Doc Savage: Death's Dark Domain (36 page)

Long Tom spun the receiver dial and found the frequency once more.

The uncanny music began flowing out. It filled the cabin like a funeral march— which
is what it was alleged to be, of course. These mordant strains took away any feeling
of victory that was rising in their spirits.

“I guess our job ain’t done here,” Monk decided.

“My country will surely respond to this provocation,” intoned Fiana Drost. “I imagine
that it will be very satisfactorily bloody.”

She ducked another of Long Tom’s shoes. This time Fiana flung it back, missing the
electrical wizard’s pale locks completely.

Ham suddenly had a question. “If these secret broadcasts were coming from Egallah
all along, why did the Egallans broadcast the funeral march of the Tazan monarchy
as a means of conveying their messages?”

Doc Savage offered, “To further disguise the true nature of this means of communication,
by sowing confusion as to its origin. You will remember the pirate radio station employed
a commercial frequency owned by Tazan.”

To which Fiana Drost retorted, “You must remember that the Tazans had unleashed their
evil ogres upon Egallah. This was seen in my country as another provocation. The Tazan
dogs have been squatting upon our sacred land, tarnishing it with their filthy tread,
for a generation. They have been spoiling for a war. Now they have one.”

No one disputed her assertion. Nor did anyone think it necessary to mention that the
late monarch of Tazan was no model of kingly decorum—not to mention the fact that,
just as Baron Karl had, the former playboy prince paid millions of dollars to John
Sunlight for a death-dealing device whose sole purpose was the slaughter of innocents.

Ham cast a challenging eye toward Fiana Drost.

“Do you realize that this conflict which both sides seem to desire so much, very nearly
resulted in horrible death for thousands?” he demanded. “Do you no longer care about
your own people?”

Fiana Drost favored Ham with a withering stare. She opened her mouth, seemed about
to speak, then closed it tightly. Wrapping her sable cloak about her, she seemed to
lose herself in her own dark thoughts.

After a while, she could be heard murmuring, “Death comes to us all. In due time.”

Grimly, Doc Savage pointed the great bawling amphibian due north.

DOC SAVAGE WAS unusually tight-lipped. His metallic countenance was etched in grave
lines; the aureate flakes of his eyes resembled dull mica.

Ham Brooks looked to him. “You’re thinking that none of this would have happened if
it weren’t for John Sunlight,” he suggested in low tones.

Doc shook his head. “None of this terror would have transpired had I destroyed those
infernal death-dealing machines, rather than storing them in my Fortress vault.”

“But who woulda thought anyone would get way up in the Arctic to find ’em?” countered
Monk.

“I should have foreseen the possibility,” admitted the bronze man wearily. “And there
is still the matter of the missing cache of weapons.”

“Probably still back in the ice pack, since we’re pretty dang sure Sunlight got eaten
by that polar bear,” Monk opined.

By this time, they had lapsed into speaking Mayan for privacy.

Monk suddenly thought of something. “Say, Doc, why did you invent that blinding gimcrack
in the first place?”

Doc Savage grew reflective. “Blindness is a terrible scourge,” he replied thoughtfully.
“If an electrical ray could be devised that would restore the impaired rod-and-cone
functions, permitting sight for the sightless, it would be a boon to mankind. My original
researches were along that line.”

“Instead, you got the opposite effect, huh?”

“Exactly.”

Long Tom stuck his head out of the radio cubby. “Doc, I found it!”

Doc turned. “Yes?”

“We passed over this sector before. Directly ahead is Nedavno. A frontier town. The
radio transmission’s coming from there.”

“We will land,” Doc decided, throwing the bawling plane downward so rapidly that the
others had to hang on for dear life.

The town of Nedavno showed up in the moonlit snow not long after. It was a modest
hamlet, and probably had been standing on the same spot for centuries. The bell tower
of an old stone church peeped up from among the low housetops arrayed around it in
no particular configuration.

Doc flung the amphibian around the spot, seeking a safe landing place. He found none.
Nor was he surprised. This was rugged country.

“Looks like we’re out of luck,” Monk muttered.

“We will chance a landing in the snow,” decided the bronze man.

Doc picked a pasture that was an undulating expanse of snowdrifts. He dragged it only
once, once because he realized that it would be impossible to tell what snags—tree
stumps and whatnot—lay beneath the innocent-appearing white crust.

Doc slanted the amphibian out of the sky.

“Here goes,” warned Long Tom.

Doc took the plane in along a shallow glide path. He did not drop the landing wheels.
Everyone expected that.

The ground hurtled up like a looming shroud. Landing was such an unsettling prospect
that even Fiana Drost’s morose tongue remained still. She closed her eyes. Her lips
moved, as if in praying. No one noticed this.

The flat keel of the pontoon hull touched, bounced, and a long scraping sound filled
the cabin, making their teeth clench. The flying boat jarred only once—a fair result
under the circumstances.

Doc hauled the protesting engines into reverse. This had no immediate effect.

The amphibian banged along, slewing to starboard. Doc held the controls in place,
but everyone understood that there would be no controlling the great hurtling aircraft
should she start careening in any direction.

Providence—or luck at any rate—was with them. The big bronze bird eventually scraped
to a slow sliding halt. Doc cut the engines. The silence that followed was an eerie
thing.

Doc jumped from his seat. “Come on, Long Tom.”

“What about the rest of us?” asked Ham, worried that he would be left behind, and
miss a good fight.

“You and Monk must remain behind to guard the plane. We will need it for our escape.
Technically, we are spies in wartime.”

“I will go with you,” Fiana offered.

“Not likely!” Long Tom snapped. “You’ll lead us into another trap.”

“I would prefer to lead my nation out of war,” she returned. Her voice had undergone
a profound change. Gone was its former coldness. There was pain deep in her dark eyes.

“Why the sudden change of heart?” asked Doc.

“I have had no change of heart,” she snapped. “But I have been thinking. My thoughts
have run to what would have befallen my beloved nation had you not stopped the Tazan
bombers carrying their loads to the cities. For the same reason that I could not liquidate
you, I cannot bear to see innocent persons suffer and die. Soldiers are another matter.
Their sacrifice is their glory. Spies such as myself, we court death knowingly. But
the people… that is another matter altogether.”

Doc Savage regarded her for a long interval, in which the only reaction lay in his
ceaselessly whirling golden eyes.

“You will remain close at all times,” he directed at last.

“Of course.”

“Doc!” Ham protested. “You cannot trust her. She’s—”

“—coming with us,” the bronze man said firmly.

And that was the end of that.

Doc divested himself of his alloy-mesh armor, and handed Long Tom and Fiana chemical
gas protectors, should they become necessary.

“In case of attack by the bat-ships,” he explained.

They exited carefully, began trudging through the snow. Drifts were piled deep enough
that they soon sank to their knees. Doc glanced back and saw that the amphibian had
been undamaged by their rough landing. It had been designed for just such circumstances,
but that did not mean it was foolproof. The compromise between boat hull and ski runner
meant that the ship was not ideally suited for either water or snow landings.

They moved on, stealthy as the noisy snow crust permitted.

NIGHT reigned. The moon was rather high, and correspondingly it looked very far away
now. That meant it shed a weaker light than before. This suited their need for concealment.

Soon, they came to the hamlet. All seemed still. The only activity was wind snatching
at the smoke arising from ancient chimneys, whose slanting roofs were whitening with
each passing minute.

They slipped in between two darkened houses that belonged to another century. The
town folk appeared to be sleeping, for the hour was now very late.

Overhead, a bat flapped along, sounding like ghoulishly soft applause.

“Ordinary bat,” Long Tom observed. He rarely took his eyes off the meter that attached
to the special vest in which a radio-direction loop was woven.

“North,” he decided.

Doc looked at the meter. “Northwest, perhaps.”

They moved northward, creeping along like careful cats. Draped in funeral black, Fiana
Drost stayed close. Her eyes were hollow from lack of sleep, and their hollowness
brought to mind the sunken eyes of the sinister John Sunlight, her acknowledged male
parent.

“What are we going to do with her when this is over?” Long Tom whispered in Mayan.

“Send her to the college,” returned Doc.

Long Tom muttered darkly, “Too good for that murderess.”

Doc made no reply. His eyes were scouring the way ahead.

They made good progress. The town was a haphazard thing, with dwellings arranged here
and there, streets and lanes growing up naturally between them in the manner of cow
paths. Only when they reached the town square did they see signs of planning and organization.

The town square was not much. A simple tree-lined park. The stone church they had
spotted from the air overlooked this blanket patch of smooth, undisturbed ivory.

Fat flakes of snow were still falling and Long Tom shivered, thinking of the anthrax
spores, which were white as snow, but silently deadly.

“We’re close,” he hissed.

Doc squeezed Long Tom’s slender shoulder for attention, pointed toward the church
bell tower. A single window showed, shuttered tightly.

“A radio set-up could be secreted in that hollow space,” he said quietly.

“My idea, too.”

They advanced on the church, taking care not to make any sounds. But cold night air
was already hardening the snow, which made it crack and groan under their feet.

Still, the town of Nedavno seemed to slumber on, oblivious to their presence.

They reached the stone entrance steps. The ancient church was fronted by a large door,
painted gray. Opening it without producing noise was out of the question. Doc moved
around to the side, looking for another way in.

A hatch in the rear suggested access to a cellar. The hatch was covered in an inch
of fresh snowfall.

Doc knelt, smoothed away this accumulation and found a handle. He pulled. It refused
to budge. There was no hasp or other fastening.

“Locked from inside,” hissed Long Tom.

Doc nodded. From a pocket of his equipment vest, the bronze man removed a case that
contained an insulated handle and several steel shafts that would fit into it. Selecting
one shaft, he inserted it and created a serviceable screwdriver, which he used to
unscrew the hinges on one side of the hatch.

When he had made a pile of screws, Doc separated the hinges from the hatch door and
placed the latter carefully against the church wall. They went down onto cobwebbed
steps.

“Is there any place around here that doesn’t lead down to depths where they bury people?”
complained Long Tom.

Doc used his flash ray to examine the cellar. Except for fiery grates of a coal furnace,
there was nothing remarkable to be found.

Doc led them to a set of plank steps. They mounted these, up to an unlocked door,
and into the church proper. It was a gloomy place, vaulted, but rather modest. The
pews stood empty as tombs.

From above their heads, they could hear the strains of ethereal music. It seemed a
fitting place to hear it.

Long Tom suddenly hissed, “That’s not coming from a radio speaker!”

Doc touched him for silence. A bronze digit indicated a set of circular steps in a
dim corner alcove. They climbed this—or started to, rather.

A mammoth bat came flapping down at them.

Recoiling, Long Tom choked back an outcry of surprise.

Lunging, Doc Savage reached out and seized the thing by its throat. The bat fluttered
and flopped wildly, flailing and stamping its booted feet. For it was one of the human
bats who piloted the grotesque gyroplanes of Egallah.

The bat pilot was a man of fair size, but Doc overpowered him easily. After a moment’s
pressure on spinal nerves, he went limp in the bronze man’s terrible fingers.

Doc set him aside and waved Long Tom and Fiana up the steps to the upper regions of
the old church.

Long Tom’s eyes went back to his meter one last time, then evidently satisfied, he
pocketed it. Out came his supermachine pistol.

The stairs corkscrewed up to the bell tower—it was hard not to think of it as a bat’s
belfry. The plank risers groaned at every step. They came at last to a closed door.

Doc tested it, then eased the panel open.

The place was a circular affair. On one side stood a makeshift broadcast booth. In
the booth sat a man. He was hunched over an electrical instrument consisting of an
upright wooden box resembling an oversized country telephone, from which two antennae
jutted upward. Moving his hands between these posts in the manner of a wizard conjuring
up a demon, the operator somehow managed to produce wild tones. The chords being strummed
to wavering life were eerie, unnerving, but perfectly in tune with the mordant surroundings.

Doc recognized this as the invention known as a Theremin, sometimes referred to as
an electric harp. The antennae were in reality two heterodyne oscillators. Proximity
of the operator’s ever-moving hands controlled pitch and amplitude, which together
created the uncanny chords. These were amplified and transmuted to a loudspeaker.