TEXT:  
   
  THE OTHER WORLD 
  A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson 
   
  Originally published in DOC SAVAGE Magazine January 1940 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE FIGHTS PREHISTORIC DANGERS WITH MODERN WEAPONS IN 
   
  THE OTHER WORLD 
   
  A Complete Book-length Novel 
   
  by KENNETH ROBESON 
   
  Chapter I 
  THE MYSTERIOUS FUR 
   
  WHEN the plane landed on a 
  farmer’s oat-stubble field in the Mississippi 
  bottoms near St. Louis, the time was around 
  ten in the morning. 
  The farmer had turned his cattle on 
  to the stubble field to graze, and among the 
  animals was a rogue bull which was a horned 
  devil with strangers. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  2 
  This bull charged the aviator. 
  The flier then killed the bull with a 
  spear. 
  Naturally, the farmer who owned the 
  bull was astounded. The farmer happened to 
  be watching, and his astonishment came not 
  so much from the fact that the aviator killed 
  the bull; if the flier had drawn a gun and shot 
  the animal, the farmer would not have been 
  surprised. The spear was the astonishing 
  item. 
  The spear was small—seven feet or 
  so in length, not very heavy. When hurling 
  the spear the flier used a peculiar device, a 
  stick about the length of his arm, equipped at 
  one end with two thong loops for the 
  forefingers, so that it could be clasped very 
  tightly, while the other end of the stick was 
  forked to grip the spear shaft. With this 
  device, the spear could be thrown with great 
  force, as a rock is hurled from the split end of 
  a stick. There was something primitive about 
  it. 
  “Hey!” The farmer dashed into the 
  oat field. “You all right?” 
  “I’m extremely sorry,” the flier said. 
  “About the bull? Hell, that’s all right.” 
  The farmer wiped off perspiration. “Brother, 
  we been afraid that ox was gonna gore 
  somebody.” 
  The flier said, “I shall pay you for the 
  animal, of course.” 
  The farmer’s eyes began to pop with 
  astonishment as he eyed the aviator. “I’ll be 
  jiggered!” he said. 
  Because he had been a little 
  astonished over the business of the bull, the 
  farmer had failed to particularly notice the 
  flier’s clothing. 
  “Bless 
  my 
  boots!” 
  the 
  farmer 
  muttered. 
  The 
  flier’s 
  garments—skin 
  tight 
  trousers, very loose coat-blouse—seemed to 
  be made of buckskin, or animal hide of 
  similar nature. Further, his feet were shod in 
  a covering that the farmer at first thought was 
  steel, but later concluded must be some 
  metal more nearly like aluminum. This metal 
  foot gear was solid, after the fashion of Dutch 
  wooden shoes. 
  “I shall,” repeated the flier, “pay you 
  for the animal.” 
  The farmer was not too surprised 
  over the pilot’s appearance to overlook a 
  dollar. “Well now,” he said, “he was a pretty 
  good bull. Thoroughbred. I can show you the 
  papers on him.” 
  “Unfortunately, you will have to wait 
  a few days for the money.” 
  “Eh?” 
  “I will leave my plane here,” the pilot 
  said, “and be gone two or three days. Then I 
  shall return and pay you.” 
  The farmer had noticed by this time 
  that the man was having some difficulty with 
  his speech, as if he had not spoken English 
  for a long time, or had recently learned it. 
  Since an airplane was obviously 
  more valuable than a bull, hence good 
  security, the farmer said: “Sure. That’s all 
  right.” 
  The flier took a large bundle from the 
  plane—a package about three feet square, 
  wrapped in the same type of skin from which 
  his clothing was made, and equipped with 
  pack-straps for carrying. 
  “As I said,” the aviator remarked, “I 
  shall return later.” 
  He walked across the oat stubble 
  and disappeared into a woods. 
   
   
  THE prominence of St. Louis as a 
  fur-buying center, while possibly not fully 
  known to the public, is an appreciated fact by 
  the fur industry, a multitude of dealers in raw 
  skins converging on the city during the 
  season to dicker for pelts. Mink, raccoon and 
  skunk from the Middle West. Muskrat from 
  Louisiana. Fox from the Hudson Bay. Wolf 
  from the Rockies. Chinchilla from South 
  America. 
  The flier got a laugh when he walked 
  into 
  the 
  market 
  rooms. 
  A 
  rather 
  contemptuous glance or two, as well. Some 
  of them figured, from his skin clothing, that 
  he was a nut. 
  “Dan’l 
  Boone 
  come 
  to 
  town,” 
  someone said, and snickered.  
  The flier’s unusual metal shoes 
  made a loud noise on the tiled floor as he 
  crossed to an exhibition table, upon which he 
  lowered his bundle. Before he opened his 
  bundle, he made a speech. Not a long one. 
  “Gentlemen,” he said, “you can buy 
  these furs for five thousand a skin.” 
  Someone laughed at that, but there 
  was no mirth after the man opened his 
  bundle and spread out the contents, slowly 
  and proudly, handling them as though each 
  was a jewel as fragile as a cobweb. 
  “Holy cats!” someone said. 
   
   
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  3 
   
  With his strange device, the flier hurled the spear into the charging bull! 
   
  They 
  weren’t 
  cat 
  hides, 
  but 
  something else, something incredible. A fur 
  so luxurious, with such subtle coloring and 
  quality, that the buyers were stunned. A man 
  stepped forward, held one of the skins up 
  and stroked it with his hand, and it was 
  indeed as if a fabulous jewel were being 
  shown. 
  Fur 
  men 
  came 
  to 
  the 
  spot, 
  magnetized by such a fur as they hadn’t 
  dreamed existed. 
  A fur man said: “Who owns that 
  dyeing process? My firm will pay plenty for 
  it.” 
  The man who was holding up the 
  pelt studied the fur closely. 
  “Not dyed,” he said. 
  “You’re crazy. There’s no animal with 
  fur like that.” 
  They gathered around the table. 
  They were not passing the skins about, but 
  touching them reverently. 
  “How much did you say?” a man 
  asked the flier. 
  “Five thousand a skin.” 
  “Dollars?” 
  “Yes.” 
  The other laughed. “Be yourself, guy. 
  Chinchilla is the most expensive fur in the 
  world, and it doesn’t bring that.” 
  The aviator did not seem impressed. 
  “And what makes Chinchilla cost?” 
  “Scarcity. The animals are getting 
  rare—” 
  “Not as rare as these.” The flier held 
  up his hand and silence fell; they listened to 
  him speaking in his strangely difficult fashion. 
  “You see here,” he said, “a collection of skins 
  which is complete. And by complete, I mean 
  that in this pile here are all the skins of this 
  animal that you will find in the world, and 
  there will be no more such skins. Never. I 
  have twenty-seven skins here, and there will 
  never be any more.” 
  “You mean,” put in a new voice, “that 
  no more of that particular fur you’ve got there 
  will ever come on the market?” 
  “Exactly,” said the flier. 
  “Why not?” 
  The flier seemed, judging from his 
  hesitation, reluctant about answering that 
  question. 
  “Because,” he said finally, “there are 
  no more of the animals. I killed and skinned 
  them all. Their pelts are here.” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  4 
  “Just who are you, anyhow?” 
  “My name,” the flier said, “is Tercio.” 
  “Tercio?” 
  “Decimo Tercio, yes.” 
  “And you’re from—?” 
  “That,” advised Decimo Tercio, “is 
  not your business.” 
   
   
  THE man who had taken up the 
  questioning of Decimo Tercio stepped back 
  and showed his teeth unpleasantly. He was a 
  dealer specializing in sealskins, and he 
  somewhat resembled one of the animals 
  himself, particularly about the countenance. 
  His face was equipped with a pair of large 
  dark pop eyes. 
  Someone whispered to a companion: 
  “It didn’t take that Tercio, whoever he is, very 
  long to get Two Wink’s number.” 
  “Is Two Wink a crook?” 
  “He hasn’t been caught at it.” 
  There were no fireworks. Two Wink 
  Danton merely scowled, growled, “I just 
  asked you a civil question,” and walked 
  away. He went directly to his office, wasting 
  no time. 
  Gerald Evan Two Wink Danton was 
  not particularly liked on the fur exchange, nor 
  was there anything definite to account for 
  this. The man had a rather long nose as far 
  as other people’s business was concerned, 
  his 
  principal 
  interest 
  apparently 
  being 
  directed toward becoming an encyclopedia of 
  gossip. However, he was like a blotter where 
  gossip was concerned—he absorbed, but did 
  not give forth. Which wasn’t so bad. 
  Danton’s nickname of Two Wink 
  came from his habitual bidding gesture. 
  During fur auctions, when large numbers of 
  bidders are gathered before the auctioneer, 
  bidding is usually done by giving slight 
  signals—the lifting of a finger, the tilting of a 
  cigarette, a tug at an ear with the fingers. 
  Danton invariably winked twice, and if there 
  was any secretive intent about the gesture, it 
  was futile, the man’s pop eyes making a 
  double wink quite noticeable. He might as 
  well have jumped up and waved both arms. 
  Two Wink dived into his office and 
  sent an excited bark at his stenographer. 
  “Where’s them two fur samples?” he 
  rapped. 
  “What samples?” the girl asked 
  nervously. 
  “The two that were left with me about 
  three years ago. The men wanted to be 
  notified if any similar fur appeared on the 
  market. Offered me five hundred dollars 
  reward if I found a similar fur on the market 
  and notified them.” 
  “Oh, that.” The girl went into an 
  adjacent room and soon came back with two 
  envelopes. 
  Each envelope bore a name and 
  address, and each contained a small piece of 
  fur. One of these bits of fur was worn 
  somewhat more than the other, but there was 
  no doubt but that they were of identical type. 
  Two Wink carried the two fragments 
  of fur back to the display room and, without 
  doing anything that drew attention to himself, 
  carefully compared the two bits with the pelts 
  which Decimo Tercio was attempting to sell 
  for five thousand dollars each. 
  It had now become apparent that 
  Decimo Tercio stood a very good chance of 
  getting five thousand dollars apiece for the 
  skins. Someone had already offered twenty-
  five hundred, providing examination showed 
  that the skins were genuine and not a clever 
  piece of manufacturing. 
  Two Wink listened to the bidding, 
  and he was very thoughtful when he went 
  back to his office. Several things were on his 
  mind. This Decimo Tercio was a strange 
  fellow, and his clothing was even more 
  unusual. The buckskin pants, as snug as an 
  acrobat’s tights. More particularly, the metal 
  shoes that served him as footgear. 
  “You know,” muttered Two Wink, “I 
  think there’s something queer about this.” 
  “What did you say?” asked the 
  stenographer. 
  “Never mind.” 
  Two Wink went into his private 
  sanctum and had a silent argument with 
  himself. On one side of the argument was a 
  conviction, rather vague now but growing 
  stronger, that there might be a great deal of 
  money to be made if a properly interested 
  fellow who played his cards right, such as 
  Two Wink considered himself capable of 
  doing, could get hold of breeding pairs of the 
  animals which had produced that amazing 
  new fur. On the other side of the argument 
  stood one thousand perfectly good dollars, 
  five hundred each from two men who had 
  offered the sums as a reward to be notified if 
  such a fur as this appeared on the market. 
  The philosophy of a bird in the hand 
  beating two in the bush eventually won out in 
  Two Wink’s mind, so he telegraphed the two 
  men who had offered the rewards. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  5 
  One telegram recipient was named 
  Arnold Columbus. 
  The 
  other 
  was 
  named 
  Wilmer 
  Fancife. 
  Both of them were in New York City, 
  although at different addresses. 
   
   
  Chapter II 
  THE QUARRELSOME MEN 
   
  THE fight at the airport that evening 
  was a honey. The hostess saw it start. Two 
  of her passengers—they had not left their 
  seats during the nonstop flight from New 
  York, had boarded the plane separately in 
  Newark, hence obviously neither had known 
  the other was aboard—arose to leave their 
  seats after the big sky cruiser landed in St. 
  Louis. The instant they saw each other, 
  fireworks started. 
  One man was young, not far beyond 
  late college age; he had the body of a young 
  blacksmith, hair as yellow as a new oat 
  shock, a rather grim expression. 
  The other fellow was a tough fat 
  man. His mouth looked as if it had been 
  made carelessly with a hatchet. Nature had 
  not given him much of a nose, and this 
  donation had been hammered upon until it 
  had somewhat the appearance of a large 
  wart. He was cross-eyed. His skin gave the 
  impression of having been appropriated from 
  a rhinoceros. 
  The fat man saw the young one first. 
  He was carrying a suitcase, which he 
  immediately lifted and crashed down on the 
  young man’s head. The case split and 
  clothing erupted. 
  The young man was jarred down on 
  his knees, but he got up and wheeled around 
  to face his assailant. 
  “Fancife!” he yelled. 
  He lunged in, hooked a fist to the fat 
  man’s ribs. He might as well have slugged a 
  draft horse. The fat man was tough. 
  The young man was no lily. He made 
  a roaring noise, waded in. He slugged and 
  got slugged. The two men fell on the plane 
  floor amid the litter of Fancife’s suitcase. 
  Seizing a necktie, the young man 
  wrapped it around Fancife’s neck like a 
  garrote cord, and tied a hard knot in it. 
  Fancife got an extra shoe that had been in 
  the case, pounded the young man between 
  the eyes, loosened him. 
  The thing became serious. Fancife 
  snatched up a razor, tried to cut the other’s 
  throat. He failed. The foe got a belt, began 
  whipping the other across the eyes, finally 
  jerked the razor out of his hand. 
  Fancife began turning purple, due to 
  the knotted tie about his neck. 
  The co-pilot—the hostess had been 
  screaming ineffectually for them to stop it—
  came rushing back and tried to part the men. 
  He made progress for a moment, then got 
  two teeth kicked down his throat. He doubled 
  over, coughed up the teeth, and as mad as 
  either combatant, he rushed forward to hunt 
  a wrench. 
  The fat man, Fancife, had started the 
  fight with confidence. By now, he was 
  changing his mind. The younger man was 
  fighting with a fury that was maniacal. 
  Fancife snatched up a bottle of 
  rubbing alcohol and struck the younger man 
  on the forehead with it. The bottle broke, not 
  harming the victim greatly. But the alcohol 
  ran down into the young man’s eyes, making 
  stinging blindness. 
  Fancife took advantage of his foe’s 
  blindness to get out of the plane and run. 
   
   
  TEARING off the throttling necktie as 
  he raced past the airport waiting room, 
  Fancife vaulted a low steel-wire fence, 
  reached a taxicab. He did not waste time. He 
  reached into the cab, clutched the astonished 
  driver by the coat, slugged him on the jaw 
  and made him senseless, then dumped him 
  on the ground. The cab leaped away, tires 
  throwing gravel, Fancife at the wheel. 
  En route into town, Fancife proved 
  that the taxicab could do eighty. Later, he 
  abandoned the cab, straightened his ruffled 
  clothing, and caught another hack in a 
  conventional fashion. He changed cabs twice 
  thereafter. 
  Between one of the cab changes, 
  Fancife looked up the residence address of 
  Gerald Evan Two Wink Danton. 
  Two Wink Danton, being owner of a 
  vinegary disposition and a completely selfish 
  nature, had always lived alone. At present he 
  occupied a rat trap of an apartment—he was 
  also as stingy as Scrooge—in a part of town 
  that was down at the heels. The living room 
  was lighted inadequately by a twenty-watt 
  bulb dangling on the end of a cord from the 
  center of the ceiling, and by this bad light, he 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  6 
  surveyed his visitor. He did not immediately 
  recognize the other. 
   
   
  The man wrapped the necktie around 
  Fancife’s neck like a garrote cord! 
   
  “Who . . . what—?” Then he 
  understood. “Oh, it’s Mr. Wilmer Fancife.” 
  “Hello, Two Wink,” Fancife said. 
  “You got my telegram, I guess. But I 
  wasn’t expecting you so soon.” 
  Fancife began coughing and put his 
  hand to his chest as if in pain—when he took 
  the hand away, there was a large blue gun in 
  it. 
  “You weren’t expecting this either, 
  probably.” Fancife waggled the gun. “I hope 
  you understand what happens when these 
  things go off at a man.” 
  “What’s the idea?” 
  “We’ve got to get away from here in 
  a hurry. It just happens there isn’t time for 
  explanations, hence the gun.” 
  Two Wink was not without judgment, 
  so he walked down to the street meekly, and 
  even said: “I have my car handy, if you would 
  prefer we take that.” 
  “Let’s.” 
  Two Wink drove out toward Forest 
  Park, the park being one of his preferred 
  haunts because it was free. Fancife rode 
  silently, holding the gun against his ample 
  keg of a stomach, pointed at Two Wink. 
  “I fail to understand this at all,” Two 
  Wink said finally. 
  “My hurry to take you with me, you 
  mean?” Fancife made a noise that did not 
  contain enough humor to be a laugh. “That 
  was because somebody besides me could 
  read the telephone book.” 
  “I still don’t get it.” 
  “You don’t?” 
  “Slightly less than three years ago,” 
  Two Wink said thoughtfully, “you came to me 
  and gave me a small piece of fur, a 
  wonderful fur of a type that was totally 
  unknown to me. You offered a five-hundred-
  dollar reward to be notified if pelts of such a 
  fur appeared on the St. Louis market. Today, 
  such pelts did appear. I wired you, and you 
  rush here by plane. You must have come by 
  plane.” 
  Fancife said: “Would it puzzle you 
  more to know that I had left samples of that 
  fur at every major fur center in the world, 
  together with the same reward offer?” 
  “It strikes me as strange.” 
  “It’ll have to keep on striking you as 
  strange, then.” 
  “What do you mean?” 
  Fancife apparently decided he no 
  longer needed his gun, and he put it back in 
  the underarm holster from which he had 
  taken it. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  7 
  “All you’ve got to do with this is 
  produce information,” Fancife explained. “I 
  want to know who brought the furs today, 
  and where I can find the person.” 
  “Wasn’t there something said about 
  five hundred?”  
  Fancife reached into his hip pocket 
  for a billfold and began counting out twenty-
  dollar bills. 
  “You’ll get it,” he said. 
  Two Wink casually reached into his 
  coat and a moment later Fancife was looking 
  into the threatening twin maws of a large-
  caliber derringer. 
  “I’m afraid I’ll need more than five 
  hundred,” Two Wink said. 
   
   
  THE two men examined each other 
  during tense moments while Two Wink 
  brought the car to a stop near a street light in 
  a deserted section of the park. Each one saw 
  that the other was not afraid, and a mutual 
  respect sprang up between them. 
  “I didn’t figure you would have a 
  gun,” Fancife said disgustedly. 
  “I did have, you see.” 
  The 
  strained 
  silence 
  continued. 
  There was no noise other than the muttering 
  of the engine and the ticking of a valve 
  tappet. Breeze moved the park trees, and 
  leaves cast squirming clusters of shadow. 
  “Well?” Fancife said questioningly. 
  “I can see only one answer to this,” 
  Two Wink said thoughtfully. “Someone has 
  bred a new type of fur-bearing animal, and 
  skins of that animal were offered on the 
  market today. That fur, if a man had had a 
  monopoly, would be worth millions. So I want 
  in. I’m no hog.” 
  “What do you mean—no hog?” 
  “I want fifty per cent. Half.” 
  Fancife chewed his lower lip. He was 
  thinking. “And if there was more to it than just 
  a new fur-bearing animal?” 
  “Half. Still half.” 
  Fancife continued thoughtful, until 
  finally he drew in a deep breath. 
  “I like your style.” He scowled at Two 
  Wink. “I don’t think I would care much for you 
  personally, but you don’t handle yourself bad. 
  I could use you.” 
  Two Wink said frankly: “I was just 
  thinking the same thing. We might do each 
  other some good.” 
  There was a silence. Then, without 
  further speech, with no other manifestation, 
  they shook hands to seal the bargain. 
  Another silence followed, for they were both 
  somewhat surprised, suddenly realizing that 
  they understood each other fully, that their 
  minds worked in exactly the same fashion, so 
  that each seemed to know exactly what the 
  other thought and intended to do. It was 
  almost uncanny. 
  “We should make a team,” Fancife 
  said. 
  Two Wink put away his derringer, 
  admitted, “Yes, we should.” 
  “Our first move,” Fancife announced, 
  “is to get hold of the man who brought those 
  furs to St. Louis. And the next move,” added 
  Fancife, “will be to get rid of a fellow named 
  Columbus.” 
   
   
  Chapter III 
  THE GANG-UP 
   
  THE yellow-haired young man who 
  was built like a blacksmith was having his 
  troubles. 
  The airplane stewardess said: “I saw 
  the fight begin, and he didn’t start it. The 
  other man hit him first.” 
  The policeman asked, “Who kicked 
  your teeth out?” 
  “The other one,” admitted the co-
  pilot. “Not this fellow, but the one who got 
  away.” 
  The yellow-haired young man made 
  an impatient gesture with his large, strong-
  fingered hands, then gave a convincing 
  speech. 
  “So why not turn me loose?” he 
  argued. “This fellow attacked me and I simply 
  defended myself, so the fracas was not my 
  fault. I didn’t even know the man, therefore 
  he must have been a nut of some kind. You 
  better be devoting your time to finding him. 
  Why, he’s probably a crazy man running 
  around loose, a menace to humanity.” 
  The policeman said, “You didn’t even 
  know him?” 
  “My name,” said the young man who 
  had furnished half the fight, “is Arnold 
  Columbus, but naturally I get called Chris 
  Columbus. I’m from New York. I’m a fur 
  specialist, and I frequently travel to remote 
  parts of the world. You’re liable to run into me 
  inside the Arctic Circle hunting unusual 
  sealskins, or you might find me in the Andes 
  Mountains dickering for a catch of special 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  8 
  chinchilla. I was simply coming to St. Louis 
  on business, and this fellow attacked me.” 
  “According to the plane company 
  records, the other man’s name was Wilmer 
  Fancife,” the policeman explained. “You say 
  you never knew a Wilmer Fancife before?” 
  Chris Columbus lied without batting 
  an eye. 
  “Never heard of the cuss,” he said. 
  The policeman thought it all over and 
  came to a conclusion. “Thank you very much. 
  Will you kindly keep in touch with us, in case 
  something should develop?” 
  Chris Columbus grinned pleasantly 
  and said, “I take it that I can leave now?” 
  “Yes. Where do you intend to stay?” 
  “The Ritz Hotel.” 
  “Thank you.” 
  Chris left the airport in a taxicab and 
  did not go near the Ritz Hotel, visiting instead 
  a tobacco shop which was open at this late 
  hour. He examined the telephone directory 
  for Gerald Evan Two Wink Danton’s address. 
  Having found the address, he rode to within 
  two blocks of the spot in a taxicab, then 
  alighted. 
  Chris told the taxi driver Two Wink 
  Danton’s address. He also gave the driver a 
  five-dollar banknote. 
  “I want you to do me a favor,” Chris 
  explained. “A friend of mine lives there, and 
  he is very sociable indeed and he also likes 
  his liquid refreshment, so I suspect he may 
  be somewhat pixilated. If he is oiled, I 
  doubtless will have trouble getting away from 
  him without hurting his feelings, and there is 
  where you come in. If I do not return in half 
  an hour, say, you come to the door and 
  knock and explain to whoever answers that 
  there is a policeman downstairs and he is 
  going to come up and get me if I don’t come 
  down. I will tell my friend that I was pinched 
  for speeding, and the cop is taking me to the 
  bastille, but merely let me stop off to see my 
  friend as a great favor.” 
  Chris Columbus was sometimes 
  rather proud of his ability as a liar. 
  “It sounds kind of complicated,” said 
  the taxi driver. 
  “But you’ll do it? There’s some more 
  bucks in it for you.” 
  “Oh, sure. In half an hour.” 
   
   
  CHRIS COLUMBUS listened intently 
  outside Two Wink Danton’s door and heard a 
  radio playing softly, and no other sound, so 
  he knocked. The door soon opened. 
  “Hello, Mr. Two Wink Danton,” said 
  Chris. “You alone?” 
  “Why, yes, by myself.” Two Wink 
  stood back hospitably. “Come on in. I didn’t 
  expect you to arrive so soon. I only sent my 
  telegram slightly after noon today.” 
  “It doesn’t take much over six hours 
  to come from New York to St. Louis by 
  plane,” Chris said. 
  He walked in unsuspectingly, not 
  realizing his mistake until Two Wink slammed 
  the door and disclosed that Fancife had been 
  standing behind the panel with a cocked gun 
  ready in his right hand, and his left hand 
  gripping a pillow with which to muffle noise of 
  the gun, should it be necessary. 
  The glare Chris gave Fancife held 
  such desperate fury and hate that the craggy 
  fat man clapped the pillow over the muzzle of 
  the gun, ready to fire. 
  “No!” 
  Two 
  Wink 
  barked 
  wildly. 
  “Somebody’ll hear the shot, sure!” 
  Fancife snarled, “Get your hands 
  up!” 
  Chris Columbus lifted his arms. His 
  fists were clenched, his face drained of color, 
  his mouth hate-twisted. He hated Fancife, it 
  was obvious, more than anything else in the 
  world. 
  Fancife added, “You tie him, Two 
  Wink.” 
  Two 
  Wink 
  secured 
  a 
  cotton 
  clothesline—he was such a skinflint, and 
  cared so little for his personal appearance 
  that he did 
  his own laundry 
  in the 
  apartment—and bound the prisoner, showing 
  an extensive knowledge of knots. 
  “Now a gag,” Fancife suggested. 
  Two Wink rammed a dishrag into 
  Chris Columbus’ mouth, and over this tied a 
  bath towel. 
  Then suddenly Two Wink looked at 
  Fancife, 
  exclaimed, 
  “I 
  just 
  thought 
  of 
  something. That damned dog—and I’ve got 
  some of the stuff left.” 
  “What has a dog got to do with it?” 
  “One of the neighbors had a dog, 
  and the blasted thing always barked at me 
  and kept me awake at night with howling. 
  Once it bit me. So I got some chloroform, and 
  one night I caught the dog.” 
  “And 
  you 
  have 
  some 
  of 
  the 
  chloroform left?” 
  “Yes.” 
  “Get it.” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  9 
   
  Fancife stood with a cocked gun, and 
  his left hand gripped a pillow! 
   
  Two Wink had started worrying over 
  his own suggestion by the time he came 
  back with a chloroform bottle that was wide-
  necked and stoppered with a wadded rag. 
  “If we kill him,” he said hoarsely, “and 
  they catch us, it might be kind of bad.” 
  “If we kill him and they don’t catch 
  us,” advised Fancife, “we will both be 
  millionaires.” 
  Two Wink was an amateur as far as 
  murder was concerned. His hand began 
  shaking, and somehow it occurred to his 
  twisted mind that—if they were caught—his 
  part of the crime might be held less heinous if 
  he didn’t actually apply the lethal chloroform. 
  He handed the bottle to Fancife. 
  “You do it,” he said shrilly. 
  Fancife said, “With a lot of pleasure,” 
  and got down on his knees and poured the 
  chloroform on the towel, running a small 
  stream out until the bottle was entirely empty, 
  and by the time he had finished the victim’s 
  eyes were closed. 
  Fancife shoved Chris Columbus’ 
  head, 
  and 
  there 
  was 
  looseness 
  of 
  unconsciousness in the neck. 
  “Now,” said Fancife, “where’s this 
  fellow who brought the strange skins to St. 
  Louis? What name did you say he used?” 
  “Decimo 
  Tercio,” 
  explained 
  the 
  white-faced Two Wink. 
  Two Wink was not enjoying his first 
  participation in a murder. 
  Decimo Tercio had stopped at the 
  Black Fox Hotel, which was in the fur district, 
  an ancient hostelry constructed back in the 
  days when a black fox skin was a rare and 
  expensive article, before fur farming brought 
  the price down to almost the level of a first-
  class dark mink pelt. 
  The Black Fox Hotel, although it had 
  entertained its share of queer patrons—the 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  10 
  guests had included shaggy trappers from 
  Alaska and black lion hunters from Africa—
  was a hostelry that was somewhat agog. 
  Decimo Tercio, with his buckskin suit and his 
  metal shoes, was something different. 
  Two Wink and Fancife used a simple 
  ruse. 
  “Will you advise Mr. Tercio,” said 
  Two Wink, “that two fur buyers wish to see 
  him. Two buyers who are perfectly willing to 
  pay him five thousand dollars apiece for his 
  skins, and take the whole lot.” 
  This admitted them to the fourth-floor 
  room where Decimo Tercio had established 
  himself. 
  Tercio was standing in the middle of 
  the room—he merely called, “Come in,” and 
  they entered—naked except for a towel 
  which he had wrapped around his middle. 
  They could not help but stare at him. He had 
  a body of remarkable muscular development, 
  and a skin marked by numerous scars. The 
  scars were irregularly shaped, some much 
  larger than others. As if the man had been 
  torn and mauled by animals, Two Wink 
  reflected. 
  A new suit of ordinary clothing was 
  lying on the bed, so it was evident Tercio was 
  just preparing to change to civilized garb. 
  The buckskin suit, together with the metal 
  shoes, lay on the floor. 
  Fancife 
  closed 
  the 
  door, 
  then 
  produced his gun. 
  “You know what this is?” he asked 
  threateningly.  
  Tercio knew; he put up his arms. 
  “Look 
  the 
  place 
  over,” 
  Fancife 
  ordered Two Wink. “We might find maps, 
  which would make our job simple.” 
  Two Wink conducted an enthusiastic 
  search. He was probably much more 
  interested in finding something than his new 
  partner, Fancife. 
  It had occurred to Two Wink that he 
  really knew very little about the whole affair, 
  and it made him uneasy. He had thrown his 
  lot with Fancife, a comparative stranger, and 
  had immediately taken part in a murder. He 
  wondered if that didn’t make him a profound 
  damn fool. 
  There were some pockets in Tercio’s 
  skin garments, but they contained nothing. 
  “What kind of hide are these things 
  made of?” Two Wink asked, puzzled. 
  “You’ll find out later,” Fancife said 
  enigmatically. 
  Two Wink scowled and hefted the 
  metal shoes. He found them very light, 
  noticed also that the soles were scarred. 
  “What kind of metal is this?” he 
  asked. “Never saw stuff like it before.” 
  “Hurry up the search,” Fancife said 
  shortly. 
  In 
  a 
  bad 
  humor, 
  Two 
  Wink 
  completed his hunt, ending up with empty 
  hands. 
  “Nothing,” he reported. 
  Fancife 
  now 
  addressed 
  their 
  prisoner, Tercio, in a tone that left nothing in 
  doubt. 
  “You can get shot here,” Fancife 
  said, “or you can do what you’re told, and live 
  through it. You will put on your clothes. 
  Those Street clothes there, and not that rig 
  you wore when you came out of . . . er . . . 
  came to St. Louis. And you will come with us 
  to a place where we can talk privately.” 
  Tercio, who had been scowling at 
  them, asked, “Just who are you two 
  gentlemen, anyhow?” 
  Fancife countered, “Do you know 
  Lanta?” 
  Tercio didn’t need to answer. His 
  surprised start was sufficient affirmative. 
  At which Fancife grinned and said: 
  “That should give you some idea. Now are 
  you coming with us, or are you going to stay 
  here and get buried?” 
  “That doesn’t give me much choice,” 
  Tercio said in his strangely difficult English. 
  He began dressing. 
  After a while, they walked out of the 
  hotel, Tercio presenting a much more normal 
  appearance in his civilian clothing, and not 
  making any move toward resistance. 
  Two Wink said, “I don’t see the 
  object of this.” 
  Fancife snorted. “We’re simply going 
  to make our friend here, Tercio, take us back 
  to where he came from.” 
  They drove away in Two Wink’s car. 
   
   
  Chapter IV 
  THE DESPERATE MAN 
   
  CHRIS COLUMBUS rolled over and 
  managed to sit up, after which he made a 
  throat-clearing noise that had nothing of 
  pleasantness in it. 
  “Feeling better?” the taxi driver 
  asked. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  11 
  Chris tried three times before he 
  could say a coherent, “No,” after which he lay 
  down on the floor again to be punished by 
  sickness. The illness itself wouldn’t have 
  been so bad, if it wasn’t for the frantic 
  condition of his mind. It was, really, a battle 
  between the two, his body wanting to lie 
  there and sleep for a long time, his mind a 
  raging tiger of anxiety. 
  Finally he rolled over and tried to get 
  up again, and this time he made it, although 
  after he was on his feet he had to walk 
  sidewise for a short distance to keep from 
  falling again. 
  “Whew!” he said. 
  The taxi driver said, “You remember 
  me now? I’m the guy who hauled you around 
  in a hack. The guy you gave five dollars to 
  come here after half an hour and get you 
  away from an intoxicated friend.” 
  Chris Columbus peered at him 
  blearily and muttered, “Yes, I know. Thank 
  God for you!” 
  “What happened to you?” 
  “I 
  had 
  a 
  fainting 
  spell,” 
  Chris 
  explained, “and it must have embarrassed 
  my friend greatly, because when I faint, I 
  thresh 
  around 
  violently 
  and 
  utter 
  embarrassing cries. I presume that is why my 
  friend tied me and gagged me. I presume 
  also that my friend has merely dashed out for 
  a doctor, which leads me to suggest that we 
  depart 
  rapidly, 
  a 
  doctor 
  under 
  the 
  circumstances being inclined to commit me 
  to the goon house, which I would dislike.” 
  The taxi driver grinned and said: 
  “You may not be the best liar, but you’re a 
  long-winded one.” 
  “You doubt me?” 
  “Now and before. I had strong doubts 
  when you first began telling me about the 
  friend, and it didn’t sound right, either, when 
  you told me to say a policeman was waiting 
  downstairs. It looked as if you wanted to give 
  somebody a cop scare.” 
  “Did you wait a half hour before 
  coming?” 
  “Not quite.” 
  “Probably 
  a 
  good 
  thing.” 
  Chris 
  massaged his head briskly, hoping to get 
  some of the fog out of it. “Or maybe I would 
  have survived. He had used that chloroform 
  on a dog, then let the bottle stand with a rag 
  cork for a long time. The stuff must have 
  evaporated and gotten weak.” 
  The taxi driver walked over and 
  picked up the telephone. 
  Chris said, “What are you going to 
  do?” 
  “Call the law.” 
  Chris felt of his hip pocket and 
  discovered he had not been robbed. There 
  were four ten-dollar banknotes in his billfold. 
  He presented the taxi driver with three of 
  them. 
  “Suppose you have a lapse of 
  memory,” he suggested. 
  The hackman hesitated, grinned, 
  said, “Sold—one lapse of memory,” and took 
  the three tens. 
   
   
  THE fur market opened at nine 
  o’clock the following morning, with Chris 
  Columbus the first man inside. He knew a 
  number of fur men in the place, having 
  bought skins in St. Louis on a number of 
  occasions in the past, and being employed 
  by one of the most reputable quality houses 
  in the business. Chris became a fountain of 
  questions. 
  “Sure,” he was told. “There was a 
  guy walked in here yesterday with a pack of 
  furs of the kind you describe.” 
  “Where are the furs?” 
  “Locked in the vaults, I suppose. He 
  rented a vault, I heard.” 
  “What’d he look like?” 
  They 
  described 
  Decimo 
  Tercio, 
  dwelling in particular upon the peculiarity of 
  his garb of buckskin trousers and coat, and 
  his one-piece metal shoes. 
  At this Chris Columbus practically 
  jumped up and down in his excitement. 
  “This is marvelous!” he exploded. 
  “The man obviously came straight from . . . 
  uh . . . that is, I’ve got to find him. Where is 
  he?” 
  Tercio had made it generally known 
  that he was going to the Black Fox Hotel, 
  desiring that prospective buyers of his furs 
  call him there. 
  “He seemed mighty anxious to sell 
  those skins,” a fur man explained, “even if he 
  did persist in holding out for the ungodly price 
  of five thousand dollars apiece.” 
  Chris broke speed records to the 
  Black Fox Hotel. 
  “Mr. Tercio has not appeared this 
  morning,” he was told. 
  Chris found the hotel manager and 
  said, “I want a look at Tercio’s room, and it’s 
  important enough to me that I’m going to be 
  blunt about it. Either you go up there now 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  12 
  with a master key and unlock the room and 
  let me look it over, or I’m going to call the 
  police and tell them Tercio has disappeared, 
  which will get in the newspapers and do your 
  hotel no good.” 
  The manager was sensible, finally 
  grumbled, “Well, if Tercio comes in while 
  we’re there, I’ll tell him you are an interior 
  decorator and we’re looking over the room.” 
  They went up. 
  Decimo Tercio’s original clothing, the 
  garments made from the material similar to 
  buckskin, and his all-metal shoes, lay on the 
  floor. 
  On a table were gun catalogues from 
  the leading St. Louis sporting goods houses. 
  There was nothing else. 
  “They got him,” Chris croaked. 
  He stumbled out of the hotel. He 
  stood on the street, mentally tearing his hair, 
  peering about in a distraught fashion. Finally 
  he walked back into the hotel and seated 
  himself in the writing room, where he picked 
  up pen and paper—  
  Later, when Chris Columbus again 
  appeared on the street, he was carrying an 
  envelope and licking an airmail stamp which 
  he applied to the envelope. Then he dropped 
  the letter in a mailbox on the corner. 
  Chris walked on, moving like a man 
  with a purpose until he reached a cab, which 
  he entered, and the cab vanished in traffic. 
  Shortly after this, Fancife came out 
  of a drugstore from which he had been 
  watching the hotel. He scowled at the 
  mailbox for a time, then went back into the 
  drugstore and telephoned Two Wink Danton. 
  When Two Wink arrived, half an hour 
  later, Fancife met him eagerly, demanded, 
  “Did you stop and get a maul?” 
  Two Wink unwrapped the bundle 
  which he was carrying, and disclosed a 
  sixteen-pound sledge hammer. 
  “This one heavy enough?” he asked. 
  “It ought to do the job,” Fancife said. 
  They used the sledge to smash open 
  the mailbox. Being made of cast iron, the box 
  split from the first terrific blow. Four letters, 
  the entire contents, fell out. The two men 
  snatched up these and fled, getting away 
  safely. 
  Two Wink was as worried about the 
  mailbox robbery as he had been the night 
  before over the supposed murder of Chris 
  Columbus. 
  “That is a Federal offense,” he 
  groaned. 
  “Now 
  they’ll 
  put 
  the 
  postal 
  inspectors and maybe the Feds after us, and 
  those are no babies to fool with.” 
  Fancife had been looking over the 
  letters, finding the one which Chris Columbus 
  had written, and opening the missive. He 
  read, and began wearing the expression of a 
  man who was drinking vinegar. 
  “Choosing between the two,” he said, 
  “I’ll take the postal inspectors and the Feds.” 
  There was strangeness in his voice 
  that made Two Wink glance at him sharply, 
  demand, “What do you mean?” 
  Fancife shook the letter. “This was a 
  letter asking help.” 
  “Help? Who from?” 
  Fancife said, “Have you ever heard 
  of a man named Doc Savage?” 
   
   
  TWO WINK DANTON was smoking 
  a cigar; he gave the weed a slow bite and his 
  face assumed an expression not on the 
  cheerful side. 
  “See you’ve heard of him,” Fancife 
  said. 
  Two Wink grabbed the letter, stared 
  at it, and was somewhat disappointed as he 
  read. The missive was addressed simply to 
  Doc Savage, New York City—not that Two 
  Wink entertained any doubts about it failing 
  to 
  reach 
  its 
  destination 
  because 
  of 
  insufficient address, had they failed to 
  apprehend it. 
  What disgusted Two Wink was the 
  fact that the letter gave no information which 
  he did not already have. The communication 
  stated 
  the 
  ostensible 
  facts—that 
  a 
  mysterious fellow named Decimo Tercio had 
  brought unusual pelts to St. Louis and 
  offered them for sale at five thousand apiece, 
  and that Two Wink Danton and Wilmer 
  Fancife had made away with Tercio; also that 
  the sender of the letter, Arnold Columbus by 
  name—called Chris for short—wanted to 
  locate Tercio, it being more important than 
  anything else in the world that he do so. 
  The letter added that the writer, 
  Columbus, had abruptly recollected that he 
  had heard Doc Savage was a man who 
  made a business of righting wrongs and 
  punishing evildoers who happened to be 
  outside the law. Here, Columbus wrote, was 
  a great wrong to be righted—and “a mystery 
  so fantastic you would not believe it if I put it 
  on paper” to be solved. Further explanations 
  would be forthcoming upon Doc Savage’s 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  13 
  appearance at the Ritz Hotel in St. Louis, 
  where Columbus was staying. 
  “That’s 
  bad,” 
  Two 
  Wink 
  said 
  thoughtfully. 
  “I call it good,” Fancife retorted. 
  “Suppose we hadn’t laid hands on this 
  damned letter? Suppose it had gotten to this 
  Doc Savage?” 
  “How bad would that have been? I’ve 
  only heard rumors about an adventurer, or 
  soldier of fortune or something of the sort, 
  named Doc Savage.” 
  Fancife frowned at his associate. 
  “You don’t travel much, do you? Never go out 
  in the field—Alaska and Siberia and Ecuador 
  and places like that—buying furs?” 
  “No.” 
  “Well, you hear about Doc Savage in 
  those places. The man must have been 
  everywhere, and wherever he’s been, they 
  don’t seem to forget him. He’s not an 
  adventurer or soldier of fortune, like you said. 
  He’s—well, a damn fool, it seems. He chases 
  crooks—for the fun of it.” 
  “No profit in that.” 
  “I’m not explaining the man—I’m 
  telling you what I’ve heard. You can’t hire 
  him, and if a thing doesn’t appeal to him, he 
  won’t touch it. I don’t know where he gets his 
  dough, and neither does anybody else. He 
  always has plenty.” 
  Two Wink frowned at his partner in 
  crime, finally said, “I take it you don’t want 
  any part of Savage?” 
  “That’s right.” 
  “In which case we’d better put the 
  bingo on Chris Columbus. If we don’t, he’ll 
  send this Savage another message.” 
  Fancife nodded, asked grimly: “Can 
  you get hold of a good rifle with a silencer?” 
  Two 
  Wink, 
  confronted 
  by 
  the 
  approach of a second murder attempt, turned 
  the approximate color of a peeled potato. 
  “I can try,” he gulped finally. 
   
   
  Chapter V 
  THE STRANGE FACTS 
   
  DOC SAVAGE—or Clark Savage, 
  Jr., to give him his correct name, which 
  practically nobody knew—was a man of 
  mystery as far as the newspapers and the 
  general public were concerned. It was known 
  that he was a remarkable individual who 
  made a business of helping other people out 
  of trouble, and who did not charge fees; it 
  was no secret, either, that his headquarters 
  were located on the eighty-sixth floor of one 
  of mid-town New York’s tallest buildings—but 
  beyond this, Doc Savage was a rather 
  puzzling enigma, a mystifying sort of legend 
  about whom all kinds of fantastic things were 
  told. 
  The fact that Doc Savage helped 
  people without charging them was naturally a 
  magnet that drew many persons who had the 
  wrong idea. Many a bum and no-account, 
  worthless moocher and tramp in search of a 
  handout—they came wanting every sum from 
  fifty cents to fifty thousand dollars—had 
  migrated to the place at one time or another. 
  There were some deserving individuals, of 
  course, 
  and 
  these 
  got 
  understanding 
  treatment and help—but no money. They got 
  jobs, not jobs with big salaries and short 
  hours, 
  but 
  jobs 
  with 
  hard 
  work 
  and 
  possibilities for betterment. The out-and-out 
  moochers caught hell at the hands of a staff 
  of expert hell-dishers-out. 
  To handle the problems of these 
  people 
  who 
  really 
  required 
  nothing 
  extraordinary in the line of a solution, Doc 
  Savage maintained on the ground floor the 
  reception staff which arranged jobs for the 
  needy, or dished out the hell to the 
  undeserving. 
  Any matter important or particularly 
  fantastic was passed on upstairs where it got 
  attention from one or another of Doc’s group 
  of five close associates. 
  These 
  preliminary 
  reception 
  committees served a double purpose, both of 
  which were defensive. They defended Doc 
  from what could easily become a twenty-four-
  hour-a-day job of interviewing persons with 
  piddling problems—not a few of them merely 
  curiosity lookers come to get a look at a 
  famous person. They also defended against 
  very real enemies who frequently concocted 
  some ingenious schemes for killing Doc 
  Savage. 
  This morning, one of Doc’s group of 
  five aids was on duty in the reception room of 
  the eighty-sixth floor headquarters. The 
  reception room was sparsely furnished with a 
  great inlaid table, a few comfortable leather 
  chairs and a safe so large that it looked out 
  of place. 
  The aid on duty was Lieutenant 
  Colonel Andrew Blodgett Monk Mayfair, one 
  of the world’s leading industrial chemists, and 
  also probably one of the world’s homeliest 
  men. Reasons for the nickname Monk were 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  14 
  obvious; you would not have to encounter 
  him in a very dark alley to think you had met 
  an ape. His mouth was astoundingly large, 
  his small twinkling eyes were almost lost 
  under bulging eyebrows, and his nose had 
  been broken so often by unfriendly fists that it 
  had about given up the struggle to look like a 
  nose. 
  Monk read the telegram as soon as it 
  arrived. He was immediately interested. 
  He entered the adjacent library, a 
  great room filled with cases containing 
  books, all of them ponderous scientific 
  tomes, which comprised one of the most 
  complete technical libraries in existence. 
  “What you make of this, Doc?” Monk 
  asked. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE took the telegram. He 
  was a remarkable man; you felt this as soon 
  as you saw him. His size alone—he was far 
  above average, almost a giant—made him 
  outstanding and there were indications, such 
  as the cabled sinews in the backs of his 
  hands, the ligaments like steel bars in his 
  neck, that his strength was fabulous. His 
  complexion was an unusual bronze hue 
  which came from exposure to tropical suns; 
  his features were regular and firm, handsome 
  without being prissy. 
  The big bronze man took the 
  telegraph, and his eyes studied the missive. 
  Most striking of all his features were his eyes. 
  They were like pools of flake gold always 
  stirred by tiny winds; possessed also of a 
  compelling quality and intensity most aptly 
  described as hypnotic. 
  The telegram read: 
   
   
  OF 
  DESPERATE 
  IMPORTANCE 
  THAT I FIND THE MAN KNOWN AS 
  DECIMO TERCIO WHO APPEARED ON ST. 
  LOUIS FUR MARKET YESTERDAY AND 
  OFFERED FOR SALE A TYPE OF FUR 
  HITHERTO UNKNOWN. HAVE REASONS 
  TO BELIEVE TERCIO HAS BEEN SEIZED 
  BY 
  TWO 
  MEN 
  NAMED 
  TWO 
  WINK 
  DANTON AND WILMER FANCIFE WHO 
  ALSO TRIED TO MURDER ME. 
   
  THERE IS FANTASTIC MYSTERY 
  BEHIND THIS AFFAIR, SOMETHING TOO 
  WEIRD TO MAKE BELIEVABLE IN A 
  TELEGRAM. I HAVE HEARD OF YOU AND 
  BELIEVE YOU CAN HELP. WILL YOU 
  COME TO RITZ HOTEL IN ST. LOUIS? I AM 
  FOLLOWING THIS TELEGRAM WITH A 
  LETTER IN HOPES ONE OF THEM WILL 
  REACH YOU. 
  ARNOLD CHRIS COLUMBUS. 
   
  Doc Savage’s features had shown 
  no particular emotion, which was one of the 
  bronze man’s characteristics. He went to a 
  telephone, dialed long-distance. 
  He called the St. Louis fur exchange 
  and learned that a man named Decimo 
  Tercio had yesterday offered for sale some 
  furs of a type hitherto unknown. He was 
  advised that Tercio could not be located 
  today. 
  He called the Ritz Hotel and was 
  informed 
  that 
  Arnold 
  Columbus 
  was 
  registered there, but had not put in an 
  appearance that morning. 
  “We will go to St. Louis and have a 
  look,” Doc Savage said. 
  They left twenty minutes later, taking 
  off in one of Doc’s fast planes from a hangar 
  on the Hudson River water front, a hangar 
  that outwardly appeared to be a disused 
  warehouse. 
  Monk took along his pet pig Habeas 
  Corpus. Habeas was distinctly a runt, had 
  extraordinary legs, ears that might have been 
  wings, and a long snout. 
  Ham Brooks, who had conducted a 
  perpetual quarrel with Monk for years, also 
  accompanied 
  them. 
  Brigadier 
  General 
  Theodore Marley Brooks, as Ham was 
  known at his exclusive clubs, was a leading 
  lawyer and had no equal in the matter of 
  being well-dressed. 
  Ham brought his pet chimpanzee, a 
  scrawny animal which he called Chemistry, 
  and which had the hilarious characteristic of 
  looking almost exactly like a dwarf size 
  reproduction of the homely chemist, Monk 
  Mayfair. 
  Colonel John Renny Renwick flew 
  the plane, grasping the controls with fists so 
  huge that they could hardly have been 
  inserted in gallon pails, staring ahead with an 
  unutterably sad expression on his long, 
  puritanical 
  face. 
  His 
  eminence 
  as 
  an 
  engineer was unquestioned. 
  The other two members of the 
  group—they were William Harper Johnny 
  Littlejohn, archaeologist and geologist of the 
  crew, and Major Thomas J. Long Tom 
  Roberts, electrical wizard—remained in New 
  York to be called later, if needed. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  15 
  There was fog, rain, 
  near-zero 
  visibility, so they rode the regular airline radio 
  beams all the way to St. Louis. 
   
   
  THE desk clerk at the Ritz Hotel was 
  both impressed and courteous; he seemed to 
  remember Doc Savage without being able to 
  exactly place the big bronze man. 
  “I’m very sorry,” he explained, “but 
  Mr. Columbus is not here. He checked in, left 
  immediately, and has not been back.” The 
  clerk hesitated, then added, “Ah—two other 
  gentlemen were here looking for him.” 
  Doc suggested, “Two Wink Danton 
  and Wilmer Fancife?” 
  “They didn’t give their names.” 
  “Could you describe them?” 
  The clerk gave a fairly accurate word 
  picture of the pair who had come seeking 
  Columbus. 
  “Thank you,” Doc said, and they 
  walked out on the street, where the bronze 
  man suggested: “You fellows wait in the 
  drugstore on the corner.” 
  Doc had learned the room number of 
  Chris Columbus. He walked back into the 
  hotel, using the rear service entrance where 
  the clerk had no chance to see him. He 
  produced 
  one 
  of 
  several 
  convenient 
  documents which he habitually carried and 
  said, “Elevator inspection.” The document 
  was one certifying he was an elevator 
  inspector, and was a phony only to the extent 
  that it was not issued by the City of St. Louis, 
  but 
  by 
  one 
  of 
  the 
  largest 
  concerns 
  manufacturing elevators. 
  He took over a cage, rode to the 
  seventh floor, went to 705, which was 
  Columbus’ room. A small metal probe the 
  shape of a distorted darning needle and a 
  good deal of previous study of locks let him 
  into the room. He searched carefully. 
  Later, Doc rejoined his men in the 
  drugstore. 
  “Nothing in Chris Columbus’ room,” 
  he explained, “except some papers that show 
  him to be employed by a New York fur 
  manufacturer, and the stub of an airline ticket 
  showing that he came from New York to St. 
  Louis by plane yesterday. And there was 
  this.” 
  The bronze man exhibited a small 
  glass bottle, thick-walled and wide-mouthed, 
  closed by a screw cap—a bottle of the type 
  used to hold stick candy. Inside was thickly 
  rolled cotton; he took the cotton out, unfurled 
  it so they could see the contents. 
  Monk exploded: “Say! What kind of 
  fur is that?” 
  They were not experts on fur, but 
  they did not have to be to know that they 
  were 
  looking 
  at 
  something 
  fabulous. 
  Ordinarily, a small bit of fur is an unappealing 
  sight. But this fragment had richness, a fine 
  lustrous quality that made it like a jewel. 
  There was a lock of hair, which Monk 
  fingered, 
  “Looks like a lock of a girl’s hair,” the 
  homely chemist ventured. 
  The fact that Monk, in spite of his 
  unearthly homeliness, almost invariably had 
  better luck with the gals than did the 
  undeniably handsome Ham was a source of 
  baffled disgust to the latter. 
  Big-fisted Renny suggested, in a 
  voice that rumbled like thunder in a canyon: 
  “Well, we’ve learned one thing, anyway. 
  Those two men, Two Wink and Fancife, are 
  still hunting Chris Columbus. So they haven’t 
  caught him yet.” 
  Doc said: “We will check with the fur 
  market next.” 
  They experienced no difficulty at the 
  fur exchange in securing a description of Two 
  Wink Danton and Wilmer Fancife, which 
  checked with the word picture of the two men 
  hunting Chris Columbus which the Ritz Hotel 
  clerk had given them. 
  “This is all checking with Columbus’ 
  telegram,” Monk said grimly. “Now let’s see 
  those furs.” 
  There was some argument before 
  they got a look at the mystery skins which 
  Decimo Tercio had placed in a rented fur 
  vault. They were breathless in the presence 
  of 
  the 
  wonderfully 
  luxurious 
  skins. 
  Unquestionably, they had never seen furs 
  with more right to be called priceless. 
  “Five thousand,” Ham said finally, 
  “would be a dirt-cheap price for those skins.” 
  “What kind of an animal could these 
  hides have come off?” Monk asked. 
  They looked at Doc Savage. All of 
  them respected the bronze man’s enormous 
  store of general knowledge. But Doc did not 
  answer. 
   
   
  THEY visited the Black Fox Hotel, 
  where Decimo Tercio had registered. They 
  had secured the address at the fur exchange. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  16 
  The clerk was a filing case of 
  information, once he was unlocked with a 
  five-dollar bill. 
  He told them that Two Wink Danton 
  and Wilmer Fancife—he did not name the 
  men, but identified them by description—had 
  come to see Decimo Tercio. Later, Tercio 
  had gone away with the pair. 
  Still later, Chris Columbus had 
  arrived in a futile hunt for Tercio. 
  Monk ventured: “It looks as if 
  Columbus, as well as Two Wink and Fancife, 
  were hunting Tercio. And Two Wink and 
  Fancife got him first.” 
  Renny contemplated his large fists. 
  “It strikes me,” he said, “that we’ve 
  traced this thing about as far as we can. 
  What do we do now?” 
  They went up to Decimo Tercio’s 
  room and examined the place. 
  Doc Savage looked at Tercio’s 
  strange all-metal shoes for a time, then 
  handed the shoes to Monk, the chemist. 
  “What do you make of that metal?” 
  he asked. 
  Monk scrutinized the shoes. He even 
  peered through a small magnifying glass 
  which Doc Savage produced. Monk shook 
  his head slowly. 
  “Not aluminum. I’ll swear I don’t 
  know what it is without a chemical analysis.” 
  The skin garments which Tercio had 
  worn provided a further puzzle. Doc Savage 
  was a little more specific. 
  “The skin,” he said, “seems definitely 
  to be that of an animal—an animal which was 
  covered with both feathers and hair.” 
  “But what kind of animal could that 
  possibly be?” Monk interjected. 
  Doc Savage did not elaborate on his 
  analysis of the skin garments. He showed a 
  marked lack of desire to discuss it further—
  as if he had ventured his first opinion on the 
  spur 
  of 
  the 
  moment, 
  and 
  further 
  consideration 
  had 
  shown 
  him 
  the 
  impossibility of the thing. 
  They looked at the gun catalogues. 
  The largest-caliber guns in each 
  catalogue—elephant and tiger guns in every 
  case except one, when the weapon marked 
  was a new type of super-powered automatic 
  rifle—had been designated with a pencil 
  mark. 
  “If he planned to buy those rifles,” 
  Ham suggested, “it looks as if he was going 
  in for darned big game.” 
  They had been working on the 
  mystery about four hours, and all they had 
  done was further confuse themselves. They 
  had not found Decimo Tercio, the mysterious 
  man with strange furs to sell. There was no 
  trace of Columbus or Two Wink or Fancife. 
  “We might,” Doc Savage suggested, 
  “try to backtrack Decimo Tercio, and find out 
  where he came from.” 
   
   
  Chapter VI 
  TERCIO’S TRAIL 
   
  “A MAN dressed as strangely as 
  Tercio was when he came to this hotel,” Doc 
  Savage said, “would have been noticed.” 
  They got on telephones and called 
  taxicab companies and cab drivers—with no 
  results. 
  “Try the railroads and the bus 
  concerns 
  and 
  the 
  drive-it-yourself 
  companies,” Doc directed. 
  The 
  bronze 
  man 
  himself 
  kept 
  telephoning taxicab concerns in the small 
  towns near St. Louis, and three hours later, 
  he was successful. 
  A jitney driver from a small farming 
  town in the Mississippi River bottoms about 
  thirty miles from St. Louis had hauled Decimo 
  Tercio to town. 
  Doc and his men drove out to talk to 
  the driver, whose tongue was also easily 
  keyed with a five-dollar bill. 
  “That funny dressed guy? He come 
  into town here and hired me. Paid me in big 
  bills.” The driver chewed tobacco and 
  grinned. 
  “What do you mean by big bills?” 
  Doc asked. 
  “The old kind. You remember, our 
  dollar bills used to be bigger than now. That 
  was a lot of years ago.” 
  “May we see them?” 
  The driver exhibited the money 
  Tercio had given him. Large-sized bills. 
  “The government quit printing these 
  things ten years or more ago,” Ham said 
  thoughtfully. 
  The village hackman took a fresh 
  chew of tobacco and volunteered: “You 
  know, I figure the feller might have been a 
  hermit, maybe.” 
  “Because he had the large-sized 
  bills, you thought he might have hoarded 
  them?” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  17 
  “Not only that. It was the way he 
  talked. Questions he asked me.” The taxi 
  driver chuckled. “Why, that feller had never 
  even heard of Hitler. He didn’t know about 
  Roosevelt being president. He was way 
  behind on the news.” 
  Doc 
  Savage’s 
  flake-gold 
  eyes 
  betrayed the bronze man’s inner excitement 
  slightly; the eyes seemed to take on a 
  whirling alertness. 
  “Was the man interested in any 
  particular phase of the news?” he asked. 
  “Well, he wanted to know a lot about 
  Stalin and Russia,” the taxi driver admitted. 
  “Matter of fact, we was of some political 
  difference, and once I thought one of us was 
  gonna get a bust on the nose. I ain’t no 
  Communist, and I guess he was. Anyhow, I 
  didn’t know much about Russia to tell him, 
  except that them and the Japanese have 
  been makin’ faces at each other.” 
  “Any idea where the man came 
  from?” Doc asked. 
  “Nope. Just walked into town, like I 
  said.” 
  Doc Savage went to the telephone 
  office, where he parted with some more 
  money. As a result, he got all the country 
  lines radiating out of that exchange hooked 
  together, and a “general ring” given. The 
  “general ring” was a succession of ten short 
  rings, a sort of summons that would draw all 
  country subscribers to their phones. 
  He made a short speech in which he 
  offered fifty dollars reward for any information 
  concerning Decimo Tercio. He described 
  Tercio. 
  Almost instantly, he got results. 
  “That feller,” said a farmer’s voice, 
  “landed his airplane in my oat field, and killed 
  one of my bulls with a spear. Said he’d be 
  back, but he hasn’t.” 
  Doc got the farmer’s name and the 
  location of the farm, and they headed for the 
  place, using a car which they had rented. 
   
   
  RENNY, who was the engineer of 
  the group and knew much about things 
  mechanical, took one look at the plane and 
  rumbled an opinion. “A Russian plane!” he 
  exclaimed. “And at least ten years old.” 
  Doc Savage examined the plane, 
  and in particular made mental note of the 
  identification numbers on the ship. The 
  plane, for its age, was in remarkably good 
  condition, showing very little wear. The 
  fuselage and wing surfaces within range of 
  the two big engines, however, were stained 
  with oil as if from a recent long flight. There 
  were no maps in the craft. 
  Having inserted a stick in the gas 
  tanks to measure the fuel—the tanks were 
  almost empty—Doc called Monk’s attention, 
  asking: “You’ve conducted some chemical 
  experiments in oil-cracking processes. What 
  do you make of this fuel?” 
  Monk sniffed, tasted, squinted. 
  “The equivalent of raw casing-head 
  stuff. Maybe a little alcohol, or something.” 
  Ham asked: “What do you mean—
  casing-head stuff?” 
  “I mean,” Monk explained, “that when 
  you condense some types of natural gas, you 
  get stuff like this.” 
  “Then 
  it’s 
  not 
  regular 
  aviation 
  gasoline?” 
  “It’s not even regular automobile 
  gasoline. The fellow must have done a lot of 
  tinkering with his motor to get it to run on 
  juice like this.” 
  The farmer, who watched them 
  closely enough to see that they were rather 
  puzzled, stepped forward to contribute his bit 
  to the mystery. He produced a stick and a 
  spear, said, “What do you make of these?” 
  Monk took the weapons, squinted at 
  them, and decided, “They look kind of 
  prehistoric to me.” 
  Doc said, “Atlatl.” 
  He was looking at the short stick that 
  accompanied the spear. 
  “Huh?” Monk said. 
  “Atlatl. A throwing stick for propelling 
  spears. Used by a number of prehistoric 
  races. As a weapon, it preceded the bow and 
  arrow.” 
  The bronze man demonstrated by 
  grasping the throwing stick, inserting fingers 
  through the finger loops, placing the spear in 
  the gripping notch. 
  “That’s the way the feller throwed it 
  at my bull,” the farmer said. 
  “It takes some experience to use one 
  of these weapons,” Doc suggested. 
  At this point, the farmer’s wife came 
  running across the oat stubble to them. 
  “The man who owns the airplane just 
  telephoned,” she said. “Him and two other 
  men are going to be out right away with 
  some gasoline for the thing.” 
   
   
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  18 
  DOC SAVAGE nodded, said: “We 
  will waylay them, of course. I will wait in the 
  plane. Monk, we will hide you in a trench 
  nearby. Ham and Renny can conceal 
  themselves in the weeds in the fence row at 
  the edge of the field.” 
  They scooped a trench large enough 
  to hold Monk, scattering the dirt widely so 
  that presence of the pit would not be noticed. 
  Monk lay flat in it. They put coats over him, 
  covered those with dirt, and placed straw 
  over his face. 
  “I don’t know as how I’m going to 
  stand for this,” the farmer announced 
  sharply. “It looks queer to me.” 
  Doc explained: “We are Federal 
  agents, making an investigation.” 
  The 
  statement 
  was 
  true—he 
  produced credentials and showed them to 
  the farmer. The appointments to Federal 
  service, a great convenience at times, had 
  been given them in recognition for past 
  services. They also possessed honorary 
  commissions in the police departments of 
  New York City, Scotland Yard and several 
  other of the world’s large cities, the bronze 
  man’s work on the side of the law being well-
  known. 
  The farmer was satisfied, and retired 
  to the house, to act as if nothing had 
  happened. And it was perhaps thirty minutes 
  later when a man ran into the stubble field. 
  The man traveled as if in the last lap 
  of a quarter-mile dash. His breath was 
  whistling when he piled into the Russian 
  plane, saw Doc Savage, and yanked a gun 
  from his pocket. 
  Doc was taken—as were all of them, 
  for that matter—flat-footed by the haste of 
  the man’s arrival. 
  There was no chance of his reaching 
  the man before the gun could be used. The 
  bronze man still carried the atlatl, the spear-
  throwing stick. He threw this. It was not 
  heavy, but weighty enough to numb the 
  man’s wrist when it struck. That gave Doc 
  time to reach him. 
  They 
  fought. 
  The 
  newcomer, 
  remarkably muscular, made some headway 
  at first, hooking a terrific right to Doc’s jaw. 
  Doc was unable to roll sufficiently with the 
  blow, saw several constellations, and sank to 
  his knees. He got hold of his opponent, 
  however, dragged him down. They fought for 
  a while. 
  Outside, Monk got up from the trench 
  in a cloud of dust, howled, “Let me at ‘im, 
  Doc!” 
  Doc’s foe stopped fighting. 
  “Doc!” he barked. “You’re not Doc 
  Savage?” 
  “Yes.” 
  “Why the hell didn’t you say so?” 
  said the young man who had arrived in such 
  wild haste. “I’m Chris Columbus.” 
  Outside, unnoticed because of the 
  noise of the fight, there had been sound of a 
  motor, but this had stopped. Then a rifle 
  crashed. 
  Monk screamed. The rifle smashed 
  out again. Doc Savage pitched to the plane 
  door in time to see Monk fold like a hinge in 
  the middle and pitch forward on the ground. 
  A hundred yards or so distant, an oil-
  tank truck had stopped. Two men were still in 
  the cab. But Two Wink Danton had alighted 
  on one side of the machine, Wilmer Fancife 
  on the other, and both had rifles leveled. 
   
   
  Chapter VII 
  RURAL MÊLÉE 
   
  ACTION during the next few minutes 
  was something of a landslide. Two Wink and 
  Fancife saw Doc in the plane. They fired. The 
  bronze man jumped back, then dived forward 
  to get down in the cabin where one big motor 
  would shelter him from fire. 
  “Get here!” he rapped at Chris 
  Columbus. 
  Ham and Renny jumped up out of 
  the 
  fence-row 
  weeds. 
  Both 
  held 
  supermachine pistols, a type of weapon 
  which 
  Doc 
  Savage 
  had 
  perfected—
  resembling overgrown automatics, the guns 
  could pour out an incredible quantity of 
  bullets in a minute. 
  Two Wink and Fancife saw them, 
  dived for the oil truck and got inside. Two 
  Wink drove. The truck wheeled away. 
  Ham and Renny turned loose with 
  their supermachine pistols, the weapons 
  sounding like a pair of big bullfrogs giving 
  short gasps. 
  Unluckily, 
  the 
  weapons 
  were 
  charged with the type of cartridges which 
  they most frequently used—mercy bullets. 
  These 
  slugs 
  were 
  merely 
  thin 
  shells 
  containing a chemical which produced quick 
  unconsciousness. The bullets would little 
  more than break the skin of a victim, and 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  19 
  ordinarily the chemical did the rest. In this 
  case, the mercy bullets splattered harmlessly 
  on the tank-truck cab. 
  The tank truck went out of the oat-
  stubble field sounding like a frightened red 
  hog, pulling a funnel of dust after it. 
  A dark, loose-jointed object tumbled 
  from the speeding truck. The regular driver. 
  They had thrown him out. 
  Chris Columbus, beside himself with 
  rage, squalled, “They’re gettin’ away!” He 
  sprang out of the plane and ran after the 
  truck in a hopeless and somewhat silly 
  chase. 
  Renny and Ham raced for Doc’s 
  rented car, which they had parked in the 
  farmer’s orchard. 
  Doc himself lunged to the plane 
  controls, made an effort to start the engines. 
  It was hopeless, as he had suspected. The 
  motors would never start on the low-grade 
  fuel that was in the tanks; it was a miracle 
  that they had operated on the stuff, even 
  after they were hot. 
  Monk was rolling over and over on 
  the ground, holding his stomach with both 
  arms. 
  “They shot me!” Monk howled. “They 
  shot me in the stomach!” 
  Doc flung out of the plane, shouted, 
  “They’re escaping in the truck!” 
  Monk got to his feet and began to 
  run toward their rented car. He traveled in an 
  awkward spraddle-legged lope, squalling 
  things that were angry and violent. 
  While he ran, Monk tried to pull up 
  the front of his shirt to see if the rifle bullets 
  had really penetrated the bulletproof mesh 
  undergarment 
  he 
  was 
  wearing. 
  The 
  undershirt was made of an alloy on which 
  Monk had expended his best chemical skill, 
  but he was doubting the efficiency of the 
  thing. 
  Ham and Renny had some difficulty 
  starting the rented car, so that all of them 
  reached the machine in time to pile aboard. 
  The man who had been thrown out 
  of the truck—his uniform showed that he was 
  the driver for the local oil company—had 
  gotten to his feet. He was standing still and 
  swearing at the top of his voice, the last they 
  saw or heard of him. 
  At all speeds above fifty, the rented 
  car had a knock that sounded as though a 
  blacksmith was at work on the motor with a 
  hammer. 
  Doc shouted, “You saw the other 
  man in the truck, Columbus?” 
  “Yes.” 
  “Was it the mystery man, Decimo 
  Tercio?” 
  “That was him. Two Wink and 
  Fancife are holding him prisoner. They made 
  him bring them out here. I think they were 
  going to use his plane.” 
  “How did you happen to show up?” 
  “I’ve been watching them, trying to 
  get Tercio away from them. I didn’t get a 
  chance. They had rifles, and they were also 
  looking for me to bump me off. I found their 
  hideout, 
  listened 
  outside 
  the 
  window, 
  overheard Tercio finally tell them where his 
  plane was. I beat them out there. I intended 
  to wait in the plane and waylay them. Wasn’t 
  far enough ahead of ‘em, dammit!” 
  “Why didn’t you go to the police with 
  this?” 
  “And have the cops lock me up for 
  crazy after they heard my story?” 
  It was a dirt road. The truck ahead 
  sucked up an incredible amount of dust. Doc 
  nosed into it; they coughed and gagged. The 
  bronze man was forced to slow. There was 
  not car-length visibility. 
  Doc Savage drove far out on the 
  edge of the road to avoid as much of the dust 
  as possible—which was fortunate. 
  Suddenly 
  a 
  blackness 
  loomed 
  ahead. The bronze man stamped the brake, 
  wrenched the wheel. The car eased over in 
  the grader ditch, but there was not enough 
  room. Came a big gnashing sound of metal. 
  Their off wheel and fender dug into the 
  grader bank. The car slowly upended on its 
  radiator, turned over, and they were an 
  aching tangle inside. 
  Monk forgot his midriff pain and 
  shouted: 
  “They 
  broad-sided 
  the 
  truck! 
  Figured we’d crash into it in the dust!” 
   
   
  A RIFLE bullet went in one side of 
  the car and out the other, the double impact 
  sounding almost like one report. 
  Doc said, “Out and into the ditch!” 
  The doors were jammed. Doc kicked 
  one; it gave, and they crawled out into the 
  swirling pall of dust. 
  Renny stood up, fired four short 
  bursts from his machine pistol in four 
  different directions. Then he dropped and 
  listened, hoping the rifle would discharge 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  20 
  again and give him an idea of the direction of 
  their foes. 
  Instead, they heard men running 
  away. 
  Doc said, “We should be near the 
  paved highway.” 
  “Holy cow! That explains it. They 
  figured on killin’ us off with a smashup, then 
  stopping a faster car on the highway. Knew 
  they couldn’t outrun us.” 
  They scrambled out of the dust and 
  out of the ditch—but got back into the ditch 
  suddenly when rifle slugs made violent 
  breaking-violin-string noises close to them. 
  The capsized rented car had been making 
  frying 
  and 
  creaking 
  sounds. 
  Suddenly 
  gasoline vapor under the hood exploded; 
  shorted wires or something of the sort had 
  set it off. Flame climbed over the car and 
  smoke spiraled upward. 
  Ham had crawled back into the dust 
  to hunt for something—his sword-cane, for 
  now he scrambled out again with the 
  weapon. He unlimbered his machine pistol, 
  fired a burst. Renny also shot. Both bursts 
  missed, for Two Wink and Fancife had 
  doubled 
  behind 
  a 
  high 
  bank 
  at 
  the 
  intersection of the dirt road with the paved 
  highway. 
  There was brief silence. 
  Doc said, “If we can separate and 
  encircle them—” He did not finish the 
  statement. 
  Automobile tires were squalling on 
  the paved highway. 
  Two Wink and Fancife were standing 
  in the road, blocking it, holding rifles 
  menacingly. The mysterious man, Decimo 
  Tercio, stood between them, waving his coat 
  as a stop flag. 
  A motorist in a black sedan was just 
  stopping his machine as Doc’s party got sight 
  of the tableau. 
  Doc said, “Try to get them with 
  mercy bullets!” 
  Renny and Ham aimed their unusual 
  weapons, put pressure on the firing levers, 
  and the guns gobbled. 
  Two Wink threw up his arms and 
  began doing bullfrog jumps. 
  “Got ‘im!” Renny boomed. 
  Then to their disgust they saw 
  Fancife seize Two Wink and drag him into 
  the sedan which the pair had stopped. 
  Decimo Tercio now broke and ran. 
  They realized, the moment the strange fellow 
  put his head down and began sprinting, that 
  he was making a break for liberty. He had 
  luck; Fancife did not notice his flight for a 
  moment. 
  When 
  Fancife 
  did 
  see 
  Tercio 
  running, his howl of profanity reached their 
  ears loudly. Fancife was inside the sedan, 
  and they could see him struggling to get his 
  rifle pointed at Tercio. 
  Chris Columbus realized the danger 
  of Tercio and gave a frantic yell. 
  “Don’t let him shoot Tercio!” Chris 
  bleated. “Tercio is the only man who knows 
  what we’ve got to learn!” 
  Ham and Renny unlimbered their 
  machine pistols again. At that range—they 
  wouldn’t be point-blank range either, for that 
  matter—the 
  mercy 
  bullets 
  would 
  not 
  penetrate the defense of car body and 
  windows. But the splattering rattle of the 
  slugs on the car frightened Fancife. 
  Fancife decided to forget Tercio and 
  save his own skin. 
  He drove away at high speed in the 
  sedan, after forcing out the motorist who 
  owned the machine. The motorist, wanting 
  no part of any of it, took shelter in the grader 
  ditch. Tercio and Two Wink vanished around 
  a curve in the sedan. 
  Monk held his stomach and galloped 
  forward, shouting, “Why don’t you guys do 
  something? Everything is goin’ wrong!” 
  There were two other cars on the 
  highway, but both of them had been close 
  enough to see the excitement and hear the 
  shots, so that both drivers, instead of 
  stopping when they were hailed, stamped 
  accelerator pedals to the floor boards and 
  moaned away, paying no attention to urgent 
  shouts from Doc’s men. 
  “Get Tercio!” Chris Columbus urged 
  frantically. 
  Tercio had no intention of being got. 
  Enough bad luck had beset him thus far to 
  make him a wary fellow. He was crossing a 
  pasture, legs a churning blur. 
  Renny shouted, “Tercio! This is Doc 
  Savage’s party. We’re your friends.” 
  This had no visible effect on Decimo 
  Tercio, except to speed him a little, if 
  anything. There was no question but that he 
  heard, because Renny’s shouting voice was 
  a tremendous thing that rivaled the twin 
  foghorns on the forward funnel of the Queen 
  Mary. 
  “Chris Columbus is here!” Renny 
  bellowed after Tercio. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  21 
  Chris said, “That won’t faze him. He 
  may not know me from Adam’s ox.” 
  Tercio kept going. On the far side of 
  the pasture, several horses were prancing 
  about nervously. 
  Doc said, “We will have to outrun 
  him.” 
  They sprinted forward, Monk losing 
  ground with his ungainly lope. They passed 
  the motorist owner of the car Two Wink and 
  Fancife had seized for their getaway; the 
  fellow lay in his ditch and shouted, “I’m not in 
  on this! I’m an innocent bystander!” 
  They piled over the pasture fence, 
  barbed 
  wire 
  and 
  staples 
  squawking 
  complaint. 
  Tercio had reached the horses. They 
  were saddle animals, spirited, apparently 
  none of them gentle. Tercio plunged into the 
  tangle of horses bunched in the fence corner 
  at the far side of the pasture. 
  “He’ll get his brains kicked out!” Ham 
  exploded. 
  Tercio gave an exhibition of harsh, 
  but 
  highly 
  skilled 
  horsemanship. 
  He 
  managed—that feat was remarkable in 
  itself—to grasp a mane, swing and get 
  astride a horse. The animal he had picked 
  was long-legged, racy. It began bucking. 
  Tercio 
  used 
  his 
  heels, 
  his 
  fists—and 
  controlled the horse perfectly. 
  A long wild whoop scattered the 
  startled animals out of the pasture corner. 
  Tercio then rode furiously toward a fence. 
  The horse jumped, cleared the wire. Wild 
  rider and mount vanished into a woods. 
  Monk stopped, looked at Ham and 
  asked angrily, “Why didn’t you use your 
  gatling?” 
  “My machine pistol,” Ham snapped, 
  “is empty.” 
  “Mine, too,” Renny boomed. 
  The remainder of the horses had 
  their tails up and were going around and 
  around the pasture. Nothing short of a pony, 
  a lasso rope and considerable cowboy 
  dexterity would trap one of the animals. Doc 
  tried to outsprint a large roan gelding and get 
  the horse in a corner, but the roan won. 
  Decimo Tercio was no longer in 
  sight. 
  Two Wink and Fancife had long 
  since vanished down the road. 
   
   
   
   
  Chapter VIII 
  RADIO TRAIL 
   
  THEY stood in the Missouri sunlight 
  getting breathing back to normal and feeling 
  too disgusted over the situation to venture 
  comment upon it. Comparative quiet had 
  fallen, the only animated object now being 
  the motorist whose car had been stolen, and 
  who had gotten out of the grader ditch and 
  was going in a long-legged run for the 
  farmer’s house, probably with the idea of 
  using a telephone to contact the State 
  troopers. Elsewhere there was stillness and a 
  return of the rural peace, with birds that had 
  been frightened coming out of the bushes to 
  which they had fled, and the horses standing 
  at the far side of the pasture, instinctively 
  bunched together in their nervousness, 
  heads up and nostrils distended. 
  Doc Savage said: “Monk and Ham, 
  you trail Tercio as best you can. Report to us 
  through the police in St. Louis. Renny and 
  Chris Columbus and myself will see what we 
  can do about finding Two Wink and Fancife.” 
  Monk and Ham called their pets. The 
  two animals had been investigating the 
  farmer’s barnyard, and had missed all the 
  excitement. They came running, now, and 
  Monk and Ham set off with them into the 
  woods where they had last seen Tercio. 
  The paved highway had become 
  quiet and empty, and since the wrecked 
  rented car and the truck were out of sight 
  down the dirt side road, there was no 
  indication 
  that 
  anything 
  unusual 
  had 
  happened recently. 
  Doc Savage had no trouble stopping 
  the first St. Louis-bound car that passed. The 
  driver was alone in the machine; when 
  shown money, he readily agreed to take 
  them into the city. 
  Doc, Renny and Chris Columbus 
  rode three together in the back seat. Silently 
  for a time. Then Renny spoke. 
  “Holy cow!” rumbled the big-fisted 
  engineer. “That Tercio rode a horse like—
  well, a Cossack.” 
  “Matter of fact,” Doc said in a low 
  voice, “he was once a Cossack.” 
  “Huh?” 
  “Decimo Tercio isn’t the man’s name. 
  In fact, decimo tercio are the Spanish words 
  for the number thirteen. So the fellow might 
  have selected the name Decimo Tercio as a 
  sly practical joke.” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  22 
  “How do you figure the Cossack 
  part?” 
  “Identification numbers on his plane. 
  The plane itself— Renny, if you will 
  remember back about ten years you will 
  recall an epidemic of transatlantic airplane 
  flights.” 
  “I 
  remember. 
  Majority 
  of 
  them 
  weren’t successful.” 
  “Exactly. Among those that were not 
  successful was one of the first Russian trials 
  to span the pole, an attempt that did not get 
  much publicity at the time both because the 
  Russian government was not too popular in 
  the American newspapers at the time, and 
  because the Russians made no effort to 
  publish the flight widely. However, it was no 
  great secret that a flier named Veselich 
  Vengarinotskovi took off alone across the 
  north pole, and was not heard from again.” 
  “You say his name was Ven . . . 
  Ven—” Renny grimaced. “Never mind. I’ll 
  take Decimo Tercio.” 
  “Veselich Vengarinotskovi is now 
  Decimo Tercio, by my guessing,” Doc said, 
  “because that Russian plane standing back 
  there in the oat stubble bears the same 
  identification numbers and name as the 
  plane used by the Russian aviator who 
  started over the pole some ten years ago, 
  and was lost.” 
  The bronze man glanced at Chris 
  Columbus, asked, “What about it?” 
  “Could be. The facts check,” Chris 
  Columbus said. 
  “You can not tell us for sure?” 
  “I can’t give you any facts about this 
  fellow Tercio.” 
  Big-fisted Renny leaned over to stare 
  at Chris Columbus. “But maybe there are 
  some facts you could give us?” 
  “A 
  lot 
  of 
  them.” 
  Chris 
  looked 
  meaningfully at their driver. “But not just 
  now.” 
   
   
  THEY 
  rode 
  in 
  silence, 
  Chris 
  Columbus holding his chin cupped in a palm, 
  deep in thought, until finally he looked 
  sidewise at Doc Savage and asked, “Where 
  in the devil did you dig up that data about the 
  Russian aviator you just gave us?” 
  “Happened to remember there was 
  such a flight,” Doc explained. 
  “Yes, but you even knew the plane 
  identification numbers!” 
  Renny interjected a rumble. “Doc’s 
  got a filing cabinet for a brain. That, and an 
  encyclopedia. You’ll get used to it after a 
  while.” 
  Chris Columbus sighed and settled 
  back on the seat. “I heard a friend of mine 
  talking about you. That was a month or so 
  ago. He had met you. Name of Sam Taft.” 
  “Sam Taft, the explorer and authority 
  on early Mexican art?” 
  “Yeah, that’s Sam. He told me a lot 
  about you. So much, to tell the truth, that at 
  the time I was on the verge of calling you and 
  asking you to help me with this mystery we’re 
  mixed up in now.” 
  “Why didn’t you?” 
  Chris Columbus grinned. “Didn’t 
  want to make a fool out of myself. I figured 
  you wouldn’t believe the story. I know I 
  wouldn’t if I was told the yarn by some young 
  fellow who looked as if he ran more to 
  muscle than brains.” 
  Their driver proved to be timid in 
  traffic, so that after they reached the outskirts 
  of the city their progress was slow. They paid 
  him off and changed to a taxicab. 
  “Police headquarters,” Doc directed. 
  Time was required—more than an 
  hour—in getting the police and State troopers 
  to broadcast a pickup order for Two Wink, 
  Fancife and Decimo Tercio. Two Wink and 
  Fancife were charged with kidnapping. 
  Apprehension of Decimo Tercio was directed 
  on the ground that he was the kidnap victim, 
  hence a material witness. 
  “Call for you, Mr. Savage,” an officer 
  said. 
  It was Monk. Disgusted. 
  “You know what this Decimo Tercio 
  did?” Monk demanded. “He turned the horse 
  loose in the river bottoms for us to follow. We 
  finally figured it out that Tercio got to another 
  highway, and must have hailed a car. That 
  means Tercio has had time to get back to St. 
  Louis, and no telling what else.” 
  “Come back into town,” Doc directed. 
  “Watch Tercio’s hotel.” 
  The bronze man, looking disgusted 
  with himself, hurriedly dialed another number 
  on the telephone. He spoke for a short time, 
  hung up with a deepened expression of self-
  disapproval. 
  “We muffed this nicely,” he said in a 
  grim voice. 
  Renny stared at him. “Meaning?” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  23 
  “Decimo Tercio got back into town, 
  sold his furs for four thousand dollars a pelt, 
  took the money in cash and left.” 
   
   
  RENNY sprang up and started for 
  the door. 
  Doc stopped him with the query, 
  “Where you going?” 
  “To hunt that Tercio.” 
  “Where?” 
  Renny threw up his hands and sat 
  down. “You’ve got me. What would we use 
  for a clue?” 
  “The 
  gun 
  catalogues,” 
  Doc 
  suggested. 
  “Eh?” 
  The 
  bronze 
  man 
  slapped 
  a 
  telephone book down on the desk and began 
  calling the sporting goods houses which had 
  issued the gun catalogues they had noticed 
  in Decimo Tercio’s hotel room. First try was a 
  blank, but the second one got a surprised 
  grunt. 
  “The 
  gentleman 
  you’re 
  inquiring 
  about just left,” the gun firm manager 
  explained. 
  “What did he buy?” Doc asked. 
  “Can you give me a good reason 
  why 
  I 
  should 
  furnish 
  you 
  with 
  such 
  information?” 
  Doc identified himself and added that 
  he was a Federal investigator, and that the 
  man could call the police if he didn’t believe 
  it. 
  “All right, all right,” the gun house 
  manager said. “This man—Tercio, you called 
  him, didn’t you?—bought a number of our 
  most high-powered rifles and a very large 
  amount of ammunition. An extraordinary 
  amount of ammunition, I might say.” 
  “And then—?” 
  “Then he loaded everything into one 
  of our delivery trucks, got in with the driver 
  himself, and they headed for the Lambert 
  airport.” 
  “How long ago?” 
  “Why—fifteen minutes, I should say.” 
  Doc Savage hung up and explained 
  to Renny and Chris Columbus: “Decimo 
  Tercio sold his furs and bought the highest-
  powered rifles he could get, and ammunition. 
  Now he is headed for Lambert flying field.” 
  Renny boomed, “That’s where we’ve 
  got our ship!” 
  Chris yelled, “We may be able to 
  head him off!” 
  He started for the door. Renny 
  caught him. 
  “Hold 
  it,” 
  Renny 
  advised. 
  “Doc 
  seems to have an idea.” 
   
   
  THE bronze man was using the 
  telephone again, getting a connection to the 
  flying field. 
  Chris 
  Columbus 
  grinned, 
  said, 
  “That’s a better idea. We can have them grab 
  him out there.” 
  Doc Savage was speaking into the 
  telephone, addressing the field manager, 
  whom he happened to know. 
  “Does a man named Decimo Tercio 
  have a plane there? . . . No? Well, possibly 
  he did not use that name, so here is his 
  description.” Doc drew a word picture of 
  Tercio, waited while the man spoke at the 
  other end of the wire, then corroborated what 
  he had been told, saying: “He just bought the 
  plane by telephone, did he? Promised to pay 
  cash and take immediate delivery. What kind 
  of a ship did he buy?” 
  The room was still enough that 
  Renny and Chris Columbus could hear the 
  voice of the distant airport manager. 
  “It was a big ship, one of those jobs 
  that have a lot of fuel capacity,” the man 
  explained. “It’s a used crate. Fellow had it 
  fixed up for a round-the-world try, then got 
  cold feet. This man—Tercio, if that’s his 
  name—got the job for twenty-eight thousand, 
  which is dirt for that bus.” 
  Doc said: “Do me a favor, will you? 
  My plane is out at your field now. Go to the 
  crate, and back in the cabin you will find a 
  number of alloy metal cases. The cases fit in 
  racks along the cabin wall, and they’re 
  numbered. Open case number nine. You got 
  it?” 
  “Open nine. Right.” 
  “Take out the green metal box you 
  will find inside on top. There is only one 
  green metal box in that case, so you can’t 
  make a mistake. There is a switch on the 
  box. Only one. Turn it to the on position. Got 
  that?” 
  “Switch to on position. Got it.” 
  “Then hide the box on this plane that 
  Decimo Tercio just bought. Hide it in the back 
  of the fuselage, or some place where it will 
  not be found.” 
  “It’s not a bomb or something?” 
  “No.” 
  “Well, I’ll hide the thing in his plane.” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  24 
  Doc Savage hung up, and Chris 
  Columbus stared at him, stared as if he had 
  some doubts about the bronze man’s mental 
  stability. 
  “I must say I don’t get it,” Chris 
  grumbled finally. “We could have had ‘em 
  catch that guy.” 
  Doc Savage was not disturbed. “I am 
  curious about where Tercio is heading.” 
  “So am I.” Chris laughed harshly. 
  “What do you think I’ve been tearing around 
  like a wild man for?” 
  “We’ll follow him.” 
  “Follow him? You can’t! How will you 
  follow an airplane?” 
  “You are familiar with radio?” Doc 
  asked. 
  “I listen to programs now and then. I 
  understand airplanes follow radio beams 
  nowadays. But I’m no radio engineer.” 
  The bronze man explained patiently: 
  “You can take a directional aërial, usually a 
  loop, and a properly sensitive receiver, and 
  locate a radio transmitter. Direction finding, it 
  is called.” 
  “That’s kindergarten stuff.” 
  “In that box we’re having the airport 
  official hide in Tercio’s plane is a short-wave 
  transmitter,” 
  Doc 
  advised. 
  “It 
  is 
  self-
  contained, operates from batteries which will 
  keep it transmitting continuously for a 
  hundred or more hours. The tubes do not 
  draw much current.” 
  Chris grinned suddenly, drove his 
  right fist into his left palm. 
  “Means we can trail Tercio, doesn’t 
  it?” he yelled. 
   
   
  Chapter IX 
  GUNS NORTH 
   
  DOC 
  SAVAGE’S 
  plane 
  was 
  constructed with two fuselage skin coverings, 
  an outer one of tough alloy that would resist 
  ordinary rifle and machine-gun fire, and an 
  inner skin which was non-sweating; in 
  between these coverings was a padding of 
  extremely 
  light 
  material 
  with 
  insulating 
  qualities effective against both sound and 
  cold. In spite of this, it was cold in the plane. 
  The big plane was slicing through 
  smoky darkness that was as cold as frost. 
  Occasionally the fuselage and wings of the 
  craft were licked by a weirdly-hued glow from 
  the strange lunging fans of aurora borealis 
  that climbed up in scintillating fantasm from 
  the cold white mystery of the polar wastes. 
  The heaters—they were electric and 
  operated by wing generators—made soft, 
  warm sound. The big motors were muffled, 
  and prop scream was louder than exhaust 
  moan, but even that noise, heard from inside 
  the sound-proofed fuselage, was undertone. 
  Renny had his eye jammed to a 
  visual drift indicator. He had taken one 
  bearing on a tiny frozen lake faintly 
  discernible below; at the end of a timed 
  interval, he took another bearing. Then he 
  consulted the altimeter, made some figures 
  with a pencil. 
  “Ground speed one eighty,” he 
  announced. He drew a compass-bearing line 
  on the chart, then stepped off some mileage 
  with the dividers. “Holy cow! If this keeps up, 
  somebody’s gonna wish he’d brought his 
  long underwear.” 
  Monk called, “Where are we?” 
  “About two hundred miles north of 
  the Canadian border.”  
  Doc Savage had been flying. Now he 
  turned the controls over to Ham and came 
  back to the rear of the cabin. 
  Chris Columbus sat there, bundled in 
  blankets. His color was perfectly good, his 
  eyes clear. But otherwise he looked as if his 
  disposition had curdled. 
  “You getting over your airsickness,” 
  Doc Savage asked dryly, “enough to tell us 
  your story?” 
  Chris Columbus hesitated. Finally he 
  grimaced. 
  “I wasn’t airsick,” he said. 
  “So we figured.” Monk leaned over 
  him and showed him a hairy block of a fist. 
  “You got any idea what this”— Monk moved 
  his fist threateningly—”could do to that face 
  of yours?” 
  “Probably not as much damage as 
  you think,” Chris said, unimpressed. 
  “Easy on the rough stuff, Monk,” Doc 
  advised. 
  “Rough stuff, or smooth stuff—I’ve 
  made up my mind about this,” Chris said 
  flatly. 
  “In what way?” 
  “You’re mixed up in this thing now,” 
  said Chris slowly, “and I’ve got a hunch you’ll 
  go on through with it. I’ve been studying you 
  fellows. You like excitement and mystery. 
  Yes. You’ll go on—regardless of whether I 
  tell you what I know, or not.” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  25 
  He looked up at them. His jaw was 
  square with determination. 
  “So I’m not going to tell you a thing,” 
  he added. 
   
   
  MONK’S temper was chiefly notable 
  for the suddenness with which it could get 
  away from him. He squared off, yelled: “Put 
  up your fists, you double-crosser! I’ll make 
  hamburger out of you!” 
  Renny reached over, shoved Monk, 
  said: “Be quiet, you missing link! He must 
  have some good reason for not talking to us!” 
  “I’ll give him a good reason to tell 
  us!” Monk shouted. 
  Chris Columbus shook his head at 
  them. “I don’t blame you for being hot. But 
  here’s how it is. This whole thing is important 
  to me. It’s the most important thing in my 
  existence. I’ve devoted two years of my life to 
  it, and if we fail now, I’ll go right on. I’ll 
  continue by myself, and I’ll feel better if no 
  one but myself knows the true story.” 
  Monk snapped, “That reason doesn’t 
  make sense!” 
  Chris nodded agreement. 
  “There’s another reason,” he said. 
  “I’ve mentioned it before. If I tell the story, 
  you might get the idea I’m crazy, and lock me 
  up in a zany box somewhere instead of going 
  on with it. I’m telling you flatly that the truth 
  behind this is not easy to believe.” 
  There was a finality about the young 
  man’s tone that definitely put a period to the 
  conference. Even Monk subsided. 
  Doc Savage worked with the short-
  wave radio—not the direction finder, for Ham 
  was using that as he handled the controls—
  until a response came over the air. The 
  bronze man turned from the apparatus, 
  obviously satisfied. 
  Fifty miles ahead, somewhat to the 
  west, was a spot marked on the chart as a 
  flying field maintained in the northern 
  wasteland by the Canadian government. 
  “Land there,” Doc directed. “Long 
  Tom and Johnny are meeting us there,” Doc 
  advised. “I got in touch with them by radio 
  and suggested they bring up another plane—
  the small speed ship that is painted a silver 
  color.” 
  The plane they were flying, one of 
  the bronze man’s largest ships, was painted 
  a bronze color which Doc used most 
  frequently, and the hue was not one readily 
  adapted to camouflage against snow. 
  The speed ship to which he referred 
  was a smaller, single-motored job that was 
  mostly motor and wings, although it also had 
  a low landing speed due to scientific wing 
  design and an equipment of efficient wing 
  flaps. It was coated with an iridescent silver 
  material somewhat in the nature of the so-
  called 
  “fish 
  scale” 
  paint 
  applied 
  to 
  automobiles, and flying at any considerable 
  height it was almost invisible. 
  The little plane was resting on the 
  snow-covered flying field, and they did not 
  discern it until they were a hundred feet 
  above. 
  There was enough snow to make 
  their landing difficult. 
  “What we need,” said big-fisted 
  Renny, “is ski equipment.” 
  “Tercio has made no effort to equip 
  his plane with skis instead of wheel gear,” 
  Doc said. “There must be some purpose in 
  that.” 
  William Harper Johnny Littlejohn and 
  Major Thomas J. Long Tom Roberts, 
  remaining pair of Doc’s group of five aids, 
  came running to meet them. 
  Johnny Littlejohn was a man of two 
  achievements. His big words, which he had a 
  distressing habit of using upon everyone but 
  Doc. And his ability as a geologist and 
  archaeologist was unquestioned. He was a 
  very long and thin man, longer and thinner 
  than it seemed any man could be and still 
  live. His clothing never fitted him, and he 
  usually wore a monocle attached by a ribbon 
  to his lapel, the monocle being a powerful 
  magnifying glass which he used in the course 
  of his work. 
  Long Tom Roberts, the remaining 
  member of the party, had a name that in no 
  way applied to his appearance. He was not 
  tall. The nickname had arisen out of his 
  misadventure with a pirate cannon of the 
  “long tom” variety in the past. He was a 
  rather unhealthy-looking specimen, owning a 
  complexion 
  readily 
  associated 
  with 
  a 
  mushroom cellar. He did not look like a man 
  with an international reputation as an 
  electrical wizard. 
   
   
  WHEN Doc Savage explained that 
  he planned to take the smaller plane himself 
  and fly on accompanied only by Chris 
  Columbus, the idea did not meet with much 
  approval. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  26 
  Renny got the bronze man out of 
  earshot, rumbled, “Holy cow, Doc! That Chris 
  bird has double-crossed us by not telling us 
  anything. How do you know he can be 
  trusted?” 
  Doc explained his motives. 
  “There is something about human 
  nature that makes a man more inclined to tell 
  his troubles to one person than to a crowd,” 
  he advised. “That may work out with Chris. If 
  it doesn’t—if he fails to tell me the truth about 
  this—we are no worse off than we are now. 
  Also, it is better if we travel in two planes,” 
  Doc added. “Then, if something happens to 
  one ship, we have the other available.” 
  If the bronze man had actually 
  expected Chris Columbus to break down and 
  part with the truth as a result of privacy, his 
  reasoning failed to bear fruit. Chris seemed 
  steeped in gloom. He slouched in the bucket 
  seat, biting his fingernails, or staring at them, 
  and shoving his lower lip out in various 
  shapes. Once he did look up shamefacedly. 
  “This makes me a hell of a guy, don’t 
  it?” he demanded. “I call on you for help, then 
  I refuse to tell you what it’s all about. Boy, 
  does that make me a stinker!” 
  Which was as near as he came to 
  talking freely. The bronze man decided to 
  give him a bit more time, then try indirect 
  persuasion upon him. Just now the air was 
  very bumpy, and the little plane, with its 
  terrific speed, felt as if it were being hit a 
  succession of blows by a giant rubber maul. 
  Then, quite suddenly, the bronze 
  man realized they were flying over Decimo 
  Tercio’s plane. 
  “Tercio’s ship,” the bronze man said 
  abruptly, “seems to have landed. We’re over 
  the spot.” He looked at Chris Columbus. 
  “What do you advise doing?” 
  “Me advise?” Chris stared at him. 
  “You still trust me?” 
  “Why not?” 
  Chris took a deep breath and 
  grinned. “You’re all right. The average guy 
  would bop me on the nose and tie me up for 
  what I’ve done.” 
  “Would it be a good idea to land near 
  Tercio’s ship?” 
  “It would. Nearer the better.” 
   
   
  DECIMO TERCIO’S big plane—the 
  upper wing surfaces were painted the 
  conventional orange color, which made it 
  easy to spot—stood close against a thick wall 
  of evergreen trees that fenced in a flat snow-
  coated surface that might have been a frozen 
  lake or merely a meadow. 
  Dawn was building up in the eastern 
  sky like a growing white sheep, but it was not 
  yet 
  spreading 
  enough 
  illumination 
  to 
  distinguish more than general things. 
  To the north and west not far distant 
  there was a bleak rock of a mountain, bare 
  and dark and sheer, but distinctly marked on 
  its southern face, where there were two great 
  irregular white rings caused by snow, 
  probably everlasting, that reposed in rock 
  crevices. 
  “Target Mountain,” Chris Columbus 
  said. 
  Doc glanced at him sharply. The 
  young 
  man 
  seemed 
  greatly 
  pleased; 
  moreover he must have known this part of 
  the Northland well to recognize that remote 
  butte. 
  “You’ve been here before?” Doc 
  asked. 
  “Oh, sure. I traded for furs all over 
  this country. And it was on north of here that I 
  met Lanta—” He stopped then, put his lips 
  together tightly. 
  Doc stood the plane on its nose, 
  flattened out, and skimmed over the surface 
  of the landing field—lake or meadow or 
  whatever it might be—to make sure there 
  were no obstructions. The wind was rather 
  strong, he saw; it carried little white woolly 
  bears of swirling flakes across the surface, 
  and the trees were bowing slowly in unison. 
  Nothing 
  moved 
  around 
  Decimo 
  Tercio’s plane. 
  Doc took it easy landing. The snow 
  was deep, soft as froth, bogged the plane like 
  mud. Fortunate, the bronze man reflected, 
  that the stuff was not deeper, or they might 
  have trouble getting off again. 
  With 
  great 
  whooping 
  gusts 
  of 
  propeller stream, he sent their ship to a spot 
  alongside the other plane. He let the motor 
  idle and climbed out. Chris Columbus was 
  already on the ground. 
  They 
  waded through the snow 
  toward the other plane, and the plane door 
  flew open and Two Wink Danton and Wilmer 
  Fancife leaned out, repeating rifles already 
  aimed at Doc and Chris! 
   
   
   
   
   
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  27 
  Chapter X 
  BLAST IN THE ARCTIC 
   
  ASTONISHMENT 
  jerked 
  Chris 
  Columbus into a rigid statue, Doc Savage 
  was equally surprised, having had no 
  suspicion that Two Wink and Fancife were 
  any nearer than St. Louis. 
  Chris said out of the side of his 
  mouth, “This is my fault for not talking.” 
  “What do you mean?” 
  “I knew they had made Tercio talk.” 
  Fancife said: “Either one of you 
  gentlemen can move if you want to! It will 
  give us an excuse.” 
  Doc did not stir. Chris had his lips 
  parted, his breath making slow steam in the 
  bitterly-cold arctic air. 
  Two Wink held a rifle on them, and 
  Fancife began searching their clothing. He 
  took object after object from Doc Savage’s 
  pockets, scowling at some of the gadgets 
  because he did not know what they were; 
  then he slapped the bronze man’s garments 
  and realized there was stuff all through his 
  clothing. 
  “Hell, 
  we’ll 
  have 
  to 
  take 
  your 
  clothes,” he growled. 
  He went over to Two Wink and the 
  two of them consulted in a voice too low to 
  be overheard. Result of the palaver did not 
  seem agreeable to Two Wink, because he 
  was scowling, although Fancife wore a 
  widely grim grin when they came back. 
  “Two Wink is gonna stand lookout,” 
  Fancife advised them coldly, “while I make 
  you change clothes. I’ll take you in the plane 
  where it’s warm.” 
  He backed into the plane with the 
  rifle, menaced them with the weapon while 
  they also clambered inside. 
  “Look!” Chris barked. 
  He meant Decimo Tercio. The man 
  sat in one of the plane seats. There were 
  ropes around his ankles, more ropes about 
  his chest and the seat which he occupied, 
  holding him securely. It was cold in the plane, 
  and his breath was a series of angry spurts. 
  “How’d they get you, Tercio?” Chris 
  asked swiftly. 
  Tercio scowled at him, said nothing. 
  “I’m . . . a friend of Lanta,” Chris said. 
  That had no effect, either. 
  “He’s a little irritated,” Fancife said, 
  and chuckled. “You see, he underestimated 
  our brains, like you fellows did. He’s mad 
  about that.” 
  Tercio swore in some native tongue; 
  they did not have to understand it to 
  appreciate the violence of what he said. 
  “You see?” Fancife chuckled again. 
  “Never occurred to him that we would grab 
  the fastest plane we could get as soon as he 
  escaped from us. Grab a racing plane and 
  whirl right up here to Target Mountain and 
  wait for him to show up.” 
  Fancife walked over to Tercio and 
  gave his head a shove. “Forgot you told us 
  Target Mountain was one of the landmarks 
  you had to find on your way back, didn’t 
  you?” 
  Doc said: “You beat us all here with 
  a very fast plane, and when Tercio appeared, 
  you forced him down? Is that the way it 
  was?” 
  “With rifles.” Fancife nodded. He 
  moved his rifle menacingly. “We’re very good 
  with these things. If you don’t want to know 
  how good, get out of those clothes.” 
  Chris yelled, “We’ll freeze to death!” 
  “That’ll be swell,” Fancife told him. 
  “Hurry up and get out of those clothes.” 
  Both Doc and Chris Columbus 
  stripped to underwear shorts before Fancife 
  said, “That’ll do,” after glancing sidewise at 
  Two Wink, who had put his head in the plane 
  door to watch. “You see anybody, Two 
  Wink?” 
  “Nobody else in sight. Guess they 
  came alone.” 
  Doc Savage drew a breath of relief at 
  that. He had instructed Monk and Ham and 
  the others to fly a course at least fifteen miles 
  to the right of his own, and the precaution 
  was now proving fortunate. 
  Fancife planted himself in front of 
  Doc and Chris and made a grim-sounding 
  speech. 
  “We’re not going to kill you, like 
  some guys would,” he said. 
   
   
  HAVING paused for a few moments 
  so that they could get the dramatic effect of 
  his opening, Fancife continued. “Some guys 
  would bump you off, but not us. We’re just 
  trying to get along and be left alone. We’re 
  taking your clothes and putting you in your 
  plane. We’ve searched your plane to be sure 
  there are no more clothes in it. We’ve also 
  made sure the plane is heated.” He turned to 
  Two Wink. “It is heated, ain’t it?” 
  “That plane,” said Two Wink, “has 
  got everything.” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  28 
  “Swell.” Fancife grinned at Doc and 
  Chris. “You two won’t freeze to death in the 
  plane. And you won’t be likely to go jumping 
  out in your union suits to cause us trouble.” 
  Chris 
  scowled 
  at 
  Fancife. 
  “Something fishy about this.” 
  “Think you know me better than that, 
  don’t you?” Fancife asked. 
  “I do. I know you’re the guy they 
  meant when they invented the word skunk.” 
  Fancife grinned at that. “I know you’ll 
  be disappointed to find out how wrong you’ve 
  been.” 
  Chris snarled: “We made this North 
  country together, trading for furs. Only you 
  were swindling. I got to know you mighty well 
  during those days two years ago, Fancife. I 
  found out that you were the lowest form of 
  life. And finally, after we met Lanta, and 
  you—” 
  “Shut up!” Fancife’s teeth were 
  showing and his eyes were not pleasant. 
  “Get over there and take off in that plane of 
  yours—before I change my mind!” 
  Doc Savage had learned to judge 
  men; he knew it would be poor policy to 
  cross Fancife at the moment. There was 
  something strange in the man’s manner. 
  Fancife wanted to kill them—there was even 
  an undertone in his manner, something 
  sinister that was hard to define, that was not 
  pleasant. Possibly it was his complete 
  confidence. And he seemed to be turning 
  them loose, which was not like the man. 
  As they moved back toward Doc’s 
  plane, the bronze man’s flake-gold eyes 
  probed the darkness—it seemed much 
  darker here on the ground than in the air—
  until he located Fancife’s plane. The craft 
  stood more than a hundred yards distant. 
  Evidently they had made a poor landing and 
  coasted in among the trees, but the ship did 
  not seem to have been damaged. It was 
  painted silver, hence almost unnoticeable in 
  the murk and swirling, wind-driven snow. 
  Doc and Chris Columbus climbed 
  into the bronze man’s plane. 
  Fancife 
  waved 
  an 
  arm 
  in 
  the 
  direction of the far end of the clearing, which 
  was lost in the gloom. 
  “Taxi down there and take off into the 
  wind,” he ordered. “We don’t want you 
  cracking up here and maybe breaking your 
  necks!” He flourished his rifle. “And don’t try 
  gunning us from the air. You wouldn’t have a 
  chance.” 
  He stepped back then, got behind a 
  tree, kept his rifle ready. But no hostile 
  gesture came from Doc’s plane. The ship 
  taxied, engine moaning and prop throwing up 
  great clouds of snow, far down the field until 
  the ship was hardly discernible. Then there 
  was a delay while the engine howled and 
  labored. 
  “What’s wrong?” Two Wink gasped 
  uneasily. 
  “They’re just havin’ some trouble 
  turnin’ around in the snow,” Fancife assured 
  him. “They’ll make it.” 
  A moment later, the engine bawl 
  loudened and the plane crawled across the 
  field and slanted up into the sky. 
  Fancife turned to Two Wink. “You 
  see!” 
  Two Wink was pale. His trembling 
  was not from the cold. He stood there, 
  fingers clinched, listening . . . listening. And 
  when the explosion came, he jumped as if 
  struck and a look of unutterable horror 
  washed his face. 
  The explosion was loud. It came 
  from the west, the direction Doc’s plane had 
  flown. There was some flash, not much. The 
  echoes bounced back from Target Mountain, 
  a series of gobbling noises. Then other 
  sounds came, noise of the blasted plane 
  crashing the earth. 
  Two Wink croaked. “You . . . you 
  think we had better . . .  better—” 
  “Look at them?” Fancife shook his 
  head. “Hell, no. Savage and Chris are dead.” 
  “Where’d you—put the bomb?” Two 
  Wink asked tensely. 
  “Under their dunnage in the plane. 
  That’s why they didn’t find it.” 
   
   
  Chapter XI 
  THE BIG BIRDS 
   
  FANCIFE walked back to the plane, 
  climbed inside and seized Tercio. “Give me a 
  hand.” 
  They dragged Tercio through the 
  snow to their own ship, and thrust the man 
  inside. Fancife stood scowling at Tercio, then 
  thought of a torture idea. He thrust his rifle 
  barrel into Tercio’s mouth, and the man’s 
  tongue and lips stuck agonizingly to the cold 
  steel. Fancife twisted, jerked. Tercio moaned. 
  “You saw what just happened—we 
  killed Savage and Chris Columbus.” Fancife 
  got down on his knees to glare into Tercio’s 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  29 
  eyes. “We’re through kidding. We’ve gone 
  too far with this to back out. So you better 
  talk.” 
  Tercio glared hate, said nothing. 
  “We’ll have to kill you to shut you 
  up,” Fancife said. “Why be a fool, Tercio? 
  Take us the rest of the way in.” 
  “What happens to me then?” Tercio 
  asked thinly. 
  “We turn you loose.” 
  “That doesn’t sound reasonable. I’ll 
  still know you’re murderers, won’t I?” 
  “Naturally, but you’ll be staying there 
  yourself. Didn’t you tell us you never 
  intended to come back again? You said you 
  spent a year distilling fuel for your plane so 
  you could take some of those furs, fly out and 
  sell them, and buy rifles and ammunition and 
  fly back?” 
  Tercio thought it over. His facial 
  expression showed that he was thinking: 
  What choice had he? 
  “All right,” he growled. 
  They untied his wrists—his wrists 
  only—and placed him in one of the cockpit 
  seats. 
  “You stay back in the cabin,” Fancife 
  told Two Wink, “and keep a gun in your hand, 
  in case this fellow tries something funny.” 
  Two Wink nodded. 
  Fancife then carried Tercio’s rifles 
  and ammunition—the stuff he had bought 
  with proceeds of the fur sale—to the plane. It 
  took him some time. There were a lot of the 
  guns. 
  The 
  plane 
  motor 
  had 
  cooled 
  somewhat; it failed to start for a time, and 
  Fancife swore violently at the prospects of 
  getting out with a canvas hood and a 
  blowtorch and heating the cylinders. The 
  engine took, and its rumble filled the clearing. 
  Fancife jockeyed the ship across the 
  clearing. Once his eyes gaped and his hair 
  all but stood on end as he thought he wasn’t 
  going to make it. Then he got the ship into 
  the air. 
  He looked at Tercio and scowled. 
  “You must weight a ton,” he said. “I 
  damn near didn’t get her off.” 
  “The snow was deep,” Tercio said. 
  He pointed at Target Mountain. “You take a 
  bearing directly north a quarter west from 
  that mountain.” 
  The plane moaned ahead. The sun 
  came up, and the arctic wilderness was a 
  waste of blinding white. They were in a great 
  valley, with mountains to left and right. 
  Two Wink sat hunched forward, 
  trying to figure out how Doc Savage had 
  managed 
  to 
  follow 
  Tercio 
  north, 
  and 
  swearing over the baffling problem. 
  Once Tercio turned around and 
  looked at him with a thin grin. “In the next half 
  hour, you’re going to stop thinking about a 
  little thing such as that,” he said. 
  There was excitement in Tercio’s 
  manner. He pressed his face against the 
  windows, even yanked the glass back and 
  thrust his head out in the ripping cold 
  slipstream, in order to see better. He spotted 
  landmarks that were familiar, grunted. He 
  became more and more pleased. Finally he 
  was grinning. 
  “Good, 
  good!” 
  he 
  chortled. 
  “I 
  remember way back without any trouble.” 
   
   
  AT Tercio’s grunted command and a 
  leveled arm, Fancife banked the plane left, 
  headed by the mountains on that side. 
  Jagged foothill peaks thrust up at them. The 
  mountains were very steep. Once he had to 
  circle for additional altitude. He grew uneasy. 
  “Hell, if we’re goin’ over those 
  mountains, we better find a pass,” he said. 
  “This job hasn’t got a supercharger, and it 
  may not work so good up in this thin air.” 
  Tercio’s grin was showing all his 
  teeth. 
  “We don’t go over,” he said. 
  Two Wink stared at Tercio, then at 
  the mountains, and shuddered. 
  The plane was laboring, panting like 
  a climber. The air was rough, incredibly so. 
  Once they went into a spin and Fancife got 
  straightened out barely in time. 
  If hell were ice and snow, it would be 
  something like what was below them now. 
  There was no snow. There was too much 
  wind for snow to stay on. Everything was ice, 
  dirty-looking ice that was as formidable as 
  tiger fangs, and looked somewhat like great 
  tiger fangs. Bright slanting blades of the cold 
  sunlight cast sprawling shadows as dark as 
  frozen monsters. 
  The plane panted and labored as if 
  trying to keep away from what was below. 
  A canyon opened suddenly. It was a 
  strange canyon. It was not a gash sinking 
  perpendicular-walled into the mountain. It 
  seemed more of a slanting cut, as though a 
  great ax might have chopped down at a forty-
  five degree angle into the mountain, and this 
  was the hole that had resulted. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  30 
  Tercio spoke. His voice was almost a 
  screech of delight. 
  “Into the pass,” he howled. 
  Fancife turned on him. Fancife’s face 
  was plastered with fear. 
  “You fool!” he barked. “It’s dark down 
  in there. We’ll crash!” 
  “Fly into it,” Tercio yelled. 
  Fancife visibly grabbed his courage 
  and put the nose of the plane into the giant 
  crevasse. He was scared. He used the wing 
  flaps to cut their flying speed. 
  They sank down and down and 
  darkness closed about them as if they had 
  gone into a deep throat. Fancife had 
  switched on the wingtip floodlights. They 
  poked out a pale glow that soon surrendered 
  against blackness. 
  Fancife yelled out then. There was 
  utter fright in his voice. He started to yank the 
  plane back and send it up. 
  Tercio struck him. He used his right 
  fist, hit a blow hard enough to jar Fancife 
  from head to toes. 
  “You don’t go back!” Tercio snarled. 
  “I’ve gone through hell to get here, and we’re 
  going on!” 
  Fancife got his nerve back. He flew 
  on downward for what seemed a distance of 
  miles. Twice, the wall of jagged stone loomed 
  distantly in the floods, and Fancife banked 
  frantically. 
  “There’s plenty of room,” Tercio said. 
  “Just be careful. Remember, when I blew in 
  here the first time, it was by accident. I 
  thought I was inside a volcanic cone, and I 
  kept trying to reach the bottom.” 
  Two Wink had been peering about, 
  and suddenly he stiffened. 
  “It’s getting light again!” he yelled. 
   
   
  THEY could, they realized, discern 
  the walls of the shaftlike affair down which 
  they had been flying. This was particularly 
  remarkable since the walls were at least a 
  quarter of a mile distant. 
  And then, quite suddenly, there were 
  no walls, only a great dome of a ceiling 
  above, and a slanting wall of stone on the 
  right, and on the other side the vastness of a 
  strangely illuminated space. The plane 
  turned into that vastness. It was like flying 
  through moonlight, and this luminance got 
  brighter and brighter until they were flying in 
  light as brilliant as sunlight. 
  “Look!” Two Wink pointed. “The sun!” 
  The man was indicating a great 
  source of light in the distance, a light utterly 
  blinding. 
  Fancife barked: “It wouldn’t be the 
  sun, you fool. We’re inside the earth!” 
  Below, there was vegetation. Pine 
  trees and cedar, birch and other growth 
  typical to the Canadian wilderness. This 
  growth was changing. The Northern varieties 
  of evergreens became scarcer, replaced by 
  oak and elm, or trees that looked somewhat 
  similar to these. Then there were palms and 
  great ferns, dense jungle below. 
  It was as if they had flown from the 
  Northern Canada woods across the middle 
  Western tree belt and to the tropical jungles, 
  all in the course of a few minutes. The 
  distance could not have been more than 
  twenty miles. 
  Now there was different growth 
  ahead. 
  Fantastic 
  jungle 
  composed 
  of 
  monstrous things that were more like ferns 
  and weeds than trees. 
  The 
  air 
  had 
  become 
  warm. 
  Compared to the bitter cold of the arctic, the 
  heat seemed stifling. 
  Tercio said, “Fly higher. Fly as high 
  as you can.” 
  Fancife’s fear was gone. Excitement 
  had gripped him. 
  “Hell with you!” he barked. “I’m going 
  to fly close to the ground and look the place 
  over.” 
  Tercio 
  reached 
  angrily 
  for 
  the 
  controls. Fancife snatched out a revolver and 
  struck him. Because Fancife was excited, he 
  hit Tercio harder than he had intended. 
  Tercio slumped senseless. 
  “Serves him right,” Fancife muttered. 
  “He’ll come to his senses later, and maybe 
  he’ll have some gumption.” 
  Three or four minutes later, Two 
  Wink shrieked. It was a wordless kind of a 
  cry. Fancife whirled, snarled, “What the hell 
  ails you?” 
  “Look!” 
  Fancife stared. 
  “Great blazes!” he yelled. He gave 
  the throttle a bat with his palm and knocked it 
  open to the last notch. 
  The plane made a loud, tired noise 
  and lunged forward.  
  “We 
  outrunnin’ 
  ‘em?” 
  Fancife 
  shouted. 
  Two Wink looked back, shuddered, 
  said: “They’re gaining. There’s hundreds of 
  ‘em!” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  31 
  He meant the things that were like 
  birds, and yet not birds, for they were 
  covered with a reptilian hide instead of 
  feathers, the wings being membranous after 
  the fashion of bats, but resembling bats in 
  hardly any other particular—certainly not in 
  size, for the smallest of these things had a 
  wingspread of not less than twenty feet. 
  There was a vast black cloud of the 
  aërial horrors, and they flew with the speed 
  of aërial express trains. 
  “They’re gonna catch us!” Two Wink 
  shrieked. 
  It was then that Doc Savage and 
  Chris Columbus came crawling out of the 
  rear of the plane—there was a hatch into the 
  aft portion of the fuselage; they scrambled 
  through that—and the bronze man seized 
  Fancife, while Chris grabbed Two Wink. The 
  fight was as short as it was violent. Doc tore 
  all the pockets out of Fancife’s suit, let guns, 
  cartridges and other contents spill. 
  “We might have remained hidden 
  back there a while longer,” the bronze man 
  said, “but we didn’t want you getting us 
  killed.” 
  The bronze man leaned out of the 
  window and stared back. 
  Chris Columbus did likewise. 
  “Them 
  things’ll 
  get 
  us!” 
  Chris 
  shouted. 
  “They have a chance at that,” Doc 
  admitted grimly. 
   
   
  Chapter XII 
  THE PREHISTORIC WORLD 
   
  FANCIFE and Two Wink remained 
  on the floor of the plane cabin, where they 
  had been hurled. Both were so astonished 
  that their expressions were blankly stupid. 
  Finally Fancife  snarled:  “How’d  you 
  . . . what . . . weren’t you in the plane when it 
  blew up?” 
  Doc ignored them. The bronze man 
  was working with the plane controls. Fancife 
  had been too excited to realize that the wing 
  flaps were set, cutting the speed of the ship a 
  great deal. Doc remedied that error. Then, 
  although the plane would have gone much 
  faster, he deliberately cut the speed to let the 
  pursuing horrors catch up with them. 
  Chris Columbus had taken one of 
  Fancife’s pistols. He menaced Fancife and 
  Two Wink with the weapon. 
  “Little surprised to see us, ain’t you?” 
  he asked. 
  Fancife licked his lips. Surprised was 
  no word for it. 
  “Doc Savage here”—Chris nodded at 
  the bronze man— “figured back there in that 
  clearing in the arctic that you had tampered 
  with our plane so it would crash. It wasn’t 
  reasonable to think you would let us go free.” 
  “How’d you get here?” 
  “Merely jumped out of Doc’s plane 
  while it was at the far end of the clearing. It 
  was too dark for you to see us. We took 
  some equipment along. Doc’s plane was 
  fixed with a robot and the controls could be 
  locked. For a while we thought the plane 
  wouldn’t take off by itself in that deep snow. 
  But it did.” 
  “But how’d you get in this plane?” 
  Fancife snarled. 
  “Simple. Plane was among the trees, 
  you remember. We just hightailed it around 
  to the bus, and climbed aboard. Nice big 
  inspection port you’ve got back there into the 
  rear of the fuselage. We crawled through 
  that.” 
  Fancife swore. 
  Chris grinned. “After you got in the 
  air, we cut some holes in the fuselage so we 
  could see where you were goin’. Saw them 
  big birds chasin’ us, and figured we’d better 
  save our necks.” 
  Chris then peered out of the window. 
  He paled. 
  “Hey!” he roared. “Them things has 
  about got us!” 
  The whole thing might have been a 
  sort of comic-paper affair of a plane being 
  pursued by impossibly big and hideous 
  birds—except that the thing was real. It was 
  happening. It was not reasonable, not even 
  close to the bounds of credibility, but here 
  they were in the plane—and there were the 
  fantastic flying things. 
  “They’re equipped with teeth!” Chris 
  gulped. 
  Teeth was a mild word for the 
  armament in the long, somewhat parrotlike 
  jaws of the flying things. They were 
  somewhat like magnified shark maws. The 
  birds—they were at close range now, 
  unpleasantly illuminated by the strange 
  “sunlight”—were totally hideous. 
  Doc suddenly jammed the plane into 
  a dive. One moment they were flying level; 
  then they were roaring earthward. 
   
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  32 
   
  The strange birds chasing the plane 
  had teeth—and were totally hideous! 
   
  The 
  squadron 
  of 
  weird 
  flying 
  monsters 
  went 
  winging 
  on, 
  apparently 
  unaware that their quarry was not ahead of 
  them. 
  “They weren’t after us at all!” Chris 
  exclaimed. 
  “Don’t fool yourself,” Doc said. “They 
  were chasing us all right.” 
  Chris peered upward. “But look at 
  the silly things. They’re flying as if we were 
  still ahead of them.” 
  “They’re a species of pterodactyl.” 
  “Put-what?” 
  “One of the prehistoric forms of flying 
  life—pterodactyl,” the bronze man explained. 
  “Like most primitive life forms, they probably 
  have almost no brain, and very slow 
  reactions.” 
  “You mean,” said Chris, “that those 
  put . . . put . . . them funny-lookin’ flyin’ 
  animals—still think they’re chasin’ us?” 
  “That is the general idea.” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  33 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE pulled the plane level 
  and flew at an altitude of not much more than 
  five hundred feet. At this height, he was 
  hardly above the highest of the fantastic tree-
  growth below. He stared downward, his 
  scientific interest racing. 
  When the plane came to a level 
  clearing which was more than half a mile in 
  each dimension, the bronze man suddenly 
  pointed the craft downward. 
  “We will land,” he said. “It doesn’t 
  seem possible this place can be real.” 
  The wheels swished through foot-
  high grass, and eventually stopped. Doc 
  climbed out. The grass was incredibly 
  coarse, each blade about the size and shape 
  of a segment of a palm frond. 
  “What 
  we 
  gonna 
  do 
  with 
  the 
  prisoners?” Chris asked. 
  Reluctantly, 
  Doc 
  postponed 
  examining their surroundings. The bronze 
  man had devoted a great deal of his life to 
  science. And no scientist, in a place like this, 
  could think of much else. 
  They 
  found 
  some 
  bundles 
  of 
  supplies in the plane which were tied with 
  quarter-inch manila rope; they used this line 
  to securely bind Fancife and Two Wink. 
  “What about Tercio?” Chris queried. 
  Doc frowned at Tercio. The man had 
  not been very co-operative at any time. 
  “We will tie him, too.” 
  They finished roping Tercio without 
  anything happening. The air was warm and 
  moist, much like a tropical jungle. The light 
  was bright, but since it did not come from 
  overhead, it was more like sunlight of late 
  afternoon, except that now that their eyes 
  had become accustomed to it, they realized 
  there was a definite bluish quality to the 
  luminance. 
  Chris Columbus looked all around, 
  obviously trying to find words to express what 
  he thought of the spot. He grinned foolishly, 
  because he could think of nothing adequate. 
  “Isn’t this the damnedest place?” he 
  muttered finally. 
  There was no sky overhead; only a 
  somber darkness, almost indistinguishable in 
  the mists of distance, showed them where 
  there must be the arching stone of the 
  ceiling. 
  “What keeps the ceiling from falling 
  down?” Chris asked hollowly. 
  Instead of answering, Doc Savage 
  took several tentative steps. He had noticed 
  that he felt remarkably light on his feet. He 
  jumped. The little leap sent him sailing 
  several feet, although he did not put forth 
  much effort. 
  “Try jumping,” he suggested. 
  Chris leaped—and managed to jump 
  fully as high as his own head from a flat-
  footed start. “For the love of a kangaroo!” he 
  exploded. 
  “Gravity probably keeps the ceiling 
  up,” Doc Savage said slowly. “Science, to tell 
  the truth, has very few proven theories about 
  gravity. One of the theories that gravity is the 
  attraction of mass—in other words, you get a 
  sufficiently large body of matter together, and 
  you have gravity. Once the theory was even 
  advanced that if the world was hollow, you 
  could walk around on the inside of the shell, 
  due to gravity being a mass attraction.” 
  “In other words, the mass of stone 
  over the ceiling is sufficient to create its own 
  gravity and become self-supporting?” 
  “To a certain extent.” 
  Decimo Tercio grunted, said: “That 
  probably explains it. You can climb up the 
  walls, and even crawl around on the ceiling, if 
  you have handholds that will support you. 
  Some of the animals do that, and I’ve 
  watched them. If they come loose, they 
  barely fall for a time, then fall faster as they 
  get away from the mass attraction of the 
  ceiling.” 
  “How big is this place?” Doc asked. 
  “It’s another world, almost.” Tercio 
  frowned. “You can believe that, or not, as you 
  wish.” 
  Doc Savage looked at Tercio. “We 
  might as well straighten out your part in this. 
  You have been here before, haven’t you?” 
  Tercio hesitated. 
  “Yes,” he said finally. “I see no need 
  of keeping the existence of the place secret.” 
  “How did you get here?” 
  “I was attempting a trans-polar flight 
  from Russia to the United States ten years or 
  so ago,” Tercio advised, “and I got into that 
  canyon which is the entrance to this place. 
  My plane wings had iced up and I couldn’t lift 
  the crate out of the canyon. I flew around in 
  there, the wings icing up, and finally knew I 
  would have to land on what I thought was the 
  bottom of the canyon.” 
  Tercio looked at them and grinned. 
  “I had several very powerful flares for 
  making an emergency landing at night,” he 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  34 
  said. “I simply tossed them out, one at a time, 
  and flew down and down by the light the 
  flares gave. Eventually, of course, I ran out of 
  flares. But I had landing lights on the plane, 
  and those helped. Eventually I got inside.” 
  “But you turned up in St. Louis,” Doc 
  reminded. 
  “Sure.” Tercio moved his jaw to 
  indicate the weird world surrounding them. 
  “You’ve seen those flying things. You think 
  you’ve seen something. Well, you haven’t. 
  Not yet. This is an incredible place, and 
  without a high-powered rifle, you’re helpless. 
  There’s even lots of places where a rifle 
  won’t help you. But to clip a lot of 
  explanation—I need rifles and ammunition. 
  So I trapped some furs, distilled some fuel for 
  my plane myself—I’m a chemist of sorts—
  and headed for the outside world. I made it, 
  landed in St. Louis, and was trying to peddle 
  the furs when”—he glared at Fancife, Two 
  Wink and Chris Columbus—”this trouble all 
  started.” 
  Doc glanced at Chris, who nodded. 
  “That’s probably the truth,” Chris 
  said. 
  The bronze man stared about, and 
  his scientific curiosity got the better of him. 
  “Before we go any farther,” he said 
  abruptly, “I am going to take a look at this 
  place. Chris, can you fly a plane?” 
  “Fairly well,” Chris admitted. “I did fur 
  trading in the north, flying a great deal in one 
  of the company planes. That was when I first 
  met Fancife. Our companies teamed us up in 
  order to save money.” 
  Doc 
  said: 
  “In 
  case 
  of 
  an 
  emergency—if some large animal should 
  rush out into the clearing—you can take the 
  plane into the air, and return later to pick me 
  up?” 
  “Right.” 
  The bronze man removed one of his 
  equipment boxes—it contained everything he 
  had saved from his plane—from the rear 
  portion of the ship where he and Chris had 
  been hidden. He noticed Chris staring at him, 
  so he patted the box and said, “Machine 
  pistol and ammunition,” in explanation. 
  Chris nodded and watched the 
  bronze man walk across the clearing and 
  vanish into the strange jungle, much of which 
  was comprised of fernlike plants attaining a 
  height of fifty and sixty feet. 
   
   
  CHRIS 
  COLUMBUS, 
  once 
  Doc 
  Savage was out of sight, became suddenly 
  conscious that he was very much alone in a 
  remarkably queer world. He frowned and put 
  out his jaw at his own fears. But it was a little 
  difficult to self-administer a hypodermic of 
  nerve. 
  There was not stillness. There had 
  not, at any time since they stopped the plane 
  motor, been stillness. There was a steady 
  and monotonous undertone of sound, such a 
  far-off bedlam as might have been made by a 
  waterfall in a deep canyon. 
  Tercio noticed Chris listening. “That’s 
  the animals,” he said. 
  “Huh?” Chris stared blankly. 
  “The noise never stops,” Tercio said 
  dryly. “It goes on and on, and sometimes it is 
  louder. You see, the sounds travel up and 
  are reflected back from the stone ceiling, I 
  guess. Anyway, there’s always a kind of 
  roaring in this place. You get used to it.” 
  “Is it—dangerous?” 
  Tercio laughed. Not pleasantly. “It’s 
  about the most dangerous damn place you 
  can imagine.” 
  “Why?” 
  “You remember reading about how 
  the world was millions of years ago, when 
  prehistoric 
  monsters 
  as 
  big 
  as 
  office 
  buildings were wandering around? You 
  probably imagined what a tough time the 
  poor caveman was having along about then, 
  didn’t you? Well, it gives you some idea.” 
  “Animals the size of office buildings? 
  You’re exaggerating, aren’t you?” 
  “Maybe. You be your own judge.” 
  Fancife had been lying there, utter 
  hate in his eyes as he watched Chris. Now 
  something else came over his face. A 
  cunning expression. 
  “Lanta,” Fancife said, “was nice, too.” 
  Chris jumped, glowered. “All right!” 
  he snapped. “Leave her out of it!” 
  Fancife began laughing then, in a 
  way that drove Chris into a maddened rage. 
  Chris flung over, struck Fancife in the face. 
  Fancife blew blood off his crushed 
  lips, said: “If I wasn’t tied up, you couldn’t do 
  that!” 
  Chris snarled: “I’m gonna untie you! 
  Then I’m gonna beat you to death!” 
  Chris then wrenched the rope off 
  Fancife’s wrists and ankles. He kicked 
  Fancife contemptuously, said, “Get up, you 
  dirty wart!” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  35 
  Without rising, Fancife lunged. His 
  fingers clamped Chris’ ankles. He wrenched; 
  Chris went down. Ordinarily, that would have 
  been merely the beginning of a rough-and-
  tumble fight. 
  But Two Wink was ready, had his 
  legs drawn up. Two Wink was wearing heavy 
  shoes. When he kicked, the shoes crashed 
  against Chris’ head like two clubs. Chris 
  sagged. Fancife hit him, swung terrific rights 
  and lefts as fast as he could. Two Wink kept 
  kicking. 
  “You’ll kill him!” Tercio yelled. 
  “Swell,” Fancife snarled, and kept on 
  kicking. 
  Exhaustion did more than pity to 
  make the two men finally stop beating Chris. 
  They sprawled back, and Fancife began 
  untying Two Wink. Chris was a twisted ruin 
  from which strings of scarlet dribbled. 
  Two Wink pointed at Chris, asked, 
  “We gonna leave him here for some animal 
  to eat?” 
  “No.” 
  Fancife 
  shook 
  his 
  head. 
  “Heave him in the plane. If he wakes up, we’ll 
  put the screws on him. I would like to know if 
  he left any written record back in the United 
  States that might cause the law to put the 
  shuck on us later.” 
  “What about Doc Savage?” 
  “We 
  should 
  worry 
  about 
  him.” 
  Fancife got behind the controls. 
  Tercio said sharply: “This is terrible 
  country! Savage won’t live long if you go 
  away and leave him alone here!” 
  “That’ll be great!” Fancife said. 
  The plane crawled moaning across 
  the clearing and slanted up into the air. 
   
   
  Chapter XIII 
  THE CAVE 
   
  DOC SAVAGE did not dash out into 
  the clearing, although he heard the plane 
  motor 
  give 
  its 
  first 
  noisy 
  growl. 
  He 
  remembered that he had warned Chris to 
  take the air if any dangerous animal 
  appeared. He supposed that was what was 
  happening. Discovery that he was mistaken 
  came when he reached the edge of the 
  jungle and stared out. 
  The plane was not circling; it slanted 
  steadily upward, departing. There was no 
  animal in the clearing, no visible danger. The 
  plane kept going. Finally it disappeared. 
  Marooned! There wasn’t the slightest 
  doubt of it. 
  The bronze man drew back in the 
  jungle, moving with care not to make any 
  sound. Rankness of the growth about him 
  was astounding. And most of it would have 
  been completely strange, except that he had 
  given a great deal of attention to studying 
  prehistoric forms of plant life. Because his 
  previous knowledge was limited to what 
  scientists had been able to deduce from 
  fossilized 
  fragments, 
  specimens 
  found 
  preserved in asphalt pits or elsewhere, the 
  bronze man’s interest in studying the 
  surroundings firsthand was intense. 
  He had—literally, except for time—
  been transported to a prehistoric world. On 
  every hand, wherever he looked, there were 
  growing plants, the nature of which it had 
  taken scientists long study to determine. And 
  science, Doc Savage was interested in 
  noting, had made a sizable number of 
  mistakes. 
  For the most part, the growth was 
  composed of ferns or fernlike plants, the size 
  of these ranging from tiny things a fraction of 
  an inch in length, up to monsters that were 
  the size of any tree on the outer earth. There 
  were creepers, amazing tangles of them. And 
  because 
  there 
  was 
  a 
  great 
  deal 
  of 
  moisture—the air seemed damply saturated, 
  and frequently light mists fell—there was a 
  quantity 
  of 
  fungus 
  growth 
  similar 
  to 
  mushrooms, although some of these also 
  attained almost comical size. 
  The bronze man had by now formed 
  a theory of how the strange world could exist. 
  The matter of light, for instance—if he was 
  not mistaken, it came from some volcanic 
  crevasse, where vapors escaped with blazing 
  incandescence 
  that 
  reached 
  such 
  a 
  temperature that the light had most of the 
  qualities of ordinary sunlight. 
  Plant life ordinarily did not flourish 
  without sunlight. Therefore, this light must 
  have the properties of sunbeams. Moreover, 
  the intense flame—he removed his watch 
  crystal 
  and 
  carefully 
  smoked 
  it, 
  then 
  examined the distant “sun” through this 
  makeshift sunglass—appeared to be blazing 
  atop a cone that extended, like the peak of a 
  volcano, several thousand feet above the 
  floor of the strange world. 
  Light must come from the thing 
  continuously, so that there was no night, but 
  always daytime. That this was true was 
  indicated by the distorted fashion in which 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  36 
  the vegetation grew. Like plants in the outer 
  world, all green growth here extended toward 
  the sun to some extent, which meant that 
  trees and ferns grew upward, then sharply in 
  the direction of the light. The effect was that 
  of a terrific wind sweeping the place. 
  The bronze man’s interest in the 
  unique surroundings nearly cost his life. 
  Came a loud crashing behind him. 
  He sprang aside, barely managed to let a 
  great form go crashing past. 
  The instant the bronze man saw the 
  thing, he felt a cold wash of horror, and 
  awareness that death was very close. 
   
   
  THE animal resembled a starved cat, 
  except that its length was fully sixteen feet 
  from blunt whiskers to the tip of its tail. It had 
  an oversized head, definitely feline, with 
  huge jaws equipped with fangs that projected 
  fully a foot past the gums. 
  The bronze man thought, “Saber-
  tooth!” and moved as he had never moved 
  before. 
  The tiger—it was undoubtedly a type 
  of prehistoric saber-tooth tiger—had landed 
  in a huge bed of coarse ferns. It wallowed 
  there for a moment. Plainly the giant cat was 
  confused, being unaccustomed to having 
  quarry evade it by a process of thinking. 
  These prehistoric animals, having very little 
  brain capacity, probably did not have 
  sufficient gumption to dodge a foe. And 
  certainly they did not move quickly. This big 
  cat 
  was 
  slow 
  getting 
  organized 
  and 
  relocating its quarry. 
  Doc had taken to the tallest handy 
  tree fern. The thing towered all of fifty feet, 
  but he doubted that its height was sufficient. 
  His doubts proved correct. The saber-tooth 
  leaped, failed to quite reach him. But the 
  great weight of the cat crashing into the tree 
  all but dislodged the bronze man. 
  As the giant cat slammed back to 
  earth, Doc was probably more frightened 
  than at any time in his career. It was as if he 
  was undergoing a hideous experience from a 
  nightmare. 
  Doc 
  had 
  thrust 
  one 
  of 
  the 
  supermachine pistols into his belt, first 
  removing the drum of mercy bullets from it 
  and charging it with explosive slugs. He 
  unlimbered the weapon now—latching it in 
  single-shot position, because he had no idea 
  how long his supply of cartridges must last—
  and fired. 
  The blast of the exploding bullet was 
  much louder than the report as it was 
  discharged. 
  The 
  slug 
  struck 
  the 
  tiger 
  squarely, and the blast ripped away a good 
  part of the skull. 
  Smallness of the brain capacity of 
  the animal was instantly evident by the 
  slowness with which the frightful monster 
  died. It pitched around furiously, even made 
  another leap at the fern, once more almost 
  dislodging Doc. It was making noises now, 
  great bawlings and roarings and snarlings. 
  Doc held the machine pistol ready, in 
  case he should have to fire again—which 
  was unfortunate. Had he thrust the gun in his 
  belt, he might have saved it. 
  With 
  a 
  great 
  uproar 
  in 
  the 
  underbrush, a reptilian hulk appeared. This 
  one was huge, as dark and animated as a 
  freight locomotive, and about the same size. 
  It also made similar snorting noises. No 
  doubt the sounds made by the injured saber-
  tooth had attracted this reptilian monstrosity. 
  Doc eyed the onrushing hobgoblin of 
  a thing with wide-eyed astonishment. It must 
  be a tyrannosaurus, a species of carnivorous 
  reptile believed by science to be one of the 
  most fearsome killing machines that ever 
  stalked the earth. This one differed in some 
  respects from the animals science had 
  created, but in major respects it was the 
  same. 
  The length of this one was more than 
  thirty feet, which gave no real idea of the 
  thing. It had a body thicker and longer than 
  any elephant Doc had ever seen. The body 
  was not fat, but gaunt and starved. Its 
  covering was a plated armor somewhat 
  similar to scales. The two rear legs were 
  enormously 
  overdeveloped, 
  like 
  a 
  kangaroo’s, and also after the fashion of a 
  kangaroo, this thing used its thick tail to 
  balance itself. Both front legs were less 
  developed, and terminated in hideously long 
  steel-hard claws which turned inward; the 
  front legs, it was plain, were used for 
  grasping and holding prey. 
  The head was revolving. With the 
  mouth closed, it resembled the head of a 
  fantastic snake. The jaws, when they 
  opened, proved to hold innumerable teeth 
  that were like a bed of dirty white needles, 
  each as long and thick as a good-sized 
  dagger. 
  The tyrannosaurus evidently was 
  mortal enemy of the saber-tooth. It charged, 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  37 
  trampled the saber-tooth, and came on to 
  crash into the tree fern. 
   
   
  From the tree, Doc eyed the strange creature—
  evidently a tyrannosaurus, a prehistoric reptilian 
  monstrosity! 
   
  The shock of the monster hitting the 
  tree fern was greater than anything Doc 
  Savage had expected. There was a horrible 
  instant when the bronze man was sure he 
  had been torn entirely free. He clutched 
  frantically. So frantically that he had to drop 
  the machine pistol. 
  The machine pistol fell and landed 
  on the ground. The tyrannosaurus proceeded 
  to trample it. The pistol mechanism was 
  delicate. The prehistoric reptilian creature 
  must have weighed dozens of tons. 
   
   
  LOSS of the pistol would be—if the 
  tyrannosaurus chanced to notice Doc—a 
  minor difficulty. Doc remained very still, arms 
  clamped about the fern. He was above the 
  reptile, higher than the thing could reach 
  when it stood on its powerful rear legs. But it 
  could get him with a slight jump. Or, with its 
  fabulous weight, it could easily ride down the 
  fern, to the uppermost fronds of which Doc 
  clung. 
  But the tyrannosaurus was interested 
  in the saber-tooth. It reached down and bit 
  the tiger, crunching the heavy bones of the 
  thing so that they broke with audible noises. 
  It emitted a roar, an earsplitting 
  frightsome noise that was a combination of 
  steamship siren and dying dog. That noise, 
  Doc reflected, was an interesting scientific 
  phenomenon. It had been believed by some 
  authorities that these reptilian monsters were 
  incapable of making a noise; evidently that 
  was an error. 
  The tyrannosaurus abruptly picked 
  up the tiger body in its great jaws and 
  bounded away, traveling with ungainly leaps, 
  stopping frequently to peer about. 
  Cautiously—he now had about as 
  much respect for this place as a man could 
  get—Doc clambered down out of the fern. 
  The machine pistol, when he finally 
  found it, was hopelessly ruined! 
  It was his only weapon! 
  The bronze man had concealed his 
  equipment case in the jungle not far distant. 
  He went to it. The case contained nothing 
  that would serve as a weapon, unfortunately, 
  so he did not open it. He slung the case over 
  his back, pack fashion, using the straps 
  provided for that purpose. 
  The idea of being unarmed in this 
  phantasmagoria of a place was not pleasant. 
  As he crept along—he was as human as the 
  next man—he had a great deal of difficulty 
  with his courage. Fear wanted to overwhelm 
  him. Complete panic surged at his nerves. 
  He had an almost overwhelming desire to 
  surrender 
  sanity 
  and 
  plunge 
  shrieking 
  through the fabulous jungle. 
   
   
   
  When he discovered that something 
  was following him, it was almost a relief. It 
  was genuine danger, something solid that his 
  senses could recognize and grapple. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  38 
  There were two of the animals, he 
  thought at first. Then he knew there were 
  more of them. Thirty or forty at least. 
  They were not large. Two feet long, 
  perhaps, with lean arched bodies. Somewhat 
  like weasels, although the heads were 
  shaped differently, the snouts being turned 
  back, 
  bulldog 
  fashion, 
  and 
  the 
  teeth 
  projecting outward rather than down. 
  He stared when he saw the first one. 
  The fur! It was amazingly luxurious 
  fur, and familiar. The truth struck him, and 
  somehow it was as astonishing as anything 
  else that had happened. 
  These were the animals that bore 
  skins such as Decimo Tercio had brought to 
  the St. Louis fur market! 
   
   
  ONE of the animals came close, 
  stared at Doc with small evil eyes. Then it 
  leaped. Its leap was prodigious, and it came 
  headfirst, its head extended and jaws wide, 
  so that the strange teeth would be driven into 
  his body by the striking impact. 
  The bronze man had picked up a 
  club. He used that, knocked the weasellike 
  animal aside. It landed in the nearby brush, 
  kicked around, then came out again. 
  Another animal appeared. That one 
  also leaped, and Doc used the club. That 
  one, too, seemed little affected by the club 
  blow. 
  The unpleasant realization dawned 
  on the bronze man that these things were 
  very difficult to kill, no doubt due to the 
  underdeveloped 
  mental 
  and 
  nervous 
  systems. 
  He shouted, threshed about with the 
  club. The noise did not disturb them. 
  Doc took to the most convenient tree 
  fern. He selected one with no branches for 
  some distance, a trunk so smooth that he 
  shinned up only with difficulty. Also, he 
  picked a refuge that was close to other trees 
  into which he could swing if it became 
  necessary. That was fortunate. 
  The animals climbed up after him 
  with less trouble than he had encountered. 
  From his height, the bronze man 
  could distinguish many more of the animals 
  that had come up silently. A huge pack of 
  them, numbering scores. 
  The animals, he had concluded, 
  were some prehistoric and distorted form of 
  bloodsucking rodent, possibly ancestor to the 
  weasel. From the unique shape of their jaws, 
  he could guess how they killed—they simply 
  attacked a larger animal by striking, after 
  which they hung on like huge leeches and 
  sucked sustenance. 
  Doc ran lightly along a frond, leaped, 
  landed in the adjacent tree fern. From that, 
  he swung to another fern. This form of 
  progress did not bother him greatly; he 
  managed it with almost simian ability. The 
  greatest danger was that he might misjudge 
  the strength of a handhold, not knowing the 
  exact nature of the growth, and go crashing a 
  dizzy distance to earth. 
  His enormous physical strength was 
  standing him well—without the physical 
  training, two hours of intense exercise each 
  day since childhood, which had given him 
  muscular development of almost animal 
  ability, he would have faced a large 
  handicap. 
  However, he tired eventually, and 
  paused to rest. Immediately, the hideous little 
  animals began climbing up to him. 
  Conscious of a growing desperation, 
  the bronze man went on, slid suddenly to the 
  ground, and went racing through the jungle. It 
  was his hope that he might outrun the things. 
  But that failed. The animals were equipped 
  with the scent-following ability of hounds. 
  More and more worried, he sought 
  vainly for a stream. He could enter water, 
  throw the things off the scent in that fashion. 
  But he came upon no stream. 
  Realizing he could not outrun the 
  bloodthirsty little animal vampires on the 
  ground—they were almost upon him—the 
  bronze man again took to the trees. He 
  moved slowly, conserving his strength, 
  waiting until the animals climbed up into one 
  tree before he swung into another. It was 
  exasperating, as well as frightening, with all 
  his scientific ability, he could not devise a 
  method of escaping the animals. 
  There was higher ground ahead, a 
  wilderness of rocks that thrust above the 
  adjacent prehistoric jungle, naked except for 
  scattered spots of rank moss. 
  Doc noted crevices high among the 
  rocks, apertures that seemed to be natural 
  caves. He made for them. If he could get 
  inside a cave, and perhaps bar the entrance 
  with stones, he might get some badly needed 
  rest. 
  Eventually reaching the stony peak, 
  he quitted the last of the trees, and 
  summoning strength, dashed forward. Almost 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  39 
  at once, he found a cave such as he desired. 
  Literally not more than a hole in the stone. 
  He grasped his club for defense 
  against the animals, should one come, 
  turned around and backed into the cave, and 
  almost at once he was seized with great 
  violence. 
   
   
  Chapter XIV 
  LANTA 
   
  THE bronze man had listened and 
  heard nothing. He had sniffed, and detected 
  no animal odor. So he had naturally 
  presumed the cave to be empty. When 
  hands took hold of him, he was completely 
  astounded. 
  Hands! 
  They 
  were 
  hands! 
  He 
  whirled—thinking: What incredible creature 
  could this be? And saw a vast torso draped 
  in a saber-tooth hide. Attached to that was a 
  pair of arms that might have been walking 
  beams for an oil-drill rig, with hands that were 
  blunt-fingered and obviously apish, but 
  incredibly strong. The head was a cone, 
  somewhat hairy, with a mouth at the lower 
  edge, ears that were rather animallike and 
  pointed, a nose that was not much. 
  Some kind of primitive man, slightly 
  advanced from the ape stages, Doc decided; 
  probably 
  not 
  much 
  mentally, 
  but 
  an 
  astounding physical specimen. 
  He struck at the fellow, a good left 
  hook that landed squarely. The other barked, 
  sat down. Instantly, there was a rush from 
  behind, and hands pinioned the bronze man. 
  The fight that followed was short, Doc 
  landing only one blow; then he was flat on 
  the stone floor, and at least six men were 
  astride him. 
  One of the bloodthirsty little animals 
  that had been following Doc now appeared in 
  the door. It made a sound that was more hiss 
  than whistle, and shot forward. 
  The primitive men whooped out in 
  chorus—not in fright, but in glee. Other 
  apish-looking fellows like themselves came 
  dashing from the back of the cave. 
  They 
  fell 
  upon 
  the 
  bloodthirsty 
  animals and wielded clubs. There was a 
  good deal of gleeful howling. 
  Doc watched them closely and 
  concluded the skins of the animals must be a 
  particular prize for clothing. The slaughter of 
  the bloodthirsty rodents continued until the 
  things finally fled. The apish men pursued 
  them a short distance, but not far, then 
  returned to the cave. 
  They were as pleased as children, 
  for which Doc was glad. When they had first 
  seized him, their humor had been ferocious. 
  He watched them gathering up the animals 
  which they had killed, and dragging them 
  together in a pile, evidently for a communal 
  division of the spoils. 
  Finally, a man came over to him, 
  looked down and made a gobbling noise that 
  was probably some statement. The words 
  were totally unintelligible. Their language 
  seemed to consist of grunts, shouts and 
  barks of varying volume. 
  The man must have remarked on 
  Doc’s clothes, for the others gathered 
  around. They showed great interest in the 
  cloth of which his garments were fashioned. 
  Man after man fingered the whipcord of his 
  shirt, and put fingers in his pockets, the 
  pockets in particular seeming to intrigue 
  them. Suddenly, over in a corner, a fight 
  broke out. 
   
   
  THE fight began, as might be 
  expected, over division of the spoils of the 
  recent slaughter fest among the vicious but 
  fine-furred little animals. One of the gorillalike 
  men had walked over and calmly began to 
  gather up all the animals he could carry, 
  obviously with the idea of carrying them off. 
  There was immediately a rather 
  pitiful silence. Doc Savage was puzzled for a 
  moment, then understood the reason. This 
  fellow who was appropriating more than his 
  share was the bully of the tribe; the others 
  were afraid of him. 
  His 
  name, 
  Doc 
  concluded 
  by 
  listening, was “Aulf.” 
  Aulf was a giant of near Doc 
  Savage’s stature. He had the most powerful 
  type 
  of 
  shoulders—sloping 
  rather 
  than 
  square—which are characteristic of apes and 
  monkeys. He had almost no hips. His arms 
  and legs were beams. He had practically no 
  head above his eyebrows. 
  Aulf was not only the bully of the 
  tribe. He was a temperamental fellow, it 
  suddenly developed. 
  Apparently he didn’t like the peculiar 
  silence that had greeted his hogging the 
  game. For he suddenly picked up a club—
  some of them carried short spears and 
  atlatls, or throwing sticks, but most of them 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  40 
  preferred clubs—and dashed for the nearest 
  group. They scattered. 
  Aulf jumped up and down, beat his 
  chest, flourished his club, and bellowed. He 
  strutted a few circles to show his command 
  of the situation, after which, greatly pleased 
  with himself, he returned to his loot. 
  As an afterthought, Aulf strode over 
  to Doc Savage’s equipment case, which had 
  been dislodged in the fight and was lying on 
  the floor, and added this to his possessions. 
  Doc Savage was now seized by the 
  arm and hauled along after the others. One 
  apish fellow remained behind at the cave 
  mouth, on guard. 
  The caves were partly natural, partly 
  the result of hand-work. The stone was a soft 
  type, easily worked with crude tools. 
  Doc was hauled through several 
  connecting passages, the way being lighted 
  by old women who carried torches. The very 
  old women seemed to have no duty except 
  that of torch bearers; the elderly crones were 
  continually dashing hither and yon in answer 
  to howled demands for a torch given by 
  some furry low-browed male cave dweller. 
  Aulf—he was leading the way—
  came to a large stone lying across an 
  aperture in the floor and held in place by a 
  heavy tree trunk. He leaned down, grasped 
  the tree trunk and lifted it off the rock, then 
  straightened and scowled around at the 
  others as if daring any of them to perform 
  such a feat of strength. 
  When the rock was moved aside, a 
  hole in the floor was disclosed. Doc was 
  jammed through this aperture, and dropped. 
  He fell perhaps ten feet, landed on dust-
  covered stone. 
  “Hello,” a strange voice said in 
  English. 
   
   
  IT was a woman’s voice, and she 
  spoke the word in a way that showed English 
  was an unaccustomed tongue. Doc turned 
  slowly, waiting for his eyes to become 
  adapted to the deeper murk. 
  She was a long golden girl who 
  would have been very appropriate on a 
  magazine cover. Her figure—the abbreviated 
  fur frock showed plenty of it—was exquisite. 
  She was a girl who would have looked bright 
  and intelligent in the most sophisticated 
  company; after the bestial faces of the apish 
  people, 
  meeting 
  this 
  girl 
  was 
  like 
  encountering sunlight after darkness. 
  “Lanta.” She tilted a finger at herself 
  so Doc would understand. “I am Lanta.” 
  Doc looked beyond her. 
  “Who are the others?” he asked. 
  Lanta 
  smiled 
  sadly. 
  “They 
  are 
  members of my tribe who have had bad luck, 
  like myself.” 
  Doc examined the men and women 
  who were beyond the girl. They were 
  standing; apparently they had gathered to 
  satisfy their curiosity as to who had been 
  tossed down through the hole to join them. 
  They were well-built people, long-
  legged and long-armed, with rather high 
  foreheads and other evidences of a fair 
  grade 
  of 
  intelligence. 
  Very 
  similar 
  to 
  Americans, 
  except 
  that 
  their 
  physical 
  development was greater than that of the 
  average Yank. There were no double chins, 
  no beer paunches among them. 
  “They speak English?” Doc asked. 
  “Some of them,” Lanta said. 
  The bronze man was bursting with 
  one question and he had to get it out. “How 
  do you happen to speak English?” 
  Changing to very poor Russian, the 
  girl said: “Some of us speak this language as 
  well.” 
  A possible answer struck the bronze 
  man. 
  “Decimo Tercio?” he asked. 
  The girl looked completely blank. 
  “Veselich 
  Vengarinotskovi?” 
  Doc 
  suggested, using Decimo Tercio’s real name. 
  Lanta started; her eyes went wide. 
  “You know him?” 
  “Yes.” 
  “He come to this place long ago,” the 
  girl explained. “He know two languages and 
  he teach them to us in return for being taught 
  our own.” 
  That, Doc reflected, checks in with 
  everything else. He looked about, decided 
  they were all in what amounted to a prison. 
  The only light came from a sputtering torch 
  jammed in a niche in the wall. The air was 
  fairly pure, so there must be ventilating 
  apertures. 
  He inquired, “We are prisoners?” 
  “Yes.” Lanta nodded. “You are with 
  us now. We are all prisoners. In your 
  language, there is a word . . . slaves. Yes, 
  that is it—slaves.” 
  “You mean slaves of these low-
  browed clowns?” Doc demanded. 
  “Yes.” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  41 
  The bronze man shook his head 
  incredulously. “But they have almost no 
  brains at all! Why do you submit to being 
  prisoners?” 
  Lanta was a little offended. “We are 
  outnumbered,” she snapped. “And one 
  person does not venture alone into the jungle 
  to return to my people.” 
  Doc Savage studied the others for a 
  while and formed his own private opinion that 
  their spirit had been broken, that they were 
  shy on courage. The girl, Lanta, seemed to 
  be an exception, however. 
   
   
  THE bronze man got up and tugged 
  the torch from its niche and made a search of 
  the prison. Except for the darkness, the place 
  was not unpleasant, although by no stretch of 
  the imagination could it be called luxurious. If 
  there was any escape, it would have to be 
  through the ceiling hole. 
  Doc 
  questioned 
  Lanta, 
  learning 
  much that interested him. Primarily, he 
  discovered that the girl and the other 
  prisoners belonged to a tribe of much more 
  advanced caliber which resided to the right 
  and toward the Light. The people lived in a 
  valley, it seemed, which they had barricaded 
  against 
  the 
  prehistoric 
  monsters 
  that 
  inhabited this strange world. 
  They lived by farming, and by raising 
  certain 
  animals 
  which 
  they 
  had 
  domesticated, their existence being idyllic 
  and comfortable, untroubled by danger 
  except from occasional huge pterodactyls 
  which came prowling singly or in groups. 
  Safety from the pterodactyls was secured by 
  dashing under shelters that were erected 
  conveniently. The stupidity of the flying 
  monsters made them easily avoided. 
  Doc had an archaeologist’s interest 
  in the origin of the two races—how Lanta’s 
  people 
  came 
  to 
  differ 
  so 
  greatly 
  in 
  intelligence from the stupid cavemen who 
  now 
  held 
  them 
  prisoners. 
  Questioning 
  evolved a theory in his mind. 
  Legends of Lanta’s tribe had it that 
  their ancestors had been sent by a deity, the 
  name of which roughly translated to the 
  Frozen Lord of All that is Elsewhere, sent as 
  a peace offering to the deity of the Light. 
  It took no great stretch of imagination 
  to surmise that Lanta’s ancestors had 
  wandered in from the arctic wilderness. 
  As for the apish fellows who held 
  them prisoner, they were true natives of the 
  place. They were ancestors of the human 
  race who had reached caveman status, and 
  advanced no further, due to the fact that 
  conditions in which they lived had never 
  changed. 
  The altering condition of the world, 
  evolutionists agreed—the passing of the 
  warm age and the coming of the ice age, the 
  end of the ice age and the ensuing cycles of 
  climatic change—were largely responsible for 
  the change in animal and plant life which 
  occupied the surface of the planet. 
  Doc asked Lanta abruptly, “Do you 
  know Chris Columbus?” 
  “I—yes,” the girl said. Then suddenly 
  she was gripping the bronze man’s arm. 
  “Where is he? He isn’t here?” 
   
   
  Chapter XV 
  THE FIGHT 
   
  LANTA’S intense interest, the tight 
  emotion in her voice, was disturbing. Doc 
  hesitated, uncertain just what he should say. 
  “Where is he?” Lanta asked tensely. 
  “Then you know him?” Doc parried. 
  Lanta nodded. Her eyes were bright. 
  There was joy back of her excitement. 
  “A long time ago”—she paused and 
  the movement of her lips indicated she was 
  estimating the time measured in English 
  terms—”it must have been nearly two years 
  ago, I was made a prisoner by these 
  cavemen. I escaped, and tried to make my 
  way through the jungle. I had a terrible time, 
  and finally was forced to flee. I fled for a long 
  distance, and finally came to where the air 
  was very cold, and there was a great 
  crevasse. I climbed up this. I climbed for a 
  long time, until my food and the water I had 
  brought were almost exhausted. And finally I 
  was out in a different world.” She gazed at 
  the bronze man. “Your own world.” 
  “Tercio—the 
  Russian 
  flier—must 
  have told you of such an outer world,” Doc 
  suggested. 
  “Yes. That is why I kept going up the 
  crevasse. It was hard climbing, but I wanted 
  to reach the other world of which he had told 
  us.” 
  “And what happened?” 
  “I did not like it. The air was very 
  cold. And there was—what you call it?—
  snow. White frozen water—snow. And the 
  animals for food—they were very hard to 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  42 
  catch. I was very discouraged. And . . . and 
  then I met two men.” 
  “Two?” 
  “One was Chris Columbus.” Lanta’s 
  voice softened and her eyes were gentle as 
  she spoke Chris’ name. 
  “And the other?” 
  “One named Wilmer Fancife.” A 
  coldness and an utter hate came into the 
  girl’s manner. “He was a terrible man, this 
  Fancife. He was worse than . . . than Aulf, 
  the bully of this tribe of cavern men.” 
  Doc had reached some conclusions 
  by now. And thereby a great many things 
  were made clear. 
  “You 
  fell 
  in 
  love 
  with 
  Chris 
  Columbus,” he suggested. 
  Lanta nodded gently. “I am not 
  ashamed of it. He was very good, and nice.” 
  She put up her chin. “And he loved me. I am 
  sure of it.” 
  Doc said quietly: “Yes, he loves you. 
  He has been trying to find this place ever 
  since, that he might return to you. He has 
  risked his life in doing so.” 
  The girl, deeply moved, murmured, “I 
  am glad.” 
  “But 
  what 
  happened? 
  What 
  separated you?” 
  “Fancife,” Lanta said grimly. 
  “He wanted the furs?” 
  “The furs I was wearing—yes, the 
  whole trouble was over those. Fancife 
  seemed to think furs such as those would be 
  terribly valuable in your world. So he asked 
  me to tell him where he could find more of 
  the furs. He suggested that we murder Chris, 
  and together have the furs to ourselves. 
  He—he was hideous.” 
  The girl was silent for a moment. She 
  shuddered at the memory. 
  “I told Chris, and the two men fought. 
  I thought Fancife had killed Chris, so I fled. I 
  came 
  back 
  into 
  the 
  crevasse, 
  and 
  descended, and tried to reach my people. 
  But I was seized by these cavern men, and I 
  have been a slave since.” 
   
   
  DOC nodded slowly. The girl’s story 
  explained Chris Columbus’ part in the 
  fantastic affair, and explained also the deadly 
  enmity between Chris and Wilmer Fancife. 
  Both Fancife and Chris had known of 
  the existence of this fantastic world, but had 
  not been able to locate the entrance. Both 
  had been searching for it, and they had left 
  word at the leading fur markets of the world 
  to be notified at the appearance of a fur such 
  as Lanta had worn. When such a fur had 
  come on the market in St. Louis, both had 
  rushed to the spot. Naturally, they had fought 
  on sight. 
  Only 
  their 
  motivations 
  differed. 
  Fancife wanted the rare fur for what it was 
  worth, which would be considerable if he 
  could bring out breeding pairs of the animals. 
  Chris had been seeking Lanta, whom 
  he loved. 
  “You understand everything?” Lanta 
  asked softly. 
  “Everything,” Doc admitted dryly, 
  “except how we are going to get out of here.” 
  “You plan escape?” 
  “Naturally.” 
  Lanta 
  nodded 
  at 
  her 
  fellow 
  tribesmen. “Many of them have tried. Usually 
  those who attempt it die. They have decided 
  it is better to go on being slaves.” 
  The bronze man said nothing, but 
  stretched out on the dusty floor. It was not 
  comfortable, but he was tired and needed 
  rest. He was asleep shortly. 
  His sleep was troubled, which was 
  something out of the ordinary, for he had 
  succeeded in accomplishing one of the most 
  difficult feats with which man is confronted—
  he had mastered the ability to attain 
  complete nervous placidity in the face of 
  most 
  circumstances. 
  He 
  could 
  keep 
  excitement from arousing him, for excitement 
  and tension were an exhausting force upon 
  his nerves. To express it simply, nothing 
  worried him—if he could help it. He had 
  managed to accomplish this control of nerve 
  placidity, and at the same time retain his 
  ambition and drive, which was a difficult 
  separation in itself, the two being different 
  qualities, but so closely associated that few 
  succeeded in making the division. 
  He 
  awakened 
  refreshed, 
  very 
  hungry. The hunger was not important, 
  because he had not yet gone without food for 
  any serious length of time. 
  Investigation showed him that the 
  roof hole was too high to reach, even 
  standing on tiptoes. Moreover, it was closed 
  with the rock, and atop this rested the heavy 
  log which Aulf had been so proud to be able 
  to move. 
  “Come here,” Doc directed some of 
  the others. “We will form a pyramid, and by 
  standing on your shoulders, I can possibly 
  move the rock.” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  43 
  To his astonishment there were no 
  takers. Escape was something with which 
  none of them cared to meddle. He tried 
  urging. No success. 
  “Let me talk to them,” Lanta said 
  grimly. 
  The girl confronted the others and 
  said a great deal, most of it sounding as if it 
  was partly vitriol. She used words to whip, 
  cajole, shame and urge. Eventually she got a 
  small froth of courage lashed up. 
  The men formed the pyramid. Doc 
  got on their shoulders, exerted force, rocked 
  the stone until the log rolled off, then shoved 
  the boulder aside and clambered out. 
  Below 
  him, 
  his 
  helpers 
  hastily 
  scattered to farther recesses of the slave 
  cave. 
  The log had made quite a crash in 
  falling. It alarmed the cavern men, and 
  several came running. Aulf was among the 
  leaders. 
  There being no avenue of flight 
  except back into the slave quarters, Doc 
  confronted them. 
  Aulf gripped his club, and came 
  forward menacingly. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE had determined upon 
  a course of action that might—or might not—
  work. 
  The 
  cavern 
  men 
  had 
  primitive 
  intellects, and from what he had seen of 
  them, he judged that they admired physical 
  bravery and strength above all else. At least, 
  they were impressed by it. The domination 
  which the huge, oafish Aulf exerted over 
  them showed that. 
  Aulf jumped up and down, ape-
  fashion. He made faces. He threw back his 
  head and roared. 
  Doc 
  did 
  the 
  same 
  thing—with 
  trimmings. Instead of merely jumping, he 
  turned several flips and handsprings, an 
  accomplishment which was made even 
  easier because of the appreciably lessened 
  force of gravity. He made faces—they must 
  have been very ferocious, judging from the 
  effects. And he yelled. 
  Aulf was as amazed as the others. 
  Then it dawned on him that he had been 
  outdone, and he launched into a fresh 
  exhibition. 
  When it came Doc’s turn, he bested 
  his previous effort. Particularly on the yelling 
  part—he added whistles, howls and several 
  Bronx cheers for effect. 
  Unfortunately, in the middle of the 
  display, it occurred to him how silly the whole 
  thing would look to a bystander, and he 
  stopped, embarrassed. 
  Aulf took the bronze man’s hesitancy 
  as a sign of defeat. 
  Bellowing his frightening best, Aulf 
  lunged in and delivered a tremendous blow 
  with his club. It was a long-armed swing, and 
  Doc ducked under it. Having ducked, he 
  stepped in and drove his fist against Aulf’s 
  solar plexus. Aulf’s stomach muscles felt as 
  hard as metal, giving him some idea of how 
  tough the fight was going to be. 
  Aulf snorted, used his club again. 
  Once more, he missed. Doc got his arms, 
  began working with jujitsu. Aulf’s apish bones 
  and ligaments were as subject to jujitsu 
  manipulation as those of an ordinary man. 
  The squalling which Aulf did was 
  remarkable. He clung to the club stubbornly, 
  but finally had to let go. 
  He had been hurt. He fell on the floor 
  and had a species of screaming spasm, 
  evidently intended to show just how angry he 
  was. 
  In the middle of Aulf’s temperamental 
  display, Doc walked over unkindly and 
  cracked him behind the ear with a fist. Aulf 
  shot to his feet, roared and rushed. 
  The fight now was distinctly one-
  sided, Aulf having no knowledge of boxing 
  science. Once he did get hold of Doc 
  Savage, and attempted to sink his teeth into 
  the bronze man’s jugular, which appeared to 
  be inside the local Queensberry rules, for the 
  spectators jumped up and down and howled 
  in excitement, thinking the fight was over. 
  Aulf had a glass jaw. Doc was rather 
  glad when he discovered that, for Aulf had 
  him outclassed as to strength and endurance 
  of an animal kind. 
  A right to the jaw put Aulf down on 
  his pants. He batted his eyes, looked 
  surprised. He got up, was down again. 
  Cunningly, he tried to keep one hand over 
  the end of his jaw when he got up the next 
  time. 
  However, 
  he 
  moved 
  the 
  hand 
  instinctively when Doc feinted at his eyes, 
  and the bronze man sat him down again. 
  This time, Aulf remained sitting there 
  with his eyes closed. Doc gave him a shove, 
  and he upset, but did not move otherwise. 
  Aulf was kayoed. 
   
   
   
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  44 
   
  Doc landed a left hook squarely on  
  the big jaw of the primitive man! 
   
  THE next few minutes, Doc knew, 
  would be the most difficult of all. A wrong 
  gesture would bring the cavern men upon 
  him in a pack, and he could not hope to 
  defeat all of them. 
  Doc calmly stood on Aulf’s chest, 
  and made the loudest roaring noise he could 
  manage. He walked over, picked up Aulf’s 
  club, which was almost as formidable as a 
  wagon tongue, and shouldered the weapon. 
  He roared again. 
  He was careful to make his howling 
  sound formidable, but not insulting. And he 
  kept his eyes on the ring of stupid-looking 
  faces, watching for a sign of hostility. 
  When nothing happened—they had 
  not accepted the fact that he was to remain 
  at liberty; they were just thinking it over in 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  45 
  their snail-pace way—Doc walked over to his 
  equipment case which Aulf had appropriated. 
  He also took possession of Aulf’s pile 
  of animals, and picking them up one at a 
  time, began tossing them among the crowd 
  of cavern men. The offerings were seized 
  with pleased grunts, proving the donation 
  was a good idea. 
  Doc then opened his equipment 
  case. Aulf had not succeeded in opening the 
  thing, the matter of the lock having defied his 
  simple mind. 
  Inside the case was a portable radio 
  transmitter-receiver, and some other articles, 
  among which was a box of ordinary safety 
  matches. 
  Doc put the matches in his mouth, 
  being sure he was not noticed. Then he went 
  out and confronted the dubious cavern men. 
  He 
  performed 
  some 
  preliminary 
  chest 
  beating and handsprings, largely to get 
  attention. 
  Then he took a match out of the box 
  in his mouth and struck it, exhibiting the 
  flame. 
  Results of the performance were 
  entirely satisfactory. Three cavern men lost 
  their nerve and ran. 
  Doc returned to the mouth of the 
  slave cave and helped Lanta out. 
  “You speak their language?” he 
  asked. 
  “A little. It is mostly grunts and 
  barks.” 
  “Do they believe in any kind of a 
  deity?” Doc asked. 
  “Only in an evil spirit. They blame 
  him for all their bad luck.” 
  “Tell them,” Doc said, “that I’m him—
  the evil spirit. Tell them they are going to 
  have some very bad luck indeed if they mess 
  with me.” 
  Lanta 
  spoke—her 
  voice 
  was 
  pleasant 
  even 
  when 
  delivering 
  the 
  remarkable conglomerate of noises that was 
  the cavern-man language—and conveyed 
  the idea. She got an answer. 
  “They say,” she translated, “that they 
  will all get clubs and beat you to death if you 
  do not leave.” 
  “That’s not so good.” The bronze 
  man pondered. “Tell them,” he suggested, 
  “that I will go away peacefully if they give me 
  an offering. I want all the slaves they have.” 
  The girl conveyed this news, and 
  was answered. 
  “They don’t like the idea of losing the 
  slaves,” she said. “They want to know what 
  need you have for slaves.” 
  “Tell them I don’t like to walk. I want 
  the slaves to carry me.” 
  While Lanta was explaining this, Doc 
  Savage got a smoke grenade out of the 
  equipment case. There were a few of these, 
  quite useless as weapons—the case, in fact, 
  contained nothing that was of any value as a 
  weapon—and he thought now would be a 
  good time to use one. 
  He let the grenade ripen at his feet, 
  let the cloud of intense black smoke come up 
  and envelop him in what must have been 
  quite a spectacular effect. 
  “Tell them,” he called, “that from 
  smoke I shall become a great fire and 
  consume them if they do not listen to 
  reason.” 
  That did the trick. 
  “All right,” the girl said. “They will let 
  you take all the slaves with you.” 
   
   
  THE bronze man put a question that 
  was more serious. “Now that we’re going to 
  get free, do you think we can make it back to 
  your tribe?” 
  The girl hesitated. “It is a terrible 
  journey.” 
  “Far?” 
  “Not very. But it is through the jungle 
  where the monsters are the largest and most 
  terrible. It will take many days—and probably 
  many lives.” 
  Doc Savage nodded slowly. He was 
  thinking of his men, Monk and Ham and the 
  others, who must be wandering around 
  somewhere in the arctic vastness, wondering 
  what had happened to him. They were in the 
  other plane—they might be able to fly down 
  through the crevasse into the fantastic lost 
  world. 
  Purposely Doc had refrained from 
  any effort to communicate with his men. That 
  was because of the danger involved in any 
  attempt to enter the crevasse. When the 
  bronze man had come in, Decimo Tercio had 
  guided the plane. 
  But it began to seem that coping with 
  the situation here was going to be more than 
  a one-man job. 
  He got the portable radio out of the 
  case and moved outside. 
  Considering the extreme power of 
  the 
  little 
  radio—it 
  was 
  capable 
  of 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  46 
  communication halfway around the world—
  Monk’s voice was remarkably faint through 
  the earphones. 
  “Blazes, 
  Doc!” 
  Monk 
  exploded. 
  “What’s happened to you? We found pieces 
  of your plane scattered all over the country 
  up here. Looked as if it had been blown up. 
  And we found that Tercio’s plane, deserted. 
  What’s up?” 
  “Everything 
  all 
  right 
  with 
  you 
  fellows?” Doc asked. 
  “Sure. Where are you? You sound as 
  if you were in China.” 
  “Hold your hat.” 
  “Eh?” 
  “Hold your hat,” Doc Savage said, 
  “because you’re going to hear something 
  that’ll be a little hard to believe.” 
   
   
  Chapter XVI 
  THE DISASTER 
   
  LIEUTENANT COLONEL ANDREW 
  BLODGETT MONK MAYFAIR was furred 
  over with a remarkable growth of red hair that 
  was perpetually erect—hence his hair was 
  not actually standing on end when he 
  stepped out of Doc Savage’s plane. But all of 
  his emotions were, figuratively, on end. 
  Big-fisted 
  Renny 
  Renwick, 
  the 
  engineer, got out of the plane and peered 
  around and muttered, “Holy cow!” 
  Ham alighted looking rather dapper 
  and dubious, twirling his sword cane in a self-
  conscious fashion. He had nothing to say. 
  Johnny Littlejohn, the archaeologist 
  and geologist, made an immediate dive for 
  rock 
  specimens 
  underfoot 
  and 
  began 
  inspecting them, and peering in a baffled 
  fashion at the surrounding strange-looking 
  flora and fauna. 
  “Doc,” he gulped, “this can’t be real! 
  This is the world as it was sixty million years 
  ago!” 
  “Don’t make the mistake,” the bronze 
  man suggested dryly, “of treating any of 
  these animals around here as it they weren’t 
  real.” 
  Long Tom Roberts, the electrical 
  wizard, was the last man out of the plane. He 
  was quite calm about it. “There’s a devil of a 
  lot of static in here,” he said. Nothing ever 
  perturbed Long Tom at the right time. 
  Doc asked: “You fellows have any 
  trouble getting down that crevasse?” 
  “Lots of it,” Renny rumbled. 
  The two pets—Habeas Corpus, the 
  pet pig; Chemistry, the pet chimpanzee—
  now climbed out of the plane. They looked 
  around. Evidently they did not approve of the 
  place. They turned around suddenly and 
  climbed back into the plane. 
  Monk also peered about. 
  “Habeas has the right idea, if you ask 
  me,” the homely chemist muttered. “Say, how 
  do you get out of this place?” 
  Johnny said excitedly: “Doc, we saw 
  pterodactyls when we came in. And a dozen 
  different types of dinosaurs. Why, this place 
  is an archaeologist’s dream. A dream, I tell 
  you!” 
  “Nightmare is more like it,” Renny 
  boomed. 
  At this point, Ham suddenly broke 
  into an exaggerated howl, began to jump 
  around and clutch at his eyes. 
  “What’s the matter with you?” Long 
  Tom asked. 
  Ham pointed. 
  “I’m seeing a whole tribe of Monks!” 
  he yelled. 
  The cavern men had come and were 
  standing at a safe distance, fearfully eyeing 
  the plane. What Ham had said was true. 
  Monk could have removed most of his 
  clothing and gone over and stood among 
  them and distinctly become one of them. 
  Monk 
  did 
  not 
  appreciate 
  the 
  comparison. He scowled at Ham. 
  Doc Savage, sensing an imminent 
  and lusty quarrel, interrupted hastily. 
  “We are going to do some ferry 
  duty,” he explained. 
  “Ferry duty?” 
  The bronze man explained the 
  situation, and finished, “The slaves are free, 
  and we’re taking them back to their tribe.” 
   
   
  RENNY blocked out his big fists and 
  scrutinized them thoughtfully. “You say that 
  Fancife and Two Wink are flying around in 
  here somewhere?” 
  “Yes.” 
  “They may give us trouble.” 
  “That is very possible,” Doc admitted. 
  “On the other hand, they may capture some 
  of the fur animals and be satisfied to leave 
  the place.” 
  “In that case—what about Chris 
  Columbus?” 
  Doc Savage glanced about to be 
  sure Lanta was not in earshot. She wasn’t. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  47 
  As a matter of fact, the others hadn’t met 
  Lanta yet. 
  “The only chance Chris has to keep 
  alive,” the bronze man surmised grimly, “is to 
  refuse to tell Fancife and Two Wink whether 
  he left any documents back in St. Louis or 
  New York that would incriminate them. Oh, if 
  he is clever, he may tell them that the 
  documents are in a safe-deposit box which 
  he has to open himself, and which will be 
  opened if he does not return in a prescribed 
  length of time. That might save his life.” 
  “What gets me,” Monk said, “is why 
  Chris Columbus was so anxious to get here 
  in the first place. He didn’t seem much 
  concerned about that strange fur.” 
  Doc said, “Here comes the reason 
  now.” 
  Lanta approached. She was smiling, 
  and self-possessed, not afraid of the plane 
  because she had seen planes before the one 
  flown into the lost world by the Russian flier, 
  Tercio. 
  “Lanta,” Doc introduced. 
  The girl produced the customary 
  effect upon Monk and Ham, both of whom 
  were susceptible to feminine pulchritude. 
  Lanta’s effect was somewhat more explosive 
  than ordinary, rendering them practically 
  speechless 
  for 
  several 
  moments—after 
  which they began to talk like phonographs 
  which had lost their governors. 
  The young woman, being entirely 
  feminine, was not averse to the kind of 
  flattery which Monk and Ham could produce 
  with flowery abandon. 
  “Those 
  two 
  mashers!” 
  big-fisted 
  Renny said disgustedly. “Some day they’re 
  gonna get hooked. Wouldn’t either one of 
  them know what to do with a wife.” 
  The situation seemed to 
  worry 
  Renny, who was a professed woman hater. 
  He got Monk aside. “Holy cow! Didn’t you 
  hear Doc say she was Chris’ girl?” 
  “What of it?” Monk grinned. “Chris 
  isn’t here, is he? Anyway, the girl’s too nice 
  for that clunk.” 
  Doc Savage was watching Aulf. The 
  big fellow had regained his senses, and had 
  approached to a spot much nearer to the 
  plane and Doc’s group than the others had 
  dared to venture. At least, he had courage. 
  Aulf also had, it was soon apparent, 
  admiration for the bronze man. He shouted 
  something in his strange gobbling, barking 
  tongue. 
  “He sounds like a dog fight,” Monk 
  suggested. 
  Lanta translated for them. 
  “Aulf says,” she told Doc, “that he 
  understands you are an evil spirit, and he 
  has a great admiration for you. It seems that 
  Aulf considered he was somewhat of an evil 
  spirit himself, but that he now sees he has a 
  great deal to learn. He wants to join you and 
  become your student, I take it.” 
  Monk snorted mirth, said, “Since 
  when did you become a tutor in evil-spiriting, 
  Doc?” 
  “Tell Aulf,” Doc instructed Lanta, 
  “that we will leave him here in charge of the 
  slaves until we return later for them.” 
  “You aren’t going to take the slaves 
  with you now?” Lanta asked. 
  “We couldn’t haul them all at once,” 
  Doc reminded her. “We will have to make 
  several trips, and it would not be sensible to 
  start until we have located a landing field 
  close to the place where your tribe lives.” 
  “That’s true.” 
  “Can you guide us from the air?” 
  “It may be difficult. I’ll do my best.” 
  As the plane raced across the level 
  clearing at the edge of the jungle where it 
  had landed, the coarse primitive grass made 
  a rasping roar against the wheels. The ship 
  climbed slowly. 
  “That way,” Lanta said, and pointed. 
  Long Tom came forward to the 
  cockpit. He was interested in knowing what 
  effect the surroundings were having upon the 
  magnetic compass. He had his own theories 
  to advance, and he collared Renny, the 
  engineer, as a listener. Renny proved to be a 
  reluctant auditor, being more interested in the 
  physical wonders of the lost world than in any 
  of the more obtuse phenomena to be 
  encountered there. 
  Monk craned his head out of a 
  window. Suddenly he yanked it back. 
  “Blazes!” he yelled. “There’s an 
  animal down there with a neck a mile long!” 
  Ham peered. “Exaggerated a little, 
  didn’t you? The thing doesn’t look to me as if 
  its neck was over forty feet long.” 
  “Brontosaurus,” lengthy Johnny said. 
  “Now look here,” Monk snapped. 
  “This is no time to start pulling them 
  jawbreaker words of yours that nobody 
  knows. Be reasonable. Say something 
  somebody can understand.” 
  “Brontosaurus,” Johnny said with 
  dignity, “is the name of the type of animal you 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  48 
  see down there. It was a fairly prevalent 
  variety of prehistoric dinosaur, and one of the 
  largest. Its size made it impressive, but the 
  monster is comparatively harmless, being 
  herbivorous 
  by 
  nature. 
  The 
  word 
  herbivorous,” 
  Johnny 
  finished 
  severely, 
  “means simply that it is a plant eater. It 
  consumes grass and leaves, like a cow.” 
  Long Tom—he had realized Renny 
  was not listening to him—came back into the 
  cabin. He poked Monk excitedly. 
  “Listen!” barked the electrical wizard. 
  “I’ve got the sun all figured out. I mean—this 
  sun they’ve got in here.” 
  “Yes?” 
  “It’s a result of subterranean, or 
  volcanic activity,” Long Tom explained. 
  “Gases are created under terrific pressure, 
  and they escape through the top of the crater 
  yonder, bursting into flame as they do so. 
  The result is like a blazing gas well, only the 
  heat is of enormously greater intensity. The 
  stuff is really incandescent gas—and you 
  know they claim our sun is nothing but a ball 
  of incandescently hot gas.” 
  “Very simple,” Monk said, “except for 
  one slight chemical drawback.” 
  “What’s that?” 
  “To have a fire, you gotta have 
  oxygen. Where would the enormous amount 
  of oxygen used by this flaming sun of yours 
  come from?” 
  Long Tom answered that. 
  “The flame theory is correct,” he 
  said. “And as for oxygen—it is very scarce 
  near the crater. And there are terrific winds 
  that rush upward all the time, making life 
  near the crater impossible, even if it were not 
  for the heat.” 
  The plane droned on through the 
  strangely luminous air. They encountered a 
  rainstorm which was very much like earthly 
  storms, except for the lack of lightning and 
  thunder. Their plane was pummeled around 
  by gale and rain until they finally found their 
  way out of it. 
  Later, Lanta touched the bronze 
  man’s arm. 
  “It seems incredible,” she said, “that 
  we have covered in so short a time a 
  distance that it would have taken us days 
  and days to travel afoot. My country. 
  Yonder.” 
   
   
  IT was a great rocky canyon—or, 
  rather, a labyrinth of canyons, all running into 
  one central gorge which was astoundingly 
  narrow. They could see, after the plane 
  drifted lower, the gigantic gates of wooden 
  timbers which closed the outer mouth of the 
  canyon. 
  Gates 
  so 
  huge 
  that 
  it 
  was 
  unbelievable that human hands could have 
  constructed them. 
  Moreover, for at least a mile in front 
  of the gates, the thicker jungle had been cut 
  down, and there were sharpened poles 
  sticking in the ground in a slanting fashion so 
  that the points offered a formidable handicap 
  to any huge prehistoric animal which tried to 
  approach. 
  “Can we land inside the canyons?” 
  Doc asked. 
  “No. There is no room.” 
  “Then where—” 
  The girl pointed at the defensive 
  array of pointed poles. Before them, and 
  more than a mile from the gate, there was 
  cleared ground which extended to a great 
  trench with steep-walled sides that was 
  evidently another portion of the defenses 
  against the dinosaurs. 
  “You can land there,” she said. 
  Doc put the plane down without 
  difficulty. They alighted. The surroundings 
  were not nearly as visible as they had been 
  from the air, due to the deceptive size of the 
  jungle brush. 
  Doc said: “Renny and I will return 
  and ferry the slaves here. I would suggest 
  that Lanta and Monk and Ham proceed to the 
  gates and make sure we’re welcome.” 
  “Swell idea,” said Monk, looking 
  forward to the walk with Lanta with pleasure. 
  Lanta, Monk and Ham departed in 
  the direction of the gates, working their way 
  through the wilderness of pointed stakes, 
  most of them larger than telephone poles. 
  Renny, Long Tom and Johnny 
  remained at the landing spot, equipped with 
  supermachine pistols, plenty of ammunition, 
  and an acute knowledge that they had better 
  keep a sharp lookout. 
  Doc took the plane into the air. 
  He had no difficulty flying back to the 
  village of the cavern men, and picking up part 
  of the slaves. Due to the size of the plane, 
  the bronze man calculated that it would be 
  possible to carry the entire group of slaves in 
  two trips. He loaded half of them, took off 
  carefully, and flew high and fast to shorten 
  the trip and lessen its danger. 
  Long Tom met the plane. He was 
  excited. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  49 
  “Look, Doc. We’ve got visitors.” 
  There were four of Lanta’s people 
  staring at the plane. Doc studied them, 
  reflected again upon what unusually perfect 
  physical specimens they were. 
  “Lanta and Monk and Ham got 
  through,” Long Tom explained. 
  The four visitors advanced, and one 
  of them spoke slowly, making each word with 
  care. 
  “Lanta and the other two are safe,” 
  the man advised. “You are welcome. They 
  are preparing a great feast for you.” 
  Doc, who was ever cautious, turned 
  to one of the slaves whom he had rescued 
  and asked, “You know this man?” 
  The slave nodded, smiling. “He is my 
  cousin.” 
  Everything seemed all right. 
  Doc said: “Wait here, and I will make 
  another trip for the rest of the slaves.” 
  He took off and reached the landing 
  field near the cavern men caves without 
  trouble. And no difficulty was encountered in 
  loading the remainder of the slaves—on the 
  first trip, it had been necessary to slug some 
  of them into unconsciousness to get them 
  aboard the plane. 
  Aulf developed into a problem, 
  however. He wanted to go along. He wanted, 
  furthermore, to take charge of the flying of 
  the plane, being just blockheaded enough to 
  think he could manage that without any 
  previous instruction whatever. 
  Aulf’s tribe being bitter enemies of 
  Lanta’s people, Doc knew it would not do to 
  take the big fellow along. 
  The difficulty was solved when Doc, 
  with one of the slaves who could speak a 
  little English serving as interpreter, prevailed 
  upon Aulf to remain with his cave-dweller 
  fellows, and continue to be a sort of chief evil 
  spirit. 
  Doc then flew the other slaves back 
  and landed on the level ground where 
  Renny, Long Tom, Johnny, the other slaves, 
  and the four visitors waited. There was a 
  brief reunion. 
  “What about the plane?” Doc asked. 
  “We cannot leave it here.” 
  One of the visitors smiled. 
  “I will call help,” he said, “and we will 
  carry the plane to a place where it will be 
  safe from the animals.” 
  He 
  lifted 
  his 
  voice, 
  emitted 
  a 
  bellowing call that carried like a locomotive 
  whistle. It was answered in fashion. 
  Men began filing out of the brush. 
  Four or five in the first group, then in larger 
  clusters. In a remarkably short time, they 
  were completely surrounded by a human 
  ring. 
  Doc, suddenly suspicious, rapped: “I 
  Don’t like this! Get in the plane!” 
  His command was too late. A 
  leader—one of the four men who had 
  pretended to be messengers of welcome—
  ripped out an order. Instantly, pandemonium 
  erupted. 
  Clubs 
  swung. 
  Knives 
  were 
  flourished—short vicious knives with blades 
  made of some type of glasslike stone. 
  The slaves behaved rather like 
  sheep. They merely changed masters, 
  putting up no fight. 
  Doc Savage, Renny, Long Tom and 
  Johnny were cornered. Their foes evidently 
  had previous instructions to keep them from 
  getting anything in their hands, because the 
  moment they drew machine pistols, the 
  weapons were crashed out of their fingers 
  with clubs. 
  A human tide swept over them. They 
  were overwhelmed, buried under pounding, 
  yelling bodies. Against a dozen foes, they 
  might have held their own. Possibly against a 
  score. But they were engulfed in this horde. 
  After a while, lines were passed into 
  the mass of bodies and Doc and the others 
  were tied. 
  Wilmer Fancife appeared then. 
  “Bring 
  them 
  inside 
  the 
  gates,” 
  Fancife yelled. “Bring ‘em right in!” 
   
   
  Chapter XVII 
  THE FRIGHTENED PEOPLE 
   
  THE gates were even more monster 
  things than they had appeared from a 
  distance and some ingenuity had been used 
  in their construction. Not one man could open 
  them, or twenty men for that matter, and the 
  opening was contrived by an array of 
  winches to which were attached great cables 
  made of thick dinosaur hide. 
  Fancife marched at the head of the 
  procession. He carried a high-powered 
  automatic 
  rifle 
  under 
  either 
  arm, 
  and 
  revolvers stuck in his belt. 
  Just inside the gate, he was met by 
  Two Wink, who was likewise heavily armed, 
  but did not seem as pleased with the whole 
  affair. He put in much of his time looking 
  behind him. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  50 
  “What if they turn on us?” Two Wink 
  blurted. “There’s hundreds of ‘em—and only 
  two of us.” 
  “We 
  got 
  ‘em 
  bluffed,” 
  Fancife 
  snapped. “Act like you was confident. That’s 
  half the business.” 
  Big-fisted Renny got the idea, and 
  suddenly lifted his big voice. “These fellows 
  are thieves!” Renny pointed at Fancife. “That 
  man is as big a rascal as ever walked! He 
  came here to rob you—” 
  Fancife leaped at Renny, struck with 
  his rifle barrel. Renny’s arms were pinned by 
  his captors, and he failed to dodge; his big 
  frame became loose, his head dropped 
  forward and scarlet dripped from his nostrils. 
  Fancife scowled at the others, said: 
  “You guys get funny and you won’t live to see 
  the final fireworks.” 
  Johnny and Long Tom, maddened 
  by the cold-blooded attack upon Renny, were 
  plainly tempted to forget discretion. 
  “He means it,” Doc warned. “Do as 
  he says.” 
  Fancife 
  showed 
  his 
  teeth 
  unpleasantly. “Now you’re being smart.” 
  The procession proceeded. Soon 
  after they were inside the gate, canyon walls 
  shoved up alongside them, so sheer that to 
  gaze upward was to get the impression that 
  the walls came together far above, except for 
  a narrow knife of light. It was gloomy, 
  although not dark, for it now became 
  apparent that a great deal of light was 
  reflected down from the stone sky of this 
  fantastic world. 
  The pinnacles, in fact, were bathed 
  in glaring light, and what must be intense 
  heat, for nothing whatever grew on the 
  heights. Down here, however, it was cool, 
  with a distinct breeze. 
  “This place,” Johnny vouchsafed, “is 
  probably close enough to that volcano thing 
  where they get their heat and light that the 
  stone peaks are too hot even for those 
  pterodactyls, which seem to be the most 
  dangerous form of flying life here. But down 
  here in the valleys, it’s cool, due to the cold 
  air moving in close to the ground, drawn by 
  the heat from their volcanic sun.” 
  “I would feel better,” Long Tom 
  interjected, “if you were using that great brain 
  of yours to figure a way out of this.” 
  They turned off into another canyon, 
  which was wider, and so low on one side that 
  much of the floor was bathed in direct rays 
  from the Light. Here there were intensely 
  cultivated fields, most of the growing plants 
  being of an entirely unfamiliar variety. 
  Long Tom, after looking over the 
  crops dubiously, said: “Not a watermelon in 
  sight. And brothers, am I thirsty!” 
  They were taken to a high stockade. 
  The gate of this was swung open, and they 
  were shoved inside. 
  Johnny took one gap-eyed look at 
  the other occupants of the pen, and lit out 
  running. 
  Johnny was hardly moving before 
  one of the enormous animals in the pen went 
  lumbering after him. The thing weighed at 
  least four or five tons. It was apparent, too, 
  that it would soon tire Johnny and overtake 
  him. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE, greatly alarmed, 
  seized Renny, who was still unconscious. 
  With the big engineer balanced across his 
  shoulders, he was about to take flight when a 
  howl of mirth from Monk stopped him. The 
  thing couldn’t be very serious if Monk was 
  laughing. 
  “Run, Johnny, run!” Monk yelled. “It’s 
  right after you!” 
  Johnny did not need the advice. He 
  was traveling with amazing long-legged 
  speed around the inside of the inclosure, the 
  monster in immediate pursuit. 
  The animal had a long neck and a 
  longer tail, and remarkably short legs for the 
  pace it was traveling. Its weight was 
  indicated by the way it shook the earth with 
  its pounding feet. 
  Monk, Ham, Chris Columbus and 
  Decimo Tercio were standing in the center of 
  the stockade, and the huge animals—there 
  were several of the things in the inclosure—
  were paying no attention to them. 
  Ham began trying to help the 
  frightened Johnny. 
  “Stand still, Johnny!” Ham shouted. 
  “What do you mean—stand still?” 
  puffed the fast-traveling Johnny. “That’s what 
  I feel like I’m doing.” 
  “Stop and let the thing catch you,” 
  Ham explained. “It thinks you are here to 
  feed it.” 
  “That’s what I’m afraid it thinks!” 
  “No, no, it won’t eat a man. These 
  things 
  are 
  vegetarians. 
  Tercio, 
  here, 
  explained that to us.” 
  Johnny reluctantly slowed up—he 
  was very dubious about the idea—and let the 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  51 
  dinosaur overtake him. The monster muzzled 
  Johnny hopefully until it concluded Johnny 
  was not an animated vegetable, after which it 
  halted. Johnny stopped, puffed, wiped off 
  rivers of perspiration, mumbled, “I’ll be 
  superamalgamated!” 
  Decimo Tercio explained: “These 
  dinosaurs are work animals. They have been 
  domesticated for centuries, I presume.” 
  “How do they manage the beasts?” 
  Doc asked. “They surely haven’t sufficient 
  brain capacity to be trained.” 
  Tercio smiled. “It is very simple. 
  Someone merely walks ahead of them with 
  food. They will follow a bag of food all day, 
  providing they are fed a bite from time to 
  time.” 
  Doc Savage turned his attention 
  back to more important aspects of the 
  situation. 
  “Fancife and Two Wink seem to have 
  control of the situation,” the bronze man said. 
  “How did they manage?” 
  “They landed the plane in one of 
  these canyons,” Tercio explained, “after 
  flying around and frightening the people. 
  Being primitive, the people think that anyone 
  who flies is some kind of supernatural being.” 
  Tercio grimaced distastefully. 
  “After they landed,” he continued, 
  “Fancife and Two Wink immediately shot 
  down two of the chiefs. They explained to the 
  people that they had come to take the chiefs’ 
  place. They made it stick.” 
  “You mean they’re running the 
  tribe?” 
  “Exactly.” 
  “That doesn’t make me very happy,” 
  Monk said gloomily.  
  At 
  this 
  point, 
  there 
  was 
  an 
  interruption. It was foreshadowed by much 
  loud talk outside the stockade—angry talk, it 
  appeared—following which the gates were 
  jerked open and a slender figure was shoved 
  sprawling inside. 
  “Lanta!” Monk exclaimed. 
  The girl got up from where she had 
  sprawled and said something not very 
  complimentary while the gate was being 
  closed. Then she turned and saw Chris 
  Columbus. 
  The girl lost color and stood very still. 
  Then her lips parted and she said something, 
  but it was not audible. She became quite 
  rigid, and the exultation flowing through her 
  was almost visible. 
  At last, “Chris!” she gasped. 
  Chris’ face was strangely gentle and 
  completely joyful. He said something, words 
  that they could not understand, but which 
  must be some phrase of love that Lanta had 
  taught him. 
  And after that, suddenly, they were in 
  each other’s arms, not kissing but just 
  holding each other tightly, with tears in their 
  eyes. 
  Monk, abruptly realizing what small 
  chance he had with this girl, uttered under his 
  breath, “Blast the luck! Some other guy 
  always beats me to the prettiest ones!” 
  Lanta and Chris moved to one side 
  of the stockade, away from the others. For 
  long moments, they seemed to have nothing 
  much to say to each other, but abruptly they 
  were talking, each with more to say than they 
  could find words to express, seized with 
  delighted ecstasy over their reunion. 
  Later, 
  Lanta 
  approached 
  Doc 
  Savage. 
  “I did all I could for you,” she said 
  apologetically. “But those men, Fancife and 
  Two Wink, have my people terrified. We have 
  no weapon as effective as rifles, you know. 
  The upshot of my argument was that I was 
  thrown in here with you. Did you hear the 
  quarreling outside? Many of my people did 
  not like it.” She hesitated, added: “I’m very 
  sorry.” 
  Ham said gallantly: “You’ve done so 
  much for us already that we’re embarrassed.” 
  “What are their plans?” Doc asked. 
  “About us, you mean?” 
  “Yes.” 
  “They 
  haven’t 
  said 
  so,” 
  Lanta 
  explained, “but at the first opportunity, I think 
  they are going to execute all of us.” 
   
   
  NO one was particularly surprised, 
  but that did not make it a prospect to induce 
  anything 
  but 
  long 
  faces. 
  Conversation 
  seemed to die of its own weight. The 
  stockade piles cast a shadow, and they 
  gathered there, sitting in almost complete 
  silence. There was not the slightest doubt 
  that everyone was thinking of the same 
  thing—how to escape. They could peer 
  through the small gaps between the stockade 
  piling and see guards pacing. 
  Farther off, Two Wink was standing 
  on a hillock with two loaded rifles at hand. He 
  hardly took his eyes off the stockade. Later, 
  Fancife replaced him. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  52 
  “They’re not taking any chances,” 
  Monk muttered. 
  “Holy cow! What’re they waiting on?” 
  Renny rumbled. 
  Lanta explained that. 
  “This happens to be a sacred 
  period,” she said. “It is the equivalent of what 
  you call your . . . your holidays. Your holy 
  holidays, I mean. Such as Christmas.” 
  “I don’t see—” 
  “To us our holidays have a deep 
  significance,” the girl explained. “They mean 
  more to us, I believe, than your own religious 
  periods mean to your race. The fact is that 
  Fancife and Two Wink have been ordered 
  not to execute you during this period, and 
  they are afraid to defy the order. Which 
  shows they are smart. If they did kill us 
  during the period, they would be—what you 
  call it?—mobbed.” 
  “I would like to see ‘em mobbed,” 
  Monk said grimly, “but not under those 
  circumstances.” 
  Big-fisted Renny got up and took a 
  pacing tour of the stockade, only to return 
  completely disgusted, impotent rage moving 
  him to kick angrily at the untidy litter which 
  floored the stockade. 
  “Holy cow!” he complained. “With 
  those guards watching the stockade, we 
  haven’t got a chance of getting out of here. If 
  it would turn dark, we might accomplish 
  something.” 
  Doc Savage leaned over abruptly 
  and picked up a handful of the ground litter. It 
  consisted of coarse stems and finer leaves, 
  old and dried. The working dinosaurs were 
  fed in the inclosure, and this was stuff they 
  had 
  not 
  consumed. 
  The 
  bronze 
  man 
  examined the stuff. 
  “These dinosaurs afraid of fire?” he 
  asked suddenly. 
  Lanta nodded. “Frightened of fire—
  yes. They do not know enough to be scared 
  of ordinary things. But in the presence of fire, 
  they become maddened.” 
  “That gives us a chance then.” 
  The bronze man arose and ambled 
  around the stockade, making a pretense of 
  peering through the cracks at the guards. 
  Actually, he found loose bits of wood which 
  might serve his purpose, and brought these 
  back to the others. 
  “Your 
  shoestrings, 
  Monk,” 
  he 
  suggested. 
  Homely Monk wore—he liked to 
  irritate 
  the 
  clothes-conscious 
  Ham 
  by 
  dressing as uncouthly as possible—large 
  brogans which were laced with rawhide 
  thongs. 
  Doc took one of the thongs and 
  attached it to the piece of curved wood he 
  had selected for his bow. The other sticks 
  were two in number; one round and roughly 
  pencil-shaped, the other flat. 
  Monk exclaimed: “The bow and drill 
  gadget for making fire!” 
   
   
  LONG TOM, a practical soul, said: 
  “What makes you think they’ll stand for us 
  making a fire? They’ll bust right in here.” 
  Doc had recognized that possibility. 
  “Lanta,” he said, “you suggest loudly in your 
  own language that we make ourselves some 
  beds of the dry litter.” 
  The girl followed the suggestion. 
  Later, when they began raking the dry stuff 
  together, the guards gave them no more than 
  a few glances. 
  “Use twigs to build the piles up as 
  loosely as possible,” Doc advised. “The fire 
  must spread fast, before they can stop it.” 
  The others positioned themselves, 
  so that it would look as nearly as possible 
  like a naturally conversing group, around the 
  bronze man. He went to work with the 
  firebow, giving the thong a twist around the 
  round drill, then pulling the bow back and 
  forth so that the drill spun rapidly. He got a 
  wisp of smoke, finally hot glowing wood dust, 
  which he fanned until it suddenly burst out in 
  a tiny flame. 
  A moment later, they were working 
  madly, spreading the flame all through the 
  several piles of dry stuff they had gathered 
  under the pretense of making beds. Flames 
  crawled up with red hunger. 
  Smoke alarmed the guards. They 
  yelled. 
  The 
  dinosaurs 
  suddenly 
  made 
  strange snorting sounds that were like men 
  whooping. They milled. One monster became 
  terrified and hit the stockade with the 
  violence of a speeding truck. The stockade 
  cracked, leaned. 
  “Blazes!” Monk exploded. “This may 
  work!” 
  The 
  guards 
  expended 
  some 
  moments outside, howling orders to put out 
  the fire. Once it dawned on them they had 
  been ignored, they dashed for the huge 
  barred gate. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  53 
  Two Wink was on duty with the rifle 
  at the moment. He had positioned himself 
  some distance away, the better to cover all 
  sides of the stockade. He raced forward. 
  Doc rapped: “Quick! Frighten the 
  things with fire!” 
  He scooped up, with sticks, a mass 
  of 
  blazing 
  fragments, 
  rushed 
  at 
  the 
  dinosaurs, pitched the stuff in the air. The 
  dinosaurs made their noise, went completely 
  hysterical with fright. 
  They hit the stockade, and a great 
  section of the thing went down. The pack of 
  working dinosaurs charged through. 
  “After them!” Doc yelled. 
  Johnny had demonstrated earlier 
  that it was possible for a man to outrun the 
  ponderous short-legged monsters. 
  “Keep 
  among 
  the 
  things,” 
  Doc 
  warned. “Make it harder for Two Wink to hit 
  us with the rifle.” 
   
   
  Chapter XVIII 
  DEATH AND A RACE 
   
  THERE was shooting—Two Wink 
  had an automatic rifle and he emptied it as 
  fast as he could trigger out the shots and 
  insert new ammo clips. The bullets made no 
  sound that was audible over the thunder of 
  flight, but several of the dinosaurs squalled in 
  a way that showed they were hit. 
  The stampede reached an area of 
  rank grasslike growth that was higher than a 
  man’s head. Doc and his party veered off 
  and 
  stopped, 
  letting 
  the 
  fright-crazed 
  dinosaurs go on. 
  Chris Columbus said: “We gotta do 
  somethin’ fast. They’ll have a hunt organized 
  in a few minutes!” 
  The statement was hardly needed. 
  Doc grasped Lanta’s arm. “They 
  searched Monk and the others. Do you know 
  where they put the stuff?” 
  “Probably in the house which Fancife 
  and Two Wink appropriated for themselves.” 
  “Do you know where it is?” 
  “I’ll take you there. I think I may be 
  able to do it without our being seen.” 
  They circled through fields of rankly 
  growing crops. At frequent intervals, they 
  passed 
  stoutly 
  constructed 
  canopies 
  fashioned of poles, after the manner of big 
  grapevines that had been erected as defense 
  against the giant flying pterodactyls, only 
  dangerous type of prehistoric life that could 
  penetrate past the ponderous defensive 
  gates into the valleys. 
  “This way,” Lanta breathed. 
  They had reached the houses of her 
  people. These were of stone masonry, built 
  in neat rows well away from the cliff face with 
  its menace of falling rocks. Above both 
  houses and streets was a great trellis 
  construction of stout poles—defense against 
  the pterodactyls, the same as in the fields. 
  Lanta stopped suddenly. 
  “Look!” she gasped. “Guards!” 
  Monk and Renny had picked up 
  clubs somewhere. They flourished these. 
  “Only four guys!” Renny rumbled. “We can 
  bust through easy enough!” 
  They looked at Doc. The bronze man 
  nodded, led them in the dash into the open. 
  The guards were armed with short 
  spears and atlatls, or throwing sticks. There 
  was no time to fit the throwing sticks. They 
  set themselves with the spears. 
  Renny and Monk hurled their clubs, 
  got two of the guards down. Doc Savage 
  raced for a third man. Apparently he was 
  going to deliberately impale himself on a 
  spear point. But he twisted coming in, and in 
  a maneuver that was so fast it was a little 
  blurred to the eye, had the short spear. 
  The fourth guard lunged and jabbed, 
  and Doc fenced with him a moment. Then 
  the bronze man cracked him across the 
  wrists, made him drop the spear. Long Tom, 
  Ham, Johnny, Decimo Tercio and Chris 
  Columbus fell onto the four, began using 
  their fists to make the guards unconscious. 
  The guards screeched at the full 
  pitch of their lungs. 
  Inside the square house, they found 
  the stuff that had been removed from their 
  pockets when they were searched. The 
  articles included the machine pistols and 
  assorted ammo drums. 
  Outside in the street, there was 
  yelling. Monk and the others backed hastily 
  inside. 
  “If you was figurin’ on goin’ some 
  place else, better change your mind,” Renny 
  rumbled. “Holy cow! The street is full of 
  people. You got no idea how fast they 
  showed up after them guards yelled.” 
  “Two Wink out there?” 
  “No. Fancife neither. But they’ll be 
  here.” 
  Monk scooped up a machine pistol, 
  clipped in an ammo drum, said: “If them guys 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  54 
  thought a rifle was magic, wait until they see 
  one of these gadgets talk.” 
  Doc stopped him. “Wait.” 
  “Eh?” 
  There was an ordinary automatic rifle 
  leaning against the wall, and Doc picked this 
  up to make sure it was loaded. 
  Next, he loaded three of the machine 
  pistols with different types of ammunition. He 
  thrust the weapons inside his belt—he still 
  wore the shorts, which was the only garment 
  Fancife and Two Wink had left him when 
  they stripped him out in the arctic waste at 
  the base of Target Mountain. The shorts 
  were of elastic silk stuff, were really swim 
  trunks. 
  “Let me use your coat,” he requested 
  of Renny. 
  Renny was the only one of the group 
  whose clothing came near being large 
  enough for the bronze man. Doc used the 
  coat to conceal presence of the machine 
  pistols. 
  “Your handkerchief,” he asked Monk. 
  Monk’s handkerchiefs were colored 
  horrors. This one was flaming red in hue. 
  Doc rolled it into a tight ball, pocketed it. 
  The bronze man walked out into the 
  street carrying the rifle. 
  At least a hundred of Lanta’s people 
  were in the street. To a man, they stopped 
  when they saw the rifle. They understood 
  what the weapon could do. 
  Lanta came out behind the bronze 
  man to translate for him. They worked fast. 
  Doc first went through a pantomime. 
  He flourished the rifle, handled it until 
  every eye was drawn to the weapon. 
  Then, with a contemptuous gesture, 
  he threw the rifle aside. 
  “Tell them,” he said, “that the rifle is 
  the tool of those who are evil.” 
  Lanta translated this. 
  The 
  bronze 
  man 
  then 
  stepped 
  forward, showed both his hands apparently 
  empty, 
  then 
  produced 
  Monk’s 
  red 
  handkerchief. The effect—it was as if the 
  handkerchief came out of the empty air—was 
  a 
  simple 
  manipulation 
  familiar 
  to 
  all 
  magicians and consisted of keeping the 
  tightly balled handkerchief concealed behind 
  one hand or the other while making 
  confusing passes designed to show the hand 
  empty. 
  “Tell them,” Doc continued, “that their 
  deities are disgusted with them and have 
  sent a flame to aid us against them.” 
  While Lanta was putting that in the 
  native language, Doc made more passes 
  with the handkerchief, and contrived to get 
  one of the machine pistols wrapped inside it. 
  “What next?” Lanta asked. 
  “Suggest that they watch the work of 
  the flame.”  
  The machine pistol he held was 
  charged with explosive bullets, tiny things of 
  unearthly power. Doc aimed at a house, 
  fired. 
  There was a terrible blast, and most 
  of one wall and the roof of the house climbed 
  into the air. 
  As soon as the echoes—they came 
  gobbling back from the canyon walls in salvo 
  after salvo—died down, the bronze man 
  demolished another house. 
  During the confusion of that blast, he 
  managed to change the machine pistol 
  loaded with explosives for one which would 
  fire tear-gas capsules. 
  “Now inform them,” he told Lanta, 
  “that the flame will breathe the angry breath 
  of its wrath upon them.” 
  The machine pistol made a bull-
  fiddle moan that, once it was mixing with the 
  echoes, was a sound that might have been 
  mistaken for anything. Doc swung the muzzle 
  as he sprayed tear-gas capsules that struck 
  and burst in the crowd. 
  Doc said, “Tell them—” then leaped 
  suddenly, seized Lanta and flung her into the 
  house where they had found the machine 
  pistols. A rifle smashed out twice before they 
  got under cover, but neither bullet touched 
  them. 
  “Fancife got here!” Monk yelled. 
   
   
  THERE was uproar and confusion in 
  the street. 
  Doc said, “Out the back way,” and 
  they rushed into a pleasant little garden. 
  They scrambled over a long stone wall, found 
  themselves in a maze of other gardens and 
  houses. 
  Fancife’s rifle snapped again. Renny 
  rumbled: “Holy cow!” and turned completely 
  around, then got himself organized and 
  roared, “My arm! Hit me in the arm! Go on 
  and get ‘im!” 
  Doc leaped, seized one of the poles 
  that formed the protective grille against 
  pterodactyls, and swung atop this. The poles 
  were not far apart; he could travel from one 
  to the other. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  55 
  Two Wink was crawling to Fancife’s 
  aid, working through a garden, all his 
  attention riveted ahead. Apparently it had 
  never occurred to him that danger would be 
  above. 
  He made a sound like a stepped-on 
  frog when Doc dropped atop him. Then, after 
  the bronze man hit him, Two Wink’s legs 
  twitched, and kept on twitching all the time 
  that he was unconscious, making the same 
  kind of involuntary movements as a nervous 
  sleeping dog. 
  Fancife—he was off to the right—
  suddenly yelled out. His howl was angry, 
  threatening. Then his voice was frightened. 
  And then he was emptying his rifle. Five 
  times the gun whipped lead. After that, 
  Fancife got up and ran. 
  The inhabitants of the strange lost-
  world valleys had turned upon him. 
  Fancife used a system in his flight. 
  He would spring until winded. Then he would 
  stop, reload his rifle and empty the weapon. 
  His pursuers did not press him too 
  hard. He was fleeing toward the great gates. 
  They were satisfied to let him go. 
  Doc said: “We may be able to head 
  him off from the gate.” 
  They failed to do it. Fancife had 
  forced the gate guards to twist the giant 
  windlass devices that opened the panels, 
  and 
  he 
  was 
  sprinting 
  through 
  the 
  comparatively open area that was set with 
  the sharpened timbers that formed the outer 
  defense against dinosaurs. 
  Doc waited for Monk and the others. 
  “Careful!” the bronze man warned. 
  “He will take shelter in the jungle and use 
  that rifle on us.” 
  They 
  got 
  down—there 
  was 
  a 
  cropped weedy growth about two feet high 
  that concealed them—and crawled forward 
  with infinite care until they heard Fancife’s 
  rifle begin smashing as rapidly as the 
  mechanism would function. 
  No 
  bullets 
  came 
  near 
  them, 
  however. 
  “I wonder what he’s shootin’ at?” 
  gaunt Johnny pondered. He raised his head 
  cautiously, 
  then 
  erected 
  his 
  whole 
  considerable 
  length. 
  “I’ll 
  be 
  superamalgamated!” 
  They could see Fancife, and what 
  was wrong with him. 
  Johnny 
  muttered, 
  “I’ll 
  be 
  superamal—” 
  “You’ll be more than that if we don’t 
  travel,” Monk interjected. “Here come some 
  of the things this way! Come on!” 
  They put their chins up and tucked 
  their elbows close to their sides and ran. The 
  gates, fortunately, were still ajar. They piled 
  through, worked frantically with the big 
  winches. 
  A few of the animals—weasel-like, 
  except that they were near two feet in 
  length—got through before the gates could 
  be closed. Long Tom and Renny disposed of 
  them with clubs. They were the same type of 
  bloodthirsty little terrors that had given Doc 
  Savage such trouble earlier. 
  Renny came up, holding his arm, 
  grimacing. “You know what happened back 
  at the village?” 
  “What?” 
  “Two Wink—those people found him 
  and somebody—well, Two Wink is dead!” 
  Out at the edge of the jungle, Fancife 
  had stopped screaming. Renny took a look 
  through the gates, then stepped back swiftly 
  and looked as if he was going to be a little 
  sick. 
  It was a long time before anything 
  more was said. 
  “He came here looking for those 
  animals,” Monk muttered finally, “and they 
  found him.” 
   
   
  IT took four days for a rather 
  pleasant fact to dawn upon them; at least the 
  interval was four days according to their 
  watches, there being no other convenient 
  method of judging the elapse of time. Not 
  that a time measurement was needed—
  because life in the canyons was almost 
  completely idyllic. Chris Columbus expressed 
  it most briefly. 
  “I’m not going back,” he said. 
  “Why not?” asked the astonished 
  Monk. 
  Chris said: “I like the place. I’ve got a 
  swell girl. Why should I go back?” 
  Decimo Tercio used somewhat more 
  words, but it amounted to the same thing. 
  “Long ago, I have figure it out,” 
  Tercio explained. “When I first get here, it is 
  not because I want to come, and I am very 
  impatient, because I do not know many 
  things. I do not know that there is no disease 
  here, and no war, because there is nobody 
  much to fight, except an occasional stupid 
  band of cave dwellers, and they never raid 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  56 
  past the gates into the canyons. There is not 
  much work, and the girls are pretty, and you 
  die young if you do not live to be a hundred.” 
  Tercio closed his eyes dreamily. 
  “Here is everything a man could 
  want,” he said. “There is peace and plenty 
  inside the canyons, and if that palls on a man 
  who is red-blooded, he can merely step 
  outside the gates and have hunting.” Tercio 
  smacked his lips. “And what hunting! You 
  have see the dinosaurs, no?” 
  “Yes,” Monk said. “And no more. I 
  don’t like the things.” 
  “You would not like to stay here?” 
  Monk considered the point. The 
  place had its advantages. 
  “I might like to retire here some day,” 
  Monk admitted. “But—well, it’s this way. I like 
  my excitement sort of spread out. Not in big 
  bunches.” 
  Tercio shook his head sadly. “You 
  are getting old.” 
  “I’m just getting reasonable,” Monk 
  corrected him. “I don’t mind hunting a bear, 
  or even a lion—but these dinosaurs are a 
  little too big for my caliber.” 
  Tercio knew that they had moved 
  Doc Savage’s plane—the one in which Monk 
  and the others had flown inside—into one of 
  the canyons where there was room for a 
  take-off, and reassembled the craft. 
  Tercio sought out Doc Savage. 
  “You go back outside?” he asked. 
  “If we can make it,” Doc admitted. 
  “You make it. Flying out much easier 
  than flying in.” Tercio hesitated, gnawing his 
  lower lip miserably. “And after that—oh, hell!” 
  He spread his hands. “Think of what will 
  happen to this place.” 
  “As far as we are concerned,” Doc 
  said quietly, “no one will ever know this place 
  exists.” 
  Tercio stared at him with joy, but not 
  understanding. “Why . . . why will you do 
  that?” 
  “This place is a treasure,” Doc 
  Savage said slowly. “It is a treasure that we 
  would like to give to some future generation 
  of the world’s people. We say a future 
  generation for two reasons. First, the human 
  race has more archaeological discoveries 
  today than it can classify. The need of 
  explorers is not to find more wonders, but to 
  classify and understand what has already 
  been found.” 
  The bronze man was silent a 
  moment. 
  “And the second reason: We are 
  very dubious whether the human race is 
  ready to receive a scientific treasure such as 
  this place. It is possible that bombs and 
  cannon would be rushed in to destroy the 
  prehistoric animals that abound here. We are 
  thinking of the buffalo that once roamed the 
  Western United States by millions, and were 
  slaughtered until now there are hardly more 
  than a few zoo specimens. It would be 
  horrible if something like that should happen 
  here, for this—this world of sixty million years 
  ago—should be preserved as a valuable 
  thing, an incredible gift that has come down 
  out of time to open to mankind the mysteries 
  of other ages.” 
   
   
  THE END 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE OTHER WORLD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  57 
   
   
   
  "THE ANGRY GHOST" 
   
  You may not believe in ghosts; even if you do, you'll have some time 
  convincing yourself that there is such a thing as an angry ghost. But, 
  ghost or not, there was something that was creating havoc with our 
  country; something that made our army and navy fear for what might 
  happen next. This is the theme of the next Doc Savage novel. It's 
  most unusual, and one that fits well with the turbulent times in which 
  we now live. Be sure to get the next issue, so you will not miss your 
  meeting with THE ANGRY GHOST in the February issue of 
   
   
   
  10 Cents-Everywhere 
   
   
   
   
  Never before has there been such a group of altruistic adventurers as Doc 
  Savage and his five companions. Raised from the cradle for his task in life, Clark Savage, 
  Jr., goes from one end of the world to another, righting wrongs, helping the oppressed, 
  liberating the innocent. With limitless wealth at his command if he needs it, Doc has the 
  best of scientific equipment and supplies. He maintains his New York headquarters as a 
  central point, but in addition has his Fortress of Solitude at a place unknown to anyone, 
  where he goes at periodic intervals to increase his knowledge and concentrate. His 
  “college" in upper New York is a scientific institution to which he sends all captured 
  crooks, for there, through expert treatment, they are made to forget all of their past and 
  start life anew. 
  Fighting these battles with Doc Savage are his five companions. Ham is Brigadier 
  General Theodore Marley Brooks, the most astute lawyer Harvard ever turned out; a 
  faultless dresser, and as adept with his ever-present sword cane as he is with words. 
  Monk, his "sparring" partner, though he looks tike a gorilla, is actually a most learned 
  chemist—Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, one of the foremost chemists in 
  the world. Ham, during the War, taught Monk some French words to use in flattering a 
  French officer. The words weren't flattering, it turned out, and Monk spent some time in 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  58 
  the guard house. Soon after, a supply of hams was missed, and all the evidence led to 
  Ham, who denied his guilt. It gave him the name, and the cause for the continual battle 
  between the two. Yet, when it comes to a showdown, they would gladly give their lives for 
  each other. 
  Renny, or Colonel John Renwick, is a leading engineer. And his huge fists enjoy 
  knocking through wooden panels. He likes a fight better than a slide rule. Long Tom, the 
  electrical wizard, and Johnny, the geologist and archaeologist, complete the group. 
  Johnny is William Harper Littlejohn; Long Tom is Major Thomas J. Roberts. 
   
   
                            
   
   
   
   
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Vault2.0.-.Fiction-and-audiobooks/Books/R/Robeson, Kenneth/083 The Other World.pdf