THE OTHER WORLD - Vb-tech.co.za

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their snail-pace way—Doc walked over to his
equipment case which Aulf had appropriated.
He also took possession of Aulf’s pile
of animals, and picking them up one at a
time, began tossing them among the crowd
of cavern men. The offerings were seized
with pleased grunts, proving the donation
was a good idea.
Doc then opened his equipment
case. Aulf had not succeeded in opening the
thing, the matter of the lock having defied his
simple mind.
Inside the case was a portable radio
transmitter-receiver, and some other articles,
among which was a box of ordinary safety
matches.
Doc put the matches in his mouth,
being sure he was not noticed. Then he went
out and confronted the dubious cavern men.
He performed some preliminary chest
beating and handsprings, largely to get
attention.
Then he took a match out of the box
in his mouth and struck it, exhibiting the
flame.
Results of the performance were
entirely satisfactory. Three cavern men lost
their nerve and ran.
Doc returned to the mouth of the
slave cave and helped Lanta out.
“You speak their language?” he
asked.
“A little. It is mostly grunts and
barks.”
“Do they believe in any kind of a
deity?” Doc asked.
“Only in an evil spirit. They blame
him for all their bad luck.”
“Tell them,” Doc said, “that I’m him—
the evil spirit. Tell them they are going to
have some very bad luck indeed if they mess
with me.”
Lanta spoke—her voice was
pleasant even when delivering the
remarkable conglomerate of noises that was
the cavern-man language—and conveyed
the idea. She got an answer.
“They say,” she translated, “that they
will all get clubs and beat you to death if you
do not leave.”
“That’s not so good.” The bronze
man pondered. “Tell them,” he suggested,
“that I will go away peacefully if they give me
an offering. I want all the slaves they have.”
The girl conveyed this news, and
was answered.
45
“They don’t like the idea of losing the
slaves,” she said. “They want to know what
need you have for slaves.”
“Tell them I don’t like to walk. I want
the slaves to carry me.”
While Lanta was explaining this, Doc
Savage got a smoke grenade out of the
equipment case. There were a few of these,
quite useless as weapons—the case, in fact,
contained nothing that was of any value as a
weapon—and he thought now would be a
good time to use one.
He let the grenade ripen at his feet,
let the cloud of intense black smoke come up
and envelop him in what must have been
quite a spectacular effect.
“Tell them,” he called, “that from
smoke I shall become a great fire and
consume them if they do not listen to
reason.”
That did the trick.
“All right,” the girl said. “They will let
you take all the slaves with you.”
THE bronze man put a question that
was more serious. “Now that we’re going to
get free, do you think we can make it back to
your tribe?”
The girl hesitated. “It is a terrible
journey.”
“Far?”
“Not very. But it is through the jungle
where the monsters are the largest and most
terrible. It will take many days—and probably
many lives.”
Doc Savage nodded slowly. He was
thinking of his men, Monk and Ham and the
others, who must be wandering around
somewhere in the arctic vastness, wondering
what had happened to him. They were in the
other plane—they might be able to fly down
through the crevasse into the fantastic lost
world.
Purposely Doc had refrained from
any effort to communicate with his men. That
was because of the danger involved in any
attempt to enter the crevasse. When the
bronze man had come in, Decimo Tercio had
guided the plane.
But it began to seem that coping with
the situation here was going to be more than
a one-man job.
He got the portable radio out of the
case and moved outside.
Considering the extreme power of
the little radio—it was capable of