Magazine 1967-­07] - The Electronic Frankenstein Affair - Davis Robert Hart - Страница 13

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His face, in the moonlight, was ghastly, the jaw sagging, the lips split in a half-idiotic grin. It was Chin Husan.

Solo was still on his feet, clutching his right arm as he swayed. "Sun Lin has been killed and that poor devil got the idea into his head that we're in some way responsible. He kept telling me that while he tried his best to kill me. He went crazy because of something he saw. I hope you didn't crack his skull."

"I hope so too, if he really was off his noggin and not just lying to you," Illya said.

"He'd have no reason to lie," Solo said, still clutching his arm. "Nothing else could have made him slash at me that way. He had a wild look in his eyes."

"Your arm," Illya said. "How bad is it?"

"I'll live," Solo said, wryly. "Just a ribbon of skin sliced away. But if he hadn't missed with his first try it could have been real bad."

"You're bleeding like a pig. You'd better get a bandage on it fast."

"I'll get around to it. But first we're going to have a look at what's on the other side of this big ridge of stone."

"What do you expect to find?"

"Sun Lin, crushed, battered to a pulp. And some strange markings in the sand all around him."

"He told you all that while he was doing his best to plunge a knife into your heart?"

Solo nodded. "He was chattering away every second."

They didn't see horror until they were almost upon it, for despite the brightness of the moonlight, much of the rock structure was in shadows. Sun Lin had been a small man in life and the terrible violence that had been done to him made him seem even more inconspicuous in death. His ribcage was completely crushed, his limbs so flattened they resembled gruesome traceries made with a stick on the sand.

Not only was the dead man's clothing torn, it had a singed look, as if the tatters into which they had been ripped had passed through a sheet of flame. The head lolled and there was a deep gash at the base of the oddly discolored neck.

"Crushed to death," Illya Kuryakin muttered, more shaken than he would have cared to admit. "That's what you said, wasn't it? What could have inflicted such injuries?"

The moonlight seemed to shift a little as he spoke, causing the shadows to lengthen and change shape.

Solo shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "We must have had a visitor in the night."

Sweat stood out on Illya's brow. He moved a little away from the corpse, his eyes sweeping the sand within a ten foot radius. Suddenly he seemed to remember something else that Napoleon Solo had repeated as coming from the lips of the deranged man who had tried to kill him, for he bent to examine more closely a huge, circular indentation in the sand.

"There are more of those markings," Solo said, as if aware of his thoughts. "Over there—look."

He gestured toward a wider expanse of sand a few yards to the right of him. The moonlight brought into sharp relief two deep, crater-like depressions in the sand, perfectly circular and set fairly far apart.

"They don't look like footprints," Illya said, following the direction of his gaze. "Only a giant could have made prints that large and they're perfectly round. It's as if—" He hesitated. "It's almost as if he were on stilts. The giant, I mean. A giant walking on stilts and trampling Sun Li into the sand. Crushing and killing him."

"Would you care to put that into a report?" Solo asked, a look of grim reproach in his eyes. "A tank passing over him would be a more sensible guess."

"But we didn't hear a sound," Illya said. "Except, of course, that scream. Just the fact that Chin Husan was screaming loudly enough to wake the dead—"

Kuryakin stopped, puzzled by the look which Solo continued to train on him.

"What makes you think it was Chin Husan who screamed?" Solo asked.

"I naturally thought, when the screaming stopped, and I saw you struggling with him—"

"Chin Husan didn't make a sound until he closed with me," Solo said. "Then he started chattering wildly about what he'd just seen. It was Sun Lin who screamed. I'm sure of it."

"Well, it fits," Illya conceded. "I hope I'll never have to listen to a scream like that again."

"Or see what Sun Lin saw coming toward him across the desert before the life was crushed out of him. If that's what you're thinking I'm with you one hundred percent."

"I'm not sure that's what I'm thinking," Illya said. "I'm not sure of anything, except that he could hardly have just stumbled and crushed in his ribs and broken his neck and slashed himself up in a dozen places."

"We have a witness," Solo said. "Just the fact that Chin Husan ran amuck like a Malay on the deck of an Indian Ocean freighter for a minute or two doesn't mean the aberration is going to last. If you didn't fracture his skull—"

"A gentle tap wouldn't have stopped him from sinking that knife in your ribs," Illya said. "It was nothing that could be helped. There's a first aid kit in the duffel bag Lin Sun tossed into the tent just before we dozed off. You'd better bandage your arm before you collapse."

"You can say that again," Solo grunted. "All right. We may as well get back to the tent. It will do Chin Husan no harm to rest up a bit."

It took them longer than they had anticipated to cross the level stretch of sand between the rock structure and the tent, because they made the mistake—or perhaps it wasn't a mistake—of glancing toward the hollow where the camels were supposed to be sleeping.

The camels were gone. Not only had all five of the animals vanished, but the tent which the three orientals had shared had been taken down and there was no sign anywhere of Nieh Huang.

They halted abruptly in their tracks and stared across the empty expanse of desert with a chill foreboding. It might have come as less of a shock if there had been some way of making sure, right at that instant, that Nieh Huang had not robbed them of everything but the clothes on their backs. Tropical shorts and one gun were hardly survival-level safeguards in the middle of the Gobi.

Fortunately so absolute a disaster had not taken place, as they discovered when they continued on to the tent, and found all of their personal belongings intact.

It was the portable shortwave transmitter which Solo seized upon first, inspecting it carefully to make sure that it had not been tampered with.

"We'll have to signal the 'copter to pick us up," Solo said. "Without camels or replacements for Sun Lin and Nieh Huang we can't do any more exploring on foot, that for sure. I might be willing to risk it with just one guide and one camel between us. But I can't see Chin Husan as that guide. And we have not got one camel. Why did he have to take our camels? That's what I can't understand."

"Maybe he didn't," Kuryakin said. "Maybe they became frightened and took advantage of Sun Lin's failure to tie them up. Ordinarily a camel doesn't have to be tied up for the night. But if they saw whatever it was that trampled Sun Lin to death—"

"We'll have to signal the 'copter," Solo said. "We have no choice. It won't prevent us from searching this particular spot more thoroughly—for a few hours, at least, while the chopper stands by. But another day's journey over the sand is definitely out. If that still seems a worthwhile gamble we'll have to return to the coast, engage some new guides and arrange for them to meet us here when the 'copter sets us down for the second time."

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