"Doc Savage Adventure 1938-11 Fortress of Solitude" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

IT was still not too late, had Doc Savage known of John Sunlight. Doc Savage had the finest planes, and knowledge and courage and scientific skill. And he could have reached this arctic rock in time.

Doc Savage, combination of mental wizard, scientific genius, muscular phenomena, would not have been too late - yet.

For John Sunlight could find no way into the weird blue half ball. He looked first at the base of the thing, but the glasslike blue walls seemed to continue on down into the solid rock.

John Sunlight clawed at the glazed blue. It felt as hard and cold as steel. He put his face against it and tried to see through the blue substance, whatever it was. It seemed that he should be able to peer through it - the stuff had a certain transparent aspect. But he could see nothing.

Next, John Sunlight made a complete circle of the thing. He found no door, no window, no break of any kind.

The blue dome was not made of bricks, or even great blocks. It appeared to be one solid substance of a nature unknown. Not glass, and yet not metal either. Something mysterious.

It took a long time to satisfy John Sunlight that he could find no door.

He went back to the others.

"Get sledge hammers off the wrecked ice-breaker," he said coldly.

The sledge hammers were brought him. Titania and Giantia alone had the strength to fetch them.

John Sunlight took the heaviest sledge.

"Stay here." His eyes smoldered in the almost-black cups which his eye sockets had become. "Stay here."

He stood and gave each of them hypnotic attention in turn.

"None of you must ever go near that blue dome," he said with stark intensity.

He did not say what would happen if they disobeyed; did not voice a single threat. It was not his way to give physical threats; no one had ever heard him do so. Because it is easy to threaten a man's body, but difficult to explain how a terrible thing can happen to a mind. That kind of a threat would not sound convincing, or even anything but silly.

But they knew when they heard him. And he knew, too, that not one of them would go near the Strange Blue Dome. He had not exerted his hideous sway over them for months for nothing.

It took a longer time for John Sunlight to make his way back to the vast blue thing. He planted his feet wide, and raised the sledge hammer, and gathered all his great strength - his strength was more incredible than anyone could have imagined, even starved as he was - and hit the blue dome.

There was a single clear ringing note, as if a great bell had been tapped once, and the sound doubtless carried for miles, although it did not seem loud.

John Sunlight lowered the sledge hammer, examined the place where be had struck. He made his growling. It was a low and beastly growl, almost the only emotional sound he ever made. Too, the bestial growl was almost the only meaty, physical thing he ever did. Otherwise he seemed to be composed entirely of a frightful mind.

His sledge blow had not even nicked the mysterious blue substance of which the dome was composed.

John Sunlight hit again, again, and again -

He was still hitting when the Eskimo said something guttural.


IT was a sinister indication of John Sunlight's mental control that he did not show surprise when the Eskimo grunted. He did not know what the Eskimo had said. He did not speak the Eskimo tongue. And an Eskimo was one of the last things he had expected to appear.

Particularly a well-fed, round butterball of an Eskimo with a happy smile, holding a large, frozen chunk of walrus meat.

John Sunlight smiled. He could smile when he wished.