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34 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx said. “I simply tossed them out, one at a time, and flew down and down by the light the flares gave. Eventually, of course, I ran out of flares. But I had landing lights on the plane, and those helped. Eventually I got inside.” “But you turned up in St. Louis,” Doc reminded. “Sure.” Tercio moved his jaw to indicate the weird world surrounding them. “You’ve seen those flying things. You think you’ve seen something. Well, you haven’t. Not yet. This is an incredible place, and without a high-powered rifle, you’re helpless. There’s even lots of places where a rifle won’t help you. But to clip a lot of explanation—I need rifles and ammunition. So I trapped some furs, distilled some fuel for my plane myself—I’m a chemist of sorts— and headed for the outside world. I made it, landed in St. Louis, and was trying to peddle the furs when”—he glared at Fancife, Two Wink and Chris Columbus—”this trouble all started.” Doc glanced at Chris, who nodded. “That’s probably the truth,” Chris said. The bronze man stared about, and his scientific curiosity got the better of him. “Before we go any farther,” he said abruptly, “I am going to take a look at this place. Chris, can you fly a plane?” “Fairly well,” Chris admitted. “I did fur trading in the north, flying a great deal in one of the company planes. That was when I first met Fancife. Our companies teamed us up in order to save money.” Doc said: “In case of an emergency—if some large animal should rush out into the clearing—you can take the plane into the air, and return later to pick me up?” “Right.” The bronze man removed one of his equipment boxes—it contained everything he had saved from his plane—from the rear portion of the ship where he and Chris had been hidden. He noticed Chris staring at him, so he patted the box and said, “Machine pistol and ammunition,” in explanation. Chris nodded and watched the bronze man walk across the clearing and vanish into the strange jungle, much of which was comprised of fernlike plants attaining a height of fifty and sixty feet. CHRIS COLUMBUS, once Doc Savage was out of sight, became suddenly conscious that he was very much alone in a remarkably queer world. He frowned and put out his jaw at his own fears. But it was a little difficult to self-administer a hypodermic of nerve. There was not stillness. There had not, at any time since they stopped the plane motor, been stillness. There was a steady and monotonous undertone of sound, such a far-off bedlam as might have been made by a waterfall in a deep canyon. Tercio noticed Chris listening. “That’s the animals,” he said. “Huh?” Chris stared blankly. “The noise never stops,” Tercio said dryly. “It goes on and on, and sometimes it is louder. You see, the sounds travel up and are reflected back from the stone ceiling, I guess. Anyway, there’s always a kind of roaring in this place. You get used to it.” “Is it—dangerous?” Tercio laughed. Not pleasantly. “It’s about the most dangerous damn place you can imagine.” “Why?” “You remember reading about how the world was millions of years ago, when prehistoric monsters as big as office buildings were wandering around? You probably imagined what a tough time the poor caveman was having along about then, didn’t you? Well, it gives you some idea.” “Animals the size of office buildings? You’re exaggerating, aren’t you?” “Maybe. You be your own judge.” Fancife had been lying there, utter hate in his eyes as he watched Chris. Now something else came over his face. A cunning expression. “Lanta,” Fancife said, “was nice, too.” Chris jumped, glowered. “All right!” he snapped. “Leave her out of it!” Fancife began laughing then, in a way that drove Chris into a maddened rage. Chris flung over, struck Fancife in the face. Fancife blew blood off his crushed lips, said: “If I wasn’t tied up, you couldn’t do that!” Chris snarled: “I’m gonna untie you! Then I’m gonna beat you to death!” Chris then wrenched the rope off Fancife’s wrists and ankles. He kicked Fancife contemptuously, said, “Get up, you dirty wart!”
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Without rising, Fancife lunged. His fingers clamped Chris’ ankles. He wrenched; Chris went down. Ordinarily, that would have been merely the beginning of a rough-andtumble fight. But Two Wink was ready, had his legs drawn up. Two Wink was wearing heavy shoes. When he kicked, the shoes crashed against Chris’ head like two clubs. Chris sagged. Fancife hit him, swung terrific rights and lefts as fast as he could. Two Wink kept kicking. “You’ll kill him!” Tercio yelled. “Swell,” Fancife snarled, and kept on kicking. Exhaustion did more than pity to make the two men finally stop beating Chris. They sprawled back, and Fancife began untying Two Wink. Chris was a twisted ruin from which strings of scarlet dribbled. Two Wink pointed at Chris, asked, “We gonna leave him here for some animal to eat?” “No.” Fancife shook his head. “Heave him in the plane. If he wakes up, we’ll put the screws on him. I would like to know if he left any written record back in the United States that might cause the law to put the shuck on us later.” “What about Doc Savage?” “We should worry about him.” Fancife got behind the controls. Tercio said sharply: “This is terrible country! Savage won’t live long if you go away and leave him alone here!” “That’ll be great!” Fancife said. The plane crawled moaning across the clearing and slanted up into the air. Chapter XIII THE CAVE DOC SAVAGE did not dash out into the clearing, although he heard the plane motor give its first noisy growl. He remembered that he had warned Chris to take the air if any dangerous animal appeared. He supposed that was what was happening. Discovery that he was mistaken came when he reached the edge of the jungle and stared out. The plane was not circling; it slanted steadily upward, departing. There was no animal in the clearing, no visible danger. The plane kept going. Finally it disappeared. 35 Marooned! There wasn’t the slightest doubt of it. The bronze man drew back in the jungle, moving with care not to make any sound. Rankness of the growth about him was astounding. And most of it would have been completely strange, except that he had given a great deal of attention to studying prehistoric forms of plant life. Because his previous knowledge was limited to what scientists had been able to deduce from fossilized fragments, specimens found preserved in asphalt pits or elsewhere, the bronze man’s interest in studying the surroundings firsthand was intense. He had—literally, except for time— been transported to a prehistoric world. On every hand, wherever he looked, there were growing plants, the nature of which it had taken scientists long study to determine. And science, Doc Savage was interested in noting, had made a sizable number of mistakes. For the most part, the growth was composed of ferns or fernlike plants, the size of these ranging from tiny things a fraction of an inch in length, up to monsters that were the size of any tree on the outer earth. There were creepers, amazing tangles of them. And because there was a great deal of moisture—the air seemed damply saturated, and frequently light mists fell—there was a quantity of fungus growth similar to mushrooms, although some of these also attained almost comical size. The bronze man had by now formed a theory of how the strange world could exist. The matter of light, for instance—if he was not mistaken, it came from some volcanic crevasse, where vapors escaped with blazing incandescence that reached such a temperature that the light had most of the qualities of ordinary sunlight. Plant life ordinarily did not flourish without sunlight. Therefore, this light must have the properties of sunbeams. Moreover, the intense flame—he removed his watch crystal and carefully smoked it, then examined the distant “sun” through this makeshift sunglass—appeared to be blazing atop a cone that extended, like the peak of a volcano, several thousand feet above the floor of the strange world. Light must come from the thing continuously, so that there was no night, but always daytime. That this was true was indicated by the distorted fashion in which
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