“The concrete is too thick,” the cobra-like Colonel said to himself aloud. It was a trick he had learned in many years in prison. To keep calm and sane it was good to talk aloud. “The door is steel. However, they must feed me, and sooner or later they must come to interrogate me or move me. They will want to know what I am doing here. Yes, some of them will want to know what I am doing here. I wonder why …”
The Colonel stopped speaking. His cobra face became alert. His long neck was rigid and cocked at an angle as he listened to something. Derian thought that he had heard a sound—a very faint sound, but a definite sound. His cold and glittering eyes flicked around the dark store room.
There were no windows in the room, but it was not pitch black. A small work light was set high up against the wall and cast a feeble light that barely reached a quarter of the concrete room.
Beyond this circle of light, where Derian sat, there was a deeper darkness of vague shadows.
It was one of these shadows that Derian’s glittering eyes now looked at.
The shadow had seemed to move.
Derian tensed like a coiled snake and prepared to jump if necessary.
The low laugh was soft in the room. Soft and macabre. A chilling sound.
“There will be no need for defense, Colonel Derian,” a low, strong voice said.
Derian’s eyes glinted. “Who are you?”
There was no fear in the cold voice of the Soviet Secret Policeman, no panic, no apparent surprise at the sudden laugh and voice from the shadows of the room.
“I am called The Shadow, Colonel Derian, and I fight all evil!”
“So?” Derian said calmly. “How did you get in here? Where are you? I cannot see you.”
The laugh reverberated. “No walls stop The Shadow, Colonel, and I am in front of you. Look closely, Colonel Derian.” The Colonel peered into the shadows. He saw a faintly deeper area of black. Then he saw the eyes—two fiery eyes that glowed in the darkness. He saw the blood-red fire-opal girasol ring, and he saw, in the red light of that ring, the long face and hawk-nose of The Shadow. The Colonel neither moved nor flinched.
“Yes, I see you now. You wear a disguise.”
“No, Colonel, not a disguise. This is as I appear to all men. This is my power. Your mind is open to me, Derian, I know all the evil that lurks in the hearts of men!”
“So?” Derian said quietly. “What do you want with me? Why have you come here?”
“I come to learn what you know! I am here to stop the sabotage of Project Full Moon! You will tell me all that you know, Colonel Derian! You will tell me why you have come here!”
The laugh of Colonel Derian was louder and colder than the eerie laugh of The Shadow. “I will tell you nothing!” Derian said. “This is some trick! You think I’m a fool? This is some American trick to learn what I know. Fool, do you suppose I believe that you can come through 64
walls without a trick? There is a secret door, of course. You have been sent to trick me, and you will not!”
The Shadow’s voice was stern. “This is no trick, Colonel! I am The Shadow. I defeat all evil men. I must know what you are doing here. I will know!”
Suddenly the tall Colonel lunged. His trained muscles hurled him up to his feet and across the room in one powerful leap. He reached the spot where The Shadow stood.
The Shadow was gone.
An amused laugh came from another dark area of the room.
Derian swore and leaped again.
The clutching hands of the Soviet Colonel closed on empty air.
The laugh of The Shadow was mocking. “You cannot catch me, Colonel Derian. No one can catch The Shadow. You will tell me now what I must know. Your mind is open to me. You feel my power.”
Derian swore. But the tall Colonel did not lunge again. He knew when it was time to change his tactics. He peered into the shadows. He searched the room with his eyes from where he stood just outside the circle of light. He rubbed his eyes and peered again. He shook his head as if it were suddenly heavy.
The hard voice of The Shadow intoned. “Your head is heavy, Colonel Derian. Your eyes are heavy. You feel your brain growing soft, warm.”
Derian rubbed his eyes hard and shook his head. He tried to clear the fog from his brain. He suddenly became aware of the heavy mist that seemed to hang before his eyes, the thick cloud that filled his mind, the soft delicate fingers of some power that seemed to be touching his brain.
For an instant he felt panic—the cloud on his mind had grown thick and heavy, so thick he could not see the room! He uttered a single cry of anger—and then he smiled. The cloud filled his brain and he stopped struggling. He felt peaceful, at rest. At some command he thought he heard he went and sat down again inside the circle of light where he had been when The Shadow first laughed.
The Shadow emerged from the darkness. His black-shrouded shape loomed over the seated Colonel. His fiery eyes burned with the power learned so long ago in the Orient from the great Master Chen T’a Tze.
“Why are you here, Colonel Derian?”
The Colonel brushed at his eyes. “To learn the source of the sabotage of the project.”
“Why here specifically?”
“Because it was the fuel control that failed on the last shot,” Derian said promptly now.
“You knew that?” The Shadow demanded. “But the NASA people only learned that today!”
“Of course I knew. Our scientists found the cause a week ago,” the Colonel snapped with a spark of his unclouded personality.
The Shadow’s eyes burned as he stared at the Colonel. Then they suddenly flashed! There was the key! What he had missed! Vaslov had spoken of “sabotage” and “the project”! He had assumed that Vaslov meant the NASA Project, Project Full Moon. But Vaslov had not! Vaslov had meant a Soviet project!
“Your Government has a special project to reach the Moon very soon?” The Shadow demanded.
“Yes. Any day we will be first on the Moon. Our Project Far-Space is ready. We would have been on the Moon weeks ago but for the failures.”
“You have had many failures?”
“Five. All sabotage. There is no doubt.”
“And you suspect the fuel control?”
“Of course. It is the heart of the project. It was the new fuel control that made the accelerated project possible. We all wondered.”
“Wondered?” The Shadow snapped quickly.
Derian laughed. The cloud that held his mind in the power of The Shadow did not change his personality or his freedom of expression. The power only made it impossible for him to not answer the questions of The Shadow, indeed it made him want to answer. But his mind was still his own mind if no longer in his full control. The Colonel laughed sarcastically.
“I knew nothing of the project until they called me in after the fourth sabotage act,” the Colonel said. “The instant I came in I smelled something wrong. The new fuel control was supposedly developed in a secret rocket lab of ours in the Urals. It was the work of an ex-German scientist we had, ah, borrowed shall we say, after we defeated the Nazis. This German had a good record as a scientist, yes, but not good enough to have made the brilliant theoretical leap that was at the heart of the new fuel control! I saw at once that many of our rocket experts had doubts about this, too. I made some discreet investigations.” The Colonel smiled up at The Shadow as if they were old comrades in arms. “We have our methods, you understand. Well, it did not take me long to learn that the United States also had a special Moon project!”
Derian snorted bitterly. “It was simple to learn that the United States project was almost exactly at the same stage as ours, that it too had been held up by sabotage, and that our special fuel cell was not very special but was similar to the one made by Federal Cybernetics in this country! You can imagine that I had that ex-German in for a small talk. Unfortunately, he died before he could tell me how he had happened to develop a cell so much like an American cell. At the same time I conducted a complete investigation into the sabotage. I had no luck—and then the last failure came and we traced it instantly to a minor change in the functioning of the fuel control. At this point it became clear to me, by studies I had made, that our fuel control was not similar, it was identical to the United States control. At that point I came to this country to see just exactly what was going on. I traced the control to Federal Cybernetics, and activated Vaslov to help me learn what was happening.”
The Shadow nodded grimly now. “And you learned what I have learned—that Federal, or someone at Federal, is conducting some extra but parallel work, that more material comes into the Main Laboratory than should, and that only half the results are sent to NASA Utah Base! That someone is sabotaging both projects!”
“Yes,” Derian said. “But who? And why? Somehow, for some reason, Federal’s fuel control was given to us! Why? Who in Federal gave us the identical fuel control, why did they give it to us and the United States, and why then sabotage both projects!”
The Shadow’s piercing eyes burned into the tall Colonel of Secret Police. “Did you or your people kill Major Oates?”
“No,” Derian said.
The Shadow nodded. He concentrated his powers to release Derian from the cloud on his mind. He left Derian with full memory of all that had been said, of all the questions. Then he released the Colonel—an unclouded mind thought better, and The Shadow now knew that he and Colonel Derian were working on the same side no matter how much he might detest the snake-like Soviet officer. Derian shook his head, blinked, and looked up at The Shadow as his mind cleared and returned to his own control. Derian stared at The Shadow for a long minute in silence.
“So, we are on the same mission after all,” the Colonel said quietly. “With certain differences.”
The Shadow’s eyes glowed. “At the moment, Colonel Derian, we are on the same errand. And we have the same questions. Who at Federal Cybernetics gave both countries the same fuel control, and why?”
Derian thought where he sat on the concrete floor. “If it were some sympathizer with our cause, the Communist cause, then why give it to both? No, that would make no sense.”
“The same for the United States,” The Shadow said.
“So it cannot be patriotism,” Derian said. “More, if one person in the company gave the cell to the United States, and a different person gave it to the Soviet, then it would be very unlikely that both projects would be sabotaged!”
“True,” The Shadow agreed. “If, say, the company was loyal to the United States, but one man wanted the Soviet to have the cell, that man would sabotage only the American project.”
“Or the company, learning of the defection of its control to us, would then sabotage only our effort!” Derian said. “But who would sabotage both projects! And why? That is what I cannot understand!”
The Shadow’s eyes blazed up as his mind concentrated on the seemingly impossible problem.
It was not logical—there was the crux. It made no sense as it stood now. Something was missing; some key that would explain the contradictory facts. He could tell by Colonel Derian’s face that the Russian could understand it no better than he could. And there was still the problem of who?
With the Soviet ruled out, only the company was left. But why would Bryan sabotage his own efforts?
“What,” The Shadow said quietly, “if there is more than one man or group? What if we have two groups working at cross purposes?”
Derian’s cold eyes watched The Shadow. “It is possible, yes. I have thought of that. This Dr. Max Ernest, there is something suspicious about him. Then there is that woman, Freda Talent. Then there is Bryan himself.”
The Shadow nodded. He did not tell Derian that at least he was sure that Freda Talent was not involved since she had simply let Margo assume her place, but the other two possibilities were very real. Was Max Ernest working against his own boss and company? Was Bryan? It was possible on both counts, and yet—the same problem was still there: why? What did either man have to gain? And why give the control, and then sabotage the projects?
“Time!” The Shadow said.
“What?” Derian said.
The eyes of The Shadow burned. “They gained time! They delayed the projects. But for what? Why do they need a delay?”
Derian was about to answer when The Shadow suddenly raised his hand. The fire-opal girasol glowed red in the silent room. The Shadow had heard the approach of men, many men. They were coming for Derian. The Shadow thought of his course of action, but he had no choice—he did not yet know enough to reveal himself or stop the removal of Derian.
“I cannot interfere yet, Colonel, you understand?”
Derian nodded. “Of course. One of us must remain at large. I shall attempt to escape and rejoin you. But the sabotage must be stopped—for both our sides.”
The Shadow nodded and faded into the dark areas of the room. Moments later the door opened and General Rogers came in with three of the security guards of Federal. Rogers nodded to Derian, and the guards stepped forward and hoisted the Colonel to his feet.
“A little strong arm work, General?” Derian said with a thin smile.
“We don’t work that way, Derian,” Rogers snapped. “We are turning you over to the State Police, they will hand you to the FBI. What the FBI does with you I don’t care.”
“Very commendable, General, no one will accuse you of atrocities, eh?” And Derian laughed as the guards took him out and marched him along the corridor toward the stairs up.
Behind the guards and Rogers, a black shape loomed in the dim corridor and floated silently after them.
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