Chapter 13
Death Ship--Ghost Ship!
It was two hours later when Doc left his Manhattan headquarters, hailed a cab, and directed the driver to LaGuardia Field.
As the taxi drove into the airfield's gate, Doc instructed him to head toward a particular hangar on the far edge of the field. The sedan hurried onward, and the passing lights briefly illumined the interior of the car, flashing metallically on Doc's face. Gazing out the window, the bronze man reflected on a city commission's recent request for his input on expanding and updating LaGuardia. Doc had turned in some suggestions, including his recommendation that the city not focus its attention on centralizing all air traffic at a single airport. Doc strongly believed that the air freight and air passenger businesses would experience a meteoric rise in the years following the war's end. So he recommended a series of smaller airfields arranged in a semicircle around the perimeter of the metropolitan area. This setup would keep the burgeoning air industry from overburdening a single airfield by spreading the traffic across a series of fields, each in close proximity to a certain region of the city and its environs.
However, the city fathers responded to Doc's recommendations with a resounding lack of enthusiasm. The costs, they said, were too great. Still, there was no doubt that the city would expand LaGuardia soon. Probably as soon as the war wound down.
Doc climbed out as the taxi pulled up. He paid his fare, and the cab rushed away. Light already poured out the windows of the hangar, for Doc had called a ground chief before leaving his skyscraper headquarters. The chief had gathered his crew, and the men were at work inside. Doc entered the barn-like structure through an entrance at its side, and bright light briefly flared out from the door as he passed through.
Thirty minutes later, a panel truck drew up beside the hangar. The driver offloaded half a dozen large parcels--some crated and quite heavy--that he delivered to the crew inside, then drove off.
It was still dark two hours later when the wide hangar doors opened and the craft within was wheeled out.
Despite the bright lights shining from the open hangar, the surface of the plane offered little reflection. It seemed to be covered with a dull black paint. It was still possible for an observer to make out that the craft had a delta shape instead of the normal cigar-type fuselage. Indeed, the four-motored plane was a large experimental flying wing, loaned to Doc Savage by the Army for testing purposes.
The bronze man climbed aboard and sat behind the controls. He soon had the futuristic-looking bird airborne.
He circled the field several times to get reacquainted with the feel of the craft. Doc had designed and directed the installation of baffles in the fuel cells to prevent the unhampered sloshing that had unbalanced the plane on earlier flights. Satisfied with the results, Doc nosed the wing south.
Back at the airfield, quite some distance from the recently emptied hangar, a man leaned against the hood of a sedan and peered after the departing wing through binoculars. With the craft beyond sight in the darkness, the watcher stowed the binoculars in the car, then made his way to the hangar on foot. After the last of the crew left the structure, the observer stealthily broke into the darkened hangar. Using a flashlight, he went through a desk until he found a copy of the flight plan that Doc had filed with the LaGuardia administration office. Pocketing the papers, the man left.
At sea, Commander Gould stood on the bridge and looked out over his ship. The USS Dynamo had lingered in this patch of water for several hours now, since receiving the radio message from Norfolk not to come into the base. Something about the bleeding sun and melting ships. Gould had heard something about this terror, but he dismissed this rumor as some sort of hysteria -- people just couldn't believe the European war was truly over, so they dreamed up some devilish imagined threat to justify their disbelief in the face of obvious relief.
Gould was the hard-bitten veteran of many battles and executive officer of the Dynamo. His ship and her men had suffered through plenty of hell during the war. They had all represented their country with great patriotism, courage and fortitude. They deserved any relief they could find.
Besides, the Pacific Theater of Operations remained a hotbed. Plenty of hell left to endure there. The returning fleet didn't need more Atlantic problems to distract from the Asian cauldron.
The commander turned his gaze out into the distance, still shrouded in darkness. But a barely perceptible line of growing light began to mark the horizon. He had heard a number of planes during the night. Sent out from Norfolk, no doubt, to check on any tin cans scattered around the water. No rough seas last night. None expected today, so he foresaw a calm sail into port. Another ship, the Caisson, was just visible off to the south.
The light increased. Activity was increasing aboard ship. Someone handed Gould a mug of coffee, scalding hot and bitter.
The brightness swelled and the fiery globe in the east lifted clear of the sea.
The X-O of the Dynamo frowned. There was a curious pink tint to the air -- a pink that darkened to crimson as the sun climbed.
The sun. The sun was an angry scarlet boil.
Gould's eyes widened. His coffee spilled, the mug clattered to the deck.
He heard a petty officer scream.
The Dynamo began to melt.
Doc landed outside Norfolk at a small airfield that had been used since the United States' entry into the war primarily by the military for craft not intended for battle. Civilian staff and crews manned the field, with security provided by a smattering of military police, who frequently had their hands full when called into Norfolk to break up fights or investigate disturbances caused by off-duty personnel.
The bronze man left the flying wing in the hands of a hangar crew before climbing into a sedan sent for him by Admiral Ryan. He carried three bulky cases, each made of metal with a dull sheen, each about the size of a large suitcase.
Doc arrived in time to enter Ryan's office with Lt. Sherman. The lieutenant greeted the bronze man and handed a note to the admiral, who had been awaiting Doc Savage's arrival with Renny. The engineer had a dour look on his face -- a sure sign that he was happy to be involved with this adventure.
Admiral Ryan frowned at the note and growled. "I sent a patrol boat out to check on ships I kept at sea last night. We've apparently lost two more to that bleeding sun thing -- the Dynamo and the Caisson. There's no sign of them. And the patrol found a ghost boat, a PT with no one aboard."
"Keep any crews off that ghost boat," Doc interrupted. "Have it towed in, but don't let a crew bring it in alone. It might still be in danger of melting."
Ryan glared at Doc, and his shaggy brows seemed to bristle. He barked at Sherman, "You heard him. Make it so!" The lieutenant hustled out.
Doc explained about the Helldiver that had flown him to New York and the residue that had destroyed the shop rags in his laboratory. "I think we'll find more of that residue on the ghost PT."
"What about the crew?" Renny asked.
"Unfortunately, human flesh is not so strong as steel," the bronze man answered. "Like the fabric rags and the porous wooden box in my Manhattan lab, a man will melt under light alone when exposed to whatever this chemical concoction may be."
"But the Dynamo and Caisson," Admiral Ryan sputtered.
"Clearly some catalyst is required to so dramatically affect the ships that have melted," Doc answered. "That catalyst must have been present with the Dynamo and Caisson, but not the PT boat. There, only the crew melted."
Renny thought his ears were scorching as Ryan swore vigorously for several moments. "Those are--were damn fine American fighting men, Navy men! And they're gone thanks to some secret weapon? Something that makes the sun melt them into nothing?"
Doc was grimly silent.
"Is this stuff like that red snow we encountered in Florida, Doc?" the big engineer questioned.*
"There are, I think, similarities" Doc replied, "but there seem to be differences as well. For instance, the red snow needed no catalyst to do its dirty work. Likewise, the metal-destroying power used by the so-called Metal Master was sonics-based.** The bleeding sun menace we're dealing with now is apparently chemically based."
Doc directed his attention to the admiral. "I'd like to take a look at that ghost boat. Can you assign a seaplane for our use?"
Admiral Ryan nodded. Twenty minutes later, Doc and Renny were in the air over the Atlantic waters. The big engineer sat at the controls of the ship that had taken him out the previous day. The plane's yoke seemed to disappear within his massive hands.
Renny sat the craft down on the choppy seas with relative ease and taxied the pontoon plane to within a score of feet of the seemingly abandoned PT boat. Alongside the ghost boat was a streamlined Navy runabout, the three-man crew of which had notified Norfolk about finding the crewless PT. They were awaiting the arrival of a tug to tow the PT into Norfolk.
Doc hailed the runabout, then launched an inflatable rubber dinghy, in which he and Renny rowed to the PT, carrying aboard one of the metal cases that the bronze man had brought from New York.
On reaching the deck, Doc opened the case and directed Renny to follow his example. The bronze man rubbed a square of fabric over a surface of the boat or a piece of its equipment. Then he would seal the rag within a lead-lined pouch--the lead was thin enough to be flexible--and write a note on a tag that he would attach to the pouch. Each note described the location on the craft that Doc or Renny had scrubbed with the enclosed rag.
Doc and Renny secured samples from below deck as well as above. While the bronze man was investigating below deck, Renny paused to note another plane approaching. He returned to his waterless scrubbing--"I never did care for swabbing the decks," he thought, "but if Doc says 'Do it,' I'll do it"--and did not even look up as he heard the roar of the plane pass overhead and recede into the distance.
Renny was still intent on gathering samples of residue when he heard the first shouts from the runabout crew. He glanced over to the smaller boat. The men were wild-eyed and pointing skyward.
The big engineer turned his gaze. He released his pent-up breath as he saw that the sky was clear blue. Clear blue, that is, just above the horizon. For when he lifted his eyes, he felt an icy grip around his chest--the blue around the already scarlet sun was rapidly changing to a spreading expanse of crimson that would soon fill the sky!
*The Red Snow, published in the February 1935 issue of Doc Savage Magazine.
**The Metal Master, published in the March 1936 issue of Doc Savage Magazine.
Written By:
Duane Spurlock
based on notes by:
Kenneth Robeson
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