Somewhere, a prehistoric beast emitted a series of hideous cries. The echoes were taken up by another reptile. For a moment, a bedlam, remindful of the awful night sounds reigned. Then comparative quiet fell.
It was a ghastly spot — this lost land of terror which reposed within the cone of Thunder Island.
DOC came suddenly upon his imprisoned friends. They were being held within another natural cave resulting from the massive blocks of stone piling together. Doc heard voices first.
'You guys just make one move — you’re finished!' A strange tone. It must be one of Kar’s men.
With no noise at all, Doc’s bronzed, giant figure floated nearer. His golden eyes watched the cave mouth — and all the surrounding terrain.
'I’ll rush him!' Monk’s big, amiable voice offered. 'He can’t get us all!'
Evidently only one man watched the prisoners within the cavern!
'No need of that, yet,' rumbled Renny. Thunder gobbling out of a barrel would have had a close resemblance to Renny’s vast voice.
'Let him be a hero!' clipped Ham. The quick-thinking lawyer seldom got in a spot so tight that he neglected to razz Monk.
'Can’t you see what they’re doing?' Long Tom demanded. 'They’re holding us as a bait to get Doc!'
'Bait or no bait,' Johnny, the geologist, put in, 'Doc will take care of himself. And if we went and got ourselves shot, we’d still be bait. I’m in favor of stringing along for a while to see what happens.'
'That’s a wise guy!' snarled the coarse voice of Kar’s gunman. 'You birds behave, an’ we’ll do the white thing by you, see! We’ll let you keep on livin’! We’ll leave you behind in the crater when we take off in our plane!'
He laughed uproariously at this. He knew life in the crater would be one long living hell! A more perilous domicile would be hard to imagine.
'I gotta notion to rush ‘im!' Monk rumbled.
'You have no such idea — you’re just working that noisy mouth!' Ham sneered. 'I wonder what they’re doing to Oliver Wording Bittman?'
'Hard to tell,' said Renny. 'They took him away shortly after we reached here. I can’t imagine why.'
Monk made an angry hur-r-rum of a sound. 'What’s still puzzlin’ me is how they got us! We had Ham, Long Tom and Johnny on guard. If they’d have sneaked up on Ham, I could understand how they got near enough to cover us before we could put up a fight. But the way it was — '
'Pipe down!' rasped their guard, tired of the talk.
Monk continued, ' — but the way it was we — '
'Pipe down, you funny-lookin’ baboon!' the guard snarled. 'I’m gettin’ so I don’t like to watch that ugly phiz of yours when you jabber!'
At this, Ham laughed.
'And the muffler goes on you, too!' gritted the guard. 'You cocky shyster mouthpiece!'
Silence fell within the cave.
Doc waited a while. His keen brain worked. His five friends were here in the cave. But Oliver Wording Bittman was somewhere else.
Doc decided to find Bittman. Monk, Ham, Renny, Long Tom, and Johnny were in no immediate danger.
Away from the cavern entrance, Doc crept. The tall grass, coarse as the leaves of cattails growing on a pond bank, concealed him.
He encountered a tiny mound. Starting to go around it, he stopped.
It was a grave! The tombstone was a stone slab. A name and brief inscription had been painted upon it. Doc read:
Here Lies
GABE YUDER
Trampled to death by a Tyrannosaurus
Doc examined the grave. It was months old!
For quite an interval, the mighty bronze man did not move, but remained as quiescent as a statue of the solid metal he resembled.
MEN approaching drew Doc Savage’s attention from the grass-grown burial mound. Although his mind had been elsewhere, his full faculties had never deserted the business at hand. He had not relaxed his alertness to danger.
'He probably ain’t had time to get here yet,' said a coarse voice.
'You don’t know that bronze guy!' growled the other. 'I tell you, he may already be hangin’ around here. He may be waitin’ to jump onto us like a cat onto a mouse.'
'Listen!' sneered the first speaker. 'He never made it past them traps we left! Especially the poisoned thorns! That was good! And the machine gun we left with a vine hooked to the trigger! That wasn’t bad, either.'
'But supposin’ — '
'Supposin’ nothin’! If he gets here, we’re gonna have our eyes open!'
'He may be too smart to even try to trail us. He may decide to let his men take care of themselves. What then?'
'So much the better! We’ll go off an’ leave him here! He’ll be where he’ll never bother Kar again.'
'But he might find where we mined the ingredients for our fresh supply of the Smoke of Eternity. They say the bronze guy is quite a chemist. Even a second-rate chemist like you was able to make up a fresh batch of the Smoke of Eternity after Kar told you how!'
'Who’s a second-rater?' snarled the other man. 'I don’t like that crack! Next to Kar, I’m the fair-haired boy in this scatter! Damn you, I won’t have — '
'Aw — don’t get on fire! I know you’re a great guy in certain lines, but only a fair chemist. Supposin’ the bronze guy figured out how the Smoke Of Eternity was made? With enough of the stuff, he could open a tunnel right through the side of this crater. He might get out — '
'What if he did? Kar would have a new gang together. There’d be no slips like there was this last time. Doc Savage wouldn’t have a chance against Kar.'
'Maybe,' the skeptical one mumbled. 'But I’d rest easier if I had the bronze guy in front of a machine gun for about a minute. I just wish I had that chance!'
He got it almost before the words were off his lips. Doc stood up!
But did the Kar gunman shoot? He didn’t!
He gave a squawk of surprise and terror and fell on his face in the grass.
DOC SAVAGE never shot a man except in actual defense of his own life, or that of some one else. Hence, he waited for the loud-mouthed one to lift the submachine gun he was carrying. But the man whipped down.
Coarse grass shook as the fellow crawled away. He was taking to his heels!
The second gunman was sterner stuff. He tilted his rapid firer.
The big bronze man’s pistol spoke once. The report was like that given off by the popper of a hard-snapped bull whip.
The gunman melted down as though all the stiffening had been drawn from his body. On his forehead, exactly between his eyes, was a blue spot that suddenly trickled red. The man fell on top of his weapon and it continued to rip off shots until the drum magazine had emptied.
Doc Savage flashed for the cave where his friends were held. He must not let the guard kill them in his excitement.
'What is it?' the guard in the cave was bellowing. 'What’s goin’ on out there? What — '
Doc reached a spot a yard from the cave mouth. He stopped there. Off his lips came a changed voice — a voice exactly like that of the Kar gunman who had just died.
'The bronze guy!' Doc’s altered voice called. 'We got ‘im! Come out an’ watch ‘im croak!'
'Sure!' barked the fellow in the cavern. 'Here I come — '
