"044 (B077) - The South Pole Terror (1936-10) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Doc Savage was involved! Doc Savage was alive! The S O S had said he was responsible for killings aboard the Regis!
The newspapers broke out type so big that it had not been used in years.
A score of photographic, newspaper and coast guard planes took the air, determined to reach the Regis. The mysterious gale which had lashed up so unexpectedly was dying now, anyway.
Long Tom flew out to sea blissfully ignorant of anything out of the way. He kept his radio apparatus tuned on the wave length used by Doc Savage and his aides in communicating with each other, so he did not hear any of the emergency news broadcasts about Doc Savage attacking the liner.
There was a haze off the end of Long Island, but Long Tom had no difficulty picking up Montauk lightship, because Montauk was a radio beacon, and could be flown to easily by use of the directional radio which the plane carried. From the lightship, the electrical wizard set his course south-southeast, as he had been directed.
That the radio directions might have been spurious did not occur to him. He never gave it a thought. He used a pair of binoculars with wide fields and swept the sea.
He knew he was flying to a point well south of the liner Regis, but he did not give that a thought. He wanted to sight a light signaling "DOC." He concentrated on that.
After a time, he saw it. It was a very powerful light, and he knew it must be on a craft of rather considerable size. It was rather dark, there being no moon; there were no clouds.
Long Tom circled the blinking light. It turned upward and found his plane. This blinded him so that he could not see a thing below.
"I'll give 'em some of their own medicine," grunted the puny-looking electrical wizard.
He dropped a parachute flare. The white light spraying from this showed him what was below. He hung out of the cabin window. His mouth came open. He was astounded.
He thought, at first, that he was looking at a long, bright rock. Then he knew differently, because the charts showed some hundreds of fathoms of water in this vicinity. And no rock could be that shiny.
The thing was long, narrow, tapered at front and back, was convex, and made him think of half of a big metal cigar floating on the water.
"Dirigible!" he exploded.
He flew down, intending to land before the parachute flare dunked itself into the sea. The plane came down with a whistle, for it was fast on the response. He straightened out to land.
Then he saw it was no dirigible floating on the water. It was something else. He goggled. He had never seen anything like it before, and could not even guess what it might be.
He stared so hard that he made a very bad landing. The plane hit a wave, bounced, heeled over. Long Tom was sure it would capsize.
THE plane did not capsize, due to the stability of its construction rather than any superhuman flying on Long Tom's part. It did all but bury itself in the sea. Long Tom cut the engine and wiped imaginary sweat drops off his overly huge forehead.
The searchlight splashed fairly into his eyes when he stuck his head and shoulders out of the escape hatch in the roof of the plane. He shielded his eyes with an arm and waved for them to take the light away. They did not take it away. The light seemed to be coming closer.
"Doc must have a bunch of greenhorns helping him!" Long Tom complained, and ducked back in the cabin to get another flare. They were constructed so he could hold them in a hand and burn them.
He shoved out of the cabin again. His mouth fell open. The searchlight had approached much more rapidly than he had expected. It was almost upon him.
Water sloshed, hissed, sobbed. A great hulk loomed. The weird, shiny craft! He could see the fantastic brightness of it, even in the darkness. It was almost upon him. It was on him!
The jar as the thing hit the plane came an instant after Long Tom flung himself flat and grasped a generator propeller, the only protuberance handy. The ship skewered around. It tilted. A wing went under. Then the whole was submerged.
Long Tom was carried down. Water tore at him. Then he was caught between the side of the fantastic thing of the sea and the hull of the plane. The impact was terrific, and air left Long Tom's lungs.
He was not in a condition to think of many things. But he knew suddenly that Doc Savage was not here, that he had been tricked.
He had a horrible feeling that the sea was a million miles deep, that he was at the bottom of it, and could never get to the top again. Then he did not feel anything, or think any more about Doc Savage and tricks.
Chapter X. UNCLE PENGUIN
DOC SAVAGE stood on the bridge of the liner Regis. He had the big searchlight pointed in the air and was stabbing white light into the windy, dark heavens. He was sending S O S over and over again. It was not so much that he wanted help. He was endeavoring to show Ham, in the plane, where the liner lay.
"I sure hope somethin' ain't happened to Ham," said the apish Monk.
A stranger hearing the concern in Monk's tone would not have imagined that the hairy chemist had never, as far back as any one could remember, spoken a civil word to the dapperЧand now missingЧHam.
There was a howl of powerful cylinders in the distance, and a plane came through the windy night, drawn by the blinking searchlight.
"May be a news reel or coast guard crate," said Monk, looking at the gloomy side.
It wasn't. It was Ham. He came in low, and his flying lights, red and green on the wing tips, began to blink out in code.
"Blazes!" Monk exploded, reading the signals.
Doc Savage's vague trilling came into being, but did not persist for long.
"Ham," Monk said, sourly, "has finally proved of some use."
Doc Savage went back to the staterooms and to the lounge, then to the bar. The bronze man's flake gold eyes were searching.
Ward, the steward, was in the bar, just taking a hooker of whisky.
"Here's to learning what that strange heat was," he toasted.
"Yes," Doc Savage said, and took his throat with both hands. "Here's to finding what the heat was."
Ward's convulsion threw the liquor in his own face. Sound tried to get up out of his chest and failed. He flapped his arms like a rooster, and did, finally, make a crowing noise of sorts. The stiffness went out of him.
Monk put his face close to Ward's, saw the man could understand what was spoken to him.
"Ham got them radio sendings you done," he gritted ungrammatically. "Ham was lost, the overdressed shyster! He just got back to the ship and blinked the news down to us with his riding lights."
"Ar-r-r-k!" said Ward.
Doc Savage released Ward's throat.
"Are Renny and Johnny aboard?" the bronze man asked.
The man Ward thought fast.
"Yes," he said.
Doc Savage looked at Monk.
"He's lying," the bronze man said. "Trying to hold us until the coast guard gets here, after which we are pretty sure to be arrested."