Minutes dragged. Bare ground, only bare ground, netted by branching streamlets. Then—what was that?
Atkins held the ray steady, quivering with bowstring tenseness. An irregular cube of stone showed mistily. A house! A human habitation in the wilderness! His heart bumped crazily against his ribs. But—wait a minute—it might be a Ranger station, a depot of the men who patrolled this primeval forest that was preserved as a national park. Beyond the house a metal something, huge, curiously formed, bulked vaguely.
Atkins’ pulse leaped. He had found that which he sought. Thomas’ captors thought themselves well hidden beneath the leafy screen. Evidently the kappa-ray was one secret that had been successfully kept from them.
Lower still Don Atkins dropped, until he was a bare hundred feet above the treetops. Too bad his search beam could not reveal human forms. He dared not send the map coordinates of this place by radio. He would be overheard, the gang would be warned and escape. But at full power it would take him seven minutes to reach ’Frisco Skyport. Then a hundred pursuit rockets would leap into the air. In minutes the mountain could be surrounded by well-armed men. He reached for the throttle.
The sea of foliage, almost black in the long evening shadows, glowed suddenly into green flame. Just above the strange building an orange pin-point leaped into existence. An inverted cone of radiance soared lightning-swift from that focal point. Instantly the ’copter was bathed in the flare. Intolerable heat struck at Atkins. The steel walls about him flamed cherry-red. He was frying in the torrid blast.
Already his senses were leaving him—with despairing instinct he thrust at the release lever of the emergency hatch beneath his seat—no time to snatch at the parachute cone. He was falling, falling—
* * * *
Atkins lifted slowly back to consciousness. His body was seared with pain. An iron band constricted his chest and his blood was salty warm on his lips. A black silence enveloped him, broken by vague rustlings and the sound of trickling water. His dazed eyes adjusted themselves to the dimness, and he saw twisted tree branches, moonlight sifting through leaves all about him. He was lying across a sturdy, gnarled bough. Above him he could make out broken branches, a funneled path torn through thick interlacing foliage.
Slowly it dawned on him what occurred. Plunging down, he had struck the lofty crown of some forest giant. The smaller branches, the massed verdure at the top of the tree, had absorbed the force of his fall. This larger branch had caught and held him, had kept him from crashing through to the ground.
He had failed miserably. The realization wrenched a groan from him. Suddenly he tensed, clinging tightly to his bough, listening acutely. A voice sounded. Heavy bodies threshed through the underbrush. A yellow glow flickered among the trees below, and was gone. It came again, held steady as it grew brighter. Two bulking shadows appeared, forcing through the thick growth. The dim back-throw of a lantern beat against the dull green of a Ranger’s uniform, familiar to Atkins from hunting and fishing expeditions in these very woods.
This was luck! Their post could not be far off, with its radio-phone. He’d chance a coded message to the chief. His throat tightened to a cautious call—
The lantern-bearer stumbled, ripped out an oath. It was not in English! His light found his face. High cheekbones, thick lips, narrow, slanted eyes. They were Orientals! They were searching for something!
Of course—it was he for whom they were looking—his body. They wanted to make sure of his death, make sure that his crumpled form, lying perhaps near a trail, would not betray their hiding place.
The lantern glow flashed dartingly along the ground, into the treetops. Atkins tried to make himself a part of the limb. Rough bark rasped a deep wound in his palm. He flinched uncontrollably, lost his grip. He was slipping, was falling… A desperate tightening of his gripping knees, a flexing of his aching arm muscles, stopped the disastrous fall. But the leaves still rustled with his movements.
A sharp challenge ripped the forest silence. A tube in the yellow hand of one of the searchers spurted blue flame. It shot through the leaves and its heat, the acrid smoke of seared greenery, stung Atkins’ nostrils. A second bolt came still nearer. Even if they missed him the light of those ray-tube flashes must reveal him to the hunters.
“Cut it out, Mingai,” the other Asiatic’s voice rasped in English. “It’s nothing but a wildcat, or some other animal.”
“I do not think so. I do not like that we have not found the body of the flyer.”
“Forget it. He was burned up in the ray.”
“The orange ray does not slay. It merely accelerates the electronic vibration of metallic atoms until the melting point is reached. But I forget, you would not understand. You are as stupid about scientific matters as the Americans among whom you have been raised. You even speak their barbarous tongue better than the language of your ancestors.”
“You give me a pain. Come on, let’s get back. We’ll tell Fu-Kong to do his own dirty work.”
“Very brave, you are, when he cannot hear you,” Mingai sneered. “But in his presence you cringe and are meek like the rest of us. No, friend Li-San, we do not return as yet.”
“All right, if you’re going to be that way. Let’s look further.”
“Not till I discover what there is in this tree.” Hope died in Atkins’ brain.
“Going to keep on raying till we’re spotted by some snooping Ranger?”
“No, there is a better way.” Mingai turned back to the tree. His cylinder again jetted its blue flame. It was continuous now—was boring across the trunk. Back and forth the steady yellow hand drew the disintegrating beam. The great bole quivered, started to sway. Atkins got his feet beneath him on the perch, leaped down.
His aim was true. His heavy boots struck square on Mingai’s shoulder. He felt bone crack beneath the impact of his weight. Even as the man dropped the American jumped sideward, catlike, his lithe form twisting in mid-air so that he faced the other Oriental. He caught a fleeting glimpse of a startled countenance—then the saffron face was obliterated by the crashing thud of his fist. He whirled away, hurtled into the shadowed brush.
Thorned tendrils caught and tore at Atkins. A root tripped him, and he crashed headlong into a tree trunk. He thudded to the ground—lay there—his tortured lungs laboring—his outstretched hands plucking at the earthy loam.
From behind, Atkins heard a thin whistle, shrill almost above the range of human hearing. From far to his right another, responding. Evidently the men from whom he had escaped were signaling for aid. He struggled erect. He was unarmed, alone, bruised and battered, terribly fatigued. But he knew now that he could escape by working down the hill, to his left. In the other direction were desperate men, weapons at their ruthless command that could whiff him into eternity at will. He turned to the right.
Chapter III
The Pursuit Squadron
Don Atkins crouched in the shelter of a bush. Before him the stone structure he had seen from the air loomed blackly. Over the clearing a rope network carried a camouflage of tree branches that his kappa-ray had pierced. He could hear a murmur of voices, but the sounds came from beyond or within the squat building.
On the side toward him there was silence, and nothing moved. The darkness of the wall he faced was relieved by a horizontal line, a thread of light, almost imperceptible. The American’s eyes clung to it. Then he was crawling across the bare ground that lay between. Twenty feet of shelterless surface, flecked with the revealing light of the moon. Could he make it, unobserved?
Inch by crawling inch, every muscle, every nerve, taut with expectation of a sudden hail, of a blue flash that would sear him into nothingness, Atkins slid toward the beckoning line of light. After an eternity, he was in the solid shadow of the wall. He raised himself cautiously and found the place where the light shone through. It was the lower edge of a steel-shuttered window, just at the level of his eyes.
He could not see much of the room within, the aperture was a mere slit
. But what he saw was enough! Just within range of his vision was a table-top, black, and glistening like glass. Fastened to its surface, leather straps cutting deep into the flesh of his arms and legs, was Thomas! His friend’s stocky body was stark naked. In a cold lurid light that beat down, Atkins could see his knotted muscles writhe snakelike, the sweat of agony gleaming on his skin.
Thomas’ face was deathly white, his clenched teeth were revealed by lips that curved away, his eyes were closed and his cheek muscles were quivering. His forehead, his hair, were covered by a metal helmet, from which wires curled away out of sight.
A low, mechanical hum rose steadily in pitch. Bart Thomas’ form arched slowly up from the table, straining against its creaking bonds. Suddenly the hum stopped, and the twisted body slumped flaccidly, inertly, down. A yellow hand, slim, its long fingers ending in pointed nails, came into view, holding a small sponge to Thomas’ nostrils. The prisoner quivered, his eyes opened, and Atkins’ fists clenched as he read the despair that stared from them.
He heard a voice, suavely cruel.
“It is very painful, this searching of your brain. If you chose to talk you would save yourself much anguish.”
Atkins’ scalp was a tight cap for his skull as the bound man’s eyelids dropped, and lifted again. Even speech seemed too great an effort for him, but his lips moved. A hand was clamped over Atkins’ mouth, a powerful arm wound around him from behind, pinning his own arms to his sides. He was lifted from the ground. He drove a desperate heel backward into a hard shin. Something crashed against the back of his head and he hung, dazed and barely conscious, in huge arms that carried his hundred and fifty pounds as though he were a child.
The room whirled dizzily about Don Atkins. He saw men, a television screen, a black tube that rose through the ceiling from some unknown device. He was carried through another door and a saffron-hued face, lengthened by a wisp of grey beard and drooping mustachios under a hawk nose, drifted hazily before him. Only the eyes were clear; black eyes, piercing behind their slanted lids.
Atkins was set down in a chair. Hands fumbled at him, passed a rope around him, binding him to his seat. He scarcely noted it, spellbound by those glittering eyes. His fogged brain cleared a bit and he saw a tall Oriental, imperturbable. There were banked tubes glowing behind him, and bright copper coils. To one side, a table, its black top glistening like glass. Thomas, strapped down, was looking at him with eyes in which incredulity and horror flared.
The tall Oriental spoke.
“Who is this, Na-Garri?”
From behind Don a huge black came in view. Dressed, like the others of the gang, in the olive-green of the Rangers, he was still redolent of the jungle. His skin was a deep, dull black that swallowed light. His bullet head sat queerly on wide shoulders from which arms thick as saplings hung loosely almost to his knees. His voice was a throaty rumble.
“I don’t know, Lord Fu-Kong. But the electric-eye alarm he flash, and I find this one peeking in. So I bring him to you. Maybe he the one who we bring down from the plane, the one who jump on Mingai and Li-San.”
The other nodded.
“Probably. He seems very persistent.” To Atkins: “You display a great deal of interest in our proceedings. I hope you are satisfied with your present opportunity to observe them.”
He reached out a clawlike hand and ripped away the front of the airman’s shirt. He snatched at the token hanging there. The fine gold chain snapped, and he had it in his hand. A faint smile crossed the jaundiced mask of his face and he held the tiny bird out to the black. Not a half inch long it was, but exquisitely wrought. An eagle, poised as if in flight, it seemed almost alive.
“See, Na-Garri, this is another of the brood. They wear talismans about their necks, like your own tribesmen, to bring them good luck. But I fear the Dragon of Hung-Chen is too strong for their puny godling.” He turned back to the American. “I shall deal with you in a moment, when I have finished with your comrade. Watch closely, American, and I wish you joy of what you see.”
Now he was talking to Thomas, and his voice was a crawling threat.
“Have you decided to answer my questions?”
“No!” Thomas’ voice was a tortured whisper, but his lips closed tight and firm. Fear and despair drew haggard lines across his face.
Fu-Kong shrugged, stepped to the wall where a tall slate panel glittered with switch-points, gages, gleaming ebony wheels.
“Still stubborn. You will not believe me, then, that this searcher will delve deeper and deeper into the core of your brain till it wrenches the uttermost secrets of your ego from you. Yet it was an American who first proved that thought is an electric process, who first measured the tiny currents that flow along the nerves. Well, if you must have it—” His fingers closed on a lever just above binding posts to which the wires trailing from the helmet on Thomas’ head trailed. “Now—”
“Fu-Kong. Fu-Kong,” a shrill cry from the outer room stopped him. “Another plane has appeared above.” Atkins forced his head around. Mingai was in the doorway, his shoulder bandaged, his right arm in a sling.
“Well, why burst in on me like this?” Fu-Kong was imperturbable. “Send someone to dispose of the remains.”
The other’s face was a sickly green. “But it got away,” he gasped.
“It got away?” The phrase was like the purr of an enraged cat.
“Yes. My broken arm—I had to use my left—I missed with the orange ray, and before I could aim again he was out of range.” Mingai’s voice trailed away in an apologetic murmur.
“You—” the other began, fury breaking through the stony mask of his face. But again there was an interruption. A sallow Hindu appeared.
“Master, the plane that escaped is signaling to ’Frisco Skyport, and their rocket squadron is taking off.”
The chief had not failed them! He had sent a following plane that by great good luck had escaped the Asiatics’ lethal ray. Atkins calculated hastily. In ten minutes now this nest would be surrounded, the spies captured, Thomas freed and his secret safe.
But Fu-Kong was snapping peremptory orders. Mingai and the Hindu had disappeared, Na-Garri was unstrapping Thomas, was carrying him out. The Oriental leader himself, ray-tube in hand, was unfastening the rope that bound Atkins.
“Get up and precede me.” The spy gestured with his weapon. The American obeyed, staggering on limbs that were needling with returning blood. He was through the outer room, his captor close behind him; was in the open. Straight ahead loomed a monstrous metal shape. Egg-shaped it was, save for one end that was sliced off sharply, and there was an opening, man-high, in its side. Na-Garri was just vanishing within, with his burden. Atkins followed. Fu-Kong clanged shut the slide behind him.
A steel ladder mounted through a dim green light, curving over an inner shell. Atkins’ head came through a trapdoor above, and he was in a low, long chamber. Then he was once more tightly bound. A rough shove from the black sent him sliding across the floor to thud against Thomas’ trussed and naked form.
Li-San was just closing the trapdoor. Mingai, fear in his eyes, was thrusting up on a valve-handle that projected from a large vertical pipe in the wall. At the far end, before a large view-screen, the Hindu was seated, black discs of phone receivers clamped to his ears. Beside him Fu-Kong bent over a serried row of gages and levers atop a metal console. A large view-screen before him showed the forest-bordered clearing and the stone building that had been vacated in such haste.
Fu-Kong pushed at a lever, and the view-screen was a flare of flame. It cleared. Where the house had been was a gaping hole in the ground. The Oriental’s hand moved again. The screen was a down-rushing blur. It cleared once more. Velvet-black, star-strewn, the night sky was about them, and the far-below forest was a dark, mysterious sea.
“Don, old man,” the whispering voice in his ear was Thomas, “how on earth did you ever get into this mess?”
“I came to find you,” Atkins said grimly. “And I did. How are you?
”
“Pretty rocky. But I’ll keep until Fu-Kong gets a chance to work on me again.”
“I can’t understand how he ever got hold of you. Your carrier came in right to the dot. What happened?”
“I was zipping along, watching the U.S. shoot past in the screen, when suddenly something flashed over me and dropped down in front.”
“Shot over you! I thought the rocket-stratocars were the fastest things ever produced.”
“So did I, until I saw this craft. I’ll bet it can make three hundred miles a minute. It passed me as if I were standing still. At any rate, there it was, right ahead of me, and slowing. The blunt end was toward me, and I thought sure I was going to crash into it. No way to swerve those carriers, you know. But just as I reached it, a hole opened and I sailed right inside.”
“Good Lord! Then it’s a—”
“A sort of flying trap. Damned ingenious, eh? I can figure out the rest of it now. You say the stratocar reached New York on time? That means they closed the stern and speeded up again till they were making just the rate I was. Afterward they went faster once more, got clear of my boat and dropped away. They had just picked me out of it on the fly.
“All I knew at the time was that my hatch opened, and the big black was pointing a ray-gun at me. He told me to get out, and I got. We were in an air-lock, and there was a rope ladder hanging down. I climbed it and found myself in this room. Fu-Kong was here, and the Hindu. Then in a little while we were down in the clearing, where the others were waiting. After that my troubles really began—Look at the screen!” he said sharply.
Atkins twisted himself back to his original position. In the distance a score of scarlet lights made a dancing crescent on the view-screen. They rose and fell, but came on steadily. He thrilled at the sight. These were the army flyers from ’Frisco Skyport. No mistaking that formation.
The Arthur Leo Zagat Science Fiction Megapack Page 32