Doc Savage: Death's Dark Domain (26 page)

Still, he made it to the place where the cavern forked and this time he whipped up
the other way.

This fork was much wider. The way was not so slick underfoot. The farther he penetrated,
the dryer it became. The way was crusty with the gray matter that might have been
petrified toadstools.

This did not surprise him, although no trace of emotion touched his metallic features.

Doc had his goggles on and black-light projector working again.

They almost undid him.

Had he not been encumbered by them, Doc Savage might have paid more attention to his
hearing. It is an interesting quirk of the human brain that when one focused on seeing,
one pays much less attention to what reaches one’s ears.

Doc was not paying sufficient attention to sounds reaching his ears.

So the roar that started rolling toward him was not detected until two great burning
eyes came scooting his way!

Doc reversed direction. Whipping off his goggles, he sprinted toward the exit.

Pouring on speed, he reached the place where the cave forked, ducked around, reaching
safety.

Just in time to see a great black bat of a thing go hurtling past him.

Another followed. Two more!

They tore by with a brisk beating of wings, making the cavern walls glow with their
fiery orbs. Their long snouts brought to mind those of vicious hunting rats.

After the last of them passed, Doc raced toward the cave mouth in pursuit.

The bats were climbing into the sky, rising in a way that was unusual even for winged
things. They seemed to possess the ability to rise almost vertically, as opposed to
climbing in the natural fashion of such creatures.

Standing at the cave mouth, Doc watched them ascend.

As they climbed into the moonlight, the last to leave chanced to bank, as if taking
a different course than the others.

This brought the ugly furred head swiveling around and the great fiery eyes seemed
to fall on the Man of Bronze.

Suddenly, the foul-looking thing changed course again, and began coming at Doc! Beneath
its body, great bony talons began clacking, opening and closing greedily.

The bronze giant decided not to retreat into the cave where he might be cornered.
Instead, he flung himself to one side and raced into the desolate landscape.

An unholy red glow began pursuing him through the night. It lit up the surroundings,
making them hellish and weird.

Behind him, Doc Savage detected the faint but ominous odor of brimstone, pressing
closer and closer….

THE BRONZE AMPHIBIAN volleyed along through the uncanny night of Ultra-Stygia, throwing
a ground-traveling shadow ahead of it resembling a pursuing eagle.

Monk was flying. Ham Brooks had the co-pilot’s seat.

The dapper lawyer was hectoring the hairy chemist on the subject of Habeas Corpus,
the pig.

“One of these days I’m going to tie that insect’s long ears into a knot and hang him
on my Christmas tree for an ornament!” fumed Ham.

He was fuming because the pig had slipped up from his sleeping perch in the rear and
made off with Ham’s sword cane, which had been lying behind Ham’s seat.

Ham had discovered this only after going to the rear of the aircraft and tripping
over the strategically positioned stick. Ham had accused Monk of teaching Habeas to
do that. Monk had denied everything, saying, “Habeas knows that you’ve been threatening
to carve him with that fancy pig sticker of yours, so he was just protecting himself.”

“If my Chemistry was here—”

Monk snorted, “If that mangy baboon of yours
had
tagged along, we’d probably still be cooling our heels in that clammy cell.”

From the radio shack, Long Tom called, “Will you two pipe down? I think I have a fix
on the radio station transmitting that music from the Netherworld.”

“Is that so?” asked Monk. “Close to here?”

“Not sure. Can you swing around to the west?”

“Sure.” Monk sent the big aircraft lumbering about.

Ham remarked, “Doc wanted us safely on the ground by now.”

“We’re gettin’ there,” said Monk. “It won’t hurt to get a radio bearing on that broadcastin’
station. Doc just don’t want us to land there.”

“It’s on the commercial band, so there must be a pirate station or repeater out here,”
Long Tom mused. He was busy plotting lines on a chart.

Monk ran the amphibian back and forth in a pattern while Long Tom called out instructions.

“I think we just overshot it. What’s below, anything?”

Ham pulled out a map and consulted it.

“A small town, or hamlet. Nedavno.”

“I will lay odds that the music is being broadcast from Nedavno,” Long Tom decided.

“Too bad we can’t mosey down and take a looksee,” murmured Monk, who was not looking
forward to cooling his heels out in the wilds of Ultra-Stygia.

“Nedavno would be your undoing,” said Fiana Drost from the rear of the plane, where
she sat across from the slumbering form Doc Savage had deposited in the seat opposite.
The green eyes of Simon Page had not opened once since take-off.

“You,” grumbled Long Tom, “give me a sharp pain between my ears.”

“Then you should cut them off. They are too big for your head.”

Long Tom ignored that insult. The truth was that his ears were very generous. He was
not particularly sensitive about it, but being reminded of the fact did not add any
cream to his sour disposition.

“If we had any parachutes left,” Monk noted, “you could drop in on them, Long Tom.”

“An idea.”

Ham complained, “Are you encouraging him, ape? Doc wants us to stay out of trouble
until he returns.”

“That don’t mean we can’t meet trouble if it comes after us,” Monk pointed out.

Ham swallowed further protest. He knew that they had the latitude to follow their
own judgment. But this was one time he felt that disobeying the bronze man’s orders
would lead to disaster.

As it developed, matters were taken out of their hands.

It happened this way:

THE night was far along; midnight drew near. It had never more the semblance of a
witching hour than over the vast desolation of Ultra-Stygia. Even the clouds marching
along around them appeared sinister, like hump-backed monsters on the prowl.

There was a stirring in the rear.

Fiana Drost was the first to notice this. Her dark orbs went to the seat into which
Doc Savage had placed their invisible passenger. The cushions were dented. Now these
indentations began to shift of their own volition.

“He is waking,” she said almost without interest.

Then came a sharp intake of breath as Fiana saw a solitary eye pop open. It roved
about, shot in her direction, focused angrily. The orb was not the cat-green she had
expected.

An unladylike scream issued from her red lips.

“His eye!
It is black!”
she shrieked, retreating to the rearmost portion of the cabin.

Long Tom was the first one out of his seat. Ham uncoiled not a step behind him.

They rushed down the narrow aisle. Long Tom spotted the floating orb first. It glared
like an animated 8-ball.

“Trouble!” he rasped.

“Where is my stick!” Ham cried.

It was nowhere to be seen, so Ham made his hands into fists and prepared to wade in
behind Long Tom.

The problem was, they could see the floating eye of the opponent, but nothing more
of him. This presented a problem in tactics.

Unseen hands reached out, and as it happened, grabbed Long Tom by one oversized ear,
twisted painfully.

Seeing stars, he was hurled back at Ham. The latter dodged, tried to work around the
flailing electrical wizard.

The dapper lawyer half succeeded. Stepping over Long Tom, he managed to position himself
for the attack.

As Fiana watched, horror written all over her face, Long Tom’s head and Ham’s skull
suddenly weaved apart, only to come crashing together with an audible
bonk!

The two would-be combatants collapsed, knocked senseless.

At the controls, Monk roared. He was in the act of setting the robot pilot—which would
allow the craft to fly itself for a time—when something big and heavy lumbered up
behind him. He felt the cool edge of Ham’s sword cane resting just beneath his unshaven
jaw.

“If I slice, you die,” a growling voice warned.

“If I die, we crash,” Monk pointed out.

“I am prepared to die for the glory of my nation,” the other countered.

“Yeah. What nation is that?”

“The nation that lies beneath the crust of the earth. You know of it. The country
of the damned called Hell.”

“Now that you mention it, I do,” said Monk, stalling for time. “Back in Sunday School,
they talked it up somethin’ powerful.”

Then he seemed to have trouble with his throat.

“What is that you said?” demanded the unseen one.

“Just clearin’ a clog in my throat,” explained Monk. “Where do you want me to set
down?”

The sword cane left his Adam’s apple, and the tip pointed off to starboard.

“Turn around. West. I will direct you.”

“Sure. Anything you say.”

The growling voice warned, “No tricks.”

Monk made his voice innocent. “Tricks. Me? I’m no magician.”

The simian chemist noticed the reflection in his windscreen. One ebony eye floated
directly behind him, staring like a reverse-hued 8-ball.

Just then, the hairy thing gave out a yelp of pain and began dancing on one foot.
Or so it sounded to Monk Mayfair as he popped out of his bucket seat and began jabbing
hairy knuckles at the spot where he believed the thing’s invisible skull was. His
first swing missed. The second connected. There was the audible crunching sound of
a broken jaw, but it might have been a neck bone.

In either case, the unseen creature began falling backward, detached black orb careening
madly.

Habeas the pig, having nipped the thing’s ankle unexpectedly, hastily retreated, lest
he be trampled by the toppling brute. It slammed to the floor, its noisy fall the
only evidence of its defeat.

That grisly black eye goggled upward like a moist billiard ball. Boar-bristled paws
grabbed for Monk’s ankles, squeezed hard.

Monk let out a war whoop that would have done credit to a Comanche. The apish chemist
executed a two-footed jump that landed on the prostrate chest of his assailant. Breath
gushed out of the foe’s lungs. That took the fight out of the beast.

Reaching out, Monk found Ham’s sword cane and used it to prod at the body of his fallen
foe. The anesthetic-coated tip did its work. All activity subsided. Normal breathing
returned. The black eye stared up blankly, and did not move.

Monk grinned. “Good thing I taught you the Mayan word for ‘bite.’ Right, Habeas?”

The ungainly shoat squealed happily, but maintained a respectful distance.

Returning to the pilot’s seat, Monk regained control of the aircraft.

Fiana Drost crept forward, eyes stark.

“It is one of the
Ciclopi,
” she breathed.

“We musta retrieved the wrong guy,” declared Monk. “Now we gotta find Simon Page again—if
we can.”

“I doubt that we will ever see Page alive, again,” Fiana said dolefully.

“To talk so cheerfully all the time,” muttered Monk, “you musta had a rough childhood.”

“I am speaking truth.”

“Well, I, for one, could stand to hear less of it,” growled Monk. “Now simmer down,
you gloomy Garbo. I gotta find us a landin’ spot.”

Fiana withdrew to sulk in her seat.

Monk concentrated on his flying, paying little attention to anything else. He listened
for any sign of Ham and Long Tom coming back to life, but all he could detect was
their monotonous breathing. Years in the company of his two comrades had familiarized
him with their distinctive breathing. Long Tom snored. Ham rather whistled.

After some time, a new sound came to his ears.

At first, it came as a ripping, followed by an unpleasant noise as if someone was
choking, or perhaps drowning noisily.

“What the heck’s goin’ on?” asked Monk, screwing his apish head around.

He was just in time to spy Fiana Drost stand up from the spot immediately behind the
pilot compartment, where that gruesome ebony eye stared ceilingward.

“It is nothing,” she said. “I have merely cut the worthless brute’s throat.”

“You did what!”

“He is an enemy, and therefore deserving of his fate.”

Setting the robot pilot, Monk pounded out into the aisle. He all but tripped over
the hairy heap that obstructed the forward portion of the aircraft.

Reaching down, he felt around the thing, encountered stiff bristles. The impression
of a hulking hedgehog was created in Monk’s mind.

As he did so, he could see the hackles on the back of Habeas rise in a startling fashion;
the pig’s beady eyes looked unnerved.

Locating the head, Monk probed for the throat. He encountered a wet slick of moistness.
It ran warm and thick.

Leaping to his feet, he stared at his fingers.

They looked dry, but felt wet. Monk sniffed. The metallic tang of blood filled his
apish nostrils.

“Ye-o-o-w!”
howled Monk. “Throat cut!”

“Did I not tell you this?” returned Fiana coolly.

Wiping his hands on a rag, Monk returned to the controls, feeling his own blood run
cold in his veins.

“Lady, I don’t know what Doc will do with you when this is all over, but I think he’s
gonna have to find a special place for you.”

“There is no place for me,” said Fiana Drost dolefully. “On this Earth, or elsewhere.
Not any more.”

LONG TOM ROBERTS was the first to awaken. He shook his head and climbed to his feet.

Feeling of his bruised skull, he asked, “What happened?”

“The black-eyed Cyclops knocked your heads together,” explained Monk.

Long Tom looked around wildly. “Where is it?”

“On the floor right in front of you.”