Doc Savage: Death's Dark Domain (5 page)

The speaker dropped from the cabin of a nearby plane.

At first glance, the man might have been mistaken for a statue of bronze metal. The
bronze of his hair was slightly darker than that of his skin, and the hair lay straight
and smooth as a metallic skull cap.

Many features about this man were arresting. His eyes, for instance, were strange.
They were like pools of flake-gold—a dust-fine gold which was swirled about continuously
by tiny whirlwinds.

That this bronze man possessed fabulous strength was evident from the tendons which
cabled his hands and his neck. These resembled nothing so much as the rounded backs
of steel files, except that they were the hue of forged bronze.

Doc Savage wore a crisp white shirt, open at the throat, which hardly concealed his
incredible physical development. The play of bar-like tendons at his neck, the confident
ease with which his rippling muscles flowed as he moved, hinted at phenomenal strength
in reserve.

And that he was actually the muscular Hercules which he seemed, was demonstrated when
he grasped the motor, the weight of which had baffled apish Monk. The bronze man did
not appear to put forth extreme effort, but the muscles which had bunched under Monk’s
coat suddenly seemed small compared to those which arched across the bronze man’s
shoulders.

Doc lifted the weighty motor and placed it on the cradle.

The pleasantly ugly Monk stared, his small eyes popping a little. He knew how much
strength it had taken to lift the engine. He was amazed, although he had seen this
bronze man perform remarkable feats of strength on other occasions.

“Thanks, Doc,” Monk said, his tones mixing awe with gratitude.

Ham approached, elegant cane tucked jauntily under one arm.

As Ham came near the bronze figure of Doc Savage, a surprising phenomenon occurred.
Ham seemed to shrink in stature, as compared to Doc. This was due to the fact that
Doc Savage was a giant in size, yet his sinews were developed with such general thoroughness
that his proportions were entirely symmetrical. At a distance, he seemed no larger
than other men.

Ham wasted no words.

“Long Tom in New York, has been gathering information for you, Doc,” he said briskly.

Doc Savage replied nothing. His unusually regular bronze features did not change expression.

ALL the world knew of the remarkable individual known as Doc Savage. His fame had
spread to every corner of the globe. Journalists did their level best to keep the
legendary Man of Bronze before the public. His discoveries in science, in medicine
and other fields of endeavor commanded headlines.

Greater still were his exploits as an adventurer. No common soldier of fortune, Clark
Savage, Jr.—to give his full name—had for years been roaming the globe, solving the
ills of the world where ordinary methods failed. He never took pay. But if a person
came to him with troubles vast enough, Doc waded in.

This, too, the public knew.

Yet for all of his feats of daring and philanthropy, Doc Savage was known by another
title the press hung on him. The Man of Mystery. Everyone knew that Doc held forth
in the top of New York’s greatest skyscraper. Here, he received those who came to
him for assistance. Or turned them away if they were undeserving. The philanthropy
of Doc Savage lured many to his portals.

From time to time, the newspapers reported rumors to the effect that Doc’s work was
supported by great wealth, which he derived from some secret source. No one had ever
been able to unearth that supposed trove. So these rumors remained just that. Rumors.

Thus far, no one had ever gleaned the amazing truth: that the mysterious bronze man
controlled a gold mine that would have staggered any of the rulers of the ancient
world. Hidden in a valley deep in Central America, guarded by descendants of the Mayan
empire. Whenever Doc had need of funds, he had but to radio his Mayan friends, who
dutifully sent out a burro train of gold to civilization. The gold was deposited into
a bank account in the bronze man’s name.

Deeper than this was another secret, that of the place in which they now stood.

It was called the Fortress of Solitude.

Whereas most of the general public had an inkling that Doc Savage possessed some inexhaustible
source of funds, no one suspected the existence of the Fortress of Solitude.

It had been built at the suggestion of his father, the man who had placed Doc in the
hands of the scientists who had made him the superman that he was and who later discovered
and bequeathed to the bronze man the Mayan gold, as a place where Doc could repair
for intensive study and reflection.

Originally, the Fortress had been carved out of the hollow cone of an extinct Arctic
volcano. It was ringed by fumaroles exuding poison gases and could only be reached
by autogyro—the only craft able to alight upon the ice lake atop the crater.

But an accident in landing there had caused the bronze man to redesign the Fortress.
It was during his last extended period of study at the old Fortress that Doc had developed
the uncanny weldable glasslike substance with which he had built the Strange Blue
Dome.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Perhaps it was.

But as he surveyed the strange retreat, the bronze man could not help but reflect
on the events of the preceding weeks.

A man had come to this desolate isle, a cruel devil who called himself John Sunlight.
He had been a prisoner of a Soviet prison camp until he had broken free, taking with
him an assortment of human flotsam and like-minded rogues. In a stolen ice-breaker
they had ventured into the Arctic Sea until, starved and desperate, they had stumbled
across the great blue dome in the frozen wastes.

The Fortress, as it now stood, had been constructed so that only Doc Savage—or one
entrusted with certain magnetic keys—could enter the apparently seamless dome of bluish
glass. To one who did not know its secrets, the Fortress would have seemed impenetrable.

But John Sunlight had been no ordinary man. He had divined that the Strange Blue Dome
was the product of the human mind, and from that simple fact, had reasoned that it
was possible to fathom its mysteries.

John Sunlight had become the first human being other than Doc Savage—the first white
man rather, since the tribe of Eskimos who guarded the retreat were allowed entry
to get to certain provisions stored there for their continued well-being—to pass into
the fabulous Fortress.

More than merely a laboratory and a place in which the bronze man could plunge into
study and reflection, the Fortress of Solitude was the impregnable vault where Doc
Savage stored an assortment of weird devices of a scientific nature which he considered
too dangerous to be allowed to fall into untrustworthy hands. Some were inventions
Doc had perfected himself. Many times in the course of his adventures, Doc had seized
scientific machines of a nature too diabolic to be put to any practical use, but which
were too advanced to be destroyed. Doc often spent weeks studying these devices, in
the hope that the principles displayed could be turned to good use.

John Sunlight had come upon these murder machines, and with them had initiated a reign
of terror, first using them to annihilate in ghoulish fashion those he deemed to be
his enemies.

Once that was accomplished, John Sunlight, fiend that he was, had sent the word out
to certain nations that these death-dealing devices were available for purchase.

Representatives of many nations had come here to the Arctic to bid on these things.
So too had come Doc, Monk, Ham and another aide, Long Tom Roberts, in disguise, to
put a stop to the horrible auction of death.

In the violence that followed, most of the terrible weapons had been lost. At least
one that the bronze man was able to ascertain, had been carried off by a dignitary
named Baron Karl, the representative of a particularly rapacious Balkan country.

Of John Sunlight, they found tracks leading deep into the blinding wastes—tracks that
ended in a confusion of snow, some blood, a rifle and rags of clothing.

Polar bear tracks had led away from the spot where the footprints of the most evil
creature ever cast in human form had ceased to impress the polar crust.

It was assumed by all concerned that the wickedness that was called John Sunlight
had been consumed by the Arctic bruin. Assumed, that is, after an extended search
of the surrounding wastes produced no sign of the devil who had been willing to ignite
wars for his own profit. Nor, oddly enough, of a full-bellied bear.

Neither was there any trace of the cache of war weapons stolen from the secure vault
where the bronze man had kept them from the world. This last was very disturbing.

It was now some weeks later, and Doc Savage along with Monk and Ham, were completing
the necessary repairs to the Fortress of Solitude, which had been severely damaged
when the bronze man had crashed a plane into the great hangar door in order to regain
entrance, after John Sunlight’s minions had locked themselves inside.

They stood now in that hangar. Above their heads, the top of the structural dome,
as seen from below, was fashioned in such a way as to permit the night sky to be seen.
The glassy blue substance, which could be welded and repaired so as to create the
semblance of a seamless hemisphere, was made so that it was possible to see out, but
one standing outside could not penetrate the outer surface with his vision. The principle
was not unlike that of so-called Argus, or one-way, glass.

Doc Savage stood looking up at the wheeling stars, his bronze mask of a face resolute.

“It is time,” he said.

“We goin’ home?” Monk squeaked.

“We are,” said Doc.

“I guess that means John Sunlight is dead for sure,” Monk offered.

“It is,” Doc Savage said with just the slightest trace of brittle emotion in his controlled
voice, “fervently to be wished.”

Monk and Ham exchanged startled glances. Doc Savage held human life in high regard.
The taking of it was prohibited to members of his tiny band. Doc seldom wished ill
of any man, and death to none. He did not believe in the edict of an eye for an eye.

But many men had died—innocent men—as a result of John Sunlight gaining the horrific
weapons that had been cached in the Fortress of Solitude. Indirectly, Doc Savage was
responsible for those deaths. The knowledge weighed heavily on his noble soul.

With a stash of those weapons still unaccounted for, only two possibilities presented
themselves. That they had been cached in the frigid waste by John Sunlight for later
claiming. Or that he had escaped to civilization with them.

Doc Savage knew, as did Monk and Ham, that it would be far, far better if John Sunlight
had indeed perished. Otherwise the world was not safe. And the ultimate goal of John
Sunlight, they had come to understand, was nothing less than complete and total world
domination.

Doc stood looking up at the stars another few moments. Then as if snapping out of
a trance, he climbed into the waiting plane. It was an amphibian of unusual design.
There were features that were many years ahead of the current aeronautical developments.
This was an experimental aircraft Doc kept at the Fortress, on which he tested new
ideas before building them into his fleet of work planes.

Doc Savage made, very softly so that it was hardly audible within the big silenced
plane, a small trilling sound. The note was exotic, as weird as the song of some tropical
bird, or the vagaries of the wind in a waste of arctic ice pinnacles. Most peculiar
quality of the trilling was the way it seemed to come from everywhere, rather than
from any definite spot; it was distinctly ventriloquial.

The sound was a small unconscious thing which Doc Savage made in moments of mental
stress, or when he was contemplating unusual action, or was very puzzled.

He was thinking that somewhere in the great globe that was the Earth lay more death
and destruction than humanity had ever faced. And it was entirely his fault.

Doc spoke with brittle earnestness. “Our next job, fellows, is to recover those infernal
machines, and this time, we will
destroy
them.”

Monk and Ham clambered aboard. They took their places.

Doc started the engines. The motors ran up revolutions, their cannonading in the cavernous
hangar side of the Fortress of Solitude strangely muffled. The acoustics of the place
were remarkable. A whisper at one end could be heard at another. Yet the glasslike
material possessed sound-absorbing qualities that drank up the plane thunder.

A trip of a switch caused the radio-controlled hangar doors to separate and valve
open.

The bronze man ran the amphibian out onto the howling snow. Visibility was not great.
But it hardly mattered. Under the accumulating snow, the isle was a flat hump of bare
rock. The edges were thorny with rock, but at this side the stone ran smooth and sloping
to the water’s edge, a natural ramp.

Doc ran the plane into the water, let it settle on its floats and then jazzed the
throttle.

The plane beat across the water, the wings found purchase, and it was soon airborne.

As the plane banked southward, Monk and Ham attempted to peer through the snow for
a last look at the strange azure blister on the Arctic that was the Fortress of Solitude.

“I ain’t gonna forget that place any time soon,” Monk said in tones bordering on awe.

For once, Ham Brooks did not disagree.

They settled down for the long flight home.

LONG TOM ROBERTS—Major Thomas J. Roberts was his full name—was probably the least
impressive-looking member of Doc Savage’s intrepid band of adventurers. He was neither
tall nor physically imposing. The term “sawed-off” might have been applied to Long
Tom had anyone felt brave enough to do so to his face. In actuality, the undersized
electrical wizard was reputed to be able to lick his weight in wildcats. His complexion
gave the distinct impression that he had grown up in a mushroom cellar, yet he had
never been known to become sick. Colds and other such diseases seemed to go out of
their way to avoid him.