"Let him be a hero!" clipped Ham. The quick-thinking lawyer seldom got in a spot so tight that he neglected to razz Monk.
"Cant you see what theyre doing?" Long Tom demanded. "Theyre holding us as a bait to get Doc!"
"Bait or no bait," Johnny, the geologist, put in, "Doc will take care of himself. And if we went and got ourselves shot, wed still be bait. Im in favor of stringing along for a while to see what happens."
"Thats a wise guy!" snarled the coarse voice of Kars gunman. "You birds behave, an well do the white thing by you, see! Well let you keep on livin! Well leave you behind in the crater when we take off in our plane!"
He laughed uproariously at this. He knew life in the crater would be one long living hell! A more perilous domicile would be hard to imagine.
"I gotta notion to rush im!" Monk rumbled.
"You have no such idea youre just working that noisy mouth!" Ham sneered. "I wonder what theyre doing to Oliver Wording Bittman?"
"Hard to tell," said Renny. "They took him away shortly after we reached here. I cant imagine why."
Monk made an angry hur-r-rum of a sound. "Whats still puzzlin me is how they got us! We had Ham, Long Tom and Johnny on guard. If theyd have sneaked up on Ham, I could understand how they got near enough to cover us before we could put up a fight. But the way it was "
"Pipe down!" rasped their guard, tired of the talk.
Monk continued, " but the way it was we "
"Pipe down, you funny-lookin baboon!" the guard snarled. "Im gettin so I dont like to watch that ugly phiz of yours when you jabber!"
At this, Ham laughed.
"And the muffler goes on you, too!" gritted the guard. "You cocky shyster mouthpiece!"
Silence fell within the cave.
Doc waited a while. His keen brain worked. His five friends were here in the cave. But Oliver Wording Bittman was somewhere else.
Doc decided to find Bittman. Monk, Ham, Renny, Long Tom, and Johnny were in no immediate danger.
Away from the cavern entrance, Doc crept. The tall grass, coarse as the leaves of cattails growing on a pond bank, concealed him.
He encountered a tiny mound. Starting to go around it, he stopped.
It was a grave! The tombstone was a stone slab. A name and brief inscription had been painted upon it. Doc read:
Here Lies
GABE YUDER
Trampled to death by a Tyrannosaurus
Doc examined the grave. It was months old!
For quite an interval, the mighty bronze man did not move, but remained as quiescent as a statue of the solid metal he resembled.
MEN approaching drew Doc Savages attention from the grass-grown burial mound. Although his mind had been elsewhere, his full faculties had never deserted the business at hand. He had not relaxed his alertness to danger.
"He probably aint had time to get here yet," said a coarse voice.
"You dont know that bronze guy!" growled the other. "I tell you, he may already be hangin around here. He may be waitin to jump onto us like a cat onto a mouse."
"Listen!" sneered the first speaker. "He never made it past them traps we left! Especially the poisoned thorns! That was good! And the machine gun we left with a vine hooked to the trigger! That wasnt bad, either."
"But supposin "
"Supposin nothin! If he gets here, were gonna have our eyes open!"
"He may be too smart to even try to trail us. He may decide to let his men take care of themselves. What then?"
"So much the better! Well go off an leave him here! Hell be where hell never bother Kar again."
"But he might find where we mined the ingredients for our fresh supply of the Smoke of Eternity. They say the bronze guy is quite a chemist. Even a second-rate chemist like you was able to make up a fresh batch of the Smoke of Eternity after Kar told you how!"
"Whos a second-rater?" snarled the other man. "I dont like that crack! Next to Kar, Im the fair-haired boy in this scatter! Damn you, I wont have "
"Aw dont get on fire! I know youre a great guy in certain lines, but only a fair chemist. Supposin the bronze guy figured out how the Smoke Of Eternity was made? With enough of the stuff, he could open a tunnel right through the side of this crater. He might get out "
"What if he did? Kar would have a new gang together. Thered be no slips like there was this last time. Doc Savage wouldnt have a chance against Kar."
"Maybe," the skeptical one mumbled. "But Id rest easier if I had the bronze guy in front of a machine gun for about a minute. I just wish I had that chance!"
He got it almost before the words were off his lips. Doc stood up!
But did the Kar gunman shoot? He didnt!
He gave a squawk of surprise and terror and fell on his face in the grass.
DOC SAVAGE never shot a man except in actual defense of his own life, or that of some one else. Hence, he waited for the loud-mouthed one to lift the submachine gun he was carrying. But the man whipped down.
Coarse grass shook as the fellow crawled away. He was taking to his heels!
The second gunman was sterner stuff. He tilted his rapid firer. Bur-r-r-rip!It was spewing lead long before it came level. The slugs chopped grass to bits halfway to Doc.
The big bronze mans pistol spoke once. The report was like that given off by the popper of a hard-snapped bull whip.
The gunman melted down as though all the stiffening had been drawn from his body. On his forehead, exactly between his eyes, was a blue spot that suddenly trickled red. The man fell on top of his weapon and it continued to rip off shots until the drum magazine had emptied.
Doc Savage flashed for the cave where his friends were held. He must not let the guard kill them in his excitement.
"What is it?" the guard in the cave was bellowing. "Whats goin on out there? What "
Doc reached a spot a yard from the cave mouth. He stopped there. Off his lips came a changed voice a voice exactly like that of the Kar gunman who had just died.
"The bronze guy!" Docs altered voice called. "We got im! Come out an watch im croak!"
"Sure!" barked the fellow in the cavern. "Here I come "
He crashed headlong into a set of mighty bronze hands. He saw them closing over his face. They looked bigger, more terrible than the whole crater of Thunder Island. The golden eyes behind them were even worse. They radiated death.
The man sought to use his gun. He got a few wild bullets out of it.
Then his neck unjointed! He died quickly. His actual going was painless, whatever the terror of the moments before might have been. For Docs sinewy hands had brought a merciful end.
Renny, Ham, Monk, Johnny, and Long Tom all five howling their pleasure piled out of the cavern prison in a hurry.
"Did you get Kar?" Ham clipped.
"No." Doc put a sharp question. "Have you seen Kar yet?"
"Not yet. They took poor Bittman off to Kar. Or thats what they said. I dont know "
Docs uplifted arm stopped Hams flow of words.
Then, as they all heard what Docs sensitive ears had been first to detect, horror seized them.
Kars plane was starting. The engines were already tossing salvos of sound against the gigantic cliff wall of the crater.
Doc Savage left the spot as from a catapult. No word did he speak. None was needed. His men knew that, should the plane get off, their lot would be very hard indeed. It might take them years to escape the innards of Thunder Island.
Renny, Ham, Monk, Long Tom, Johnny all five trailed in his wake. But from the way they were left behind, they might have been at a standstill in the rear of the bronze master of speed.
Seemingly gifted with unseen wings, such fabulous leaps did he take over boulders, Doc bore down on the makeshift hangar between the two masses of stone that were larger than skyscrapers. He caught sight of the plane.