THE OTHER WORLD - Vb-tech.co.za

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
He meant the things that were like
birds, and yet not birds, for they were
covered with a reptilian hide instead of
feathers, the wings being membranous after
the fashion of bats, but resembling bats in
hardly any other particular—certainly not in
size, for the smallest of these things had a
wingspread of not less than twenty feet.
There was a vast black cloud of the
aërial horrors, and they flew with the speed
of aërial express trains.
“They’re gonna catch us!” Two Wink
shrieked.
It was then that Doc Savage and
Chris Columbus came crawling out of the
rear of the plane—there was a hatch into the
aft portion of the fuselage; they scrambled
through that—and the bronze man seized
Fancife, while Chris grabbed Two Wink. The
fight was as short as it was violent. Doc tore
all the pockets out of Fancife’s suit, let guns,
cartridges and other contents spill.
“We might have remained hidden
back there a while longer,” the bronze man
said, “but we didn’t want you getting us
killed.”
The bronze man leaned out of the
window and stared back.
Chris Columbus did likewise.
“Them things’ll get us!” Chris
shouted.
“They have a chance at that,” Doc
admitted grimly.
Chapter XII
THE PREHISTORIC WORLD
FANCIFE and Two Wink remained
on the floor of the plane cabin, where they
had been hurled. Both were so astonished
that their expressions were blankly stupid.
Finally Fancife snarled: “How’d you
. . . what . . . weren’t you in the plane when it
blew up?”
Doc ignored them. The bronze man
was working with the plane controls. Fancife
had been too excited to realize that the wing
flaps were set, cutting the speed of the ship a
great deal. Doc remedied that error. Then,
although the plane would have gone much
faster, he deliberately cut the speed to let the
pursuing horrors catch up with them.
Chris Columbus had taken one of
Fancife’s pistols. He menaced Fancife and
Two Wink with the weapon.
31
“Little surprised to see us, ain’t you?”
he asked.
Fancife licked his lips. Surprised was
no word for it.
“Doc Savage here”—Chris nodded at
the bronze man— “figured back there in that
clearing in the arctic that you had tampered
with our plane so it would crash. It wasn’t
reasonable to think you would let us go free.”
“How’d you get here?”
“Merely jumped out of Doc’s plane
while it was at the far end of the clearing. It
was too dark for you to see us. We took
some equipment along. Doc’s plane was
fixed with a robot and the controls could be
locked. For a while we thought the plane
wouldn’t take off by itself in that deep snow.
But it did.”
“But how’d you get in this plane?”
Fancife snarled.
“Simple. Plane was among the trees,
you remember. We just hightailed it around
to the bus, and climbed aboard. Nice big
inspection port you’ve got back there into the
rear of the fuselage. We crawled through
that.”
Fancife swore.
Chris grinned. “After you got in the
air, we cut some holes in the fuselage so we
could see where you were goin’. Saw them
big birds chasin’ us, and figured we’d better
save our necks.”
Chris then peered out of the window.
He paled.
“Hey!” he roared. “Them things has
about got us!”
The whole thing might have been a
sort of comic-paper affair of a plane being
pursued by impossibly big and hideous
birds—except that the thing was real. It was
happening. It was not reasonable, not even
close to the bounds of credibility, but here
they were in the plane—and there were the
fantastic flying things.
“They’re equipped with teeth!” Chris
gulped.
Teeth was a mild word for the
armament in the long, somewhat parrotlike
jaws of the flying things. They were
somewhat like magnified shark maws. The
birds—they were at close range now,
unpleasantly illuminated by the strange
“sunlight”—were totally hideous.
Doc suddenly jammed the plane into
a dive. One moment they were flying level;
then they were roaring earthward.