Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 Part 37

Jamison lifted The Master to his feet and with a surge of muscles swept him down to the flooring of the dock.

"Paula first," said Bell, "and then The Master, and then you, Jamison."

"One moment," said The Master reproachfully. "It would be cruel not to let me rea.s.sure my subjects. I will give an order."

Bell and Jamison listened suspiciously. But he spoke gently to the coachman.

"You will tell the deputies," said The Master in Spanish, "that a month's supply of medicine for all my subjects will be found in my laboratory. And you may tell them that I shall return before the end of that time."

The coachman's eyes filled with a pa.s.sionate relief.

"Now," said The Master placidly, "I am ready for our little jaunt."

Paula descended the ladder and seated herself in the bow of the boat.

Bell covered The Master grimly with his automatic as he descended, with surprising agility. Jamison came down last, and resumed his former grip on The Master's collar. Bell rowed out to the big plane.

Jamison kept close watch while Bell started the four huge motors and throttled them down to warming up speed, and while he hauled up the anchor with which the huge seaplane was anch.o.r.ed.

The dock was covered with a swarm of panic stricken folk. Everywhere, all the inhabitants of the city who were slaves to The Master had come in awful terror to watch. And all the inhabitants of the city were slaves to The Master. Some of them fell to their knees and held out imploring arms to Bell, begging him for mercy and the return of The Master. Some cursed wildly.

But, with his jaws set grimly, Bell gave the motors the gun.

The big plane moved heavily, then more swiftly through the water. It lifted slowly, and rose, and rose, and dwindled to a speck high in the air.

And all through the streets and ways of Punta Arenas, fear stalked almost as a tangible thing. Panic hovered over the housetops, always ready to descend. Terror was in the air that every man breathed, and every human being looked at every other human being with staring, haunted eyes. Punta Arenas was waiting for its murder madness to begin.

CHAPTER XVIII

There were four motors to pull the big plane through the air, and their roaring was a vast thundering noise which the earth re-echoed.

But inside the cabin that tumult was reduced to a not intolerable b.u.mming sound.

"What'll I do with this devil, Bell?" asked Jamison. "Now that we're aloft, I confess this grenade makes me nervous. I'm holding it so tightly my fingers are getting cramped."

"Tie him up," said Bell, without looking. "He'll talk presently."

Movements. The plane flew on, swaying slightly in the way of big sea-planes everywhere. A williwaw began in the hills ahead and swept out and set the s.h.i.+p to reeling crazily in its erratic currents. The Strait vanished and there were tumbled hills below them. Minutes pa.s.sed.

"Got him fixed up," said Jamison coolly, "I'll guarantee he won't break loose. Got any plans, Bell?"

"No time," said Bell. "I haven't had time to make any. The first thing is to get where his folk will never find us. Then we'll see what we can do with him."

Paula looked at the now bound figure of The Master. And the little old man beamed at her.

"He--he's smiling!" said Paula, in a voice that was full of a peculiar horrified shock.

Bell shrugged. Punta Arenas was all of twenty-five miles behind, and the earth over which they flew began to take on the shape of an island. Water appeared beyond it, and innumerable small islands. Bell began to rack his brain for the infinitesimal sc.r.a.ps of knowledge he had about this section of the world. It was pitifully scanty. Punta Arenas was the southernmost point of the continental ma.s.s. All about it was an archipelago and a maze of waterways, thinly inhabited everywhere and largely without any inhabitants at all. The only solid ground between Cape Horn and the Antarctic ice pack was Diego Ramirez and the South Shetlands....

Nothing to go on. But any sufficiently isolated and desolate spot would do. Almost anywhere along the southern edge of the continental islands should serve.

The plane roared on monotonously, while Bell began to wrestle with another and more serious problem. In three days--two, now--an American naval vessel would turn up, with scientists and chemists on board. It was to be doubted whether anything like an overt act would be risked by that vessel. If all the governments of South America were under The Master's thumb, then cabled orders from his deputies would race three navies to the spot. And the government of the United States does not like to start war, anywhere. Certainly it would not willingly enter into a conflict with the whole southern continent for the solution of a problem that so far affected that continent alone. The Master's kidnapping had solved nothing, so far.

Jamison tapped his shoulder.

"No pursuit, so far," he observed coolly. "I've looked." Bell nodded.

"They don't dare. Not yet, anyhow. They're depending on The Master.

How is he?"

"Smiling peacefully to himself, d.a.m.n him!" snarled Jamison. "Do you know what we're up against?"

"Ourselves," said Bell coldly. "But I'm nearly licked. He's got to talk!"

Jamison moved away again. The earth below looked as if it had been torn to shreds in some t.i.tanic convulsion of ages past. The sea was everywhere, and so was land! There were little threads of silver interlacing and crossing and wavering erratically in every conceivable direction. And there were specks of islands--rocks only yards in extent--and islands of every imaginable size and shape, with their surfaces in every possible state of upheaval and distortion. A broader ma.s.s of land appeared ahead and to the left.

"Tierra del Fuego again," muttered Bell. "If we cross it...."

For fifteen minutes the plane thundered across desolate, rocky hills.

Then the maze of islets again. Bell scanned them keenly, and saw a tiny steamer traveling smokily, for no conceivable reason, among the scattered bits of stone. The sea appeared, stretching out toward infinity.

Bell rose, to survey a wider s.p.a.ce. He swung to the left, so that he was heading nearly southeast, and went on down toward that desolation of desolations, the stormy cape which faces the eternal ice of the antarctic. He was five thousand feet up, then, and scanning sea and earth and sky....

And suddenly he swung sharply to the right and headed out toward the open sea. He felt a small figure pressing against his shoulder.

Presently fingers closed tightly upon his sleeve. He glanced down at Paula and managed to smile.

"There are some rocks out there," he told her quietly. "Islands, I think, and Diego Ramirez, at a guess."

They were specks, no more, but they were vastly more distinct from the plane than from Mount Beaufoy. That is on Henderson Island in New Year Sound, and its seventeen-hundred-foot peak was almost below Bell when he sighted the islands. But the islands have been seen full fifty miles from there.

It took the plane nearly forty minutes to cover the s.p.a.ce, but long before that the islands had become distinct. Two tiny groups of scattered rocks, the whole group hardly five miles in length and by far the greater number no more than boulders surrounded by sheets of foam from breakers. Two of them merited the name of islands. The nearer was high and bare and precipitous. No trace of vegetation showed upon it. The farther was smaller, and at its northern corner a little cove showed, nearly land-locked.

Bell descended steeply. The big plane plunged wildly in the air eddies about the taller island at five hundred feet, but steadied and went winging on down lower, and lower.... The waves between the two islands were not high, but the seaplane alighted with a mighty, a tremendous splas.h.i.+ng, and Bell navigated it grimly though clumsily into the mouth of the cove. There a small beach showed. He went very slowly toward it. Presently he swung abruptly about. A wing tip float grounded close to the sh.o.r.e.

The motors cut off and left a thunderous silence. Bell climbed atop the cabin and let go the anchor.

"We're here," he said shortly. "Bring The Master and we'll go ash.o.r.e."