AASSAGO
THE ALTERNATE ARGOSY
Action Stories was Fiction House's first and most successful pulp magazine. It began in1923, survived a temporary collapse of the firm in 1932, and ran until 1950, when the pulps began to decline. Fiction House was never a great publisher, but it did maintain an unusual number of long-running magazines, among them Jungle Stories, Planet Stories and Air Stories, the first aviation pulp. Action Stories was their answer to Argosy. Its contributors, largly has- beens or authors just passing through the field, were not of Argosy caliber, but the monthly magazine was an attractive alternative to the weekly adventure pulps for one simple reason: it carried no Serials.
This Odyssey anthology includes some of the best and most typical stories from three decades of Action Stories.
The Devil's Derelict (12/30) was the fourth published story by Doc Savage author, Lester Dent. Its hero, Bellow Brill, is a prototype for the bull voiced, gallon fisted Doc Savage aide, Renny Renwick.
Frederick L Nebel’s earliest stories were he-man adventures set in the Northwest and the South Seas. 7he Coast of Hate is a South Seas yarn with all the toughness of Nebel’s later Black Mask work.
Theodore A. Tinsley, author of Hermit House (10/27), was another Black Mask author. He also wrote almost thirty Shadow novels. This is one of his rare westerns, illustrated by his brother, Frank Tinsley.
Aviation writer Jack Smalley was to Air Stories what western writer Walt Coburn was to Action Stories. His Emperor of the Three(11/29) is typical of the early Action Stories, however.
Captain Cut-Throat (6/40) is by Albert Richard Wetjen, a popular slick writer who also wrote pulp fiction.
Exiles of the Dawn(12/40) by Nelson Bond, was one of the few science fiction Stories the magazine published. It’s probable that this story was purchased for the newly-founded Planet Stories and transferred here to attract readers to both magazines. Nelson S. Bond frequently contributed to the science fiction pulps of the forties.
The Lion Goddess (8/40) was likely a tie-in with the then new Jungle Stories. John Wiggin, a frequent Planet Stories contributor, may have been a pseudonym.
John Starr, whose Murder Sands (12/40) rounds out this collection, was in fact a house name. This story is probably the work of Dan Cushman, who wrote the Pecos Kid stories and probably some Ki-Gor adventures.
Action Stories, as you will discover, featured just that— stories of action. These yarns are rougher than what readers got from Argosy, and they are very good pulp. Why else did Action Stories survive almost thiry years in the sudden- death pulp field?
Will Murray January 20, 1981
a ee ‘Tey, . y SSN “ é Ss TRS at ™ What de re ~— wate, SON , xX ys ~- Si KES <
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collection editors--William H.Desmond, Robert K. Wiener, John Howard, Diane Howard and Will Murray.
Exiles of the Dawn World....................0008- Nelson S. Bond............. 2 A Novel of 1,000 B.C.
The startling story of a modern Adam and Eve hurled
back to the steaming birth of the world.
THE Devil S DGC e.cavccAwecicescntaccawesveussss Lester Dent ....v.ccecsscses 33 An Action Story.
Brill’s plane slapped the open sea with a backwash
that swamped a gangland ship. Gaptant Cut-TW(OAts cncecucicsciciccetvanseecsatnnts Albert Richard Wetjen...47 A Novelet of Modern South Sea Piracy. Thirteen brigands in a sleek black bark; scenting pearl plunder ripe for the plucking. RUETIO - SORUICG vioscicoocsvoee ranean cceeean ss gies JON StQtl cc cccccescencnene 61 A Tale of the Foreign Legion. Mike Donlin broke the Legion Law. And a desert devil swore he’d pay with his life.
ANG: LION GOUGOSS sak ieec esas vot oy cenndensstanesss + SON WiIGGWN ccccc ccc nten 66 An Adventure Novel of Hidden Africa.
Lost Bel-Hanno—behind its battlements dwelt the
milk-stained goddess whose kiss meant death.
HNO CORSE OF SIOUO x xoxetsccocnesesacswaassccaonavnas Frederick L. Nebel........ 88 A Complete Action Adventure Novelet.
Men shunned the Flying Moon. For the shadow of doom marched step for step with whoever manned her sun-scorched decks.
PIGOTT PIOUS iiss ie oo es ask ean ee eewennavicren: Theodore A. Tinsley ...105
A Western Short Story. Tommy Glynn stalks ghosts that guard hidden gold. Emperor OF tne: TICS <5. os cers tenciancsxessesovsees Jack Smalley ..........-- 116 An Action Short Story. Deep in the Afghan hills Tim Elroy seeks weird fortune in the Land of the Cursed Three.
Originally copyrighted 1927, 1929, 1930, 1940 by Fiction House, Inc. No notice of renewal. All new material copyright 1980 by Odyssey Publications, Inc., P.O. Box G-148 Greenwood, MA 01880. Cover art refurbished by Mike Symes/AIl Nite Studios.
) Ea EAA REN RETA NRT ETN EXILES of tHe ‘:
DAWN WORLD _ Nelsons. on
The truly startling story of a Twentieth Century Adam and Eve hurled back through the ages of Time to the noisome, steaming birth of the world.
Eg “Sd ee
aN
HEN they reached the edge of the clearing, Johnson stopped the car. They made no move to get out, but sat surveying with varying degrees of in- terest the midnight-cloaked terrain around
. im them. A weed-gnarled road still lay open fm™ before them, winding its tortuous way
through unkempt fields to the house which
4 ; 7s loomed like a sullen blot against the night Rea sky, but Johnson made no effort to solve
its meanderings. He let the motor idle; its thrum was a background for the quer-
fae ulous scrapings of small night things. He
“a pushed back his hat and expelled his breath Rwith an air of finality. Quite obviously qthe man was afraid. He said uncer-
4 ACTION tainly, “Well—there it is, Mr. McClary.”
“Mmm,” said Jeff. He stared at the house. A clean wind broomed cobwebs of cloud from the moon, and the sudden
silver light etched slant roofs and hollow
windows sharply, and the same light found a grin on Jeff’s face. Not a handsome face, but an attractive one. Lean-jawed and hard, a large nose, eyes keen with a perpetual, amused curiosity. “That,” he agreed, “is it. But why stop here, Sher- iff? This road leads to the house, doesn’t 1 as
Johnson wriggled.
“It—it gits worse from here on.”
“Looks all right to me.”
“This ain’t my car,” said Johnson virtu- ously. “Got to pertect county propity. Besides—” Sudden inspiration descended on him. “—I got to git back to town to tell °em you reached here al! right. They'll be wonderin’.”
“What the sheriff means,” interrupted a bittersweet voice from the back seat, “is that he’s scared spitless, and doesn’t want to go any farther. Isn’t that right, Sheriff ?”
“Nothin’ o’ the sort!” Johnson scowled indignantly. “Til thank you to be more respectful of the lawr, Miss! It just so happens I got duties to perform.”
“And a wife,” finished Jeff, “and two children. We understand, Sheriff. Well, I guess I po the rest of the way by shank’s- mare.” He stepped from the car. “See you folks later, then. Good-bye, Miss Anderson. Put lots of bogey-man atmos- phere in your story.”
“Say, “aw revoir,’’” said the girl sweetly, “ ‘but not, “Good-bye!”’” Metal clanged and she was standing beside him in the darkness, her brushed-felt hat at the level of his lips, the scent of her outdoorsy perfume vaguely tantalizing his nostrils. “Or maybe you should just say, ‘Hyah, Toots!’ I’m not leaving, Maestro. I’m coming with. The World-Times readers are going to get an eye-witness account of this banshee brawl if I have to scribble my notes on a ouija board.”
Jeff frowned. “No!” he said.
“Pardon Cagliostro?”’
“T said,” repeated Jeff, “‘Nol’ ‘N’ as in ‘Nuts!’; ‘O’ as in ‘On you way, sister!’ A ghost-busting expedition is no place for a hundred and twenty pounds of female
STORIES
fluff, even if said nuisance does have a typewriter for a brain and printer’s ink in her arteries.”
“Six,” corrected Beth Anderson. “Not twenty. Not much of a ladies’ man, are
?”
“I know when they’re in the way. Now
run along, or papa spank.”
OVEMENT in the dusk, and her swift anger rising as she spun to face him.
“Has it ever occurred to you, Mr. Mc- Clary, that I’m free, white and twenty- one? It is my privilege to go and do as I see fit. I’ve suspected for some time that you were no gentleman. I was right. Now you might as well know my full opinion.
“In addition to being a stage ‘magician,’ a sleight-of-hand expert, you’ve won your- self a reputation as a ghost-layer. You gallivant about the country exorcising spooks in haunted houses—like this. For, of course, a consideration—and to the fan- fare of reams of newsprint.
“In my judgment, your wraith-laying is as phony as your stage tricks. I firmly believe that your ventures into spiritualism —including this present job—are publicity stunts. I mean to verify that belief, and pass the facts on to the World-Times readers !”
“Listen, Miss Anderson—”
“You listen! There’s no ‘ghost’ in that house, and you know it! Whatever mani- festations the frightened natives may have seen or heard were carefully planted there. By you or your underlings.”
“I have never,” said Jeff solemnly, “seen this town or this house before.”
“and it will give me the greatest plea- sure,” the girl continued inexorably, “to expose you to my readers. In other words—” She stopped for breath, glared at him. “In other words, Mr. McClary, I think you are a fake, a fraud, a quack, and a humbug!”
“T—” began Jeff. And stopped. fraud ?”
“Definitely.”
“Mmm. And a fake?”
“Beyond,” scornfully, “a doubt!”
“J see,” said Jeff thoughtfully. He stared at her, then at Johnson, who sat in open-mouthed wonder. “That will be all, Sheriff. You may go now.”
ad.
EXILES
Johnson jerked a thumb. “Her?”
“I’m staying,” said Beth.
“She,” agreed Jeff, “is staying. Oh— when you and Lafferty come back tomor- row, bring a vial of sal ammoniac.”’
“Smelling salts,” said Beth Anderson sweetly. “For Mr. McClary. The shock of exposure will be dreadful.”
“Oh?’” said Johnson. The car backed and turned; its lights gnawing an ochre tunnel through the trees. The motor throbbed, and a fading tail-light winked and bobbed obeisatice to the road. Then it was gone, and the sultry loneliness of night closed in about them. Jeff kicked a pebble savagely.
“Suppose I admit something, Miss An- derson? Suppose I confess that you are partly right; that in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases ‘ghosts’ are mere figments of the public imagination, conjured out of hallucination, embodied by mass _hyste- ria—”
“Now it all comes out!”
“but that one other time there are forces of which man has reason to be ter-
ried? Frankly, I don’t know what con- fronts us.”
“Shall we,’ said Beth, “go to the house ?”
Jeff stared at her long and angrily. Her shoulders were firm; it would be a plea- sure to shake them—and her—until her teeth rattled, until the jarring of her gray cells knocked some sense into her head. It would be smart to send her on her way. But she had called him a quack. A hum- WES Ss cat oe
“Very well!” he snapped. He turned on his heel. A thin breeze rustled in the darkling trees; her footsteps and his were a challenge to the warning night-sounds. Somewhere in the distance a dog howled piteously. And the intent eyes of unseen things seemed to follow them to the house.
HE house itself was like a vast, bland
face. With covert eyes it studied their approach. Its sagging door was a mouth agape behind fanged colonnades.
Ever responsive to influences, Jeff felt a cold, an unearthly aura of evil ema- nating from this ancient dwelling. De- spite her bravado, the girl must have felt it, too, for as he paused at the door, she shivered briefly. Jeff grinned.
OF THE DAWN
WORLD 5
“Something you et, no doubt?”
She was a ramrod of disdain. night is cold.”
“Uh-huh. You’re sure you want to go in?”
“T wouldn’t miss it for worlds. What’s supposed to happen here? Do white things with long, hairy claws hop out and yell, ‘Boo!’ ?”
“Tf I couldn’t be funnier than that,” frowned Jeff, “I’d give up. No, sister, this business has the earmarks of the real thing. You've heard of poltergeists ?”
“T’ve heard of the old malarkey.”
“T wouldn’t doubt it. Well, this isn’t some. This is something that has petri- fied the localities for two years. And with good reason. Coupled with the ‘mani- festations’ you seem to think I created have been a few sinister occurrences— including the disappearance of livestock and, on at least one occasion, the disap- pearance of a human being.”
“The what? Impossible! They would have combed the house from top to bot- tom if they thought—”
“They did think! And they did comb; that’s why I’m here. They found noth- ing but footprints. The footprints of the man who disappeared.”
“T don’t believe it!’ Anderson.
“That’s okay by me. I can do without your charming trust. But there’s one thing I will insist on having. Your obe- dience. We'll be here together all night; in the morning my assistant, Lafferty, will come for us. But until then, I shall expect and demand that you do as I say. Is that clear enough?”
Beth glanced at him derisively. A va- grant shaft of moonlight found her face; her lips were mocking.
“Clear,” she gibed, “but not convinc- ing, Maestro!” She turned suddenly and slipped into the house.
Jeff swore softly and followed her. That is how he was just in time to see that which had stopped Beth still in her tracks, just a few paces inside the portal. A glinting, narrowing, vanishing pencil of light on the floor of the hall before them. For an instant it was a ribbon gleaming golden on dusty oak; then it was gone.
Jeff sprang forward, a hand fumbling in his pocket, finding a flash.
“The
declared Beth
6 ACTION
“There! It came from that room on the right!” And with the girl behind him, he raced into what once had been a library, was now a high-lofted cavern ribbed with gaunt and empty shelves.
His flashlight stabbed the darkness, swung a circle about the room. There was no visible source for the light that had startled them. It was gone. The old house groaned and creaked, dust ed- died beneath their feet and wove spirals in the firm, uncompromising glare of the flash-beam. Jeft’s brow contracted.
“Perhaps you'll change your mind now? Or perhaps J caused that light?”
For a moment the girl’s breath had been uneven, but it steadied now, and she laughed lightly.
“Tell me, Mr. Spook-chaser—is it usual for ghosts to leave footprints?”
“Footprints ?”
“Shoe-prints, rather. fore you—”
On the floor be-
B [ee flashed his light downward. It was as she had said. Crossing the dusty floor were the well-defined tracks of feet shod in the modern fashion. From the hall to one of the bookcases ran the scuff-marks; at that point there was a confusion of prints—then nothing!
“I hate to appear difficult,” murmured the girl demurely, “but if you did hap- pen to have an accomplice in the house, Mr. McClary, and if there were a se- cret passage, say from that row of shelves to some hidden spot—”
Jeff’s glare silenced her. But he nodded slowly.
“All right, sister. We'll see. Secret passageway, hey? You must be a detec- tive story addict. The springs are gen- erally concealed in the decorations, aren’t they? Things like these fat cupids, for instance. I suppose if I were to press their chubby noses—like this!—a panel would swing out and—Great guns!”
He stepped back, shocked. For beneath the pressure of his fingers, the noses of the pudgy cherubs had given way and with a wheeze the entire book-panel was moving out!
Beth Anderson laughed at him trium- phantly.
“Surprised, Maestro? You missed your vocation, I’m afraid. You should have
STORIES
been an actor. Let’s go find your friend. Maybe he will have something to eat in his cubby-hole. Ah! There he is now!”
For the swinging case had stopped, ex- posing a long, dark corridor slanting downward. Off in the distance a tiny bell tinkled, and once again the darkness of the corridor and the library in which they stood was relieved by a flood of golden light as a door swung open at the end of the passageway. Footsteps pat- tered up the ramp. And as Jeff Mc- Clary’s lips framed protests that were never spoken, a figure filled the opening before them.
A large man, broad of shoulder, deep of voice. And his words were an invi- tation.
“How do you do, my friends? This is an unexpected pleasure. May I wel- come you to my little refuge?”
IT
HE words Jeff finally found were not
inspired. He goggled them at the stranger. And, “Who,” he demanded, “are your”
Beth smiled benevolently. “As if,” she hinted, “he didn’t know. So you’re the ghost, eh? Well, I must say I’m dis- appointed.”
“Don’t mind her,” said Jeff. are you?”
The stranger stared at them, dubiously, in turn. A network of fine lines creased his forehead. Beneath beetling brows his eyes were keen and hard and shrewd. He said, “But this is no place for conversa- tion, surely? Let us go below, to my lab- oratory. It will be more comfortable there.”
“Laboratory?” said Jeff.
But the man did not answer. He turned, led the way down the sloping cor- ridor. At a midway point he touched a button on the tunnel wall, the false door behind them closed softly. A few more paces and they entered a large, brightly illumined chamber, the sight of cis brought a gasp to Jeff McClary’s ips.
It was incredible, impossible, that here beneath an ancient, deserted farmhouse in the countryside of upper New York state, there should be a laboratory matching in
“Who
EXILES OF THE DAWN
modernity, equipment and completeness those of wealthy research organizations, but it was so!
In sharp contrast to the fusty atmos- phere above, it was fresh-aired, bright, and spotlessly clean here. One wall of the room was shelved to the ceiling with bottles of chemicals. Another was proud with neat, orderly rows of books and in- dex files. Upon a central work-bench, Bunsens breathed and retorts bubbled. In a far corner of the room a weird-looking electrical appliance of indeterminate pur- pose hummed, whined and spat sparks of white fire. Jeff recognized a generator, a centrifuge, failed to identify a dozen other pieces of the research scientist’s para- phernalia.
And the stranger was motioning them to chairs. “Be seated, bitte. This is an occasion. It is not often I have the plea- sure of entertaining visitors. You are pleased with my little hideaway? Later I must show you the rest. I have also a comfortable bedroom and bath, a kitchen and study.”
Beth was staring at Jeff, her eyes be- wildered.
“T don’t get it, Maestro. Why all this trouble just to give a few hicks duck- bumpe?”
“Stubborn, aren’t you?” sighed Jeff. “You’re still barking up the wrong tree, sister. Don’t ask me; better ask Mr.— Mr—?”
“Doctor,” corrected their host quietly. “Dr. Franz von Torp.” He bowed aus- terely. “At your service!”
“How do you do?” responded Jeff me- chanically. “And I’m Geoffrey McClary. Professional magician, investigator of psychical phenomena, and—according to my companion, here—a first-class fake
and humbug. The young lady is Miss Anderson, sob-sister on a metropolitan daily.”
But Beth’s eyes had widened. “Dr. von Torp?”
“That is correct, fraulein.” He smiled faintly.
“Not the Dr. von Torp? The pro-
fessor who disappeared a few years ago after a row with the A.S.A.?”
A dark cloud swept suddenly across von Torp’s brow; for a moment his eyes were sultry. But when he spoke, it
WORLD 7
was in a rich, creamy voice barely edged with bitterness.
“The same, fraulein. Unfortunately, the members of the American Scientists’ Association saw reason to ridicule certain theories I placed before them. They took exception to my experiments in the field of time-travel; they also objected to sev- eral other purely scientific activities—”
“Time-travel!” interrupted Jeff. “Do you mean you really believe time-travel to be possible, Doctor ?”
But the reporter in Beth Anderson had risen to the surface. Her pique at Jeff, her scoffing attitude, had completely dis- appeared. Her eyes were bright with ex- citement, her nostrils tense, as she scented story-stuff,
“Then Mr. McClary wasn’t deceiving me? He really didn’t know you were here? You built your laboratory out in this deserted countryside to get away from the world? Let, or caused, the na- tives to believe the house was haunted that you might be let alone—?”
There was a look of distaste in von Torp’s eyes.
“In your very questions, frauleim, you should find answers to satisfy your curi- osity. All that I have done has been done simply to avoid such interludes as this.
“My work is important. I have neither the time nor the inclination to devote pre- cious hours to satisfying public curiosity. That is why I came to the country. The common people are stupid. By investigat- ing, they could have learned that this de- serted homestead had been sold to me. It would have been equally easy to learn that, periodically, I have supplies deliv- ered here.
“But, no! They would rather accept the fantastic, supernatural explanation— which, I confess, I encouraged in mild fashion—that the house was ‘haunted.’ It is a humorous commentary on the human race that they should have solved the problem, finally, by paying a professional ‘ghost-layer’ to come here and track me down!”
Jeff laughed politely. “Doctor,” he said quietly, “I’m interested in something you mentioned a moment ago. Your time- travel theories. Since coming here, have you discovered anything further?”
“Further?” Von Torp straightened
8 ACTION
haughtily. “But of a certainty, sir! I have completed my task!”
eV ou— 2”?
“{ have done that which my erstwhile colleagues derided as impossible! I have successfully bridged the chasms that lie between Yesterday, Today and Tomor- row. Behind you, my eager young friends, lies the evidence. The greatest invention ever achieved by man. My time ma- chine!’
HERE was no denying the strange- ness of the machine to which he pointed. It was unlike anything Jeff had ever seen before; if the crossing of time were not its reason for being, then surely, judging by its appearance, its purpose must be something equally unbelievable. Its major elements were a large, circu- lar platform, slightly raised above the floor-level; four upright metallic stand- ards that, starting from equidistant points on the dais’ perimeter and seemingly par- allel, somehow succeeded in joining at the top in a twisting, helical formlessness that the eyes strained to untangle; and a dial- bedecked panel whereon were placed in- numerable switches, contact buttons and levers.
Feeding it were two heavy cables, each as thick as a man’s wrist. These were connected to the dynamos across the room. Jeff stepped nearer the machine. The dials, he noted, were at rest. Their pur- pose was undecipherable. Some seemed to be marked in meters, others in power units; a large one in the center was di- vided into quadrants ranging from zero to infinity.
“It works?” He turned eagerly to von Torp. “You’re telling us the truth? It really works?”
“I have said so,” said the scientist
proudly. “But you wish proof. See, then !” He moved swiftly to the machine.
From his pocket he drew a penknife. This he placed on the platform. He adjusted the dials with infinite care, studied them, nodded.
“T have set the controls,” he stated, “to project my knife two minutes into the future. A short time, merely that you may witness without boredom the opera- tion of the machine. You comprehend
STORIES
that when I press the lever—so/—the knife will disappear—”
His hand thrust down a lever. Instantly there came a humming crescendo of sound from the generators. Blue mists crackled where the parallel uprights of the instru- ment met in weird embrace. A sheet of cold, white flame rippled across the gleam- ing platform.
“It’s gone!” cried Beth.
“But naturally,” nodded von Torp. “It has ceased to exist in our time. In the present. It has been projected into the future of two minutes hence.” He re- leased the lever and the current died away. “Now, if you will watch closely, you will see it return. Or, rather, it will stand still and we will catch up to it—”
Jeff stared, fascinated. As a boy, the question of time-translation had been one that intrigued his imagination; the com- ing of manhood, and the dedication of his life to the twin arts of prestidigitation and deception had strengthened, rather than diminished, his interest in the problem. The two minutes were like hours. He stood with bated breath, watching the platform. Beside him, even the girl was silent and intent.
LOW seconds ticked away. Once Dr.
von Torp made a slight movement ; the scrape of his foot was thunderous loud. And then, suddenly—
“Th-there!”’ cried Beth. “There it is!”
Jeff’s eyes leaped to the clock above the platform. Exactly two minutes had passed. And on the dais lay, shining and serene, von Torp’s knife!
He spun to face the scientist. There was more than admiration in his eyes; there was awe and respect. “You’ve done it, Doctor! You’ve accomplished the miracle man has so long dreamed of! Con- gratulations, sir.”
“Danke schoen!’ said Dr. von Torp. His voice was soft, pleased, but there was a note to it that caused Jeff to look up suddenly. A note of dominant, gloating triumph. <A softness with ominous over- tones. “Your praise gratifies me, young man. You are one who understands. I know it will thrill you to be permitted to aid in this great work.”
“Aid?” Jeff did not like that voice. Nor did the look in von Torp’s
EXILES
eyes please him. The shrewd intelligence was flavored, now, with something noi- some. A weird, savage look; the crawling brightness of insanity.
“T shall grant you a great privilege,” purred von Torp. “In thanks for your kindness, I shall let you select the era you wish to dwell in.”
Even then, Jeff did not get it. It was too mad. But Beth Anderson was a wo- man. Logic toppled before the swift truth of her intuition.
“He means he’s going to put us in that machine! We are to be his guinea pigs. Now I know what happened to that man who disappeared! He was used as an experiment. And I remember something else, too. The A.S.A. refused to listen to von Torp because a board of psychi- atrists reported him to be mad—”
“That will do!”
Even before Beth’s words could register on Jeff’s stunned brain, von Torp’s roar interrupted her. And the big man moved with amazing swiftness. His hand darted to a coat pocket, came out holding an ugly, snout-nosed Luger.
“You will step to the platform, and quickly! Both of you! Ja, I intend that you should become subjects for my experi- ment. The painstaking scientist never an- nounces his results without many such. The fraulein is right; never was it my in- tention you should leave this room, except through the machine.
“You did not fool me with your fine words of praise. I know you came here to steal my invention, the fruits of my genius! But you have failed, hear? Into another time, you I will exile. No, don’t
move, Herr McClary! Else I shoot! On the platform. Quickly!” His voice lifted, word by word. He
was screaming, now, in a violent hys- teria. And his finger was treacherously tense on the _hair-triggered Luger. Thoughts whirled dizzily through Jeff’s brain. There was no arguing with this insane genius. A countermove would spell swift death. Play up to him—that was the way. Pretend to obey, stall for time, try to find a propitious moment... . “Very well, Doctor!” he said. “See, we are obeying. We are anxious to aid in your research work. It is a great honor to assist you. Tell us where to
OF THE DAWN
WORLD 9
stand, what we must do—” And as the scientist, mollified, hesitated, “Move, you little idiot! I'll handle this!”
“What are you whispering?” demanded von Torp suspiciously.
“Nothing, sir. I’m just asking Miss Anderson not to delay. We’re ready now, sir. Only we don’t know just what we should do next. If you would be kind enough to advise us?”
There was a light of approbation in the scientist’s eyes.
“You are an intelligent man, McClary. Maybe one day I shall recall you from your exile and have you report your find- ings. Now, let me see—does your inter- est lie more in that which has been, or that which lies before? Think before an- swering. The future holds more fasci- nation, but the past offers the solution to many riddles.”
Jeff said, “It’s a difficult decision, Doc- tor. Had I a little more time— Couldn’t we discuss it carefully? Lay a plan?”
“Ach, I have it! The very thing!” von Torp beamed suddenly. His hands flick- ered over the controls, made swift adjust- ment. “The dawn of intelligence, that is the era you should visit. The days of Earth’s youth, when man was just creep- ing out of the morass of ignorance. I am good to you! It will be a glorious ad- venture.”
Beth Anderson’s breath broke sharply.
“Do something. Before—”
Jeff silenced her. But his eyes, too, were tense. Time was growing short. He adopted a wheedling tone. “But that will be dangerous, Doctor. We go un- prepared. We will need weapons. A pis- tol. . . . May I have yours?”
It almost worked. So intent was he on his project, that unconsciously von Torp nodded, started to pass the gun to Jeff. Almost their hands had met on the weapon when he divined Jeff’s pur- pose. And he screamed in sudden fury.
“So! So you seek to trick me! Let go, young fool! Or I will—”
Then everything happened at once. For
his hand was on the lever, but Jeff’s leap-
ing hand had gripped the Luger. Von Torp was the larger man, but Jeff’s was the strength of desperation. For a breath- less instant they hung poised in a battle of muscles and wills, while the girl clung,
"10 ACTION
tense and breathless, to Jeff’s shoulder.
And then the gun, miraculously, was in Jeff’s hand. But von Torp was scrambling after it like a maddened beast, charging onto the platform beside them. Back and forth they swayed, fighting tooth-and-claw for the weapon that meant life or death.
Neither won! For as Jeff strove to level the gun on his mad assailant, von Torp’s hammerlike hand slashed across his wrist, jarred his arm away and upward. The automatic flew from his nerveless grasp. Just for an instant he glimpsed it soaring like a sullen, wingless bat across the room. Then it thudded into a nest of wiring there. Sparks flew. And a cold, white pain drove violently through his veins! His eyes were blinded by a swift efful- gence. His body was twisted and wracked with innumerable needles of torment. There was a dull throbbing in his ears, the roaring cacaphony of bestial throats, a single, piercing scream, and the hoarse gasp of von Torp—
Then blackness. And silence.
Ill
LACKNESS and silence. Then out
of the blackness a growing light. A swirling, misty light that brightened with each passing moment. Out of the silence the birth of sound; distant at first, then nearing, swelling, threatening.
And Jeff opened his eyes.
He was lying, body wet and half sub- merged, in a bog that sprawled beneath a gigantic forest. Forest? A jungle, rather. And what a jungle! Surely no human eves had looked ever before on a scene like this.
About and around him, like sky-groping columns, the thick and spongy trunks of massive ferns were a matted wall. Their mottled fronds were a webwork veiling the sky. Only a few wan fingers of sun- light filtered through that mossy fan.
From the bog rose a dank and steamy mist. Its odor was the stench of rotting flesh and vegetation. Jeff gagged at the sight and scent of it, seeing, as he now did, how the sluggish water was acrawl with foetid life. He staggered to his feet, dimly aware that beside him von Torp had awakened. He strode to Beth An- derson’s side, lifted her limp figure.
STORIES
Her eyes opened at his touch. For a mute moment an awe filled them. She stared about her in wild surmise.
“Where—” she whispered. ‘‘Where are we?”
“T don’t know. But there’s one damned sure thing I do know. We've got to get out of this swamp. It’s a death-trap if ever I saw one.”
And he took one slogging, mud-sucking step forward. But von Torp halted him with a cry.
“otop!”’
Jeff glared at the man savagely.
“Don’t start anything now, von Torp: We'll settle our affair when we get out of this mess.”
“Stand still, you young fool! Don’t you understand what has happened? That gun shorted my machine. We've been hurled backward through time. Thou- sands of years. Into the garden of man’s creation. And you’re walking away from the gateway through which we entered: If we leave this spot, we lose forever ouf last hope of returning to our own time.”
The mad scientist gnawed his nether lip. “Yet, you are right. It is impos- sible to stay here. Jungle fever would de< stroy us.”
Jeff found it in him to marvel at von Torp’s swift, cold logic. The man was as- suredly mad, but he had the quick adapta- bility, the brain and reasoning-power of a genius. A look of concern deepened in his eyes.
“But what are we to do?”
“We must build a cairn to mark the spot on which we wakened. There should be rocks beneath this scum. Here—” He scooped the brackish depths with delv- ing hands. “Just as I thought! Come now! If you would return to the earth you left behind, you must work.”
Beth stirred in Jeff’s arms. For the first time he realized the anomalous inti-+ macy of their position. Her body was the only real and vibrant thing in a universe gone suddenly mad, unreal. She slipped from his grasp, bent to help find stones. Hé could almost read the nausea in her eyes as she thrust her arms into the noxious ooze, but she persisted.
“Earth?” she repeated. “You mean we are no longer on earth?”
“We're on earth. But for our
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knowledge of earthly conditions in this time, we might as well be on a distant planet. This is not the soft, tamed earth you knew. This is the wild, the savage morass of man’s beginnings.”
“You set the dials,” said Jeff. what period?”
Von Torp stared at him levelly, a touch of mockery in his eyes.
“For a period I thought befitting your type, friend McClary. I had not antici- pated becoming your companion in this ad- venture. But I thought it might be inter- esting to follow the progress of two such healthy, splendid young savages as you and Miss Anderson in a world unspoiled by civilization.
“FIowever, now that I am here, we shall have an even more interesting experiment. We shall learn—”
“What period?” repeated Jeff.
“Look about you. Can’t you tell by these ferns, the steaming fen, this crawl- ing slime we wade through? I set my dials for that age when Nature’s mon- strous experiment in size and overlordship —the reptile—was dying from earth. When mammals were assuming control, and when an awkward, bi-pedal mammal was striving to gain supremacy over more powerful, but less intelligent, members of his phylum. When man, himself, was not one, but two or three or a half dozen spe- cies, each at war upon the other. For a period roughly a million years before the century in which we were born!”
“For
T was impossible, of course. Utterly
mad and fantastic. Yet, looking about him, Jeff knew von Torp spoke the truth.
“What good will it do to build this cairn?” he asked. “We three, you say, were the only ones who knew of your lab- oratory. How are we ever to find our way back?”
“You forget, my young friend,” said von Torp proudly, “that J build the time- machine. I can build another. I do not say it will be an easy task; it may be the labor of long years. But in the bowels of this young earth there are metals and I have the knowledge of their refining and casting.
“With your help, one day there shall be a means of returning to our time. But, mark you! I offer you eventual return,
OF THE DAWN
WORLD 1]
and my price for that gift is your whole- hearted allegiance and labor. There must be no question of who is the master here!”
His words brought an instant, hot re- sponse to Jeff’s lips. But the girl fore- stalled his reply.
“Yes, Doctor, but if our plan is to build a second machine, why need we mark this spot so carefully?”
“As security for ourselves. Over the ages, seas may rise and mountains topple. By sheer chance, we landed in a compara- tively safe spot. We might just as easily have landed in the crater of a boiling vol- cano, fathoms deep in ocean waters, a quarter mile above earth.”
“You mean—” gasped Jeff, “you mean you knew that? Yet you would have thrust us into the unknown, realizing the infinitely slim possibility of our surviving the passage?”
Von Torp shrugged petulantly.
“What would you have me do? The cause of science must be progressed. What is a human life—?”
“That’s why your other victim—or was it victims—never returned! You damned, murdering madman! You want our help? Our obedience? I’d rather help a jackal find its carrion, obey the dictates of the devil—”
“Jeff t”
Jeff’s anger faded. The girl’s eyes were pleading for peace. Von Torp continued to doggedly heap stone upon stone, his face bland as if he had not heard the ti- rade. It occurred to Jeff McClary, sud- denly, that for the second time since the beginning of this mad venture, Beth An- derson had called him by his given name. Which meant she must realize what he was now beginning tu realize. That he and she were bonded together in this crisis against a common foe. A foe with whom, for the present, at least, expediency de- manded they make armistice.
He said grudgingly, “All right! But remember, von Torp, this is a two-way agreement. Beth and I will barter our labor for your knowledge. But if you make any attempt to double-cross us—”
He let the threat die there, and bent to the job in hand. The cairn was growing slowly, but the sucking mud devoured stones like a hungry maw. It was a knee- high, truncated pyramid now, but the slow
i ACTION ooze yielded fewer rocks to his scooping grasp.
He moved farther from the cairn each time he sought a new addition to the dol- men. It was back-breaking labor. Muggy heat surged up from the fen, the rank stench choked him, nauseated him. Once, as he chanced to glimpse his calves, he was surprised to see that the bottoms of his trousers already were frayed and torn. The cloth was stained with blood. He looked more closely, discovered with swift, sickening disgust that his legs were pen- dulous with bloated, loathsome leeches.
The jungle about him was alive with sound; the cries of unkown beasts and clamoring of birds merged shrilly with the insistent,, sucking murmur of the swamp. Great, rasping, bladed ferns scraped drily above him. Once he started, hearing and feeling the mud beneath him quiver at the impact of some distant terror.
But he fought down his fears. All this was subordinate to the task confronting them. They must complete their cairn. Then they could seek higher, drier land.
From the swamp behind him came a piercing scream; a cry that whirled him about, sent him stumbling through mucky foulness on flying feet. A cry in a fa- miliar voice. Beth’s voice.
“Jeff! Jeff—help! This thing— a
And von Torp’s terror-stricken bel- low. . « «
IV
T was only rods to the small clearing wherein the others labored, but to Jeff it seemed miles. Snarled roots and matted fibers snared his feet, his steps foundered in a soft and yielding mire. But when finally he burst through the labyrinth of vines, it was to view a scene of horror. Charging from the opposite end of the marsh came a weird, ungainly beast. A huge, elephantine monster, fully six feet in height at the withers, mottled flesh-and- gray in color. Its head was a vision from an evil dream. Long and ugly, with three pairs of hornlike eminences on the skull. One pair on the nose, another above the ruddy, porcine eyes, and again a pair where the head joined the body in swell- ing rolls of flesh. These were the weapons with which,
STORIES
head lowered, it now threatened Beath and von Torp as it plunged toward them at express-train speed. Vicious, too, were its fangs. The canine teeth of its upper jaw, a pair of dagger-keen tusks, curving down- ward and outward from its dripping jowls.
As Jeff watched, the man and girl ended their terrified immobility. Behind Beth a massive tree, broad of bole, gnarly, of- fered easy footholds and safety. Jeff roared encouragement as she caught a low limb and clambered up.
Von Torp was close behind. Despite the grotesque monster’s speed, it seemed as if there was ample time for both of them to escape its charge.
Then the beast bellowed! A coughing, irate snort hawked from its spume-white nostrils. And with that sound von Torp flew into weakling panic. He hurtled him- self forward. Reckless of the girl’s meager hold, thoughtless of everything except his own precious hide, like a gassed rat he clawed up the tree-trunk.
His weight and haste thrust the balance against the girl. For a dreadful moment Beth succeeded in maintaining a precarious hold. Then, with a tiny, choking cry, she fell!
It did not occur to Jeff that his next, instinctive action was gloriously foolhardy. There was no time to think things out, to measure consequences. There was only time to act.
As her slim figure toppled, he cried aloud, surged forward. In the back of his brain was one clear thought amid con- fusion. The beast’s charge reminded him of something he had once seen enacted in a lazy Spanish town, a drama played be- fore tiers of swarthy afficionados. That clumsy, lumbering beast . . . that lowered head . . . that blind, devastating charge
. and the method of turning that charge.
Mud sucked and clung to his heels, but he ran. And as he ran he tore at the lin- ing of his coat-sleeve; the deep, capacious lining of a professional magicia.:’s jacket. From it whipped a length of filmy silk, so fine that it could be drawn through a baby’s finger-ring, but dazzlingly scarlet!
And as he ran, he cried aloud.
“Run, Beth! That way! To the higher ground!”
It was nip-and-tuck for a moment. The
EXILES OF THE
girl dragged herself erect, turned without parley, fled in the direction designated. The dawn-beast thundered on, its great, splayed hoofs splashing, churning the fetid swamp. Its speed was greater than Jeff’s, but Jeff was nearer the girl. And Jeff was angling between the creature and its prey, his crimson kerchief wide, un- folded, now. A bloody challenge against a background of drab.
HE beast recognized that challenge. Recognized and responded like the fighting bull oi the twentieth century, the bull whose parent it might remotely be. Its tiny, bloodshot eyes rolled in their sockets. An instant it seemed to hesitate. Its body quivered in an agony of indeci- sion. Then, with a second coughing snarl, it wheeled toward the flaming lure Jeff dangled before it.
Jeff’s veins flowed with fire, but the sweat on his forehead was like the clammy kiss of death. Having tempted the charge, there was nothing left to do now but meet it. A swift glance after Beth. Each fleet- ing second offered her a greater margin of safety.
But himself?
The six-horned creature was perilously near. Jeff held the scarlet lure at arm’s distance. This was like bull-baiting, but never had a matador faced a charging wall six feet in height. No time for gestures here, no opportunity for graceful swirls and curvetings. Yet he must hold his pose until the last possible moment.
Then its foul body-stench was in his nostrils, its splashing charge was drench- ing him with spray. Red, hateful eyes glared, not at him, but at the flaming cloth that antagonized it. And its hurtling body with within yards . . . feet!
Jeff roared, and fell away!
Just in time, for at that moment the swamp-thing’s plated carcass splashed against his arms with bruising force. So close it brushed his shoulder that he glimpsed the stiff, tiny hairs of its nos- trils, saw small things crawling in an old and unhealed wound in its foreleg.
And it bellowed again, for the kerchief, whipping from Jeff’s grasp, was pierced and clutched by the monster’s lethal horns! The damp, fine silk settled and clung be- fore the creature’s eyes like a veil, a mask-
DAWN WORLD 13
ing, blinding and confusing hocdwink over its eyes,
Jeff tried to laugh, but the laughter choked in his throat. A chance in a mil- lion but it had worked! For the blinded beast was threshing farther and deeper into the gray swamp, bellowing, shaking its massive head in vain attempt to lose that swaddling mask.
He ran, then. He was not afterward sure how long or far he ran. All he knew was that he caught. Beth, and they joined hands and fled like frightened children from the dim and evil marsh. Until the sluggish water thickened to mud, the mud turned coarse, became hard ground. Un- til they stood on the slope of rising hills, saw above them the clean, blue sky, and before them pasture-land waving shoulder- high with grasses.
It was not until, exhausted, they flung themselves to the ground in that cleaner, safer spot that they thought of their com- panion, of the coward who was the author of all their troubles. Beth looked at Jeff, and her eyes were anxious,
“Von Torp!” she said.
66{ TON TORP!?” echoed Jeff. “Lord, yes! I forgot all about him. When that damned watchchamaycall it—”
“Dinoceras,” said the girl unexpectedly.
“Huh? Dino which?”
“Dinoceras ingens. I did a Sunday fea- ture once for the World-Twnes. On fos- sils. An amblyopod of the Cenozoic era. Which proves that von Torp was telling the truth. We have been hurled hundreds of thousands of years backward into time’s secret ages.”
“T never doubted him. That swamp we landed in was no Aquacade. But—” Jeff frowned. “We've lost him, damn his hide! I’m sure I couldn’t find my way back to the cairn. But it serves him right. The skunk deliberately pushed you off that tree—”
“Which doesn’t alter the fact,” said Beth, “that we need his knowledge. We have to find him, Jeff. If we don’t, we’re going to spend our lifetimes playing cave- man. And I, for one, don’t know that I’d be such a great success—”’
She stared ruefully at her clothing. Fifth Avenue exclusives, thought Jeff, had certainly proven themselves inadequate to
14 ACTION
the exigencies of dawn-world life. In a hurry. His clothing was soaked, torn, ragged; hers was irreparably ruined.
Her tailored suit was out at the elbows, ripped up the seams, shredded in a hun- dred places by the thorn-fingers that had clutched at them as they plunged recklessly through the swamp. Her brushed-felt hat was gone. One shoe had lost its heel. Her hose were patches of fabric clotted to her legs by a network of cuts and scratches.
“And they were Nylon, too!” mourned Beth.
“If we live a million years,” offered Jeff, “you can sue the DuPonts. One thing is sure, we can’t go wallowing back into the damp-and-smelly ’til we’ve rigged up some new duds. Whether you like it or not, the only thing I can see to do is try playing caveman for a while. Find some safe place to set up light housekeep- ing. We know there are animals. If I can take a few hides and you can find a way to stitch ’em, maybe we can have a new, all-leather outfit—”
“—-with mammoth-tusk buttons?” fin- ished the girl. Jeff looked at her swiftly, admiringly. He had spoken with delib- erate lightness of tone, hoping to lift her spirits with gaiety he, himself, did not feel. It was a revelation and a surprise to find that she had sporting-blood as ready as his own. Sporting-blood? Another word was better. Less pretty, perhaps, but more
apt. This gal had guts! He rose. “Right, pal! And now, let’s get going.
See those hills over there? They look to me like they might be a good place to set up— What was that?”
Swift concern settled over the girl’s face.
“Voices!” she faltered. “But surely—?”
“Look out!’’ Jeff yelled and moved at the same time. Out of the thick, high grass that towered above them like an ocean’s green crest flew a dark object, a stone as large as a man’s clenched fist. Only Jeff’s hasty push saved Beth.
She fell, sprawling, the rock missing her by scant inches. But she was back on her feet in an instant.
“Wh-what is it, Jeff?”
“T don’t know. Cut and run! hills!”
Another stone hurtled toward them. An- other and yet another. And for the second
For the
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time they fled, this time from a foe un- seen. Through tall grass, sharp and high, they raced blindly, not knowing whether their headlong flight took them toward or away from their enumy. . .
The storm of missiles thickened. Now there were not only rocks, but sticks as well. And once a forked stick, in the cleft of which a sharp stone had been rudely crammed, hummed menace as it whisked past Jeff’s head. Even in that hur- ried moment, seeing it, Jeff’s eyes opened in wonderment.
Such weapons were not the arms of beasts! And they had heard voices, too. Voices! That meant—
“Beth!” he gasped to the girl. it’s men!”
But there came no answer. For at that moment there sang through the air a whirl- ing bludgeon. Its spinning edge glanced across Beth’s temple, scored a welt there. Suddenly the girl’s weight was heavy on his arm.
Jeff dropped beside her, horrified. His heart sank as he saw the bright blood burst from that deep gash, began to beat again as he saw that though her face had drained of color, her breast still rose and fell in measured cadence.
With a little cry, he took her into his arms, moved forward. He had taken no more than a half dozen steps when the grasses parted before him—and there, sud- denly, he was face to face with his an- tagonists.
And they were men! Men as tall as himself, bearded and unkempt, savage creatures garbed in crude hides, bearing mean weapons of wood and stone, but— men!
Their leader raised his arm. To Jeff there came a sort of prescience. Some deep-rooted intuition warned him that if that arm were to fall, he and Beth would surely die. It must not fall! He lifted his voice in a great shout.
“No! No! We are friends!”
The creature before him could not pos- sibly know the meaning of his words. But something in Jeff’s voice stayed his arm. For a long moment he stood hesitant, brow furrowed in thought. Then he grunted short, unintelligible syllables. A host of followers swarmed in upon Jeff, pinned his arms to his side, wrenched the girl
“Beth—
EXILES OF THE
from his grip. It was senseless to resist. The leader spoke again; Jeff was prodded forward. And the little caravanserai of dawn-folk moved toward the low hills, bearing with them two captives.
V
HEIR journey was not a long one. A half hour, maybe less; certainly not more.
It took them through the tangle of high grasses, up gravel-strewn slopes, into the very hills toward which they had striven. Beth was carried, but Jeff walked. From time to time one of his captors sidled up beside him, peered at him curiously. One gathered the courage to reach out, touch the cloth of Jeff’s jacket. Jeff grinned encouragingly.
“Like it, bud? Latest thing out of Es- quire.”
But at his words the warrior leaped back, startled; brawny hands tightening on a wicked-looking club. Jeff made no fur- ther overtures.
And as they walked, the afternoon dulled with storm clouds gathering in the west. The slow sun drowned in seas of gray, a wind keened from the hills and buried it- self deep in the grassy moors. The world was young and strange and it whispered of things unknown.
Beth’s eyes opened, dark with terror till they found Jeff. Then they lighted.
“Jeff! You're all right?”
“Yep. Take it easy, gal. They’re hu- mans, and they seem to be friendly enough.”
“Humans! But—” Beth stared at the dawn-folk incredulously. ‘But that’s im- possible, Jeff! Von Torp said a million There were no true men a million
years.
years ago. Only ape-like creatures. The Java man, the Heidelberg man. These men look like the Cro-Magnon type. In-
telligent. But that type didn’t exist until 25000 BL.”
“Then they must be mirages,” grinned Jeff. “Shall I wipe my eyes and make "em vanish?”
“But I read all about it. In—”
“You believe what you read, don’t you? If it’s all the same to you, I'l believe what I see. I always did say those paleontolo- gists were a bunch of phonies. They dig
DAWN WORLD 15
up a molar, two ribs and a shin-bone, re- construct the rest out of plaster and wire, and say, “This is homo whozis. Pe- riod: April 7th, 547,862 B.C. Last seen riding a pterodactyl down Neolithic Boule- vard.’
“Nope, it doesn’t work that way, sugar. These guys are men, not monkeys. A little on the Tarzan side, perhaps, but still men. See that one over there? The one in the ox-hide G-string. He’s laughing at us. Probably thinks we have a funny accent. Well, maybe he’s right. But the fact is—he can think. And he can laugh. Man is the only animal with that ability. And,” he added thoughtfully, “a good thing !”’
Beth said dubiously, “Yes. Either that or von Torp made a mistake. His ma- chine may not have been as efficient as he believed. But where are they taking us?”
“Home, I guess. To meet the Big Chief. The leader of this outfit seems to be puzzled by our appearance. We're a little something out of the ordinary, you know. And—I’m betting this is the me- tropolis now. Doesn’t look much like Broadway, does it?”
HEY had rounded a sharp outcrop- ping of rock. And before and slightly above them had appeared, suddenly, a row of lodgings centered about a small cleared space. Lodgings was a poor word. They were really caves in the rocky ledge, some large, capacious, some mere niches. They were alike in that entry was afforded each by crudely lashed wood ladders, that each was guarded by a huge boulder so placed that in an emergency it could be hastily moved to barricade the cavern, and that in the mouth of each dwelling-place now stood men, women and children of the dawn-world community. At the mouth of the largest cave stood a huge man, more elaborately bedecked than his fellows. There was about him, in his looks and in his rich, full voice, an aura of authority. He cried a command to the incoming party, and that party’s leader answered. Beth’s bearers set her down. Jeff moved to her side, and to- gether they stood silently awaiting the in- spection of the clan’s chieftain. It was a long inspection. It began with questions; phrases Beth and Jeff knew
16 ACTION STORIES
to be queries only by the rising inflection of the clan-father’s voice. The words were unintelligible ; the language was apparently a rudimentary tongue for the clicks and grunts that characterized it were mono- syllables.
Jeff shook his head. “Sorry, friend. We don’t get it. Sign-talk, maybe?’ He tried to remember what little he knew of this means of converse. It wasn’t much. A circular rubbing motion on the belly signified hunger—but a hell of a lot of good it did him to know that.
Beth cried, “Jeff!”
The leader had transferred his attention to her. A scowl creased his forehead. He spoke a few, excited words to a companion and pointed at Beth’s legs. Then he called out, and from the back of the huddled throng shuffled an aged woman. The others gave way before her as she ad- vanced, moving aside with swift, repellent gestures, avoiding her touch.
It was not hard to see why. Her face, her arms and body, particularly her legs, were scabbed and scrofulous. A network of ugly veins empurpled her limbs where the skin was peeling away.
The leader pointed at her, then at Beth. There was a look of loathing on his face. He spoke a command, and the tribespeople fell away from Beth. One man raised a pointed stick... .
Light dawned on Jeff.
“Beth,” he said suddenly, “take off your stockings !”’
“What ?”
“Take them off. Don’t you see—they think you’ve got the same disease as this old crone. Leprosy ... scrofula... eczema. . . I don’t know what it is. You’re taboo. They'll drive you away, probably. Take them off!”
The girl nodded, bent over swiftly. The hose were in shreds anyway; she stripped them off with a quick motion, tossed them away.
A concerted gasp broke from the lips of her watchers. The one nearest to whom the hose had fallen howled and fled. Even the chieftain took a backward step, his eyes wide. Then a new look came over his face. Fear, mingled with vengeance and hatred. He raised a quivering arm, pointed at Beth.
“Ngah!” he cried. Ngahlu!’ Then
broke into a perfect torrent of speech; voice hard and accusing.
“Ngah!” echoed the tribesmen. And as swiftly as they had retreated, they moved forward again. In an instant they had seized Beth, were hauling her forcibly to- ward the center of the clearing, where stood a squat stone fireplace. One man, at the leader’s order, darted to the caves.
“Hey, wait a minute!’ roared Jeff. “What is this?”
But no one paid him the slightest atten- tion. Every eye was turned on Beth; every accusing mouth was hurling invec- tive at her. Jeff’s efforts to reach her side were met with angry shoves and glances. The messenger returned from the caverns. Dangling from his right fist was a long, limp object. At a word from the chieftain, he hurled this to the ground before Beth. And the cries redoubled in volume.
“Ngah! Ngah lu!”
And Jeff saw, at the same instant as the girl, what it was that the runner had brought from the caves. The body of a snake. Beth’s voice rose shrill above the clamor of the tribe.
“Jeff—they think J’m a sort of snake, too! A—a snake-woman. When I took off my hose, they thought I peeled off my old skin, like a snake does. They—”
Their intention was plain. For sud- denly the chieftain picked up the snake, whirled it thrice around his head, loosed a great, vengeful shout, and cast it into the baking coals of the fireplace. A brief, hissing crackle—and the snake was charred ash!
ao now a score of hands were eag- erly heaping fuel on the central fire; making an altar, a pyre, of what usually must serve as a warmth- and cooking- place. Glowing embers kindled dry wood, dry wood spat bright tongues of flame; the pile grew higher and yet higher.
The blaze was fanning now. Soon it would be a red holocaust of flame. When it reached that point, Beth would share the slain snake’s fate. Like it, she would be a sacrifice to the ignorance and fear of these aborigines.
Unless—
Jeff’s mind worked at lightning speed. There was no sense in pitting his strength
EXILES OF THE
against that of the dawn-men. Their weakest member would be more than a match for him. Nor could he, not know- ing their language, argue with them.
Neither force nor reason, then, could stay them; a single hope remained. To play upon their fears. To somehow make them believe—Jeff started suddenly. He had it! His hands again sought the lining of his coat, the secret pocket in the in- creasingly valuable jacket of the profes- sional man-of-magic. For a moment he could not find what he wanted; a fang of fear slashed through him. Had Lafferty forgotten—?
Then the pellets were in his palm. A half dozen or more of them. Small, gray- brown pellets of a chemical composition known to any Twentieth Century adult. Jeff used them when giving benefit per- formances to children. They created a spectacular, harmless display.
These creatures who, even now, were dragging Beth closer and closer to the pyre were adult in size—but children in mind and thought. Beth’s head turned, her eyes found his, her voice wailed, “Jeff—stop them! They—”
Jeff cried aloud, and raised his arm. The eyes of the tribesfolk sought his face; no one noticed that he threw, or that tiny brown pellets left his hand, flew toward the altar. They heard his voice, and fol- lowed the pointing of his finger.
“Rise!”’ cried Jeff. “Rise, O spirit of the Serpent. Rise!” It did not matter that they could not understand his words. His intonation was thunderously hollow, and his eyes flamed. His hands directed their attention ; the fine, swift hands of the pres- tidigitator. ‘Rise and come forth from the flame, O Serpent!”
And as at his command, something writhed in the red heart of the fire! Two .. . four... a half dozen gray, twist- ing bodies rolled and stretched and grew, began sliding from the flame that nour- ished them in thick, undulating curves.
A cry rose from the watchers. But ha- tred was gone from the cry, now. It was in sheer terror that they screamed. The chemical “serpents” grew, spread, seemed to crawl from the heart of the flame, wrig- gled over the altar; blind simulacra of life slithered across the ground.
DAWN WORLD 17
HE cave-men fled. With fearful, awe-
struck bleats they scurried to their ladders. Within seconds, Jeff and the girl stood alone, unguarded, in a _ deserted clearing. Above them, squealing figures scrambled for the cave-mouths. Beth sobbed a sigh of relief.
“I take back everything I ever said, Maestro. From now on, parlor magic is my favorite sport. Let’s get out of here before these Chemcraft snakes blow up and float away.”
She reached for his hand. But a new thought came to Jeff McClary. He stopped her.
“Hold it! I’ve got a better idea. We’re two babes in the woods out there. We might as well feather our nests while we can. Make a few friends—”
“What do you mean?”
“Watch!”
Jeff stepped forward. Once again his cry drew the attention of the tribesmen. Awed eyes watched as he bent to seize the foremost of the brown “crawlers” in his bare hand.
“Abracadabra!” intoned Jeff magnifi- cently. ‘“‘Tenneseevalleyauthority! Yoicks and tally-ho! Scram, snakes!”
And he made a swift, grinding gesture. The powdery “serpent” crumbled, became a thin, dusty film. He picked up the next, and the next . . strode forward and trampled the remainder, grinding them to ash beneath his heel. The snakes vanished.
And Jeff stepped back, smiling tri- umphantly. Arms high, fists unclenched, he beckoned to the wide-eyed children of the dawn-world. And their leader read the right meaning into Jeff’s gesture. He raised his own ham-like paws—and cau- tiously began to descend the ladder.
Those behind him took courage from his daring. One by one they deserted their perches. In the space of minutes, they were gathered before Jeff; a wide, semi- circle of awed, respectful humans. The chieftain moved nearer to Jeff. His lips were tense, but his manner purposeful. There was a sort of majesty to his move- ments; it was as if he offered himself as hostage for those he led. He muttered a word in pleading tones. Then his great knees bent—and he knelt in the dirt before Jeff.
Jeff moved to his side. A little moan
18 ACTION
escaped the lips of the watchers. The chieftain did not stir, but there was per- spiration on his brow and on his neck. And then—
Jeff placed a hand on the kneeling lead- er’s elbow; gently raised him from his at- titude of obeisance!
As he did so, breath returned to the on- lookers like the rising of a swift breeze. Some tortured throat loosed a great cry of gladness; others took it up. Laughter rose and fell in cascades about them; loud- est of all was the booming, shaken laugh- ter of the reprieved chieftain.
With a joyful shout he charged for- ward. And before Jeff could stop him, the clan father was rubbing his broad, bearded face across Jeff’s in an ecstasy of grati- tude, friendship and abasement!
Jeff opened his mouth to protest, got a mouthful of coarse, sweaty hair, choked and pleaded, “Hey, cut that out! Beth— do something! Before he smothers me!”
But Beth was having troubles of her own. Like Jeff, she was the center of an admiring circle to each member of which the rubbing-of-faces seemed a paramount duty. Between gasps, “Don’t look now,” she cried hysterically, “but I think we’ve been elected honorary members of the tribe!”
VI
HUS Beth and Jeff, daughter and son
of the Machine Age, became members of a Dawn World clan. And if their ways were a constant marvel to the cave-folk, no less strange were the ways of their new comrades to them.
Despite the apparent savagery of the cave community, its citizens had many re- finements Beth and Jeff felt certain the Twentieth Century savants had not sus- pected. Light, for one thing. At night- fall, the two young adventurers were al- lotted sleeping space in a large, central cavern shared by a half dozen others; to their vast amazement they learned that the cave was kept dimly illumined by splut- tering animal-fat candles! Poor, ill-shapen things, true—but candles, nevertheless.
“And that in itself,” mused Jeff, “is proof of their intelligence. When you stop to consider that candles were a stand- ard means of illumination as late as our
STORIES
17th Century! And—and look, Beth! On the wall! Those paintings!”
They were dull and indistinct in the candle’s gleam. But Beth nodded excit- edly.
“T thought we'd find something like that. They've found paintings like those in a half hundred places. Man’s artistic sense developed early. You see, those paintings are colored, Jeff! There’s one thing we must learn to do—and quickly! We must learn their language. It can’t be hard!”
But it was more difficult than they ex- pected. Their first—and for a long time their only—means of communication with the clans-folk was by signs. To their ears, for a long while, the tongue of the Oonts (for such they eventually learned to be the name of the tribe) sounded like noth- ing but the grating of tree-boughs in the wind, or—as Jeff put it—“Like the hokey agony of a pair of pro wrestlers!”
The tribal father was no help to them. Having done his part in inducting the two strangers into the clan, he proceeded to forget, with aboriginal ingenuousness, the terror which had caused him to do so and, indeed, their very existence! They sought help elsewhere ; found it finally in the per- sons of two younger members of the clan. A girl who was called Luuma; a young man, ’Aka.
From these two, by the tedious process of pointing at objects and listening care- fully to the syllable by which the instruc- tors designated it, Beth and Jeff painfully began to accumulate a vocabulary. The nouns were not too difficult to establish, but for some time the verbs defied them. Nor did it make their problem any the easier that neither of them had ever stud- ied the basic theories of philology.
But it was Beth who, finally, made the great discovery that smoothed their path to understanding.
“T’m beginning to see now, Jeff! We’ve been trying too hard to find true verbs in their sentences. The truth of the matter is—there are none! Except for those few onomatopeic verbs we’ve already distin- guished. Like ‘tlap’, for ‘eat’, and ‘ongh’ for sleep—’’
“Both,” commented Jeff, “signs of good manners, no? If you don’t smack your lips or snore like a hog—”’
“They form their verbs,” continued
EXILES OF THE DAWN
Beth, “by putting two nouns together! For
instance—you know their word for ‘here’ ?”
“Umn 33
“Yes. And ‘there’?”
“Let’s see. ‘Nuk’, isn’t it?”
“That’s right. Well—the verb ‘to go’ is ‘umnuk’! ‘Here-there’. It also means ‘to walk’. And ‘to run’ would be ‘wmnuk- ul’.. .“Here-there-wind’.”
“And the past tense?”
“‘“Umnuk-or. ‘Here-there sun’. One day ago. And if they mean two days ago they say, ‘umnuk-or-or. See?”
Jeff solemnly raised her right arm above her head. “The winnah,” he proclaimed, “and Dawn World champeen! Beth, I think you’ve got something there. And now, if you'll pardon me, I'll be on my way. I’ve got to—er—umnuk-ga-li-rrg!”’
“You—you’ve which?” repeated Beth. “ “Here-there-eye-man-dog—’ ?”
“What a poor scholar!” Jeff shook his head. ‘“Can’t you understand plain Oont? I said I’ve got to see a man about a MOG Rae
UT Beth had found the key; it was not difficult now for the two young people to unlock the mysteries of the Oont language. And in doing so they won closer to the clans-folk than they had pre- viously been able to do. They had been fed and housed as a matter of course; now, able to converse with their hosts, they en- tered directly into the life of the clan.
The tribe, they found, operated as a simple commune. Each man worked for the good of all. The men hunted, fished, made week-long voyages afield in search of edible fruits and grains; the women cooked, maintained a certain degree of sanitation about the caves, raised the chil- dren and tended a few domesticated ani- mals. A_ lank-uddered creature with scrawny shanks and thick, shaggy hair in whose bony frame it was hard to envision the cow that would some day evolve. But it gave milk, a strong, curdy liquid that pleased the stomach even if it did not tempt the nostrils.
The women, too, scraped and tanned the pelts brought back from the hunt by their males. These they used as mats, as sleep- ing furs and clothing. Beth shrewdly bar- tered bits of her Twentieth Century cloth-
WORLD 19
ing for these sturdier hides; a short time later she proudly presented Jeff with a garment similar to that worn by the other tribesmen.
Jeff put it on. When he strode from the cave, stood before Beth for inspection, he grinned ruefully, ““How do I look?’ he demanded. “As if I didn’t know. And what do I use for pockets? Hell’s bells—”
“You look,” Beth told him frankly, “like Mr. Din. You know, G. Din, of Kipling fame? . ‘nothin’ much before, an’ rather less than ’arf o’ that be’ind.’ But you'll get by. You could use a little more hair on the arms and legs. That seems to be fashionable around these parts. But these things will stand more wear and tear than the things we've been wearing. I forgot about pockets. I'll cut up your old coat and use the cloth.”
“My old coat? Why not yours? Say, where is your old stuff, anyway? Not that you don’t look O.K. in that fur en- semble, but—”
He stopped suddenly. Old Krua, one of the women with whom Beth had bartered, appeared from her cave. There was a proud smile on Krua’s face; there was hauteur in her stride. She wore the ex- pression of a woman who is wearing a Schiaparelli model—and knows it. She had a new decoration about her head. A headgear soft and colorful and filmy, and strangely out of keeping with harsh, prim- itive existence. A garment that billowed softly in the breeze as she walked... .
“Oh!” said Jeff. “Oh, I see!” And he grinned, no longer self-conscious in his ab- breviated loin-clout. “Nice going, sugar. Still, you might have told her the right way to wear ’em.”
“You,” declared Beth stiffly, “are hate- ful!” And she blushed. It was, thought Jeff, a particularly attractive blush.
S° days sped by, and though they al- lowed themselves to be diverted by affairs of the clan, by the fulfilling of their own immediate needs, even by occasional periods of relaxation and amusement, Beth and Jeff never forgot the one important problem that confronted them. That of somehow returning to their own time. “But to do that,” said Jeff, “we must first locate von Torp. And so far we haven’t been able to find hide nor hair of
20 ACTION STORIES
him. Nor the cairn. ’Aka, you didn’t have any luck today?”
The young warrior whom Jeff had en- listed in their cause shook his head. He spoke, as Beth and Jeff now quite fluently did, in the Oont tongue.
“The swamp is large, Snake-Killer. But we shall find the rocks-on-rocks some day. But the other No-Hair man—” He shook his head dubiously. “He is probably dead. None can live in there for long. None but they who talk with beasts.”
“Who?” That was something new. “Who are they?”
’Aka rolled his eyes and spat. It was a sign Jeff recognized; the conventional action that bespoke something vile, un- mentionable, distasteful to the Oonts.
“The little monkey-men, Snake-killer. Our enemies. The slant-heads. They are men-not-men. Being not-men they talk with the huge ones that scream.”
Jeff stared at Beth curiously. “Double- talk?” he hazarded. “Men-not-men?”
But there was a light of understanding in the girl’s eyes.
“Maybe I know what he means, Jeff Paleontologists say that the races of man did not follow each other in clean-cut suc- cession; they overlapped. The primate evolved into the ape-man, a creature of rudimentary brain; this thing, in turn, gave way to a creature another short step higher in the scale of life—the Neander- thal man. Then, for thousands of years, the Neanderthal Man and the Cro- Magnon type waged war upon each other. The Cro-Magnon man, the true man, won out eventually because his was the greater intelligence. But it was a long and bitter and bloody period, because the Neander- thal man was the stronger and more bestial.
“These ‘men-not-men’ ’Aka speaks of may be the ape-like Neanderthaler. It is extremely likely that they should dwell in hidden, jungled places; quite possible they should speak the language of the rep- tiles—”
“But you said yourself—”
“I know. That the great reptiles should all have disappeared by now. But I was wrong, and the twentieth century students were wrong, too. They are not all dead. I’ve seen gigantic footprints in the ooze at the edge of the lowlands; we’ve all
heard their screaming at nights. Some still live. Dying remnants of a gross ex- periment that failed. And those few, if "Aka is right, may have intercourse with the man-things on a lower plane than ours.”’
Jeff scowled. He stopped.
“Yes?”
“Nothing.” He did not want to tell her his thought. That if the jungle were peopled with creatures like these—mon- sters of an even earlier age, ape-things whose friends the monsters were—then there was little hope indeed that von Torp still lived. And if von Torp were dead, then they were forever trapped in this age.
Were she to stop and considcr, she would realize it herself. But hope is a spark that needs much quenching. So long as she did not realize, he would not tell her.
But they must not give up without mak- ing one final, strong bid for the restora- tion of the world they had known. He turned to ’Aka.
“?Aka, the men are home from the hunt. Our clan is strong and fearless. Will the men follow me into the marsh tomorrow? To make one last and thor- ough search for the heap of rocks-on- rocks, or the lost No-Haired One?”
"Aka said dubiously, “They fear the swamp, O Snake-Killer.”
“T will pay them,” Jeff tempted them. “I will give them a night of great joy. I will make for them the pebbles to disap- pear. The shells will hide in their mouths and ears and noses. I will even cause the flowers to bloom from old Krua’s hair- less pate.”
’Aka’s eyes sparkled. This was indeed temptation. Jeff’s magic was a constant source of delight to the Oonts. One of which they never wearied. A full night of magic... .
“T shall speak to them, Snake-Killer. If they dare, we shall hunt tomorrow at sun-up.”
“Then in that tase—”
VII
Ps ees at sun-up they stood, twoscore strong, on the low, flat plain where the rolling countryside met the steamy edge of the fen. Twoscore warriors of
EXILES
the Oonts, armed for battle. Looking upon their weapons, Jeff felt oddly proud. For it was he who had brought to the tribesmen new inventions for the waging of war.
“Pretty good, eh?’ he said to Beth. He slapped the stock of the weapon he bore. His fingers plucked a rawhide; it vibrated with a throaty, thrumming sound. “This ought to take care of any stray Neander- thalers, no?”
Beth sniffed disparagingly.
“You act as if you had invented it. After all, the cross-bow was in use as far back as the Tenth Century!”
“Which,” pointed out Jeff, “won’t come along for a million years, more or less. Interesting point there. Was I the orig- inal inventor of the cross-bow? If so, how come I learned about it in an age wherein it already existed when I was born? Which came first, the chicken or—?”
“Stop it. You’re making me dizzy.” Beth stared at their comrades-in-arms. “Are you sure they can handle those things? After all, they’ve only been using them for a day or so, Bows are tricky.”
“Don’t worry about that. These lads can handle anything that requires only strength and keenness of eye. “*Aka can crank this job, shaft it and lay an arrow into a bull’s-eye before you can say homo sapiens. Well, it’s light enough to get go- ing. “Aka!”
“Yes, Snake-Killer?”
“Divide the men. You take one party; I'll lead the other. We'll meet here when the hills swallow the sun. You know what to look for?”
“Yes, Snake-Killer.”’
“Good! Let’s go, then.”
The parties set off in opposite direc- tions. Jeff’s moved toward the lower part of the swamp. Dawn was still an echo, pale and distant, of the night it had van- quished. The sunlight dimmed as they entered the sucking fen; grim sounds of life rose about them; the Oont tribesmen glanced uneasily at the greasy waters, the massive, dripping ferns, clutched their new weapons tighter as for assurance. But they moved forward.
“T chose this direction,” explained Jeff, “because I remember that when we ran from the swamp we were steadily moving
OF THE
DAWN WORLD 21
uphill. It’s all a matter of luck, of course. Luck, and persistence. There may be miles of this swamp. But we know that somewhere is that cairn. And somewhere near it is——-must be, if he is alive — von Torp. He can’t desert it. It’s the gate- way to our own time.
“We must find him. Now that we have allies, we can build a duplicate machine. Return to— What was that?’
“That” was a sound that sent swift shudders running up and down the girl’s back. Nor was she alone in her fears. The tribesmen halted in their tracks; one or two of them retreated a pace to Jeff’s side; others looked nervously about as if seeking a place of refuge.
The sound was that of a pack in full cry. Snarling howls, the rasping of angry throats, and from afar—coming nearer with each passing moment—the splash of many racing feet.
Toek, ordinarily least fearful of the clansmen, was beside Jeff. He fingered his bow, darted swift glances back the way they had come.
“We are not safe here, Snake-Killer. It is they-who-run-in-packs.”
Jeff’s jaw tightened.
“We are as safe here as anywhere. Form as I taught you. Prepare your bows. Fire when I give the word.”
Toek stirred rebelliously.
“They are mighty fighters—”
“So am I.” Jeff stared him down. “Do as I say!”
Toek’s eyes fell. He shrugged and turned away. In another moment he had gathered the clansmen together, formed them into the double line Jeff had taught them to use. An adaptation of the “Brit- ish square,” wherein the front line knelt to fire, the second line fired over their heads from a standing position.
Jeff took his place in the line, bow taut and ready, arrow restins in its channel. These were crudely hewn arms, but better than anything the cave-folk had ever known before. Jeff could have given them the simple long-bow. But this was more ac- curate.
The baying was very near now. And above the splash of racing feet, above the snarling of the pack, Jeff heard a second sound—the snuffling snort of an animal fleeing in terror. The thick, wheezy gasp-
22 ACTION STORIES
ing of a beast straining itself beyond en- durance. This, then, was the pursued. What it was, or what its pursuers, Jeff could not guess.
HEN the full drama burst upon them!
From the dank tangle burst a tank- like figure, a flesh-brown creature about the size of a small rhinoceros, and not un- like that animal in appearance save that it had no horn; its only weapons were flar- ing tusks something like those of a wild boar. Heavy, unwieldy, its great pads sank in the morass with every step; only fear gave it the strength to pull itself free and shamble on.
The howling grew more shrill, more menacing—and the fern fronds were sud- denly parted in a dozen places. Dim brown shapes appeared. Two... a half dozen . ..ascore! Jeff looked upon the beast that ran in packs . . . the ancestor of the wolf. Larger, heavier built, with a broad, prehensile head and dripping fangs; blood-red of eye and singularly intent on the kill.
Someone gasped at Jeff’s shoulder, and it was Beth.
“Dromocyon vorax! But it should not be in here. It is a plains animal. Ac- cording to the books—”
“Never mind the books! Which is the more dangerous? We don’t want the win- ner turning on us.”
“They are! The—the wolf-things. The other one is coryphodon hamatus. An herbivorous swamp-creature.”
“Okay!” Jeff spun to his followers. “Let ’em have it! The furry things. All right—now!”
And with the command, a score of cross-bows spanged! as one.
Not vainly had Jeff boasted of the arch- ery ability of his dawn-men. Twenty shafts sped through the gloom—and twenty shafts found their marks m one or another of the wolf-beasts. The foremost, logical target, leaped high, howling once terribly, and that tensing of his muscles was his last move. He was dead even be- fore his bristling body dropped back into the roiled waters. A half dozen more dropped silently, suddenly, in their tracks, dead of arrows that had found their hearts. One beast tumbled, screaming with pain, gnawing at an arrow that pierced his thigh
and tripped him as he would have fled. Another pawed, whimpering with strange, muted cries, at a shaft that locked his slav- ering jaws together; as he turned to run blindly from this weird foe, a second ar- row bladed his breast. <A bright circle of blood spilled from his clenched lips, he fell, kicked furiously for a moment, and lay still.
The grotesque amblyopod fled on, un- knowing that its pursuers lay stricken with sudden death. A single furry cur raced after it; for a time the splash of feet echoed through the swamp, the baying of a lone wolf—then there was deathly si- lence.
Silence even from the Oont tribesmen. For a moment. Then the realization of what they had done burst upon them with shattering force. Jeff could see the dazed incredulity in their eyes turning to glad
surprise . . then to pride .. . and to joy. They, weak bipeds who, heretofore
armed only with crude sticks and stones, had ever fled for their very lives before the savage beasts of plain and jungle, had become the masters of all creation! New arms had been given them; long, shafted arms with which they could strike terror to all who defied them.
It was a heady knowledge. Toek opened his lips and shouted aloud. It was a shrill, a challenging cry. It was the cry of man, realizing, for the first time, that he is to rule the world. His fellows took ip the shout. Pride there was in their rejoicing, pride and glory and daring. Their eyes were aglow, and a new, subtle lift had come into their shoulders.
No more did they skulk and face the swamp with dim, uncertain eyes. They gathered about Jeff, gesturing, clamoring, boasting. “Did you see, Snake-Killer? Three I slew!” “—one motion of my arm, O Snake-Killer, and—” “Let now the men-not-men approach us; we will show them—”
Jeff smiled. There was no longer rea- son to doubt the valor of his comrades- in-arms. Strength they had always had; with this new assurance to bolster it—
“Our search is not yet ended,” he said, “nor even begun. Let us be on our way. Forward?”
And forward moved the march.
EXILES
AWN turned to morning, morning
brightened to noon. The heat of the day came down to meet the stifling, rising sultriness of the swamp; the fen- stench thickened and sluggish creatures lazed in pools of turgid water.
Still the quest continued, but with each dragging hour Jeff’s spirits fell another notch. Nowhere in all the miles they had covered had he seen anything, any sight, any scene, that reminded him of the spot wherein von Torp’s time machine had first abandoned them.
Their march was not without incident. Once as they passed beneath a huge live- oak, a sinuous pseudo-branch uncoiled it- self and slithered out, great pendulous head dripping toward the back of one of the unsuspecting warriors.
There was no time to cry out. Jeff had only time to raise his ready cross-bow, take hasty aim and loose the bolt. Even as the great snake opened its jaws, the ar- row whirred to its mark. Thick ichor spurted from the thing’s nostrils, the war- rior screamed, leaped backward to safety; then the snake, its tiny brain pierced by the lethal arrow, flailed into motion like a gigantic, many-jointed scythe.
Its yards-long tail threshed through the ferns like the whip of doom, water churned and thick branches snapped before it, and the little band of searchers fled. How long it took to die, they did not know; it was still twisting and rolling in its death agony after the last of them had passed it by.
Again a giant turtle, its shell-plated car- cass ten feet in diameter if an inch, at- tracted their attention. It was crawling with painful slowness from the soft mud to the waters; beneath its weight the mud shifted and gave, making its progress even slower. Toek tested his new weapon on it, but that armored back shattered the slim shaft, sent it ricocheting off into the underbrush. For a time, the others amused themselves by striving to place a shaft in one of the monster’s few vulnerable spots ; an eye, or the roll of soft flesh where its throat joined its nether shell. But at last the turtle, petulant at the tiny, jarring motes that rained upon it, withdrew into its shield and would not come forth. So they moved on.
And noon gave way to steamy after-
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DAWN WORLD 23
noon; the rays of the sun struck pearls of rose and scarlet on the oily waters, then these and all colors began to dull as dusk gathered in the west. And Toek came to Jeff.
“Tt is time that we turn back, O Snake- Killer. It will soon be night. We must leave the swamp.”
And Jeff sighed.
“IT guess you’re right. Lead the way, Toek. Up to higher ground. We'll re- turn—”
len
“Yesr’
“Listen! Over there to the right. The sound of a voice. And—and hammer- ing?”
She was right! New hope sprang sud- denly into Jeff’s eyes. “Wait here! I'll see!” He darted through a veil of heavy fern, fought clear of bull-briers that clus- tered at his shoulders, his legs, broke through a final barrier of green. And then—
And then he was once again in a spot he remembered! The clearing where they had lost von Torp. Lost him—and now found him again!
For as he struggled through the brush, a heavy figure turned to face him; a familiar face stared at him across open rods; sur- prised eyes appraised him with vast won- der. A glad cry leaped to Jeff’s lips. He sprang forward. “You’re safe, von Torp! Thank Heaven! We were afraid—”
Von Torp cried swifter warning. “Stand still, you fool! Another step and you will die!’
VIII
EFF stared at the man. Then, eyes
roving slowly, he saw that which, in his eagerness, he had not noticed before.
Von Torp was not alone in the marshy glen. He had companions. Scores of them. Squat, hairy, slant-browed crea- tures, ape-like, naked save for the fur that covered them from crown to heel. Long-armed, splay-fingered, with thumbs too short to be brought into apposition; bandy-legged.
As he watched, spell-bound, the silence shattered. From the throats of the mad scientist’s companions broke a bedlam of squealing chatter. It was like the high and
24 ACTION
nasal scolding of a Capuchin monkey, but there was something ominous about it, too. Evil, threatening, direful.
Then von Torp cried a syllable—and the chattering ceased! With it ended, at the same moment, the slow, sidling mo- tion with which a half-score of the ape- creatures had been closing in on Jeff. They froze in their tracks, obedient to the German’s command. And von Torp smiled. It was not nice to look upon, that smile.
“My acquaintances are zealous protec- tors. Were I not here to stop them, Herr McClary, they would tear you into bits.”
Jeff gasped, “The—the Neandertha- lers!”
“Ah, you recognize them? Your eru- dition amazes me, almost as much as your appearance. You appear—”’ Here his eyes studied Jeff’s garb with covert amuse- ment “—to have reverted to type. Crude garments. And a weapon! Ach, how we adopt ourselves, nicht wahr?”
Then his tone changed abruptly, a note of concern dominated his query.
“But the girl? Where is she?”
“She—” Jeff was on the verge of ad- mitting Beth’s presence, of telling von Torp about the band of Oonts waiting for him within earshot distance. But the bell of caution was ringing softly; he tempo-
rized. “She is safe. Why?”
“You must get her. You must bring her here.”
“Why i
“You must get her.” Von Torp re- peated the words in a thick monotone; Jeff noted with gathering amazement how his eyes seemed to have glazed, beconte hard and worried. And, as before, he realized suddenly how perilously close to violent insanity was the scientist’s genius. “You must bring her to me.”
“And,” suggested Jeff, “if I don’t?”
The dam burst. Von Torp’s neck swelled, crimson suffused his broad fea- tures.
“But you will! Young fool, do you still not realize that I, von Torp, am master here? Behold, out of time’s dawn I have conquered these ape-like savages, learned their tongue, made them obedient to my will! At my command, they will tear you to bits. They will—’
“You said that,” Jeff told him grimly,
STORIES
“before. Now listen, von Torp. I came seeking you in peace and amity. You have the brains to get us out of this mess, and Beth and I understand that. We were quite willing to help; we even got laborers for you.
“But apparently you have other ideas. And I think I know what those ideas are
. and why you’re so damn’ anxious to know where Beth is. Well, I don’t like your ideas.
“So long. Much as we’d like to return to our world, we’re not going to play patsy to you, lay ourselves open to the good old double-x again—”
“You have been warned!” roared von Torp. He lifted an arm; crisped guttural syllables to his followers. ‘Alone I shall find the fraulein; she shall share your fate—”
With his cry, the host of gnarly men came scrambling forward. But Jeff was not caught napping. Now he, too, lifted his voice in a great shout; words in the tongue of the Oont tribesmen spilled from his lips.
“Toek . To me!”
It was as if the jungle had been await- ing his cry to spring to life. Instantly the fronded ferns rasped as bodies thrust boldly through them; water splashed; friendly voices shouted in reply; and where had been lush green, now were the figures of his comrades. Tall, strong fig- ures, grim, erect, armed and ready.
The charging Neanderthalers whirled, startled. And seeing, thus limned at the jungle’s rim, their traditional enemies, they forgot Jeff. Race hatred, wild and rav- enous, seized them. With shrieks and howls they turned, broke toward the on- coming Cro-Magnons!
. » Beth . . . my warriors!
gi Rasa late von Torp’s intelligence fore- saw the inevitable outcome. In vain he bellowed orders for their retreat. Blood-lust, the hatred of bestial near-man for his superior, blinded the hairy ones to everything save the desire to kill. Like a brown wave they flooded toward Jeff’s fol- lowers.
And like the dwindling edge of the ebb- tide wave, wasting itself to nothingness on the adamant breast of the beach, they died! Toek’s voice was hot and fierce as
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he put the command. A score of arrows scraped as they slid back in a score of stocks. Full twenty bow-strings spanged! as one. And shafts of feathered death whirred unerringly to a score of hearts.
It was no battle; it was a rout, a slaugh- ter! Once more Toek cried command; again deft fingers placed arrows in cross- bows; again howling ape-men collapsed into the slimy waters of the swamp, clutch- ing with lifeless paws at breasts from which slim shafts protruded. A _ single Neanderthal man managed to find his prey; Jeff saw then, and horribly sickened to see, why ever before the Oonts had dreaded the apemen. Clawed hands were flailing weapons; like a snarling cat the hairy man-thing hurled itself upon its op- ponent, ragged nails shredded the Oont tribesman’s face, tore bloody sockets where his eyes had been. Blood-dappled claws dug lower, ripped at soft flesh, disembow- eling the hapless Cro-Magnon.
He died, screaming like a stricken ani- mal. But the Neanderthaler died with him. It was Jeff’s arrow that thudded into the ape-man’s back, transfixing him to swift death, smashing through his body into the suffering heart of the true man to bring both warriors down, locked in grim, loveless embrace.
But that was the Oonts’ only casualty. Neanderthal hatred was great, but Nean- derthal courage could not dare this new weapon, the whisperer-that-struck-from- afar. Their tone changed, their cries were suddenly no longer howls of rage but whimperings of terror. Wide-eyed and slavering, the remainder turned and fied. Prehensile arms, in this emergency, be- spoke the beast ancestry. Scrambling on all fours, the Neanderthalers raced, splash- ing, from danger. Into the trees, into the thorny thickets, anywhere... .
Jeff lowered his bow. He brushed the hair back from his eyes, wiped sweat from a dripping forehead.
“You all right, Beth? Nic: work, Toek! You showed ’em that time. Von Torp— he got away, did he?”
The others encircled him now.
“He was the first to run,” Beth told him. “T could have shot him. Any of us could. But I stopped Toek. Everything hap- pened so suddenly. I didn’t know if he was friend or enemy or what I should do.
OF THE
main.
DAWN WORLD 25
And he’s the only one who can get us back to our time... .” “You should have killed him,” said Jeff somberly. “He meant to kill you.” “What do you mean?”
EFF drew a long breath. “I hate to
tell you this, sugar. But you might as well know the truth. If von Torp was our last chance of ever getting home again— and he was—then we’re stuck here for- ever !”
“For—”’ The word stuck in Beth’s throat ; it came out, finally, harsh and dry. “Forever ?”
“Yes, Beth. Do you see that?”
He pointed to a crude wooden frame- work behind him. It was a sort of raised dais. It was vaguely reminiscent of—of something Beth Anderson had seen a long while ago. A raised dais with four up- rights. She stared at it, puzzled. Then she gasped.
“His new time machine! ing to build one!”
And Jeff nodded unhappily.
“Yes. He was trying. But don’t you see how pitifully inept his efforts were? When I saw that, Beth, I began to realize the truth. When von Torp spoke to me, I knew I was right. For his looks, his tone, his demands—”
“Ves i
“He is completely mad,” said Jeff sim- ply. “It has been too great a strain for him. His genius has collapsed into a weird monomania. He did not—as he once said he would—organize his Nean- derthal cohorts to find ore, refine the met- als with which he might have some day, years hence, succeeded in constructing a new machine. No. In his madness he set about constructing a useless replica of his machine ; a wooden one.
“Vestiges of his once-great mind re- He earned the allegiance of the ape-men, how, I cannot guess. Perhaps he realized, in some dim corner of his mind, the fruitlessness of his efforts—”
Here a sudden, startling thought struck Jeff.
“Yes! Perhaps he realized that the ma- chine was not ever destined to be finished. This framework in the jungle could be the throne from which he planned to rule his brutal subjects.
He was try-
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“And that would explain why he asked —insisted !—that I get you, bring you to him! Knowing he was doomed to finish the rest of his days as overlord of man- beasts, he intended to have a mate at his side. A woman. Yourself!’
el Fs a ie
Beth shuddered. Then the color flooded back into her cheeks.
“That spells the end of our hopes, then?”
“I’m afraid so, Beth, I—I’m sorry.”
She forced a smile.
“There’s nothing we can do about it. And Jeff—”
“Ves Pe”
A long moment of silence. Then her voice, strangely golden in the swiftly gath- ering dusk.
“I should be sorry, too. And in a way, of course, J] am. But in another way —if this is the way things must be—I’m not altogether sorry.”
Then Toek was at their sides, inter- rupting the first moment in weeks out of which Jeff McClary might have drawn a measure of sweetness. His mien was rest- less.
“We must go now, Snake-Killer. The black comes.”
Jeff nodded. “Lead the way, Toek. We will return and fortify the town.”
Beth stared at him wonderingly. “For- tify the town, Jeff? But why?”
“Von Torp is not yet dead. And I made the mistake of telling him our vil- lage was in the hills. Knowing him as I do, I am afraid we have not yet seen the last of him.”
26
IX
LD KRUA had let the fire go out again. It was getting to be a habit with her. In the old days, before Snake- Killer and his woman had come to join the clan, the chieftain would have pun- ished her for letting the flame die. That was how her nose had become flattened. But it was so easy for Snake-Killer to make a fire. He was magic, he was a god, like the light-that-flashes-in-the-rain, like the voice-that-repeats from the mountains. He used to make fires just by rubbing tiny twigs on stones. Now he had no more tiny twigs, but he had other ways. He had even taught her a way, but it
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was a long and tedious one. But—she glanced up, saw Jeff coming down the trail—she had to pretend she was trying. Again she took the bow in her hands, scraped it laboriously back and forth across ‘the spindling stick. It spun slowly, the end of the stick warming, charring, but not glowing. She continued to bend over the drill, whirling it with diligent un- enthusiasm, until Jeff stopped beside her. Then she looked up.
“Greetings, O Snake-Killer!” Ruefully, “The flame will not awake. It is drowsy. It is lazy.”
“You are lazy!” corrected Jeff. “I should beat you, Krua, for a worthless hag. But give it here!’
He took the bow-and-drill, spun it deftly. Spinning drill flaked a point of carmine into a nest of tinder. Jeff scooped up the tinder, whirled it briskly above his head till it burst into flame, tossed it be- neath the heaped faggots on the fireplace. Twigs crackled and the fire grew.
“If you let the fire die again,” scolded Jeff, “the chieftain will feed you dried bones and dung, O stupid one!”
Krua’s ancient lips cracked in a tooth- less grin. A belly of thunder had Snake- Killer, but a heart of tallow. A little boy romped up to Jeff, tugged at his thigh. “Find a shell in my ear, O Snake-Killer? Find a shell in my ear?”
Jeff laughed, made motions of surprise, and found a shell in young Juba’s ear. Young Juba raced away triumphantly to show his playmates his new acquisition. And Beth spoke from behind Jeff.
“So this is how you spend your time? Tending fires for Krua and doing tricks for the children?”
“The north gate’ is finished. We’re going to start work on an aqueduct tomorrow. I’ve knocked off for the rest of the day. Union hours, sugar—even in the Dawn World!” Jeff pointed proudly at the bar- ricade over which he and his helpers had been working for the past week. “But how’s your garden coming along? Any results?”
Beth sighed in mock resignation.
“Luuma got up at dawn this morning to see how our vegetables were doing. She couldn’t tell anything by the size of the shoots, so she pulled them all up—”
“That won’t do!”
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“I know. I scolded her. Told her that next time I would plant her with the seeds. It’s a hard job, Jeff, trying to teach them. They’re just like children. All their lives they’ve eaten whatever fruits, grains, vegetables, they found in abundance. When one section runs short of food they move to another. They haven’t the faintest idea what animal hus- bandry is, or sowing of seeds, or crop- raising.”
“We must teach them. It’s our duty, Beth. We-won’t always be here to help them with these things. We must teach them all we can, hoping they’ll remember a little— Oh, ’Aka? What did you find out P”
The young tribesman stopped before him, bowing soberly.
“Tt is not good, Snake-Killer. They are gathering. Many tribes of them.”
“In the swamps, eh? I thought so. They'll raid us when von Torp has over- come their fears, and when he believes they’re strong enough. Did you see the big No-Haired One?”
“No, Snake-Killer. Mighty Ones.”
“The Mighty Ones?”
“The screamers that walk like thunder. Many of them. The men-not-men have brought them in to help.”
“What does he mean, Jeff?”
“Got me. Well, all right, Aka. Run along. I’ll see you later.” And as the warrior scout disappeared, “From now on, we've got to keep on our toes. Von Torp is planning to raid us, sure as shooting. If and when he does, get the women to the caves. I’ve got the men trained. They’ll take the posts I set for them—lI hope!’
“And what are you going to do with von Torp?”
Jeff said slowly, “Capture him if pos- sible. Good food and treatment may some day restore his intelligence; we have to gamble on that. But if matters should ever reach a showdown, our lives against his, there’s only one answer.”
Beth nodded. The world in which she had been Beth Andreson, sob-sister, wise- cracker and iconoclast, the world in which this tall, bronzed leader had been a pro- fessional ‘ghost-buster’ was a far, forgot- ten memory. She moved into the shelter
But I saw _ the
DAWN WORLD
of his arm. He was Snake-Killer. she was Snake-Killer’s woman.
(Ai And
ND that night, as every night, there was a guard. That night and the next, and the next. But not then, nor any night, did the expected attack come. Mad von Torp might be. But his mad- ness was guileful and crafty. He chose the moment for his bid at the hour when his forces might least have been expected, when watchfulness was at its nadir. And the method of his coming, when he came, was more dreadful than the tribesmen had expected.
High noon was drowsing time. In this young world, where sun and earth were newer, nearer, warmer, the scalding heat of midday was siesta-time. Even the in- numerable foes of warring nature called truce to their relentless battling when the sun ruled the zenith. The cave-beasts sought the cool depths of the hills, fish lay sluggish in shaded pools, even small in- sects halted their incessant scurrying.
At this hour the Oonts’ vigilance was detailed to a handful of lethargic souls. Even Jeff saw no harm in this. Nothing moved at midday. It was illogical to be- lieve von Torp would dare a blazing sun as well as a strong opponent.
Illogical, yes. But he did!
Into the darkness of the cave where Jeff lay napping came the urst warning. There was peace and stillness, soft quiet—then suddenly there were none of these! There was a voice crying out, many voices tak- ing up the cry, the trample of racing feet, and a strange and ominous quaking of the earth on which Jeff lay.
Then Gluk, one of those who had been stationed as a watchman, bursting into his cave.
“Swiftly, O Snake-Killer ! come!”
Instantly, Jeff was awake and on his feet. His hand groped for and found his cross-bow; he cast swift words over his shoulder to Beth.
“Rouse the women; lead them to a safe place. Don’t come outside! It won’t take long. How many of them, Gluk?”
Gluk’s eyes rolled fearfully.
“They are as the leaves on the trees, O Snake-Killer! And—and the little ones who-speak-with-beasts have brought with
They have
28 ACTION
them the Mighty Ones. The thunderers!”
“Thunderers?” There it was again. But Jeff had no time, now, to determine the meaning behind Gluk’s fanciful speech. “Come!” he cried—and with Gluk follow- ing, he sped to the barrier he and the tribesmen had constructed. As he ran, other warriors, sleepy-eyed, sweating and cross, joined him. Jeff noted with ap- proval that one and all had clenched in their fists their cross-bows. That alone should prove the deciding factor in the battle.
Unless, he thought suddenly, von Torp had provided his allies with the same weapon?
But that was a bootless fear. For one thing, the primate paws of the Nender- thalers were not adapted to a weapon re- quiring manual dexterity. Clubs and stones, teeth and nails, were their natural weapons. And, too, there was the barri- cade surrounding the Oont village.
“One thing remember!” Jeff warned his followers. “I want the big No-Haired one alive! Capture him; do not kill him!”
And then he was at the main gate; a high structure of cross-barred timbers locked across the rocky defile which faced the only approach from lower ground. He was climbing up the rough beams to a van- tage point, staring down, viewing for the first time the attackers von Torp had or- ganized, and his eyes leapt open with swift, sudden horror!
Ape-men there were, true! Not dozens of them, nor scores—but two hundred, possibly more! And with them was von Torp. But it was not the fierce, gloating smile on the mad scientist’s face that touched Jeff’s heart with dread; it was not the clamorous, blood-hungry howling of the Neanderthalers, it was not the sight of the weapons with which they menaced the breach.
It was something else. It was the sight of the weird, ungainly steeds on which the foremost attackers rode. Gigantic parodies of lizardom, fully forty-five feet in length, thrice as tall as a man, weirdly anthropomorphic as they raced forward on massive hind limbs, futile, tiny fore- limbs dangling grotesquely before them, great tails crushing the earth over which they flailed.
It was on these monsters the Neander-
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thalers crouched, bandy legs tightly clenched to gross, reptilian withers. And as they rode they spoke in coarse and reedy voices—and the beasts answered in kind!
There was a stifled cry at Jeff’s shoul- der. Beth’s voice in his ear.
“Tyrannosaurus! Jeff, the largest, the most powerful of all dinosaurs—!”
EFF whirled. It was concern, not an- ger, that made his voice flaming hot, that caused his brow to darken and his thrust to be so violent. “What are you doing here? I told you io"
“T couldn’t stay in the caves. I heard the screams; I knew—or guessed—what they had done. Jeff, don’t you under- stand? We are destroyed! We—”
“Don’t talk nonsense! They’re in the open. We’re protected. We still have our barricade.”
“They'll crush it like a paper box! They—they’re like huge, armored tanks, Jeff. Not even your weapons will stop them. Arrows are useless—”
Even as she spoke, Jeff’s eyes found evidence that her words were true. The attackers were still far down the incline, at their mounts’ lumbering pace it would take them many minutes to reach the wall, but one of the Oonts, unable to restrain himself longer, had grooved a shaft, let fly at the foremost dinosaur.
The slim arrow sped swift and true to its mark. It struck the horny pate of the onrushing lizard with blinding force and accuracy—and shattered! The dinosaur squealed fiercely, shook its massive head —and plunged on!
And Jeff’s heart sank. The thunder of giant hoofs woke a fearful echo in his heart. Beth was right! Von Torp had gained a potent ally. Even this gate could not withstand the crushing impact of those tons of armored flesh. One blow would shake it to its foundations. A second and a tutd . . <
“The big cross-bow!” he thought, and leapt along the wall to where a huge cross- bow, operated by primitive windlass, stood in a natural embrasure in the cliff. Quickly he took aim at the neck of the nearest monster. With trembling fingers he pulled the pin that set the thick, rawhide bow-
EXILES OF THE
string twanging. Even above the squealing of the ape-men Jeff could hear the thuck of the feathered shaft. His taut face lighted with hope, but the light faded. The thick shaft penetrated the horny hide perhaps an eighth of its length, but the hideous lizard plunged ahead.
Jeff opened his clenched fists in a ges- ture of despair. What more could he do? There was always something. . . . Think fast, McClary, he told himself.
“The riders!” he cried in a suddenly cracked voice. “Aim for them! The men- not-men!”
Now every warrior was busy with bow and shafts. And obedient to his command, eyes concentrated on the squat, hair- matted figures crouching on the dinosaurs’ necks. Arrows impelled by mighty arms flew across the ever dwindling distance like a feathered rain. And found their marks! Ape-men cried their swift, as- tonished agony, and tumbled from their monstrous chargers like crimson-stemmed, writhing balls of fur. One fell beneath a lizard’s descending foot; Jeff could not take his dreadly fascinated eyes from the spot where he had fallen. When the hoof left the earth again, that which it left be- hind was nauseous and grim.
And as if a judging hand had suddenly erased the chattering excrescences from the reptiles’ armored throats, the ape-men were gone! Yet the host of tyrannosauri, fully a dozen of them, continued to obey their last command. Like mighty ma- chines incentrollably set into motion, they charged forward. But a few hundred yards lay now between them and the bar- ricade. Behind them, dancing impatiently, howling in desire to follow their fleshly tanks through the breach, the mob of ape- men waited.
Jeff’s lips were white, his brow fur- rowed with the agony of fruitless thought. There was no way from this dilemma. Only in flight lay safety, but even in flight, many of his tribesmen and friends would find death. How to—?
And Beth was sobbing, tugging at his shoulder.
“Jeff, we can’t stand up against them! We've got to run! Give the order. Tell the men to stop firing—”
“Firing!” The word slashed its way across the portals of Jeff’s thought. “Fire!
DAWN WORLD 29 wnat sat! el “Tote «os Anal 4-5 4 Gluk . . . to me!”
He wrenched himself from the girl’s grasp. Her cry followed him as he clam- bered down the wall, leaped across the clearing.
He reached the altar-place where blazed the huge community fire of the tribe. A woman tended the fire, a woman proudly garbed in a thick, hairy cave-bear pelt. With ruthless hands Jeff seized the gar- ment, ripped it from her back!
She screamed once in outraged anger, then saw that her accoster was Snake- Killer, and stopped screaming. Like Beth, on the gate above, she stood watching in mute astonishment as Jeff tore a strip from the pelt, wrapped it hastily about an arrow, thrust arrow and hairy wad into the flame.
It caught, glowed, blazed! Jeff thrust the burning shaft into his bow, tensed, loosed it! It arced over the barricade— and squarely into the face of the foremost dinosaur !
The dinosaur screamed !
XI
HE dinosaur screamed—and its tiny
eyes glowed red and blood-shot fear- ful with the impact of that flaming mass! For the first time it faltered in its charge. It halted in its tracks, tiny forelegs waving impotently, scraping in sudden panic at its lowered head.
A second beast, behind it, stumbled into it, squealed and nipped at the rump of the beast before. The first one turned blindly, - angrily, slashed with six-inch teeth at its comrade’s slavering jowls!
And Beth understood! In an instant, she was leaping from the wall, hastening to Jeff’s side. She took the hairy pelt from his hands, began tearing it into foot- long strips. ’Aka and Toek, a half dozen of the other warriors, had come to them now. Jeff grunted swift approval to Beth.
“Nice going! Get some women to help you. And get more furs. Form a fire- bucket line to pass ’em along. I’m going topside. Come on, men!”
Thus began the defense of the village. The bowsmen on the parapet, their women laboring below to supply them with the one ammunition which the lizard-creatures
30 ACTION
dared not face. The licking tongue of flame!
Success came quicker and more over- whelmingly than they had dared hope. Blinded, hurt, bewildered by the flood of burning shafts that suddenly began rain- ing down upon them, the riderless dino- saurs first hesitated, then fought amongst themselves—then fell back in complete rout !
Squealing shrill bleats of terror, they turned and fled down the path up which they had come. Not all fled, for as they ran they slashed at each other with tooth, claw and scything tails. The Oont tribes- men, jubilant, refused to let the fight die thus. With shouts of boastful triumph they swung open the great gate; it was Jeff who was first to pass through it, meet the confused ex-foe face to face. It was his final arrow, bright ribbon of flame flashing squarely into the snarling mouth of the last, defiant dinosaur, that com- pleted the fray. The blazing brand found its mark in the fleshy palate of the beast; suddenly the tyrannosaurus went berserk with pain, charged through and past its brethren and down into the ranks of wait- ing ape-men!
Then there was bedlam indeed! For von Torp’s most dreadful weapon turned Frankenstein, ten pain-torn, baffled jug- gernauts were turned loose amongst their own companions. Vainly the Neandertha- lers cried commands in the beasts’ own la- borious tongue, vainly they turned and fled down the hill, into the fields, into trees and crevices and into whatever refuge they could find.
Pounding hoofs, hag-ridden, pressed their fleeing flesh to pulp. Screams of tor- ment rent the air. And there still hailed down about the ape-men an unceasing storm of flaming shafts.
A mad savagery had gripped Jeff Mc- Clary. His thin veneer of civilization stripped away from him completely in this moment of victory. His cries were the wild ululations of his comrades as he pressed forward on the death-dealing pur- suit, his arm was strong with the strength of a thousand hatreds as he loosed thin death into their breaking ranks.
Now the flight went far afield. Across the grassy plains, toward the swamps that lay, turgidly noisome, below. And it would
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have been sane to stop, but there was no sanity in Jeff McClary now. Because fleeing before him was a figure he recog- nized. A figure taller, sturdier, more erect than those of the shattered ape-men.
Von Torp! Somehow he had again es- caped the punishment he so richly de- served. But not for long! Not if Jeff had to meter out that punishment with his bare hands.
And he would have to do just that. For his arrows were gone, now. His source of armaments lay far behind him; his fellow tribesmen, his comrades-at- arms, were broken into a score of pursuit parties. He tossed away his useless bow. He was alone. He would follow and find von Torp even if it meant scouring the swamp for him. He was alone.
No, not alone. For there—as ever when he needed help and courage—was Beth, coming up from behind him. A wild-eyed, dishevelled Beth, her own gar- ment shredded where wads had been ripped from it to feed the bowsmen’s needs.
She was crying, “Turn back, Jeff! We've won! Come back—”
But he shook his head.
“We'll never win until we finish him! If this must be our world forever, we'll make it a clean world. I’ve got to get him! Go back and wait for me.”
But that she would not do. She fol- lowed. And down led the pursuit, into the mud-choked stream, out through the tangle of thorny-brush, into the swamp again.
ON TORP knew, now, that he was
followed. He knew, too, his pusuers. And at the last, his mad brain must have worked like that of the hurt child, the wounded animal. He fled unerringly to- ward the spot that drew him like a mag- net, the spot wherein they three had landed, the spot whereon he had built his futile dais—machine or throne ?—and gained overlordship of a dying race that spoke with lower beasts.
And at the spot, like a trapped rat, he turned to face his followers for the last time. His face was a mask of frightened fury, there was no intelligence in his eyes. Only the baffled look of a man who looks on certain death.
Jeff burst into the clearing where he
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waited. And the meeting of the two men was like the clashing of two wild beasts. Soundless. No word passed between them. No offer of peace or quarter, no plea, no challenge. But their two bodies tensed; something like a snarl broke from von Torp's gaping mouth, and Jett’s lips gave answer. Then they were rushing together, arms locking in deadly embrace.
Subconsciously, Jeff had always recog- nized von Torp to be a strong man. How strong, he had not known until the mo- ment he felt the German’s breath hot against his face, the madman’s arms meet- ing his in ultimate conflict. Then, with the pressure of those powerful arms forc- ing his spine backward, feeling his knees buckle beneath him, Jeff McClary knew his blood-lust had led him, at last, to the battle which was the difference between life and death.
There was no form or no formality to that battle. With fists, with knees and fingernails they fought. With all the strength and technique and cunningness which either knew. Once Jeff thought he had his man; that was the time he forced von Torp’s head into the slimy mud of the swamp, grim fingers tensed upon the madman’s windpipe, determined to choke life forever from those treacherous lips.
But von Torp’s knee in his groin was lightning and tempest and a white knife torturing the blood in his veins. He was doubled and helpless there for a long mo- ment, and his life might have paid for that moment had not von Torp, too, been weakly gasping the water from his lungs.
And both were staggering as they re- turned to grips.
Back and forth swayed the pendulum of victory. It was Jeff’s when he had his adversary pinned across the bole of a tree, but somehow von Torp’s flailing hand found a rock, and Jeff fell back, stunned by a blow on the temple that almost crim- soned the gray-green scene before him. It was at that moment that von Torp might have won, had it not been for Beth. Her scream halted his hand descending for the second time, and before he could swing again, she was upon him, a blind, scratch- ing, clawing Fury fighting for the life of her man.
And consciousness came back to Jeff. He came again to his feet, white with
DAWN WORLD 31
rage, and he spoke the first words of the conflict.
“So that,” he said thickly, numbly, “so that’s the way it’s to be, eh? Well, two can play at that game—”
His delving fist found a weapon, a cud- gel as thick around as a man’s fist. He moved toward von Torp. And as if the sound of a voice had suddenly erased the clouds of insanity from the German’s brain, his eyes leaped open in stark fear. He broke away from Beth, backed farther from Jeff.
“Nein!” Kamerad !”
But he found no mercy in Jeff’s eyes. And finding none, the last vestige of his false courage fled. Crying in terror, he turned and fled again, splashing, stumbling into the dank depths of the swamp.
Jeff started after him. But he had not realized his own weakness. His knees trembled beneath him, he felt himself falling forward on his face. A _ vision flashed before his eyes . . . it was a vision of delirium or madness, for it seemed that suddenly the crude framework dais broke sharply into a thousand pieces, and in its place there was a vague and shadowy something that gathered solidarity with each passing moment.
He heard Beth’s cry, and her voice spoke meaningless syllables into his ears. He felt her hands beneath his armpits, dragging his limpness across the sucking swamp; he remembered a moment of keen, stinging pain—then blackness. And in the ebon eternal his lips framed a name.
cof 5) Cae cl
he screamed. “Kamerad!
Ace away a voice spoke. A re- membered voice. It said, “—nk this!” And then there was something fiery in his throat. He gasped and splut- tered and opened his eyes. A_ second voice spoke, saying, “He'll be all right now—”
It was delirium, of course. It could be nothing else. For before him was the face of Beth, radiantly smiling, and be- yond Beth’s face was the brilliance of an electric light, the gleam of light on metal!
It was delirium, or he had died. And this was the heaven of his dreaming; the world he had once known, had one time lived in and lost.
32 ACTION He struggled to sit up. And firm hands pressed on his shoulders.
“Take it easy, Chief! You'll be okay in a mo—”
That voice!
This time he would not be denied. He sat upright, staring about him with incred- ulous eyes. He gasped, “It—it’s you! Lafferty! The laboratory! Von Torp’s—”
Lafferty’s face came into focus.
“That’s right, Chief. It’s me. You want another drink to settle your—?”
Jeff pushed the glass away, and _ his eyes sought and found Beth’s.
“How?” he demanded simply.
“IT don’t know. He came—like that!’ She snapped her fingers. “You were out on your feet. I had to drag you to the machine. He knows the rest, I guess.”
Lafferty grinned.
“J don’t know from nothin’, Chief. It all sounds like a hay-smoker’s dream to me. First of all, you and the gal pulled a fade-out—”
It all started to come back now. It was long ago and far away, but it started to come back. Jeff nodded.
“We were ghost-hunting. In this house. And we found von Torp in this labora- tory—”’
“Von Torp? Oh, yeah—the cuckoo? Well, what I’m trying to tell you is, when I came to the house for you the next morning you weren’t here. Nobody was here. Nothing was here but a bunch of footprints.
“So I started snooping. I found those footprints led to a blank wall. I pushed and pulled, and—” Lafferty shrugged. “Well, I got here. Found this dumb- looking machine, and couldn’t make any sense out of it. But I used the old conk for a change. Didn’t monkey with the dials until I had a look around.
“TI found von Torp’s notebook, explain- ing how the thing worked. Found the short and repaired it. Set it going, and— looked like I was just in time, too! Found you folks in a helluva looking mudhole, you flat on your puss, the gal weeping. How come? Where were you? And why ?”
Jeff said, ““How long did it take you to do all this, Lafferty?”
Lafferty frowned.
STORIES
“Let’s see. Oh, ten... twelve hours, maybe. It was early this morning we came to the house. They’re raising an aw- ful clamor back in town. But how about it, Chief? Where were you? And how— I mean, those crazy-looking duds—”
Jeff looked at Beth helplessly. He might succeed in explaining everything to Lafferty. Lafferty was his assistant, and a smart youngster. He might understand.
But how could he ever give this fantastic story to the world? How explain to them that he and Beth had lived for weeks— for almost two months—in a world that had died a million years ago, and had come back after twelve hours’ lapse of time?
It was better to say nothing. Except, maybe, some day to Lafferty. They had the machine. It was theirs to experiment with further.
Jeff said, “I’ll explain later, kid. Right now I need a bath and a shave and some clean clothes. And so does Beth—I mean, Miss Anderson. And, Lafferty, when you go into town to get the clothes, get me a ring, will you?”
“Ring?” The assistant looked puzzled. “What kind of ring, Chief ?”
“Wedding, you dope! That is—” Jeff turned to the girl, and the grin crept back to his lips. “That is, unless Beth’s still planning to ‘expose’ a certain fake and fraud and phony ‘ghost-buster’ ?”’
Beth smiled, too, ruefully. She looked at her garb, and there wasn’t enough of it to conceal her blush. “I think there’s been enough ‘exposing’ around here for one day. And J like that ring idea, Snake- Killer.”
“Snake-Killer?” said Lafferty. “Fake? Ring? Hey, what’s going on around here, anyway?”
“T’m Snake-Killer,” said Jeff compla- cently. And he scowled suddenly. “And maybe you’d better get going before I pre- tend you’re a snake! Now, scram, kid!”
Lafferty left. And with his departure, the house was silent and quite, quite de- serted—as a haunted house should be— save for Snake-Killer and his mate.
It was, thought Snake-Killer, an ideal opportunity to celebrate by kissing the gal. But thoroughly. Snake-Killer’s mate seemed to think so, too.
AN Ny
DEVIL'S DERELICT
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By LESTER DENT
Pilot Bellow Brill was spoiling for trouble. And he found it. His plane slapped the open sea with a backwash that swamped a gangland ship—and rinsed its decks in red.
Complete Action Novelet
WO thousand feet under the | droning amphibian a thread of sparks climbed above the fog layers smeared close to the sea. Another followed. Another. A procession into the night sky. The threads became suddenly attached to balls of lurid fire. Rockets. Distress signals.
A hand the size and color of a cured ham flicked the control wheel of the amphibian. The craft sagged on one wing. Throaty bellowing from the bayonet stacks of the two motors dropped to a mutter.
Back in the plane’s cabin was spas- modic motion. A man jammed wildly into the pilot’s compartment. <A beefy man with a sagging paunch, jowls*that hid his ears, hard eyes.
“What the hell!’ he yelled.
The reply he received sounded mild, but it rumbled out, drowned the two motors. Like a fog horn opening up.
“There’s a boat down there asking help.”
The fat man snarled in the reflected glow from the instrument panel.
“Let the coast guard get them!” he railed. ‘“We’ve got no business out in the damn’ Atlantic after dark. A pilot with guts would have gone through that storm instead of flying two hundred miles out of his way to get around it. We're past due in New York now. Get back on your course!”
“Bellow” Brill shifted two hundred and thirty pounds of grizzly hulk in the pilot’s seat. His mild voice drowned out the rumble of the motors again.
“Coast guard won’t see the rockets,” he pointed out. “The fog sticks to the water like a blanket. We’re fifty miles out from the Maine shore. Code of the sea demands we go down.”
The hand of the other went into the pocket of his blue serge coat. “Back on your course!
order, see!”
Bellow Brill eyed the bulge in the pocket, larger than the fellow’s hand.
“Probably wasting time to argue,” he
That’s an
34 THE DEVIL’S DERELICT
agreed. His oversize right hand left the rim of the control wheel, jerked at the instrument panel in sudden alarm.
“The gasoline—look at the gauge!” he gasped.
The fat man looked. Bellow Brill’s fist whipped up, connected with a brittle crack. The fellow lifted, hung quiver- ing and collapsed. His head hit an exposed hull brace with a _ hollow thump.
Lapels of the blue serge coat sagged, uncovered the detective’s badge he wore.
ELLOW BRILL hauled lustily at
the control wheel. The big plane was on her nose, boring at the fog draped sea. With a scream the ma- hogany snout came up. The limp body of the detective rolled as the craft went into a vertical bank.
Using one hand, Bellow Brill ex- tracted a .38 Police Special from the unconscious man’s coat pocket, trans- ferring it to his own belt. There was pulse in the fat wrists. Saliva drooled from the flabby lips, bursting in bubbles as the fellow breathed.
Straightening, the big pilot glanced back in the cabin at his passengers.
The four men had made no effort to leave the wicker seats. Their vicious faces mirrored little concern for what might happen.
“Sit tight!” he roared at them. “And hang on when we hit the water!”
A rocket climbed up, broke under the left wingtip. The amphibian whistled down a tight spiral, headed for fog piled in irregular masses, tipped with silver moon glow. Like cotton, very clean in some spots and very dirty in others. The plane cut streamers of the vapor. Globules of water filmed the glass windows.
Bellow Brill went through contortions with rudder and control wheel, leveling the heavy craft. He stabbed at the light switches. Shafts of glaring incandes- cence licked from wingtips and blunt bow.
Another rocket stitched a trail of sparks in the heavens. The flash where it was fired was a sickly glow off to port. It revealed nothing. The fog was thick soup.
Bellow Brill plunged a hand into a netting side pocket, brought out a sig- nal gun. He jerked open a sliding win- dow, fired it.
The plane was banking. It nearly caught the flare projectile before it burst in a plume of sparks that painted the yellow wing surface sickly vermilion.
Below was black nothingness. No trace of the boat sending up the rockets.
Bellow Brill leveled the huge passen- ger plane. The sparks from his own rocket had drifted, given him wind di- rection, besides notifying those below, if they could see it. They would know he intended to land, could certainly hear the roar of the motors.
The blanket of fog was thinner than he had estimated. The plane was too close the surface to be healthy. No chance of seeing what was wrong down there below.
The amphibian howled downwind, motors dragging her to safety. Fully two minutes he held the compass dial absolutely stationary. Three miles. The frame squawked protest as he whipped the craft about.
He lined the compass, retraced the down course, motors throttled. The needle of the altimeter went sluggish, started a slow retreat.
Back in the cabin the four passengers were uneasy, but made no effort to leave their seats.
ELLOW BRILL thrust his head
through the open window. His colorless hair stood out like piano wire as it moistened. Fog damp smeared his goggles. He tugged them off. The wind plucked at his eyeballs, screamed in his flattened ears.
The rockets had stopped coming. The plane was bucking the teeth of the breeze, dropping slowly.
The craft was flying in ink. The light
ACTION STORIES 35
beams were glittering bars of metal, diffusing not at all, filled with streamers of vapor that writhed like leviathans in torment.
Bellow Brill suddenly hugged the wheel of his chest. The moonglow had blotted out. Gullies and crags of dirty green, spume tipped, clutched at the plump hull, then receded.
The pilot nursed the buzzing monster down again. He felt misgivings for the first time. The sea was running higher than he expected.
He spat disgustedly at the altimeter, off adjustment until it registered three hundred feet when there was not fifty below, stalled the craft slightly.
A mountain of water leaped up, smashed the plane high into the air. Ensued a frenzied battle with the con- trols. Another smash. A wrenching, convulsive series of them, and they were down. Spray sheeted through the win- dows, beat against the two propellers like barrage fire.
The slack body of the detective pitched grotesquely, worming back into the cabin.
White faced, wedged in the wicker seats, the four passengers rolled their eyes and hung on. One had started cursing uneasily.
The plane bounced like a feather. Bellow Brill sawed the knobbed throttle levers like inverted pendulums. The plane held sway, gunned into the whis- tling blow. The propellers howled a crescendo.
A white smear, irregular in shape, suddenly took form at the tips of the three rods of light slicing into the fog. It bulked closer, rapidly assumed defi- niteness, shape.
The stern of a yacht. into the wind.
Bellow Brill wedged his head through the window, filled his lungs, and hailed.
There was no answer. The stern of the craft rushed up, paint and brass gleaming moistly. A clammy ghost ship of marble and glittering threads of gold.
Adrift, bows
The big flyer raked the throttles shut until the motors barely turned over. The plane lost speed as if it had run into mud. None too soon. The hull nosed the stern of the yacht with a crash.
Bellow Brill untangled from the con- trol wheel and splintered instrument dials with amazing speed, lunged back into the cabin, scooped up a hank of line from a netting locker, and fought with the hatch.
Outside, he ran forward on the arched back of the hull. The rail of the yacht was in reach. He leaped,
caught it, hung with one hand, made the end of the line fast, and chinned him- self.
Another hail returned silence. The fog wrapped deck was liveless. She might have been a derelict for all the signs of movement. There was no il- luminatton, not even riding lights.
A long minute Bellow Brill hesitated. It would have taken no effort at all to swing over the rail. He did not do it.
Instead, he dropped back on the hull of the plane, snubbed the free end of the line to a streamlined mooring cleat. Then he scuttled for the hatch, on all fours to prevent being pitched over- board.
Inside, he headed for the control com- partment and clicked off the ignition switches. The amphibian dropped back swiftly, started worrying at the line like a playful bull pup.
The body of the detective wallowed in sympathy with the plane’s antics. Saliva bubbles still burst regularly on the pro- trudant lips.
Bellow Brill slapped the serge suit until he found a leather container loaded with keys.
That in his hand, he glared dis- gustedly at the four men crouched in the wicker seats. His passengers.
“T’ll have to take the bracelets off,” he rumbled at them. “You’ve got to go aboard with me!”
Handcuff links tinkled as the four shifted uneasily.
36 THE DEVIL’S DERELICT
CHAPTER II MURDER’S BACK WASH
ELLOW BRILL paused, eyes on
the shackled quartet, measuring them, something he had not troubled to do before.
He had no idea what they were charged with. Their presence was urgently desired in New York; so urgently that the owners of the big amphibian had taken it off a passenger run and sent it to get the four and their captor from the little town on the north Maine coast where they were held.
A vicious, hard lot. Stocky, moon faced, eyes like swine, swarthy skins that looked oily enough to ooze.
One thing he did know. In the group was a flyer. The detective had divulged that before the start. Which one of the four it was, he had no way of telling.
The wicker seat rests that anchored the handcuffs would not hold a man who wanted to get loose. They lacked solid- ity. That left but one thing to do—take the quartet along.
These thoughts had already rattled through Bellow Brill’s head as he hung on the taffrail. The inspection ended. He unlocked the first of the prisoners, yanked him to his feet and pitched him into the rear of the cabin with an ease that made the fellow goggle eyed.
He did the same for the others. Two handcuffs had been used on each. He released one end of each piece of jewelry, let the other dangle from the swarthy wrists.
The three wallowed where he pitched them, frightened, sick, but dangerous. The fourth came to his feet like a cat. He who had done the cursing.
Bellow Brill crashed a big fist between the fellow’s eyes, knocked him sprawl- ing in the wreckage of wicker seats. He landed dazed and blinking.
The flyer charged. He ignored the revolver in his belt. The men were gangsters, familiar with the menace of
guns. Bellow Brill had sailed before the mast, sweated in stoke hells, earning his masters ticket. He had handled crews of just such vicious south Europeans as this collection. He knew what they feared. Fists.
He yanked each of the four erect, smashed them down again, pulling his blows, for he did not want them out.
“Now you damn grease balls, do what I say!” he roared as they cringed and ceased to fight back after a few first futile strugglers. “And do it hell fired quick !”’
He backed quickly, vaulted through the hatch.
“Outside !”’
They came, crawling, bleeding like rats. He had hit them on their noses purposefully.
Bellow Brill herded them forward on the arched top if the amphibian’s cabin. Then he grasped the mooring line. His huge muscles corded. Slowly, the plane drew up under the stern of the yacht. A bound put him over the rail.
He gave the line a turn about a bit. The snout of the plane instantly started goring the steel plates like an enraged bull.
“Upsy-wupsy!” he roared, crowding insult on injury.
The battered four scrambled aboard, huddled together. The big flyer let the plane drop back to the end of her tether.
Then he hailed for the third time and got no reply.
“Walk ahead!” he boomed at his cap- tives. “We'll look into the cabins first. Jump, blast you!”
They found the first body in the cabin companion.
HE floodlights on the wingtips of
the amphibian were high enough to illuminate the deck and diffuse a sickly glow down the companion.
The dead man was short in stature, wore a white uniform. One of the yacht’s crew.
Bellow Brill looked at the features of the corpse and felt nausea. The face
ACTION STORIES 37
had been obliterated by a torrent of lead.
On a level with the big flyer’s chest, about where the head of the dead man would have come, the neat paintwork was spattered with stuff that looked like chopped liver.
The interior of the cabin was fog filled darkness. Bellow Brill palmed the revolver, slid lightly down the com- panion, avoiding the body. He found the light switch at once, got a blinding glare.
“Come in here, ye scuts!” he roared at his prisoners.
His voice had acquired a brogue after what he saw as he peered about the lounge.
The place was a shambles. It had seen a terrific gun fight. Chairs, card tables, and smoking stands were overturned. Glass in picture frames, mirrors, and wall paneling were bullet riddled.
Four dead men sprawled in various postures. One, who lay apart, wore greasy khaki coveralls and a cap; the others immaculate white uniforms. They had dropped fighting. A submachine gun and several automatics littered the thick carpet where they had fallen when their operators went down.
The prisoners crowded inside, hand- cuff links beating a metallic clangor.
The flyer stirred a body with his toe. Rigor mortis had not set in. Blood in the nap of the carpet had not even turned black.
The door in the bow bulkhead was open, the passage beyond brilliantly lighted.
Bellow Brill glanced at it out of the corner of one mild blue eye. At the same instant almost, he launched his bulk sidewise with a leisurely smooth- ness.
His fist cracked again. One of the swarthy gangsters piled forcibly into an overstuffed armchair.
“Sneak for one of thim guns, will ye!” he roared. “Fer that, I'll hand- cuff ye together.”
He proceeded to do that, making a.
living chain of the four, then yanked them across the lounge. The passage was lined on either side by stateroom doors. There was another dead man on the narrow carpet, and all the doors but one were open.
Fulfilling the big flyer’s suspicions, the staterooms were empty and revealed nothing of interest. He halted in front of the closed door.
It was a net of splintered wood. Bullets had riddled the hardwood panels like a sieve. Not all the splinters turned out, so part of the shooting had come from the corridor. It was locked —on the inside.
“Open up!” the flyer boomed.
Thirty seconds he waited for the an- swer that didn’t come. Then he crashed a huge leather flying boot against the lock.
The barrier exploded inward. Fish- ing around the jamb with one hand, he kept his body carefully shielded until he found the light switch.
Y his elaborate yachtman’s attire, the man on the floor was the owner. A pasty faced, dandified fellow with
patent leathered hair. Unquestionably dead. The flyer wasted only a cursory
glance on the body. The stateroom, larger than the rest, held much else of interest.
A woman was stretched under the curtained port. Bellow Brill walked over and looked down at her. His lips pursed, emitted a whistle, and he peered more intently.
She was young, with the kind of voluptuous beauty found in movie and stage stars. The evening dress she wore could not have weighed more than a few ounces.
Her mouth and neck were a smear of crimson. The fluid had pooled between her breasts, soaked the upper part of her dress, and colored the carpet.
“Hell, Tony—look!’’
“Damn the luck!” rumbled Bellow Brill. ‘Ye scuts! Get outa here! Stop
38 THE DEVIL’S DERELICT
outside the door where I can see ye!”
One of the prisoners had spoken. The eyes of the four protruded as they focused on the safe which stood against the aft bulkhead.
The door of the strong box was open. The contents spilled out on the floor.
Rubber band wrapped bundles of green paper, some soiled, some crisp with newness. More than a bushel of it. Money.
The flyer picked up one of the bundles and pitched it savagely back into the safe. He read the denominations of the top note. The others saw it too, as they crowded sullenly into the passage. A thousand dollar bill.
Rapidly, he stuffed the rest into the steel box. His four prisoners looked chagrined. He banged the safe door, whirled the combination, and stood up.
There were two submachine guns on the floor, circular magazines nearly full. Bellow Brill took them both, as well as two automatics, and inspected the state- room for more weapons.
Near the woman was a small der- ringer with pearl handles and ornate gold inlay.
Bellow Brill eyed the crimson spat- tered feminine form for a long minute, ran his eyes over his surroundings again.
“We won’t do anything here—yet,” he said; his words loud, even for his crashing tones.
He left the derringer where it lay, strode into the passage, closing the splintered door firmly behind him. With the muzzle of the rapid firer, he prodded the four gangsters sternward through the passage and the death lounge.
He handcuffed them to the taffrail.
CHAPTER III GUN-POWDER FISTS
He. had two good reasons for doing that. Sight of the safe’s contents had produced the same affect in the
prisoners as a shot from a hypodermic needle. It had given them back the cour- age he had gone to such pains to batter out with his fists. They would make trouble.
Besides, they were in his way. In case a fight started, they would auto- matically add four to the enemy.
“Listen, fellow,’ one of the gang- sters whined. “You’re passing up- something !”
“Shut up!” Bellow Brill suggested.
He tested the handcuff linked to the rail. Then he went forward. He ran, not because of what he expected to find, but because his big body had tasted ex- citement, and excitement acted on Bel- low Brill like an intoxicant.
He did not enter the superstructure this time. Half way to the bows he pitched the submachine gun that was the nearest empty over the rail.
Huddled in the bows was the man who had sent up the rockets, shot through the lungs. The flyer thought he had bled to death until he turned the body and saw another bullet hole be- tween the eyes.
He was a Chinaman, the cook.
Evidence was written on the deck. He had been shot somewhere aft, in- side the superstructure, and dragged himself into the bows to shoot off his rockets and die with the roar of the amphibian’s motor in his ears.
Bellow Brill went over the remainder of the craft rapidly. The captain was dead on the toy-like bridge, shot like the rest. Galley, forecastle, and engine room were empty. He picked up weapons as he went, until he bristled like a perambulating armory.
In the dining salon he found what was left of two more men clad in greasy khaki coveralls, and one of the crew. There was no need of examining the bodies for life.
The table was arrayed for dinner, with most of the dishes shot off on the floor. At one end a polished brass service bell stood undisturbed in a litter of shat- tered glassware.
ACTION STORIES 39
He finished the search without find- ing anything else and ended up in front of the stateroom door they had found closed and bullet riddled.
The yacht was a shambles. A derelict of death.
Bellow Brill listened, cursed under his breath. The four prisoners, hand- cuffed to the after rail, were making no sounds. The tugging of the moored plane in the blow was audible. He shoved open the splintered door.
The stateroom looked as he had left it, except that the derringer had van- ished.
He slammed the door. Then he strode to the side of the woman, prodded her with his toe.
“Ye’re foolin’ nobody,” he told her. “Get up!”
She came to her feet like a cat, hiss- ing.
Bellow Brili grinned into the black colon which was the maw of the der- ringer. The weapon had been under her body.
“The bottle the red ink came out of,” he boomed. “Ye should have pitched it out of the port, instead of into a corner.”’
The woman stopped hissing to spit saliva dyed with red ink.
“T didn’t know who you were,” she said in a voice that sounded like a mil- lion.
“Ye don’t know yet,’ rumbled Bel- low Brill. ‘“Gorra—damn!”
The last as a shot crashed from the direction of the stern.
N midair, on a leap that carried him all the way to the door, Bellow Brill shot a suggestion.
“Best play dead again! The scuts must have sneaked a gun when I wasn’t looking.”
He charged dowh the passage and through the lounge, hurdling over- stuffed chairs. A card table went to pieces under his feet with a ripping of wood and fibre.
Three figures hugged the rail instead
of four; black gargoyles wrapped in fog against the glare of the plane’s lights.
There was a wad of handkerchiefs on the deck. They had been used to keep off lead splinters and powder burn while the handcuff links were being shot off.
Bellow Brill waggled his helmet up the companion on the muzzle of the submachine gun.
“Look out Tony, here he is!” one of the three screeched warning.
Bellow Brill came out of the compan- ion like a garagantuan jumping jack. The rapid firer clattered on the deck. His fist popped on the jaw of the gang- ster shackled nearest the rail. The fall- ing body jerked the other two off balance.
The flyer picked up all three, pitched them overside. There was a concen- trated howl of agony, but the handcuffs held.
With the man next the rail uncon- scious, they would hang some time.
Back in the shelter of the superstruc- ture, the big flyer made plans.
A shot shattered the quiet. The light on the plane’s port wingtip went out in a puff of glass and blue sparks.
Bellow Brill slid across the deck like a base runner, shoulder brushing the superstructure.
Another shot, and the light on the starboard wingtip disappeared.
On his belly, Bellow Brill fired at the flash of the gun and missed. As he had guessed, the marksman had scuttled to starboard for the next shot.
HE flyer ducked a cloud of
splinters and crawfished to shelter. He sat up, lifted the revolver, and deliberately shot out the plane’s remain- ing light, the one on the hull. If fight- ing in the dark was wanted, he was agreeable.
He stood erect, jumped for the top of the cabin, and drew himself up. It was risky, but it developed the fellow in the bows had not thought of the same thing.
40 THE DEVIL’S DERELICT
A red glow like foxfire located two skylights, covered with writhing ten- drils of vapor. One of the trio dangling over the stern started screaming as steel chewed into his wrists and _ grated against the bone.
Covered by that, and the whistle of the wind, Bellow Brill scuttled forward. He reached the diminutive bridge, stopped there, balked. Lights had been switched off on the fore deck.
Below was a black void. gangster undoubtedly lurked.
Quietly, Bellow Brill fished a silver dime out of his pocket and pitched it into the bows.
He grinned when the ruse didn’t work.
Holding the revolver under his armpit to deaden the click, he cocked it. Then, with his left hand, he threw it, hard, and into the bows.
The automatic was ready in his right hand.
The revolver struck. The shock re- leased the hammer. It exploded.
Instantly lead spewed at the flash. The dancing plume of flame disclosed a swarthy face with the beady eyes of a pig, not six feet distant. The man had faced the sound made by the dime when he heard it.
Bellow Brill slipped the safety catch on his automatic, hurled it, and fol- lowed with two hundred and _ thirty pounds of gristle and bone, all in one movement.
They hit the deck in a heap. Two swings the big flyer landed were super- fluous. The gangster was already un- conscious.
Limping on a shin that had cracked the deck, Bellow Brill dragged his vic- tim toward the stern by an oily wrist.
The chain of gangsters were very willing to be hauled back aboard. The man nearest the rail was just regaining his senses.
The flyer looked overside. Then, swiftly he jerked down a huge square of awning, ripping it from the fasten- ings. The yacht had fallen into the
In it the
trough of the sea. In a moment the amphibian would be pounding to pieces against the steel hull.
ie the light from the lounge com- panion, Bellow Brill cut four lengths from a line attached to a life preserver. Rapidly he rigged a sea anchor by bend- ing the lines to the corners of the can- vas and fastening the ends together in the center.
The job done, he snapped the un- conscious gangster on the end of the living links for the second time. Then he went below, moving swiftly, with a definite purpose.
The young woman sidetracked him in the passage. She beckoned him inside the stateroom with the dead man and the safe, closed the bullet shattered door.
“Where were you going?” she asked.
Bellow Brill looked at her features. It was not an innocent face.
“Why ?” he parried.
“You intend to get the coast guard?”
He nodded. “With the radio.” The brogue had gone.
“The four men with you, your pris- oners—they made a break after they saw the money. They’d like to get it.”
“T expect they would, Miss— Miss—!”
“Maida La Forge.”
The young woman favored him with a smile as cold as diamond chips.
“Leave them aboard,” she suggested. “T heard you land. You have a plane. I want you to take me to Canada.”
“The safe is locked,” pointed out Bellow Brill.
“T know the combination.”
“The devil!” grunted the flyer.
“There’s two hundred and fifty grand.”
Bellow Brill looked at her intently.
“Just what happened here before we came along?” he asked.
“We going to get together ?”
“Now
“Fifty-fifty ?”
“No.
ACTION STORIES 41
“Then go to hell and find out what happened, you ugly ape!”
She did not stop. at that. Bellow Brill’s ears reddened, began to burn as if they had been slapped. He was some- thing of a connoiseur on profanity him- self. He felt lost. She left the bounds of decency and brought up things that made him sick at the stomach.
“T’d empty this owl head into your guts!’’ she finished. “Only I need you to keep those grease balls off me. They'd cut the throat of their own mother.”
Bellow Brill backed into the passage.
“Better stay in this stateroom,” he grunted dryly.
CHAPTER IV HI-JACKER STRIKES BACK
HE flyer took up his previous mis-
sion where he had been sidetracked. He ran forward to the dining salon, and got the brass service bell which reposed on the end of the table in the shattered chinaware. At headlong speed, he made for the stern with the bell.
The amphibian was butting playfully at the steel hull, preliminary to the real damage that would follow.
Bellow Brill dropped overside with a line’s end. Working rapidly, he tied the bell to a motor rocker arm, where it would ring steadily as the plane bucked on the swell.
He glanced into the cabin. The fat detective still wallowed in_ bliss- ful unconsciousness, blowing — slimy bubbles.
He let him lay, clambered back aboard the derelict, loosened the line from the rail, made it fast to the im- provised sea anchor, and dropped it overside.
The four gangsters watched the pro- cedure with glares that were far from cheer ful.
The sea anchor filled perfectly. The amphibian stood off. It would drift a
little faster than the yacht, but not much.
The tinkle of the bell trickled away in a wall of sepia, escorting the air- craft out of sight.
Three boats dangled in the davits. A launch, a dinghy, and one lifeboat. Bel- low Brill did something with the launch’s motor, lowered the slim shell, trailed the painter back, and made it fast to the taffrail. Then he cut the dinghy and lifeboat loose. They fell into the sea and swirled away in the fog.
Incidentally, he noted the yacht was equipped to carry no other small craft. A suspicion gathering in the back of his mind gained impetus.
Playing crack-the-whip with his four sullen captives, he snapped them below, sent them stumbling along the passage. The woman met them with relief, which she quickly turned into disdain.
The shackled gangsters headed auto- matically into the stateroom which held the safe and the dead man. Bellow Brill caught the last one and hauled them out again like a bird with a worm.
“The wireless room, blast it!” he roared. “The wireless room.” |
Outside the cubicle which contained the radio apparatus, Maida La Forge plucked at his sleeve. She still carried the pearl mounted derringer.
She had cleaned the ink off her face and the look she favored him with was calculated to do things to a wooden man.
“About to change your mind?” she quizzed.
“T hadn’t even thought about it,” Bel- low Brill told her cheerfully.
“That straight?”
“Sure,”
The woman’s lips were hard, her eyes feline. She shrugged.
“T lose, you win, man-mountain,” she conceded. “But the coast guard is out !”’
“Why ?”
“Know the stiff in there on the state- room floor?”
SING:
“That’s Sir James Lanshire.”
5
42 THE DEVIL’S DERELICT
ECAUSE the name meant nothing to him, Bellow Brill kept quiet.
“The big shot rum runner of them all,’ Maida La Forge told him im- patiently. She had dropped into the underworld argot freely.
“We had collected for several ship- ments this afternoon. We were hi- jacked. It was a small timer in the racket, Spongy Mastro, and his tor- pedoes. I was asleep and didn’t hear them get aboard. A bunch of Tom- mies and heaters being turned loose was the first I knew. Your plane scared them off a minute after they burned Sir James down and I doctored myself with the ink to play dead.”
Bellow Brill wondered idly how the safe door happened to be open.
The woman stepped closer. words grew suggestive.
“Listen to reason,’ she murmured so low the four gangsters crowding into the radio room could not hear. “You haven’t got a chance. Mastro will be back. He’s standing by in the fog with his torpedoes to see if anyone else turns up.”
A splintering crash came from the radio room. Glass cascaded against metal and wood.
Bellow Brill plunged through the door, sniffing the odor of burned ozone. The prisoners retreated sullenly to a corner.
“Tenorant scuts!” the big flyer roared at them. “Lucky you didn’t have the sense to tell the receivin’ set from the sendin’.”
Maida La Forge followed him in- side, fingered the ornate derringer thoughtfully, then moved to the port- hole.
“Keep away from my friends, there,” Bellow Brill warned.
Her
RILL worked with the radio. The receiver was a smashed heap of wire, broken tubes, and shattered bake- lite. One of the gangsters had whirled a chair down upon it. The short-cir- cuited wiring had burned a master fuse.
The flyer replaced the fuse, lit the transmitter tubes, and hammered the key with painful care. He was rusty on the Continental.
The jerking, hesitant message was interrupted.
“Look!” suddenly called Maida La Forge. Bellow Brill pasted a mild blue eye to the port.
“What did I tell you—Mastro!”’ said the woman.
“Sure enough,” the big flyer agreed grimly.
He picked at the key for nearly thirty seconds longer. Then he jerked one of the automatics out of his belt, thrust it into the shapely hands of the woman.
“Watch these four!” he ordered.
He rushed into the corridor, snapping off the lock on the Thompson subma- chine gun. He had seen a collapsible raft through the port, outlined in the glow from the fore deck. A queer, round and unwieldy thing that looked like a doughnut. There were three men crouched in it, wielding short paddles. They would be on board quickly.
Then they were aboard. Violent scarlet lashed from a corner of the superstructure. Air fanned his face.
Bellow Brill fell loosely, killing the gunman with a burst from the subma- chine gun as he went down.
Lead lashed across the deck like a sandstorm. The floodlights went out in quick succession. Splinters that ranged in size up to small canes showered on his back.
The instant the inferno was in dark- ness, he rolled for shelter, unscathed. Coming erect, he leaped, and hauled himself to the vantage of the top of the superstructure. The clamor died.
Sounding surprisingly near, came the tinkle of the bell tied to the drifting amphibian.
Bex BRILL inched quietly to the opposite side of the arched roof and peered over. discernible in the darkness. drew his head and listened.
Nothing was He with-
ACTION STORIES 43
Then he repeated his trick with the dime and the thrown revolver. It re- sulted in nearly shooting himself. The bullet from the gun ripped under his armpit.
Startled, he did little but betray his position in the bedlam that followed. They were forward, in the bows. They drove him back in a shower of lead, to the shelter of the squat funnel used for the exhaust from the Diesels.
There was more quiet, then a burst of reports from inside the superstruc- ture, and a retreating rush upon the foredeck.
Bellow Brill shifted uncomfortably at the volume of shooting from in- side. The sounds were unmistakable. The four prisoners had joined the fracas.
He dared not move. They had him ranged on either side of the funnel, which was barely thick enough to turn the small calibre submachine gun missles. With rifles, his position would have been serious.
A feminine voice followed the re- pulsed gangsters.
“You'll get yours this time, Mastro! You can’t whip the United States coast guard, you dirty rat!”
“Good girl!’ Bellow Brill grunted doubtfully. “Maybe.”
Her words brought a muffled volley of whispers from forward.
The big flyer scuttled into the open, sent a long burst of lead sweeping the deck, and lunged back to shelter.
He got a death scream and a howl of agony mixed with curses that dripped vitrol. Bullets poured about him. Then the shooting died in spasmodic popping. Silence again.
It took fully ten minutes for it to dawn on him that something unexpected had happened.
The attackers had beat a retreat.
Then the distant tinkle of the bell tied to the amphibian suddenly died.
A moment later the acrid smell of burning wood reached his nostrils, The yacht was afire.
CHAPTER V THE GANGSTER’S HOLE CARD
ELLOW BRILL shoved the muz-
zle of the submachine gun around the funnel, sent a stream of slugs spray- ing into the night. They drew no re- ply.
Heedless of noise, he dropped off the superstructure and lunged down a com- panion. There was a new dead man in the passage, clad in greasy khaki cover- alls, and also a leather aviator’s helmet.
The radio room was empty.
The stateroom which held the body of Sir James Lanshire, erstwhile rum runner king, came next. It was also empty.
The door of the safe gaped wide open, rifled.
Cursing, Bellow Brill raced for the stern. The passage was filling with smoke.
At the taffrail he discarded shirt, boots, and all the weapons but a single revolver. With that in his teeth, he went over the side.
The fact that the launch had vanished confirmed his suspicions. They had paddled it, because he had essential parts of the ignition wiring in his: pocket. Maida La Forge had enlisted the aid of the four prisoners to make off with the quarter of a million in cur- rency. One of them was a flyer.
Scared away by the clever coast guard bugaboo, Mastro and his gangsters had set fire to the yacht. Or perhaps the woman had done it. Bellow Brill had a hearty belief that she would do any- thing.
He had the dying tinkle of the belled amphibian fixed in his mind. He could find it in the fog, given a little time. That he had hopes of getting. The motor, saturated with salt spray, would be slow in starting.
He got his bearings quickly and set out with an almost splashless crawl that sent his big body volleying along like a
44 THE DEVIL’S DERELICT
torpedo. The revolver was still in his teeth.
Back of him the burning yacht glowed like the Aurora Borealis. The Waves were young mountains of tar- black, the fog a thick smudge.
A cavalcade of sobbing explosions came out of the welter. One motor starting.
Bellow Brill corrected his course, put on more speed. The warming motor was at full throttle. Furiously, he spat salt brine and profanity at whoever was handling the amphibian’s controls.
The plane loomed. Lighted cabin windows glowed like diamond facets in the tumbling cotton of the fog. The roaring port motor had pulled her broadside to the swell.
One wingtip leaped upward. wind got under it, lifted.
For an eternity Bellow Brill held his breath. But the craft did not capsize. Slowly she righted, and he dived to escape the sword slash of the descend- ing wing.
He crashed into the hull, came up, fingernails grating the smooth veneer. The starter was grinding at the dead motor, jerking it over fitfully.
Then the pilot inside the cabin came to his senses and closed the throttle of the running motor until it idled. The nose of the plane pointed into the wind again.
Gauging himself, Bellow Brill rode the pedestal of a wave upward, locked an arm about one of the streamlined struts that held the spidery tail and elevator assembly. The next instant he was hanging in midair.
The second motor started then. At the same time, the group in the plane discovered him.
The
HE four gangsters were still
shackled in a living chain. The man
on the end, Tony, was the flyer. He was at the controls.
The woman, Maida La Forge, saw
Bellow Brill first and screamed warn-
ing. There was a wild mélée as the four
fought each other getting out of the pilot’s compartment.
It lasted long enough for Bellow Brill to come crashing through the hatch. He landed on all fours, launched forward like a football tackle.
The revolver snapped. The water should not have ruined the modern, smokeless, grease protected cartridges. But it had.
His feet tangled the wallowing form of the unconscious detective and he ploughed down on his stomach between the wicker seats.
Lead burned through the spot he had vacated. Two shots. The hollow, fire- cracker-in-a-barrel pow of the der- ringer.
Nose gushing crimson where it had smashed a seat brace, Bellow Brill jerked erect.
Maida La Forge and the swarthy Tony were fighting for possession of an automatic. The woman had it, was try- ing to keep it.
Bellow Brill reached her, twisted the gun upward, and saved the checkered life of the gangster-pilot as it went off.
“Thanks !’’ he boomed at the woman, and set his fists to work once more on the four prisoners.
He drove them back in the cabin. Cursing, bleeding, howling like animals. Two of them he knocked unconscious to anchor the rest.
They piled in a squirming heap over a sopping wet leather traveling bag. He left them there, leaped for the controls.
HROTTLES came open to the last
notch. Wheel back to keep the nose out. The swell smashed, pitched the plane about.
The plane went down and up again like a Coney Island roller coaster. Water sheeted through the windows, rattled on the wings, roared against the propellers.
Worried like a cork, the amphibian gained headway reluctantly. They missed the burning yacht. a devil’s derelict of licking scarlet, by inches,
ACTION STORIES 45
bellowed on into an inferno of water and wind.
It took three miles of that. Water broke windows, sloshed in the cabin. Then a mound of ugly green pitched the plane up and it hung in the air, roaring like a gigantic wasp.
Bellow Brill held the bow up until the craft nosed above the blanket of fog. Then he jerked the sluggish craft in a quick bank, stalled and spilled hun- dreds of pounds of water through the shattered windows. The six in the cabin rattled like pebbles in a tin can, tangled with cushions and _ parachutes that tumbled out of the overhead racks.
Maida La Forge squealed, scrambled over the seats, ana grabbed the travel- ing bag.
Bellow Brill leveled out, glanced about in the brilliant moonlight, re- flected from the vapor carpet as from a mirror. He started, vented a disgusted oath.
COUPLE of miles off the tail as- sembly, a seaplane was hauling up on them.
Bellow Brill whipped the amphibian about. The compass was out of com- mission. He set a course by the stars, heading for the mainland. Then he looked back, and nodded grimly.
The other plane was following them. It was a tri-motored monoplane that glittered like silver in the moonglow. Behind and below it was a red smear in the fog where the yacht burned furi- ously and would soon sink, pulled under by the steel hull and machinery.
Bellow Brill held the amphibian straight ahead, gathering altitude, watching the rear. Doubt quickly dis- pelled.
The silver plane was speedier. It lifted with them, and gained. At last it pulled alongside, a foul silver buzzard of steel and fabric.
A man leaned through one of the windows. A _ stocky man who wore goggles and made significant gestures with a submachine gun.
‘“Mastro!” Maida La Forge screamed over the moan of the engines.
Bellow Brill gave a grim nod. He was sure now. H1-jackers had boarded the yacht from the plane. It had stood by, invisible in the fog. He had sus- pected as much when he saw the canvas raft through the port. It was of the type usually carried aboard seaplanes.
The yacht was afire, burning evidence of what had happened. With the amphibian gone, all aboard dead, there would be no witnesses. It looked bad.
The pantomine from the silver ship became more insistent. Directions to descend. The submachine gun came
up.
CHAPTER VI ROCKETING DEATH
HEY wanted the money in the traveling bag of course. They had probably guessed it was aboard. There was the reason for the order to descend. Bellow Brill kicked the rudder. The glass at his side puffed inward. Lead rattled on the steel tubing framework of the amphibian’s hull.
The pilot of the silver plane knew his stuff. He banked swiftly, kept the amphibian out of his blind spot. The man leaning out the window gestured again, furiously.
Bellow Brill grinned, went forward with the control wheel. The amphibian’s snout dug for the fog.
It didn’t work. The silver craft was overhead an instant later. The man in the window was not pointing below now, but ahead. They were taking no chance of losing him in the vapor.
Bellow Brill held the nose down for a while longer. Then, reluctantly, he pulled up in a storm of lead.
They flew level for a time. Over the Maine mainland now. The silver plane higher, and a little behind. With an- other submachine gun at its windows.
Bellow Brill was thinking. Cold with
46 THE DEVIL’S DERELICT
rage. His battering tactics wouldn’t work here.
But something else might. He came back with the wheel. The nose climbed. The heavy craft hung like a kite, stalled.
As the silver plane flashed overhead, stalling likewise to avoid a crash, Bel- low Brill emptied the automatic into a wing tank.
Is was doubtful if those in the silver plane knew they had been shot at.
ELLOW BRILL dropped back
again as if nothing had happened. The other craft slid into position over them. The faces of the two men with the rapid firers twisted as they cursed.
Over their heads, liquid fanned from the trailing edge of the wing, gleaming in the moonlight.
Simultaneously, the pair looked up- ward. The machine guns whipped level with the certainty of death.
Bellow Brill moved with leisurely smoothness. One big hand dug into the netting pocket beside him, brought out the rocket gun with which he had answered the distress signal earlier in the night.
Under his breath, he gave thanks for the whim that had prompted him to re- load it.
He pulled the control wheel back slowly, thrust an arm out the window, and fired.
The result was all he hoped for. The projectile struck the wing with a shower of sparks.
A pool of red sprang into being
against the breast of the silver man- buzzard. It grew. Tongues licked from the rear of the blot, enveloping.
The seaplane bobbed, went down, a screaming comet of fire and fumes.
The flaming ball sank into the fog layer, faded almost away, then re- solved into a salmon-tinted blotch that spread abruptly to immense proportions, and just as abruptly vanished.
A feminine voice penetrated shrilly over the roar of the amphibian’s motors.
“Thanks, big boy, for the buggy ride!”
HE woman was half through the
hatch, groping for the rip cord of the parachute she had strapped to her back,
Fastened to her free hand by its own straps was the traveling bag.
Bellow Brill grunted explosively, de- serted the controls. The unconscious detective stirred, got under his feet, and tripped him. Maida La Forge shoved off.
A hundred feet down she cracked the chute. The silk mushroom clouded out. The white face of the woman turned upward. She waved, made an insulting gesture with her fingers, and vanished into the fog.
The detective sat up. Bellow Brill had stepped on his stomach. He swore weakly, pointed at his badge.
“Damn it!” he yelled. “You’re not going to land! That’s an order!”
“You've been asleep!” Bellow Brill
told him cheerfully. “But I wasn’t think- ing of landing!’
THE END
Look for the bull’s-eye
on the magazines you buy.
The sterling-silver hallemark of action-adventure fiction!
CAPTAIN CUT-THROAT
By ALBERT RICHARD WETJEN
Thirteen brigands in a sleek-black bark! Greedy sea-wolves scenting ripe pearl plunder in Typhoon Bradley’s bailiwick.
of the written laws of the islands when he interfered. It was at Funa- futi, toward the close of the pearling sea-
“Thor te wr BRADLEY broke one
son. <A score of ships were anchored in the lagoon. Half a hundred canoes and whaleboats dotted the surface of the limpid water. On the beach was a small city of
48 CAPTAIN
tents, shacks, huts and lean-tos, such as always sprang up when a lagoon was being worked. Native women and children were scattered along the sand. White men sprawled here and there on the hastily built verandas. Pearl buyers from all the world rested in the shade and sipped their drinks. Typhoon Bradley was sitting with Chang, the Chinese pearl buyer, when it began.
First of all a slender native, or rather a half-caste from the look of him, came hurtling out of the bar door. He fell heavily on the sand and the next moment there was standing over him a burly, tall man with a ragged black beard and thick hairy arms.
“T’ll teach you, you nigger swine!’’ he roared, and the whip rose and fell. The half-caste writhed, tried to crawl away, was kicked back and at last resigned him- self to whimpering and crying out, his head buried in his arms.
A small crowd gathered. No one said anything. A man had a right to punish his own natives. The Islands were not being tamed by prayers and good wishes. The South was raw and a man’s crew might at any time turn and rip him to shreds if they thought him soft enough.
Typhoon Bradley drew on his cheroot and frowned a little.
“Who is he?’ he asked quietly. Chang shrugged.
“The bearded one? A Captain Tench. Came in two days ago with that rakish bark over there. No one seems to know much about him. The thin, pock-marked man standing by him is his mate, I believe.”
The whip rose and fell, the beared man swore viciously. The half-caste’s back was cut and raw, beginning to bleed. Soon his writhing and screaming ceased. He had fainted. Still no one said anything and no one moved. But the whip lifted and fell with sickening soft sounds and blood spat- tered the crowd.
YPHOON BRADLEY got up, shook off Chang’s detaining arm and tossed away his cheroot. “Don’t you think that’s enough?” he asked mildly. Captain Tench paused for a moment and glared at him.
CUT-THROAT
“You mind your own damned business!” he grated. “The damned swine stole a belt out of my cargo!”
Bradley looked and saw the unconscious half-caste was still clutching a cheap, pat- ent leather belt such as was used for trade in the outer islands, a thing worth, perhaps, two cents.
“Stealing’s bad when it gets started in a crew,” Bradley agreed, “but you don’t need to kill the man.”
“Shut up!” snarled the other and brought the whip down again with a vicious swish upon the unconscious man’s back. Typhoon’s gray eyes hardened and his six feet of lean muscle tightened a little.
“T said that’s enough!” he snapped. He caught the arm that held the whip, wrenched the weapon away and flung the owner aside. There was a silence that could almost be felt. Men stared. Captain Tench choked with wrath. The veins corded in his bull neck and the blood ran red in his face.
“LOUD 4 . damn you!” he choked. Someone caught his arm.
“Careful there. That’s Bradley !”
Captain Tench hurled the cautioning hand aside.
“TI don’t give a damn who he is! can’t tell me what to do!”
gal WE — « Re ed
“Get out of my blasted way!” roared Tench, and he charged, his great fists flail- ing and his head lowered. Someone laughed. Typhoon Bradley was reputed to be the strongest man in the South and no one but a stranger would have been as big a fool as Tench.
There was a hard smacking noise and the bearded captain went sidewise and to the sand, sprawling a good six feet before he lighted. Typhoon Bradley rubbed his knuckles and waited.
Tench got up, shaking his head, un- doubtedly surprised and sobered. He whipped ’round, cooler now, his eyes slits.
“Tough, eh?” he sneered and came in with the weaving gait of «4 practiced fighter. Bradley was no boxing man but he knew the rough-and-ready fighting of the outlands as few other men did. Even first-rate boxers are not always good fighters outside the ring, and champions
Typhoon
He
ACTION STORIES 49
have been known to be knocked out in a rough-house by men they could cut to pieces in a squared circle and under rules. But Tench was good. There could be no mistake about that.
He ducked Typhoon’s right hook and landed with a stinging left jab that would have sent most men to their knees. Ty- phoon took half a step back and smack! Tench staggered, almost fell and covered up by instinct. He made the mistake then of going into a clinch and Bradley got him under the heart with a right hook that nearly broke Tench’s ribs.
Tench was game. He came _ back, landed a right jab, crossed with a hard left and left himself open. Typhoon laughed and put his body behind his blow. Tench’s feet left the sand and he was hurled twice his own length before crashing into the crowd and falling. He was out before his body hit the sand and his left ear was all but torn off.
66 ELL,” someone drawled, ‘‘he’s
pretty good. He hit Typhoon
three times. That’s one above the record.”
Someone else laughed. Typhoon stared
at his inert foe for a moment and thought- fully rubbed his knuckles.
“You ain’t heard the last of this,” a voice said beside him and he turned sharply to see the thin, pock-marked man who was Tench’s mate. The man was snarling and obviously savage and his right hand kept clawing at his gun butt, as if he had a hard time to control himself. But you can’t shoot another man on Funafuti beach without giving him an even draw, and Typhoon’s gunbelt hung over the back of his chair near Chang.
“Are you proposing to fight too?” in- quired Typhoon mildly. The other licked his lips, breathed hard and then shook his head.
“Not now, Bradley. But I’m Tench’s mate and I know him. He’ll get back at you some way. We’ve heard of you! Big guy in the Islands, eh? You won't be for long.”
Bradley shrugged.
“You'd better pick up the wreck,” he said indifferently, jerking his head toward Tench who was still unconscious. The other glared at him, cooling off.
“I suppose you don’t object if I take
our man along too?” he asked sarcastically. Bradley glanced down at the now groaning half-caste and shook his head.
“If he’s your man he’s yours. wouldn’t beat him up any more.”
“No abd
“That’s what I said.”
“And what would you do, dig guy? Board our packet ?”
“I don’t know just what I’d do but it wouldn’t be pleasant.”
“Yowre not the damned magistrate here!”
Someone snickered and Typhoon smiled grimly.
“That happens to be exactly what I am. Appointed for the duration of the season.”
But I
HE other’s jaw dropped. He mum-
bled something, backed off, then, call- ing sharply to several of his crew he saw standing about, he had the half-caste and Captain Tench carried down to the water’s edge and taken on board the bark.
The crowd broke up, some few men congratulating Typhoon. He merely shrugged and returned to his seat beside Chang. It had been the first time that season he had ever had to interfere as a magistrate and then he had handled the matter outside of officialdom. When Typhoon Bradley held authority no one cared to cause trouble.
“He’s bad, that Captain Tench,” said Chang quietly. Typhoon nodded.
“Damned bad. I wonder what his game is?”
“I have been wondering too,” said Chang dryly. “I heard a short while ago that he has Gentleman Harry on board.”
“What?” Bradley ripped out, turning to stare at the Chinaman. “Gentleman Harry ?”
For a moment he was tense and motion- less. If there was one name that could jar the habitual calm of the man it was that of his old enemy Gentleman Harry of Singapore. They had clashed a dozen times. They had wounded and all but killed each other. It had been a blow of Typhoon’s fist one night on Balata Beach that had ruined the Gentleman’s then handsome features. He had, before that night, been called Gentleman as a term of admiration for his looks as well as his immaculate clothing. But after that night
50 CAPTAIN
the term of Gentleman was used as a jest, and for that Gentleman Harry hated Typhoon Bradley with an intenseness that at times sent him almost insane. If Gentle- man Harry was at Funafuti that meant trouble.
“T’ll look into this,” promised Typhoon grimly. “I’m responsible for the beach this season and no one’s going to pull any- thing if I can help it. . . . Come on in and let’s feed.”
They both got up and went into Boston Charlie’s for a drink and some food. Out- side the night fell swiftly over the vast ex- panse of the great lagoon and the lights began to twinkle out on the ships. Bonfires flickered on the beach. The Kanakas shouted and boasted and strutted up and down telling of their day’s diving. A tinny piano began to play in Boston Charlie’s, and native women slipped quietly in and out while the rattle of dice and the harsh voices of the game dealers cut across the smoke-filled air.
IT
1 must have been two or three hours after sunset when Typhoon finally left the poker game he had been sitting in, and after a few words to Chang went outside into the cool night air. He paused for a moment to stare up and down the line of shacks and then hitching up his cartridge belt he pushed his way through the throng and made for the water’s edge.
He was frankly puzzled at learning that Gentleman Harry was at Funafuti, and more than puzzled that though the man had been there two days he had made no attempt to come ashore. That meant he wanted to keep under cover. No one else in the lagoon seemed to know the Gentle- man was present, and how Chang had found out Typhoon ceuldn’t guess. The Chinaman, however, usually knew a good many things others didn’t. When Typhoon had bluntly asked him how he was aware of the Gentleman’s presence on Tench’s ship, Chang had merely shrugged, smiled inscrutably and said:
“It is my business to know everything. That is why I buy pearls for Cartier’s and Tiffany. That is why I have been in the Islands twenty years and am still alive.”
Bradley shook his head. He knew
CUT-THROAT
Chang too well to doubt that his informa- tion was correct. Then what did the Gentleman plan on doing? The season was closing in two days. Most of the pearls had been bought or were contracted for ; so had the shell.
Tench hadn’t brought any supplies to sell, . . . Typhoon had ascertained that. Nor had he claimed to be in need of sup- plies or water. He appeared to be some sea bully from northern waters who offered neither explanations nor courtesy. Ty- phoon suspected something was going to break and it had worried him so much he had not been able to attend to his poker. He was magistrate for the season and he intended it should close with a clean slate for him.
He picked out a dinghy when he reached the water’s edge—as magistrate he could commandeer any boat he felt like, though for that matter no one would have argued with him—and getting in he pushed off and rowed himself out to Tench’s bark, - the Wanderer. There seemed to him to be a curious air of tension hanging over the night, a sense of something going to happen. He swore to himself and put his weight on the oars. He must be getting old to let such feelings bother him.
He reached the Wanderer at last and was surprised by several things. In the first place he could see in the starlight that she was riding to a short cable, almost up and down in fact, which was a curious thing for a vessel at anchor in a lagoon twenty miles long and with plenty of room to swing in. Second, her sails, which he would have sworn that afternoon were harbor stowed, were now losened. Thirdly, there seemed to be an unusual number of men on board . . . and she carried a white crew Chang had said.
At night at Funafuti most if not all of the shipping save the anchor watches went ashore for a brawl. Typhoon hesitated. The Wanderer had all the earmarks of a ship set for a quick getaway. Should he go back and gather a crowd to help him investigate or shouldn’t he? But investi- gate what? Nothing had happened so far. And apart from that he, Typhoon, had a reputation to consider. He wasn’t accus- tomed to going back for help. The strong- est man in the South and the best shot in the Islands . . . excepting only Stinger
ACTION STORIES S1
Seave . . . did not rely on other men. Bradley cursed and forced the dinghy alongside, catching hold of the pilot ladder and making fast.
OMEONE leaned over the bulwarks. “Who the hell’s that?”
“We'll talk about that later,’ Bradley said irritably. “Is Captain Tench on board ?”
“Maybe. But he ain’t receiving visitors. Come back tomorrow.”
Typhoon was already halfway up the ladder.
“You ain't boarding us warned the speaker above.
Typhoon reached the top of the ladder and a heavily built seaman in worn blue dungarees laid a rough hand against his chest. Bradley swore and pushed and the seaman went staggering. Before he could recover himself Typhoon was on deck. The seaman got up, swearing, and Typhoon saw he was wearing a gun belt, a strange thing for a common seaman.
“You gotta get out!’ snarled the man, jerking out his weapon. “Orders is ‘no one boards.’ . .. ”
He gave a yelp of pain as a hard fist smacked him under the jaw. Bradley took his gun from him as he fell and con- temptuously tossed it overside. He was immediately surrounded by a half dozen armed men, threatening and surly.
“I’m the magistrate for Funafuti,” he said coldly. “Do you all want me to arrest you?”
Someone laughed.
“What a chance!”
Another voice spoke up and a man in a peaked cap, evidently the second mate, pushed forward.
“Never mind the guff, fellers. Typhoon Bradley, ain’t it?”
“Correct!” said Typhoon stiffly. other gave a mocking bow.
“An’ you want to see Cap’n Tench, eh?”
71 ao,”
“You're quite sure you wouldn’t rather get back into th’ dinghy?”
Something warned Bradley but he hitched forward his holsters and set his jaw.
“You heard what I wanted.”
The other hesitated.
“You're sticking your nose into some-
tonight !”
This is
The
thing,” he warned. “What you doing out here anyway this time of night?”
Typhoon wasted no further words. He strode forward. A man tried to check him and went reeling from a backhand blow. The secnod mate sprang forward to receive the flat of Bradley’s hand full in the face. There was an ugly under-current of oaths and Typhoon spun around, his gun out and his eyes slits. They were drawing on him, but the second mate’s snarling voice checked that.
“Let ’im go, fellers. The Old Man’ll be glad t’ see ’im anyway after what hap- pened this afternoon.”
HEY drew back then and after a
pause Typhoon holstered his gun, turned and proceeded aft. He was angry, coldly angry. He was not used to being treated like that.
He strode up to the poop, approached the main cabin scuttle and dropped down the companion, his eyes like ice.
There were four men seated around the table and drinking, three of whom he rec- ognized. One was Captain Tench, his head swathed in bandages. One was the pock- marked mate. The .third, Gentleman Harry, calm and smiling and malevolent as usual, in immaculate white, his hair glossy black, a blue silk cummerbund about his silm waist and his terrible scarred face lemon-colored in the lamplight. The fourth man, a nervous, pimply-faced youth, Brad- ley did not know.
He faced the four, his face grim and his thumbs in his cartridge belt. Tench glared at him. The pock-marked mate swore sibilantly. The pimply-faced youth crouched lower in his chair and looked like a snake about to strike. Only Gentleman Harry seemed unmoved, unless the faint nervous twitching beneath his ears could be called apprehension.
“You see,” he said smoothly, waving a well-manicured hand. ‘You see, Tench. I told you he would probably be along if he heard I was aboard.”
He smiled craftily.
The bearded captain struck the table with his clenched fist and ripped out a scalding oath.
“Damn you, Bradley! I never thought
you'd have th’ nerve to board a ship of
mine !”’
52 CAPTAIN CUT-THROAT
“T’ll board any damned ship in Funa- futi I choose,” said Bradley coldly. “I’m a magistrate and I’ve got that right.”
Tench got up, choking, and made a move for his gun. The rest got up, ex- cepting the Gentleman. Bradley stared at Tench.
“T wouldn’t draw if I were you, unless you can shoot a lot better than you can fight.”
The Gentleman smiled.
“For what are we indebted to this little visit, my friend?”
Tench kept his hand on his gun but did not draw. The rest watched. Bradley stared at his old enemy, his face like iron.
“You’re the reason, Gentleman,” said Bradley coldly. “I don’t want you around. This ship will sail at once, with you on board. The wind’s fair. The tide’ll be right by the time you reach the channel. So get out.”
“We are getting out,” the Gentleman assured him, smiling. “In fact, we are getting out tonight as you suggest. But we did not expect to have the honor of your company, although I did warn Tench you might take a notion in your head to come along.”
“Yeah, you warned me but I never thought he’d be damned fool enough to come here alone. Anyway we'll handle him.”
Typhoon glanced swiftly about. He sensed that if he had not actually walked into a trap they were prepared for the eventuality of his coming. The Gentleman knew him and his ways; probably the Gen- tleman even knew that Typhoon knew of his presence on board the Wanderer. If not that, the Gentleman was certainly aware that when Typhoon Bradley was around it was always best to take pre- cautions.
‘“What’s the game?” said Bradley sud- denly. The Gentleman smiled.
“A very sweet little game, my friend. But perhaps you had better throw your gun away first. There are four of us here. The second mate on deck had orders that if you should happen to arrive and be alone and insisted upon coming aft, you should. But right now there are two men covering the scuttle up above so you can’t get out. And there are two more covering you with Winchesters from the skylight.”
RADLEY did not turn his head to
look. It was an old trick to distract attention though he believed the Gentle- man was telling the truth.
“Fair enough,” he said quietly. “But you ought to know me better, Gentleman. If you want me—come and take me.”
He jumped back against the bulkhead, out of line of the skylight fire, and his draw was fast as the strike of a rattler. They had him trapped perhaps, had him cornered, but he never surrendered. He would go down fighting like all the Island pioneers went down, his back to the wall and his gun spouting flame.
It would be a battle to the finish.
The Gentleman dived for the deck and missed death by the sixteenth of an inch. Captain Tench had drawn and was firing. Bradley’s gun ranged the cabin and the pimply-faced youth went down with a hole between his eyes. It was nothing but sheer bad luck that Typhoon did not get every man present. But he only had time for three shots and then a bullet from the pock-marked mate’s gun, wide of the mark, ricocheted off one of the brass hang- ing lamps and grazed Bradley across the back of the head, stunning him as neatly as a blackjack could have done.
He pitched forward and lay still and there was a silence in the main cabin save for the hard-drawn breathing of Captain Tench and the harsh whistling noise that his mate made between his teeth.
“Gawd, I never saw a man draw as fast as that afore,” said Tench, choking a lit- tle. ‘‘He’s killed the supercargo.”
Gentleman Harry got up from the deck and brushed his clothes. He was a little shaken.
“TI never thought the fool would fight,” he said harshly. “It’s bad enough if he gives you an even break but when he jumps you first it’s time to duck.”
A respectful fear showed in his eyes.
“So I noticed,” sneered Tench. The Gentleman’s dark eyes glittered.
“Tench!” he said crisply. “There are just three men in the Islands who can draw faster and shoot straighter than I can. Those three men are Larsen of Singapore, Stinger Seave, and Typhoon Bradley. Would you care to dispute the fact ?”
Tench stared at him for a moment and
ACTION
then wilted. He had seen the Gentleman shoot.
“Well, you did duck,” he said sullenly. The Gentleman nodded.
“That was common sense with Bradley shooting.”
The pock-marked mate swore.
“Aw, what th’ hell are you arguing about? We plugged th’ lousy swine, didn’t we?”
ENTLEMAN HARRY, his own gun
drawn now, gingerly approached Ty- phoon’s prostrate body as a man might ap- proach a wounded grizzly bear. He would not even stoop to see if Bradley was dead but made the mate do it. The Gentleman knew Bradley and once before he had shammed dead to advantage.
“Hell,” he ain’t croaked,” said the mate disgustedly after a brief examination. “Just creased, that’s all.”
“Better finish him anyway,” grunted Tench, cocking the hammer of his gun. “Th’ swine butted into my business this afternoon and damned near knocked my ear off,”
“We won't kill him,” said the Gentle- man decisively. “At least not yet. He’s given me more grief than you'll ever have, Tench, and I’ll get rid of him in my own way. Tie his hands and feet and chuck him into a spare room.”
The other looked puzzled.
“T don’t see why we don’t croak him now,’ swore Tench.
“Because I say not!” rasped the Gentle- man. “This is my deal and I'll play it as I see best. The thing you want to worry about is if anyone in th’ lagoon has heard the shooting and wants to come over and look-see.”