"Doc Savage Adventure 1935-07 Quest of Qui" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

Johnny turned him over, and as one would drain out a drowning man, cleared the victim's bronchial passages so more words could come.

"Newspapers full of stuff about that Viking ship," the man said. "Lot of guessing - nowhere near truth - never connect it with Qui."

Johnny again tried to clear his throat, but it was no go, for the internal wounds must have opened. With bandages and and opiate, Johnny went to work.

It was cold. He had some trouble keeping snow from blowing into the wounds while he bandaged them. The wind in the rocks sounded like violins playing far away.

Out of the fiddling of the wind in the rocks, the moan of the airplane motor came so gradually that it was quite loud before Johnny noticed it'


IT WAS a low-wing monoplane, fitted with pontoons for landing on water, and the pontoons in turn equipped with ski like runners. The ship had two engines, fitted with shutter cowls, and their exhausts must be carried through some cabinheating attachment, judging by their hissing quality. An all metal ship, Johnny concluded.

The plane was coming down the wind, and Johnny, staring toward it, was bothered by snow which the wind swept into his eyes. He stepped backward to get in the lee of a boulder only somewhat smaller than a suburban garage, where there was some shelter. It chanced thus that he saw two grooves in the snow, deep grooves, and more than a dozen feet apart. There was one point where they had not filled with snow, although they must have been made hours ago. Johnny looked at them closely.

"I'll be superamalgamated," he murmured.

The grooves had been made by the landing gear of the plane above, or one amazingly like it. The particular marks of the ski runners attached under the pontoons could be picked out.

The other plane moaned overhead. Its color was the aluminum alloy of its natural metal, and it looked new. Men in the cabin - they numbered several - were all looking down,

The men all wore masks.

The instant he saw the masks, Johnny sprinted for his own plane. He had suddenly become in the greatest of hurries. He was in a jam. He did not need the twang of a bullet off a near-by rock - a sound he now heard - to tell him there was trouble.

Johnny reached his plane, which had broken through the soft crust. Its nose was almost against boulders. He grabbed the tail and tried to turn the ship around by main strength. No go. He only broke through the crust and floundered.

The aluminum ship had spun away, but now it came streaking back again, and men were cocked out of its windows, using high-powered rifles. Johnny could see their shoulders jerk as the rifles recoiled. He heard characteristic little patting noises of bullets into the snow about him.

Johnny crawled under the tail of his own ship, burrowing deep into the snow, got under the cabin, scrambled up, and was inside. Bullets hitting the cabin sounded like firecrackers exploding. The cabin was encased in a membrane of armor alloy which, due to the metallurgical genius of Doc Savage, was light and proof against ordinary missiles.

The aluminum plane went over with a gusty whoop, so low that its air disturbance rocked Johnny's plane a little, and sucked up a vortex of loose snow. Bullets came down like rain.

Johnny jacked the self-starters and got his engine going. His propeller was not only adjustable pitch, but could be reversed. He reversed it, not sure that it would do any good, but not wanting to be pulled forward into the rocks where the prop would club itself to pieces.

The aluminum ship was coming back. Johnny produced a weapon which resembled an oversized automatic pistol, with a big drum of a magazine. This was a supermachine pistol perfected by Doc Savage, and its chief wonder was not its incredible rapidity of fire, but the variety of bullets which it could discharge.

Johnny searched through a case which held ammunition drums, all neatly designated with numerals. He was hunting one which held bullets charged with a particular chemical that vaporized, even in air as cold as this, and gave off a gas that, when drawn into a carburetor, rendered the mixture unexplosive. The chemical was another of Doc Savage's gems.

Who-o-o-m! The plane jumped a full twenty feet in the air. Its back broke in the middle. It fell in two parts. Smoke and snow made a cloud all about it.

Johnny was out of the plane. He was not sure how that had happened. Too much flame, smoke, noise. He was in snow up to his neck. Outflung arms supported him on the crust. The smoke fumes stung his nostrils.

"Dynamite!" he mumbled.

The other plane boomed off. Wind pulled the smoke away. Parts of the plane, its contents, were scattered about. The other ship stood on a wingtip, came about in a vertical bank, and started back.

Johnny hoisted himself out of the snow. Handfuls of snow jumped up around him. Bullets! He ran. He saw a metal case to the left. It had spilled out of the ruined plane. He recognized it, whipped to it, gathered it up with both arms, and sprinted.

A big rock lured him. Snow was encrusted near it. He went through, under. But the stones sheltered him. Plane, guns, bullets, made a hell of a noise. Then the plane went on.