ron Goulart - Challengers of the Unknown (6 page)

BOOK: ron Goulart - Challengers of the Unknown
4.81Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Very little sunlight could get into the cluttered office. Thick and dusty drapes masked the high, narrow windows. Stacks, mounds and towers of old books blocked most of the light which tried to get into Professor Prolijos' office through the slits between drapes. The small old man, somewhat dusty himself, more or less sat in a carved wooden chair beside his cluttered desk. The old professor fidgeted, tapped his feet, rubbed at his nearly bald head, snapped his fingers, stood and abruptly sat down in a personal sequence June Rob-bins had not quite yet figured out. "... a fascinating subject you've chosen for yourself, young woman," Prolijos was saying.

"Newsmag
agrees with you." The blonde girl, wearing a sky-blue pantsuit, was sitting in the only other chair in the professor's university office, nearly walled in by books.

Prolijos stood, slapped at his skull, chuckled, sat down, picked up his fountain pen, uncapped it, capped it, dropped it on a tumble of unopened letters,

tapped his feet and said, "Oh,
Newsmag.
With all due respect, and I do admire the aggressive journalism of that particular periodical, I sincerely believe, if you'll forgive my saying so, that the subject of the
mo
ns
truo
of Lake Sombra needs a more thorough treatment than such a magazine can provide."

"Well, this is probably going to be a two-part article, professor." -

Chuckling, smoothing down his sparse hair, linking five paper clips, standing up, sitting down, Professor Prolijos said, "To deal adequately with the legend of Zarpa one must distill the speculations and researches of centuries."

"I was hoping," said June with a smile at the twitchy old historian, "you could do a bit of that distilling for me. Since the lore of Zarpa is your specialty."

"I am, without any doubt, the leading Zarpa scholar in the world," admitted the old professor, clipping a few of his fingernails with his desk scissors. "You read Spanish?"

"Fairly well."

"Bueno.
I'll give you a copy, suitably inscribed should you so wish, of my book on the subject. Published in 1926 and, such is the stupidity of the publishing world, long out of print and shamefully neglected. I still have three hundred and eight spare copies stored around this office somewhere." He rose, walked toward a wall of books, came back, sat down, patted his knees.

"That would be wonderful," said June. "Can you tell me, before I dip into your book, something of the history of the creature?"

"Of course, of course." Prolijos wiped his nose, tugged at his ear, scratched his elbow. "You must realize I don't at all agree with Dr. Mandell as to the origins of the
monstruo.
I grant, mind you, Zarpa was once probably worshiped by the Incas, as the findings of Reisberson strongly indicate. The key issue, Miss Robbins, and the point which has caused me to fall out with more than one of my esteemed colleagues, is this." He stood, dug one shoe tip across the pattern of the ancient rug, nodding several times. "The point is, where did old Zarpa come from. Eh?"

"Your theory is ...
?'

Professor Prolijos pointed upward. "There."

June's head ticked back; she stared at the spider-webbed hanging lamp in the ceiling. "Where?"

The old man sat, his voice went low. "He is not some leftover from an earlier epoch, this
monstruo
of ours. He is not, furthermore, a throwback. No, indeed, not at all."

"Then where did Zarpa come from?"

"They brought him with them," explained the old man. "Across that vast gulf. He was, at least I'm leaning rather strongly toward the notion, their god. A god, however, incarnate, and one with an incredible life span." Prolijos stood up, paced, zigzagged around stacks of books with bookmarks sticking out like yellow tongues. "You follow my drift, young woman?"

"You seem to be implying Zaipa is unearthly," said the girl, "that he came to earth from another planet."

"Exactly, exactly." He circled his chair twice, sat down. "They brought him with them."

"I'm not clear who they are."

"There has never been any agreement as to the origin of the Incas," said Professor Prolijos. "A magnificent civilization, highly advanced. It springs up, suddenly and inexplicably, at least to my way of thinking. The branch of the Inca civilization which flourished in Ereguay claimed to have come originally from the area around Lake Sombra. There is some archaeological evidence to substantiate this." He got up, tapped his left foot on the rug, scratched his left side. "The Ereguayan Inca legends, those which have survived for us, say they were sent here by the Sun God. Sent, yes. Sent from another planet, landed near the lake of shadows."

June said, "But the Inca civilization was already going strong when the Spanish conquistadores reached South America in the sixteenth century. You believe Zarpa was already in residence in Lake Sombra by then?"

"Not merely believe, young woman, know," said Prolijos. "By the time Pizarro and the rest reached our land, Zarpa had been here for untold centuries."

"In the water all that time?" June shook her blonde head. "I can't see why no one has ever been able to locate him, then."

"Lake Sombra is very large and very deep," said Prolijos. "It lies in what is now a remote and difficult area to reach." He seated himself, picked up a fat book, blew the dust from its pebbled cover, opened it, shut it, dropped it to the floor. "And you are wrong when you say no one ever found Zarpa in the lake of shadows."

"I've never heard of—"

"In 1923 the Englishman Emlyn Warburton, of the Barchester Geographic Institute, led a group into the jungle. He was able, using diving gear of his own design, to locate the creature." The professor tapped both feet on the floor. "You see, it was Warburton's theory, one which he and I agreed on, that Zarpa spends much of his time dormant. In a state somewhat akin to the hibernation of some animals or even the cryptobiosis of lower forms of life. Only for longer periods; yes, considerably longer."

"If your friend Warburton trailed Zarpa to his underwater lair, why then—•"

"Poor Warburton awakened the
monstruo,"
explained the professor. "It destroyed him, returned to life and surfaced. All nine of the others in Warburton's party, including his lovely, gifted daughter, were torn to bits by Zarpa. At one time I had hoped the girl and I . . He sighed, thrust a knuckle into the corner of his eye.

"HoW," June asked him, "do you know all this?"

"I ventured into the jungle to find them," replied the old man. His fidgeting had ceased; he sat in his chair with his hands palms upward in his lap. "When she . . . when the party did not return after a reasonable time, I organized a group and went in search. Too late to . . . that is how I know. I was able to deduce what must have happened from what I found there near that dreadful lake."

"I see," said June.

Right down out of the trees.

The husky man dropped and landed, flat-footed, directly in front of June.

This tree-lined path led from the back of Professor Prolijos' office building to the San James University parking lot where June had left her borrowed car. There were no other people on this stretch of path.

Only June and the big man. And the second man, who had stepped out from behind a screen of hedge.

"Well, gents, you've succeeded in making me feel pretty much like Little Red Riding Hood," the girl told the pair in a calm voice. "What can I do for you?"

The one from the tree branches only grunted. From a pocket in his sport coat he extracted a hunting knife. He stalked toward the girl.

The second heavy was coming at her from the side and, as yet, showing no weapon.

"Give you a choice," said June while she, carefully, placed her large canvas purse on the gravel. "Go away right now and we'll forget the whole thing. Okay?"

They both moved closer to her.

"The other half of the choice is you try anything funny and I'll deck you both," the girl warned.

This caused the knife-carrying one to laugh.

"Okay," said June, "so much for the peaceful negotiations." Before the sentence was finished, she'd dived straight into the husky man with the hunting knife.

Her head rammed him hard somewhere above the groin and below the rib cage. The force ;was sufficient to cause him to emit an oofing bellows sound. He would have slashed at the girl's slim back, but found his knife hand caught in an impressive grip.

June straightened, levered the big man with his arm, sent him galloping sideways away from her.

She didn't follow him. Instead she gave a sudden dip, tackled the other assailant around the knees. This off-balanced him before he could utilize the blackjack he'd produced.

While he was spreading out on his back, June stepped on him. One foot on his throat, one on the wrist of the hand which held the sap. The pain from his hand made him want to shout; the pressure on his windpipe prevented that.

"Oops." June executed a swift somersault off and away.

The knife man's attempt to grab her from behind came to naught; he ended up stabbing air and kicking his fallen partner s stomach.

June returned while he was still wobbling. She twisted his arm behind him, shoved. He went hopping and skipping straight into the wide, unyielding trunk of the nearest decorative tree.

His partner was trying to go away, on hands and knees.

June booted him in the tailbone, and, when the man stiffened out and fell fiat, she dealt him an impressive series of sidehand chops to the neck.

With a short, somewhat surprised groan, he dropped into unconsciousness.

The other man was also out, as a result of his sudden contact with the tree.

Very deftly, and rapidly, the girl, after pushing her blonde hair back into place, frisked both of the men. Neither carried any identification at all.

Tongue in cheek, she gathered up her purse with the autographed copy of Prolijos' 1926 book in it. She studied the two sprawled men. "Most likely hired goons," she decided. "Not worth questioning, and I don't have that much time to waste anyhow. Okay, so leave them here for the trash collector."

With a final brush at her hair, she went strolling away from there.

The wall swung open with a creak. "You ought to oil the darn thing," said Denny Yewell. He pushed the bookcase back into place and crossed to a leather armchair. "Not my idea of efficiency."

General Cuerpo was behind his desk, in uniform. He picked up a skinny black cigar from the humidor and placed it between his hps. "Soon you'll be able to visit me by way of the front door," he said as he lit the cigar with his gold lighter.

"Hey, don't go rushing the coup," cautioned the American agent. "Lots of things have to be taken care of yet."

"I fancy I know how to manage an operation of this sort."

"I'm betting you can, too. I've got a stake in this, though, and if you screw it up I could end up in a dungeon someplace."

The general's thin smile was blurred by gray smoke. "We don't intend to fail," he said. "You forget, by the way, that President Chanza has eliminated the dungeons previous regimes in Ereguay found so useful."

"Okay, so much for chitchat. Did you act on my tip?"

"Haven't you heard the news yet? I would have thought your intelligence-gathering resources were better than that."

"You took care of Satara, then?"

"He and his place of residence in the
barrio
are no more," Cuerpo informed him. "The timing of my agents could have been a bit better; in that case we would have gotten rid of two of your Challenger friends as well."

"They're hard to kill," said Yewell.

Cuerpo watched his cigar smoke go spiraling up toward the beamed ceiling. "We seem to have safely cut off the possibility of their ever finding Escabar," he said. "Yet I feel we'd best make completely sure."

"I'm seeing them tonight again. If they have any idea who or where Escabar is, I'll let you know."

"The simpler plan is to get rid of Escabar; that way no one can talk to him, ever."

The young American raised his eyebrows very slightly. "Kill him, huh?"

"That's the most efficient way of handling this."

"He did a lot for you boys," said Yewell. "From what I gather. Working out the basic—"

"The nature of Escabar's contribution is familiar to me," cut in the general. "Is this a touch of your well-known American sentimentality surfacing?"

Yewell shook his head. "Kill him," he said. "I don't owe the guy anything."

"We'll wait," Cuerpo said, "until you find out if these Challengers are aware of his existence."

"Who's being sentimental now?"

Tapping ashes into a heavy brass ashtray, the general said, "I'd like a bit more background on the Challengers of the Unknown. The awe in which some of you hold them intrigues me."

"They've a pretty impressive record," said the National Espionage agent. "They've put the whammy on some very rough customers. Not only your run-of-the-mill bad guys, but all sorts of supernatural threats, too."

BOOK: ron Goulart - Challengers of the Unknown
4.81Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Sleeping Sword by Brenda Jagger
One More Bite by Jennifer Rardin
Texas Hold 'Em by Kay David
I Serve by Rosanne E. Lortz
Ashes of the Realm - Greyson's Revenge by Saxon Andrew, Derek Chido
Long After (Sometimes Never) by McIntyre, Cheryl
As You Wish by Nichelle Gregory