Collection 1986 - Night Over The Solomons (v5.0) (11 page)

“If there’s a special god for fools,” he said aloud, “I hope he’s got his fingers crossed for me.”

T
URNING THE SHIP toward the edge of the jungle behind the pyramid, he came down in a slow glide, then he cut the motor and, with the trees close under him, brought the stick back. He came down in a stall.

There was a tearing crash, and he was hurled violently forward. The safety belt broke and he shot forward as the plane nosed down through the trees and brought up in a tangle of leaves and lianas that broke under him. He fell and then crashed into another tangle of vines. He finally hit the earth under the trees in a mass of dried leaves, blind reptiles, spiders, and decayed lianas that had hung among the tangle of vines like a great bag full of jungle rot and corruption.

All he could think of was that he was alive and unhurt. His .45 had fallen from its holster but lay only an arm’s length away. What had become of the tommy gun, he couldn’t guess. He struggled to his feet, badly shaken, and moved away from the debris he had brought down with him.

The plane had hit the ground only a few feet away, but look as he might, he could not find the tommy gun.

He stared at the plane, then at the hole in the jungle.

It was a miracle, no less.

“Brother,” he said grimly, “they don’t do that twice, an’ you’ve had yours.”

He started away, then saw his machete lying not far from the broken wing tip. Recovering it, he started on a limping run, his head still buzzing, for the pyramid.

There was no stair on this side, and he knew that by now Vin Boling would be ascending. He started around the base, then halted, for suddenly through the vines he saw a deep notch in the side of the pyramid. It was a tangle of vines and fallen stone, but might be another entrance. It also looked like a hole fit for a lot of snakes.

C
AREFULLY, HE APPROACHED the opening. Beyond the stones he could see a black opening.

Drawing a deep breath, machete in hand, he went into it.

One inside he stood in abysmal darkness, the air close and hot, stifling with an odor of dampness and decay. Striking a match, he looked around. On the floor was the track of a jaguar, the tiger of the Amazon. There was mud here and mold. But directly before him was a steep stair. Mounting carefully, for the steps were slippery with damp, he counted twenty steps before he halted, feeling emptiness around him. He struck another match.

Torn and muddy from his fall, he stood in the entrance to a vast hall, his feeble light blazing up, lending its glow to the light that came through from somewhere high up on the pyramid’s side. Upon each wall was a row of enormous disks, surfaced in gold or gold leaf, at least a dozen upon a side. Before him was an open space of stone floor and, at the end of the hall, an even more enormous disk.

Stepping forward, Turk glanced up toward the source of the light and saw it was a round opening, and no accident, for he realized at once that the rays of the morning sun would shine through that opening upon certain days, and the golden flood of light would strike upon the great golden disk, and be reflected lightly upon the rows of disks.

Awed by the silence and the vastness of the interior of the great pyramid, he walked forward, his footsteps sounding hollowly upon the stone floor, and then he turned and looked back, and almost jumped out of his skin.

A figure wearing a tall golden headdress sat upon a throne facing the disk. Despite the need for him on the surface, Turk turned and walked toward the tall dais, approached by steps, on which the figure sat. Slowly, he mounted the stair.

It was a colossal figure, much larger than he had first believed, and he could see that it would be bathed in the reflected sunlight from the great disk over the end of the hall. In the lap of the figure was a great dish, and upon it lay several gold rings, and some gems.

Suddenly, Turk heard a shot from above him, and then a yell. The sounds seemed very close, and very loud.

“Here they come!” The voice was that of Pace.

“Let ’em come!” Boling said. “Mather, behind the stone on the right. Pace, stay where you are. Don’t waste any shots. Fagin, tell them unless they stop and return to their village we’ll kill the girl.”

Turk heard Fagin shouting, and he turned, searching for the opening through which the sound must come. And then he saw a bit of light and saw there was a stairway close behind the seated figure. From the light on the top steps, he knew it must lead to the roof.

Taking a quick step back, he picked up a handful of the gems on the dish and stuffed them into his pocket. Then he started for the doorway. But in the door he paused, for before him was a gigantic gong. It must have been ten feet across, and beside it a huge stone hammer.

S
TUFFING HIS GUN back into his belt, he picked up the hammer, hefted it, and swung.

The sound was deafening. With a great, reverberating boom, the tone rang in the empty hallway. Outside, Turk heard a shout of astonishment, then a yell. Again, once, twice, three times he struck the gong, and then, dropping the stone hammer, he was up the stair in a couple of leaps.

He had hoped the surprise would give him his chance, and it did. He rushed out on a stone platform before the temple to face a group that stood astounded in their tracks, the pyramid still vibrating with the sound of the huge gong.

Nato saw him first. “Quick!” he said. “Over here!”

Boling recovered with a shout. “No you don’t, Madden!” he yelled. “By the—”

He swung up his gun, and Turk snapped a shot at him that missed, and then shoved the girl toward the stair and fired again. The man behind Boling grabbed him and yelled.

“Look out!” His voice rose to a scream. “They are coming!”

The natives had started up with a surge, and Pace fired, then Mather. As their guns began to bark, Turk lunged after the girl, but Boling, more anxious to get her in hopes he could stop the natives with her, rushed after him.

Turk wheeled as Nato dodged onto the stairway, and Boling skidded to a halt.

“Out of my way, Madden! That girl can save us. Without her we’re all dead. You too.”

“You fool!” Turk snapped. “They wouldn’t stop for her. You’ve violated tabu. They’d kill her, too.”

“You—”

Boling’s gun swung up, and Turk lashed out with his left. Boling staggered, but slashed at Turk with the gun, yelling in one breath for Nato to come back, in the other for help. Turk went under the gun and smashed a left and right to the body, and then as Boling wilted, he turned and lunged down the stairway after the fleeing girl.

A gun roared behind him, but the shot only struck the gong, and it clanged loudly, driving the natives to a greater frenzy. Grabbing Nato’s hand, Turk raced across the open floor and ducked down the dark and slippery stairway toward the opening where he had come in.

Behind them, the pyramid echoed to shots and yells, and then a high-pitched scream of terror and another shot. At the edge of the jungle, they stopped and looked back. All they could see was a mass of struggling figures, but to that there could be but one end, for if the natives had reached the top of the pyramid there was no hope for Boling’s crowd. One, perhaps two might get away, but more likely, none of them.

Turk caught the girl’s wrist and plunged into the jungle. Her face was white and her eyes wild.

“We must hurry!” she panted. “They will come for us, too, when finished there. We have violated tabu. No living thing must go to Chipan.”

“What about them?” Turk asked grimly, indicating the natives.

“They protect the tabu. That is different,” Natochi protested.

Slashing at the wall of jungle, with his machete, Turk cleared a space and then moved forward into an opening. He walked swiftly, but as fast as he walked, the girl’s terror and her own lithe strength was enough to keep her close behind him.

Twisting and turning, using every available opening, he dodged through the thick undergrowth. They had little time, and then the hue and cry would be raised after them, and the natives would come fast, probably much faster than he could go.

A savanna opened before them. “Can you run?” he asked.

She nodded grimly and swung into a stride even with his own. Together, man and woman, they raced across the tall grass field and into the jungle beyond. Turk’s heart was pounding, and though he strained his ears, he heard no more shooting. Then, after a long time, one shot sounded, far behind them.

“If Boling was smart,” he said, “he used that on himself.”

W
ALKING, RUNNING, STUMBLING, and pushing, they made their way through the jungle. Behind them they heard no sound, but they knew the chase was on.

What if Shan had crashed in his takeoff? What if there had been some other trouble? What if they had not found the ship? If they had met with trouble, he thought grimly, if anything had gone wrong, then it would be a last stand on the lake shore for them. And for Dick London and Phil Mora, too.

His shirt was hanging in rags, partly torn in the plane crash and partly in the jungle. His breath came in hoarse gasps, and he stopped once to brush his black hair from his eyes, staring back. He turned once more at Nato’s urging and plunged into the jungle.

How long they were in covering the distance he never knew. The jungle was a nightmare of tangling traps and spidery vines. They fought through it, heedless of snakes or swamps, thinking only of escape, and behind them, somewhere in the green and ghostly silence of the afternoon jungle, came the slim brown natives, the little brown men with their black, glistening eyes. Their tabu had been violated, and for this each man and woman must die!

A crash sounded in the jungle behind them, and Turk swung about swiftly, his gun leaping up. A native poised there with a spear, and Turk’s gun belched flame. The man screamed and the spear went into the ground. Then, as others rushed forward, Turk emptied the clip into them and turned and burst through the wall of the jungle into the open savanna. Before them was the blue of the lake!

If he had had the strength, he would have whooped for joy. Even as he ran, he jerked out the used up clip and shoved in another one. The prop on the big amphibian started to turn, and with his breath stabbing like a knife, he staggered with the girl down toward the water.

Rodd and London were standing there with rifles, and suddenly they began to shoot. Pushing the girl toward the boat, Turk wheeled on Rodd.

“Get going!” he said. “They’ve gone crazy! Nothing will stop them!”

They shoved off in the boat, and the plane’s door was open to receive them. Once aboard the plane, they pulled in the boat and Shan started the ship moving.

Gasping, Turk stared back toward the horde of natives, all of two hundred of them, gathered upon the site of their camp, stamping and waving their spears.

The twin motors talked strongly to the bright blue sky, and the big ship pulled up, circled once over the lake and leveled off toward the far blue distance where lay the Amazon.

“What about her?” Mora said, nodding toward the girl. She looked from one to the other, her eyes wide.

“She’ll do better outside,” Turk said quietly. “I’ll see that Joe Leone stakes her, and with the job we’ve done, he’ll be glad to. Besides,” he added, feeling the hard lump of the gems and gold in his pocket, “I’ve got enough here, out of their own temple, to take care of her for life.”

“Wait until I show her Coney Island,” Dick said. “And buy her a couple of hot dogs!”

She laughed. “With mustard?”

“Hey!” Dick gasped. “What is this?”

“Red tell me much about Coney Islands,” she said. “He talk always of hamburgers, hot dogs, and of beer.”

Turk took over the controls and held the ship steady. He looked down at the unrolling carpet of the jungle. It was better up here. It was cleaner, brighter, freer.

They would be in Obido soon, and tomorrow they would be starting home, down the dark rolling Amazon, the greatest of all jungle rivers. And behind them, in the green solitude of the jungle, the morning sunlight would shine through a round opening and touch with all its radiance upon a great golden disk, and the reflected light would bathe in strange beauty the solitary figure of the mysterious god of Chipan.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

TAILWIND TO TIBET

Many of the great rivers of Asia have their sources in the mountains of Tibet, flowing down from the high plateaus through magnificent gorges, most of them unexplored by any European or American. How well they are known to others, whether Tibetan or Chinese, we can only guess.

It is said that many of these gorges and the grassy highlands near them have never been explored, and so it is not indicated on maps of the area where they can be found at all.

The Kuen-Lun Mountains that border Tibet on the north are little known, perhaps not even to local tribesmen. Almost as high as the Himalayas, their peaks have lured no climbers, although many are awesome in height and obvious difficulty. Passes through these mountains are few, and some that were once in use have since been abandoned. During its brief war with India, the Red Chinese built a road leading to Ladakh and its general area over which to supply its soldiers. Most traffic has tended to choose that road and abandon the lesser passes, although yak caravans still travel some of the old routes to avoid officials and, if they can, taxes.

TAILWIND TO TIBET

T
HE TWIN MOTORS of the Grumman muttered their way through the cloud, then pulled the plane into the blue sky beyond. Below, the bare, brown backs of the mountains fell away into the canyons like folds of loose hide. The winding thread of the Yellow River which had pointed their way toward the distant hills had fallen behind. Before them lay only the unknown vastness of the Kuen-Lun Mountains and, beyond, Tibet.

Turk Madden eased forward on the stick and slid down a thousand feet toward the black, thumblike peak on which he had laid his course. Then he banked around it and came in over the black lake.

It was there, just as he remembered it. On the far side the age-old ruins, ancient beyond belief, lay bleak and bare in the late rays of the setting sun. Turk put the ship down gently and taxied toward the crumbling structures, keeping a careful eye out for any of the stone piers that might be under the water.

Shan Bao moved up behind him as he neared the stone platform, weathered and black with age. “We’ll tie her up,” he told the Manchu. “I want to go ashore.”

Sparrow Ryan looked over his shoulder. “Looks older than the mountains!” he exclaimed, staring at the buildings. “Who built these?”

Turk shrugged. “That, my friend, is possibly the ultimate mystery. Nobody knows anything about this part of the world. No competent archeologist has ever worked up here. I’ve seen Roman ruins that look juvenile compared to these.”

When the ship was tied to massive iron rings on either side of the slip, they climbed out. Ryan glanced at Turk. “I’ll stay put,” he said, “just in case.”

M
ADDEN NODDED AND helped lovely film actress Raemy Doone to the dock. Travis Bekart climbed out and stood looking around. There was apprehension in his eyes and a certain watchfulness that Turk didn’t like. He was glad the tough little government man was staying behind to keep an eye on things.

The stone platform on which they stood was worn by long ages of wind and water, and it fronted what had once been a magnificent building, over half in ruins now. The architecture was not Chinese but something that predated even the massive monasteries of inner Tibet. The city itself, of which almost a third had been built on stone pilings over the lake, stretched halfway up the sandy hills of the valley.

At the far end of the lake the Thumb Peak pointed a finger at the sky. “I’m glad it’s thumbs up!” Turk said, chuckling. “This place is gloomy!”

Their footsteps echoed hollowly on stones no white man had ever trod, and when they spoke they dropped their voices to whispers as though fearful of awakening spirits long dead.

There was no other sound. A stillness of something beyond death lay over the valley. Even the wind found no place to wail or mourn among the ruins or the hollow arches of empty windows. The platform ended in a paved street that ran along the shore behind the first row of buildings, then turned up a gloomy avenue that mounted the hill. A great stone tower had fallen into the street, which was scarcely more than an alley, making a pile of dusty rubble over which they must climb.

Shan Bao slid a long, yellow-fingered hand into the pocket of his leather jacket and drew out a pipe. Raemy glanced at him, seeing the curious expression in his eyes. “These were your people?”

“Who knows? I am a Manchu, and my people are very ancient, but this”—he waved a yellow hand—“this is more ancient. This is older than the Great Wall, older than time. It is perhaps older than the mountains.”

Turk stepped to a great stone arch that opened into a vast hall, unbelievable in its height and impressive expanse. They walked inside, a tiny knot of humanity lost beneath a dome so huge as to make them stare, unbelieving.

“Who would ever dream there were such places as this!” Raemy exclaimed. “It’s so strange, and so beautiful!”

“Beautiful?” Bekart stared about him distastefully. “It’s gloomy as a cavern.”

They walked out into the darkening street. A bat dipped toward Turk’s head, and, involuntarily, he glanced up.

Beyond the rooftops and on the ridge that enclosed the valley was a small group of horsemen. They were at least a half mile away but clearly visible in the last rays of the sun.

Raemy caught Madden’s arm. “Who are they?”

“Can’t say,” Turk murmured, scowling. “They might be Lolos. We’ll get back to the ship. Bekart, you go on ahead with Miss Doone. I’ll hang back with Shan Bao as they may come up on us.”

“I want to see them!” Raemy protested, lifting her chin defiantly.

Turk grinned. “You’d better go, honey chile. You’d be worth fifty camels up here!”

“I’ll stay,” she said. “I want to see them!”

Turk barely glanced around, his eyes level and hard. “You’ll go,” he said, “now!”

“Let’s not use that tone, Madden!” Bekart said savagely. “I’ll not have it!”

Madden’s eyes shifted to Bekart. “You go with her,” he said coolly, “and get moving!” His eyes went back to the actress. “Take him along,” he said.

Their eyes held. Horses’ hoofs sounded on stone. She turned abruptly then. “We’d better go, Travis,” she said. “He’s right, of course!”

A
DOZEN HORSEMEN were riding toward them, loping nearer on their ragged, long-haired Mongolian ponies. When they were almost up to them they reined in, and their leader, a tall, fierce-looking man with greasy black hair, shouted speech strange to Madden’s ears.

Shan replied. After attempting several dialects he made himself understood. “He wants to know what we do here,” Shan said. “I told him we rest awhile.”

“Ask him what he knows of the great mountain, Amne Machin.”

Shan spoke, and the big man’s face became a mask of incredulity. There was excited talk among the horsemen, then the big man spoke excitedly to Shan, shaking his head many times.

Shan looked at Turk. “He says you cannot go there. That is Ngolok country, and they are very bad men with a queen who is a wicked and evil woman. She has many slaves, some of them his own people.”

“Tell him we search for a man who crashed in a plane. Ask him if he knows of any white men up this way.”

After some excited talk, Shan Bao turned back to Turk. “He says once long ago a big bird landed back in the Ngolok country. He has seen it, but it is not broken. He said there was another bird, not so fat in the belly as ours, that flew near here yesterday.”

“Sounds like a fighter,” Madden speculated. “Who would have a fighter up here?”

Shan talked some more, and the leader got down from his pony and came forward. Squatting on his haunches he drew a rough map in the sand, pointing out the mountain peaks, then drew a line for a valley. He put his finger on one spot. “The plane is there,” Shan Bao interpreted. “That line is a deep valley, and very, very rich. Caravans come from and go there from Sinkiang, Urumchi.”

Turk Madden drew a flashlight from his pocket. There were several in the plane. He flashed the light on and off, then handed it to the chief. The man got to his feet to accept the gift, then bowed very low.

“He says any enemy of the Ngoloks is a friend, but he thanks you,” Shan advised.

As the horsemen rode away, Turk led the way back to the ship. “We’ll stay here tonight,” he said. “I think the place he mentioned isn’t more than sixty miles away.”

Ryan was waiting for them on the dock with Bekart and Raemy.

“Miss Doone,” Madden said, turning to the girl, “your trip may not be a wild goose chase. A ship like the one we’re looking for came down safely about sixty miles from here.”

“Turk!” Raemy’s eyes flashed with joy as she caught him by the sleeves of his jacket with both her hands. “Do you mean it? Is it true?”

“Take it easy, honey!” Madden advised. “He might have been killed in the landing, anyway. We only know what this native said, and he was never close to the ship. If he’s alive and enslaved to the Ngoloks, we’ll have a rough time freeing him.”

“Oh, if he’s only
alive!
”

Turk’s eyes lifted from hers to Bekart’s and he was shocked. The former Army flyer’s face was dead white, the bones seeming to stand out tight and hard against the tautened skin. His eyes were narrowed and ugly.

Gently, Madden stepped away from the girl. Was Bekart so affected because the girl had grabbed him in her excitement? Or was he afraid that Captain Bob Doone might still be alive?

While the others were busy preparing for night, Ryan walked over to Turk. “What do you think of Bekart?” Madden asked him.

Sparrow Ryan kicked a stone. “Haven’t got him figured,” he said. “Like I told you in Hollywood before we left, the government checked him thoroughly. His war record is good. Before the war he was an advertising man, before that a number of things. He seems to like the company of wealthy women, but who doesn’t?”

“Notice his face when I mentioned the plane was intact?”

“Uh-huh, I did. That hit him right where he lives, Turk, and I’m wondering why. He flew the wingman for Doone, and nobody ever knew what happened but him.”

Could Bekart secretly be in the pay of the people who wanted the Pharo counter? Certainly, this improvement in the Geiger counter which had been the sole cargo of the missing plane was infinitely valuable to a number of countries.

M
ADDEN RECALLED RYAN’S words of a few days before. “It’s a new gadget. Yank flyer in India dreamed it up. He’d been working in a laboratory where they had to keep testing for radiation. The device for that’s a Geiger counter. This guy dreams up a new angle on it, a much more sensitive tube, just the sort of thing that would be ideal for locating secret atomic plants. The Geiger counter will register atomic disturbances over one thousand miles away, in some cases up to two thousand miles. This Pharo counter is much more sensitive and has a directional device so they can pin down the location of the disturbance within a matter of miles.

“This guy in India,” Ryan had said, “had access to the materiel and built a model, but then he was murdered. However, they put the gadget in this steel box and started it for the States over the Hump. They were flying it to Chungking, then Japan, then home. But the plane crashed.”

Had that been the reason for the crash? Madden doubted it, and so did the authorities in Washington. The crash had been in the wrong place, almost impossible of access. Three times, under cover of other excuses, the Army had tried to find the plane and failed. Then when they discovered that Raemy Doone, the film star, was financing her own expedition to search for her brother, who had piloted the ship, they had slipped their man, Ryan, into the personnel for the flight. Madden’s eyes searched the shadowy line of the hills, and beyond them the mighty, ice-capped peaks and shoulders of the mysterious Kuen-Luns and the towering majesty of the world’s mightiest mountain, Amne Machin.

Travis Bekart was utterly ruthless. He was the sort of man who got what he wanted, regardless of price. The cold, bleak fury in his eyes a few minutes ago had not been the look of a man in love and engaged to the beauteous Raemy Doone. It had been the expression of a man thwarted who meant to do something about it. The expression, perhaps, of a murderer.

Then Turk Madden stiffened. Sparrow Ryan, who had started toward him, stopped dead still, his mouth open.

For from the distance over the hills came the mutter of a rapidly approaching plane! A drone that mounted and mounted until suddenly, with a gasp of night air, it swept by, low over the hills! It was a single-engine fighter.

“Think he saw us?” Ryan speculated apprehensively.

“No telling. We’d better figure that he did. Get out that B.A.R. That Browning’s a good weapon. If he comes back and asks for it, he can get it.”

The plane did not return, and at daylight Turk Madden rolled from his blankets into a crisp, chill dawn. Gathering a few sticks he built a small fire against a stone wall.

The rest of them crawled from the plane, Sparrow with a gun on his hip, and Shan Bao with his ever-present rifle. Standing it nearby he began to prepare breakfast. Turk’s gun, as always, was in his shoulder holster.

Bekart’s face looked drawn and worried. “Madden!” he burst out suddenly. “I’ve come this far without complaint! But this is madness! Sheer, unadulterated madness! This place is ghastly, and who knows what horrors we may run into up close to that mountain? I’ve heard of the awful chamber of horrors in Samyas monastery in Tibet, and compared to these Ngoloks the people of Tibet are civilized! I insist we turn back!”

“How can you talk that way, Travis?” Raemy protested. “Why, would you want me to waste all I’ve spent? All my hopes and Madden’s time? I wouldn’t think of turning back!”

“I insist!” Bekart replied stiffly. “I love you and I can’t have the woman I love subjected to such risks! This journey was madness in the first place! With what we know now it is worse than madness!”

“You mean,” Ryan interrupted suddenly, “because we now know that Doone landed in one piece?”

Bekart’s face whitened and his eyes glittered, but he did not reply, only continued his tirade. “What kind of plane was that, that flew over us last night? I know every plane that flies, and I never saw such a ship before! What would a fighter be doing here, of all places? We’ve been warned about these people, and every step is nearer to awful death or slavery!”

Turk Madden glanced up. “You knew all that when you came,” he said coldly. “We all did. As it happens, neither you nor Miss Doone has anything to say about the further progress of this trip.

“It is true,” he added, smiling at Raemy’s surprised look, “that she financed this trip to find her brother. That’s still our purpose, but we have another. Ryan is a government man. We’re after a steel box that was Doone’s cargo in the lost plane. That box is of enormous importance to our government, so let’s hear no more about it. The trip continues.

“As for Bob Doone,” Madden added, “if he is alive, we’ll find him. If he is dead, we shall find his grave. Also”—he glanced up, his eyes bland—“I wish to examine Doone’s ship to see what happened to it.”