"Doc Savage Adventure 1935-12 The Fantastic Island" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

THE FANTASTIC ISLAND

A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson

(Originally published in "Doc Savage Magazine" for December 1935. Bantam books reprint December 1996.)


BACK COVER

To the world at large, Doc Savage is a strange, mysterious figure of glistening bronze skin and golden eyes. To his amazing co-adventurers -- the five greatest brains ever assembled in one group -- he is a man of superhuman strength and protean genius, whose life is dedicated to the destruction of evil-doers. To his fans he is the greatest adventure hero of all time, whose fantastic exploits are unequaled for hair-raising thrills, breathtaking escapes and bloodcurdling excitement.

THE DEVIL'S HONEYCOMB

It looked just like any other deserted island. But hidden under its tropical sands was a monstrous slave empire, a vast underground network of death pits, giant carnivorous crabs and prehistoric beasts, ruled by the blood-crazed Count Ramadanoff. Blasting their way into this nightmare of horror, Doc Savage and the "fabulous five" embark on their most daring adventure.






Chapter I

SHIPWRECKS TO ORDER


THE disappearance of William Harper Littlejohn attracted no public attention whatever. The reason for this was simple. The public never learned about it.

William Harper Littlejohn was a very famous man. It was impossible that, if ten average men on the street should be stopped and asked who William Harper Littlejohn was, they would not have had the slightest idea; but, in his field, William Harper Littlejohn was tops. His field was archaeology and geology. Wherever men are interested in such things, he was known.

William Harper Littlejohn's disappearance was simple. He had chartered a ship and was taking an archaeological expedition to the Galapagos Islands, below the equator in the Pacific Ocean. The Galapagos are said to be the world's strangest islands. William Harper Littlejohn simply disappeared. The ship vanished also. The whole expedition, too.

It could not have been that their radio merely failed. There were three radio transmitters on the expedition ship. No, there was some other reason. It was strange.

Just how strange it was, no one had any idea at the beginning of the thing.

William Harper Littlejohn happened to be one of the five men associated with that remarkable man of mystery, Doc Savage. Word of his disappearance reached Doc Savage at his New York headquarters. Doc Savage acted promptly.

Two of Doc Savage's aids -- he had five of them altogether -- were on a vacation cruise in the yacht Seven Seas, which chanced to be off the coast of Panama, in the Pacific. Aboard the yacht also was Patricia Savage, a remarkable young woman, whose relationship to Doc Savage was that of cousin. Pat had gone along for the trip, she claimed; but it was to be suspected that she was looking for excitement.

If she was looking for excitement, she was certainly destined to find it.

Doc Savage, man of bronze, individual of mystery, mental wizard and physical marvel -- to quote the newspapers -- sent a radiogram to the yacht Seven Seas headed for the Galapagos to look for William Harper Littlejohn, who was better known as "Johnny," and his expedition.

The Seven Seas was now about to slam headlong into more trouble than those aboard would ever have believed possible.


THE Seven Seas was riding a radio beam radiated, by special courtesy on the part of the powerful United States Naval radio station, from the Panama Canal Zone. This beam simplified navigation, and they were riding it straight for the Galapagos.

Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks stood on the dripping deck of the Seven Seas and stared into an immensity of black sky and blacker water. Occasionally he scowled anxiously upward at the radio rigging. Water slapped and phosphoresced around the bow.