as Doc Savage flew along, he spotted one of the harpy-like pair fluttering down
into the mouth of a cave set in the side of a hill and vanish within.

“There he goes!” yelled Monk.

The other one selected an entirely different cave.

As they watched, additional bat monsters began arriving. Each selected a cave—the
hills seemed to be honeycombed with them—and slithered in. They did not even tuck
in their wings, but settled down in an uncanny way that appeared to defy gravity.

“We found their rookery,” decided Monk. “What next?”

“We will continue on while seeking a suitable landing spot,” said the bronze man without
outward concern.

FOR THIS ONCE, Doc Savage proved to be a hopeless optimist.

No suitable landing spot could be found. True, the growing darkness made it harder
to find any such flat locality. But this limb of Ultra-Stygia proved to be the hilly
portion. Flat swatches were rare, and unsuitable due to craters, tumbled boulders,
lightning-blasted dead trees and other natural obstructions.

By now the moon was up and they could see the spectral starkness of it all.

“This place was well-named,” Ham opined. “Gives one the shivers.”

“We will have to change plans,” said Doc. “Monk, you will fly.”

The apish chemist seized the controls. “What you got in mind, Doc?”

Instead of answering, Doc Savage went to the back of the aircraft and began donning
a parachute pack. It was the last one in the remaining store. He wore his leather
equipment vest, whose pockets were stuffed with myriad devices.

Long Tom, the electrical wizard, spoke. “I’ve got an angle to work on, Doc.”

“You mean the mysterious music?” Doc asked. “That was the angle I intended to put
you to work on. See if you can locate its source. But do not intervene.”

“Got it.”

“Isn’t this one time it is too dangerous to go it alone?” asked Ham.

Doc replied, “Whatever impends, it seems to be concentrated in this region of Ultra-Stygia.”
The bronze man directed his steady gaze toward Fiana Drost. “What can you add to this?”

“Below is the Marea Negra,” she said. “What the Tazans call Monti Alb. The most desolate
and disputed pocket of Ultra-Stygia.”

“Why is it so valuable?” asked Doc.

“Look below you,” Fiana said dryly. “Obviously it is not. No?”

Doc Savage finished buckling the web harness and completed his instruction.

“There is no point in flying on to Egallah, or back to Tazan for that matter,” he
said. “We have no friends in either country. Return to the safe place where we last
put down. I will join you there.”

“But that’s fifty miles back as the bat flies!” exploded Monk.

“I will find you,” repeated Doc, who wasted no time in throwing open the cabin door
and leaping out into space.

Ham rushed to pull the door shut, almost falling out himself because he neglected
to abandon his stick while doing so, and it entangled with the door frame.