The Avenger 8 - The Glass Mountain by Kenneth Robeson Read Free Book Online Page B

feet. From them he was taking the rubber-soled shoes that had saved his life from a lightning bolt awhile ago.
    “But this one,” he said, when the Scot’s feet were sheathed only in socks, “won’t be tough enough to shed lightning, I think.”
    As he was speaking, from near the duck outcropping, a pillar of fog was swiftly forming. The appearance of the thing was like the slow emergence from its hole of a great serpent, when other beasts—or men—have killed and left the victim near it.
    The pillar solidified, turned greenish. Then, at a pace about as fast as a man can walk, it rolled toward Mac. The three men ran stumbling in fright from it. In a way they were working with the thing; but they feared it as much as the keepers of a great beast might fear the thing even as they fed it.
    The pillar of greenish mist didn’t go after them. It advanced straight toward the one goal; the unconscious man lying with bared feet.
    As it moved, a faint hissing sounded from its center, like the hissing of a mighty reptile. Or, perhaps, of an enraged god?
    But Mac didn’t hear that, or anything else. He lay as helpless as a child before the advancing pillar.

    A dusty touring car had come to the edge of the camp. At the wheel was a man who seemed, from a distance, to be a cattleman from the vicinity. Wide-brimmed hat, tieless shirt, dusty coat, he appeared to be a typical rancher. But he was not a cattleman. It was Jim Crast, from Chicago.
    The Avenger went to the car, got in, and the two drove off a little distance. Crast was here secretly. He had wired Benson before coming. He didn’t want anyone in the camp to know of his visit.
    “Well?” he said anxiously, looking at the masterful, dead face and the strange, pale eyes of The Avenger. “Has anything been found out?”
    “Nothing definite,” said Benson. “Plenty has happened. The Rain God has walked abroad several times, enveloped in his cloud, and has struck down with lightning bolts.”
    Crast stared at him.
    “You mean you believe—”
    “But no fact has yet emerged to really work on,” Benson continued. “I have some ideas of what is going on. Most amazing ideas. But they are still—only ideas.”
    “I was hoping things were clearing up,” sighed Crast. His face was suddenly old with worry. “Everything we have is tied up in the Mt. Rainod tunnel. The least trouble will bankrupt us. We . . . we’re about four million dollars under the next lowest bid. That’s how close we shaved it.”
    “That’s a big discrepancy,” said Benson.
    “We figured we could do it all right. Fyler made up the total, and he’s a good man with figures. But even if everything goes smoothly, we have our work cut out for us. Drilling through a mountain of glass is a terrific job.”
    “I have a suggestion there,” Benson said. “A way to short-cut the drilling. This stuff is glass. Therefore, treat it like glass. Don’t drill it—crack it.”
    “I don’t understand,” said Crast.
    “Build fires,” ordered Benson. “When the basalt is hot, play cold water on it. The stuff will crack just as a hot tumbler cracks when cold water is poured in it.”
    “Holy codfish!” said Crast reverently. “Why couldn’t I have thought of that? But I’ve always known you were the world’s greatest engineer—”
    The Avenger cut in: “Can you trust the people in your organization, Jim?”
    Crast looked troubled.
    “Why, I suppose so. Most of them have worked for us for a long time. Why do you ask?”
    “Because there has been treachery on the part of some one in the Chicago office,” said Benson, eyes like steel splinters.
    “You’re sure?” gasped Crast.
    “Very sure,” said The Avenger. “Someone knew all about the arrival here—-and sent a radio-controlled plane to ram my ship and kill me. Someone knew all about the arrival of my aides, and their connection with me. That could only have come from the Chicago office.”
    Crast was looking a little sick.
    “What’s