Doc Savage: Glare of the Gorgon (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 19) (53 page)

But it was the eyes of the creature that made Ham Brooks emit a startled shriek. He later denied he had done any such thing. But in that awful instant, the horrid gaze of the Gorgon struck him with full force.

The thing recoiled from the brilliant beam, and in that moment of reaction, Ham lifted his supermachine pistol and depressed the trigger.

The compact superfirer commenced jittering, pouring smoking cartridges out of its fast-shuttling receiver. The marvelous mechanism was reduced to a busy blur. The roar, so reminiscent of a bullfiddle violin string being plucked and vibrating for long moments afterward, filled the entire tunnel passage like a moaning ghost.

The tattered gray garment that sheathed the two-legged apparition twitched and plucked madly, and the thing staggered back under the force of multiple mercy bullets striking it, dashing themselves apart, and releasing the potent chemical.

A hissing came from the lips of the gargoyle.

It held its hands at its side. These members resembled scale-covered snakeskin, angry fists squeezing spasmodically. Only in the bullet-stung twisting of the vipers surmounting its hideous head did the monster show that it was bothered by the slugs pummeling its chest.

Monk’s voice cried out. “What’s goin’ on up there?”

“The Gorgon!” Ham yelled. “I just shot at it.”

“Did you get it?” Monk yelled up.

“Yes, yes,” Ham said. Then a pause. “No, it’s still coming on.”

“Dang it! Shoot at it again.”

Ham did. But the ammunition drum had already been largely expended. A short hooting erupted from the supermachine pistol. A brief glimpse of sparks snapped from the weapon’s spiked snout, but these were only tracer bullets mixed in with the mercies.

The Medusa did not even flinch this time. It only hissed. The hissing was loud and angry, and it could not be immediately understood if these ugly noises came from the open maw of the thing, or from its crown of fierce vipers, whose slit eyes gleamed in the strong light.

By this time, Monk had scrambled out of the pit. He lay Long Tom down as quickly and gently as he could, then spun about and unlimbered his supermachine pistol with the speed of an old-time Western gunfighter.

On the point of firing, Monk snarled, “Take this, you bug-eyed harpy!”

Eyes going wide, Ham howled, “Monk, wait! What if those are explosive bullets! You could kill us all!”

Monk hesitated, and before he could decide, the Medusa suddenly turned in a swirl of ragged skirts, and fled into the deeper passages of the mine.

In an amazed voice, Ham gasped, “It understood us. It understood what explosives are!”

Monk growled, “That means it’s afraid. Good, let’s hunt it down.”

Ham demanded, “With what? You’ve only got one drum of ammunition and you don’t even know what’s in it.”

“You still got your sword cane with you?”

The dapper elegant lawyer did. It was tucked under one arm. He holstered his pistol—which was now useless anyway—and drew the blade. Examining its needle-like tip, he saw that there was a brown substance coating the uppermost metal.

“I have enough anesthetic on the point of my blade to put an elephant to sleep,” he declared. “But my mercy bullets didn’t even bring the Medusa down. I am not certain this will be of much help.”

Monk was down on one knee, slapping Long Tom boisterously about the face saying, “Wake up, Long Tom. We can’t leave you behind in the shape you’re in.”

The dazed electrical wizard seemed to come around slowly. The glazed look in his pale eyes started to go away.

“What happened?” he blurted.

“Ham shot the Medusa with a full drum of mercies.”

“Did it go down?”

“No,” admitted Ham diffidently, “but it ran away. Under the circumstances, I am grateful.”

Long Tom picked himself up, and Monk provided some long-armed assistance.

Looking about, the pallid electrical expert remarked, “In that case, I don’t feel so bad about my magnetic gun.”

“Never mind that!” snapped Ham. “We must run this creature to earth.”

They advanced once more, moving rapidly, flashlights painting the crumbling tunnel walls, which were black with coal dust and grime, breathing in a controlled manner, for they full well understood that the supply of oxygen in their gas masks was rapidly diminishing.

Chapter L

THE DECAPITATED

DOC SAVAGE HAD traversed the tunnel leading into the bowels of the mine for more than fifteen minutes without encountering anything other than the occasional centipede flowing along on its multiple legs. The dank passage appeared to be without end.

After a short period, Doc extinguished his flashlight and extracted from his gadget vest a pair of goggles. Simple in construction, the lenses were designed to enable one to perceive otherwise-unseeable infra-red rays.

He disassembled the forward part of his flashlight, unscrewed the tiny bulb, and inserted another taken from a compartment back of the flashlight barrel. After he swapped bulbs, Doc thumbed the flashlight on. An observer would have sworn that no light issued forth.

The infra-rays were sufficient for the bronze giant to see through his special goggles, and he resumed his underground trek, guided by this eerie light that shed no shadows, for it could not be seen with the unaided eye.

So it was that the Medusa, feeling its way along the shaft up ahead, did not suspect the Herculean obstacle in its path that was Doc Savage, mighty Man of Bronze, until it blindly blundered into view.

Seen in the infra-red light, the living Gorgon was a garish and unreal apparition. Several of its hair serpents hung limp. A few were missing. This only added to the objectionable nature of the monster. Most of her snaky locks squirmed like earthworms in a bait can.

There was insufficient room for the bronze man to step aside, even if he had a mind to do so. While it was tempting to let the creature pass and follow it, and perhaps overcome it by seizing it by the throat from behind and exerting spinal pressure on its neck nerves, the narrow passage made that an impossibility.

So Doc Savage planted his feet, lifted terrible hands, and waited. The sway-skirted Medusa ran smack into him. It was rather like hitting a brick wall.

Hissing venomously, the human monster rebounded, slammed back onto its spine. The air came out of its lungs in a gusty rush.

Doc Savage leapt ahead, fell upon the grotesque thing. Seizing the throat by main strength, he lifted high, bringing the unlovely form entirely off the ground so that its sandaled feet kicked the air like a condemned man in the throes of being hanged.

The bronze man intoned, “It is over.”

“Savage!” hissed the other, recognizing the metallic voice. And began kicking, but it was like kicking a stone. Doc Savage, who in repose sometimes looked uncannily like a statue of metal and not a human being formed of flesh and blood, was unmoved by the flailing feet.

The bronze man retained one grip on the thing’s pulsing throat, shifted the other hand to the neck of the flowing robe it wore. With a violent tearing motion, the bronze man removed the upper part of the garment, revealing what appeared to be scales of iridescent serpent skin.

For Doc had seen the perforations on the chest of the Medusa; mixed in with them were the mashed blobs of mercy bullets which had penetrated the cloth, only to flatten harmlessly against protective scale.

“My men tried to bring you down, but failed,” said Doc firmly. “Where are they?”

“Dead!” shrieked the Medusa. “Their living brains have been turned to inert matter. And now, that doom is yours!”

“This whole affair,” stated Doc Savage, unmoved, “has been a build-up, a mass of trickery and intrigue. There is no such being as Medusa.”

“Lies!” Scaly fingers reached into the garment, slipped to one side, and brought out an object. This was pitched wildly. It struck the ceiling.

The surviving serpents surmounting the Gorgon’s skull suddenly fell still, and there came a glare of greenish light, followed by an eruption of oily smoke.

Doc Savage suddenly released the thing, retreating backward down the tunnel. He understood the awful significance of the green flare and the resulting vapor. The Gorgon’s deadly glare!

Doc’s retreat was not complete or utter. He got back as far as he could, reached into his vest, and brought out something that looked like an oversized marble. Had someone studied the thing, they would have found it consisted of two hollow compartments, each filled with a separate chemical solution.

The bronze giant flung the thing ahead of him. The thin-walled glass shell shattered, and the two chemicals combined in a violent reaction.

A hissing, sputtering resulted, illuminating the long passage.

As the Medusa stood poised, one hand about its injured throat, the other pointed long-nailed fingers in Doc Savage’s direction.

“The doom of petrification is your fate! You cannot resist it.”

Doc Savage advanced, walked boldly and unafraid through the roiling oily smoke, his dark-goggled eyes reflecting the sputtering light.

The Medusa was shaking its fist, saying. “Die, die, die—why won’t you die?”

Doc had sealed his lips, and he was breathing through his nostrils in a normal fashion. If any smoke entered those nostrils, it seemed to have no outward effect.

Then, the bronze giant’s lips parted slightly. From deep within him emerged the eerie trilling that was so evocative of faraway climes. This time, however, the tuneless melody sounded angry, vengeful, as if a swarm of ethereal bees had been roused to wrath. The trillation swelled in volume and barely-repressed rage.

The exhalation of breath which accompanied the phenomenon stirred the smoky cloud as it gathered around Doc Savage. It eddied, spreading out.

A serpentine tendril was drawn into one bronze nostril, to disappear like a vaporous serpent sliding into its burrow.

Suddenly, Doc raised one metallic hand, then the other lifted. The bronze giant acted for all the world like a man who had been caught by surprise.

Cabled hands going to his ears as if to block an unpleasant sound, Doc Savage seemed to stagger on his feet.

The Medusa crept forward cautiously, stepping around the spluttering magnesium eruption, lizard-green eyes alight.

“See! See!” hissed out the terrible voice. “You succumb! You are not impervious to my glare after all….”

Doc held himself rigid, as if fighting off a terrible influence he could not see.

Without warning, bronze fingers shifted from his ears, tore loose the goggles, exposing the metallic giant’s natural eyes.

FASCINATED, the Gorgon saw the orbs of Doc Savage boring ahead, staring sightlessly, no longer twin flake-gold pools that were perpetually animated, but stony and opaque.

“What!” the Medusa exploded. “Impossible!” It seemed shocked that its power had not yet brought the bronze man low. Or possibly the sight of those stony orbs caused the hissing outburst.

The Medusa hesitated, apparently afraid to approach the fixed statue that was the Man of Bronze.

A commotion came from behind it. The bizarre figure turned, realizing Doc Savage’s men were not far off.

Reaching into its garment, it drew another object, pitched it directly at Doc.

The bronze man shook off his fearful rigidity then. He threw himself to one side, simultaneously catching the thrown object and flung it over his shoulder. It flew quite a distance before rebounding off a bend in the tunnel, and vanished in a flare of sickly green light.

Picking up long skirts, the weird figure vaulted the bronze man’s dodging form, seeking escape. It ran in the direction of the dying flare.

Doc Savage’s powerful voice lifted in a crash of warning.

“Stop! If you flee in that direction, your destruction will be certain!”

“Medusa does not fear her own breath!” the weird voice hissed. Whipping around a turn in the passage, the thing vanished, ragged skirts swirling.

Almost immediately, Doc Savage shook off his seeming paralysis. Reclaiming his goggles, the bronze man raced toward his men, and called ahead, his infra-red flashlight once more in hand.

“Danger! Turn back!”

Monk’s voice rolled anxiously down the tunnel. “Doc?”

“Go back! The vapor that causes brain-calcification is loose in this tunnel.”

“What about you?”

“Chemical cartridge filters in my nostrils. Run!”

The commotion of men turning around quickly followed, and Doc Savage raced after that sound.

He soon came to the vertical shaft, and the wooden ladder, which he climbed, there being light there.

Monk, Ham, and Long Tom were hovering around the mouth of the pit when Doc Savage’s head appeared. The bronze man climbed out with some difficulty, owing to the tight confines of the shaft.

“Seal this lid,” Doc said flatly.

This was done, and they stood around, looking at one another.

Stripping off his goggles, Doc exposed stony orbs. They looked weird in the combined light of his men’s flash rays.

“Doc!” cried out Ham. “Your eyes are—”

“Merely eye shells contrived to resemble stone,” explained the bronze man, pocketing them. Doc often employed colored lenses to disguise his distinctive flake-gold eyes. These had been painted to mimic rock.

“What gives?” muttered Monk.

“It had been my plan to fool the Medusa into thinking that it had worked its magic upon me,” Doc stated, “and so lure him into my grasp. Regrettably, your approach foiled that ruse. When a second gas bomb was thrown in my direction, I could not be certain that my chemically-treated nostril filters would continue to preserve my life and took appropriate steps. Regrettably, our foe has fled.”

“I shot the thing,” moaned Ham. “It wouldn’t go down.”

Long Tom added, “My needle bullets didn’t even affect it.”

“Chain mail armor beneath the cloth garment,” explained Doc.

“Oh,” said Ham and Long Tom in unison.

“That explains it,” snorted Monk. “The harridan didn’t seem human.”

“The Medusa is human enough,” advised Doc. “How is your oxygen supply?”