The skipper of the Subterro sub pulls a switch and there is a noise like
three contented cats purring. The metal fish slides along the surface of
the underground lake and comes to a hole in a big rock ledge.
We see all this through a monitor which registers the scenery outside
the sub within a radius of three miles. The sub slides into the side of
the rock, and then is lifted up to the underground river that winds and
winds upward like a corkscrew to the outlet under Brazil. Every once in
a while a blast of air that smells like a dentist's office goes through
the sub from bow to stern and I ask why.
"There is such terrific potency to the power we use from our puranium,"
Hitler Number Three says, "that we purify the air every few seconds with
formula XYB and Three-fifth. The basis of the gas is galena."
I nudge Wurpz and Zahooli as the Neofeuhrer goes over to converse with
his crew. "It is our big chance," I whisper. "You watch how they run
this tub for the next few minutes. Then when I cough three times you be
ready. I do not know how much powder it will take to knock off the big
bug as he is half human. Once I blow this insect powder at the same time
as the purifying blast is to take place, you two be ready to jump
Agrodyte. I noticed that a small purple light flashes on over the
monitor just before that stuff turns loose. It is a warning so the
beetleheads can take deep breaths."
"Sep," D'Ambrosia Zahooli says. "I take back all the insults of the past
five hours. Shake."
"I am doin' that already," I says. "We have to work fast while we are in
the underground river."
We wait. The Neofeuhrer comes walking back to where we are sitting. The
purple light flashes on, and I count to three. Just as the blast of air
loaded with XYB plus cuts loose I throw all the bug powder left in the
box into the current. Hitler Number Three breathes in a big gob of it
and buckles a little at the knees.
"Grab him!" I screech. "Don't let him yank that disintegrator loose. Hit
him with anything you see, pals!"
I see the other beetleheads collapse like they had been hit with
bulldozers and I know now that insecticide is more dangerous in Subterro
than all the radioactivity harnessed up on six planets.
Agrodyte Hitler, however, has some moxey left in him as he has two of
his hands around Wurpz's throat, the third around Zahooli's leg and is
reaching for a ray Betsy with his fourth. He grabs the disintegrator
just as I belt him over his ugly noggin with a wrench about two feet
long and which was certainly not made of aluminum or balsa wood.
"Himmel!" the Neofeuhrer gulps. "Ach du lebensraum!" He has to be hit
once more which is enough and we tie him up with rope that looks like it
was made out of plutonium filaments.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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