38

DOC SAVAGE

“Yeah, but the alley will be dark next about the shields; they were of plexiglass time,” I said. “Thanks for the note, though.”

shaped like welder’s masks. The grinder op-

“I appreciate your interest.”

erators in the bomber plant in Kansas City, “Aren’t you gonna take steps about Kansas, where I worked before the army got this?”

me had worn similar transparent masks.

He said: “If you don’t happen to notice Savage said: “We won’t be technical. .

any

counter-moves

don’t feel unduly

. . At the other end of the room is a transmit-alarmed.”

ter of micro-wavelengths, built on laboratory I felt better. “This guy Monk is trying to scale—which, incidentally, is as far as we chase me. What about that?”

have been able to progress in the research “Want to pull out?”

field—probably similar to the one being used

“Well, no. I haven’t got a home, but to cause the effect we refer to as chromos-that’s not why I don’t want to go to it.” My pheric eruptions. It has to be similar, in fact.

ears got red and I had trouble with my words The other transmitter is enormously more like the tough kid standing in front of the powerful, however.”

class while teacher made him admit he He showed us a large glass bottle—pulled Mary’s pigtail because he liked Mary.

about five-gallon size—surrounded by mag-

“Miss Fenisong has happened to say a cou-nets and stuff.

ple of nice words to me. That’s the rock Monk

“Air has been pumped out of the bottle, is chewing on.”

and certain elements introduced, and mag-

“Stick around, then,” he said, and I netic effects applied, so that we have here walked out of there with the little wings on my what amounts to a bottled bit of the strato-feet helping me along. He was on my side.

sphere layer where the effects we saw last The Monk must have given trouble before night were produced.”

with his chasing.

He said he would demonstrate. He turned on the machine. The result was not anything to stand my hair on end; the trans-SIX hours passed and it was five mitter contraption just lit up like a radio.

o’clock, a long time later. It probably seemed There was no particular sound.

longer than it was. The telephone had done “Notice the interior of the bottle,” Sav-plenty of ringing, but it was either the police age said.

or Doctor Hodges, the scientist, and they had The bottle was glowing with approxi-no developments to report. They only wanted mately the same quality of ghost-light that to know if there had been any. They seemed had appeared in the sky last night.

to feel that Doc Savage was taking, for him, “Now,” he added, “we will recreate the an unusually long time to show results.

field of neutralization.”

“Come into the laboratory,” Savage He threw a switch, and the second said.

piece of apparatus proceeded to give me a He looked hard-used. His fingers were mild case of cold tracks up and down the stained from chemicals, his shirt was wrin-back. . . . A noticeable darkness had ap-kled, and sheets of notes were sticking out of peared around the thing.

his pockets where he had absently stuffed Savage said: “Turn out the lights, draw them.

the curtain, and the impression one would The laboratory was too full of compli-get is of a fuzzy black area completely envel-cated gadgets—I didn’t notice that anything oping the neutralizing transmitter. Simply new had been added, not until he pointed out stated—the visible wavelengths of light are two clusters of apparatus—wires, tubes, no longer present, having been broken up things that looked like a composition of all the around a short area, and what we have left is radar transmitters I had ever seen in the a patch of the normal darkness of the night.”

army—at the other end of the laboratory.

“Hey!” I said. “You mean there wasn’t There was a cleared space there. Nearer at any black can’t-believe-its?”

hand was a smaller portable gadget in a box

“Exactly. What we saw was merely a hastily improvised from a big suitcase.

small area of normal night. It looked spec-Savage distributed eye-protectors, say-tacular because it was something we were ing, “Better put them on, in case there should not accustomed to. We are perfectly familiar be flying glass.” There was nothing unusual NO LIGHT TO DIE BY