"072 (B059) - The Yellow Cloud (1939-02) - Evelyn Coulson" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

THE YELLOW CLOUD
A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson

Chapter I. THE IMPOSSIBLE YELLOW THING
IT was too bad that nobody actually saw what happened to the new army X-ship on its test flight. It happened that there were clouds that night, and anyway, the impossible thing occurred twenty thousand feet in the air.
So all the information they got was what the pilot told them over the radio. And, of course, no one could hardly believe that. It was too incredible.
However, there was no denying plane and pilot vanished.
Also, there were the photographs which the pilot took and dropped—the picture that actually showed the thing that had grabbed the plane, incredible as it was.
The army wasn't fooling that night.
There had been a congressional investigation, and it had resulted in the boot being taken to certain high staff officers until, as one old-timer put it, the seats of their pants rang like bells.
The investigation had brought out the simple and undeniable fact that the army—the United States army—was about as well-prepared as a man with a musket. The army, the soldiers of the Stars and Stripes, might make an impressive sight when stood in a row—if nobody noticed that they stood in about the same equipment as in 1918. Every European soldier had a submachine gun, even the, Chinese had sub-gun companies, but the American doughboy, the boy in khaki—what did he have?
He had a rifle—1918 style. His commanding general also possibly had a polo pony, listed in the records as a cavalry mount.
It had peeled hides, had that congressional investigation. It had wanted to know why there were only half a dozen or so antiaircraft guns available to protect New York City, although there were plenty of soldiers riding around on horses, the way King Arthur rode around in the fifth century.
England had multi-barreled anti-aircraft guns capable of firing several thousand shells a minute—and England had almost as many of those guns as the U.S.A. had soldiers.
America wasn't going to fight England, of course, in fact, it looked as if she was figuring on England to protect her. Or figuring on somebody. It certainly didn't appear that she was thinking much about protecting herself.
Army, you better do something, was the word.
Europe was full of men who were trying to be Napoleon. There were even some in South America. The only thing that impressed these burglars was the fact that you wore a pistol.
So the army wasn't fooling. For once, actually, it wasn't. It had even fired its publicity men, the boys who could take two crack-pot tanks produced by a nut inventor, and send out enough pictures and ballyhoo baloney that some of the U. S. A. really thought it had a mechanized army.
Army wasn't fooling, and it was testing the new X-ship, the new X-ship being a plane that was actually the kind of plane they had been saying the previous ones were. It was a supership which could outfight and outfly by fifty per cent the best plane of any other army in the world, and this was no press-agent slop.
To test-fly the X-ship, the army had called upon the greatest engineer in the army reserve—a man who was probably also the second greatest engineer in the world.
Colonel John Renwick was this engineer—Renny Renwick, the man with the fists, and the I'm-on-my-way-to-a-funeral face.
The man who was associated with Doc Savage.
THE stage had been nicely set for a devil of a mystery, only nobody knew that as yet.
The X-ship was so good that the army really wanted to keep its performance a secret; so precautions had been taken. The test was being held from a deserted sand-dune island on the North Carolina coast, and the one bridge leading to the island was watched; while a motorboat floated around and around the island loaded with army officers dressed like local fishermen.
It was to be a night hop.
The new X-ship was there, sitting on the hard sand beach, a creation of camouflaged metal that looked as stocky as a bulldog and as vicious as a yellow hornet.
The snouts of nine machine guns poked out of various streamlined ports, her innards were full of racks for bombs, and there was a high-powered aлrial camera and a gigantic photo-flash contraption, so that the plane could take a night picture of many square miles of enemy territory.
Everything was ready except Test Pilot Colonel John Renny Renwick. He hadn't shown up.
Around about stood generals and majors and lieutenants and sergeants.
No small amount of interest centered on the army's new electrical "listener" for locating airplanes flying high. Four of these stood on the sand. The gadgets were very efficient—but most every other army in the world had them as efficient.
The idea of tonight's test was: The new X-ship had a silenced motor, a special propeller, and it was hoped it could fly so silently at an altitude of twenty thousand feet that no electrical listener could spot it. This night's test would tell.
The army radio men had their outfits set up, too. A bang-up, new two-way radio telephone was part of the equipment of the X-ship, and they were going to test that.
The men at the electrical "listeners" gave a start
"Sir, there's a plane coming," one reported.
The plane came down with a brisk whistle of wind past wings, stuck out two whiskers of light from its wing floodlights, and came to rest on the beach. The occupants—three men—alighted.
"Colonel Renwick!" someone said.
Colonel Renny Renwick had a voice that sounded something like the roof of a mine coming down must sound to a miner.
"Holy cow!" he said. "Sorry if we're a little late. I wanted to pick up two friends of mine."
"Two friends?"
"Sure."
"To witness testing of the X-ship, you mean?"
"Yep."
The army officers looked at each other and must have said mentally, "Oh, damn, what'll we do about this?" The test of the X-ship was supposed to be very, very secret, and not for outsiders to see.
"We—ah—that is—"
"Sure, I know." Renny Renwick rumbled. "But it will be all right for these two guys to watch. They're in the army, too. They're Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair and Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks."
"Oh!"
"Yes," Renny said. "The two are Monk Mayfair and Ham Brooks."
That made it different. Very different.
"Did Monk bring his pig?" an officer asked.