the gun trigger.
One stubby finger found it. Istafiev grunted. The gun trembled fromthe force of the hands disputing its direction; then its ugly snout,stuck out parallel to the floor, and began to creep slowly downwardsas Istafiev bore on it with all his might.
"So!" he hissed. "It was clever, your little game, but it issfinished!"
But Chris, undermost, had braced his elbow on the floor. The gun held.Every ounce of his strength went into holding that one position, intokeeping the weapon's muzzle away; he was therefore not prepared forIstafiev's sudden strategy.
There was a quick pull, a tug. Istafiev had wrenched himself over,reversing their positions and dragging Chris uppermost--and, as theAmerican's balance was destroyed, the gun whipped up and fired.
A bullet sang past his head. It missed by inches. But from behind camea sound as of rending cloth. The glassy dome above the cage of themachine had splintered into countless fragments.
The effect was amazing. The shafts of light from the machine's tubeceased; creamy liquid dribbled out from the cracked dome, and, as itmet the air, frothed into billows of dense gray smoke. In seconds, theroom was choked with a thick, foggy vapor that obscured every objectin it as well as the blackest of moonless nights.
* * * * *
Istafiev had not fired again, could not. With a quick, frantic wrenchand twist Chris had knocked the gun from his hand, and it hadslithered away, now lost in the bunching smoke. But Istafiev's otherhand, steel-ribbed with tense muscles, had darted like a snake intothe American's throat, and under that iron, relentless grip Chris wasweakening. His head was whirling; the old wound throbbing waves ofnausea through him. Desperately he tried to struggle loose, flailingwith his legs--but useless. He knew he was slipping; slipping....
Then, out of the gray, all-hiding mist, came a voice.
"Istafiev! Where are you? Call! The machine's broken; I'm out andinvisible. Where is the American?"
Kashtanov!
Istafiev hissed:
"It iss all right. He will be finished in a moment. But you--go! Thebox iss aboard the plane; don't wait! You must not take chance ofbeing hurt. Go to your work. Call Grigory in. Go, Kashtanov!"
"I go, Istafiev."
"No, you don't!" Chris Travers croaked almost inaudibly. "_Youdon't!_"
Thought of the Canal lying there defenseless, of Kashtanov speedingtowards it on his wrecker's errand, kindled within him a strength thatwas unnatural, superhuman. Like a wildcat he tore loose from thechoking grip on his throat; Istafiev tried to subdue that sudden,unlooked-for surge of power, but could not. Five piston-like, jabbingblows crunched into him from Chris's hurtling fist, and with the fifthIstafiev faded quietly out of the picture....
Chris sprang up and started a leap for the door he could not see. Abody brushed against him; dimly through the smoke he saw the mancalled Grigory, and Grigory saw him, but not for long. A whaling swinglifted him two inches clear of the floor, and then he went down ontothe peacefully recumbent Istafiev; and Chris Travers, fighting mad,stormed from the hut into the clearing outside.
The camouflaged framework had been raised; soft motors were purringhelicopter propellers around and lifting a plane up towards the starshanging high above.
The airplane was already feet off the ground and sweeping straight up.A sane man wouldn't have thought of it, but Chris wasn't quite sanejust then. With a short sprint, he launched himself into a flyingleap, grabbed out desperately--and felt the bar of the undercarriagebetween his hands.
The plane jolted. Then it steadied; rose with terrific acceleration.And Chris hauled himself up onto the undercarriage and clung to one ofthe wheel-stanchions, breathing, hard, hidden by the fuselage from theinvisible pilot.
The clearing and the hut, with smoke billowing from it, dropped intonothingness. The night enclosed the helicopter-plane.
* * * * *
From the air, Panama Canal at night is a necklace of lights strungacross the thin neck of land that separates sea from sea. Then, as ahigh-flying plane drops lower, the beams of light loosen into widelyseparated patches, which are the locks; between them the silky blackribbon of water runs, now widening into a dim, hill-girt lake, nownarrowing as it passes through massive Culebra Cut, then wideningagain as it comes to the artificial Gatun Lake, at the far end ofwhich stands Gatun Dam and its spillway.
Silence hung close over the Canal. The last ship had passed through;the planes that daily maneuver over it had returned to their hangars;the men who shepherd ships through the locks had gone either to bed orto Panama City or Colon. The Canal, as always at night, seemed almostdeserted.
To Chris, clutching tight to his hazardous perch, it looked utterlydeserted. The ride had been nightmare-like, fraught every second withperil. Several times the whip of wind had come near tearing him loose;the cold air of the upper layers had numbed his fingers, his wholebody; he was chilled and, experiencing the inevitable let-down whichcomes after a great effort, miserable. Just then, the task aheadappeared well-nigh impossible.
The only thing in his favor was that Kashtanov apparently did not knowhe was aboard, since the plane had flown evenly, steadily, not tryingto shake off the man hanging to its landing gear by somersaulting inthe sky. Evidently the jolt as it was rising hadn't warned the unseenpilot; the fog from the broken machine had obscured Chris's wild leap.
But what, he thought, of that? The element of surprise was in hisfavor--but how to gain advantage by it? He had no weapon, nothing savebare hands with which to subdue a foe as elusive as the wind that wasnow hurtling by him. Clinging there, slipping now and again, drenchedwith cold, the odds looked hopeless.
Then, suddenly, the booming of the main motor stopped. Only a quietpurring from the wings took its place. The helicopter-plane hoveredalmost motionless, quiet and deadly like a sinister bird of prey. Itbegan to drop straight down through the dark. Chris Travers glancedbelow.
* * * * *
There, misty, fainty, small as the toy of a child, lay Gatun Dam, withthe spillway in its center.
Chris stared. So small the dam looked--this dream of an engineer, thistiny outpost of man's genius thrust boldly into the breast of thetropics, holding back a whole lake with its cement flanks, enablingocean to be linked to ocean! It was the heart of the Canal; if burst,the veins would be drained.
Something that cannot be caught in words seemed seize the loneAmerican then. As in a trance, he saw more than the dam; he saw whatit symbolized. He saw the Frenchmen who had tried to thrust the Canalthrough first, and who had failed, dying in hundreds. He saw the menof his own race who had carried that mighty work on; saw them gougingthrough the raw earth and moving mountains, tiny figures doing thework of giants; saw them stricken down by fever and disease, sawothers fill the empty files and go on, never wavering. He saw themcomplete it and seal the waters in captivity with the dam that laybelow....
And with that vision of stupendous achievement, cold, weariness,hopelessness passed from Chris Travers and swept clean away. The oddsthat had loomed so large fell into insignificance.
The golf course spread out and became dimly visible as the planedropped cautiously down. Away to the left there were the few twinklinglights of Gatun Dam, whitening the crests of the waters that tumbledthrough the spillway. Their drone was dully audible. On every otherside dark rolling hills stretched, covered in untamed jungle growth.The golf course was shrouded by them. Its smooth sward made a perfectlanding place; an ordinary plane might alight there.
Lower, lower, ever so slowly. A bare one hundred feet, now. Chrisscanned the lay of the land. Right close to the spot Kashtanov hadchosen to set the plane down on was a deep sand-trap, put there tosnare unskilful golfers. Chris steadied himself on the cross-bar.
"I'll have to go up over the side and grab him," he planned. "Thenhold on to his throat till I feel him go limp."
The wheels of the plane touched gently, and she settled to rest.
* * * * *
In one furious movement Chris was off and springing up the side of thefuselage into the single cockpit, his hands clutching for theinvisible man who sat there.
He heard a croak of alarm; then his fingers thumbed into bare fleshand slid up over a nude shoulder to the throat. They tightened, boredin, held with terrible pressure. Sprawled over the cockpit, he clunggrimly, to what seemed nothing more than air.
Spattering noises came from somewhere. An unseen body thrashedfrantically. Transparent hands clawed over the American's frame,worried at him. But he held his grip, tightening it each second. Therewas a gasping, choking sound, a desperate writhe, another scratchingof the invisible hands--and then came what Chris had feared, what hecould not guard against since his eyes could not forewarn him. A heavymonkey-wrench appeared to rise of its own accord from the floor of thecockpit and come swinging at his head.
He ducked at the last