Kenneth Robeson - The Man of Bronze

With a piercing howl, Morning Breeze was on his feet. He urged his satellites erect, even kicking some of the less willing.

Shouting again in dramatic fashion, Morning Breeze pointed at the lake shore.

All eyes followed his arm.

Doc's low-wing speed plane had floated into view around a rocky headland. It was being pushed by a number of red-fingered warriors who had not attended the session at the sacrificial well.

The plane was no longer blue!

It was daubed with a bilious, motley assortment of grays and pallid yellows. And prominent upon the fuselage sides were large red spots.

"The Red Death!" The words rose in a low moan from the Mayans!

Morning Breeze was quick to seize his advantage.

"Our gods are angered!" he shrieked. "They have sent the Red Death upon the blue bird which brought these whiteskinned devils!"

Renny knotted and unknotted his gigantic, steel-hard fists.

"The whelp is clever! He repainted our plane last night," Doc spoke in a voice so low it carried only to his five friends. "Morning Breeze did not have the intelligence to think that up, if I am any judge. Somebody is prompting him. And that somebody can only be the murderer of my father, the fiend who is planning the Hidalgo revolution."

"But how could that devil get in touch with Morning Breeze so soon?"

"You forget the blue monoplane," Doc pointed out. "The craft could have dropped him by parachute in the Valley of the Vanished."

They ceased speaking to listen to Morning Breeze harangue his uncertain followers.

"The gods are wroth that we permit these white heretics in our midst!" was the gist of his exhorting. "We must wipe them out!"

He was rapidly undoing the good work Doc had accomplished.

King Chaac addressed Doc in a voice that was strained but full of violent resolve. "I have never executed one of my subjects during my entire reign, but I am going to execute one now — Morning Breeze!"

But before things could progress further, there came a new and startling interruption.

Morning breeze it was who called attention to the new development. And it was evident from the way he did it that the whole thing was planned. More of the scheme to discredit Doc which had started with the painting of Doc's plane!

Straight above his head Morning Breeze pointed.

"Behold!" he shouted. "The genuine holy blue bird has returned! The same holy blue bird of which we obtained glimpses before these impostors arrived!"

Every one stared upward.

Perhaps five thousand feet above, a blue plane was circling slowly. Doc's keen eyes ascertained instantly that it was the monoplane which had attacked his expedition in Belize. The plane the instigator of the Hidalgo revolt was using to impress the superstitious Mayans!

Loud gasps came from the assembled people. The scarlet-fingered warriors recovered their punctured dignity and cast ominous glances at Doc and his friends. It was plain the tide was turning against the adventurers.

High overhead, the blue plane continued to spiral. Its presence had a ghostly quality, for no sound of its motor reached their ears. Doc, with all his keenness of hearing, could detect but the faintest drone of the motor. But he knew the explanation. The terrific winds that comprised the air currents over the chasm were sweeping the sound waves aside.

"I am worried!" benign King Chaac confided in shaky tones. "My people and the warriors are being whipped into a religious frenzy by Morning Breeze. I fear they will attack you."

Doc nodded. He could see that very thing impending. There was certain to be violence unless he did something to prevent

"The blue bird you see above is supreme!" Morning Breeze was shrieking. "It is all-powerful. It is the chosen of your gods! It has no white-skinned worms inside it! Therefore, destroy these white worms in your midst!"

Doc reached a decision.

"Stand by your guns!" he directed his men. "If you have to, shoot a few red-fingered men. But try holding them off a while. Renny, you come with me!"

Doc's friends' whipped out automatic pistols, which they had kept under their clothing. These automatics were fed by sixty-cartridge magazines, curled in the shape of compact rams' horns below the grips. The guns were what is known as continuously automatic in operation — they fired steadily as long as the trigger was held back. Both guns and magazines were of Doc's invention, infinitely more compact than ordinary submachine guns.

At the display of firearms, excited cries arose from the populace. Ample proof this, that they understood what guns were.

Doc and Renny sprinted for their plane.

Amid a great splashing, Doc and Renny waded out to the low-wing craft and hoisted themselves into the cabin. Doc planted his powerful frame in the pilot's bucket.

"Now if the engines haven't been tampered with!" Renny grated, anxiety on his long, puritanical face.

Doc stepped on the electro-inertia starter buttons. The port motor popped black smoke out of the stacks, then started turning over. Nose engine, starboard — both functioned.

Vastly relieved, Renny lunged back in the cabin. His monster, flinty hands tore the top from a metal case as another man would open a cigarette pack. Out of the case came the latest model of Browning machine gun, airplane type. An ammo box gave way to his iron fingers. The cartridges were already in long snakes of metal link belt.

The low-wing speed plane was going down the narrow lake now. Renny threaded a belt into the Browning. The gun was fitted with a rifle-like stock.

At the lake end, Doc jacked the ship about with sharp bloops of the engines. The craft gathered speed, a run of the whole lake length ahead of it. On step, it went. Then into the air.

With a touch little short of wizardry, Doc banked the speedy plane before it shattered itself against the sheer stone sides of the chasm. In tight, corkscrew turns, climbing, using all the power of the motors, Doc mounted out of the great cut.

Overhead the blue monoplane still lurked.

The treacherous air currents seized Doc's plane, worried it like a Kansas whirlwind would a piece of paper. Once, despite his expertness, Doc found himself doing a complete wingover. He recovered, continued to climb out of the Valley of the Vanished.

The air currents, after an interminable battle, became less violent. Doc pointed the great ship's nose up more steeply.

Suddenly the blue monoplane came hoicking down the sky lanes to the attack. Grayish wisps like spectral ropes suddenly streaked past Doc's ship. Tracer bullets! The monoplane was evidently fitted with a machine gun synchronized to shoot through the propeller blades!

Doc had not expected that — the blue plane had not possessed such armament when it attacked him in Belize. But he was not greatly perturbed. At his back was Renny, whose equal with a machine gun would be hard to find. Renny knew just how to lean into the firing weapon so as to withstand the recoil and still maintain an accurate aim.

Renny's Browning abruptly released a long, ripping burst. The blue monoplane rolled wildly to get clear of the slugs that searched horribly for its vitals.

"Good work!" Doc complimented Renny.

Then it was Doc's turn to sideslip-skid his ship out of the procession of slugs that were eating vicious holes in the left wing end. The pilot of the blue plane was no tyro.

Warily the ships jockeyed. Doc's plane was infinitely the larger, but that was certainly no advantage. And its control surfaces were not designed for combat flying. The two crafts were nearly evenly matched, with Doc having the great edge in speed on a straightaway. But this was no straightaway.

Lead from the other ship chewed at the fuselage, well to the rear.