Gorgo Read online

  MONSTER

  ON THE

  LOOSE

  Sam Slade didn’t believe in Gorgo until he saw the monster’s hideous scaly face, its slimy green talons and the massive mouth that could swallow a killer whale.

  Sam didn’t believe in love, either, until he met virginal Moira McCartin and helped her to discover the deep passions slumbering within her.

  Moira taught him to love and Gorgo taught him to fear. Spewn from some sub-oceanic cavern, the monster catapulted from the sea, threatening death for all who challenged it.

  Captured, it presented even more of a problem, for deep in the bowels of the sea was a larger, more vicious monster, even now rising from the depths to rescue its offspring and to destroy everything in its path—battleships, tanks and half of London!

  METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER Presents

  A KING BROTHERS Production

  G O R G O

  Starring

  BILL TRAVERS • WILLIAM SYLVESTER

  With

  Vincent Winter • Bruce Seton

  Joseph O’Conor • Martin Benson

  Barry Keegan • Dervis Ward

  Christopher Rhodes

  Screen Play by

  JOHN LORING and DANIEL HYATT

  Original Story by

  EUGENE LOURIE and DANIEL HYATT

  Directed by

  EUGENE LOURIE

  Produced by

  FRANK KING and MAURICE KING

  GORGO

  A Monarch Movie Book

  Published in July, 1960

  Copyright © 1960

  by King Brothers Productions

  Monarch Books are published by MONARCH BOOKS, INC., Capital Building, Derby, Connecticut, and represent the works of outstanding novelists and writers of non-fiction especially chosen for their literary merit and reading entertainment.

  Part One:

  CATACLYSM

  Chapter 1

  I had tried to argue Joe Ryan out of making that last dive with the aqua-lung to prowl the freighter hulk we’d found. But he was the boss, and what boss will ever listen to you?

  In the thirty minutes or so since he’d gone down, the sky over the North Atlantic had turned a dirty yellow, like moldy lemon custard. The sea surface was flat and oily, without a ripple visible for miles. Something was going to happen. An ominous oppressiveness hung in the air. It crushed down on all of us, like a solid weight.

  I turned and moved across the deck of the Triton, past the rugged little bathysphere we kept lashed amidships. When you’re working the salvage racket, you use the best and latest equipment. The initial outlay costs an arm and a leg, but in the long run, class pays off. Even in a gambler’s game like salvage, you only play the sure thing.

  The Bos’n, a big, solid Irishman named Jack Finn, was leaning on the rail with three of the crewmen, staring off into the western sky. The crewmen were a taciturn bunch of Gaels we’d signed on in the Galway Bay area. They never said much, and they were a superstitious lot. Whenever they had any serious talking to do, they did it in Gaelic.

  As far as I could see, something was eating them now. They kept their eyes averted, squinting seaward, and they muttered among themselves in their own language.

  A flock of birds headed toward the Triton, flying low and purposefully. They flew in a soaring V, knifing through the sulky sky. A strange, muted turbulence began to swell the surface of the unnaturally calm waters. Ominous lethargic ripples roiled the glassy surface.

  “Boats,” I called.

  The big Irishman approached me with the solid widespread gait of a man who has spent most of his life on the deck of a ship. A cigarette hung out of the corner of his mouth, just under the nicotine stain on his upper lip. He was born with it there.

  “What’s up, anyway?”

  Jack Finn raised an eyebrow and glanced at the yellow sky. He had his thumbs hooked in the belt of his dungarees, and his sweat-and-salt soaked skivvies bulged under his heavily muscled chest and forearms.

  “The weather’s getting foul.” His words came out in a rich, true peat-bog brogue.

  Motioning him after me, I crossed the deck out of earshot of the crew. We leaned over and watched a long spiraling trail of air bubbles that rose to the surface of the water next to the ship.

  The Bos’n glanced at the watch on his massive wrist. “He’s been down a half hour already.”

  “Damn fool. He’ll stay till his air runs out if he thinks he can latch onto a buck’s worth of salvage.”

  I glanced up at the sun where it glowed blood-red in the thick yellow overhang—the damndest thing I’ve ever seen. It was as if the whole sky was slowly smoldering to ashes.

  “I know these waters, Mr. Slade,” Jack Finn said softly, “and I never seen the like of this. Something funny’s going on.”

  I nodded. Over his shoulder I could see the crewmen up front, peering into the heavy sky. One of them gesticulated wildly to an other. Unintelligible syllables of Gaelic drifted to me through the murky air.

  “Boats,” I said, “get over there and calm them down. They just might jump overboard and leave us high and dry.”

  Jack Finn grunted. “Superstition is all these Irishers got, Mr. Slade. But I’ll do what I can.”

  Jack Finn moved away. I turned and peered over the rail again. There was no change below. The bubbles still curved upward, vanishing on the surface of the flat turbid sea. I could imagine Joe down there, his aqua-lung in position, peering out through his face mask. I wondered what he’d located. I closed my eyes and crossed my fingers. God, could we use a buck! We were in hock up to our eyeballs on this salvage rig, and if we didn’t come up with some heavy scratch pretty soon, we’d have to run for Tahiti or be repossessed.

  Thirty-five minutes, I mused. Not that I blamed Joe for making a thorough recon. It had taken us a week just to find the wreck. And now, with this damned storm coming up, we’d have to abandon it just when we were getting close. I cursed soundlessly and spat into the brackish water.

  Just our luck. Just our lousy stinking luck.

  As I stood there, the sky went dark. It was almost as if I were standing in a room filled with normal daylight while someone slowly drew all the blinds shut. It was the same feeling you get when you’re going to pass out. And it was fast.

  I looked up. The sky was night. The clouds were mushrooming like the smoke from an oil-well fire. The sun was gone. It was twilight and growing darker.

  I tore myself from the rail and headed for my lung and fins. As I moved I pulled my skivvy shirt out of my dungarees and hauled it over my shoulders. I got out of my shoes and was unbuckling my pants when I heard a sound behind me.

  I turned and there was Joe, standing dripping on the companionway, looking like come creature out of the deep.

  He flipped back his mask and I could see an idiotic grin of greedy triumph on his sharp, narrow-cheeked features.

  “We’re in Sam!” he cried. “Swing that forward boom out. I want a cable over the side!”

  I looked at him sourly. “You’re kidding?” I nodded up at the sky and pointed to the water. “Look at that weather.”

  Joe turned. “It was getting a little rough down under,” he admitted. “Damn it! Just when we get our hooks into something, Mother Nature screws it up for us!”

  “No use standing here and cussing. From here on, it’s a one-way trip—straight down.”

  I could see Joe’s hands knot into fists. His face got a strained, bitter look. His yellow eyes were as narrow as slits. I’d seen him that way before, in Korea, where we served together. He was a killer at heart. A dangerous man. Right now I knew he’d like to take on the whole damned North Atlantic Ocean.

  “No sir!” he snapped. He wheeled on me. “Give me that cable hook. There’s a ten thousand dollar gyrocompass down t
here on that rustbucket. I’m staying until I get it!”

  “For God’s sake, Joe! Don’t be damned fool—you’ll get us all killed!”

  He wheeled and gripped the rail in frustrated rage. And as he stood there, glaring out at the sea, we both saw it happen. It was as if the whole ocean swelled like a blowout in a tire tube. The horizon bulged, and the ocean’s surface lifted for what seemed to be miles. Then it drew back, separating, and in its center a huge ball of fire bloomed out like some rank, poisonous flower.

  “My God!” Joe gasped. His jaw sagged.

  The explosion came then. The Triton shuddered as the shock waves hit her steel plating. We saw steam shower out of the fireball—steam and ashes and molten rock. It seemed as if the big blob of erupting, exploding material from the earth’s center rose miles in the sky. Possibly it was only a thousand feet or so. I’d never know.

  The ocean settled back into its normal horizon line, and a cone-shaped mass of glowing red rock thrust itself up out of the turgid, boiling sea. Flames shot from the point of the cone, and red-hot flaming lava belched forth, flowing down its sides. When the molten rock hit the water, more steam swirled into the air, all but obscuring the newly formed volcanic crater.

  “Boats!” Joe yelled. “Get the anchor up! Quick!”

  “Aye aye,” the Bos’n cried. He yelled orders to the crew and kept saying, “Corraigh ort! Corraigh ort!” He was telling them to hurry. He turned and raced for the donkey engine and kicked it instantly into action.

  I stood there, frozen to the deck plates. I couldn’t move a muscle. All I could do was gape at the cataclysm in the ocean. Clouds of steam and ashes fanned out and stinking, foul air boiled over the Triton. Red-hot stones hit the surface of the ocean about us with sizzles and hisses.

  When I could wrench my gaze away from the awesome sight in front of me, I saw that Jack Finn had two crewmen helping him at the winch, hoisting the anchor chair through the hawse pipe. Throughout the din of the metallic rattling I heard Joe hollering at me.

  I turned.

  “Batten her down, Sam!”

  Joe leaped up the companionway to the bridge. I moved then, released from whatever spell held me, and dashed about securing everything on deck. I never worked so fast in all my life. All the while it was getting darker and hotter and the air was turning more sulphurous. There was the smell of gunsmoke in the air, the smell of rotten eggs.

  I joined Joe in the bridge room. He was yelling down the speaking tube and jangling the engine telegraph.

  “Full speed! Give it all you’ve got!”

  He flipped the wheel around eastward, waiting for the screw to grab hold. We both looked through the window at the newly-formed volcanic upthrust.

  The entire horizon was jet black now—a continuous cloud of smoke, ash and lava. The sea was building up around the blackened cone, dancing wildly like an enchanted incarnation to some strange other-world melody. And then came the second blast—a thunderous, violent, eruption ejecting rock, fire and steam from the volcano’s center.

  “My God!” Joe cried. “Look!”

  Around the bottom of the volcano, evenly formed and swelling majestically appeared a huge tidal wave, rising slowly and inexorable from the base of the cone, moving ponderously outward in an ever-widening circle.

  The wave swelled turgidly, dull red in the strange unearthly glow of the sky. It flowed toward us like blood. The deck of the Triton shuddered under us as the engines pulsed. We began to move. But we were not moving fast enough. Behind us the huge comber moved steadily closer, rising into a massive mountainous crest, bearing down on us like the superhuman agency of some malignant sea devil.

  The crewmen clutched the deck rails for support, to keep from being hurled overboard by the thrust of the wave. Jack Finn, his big burly body straining against his skivvies, held tightly to the mooring of the donkey engine, gazing up fearlessly and curiously at the avalanche of water approaching us.

  “Joe!” I cried. “Here it comes!”

  The Triton shuddered heavily, listed slightly, and then in a tremendous surge of power, hurled high into the air, like a catapulted plane from the deck of a carrier. It was as if some giant hand had grasped us and shot us out of the water. There was nothing around us but yellow-black air, and ashes and sizzling rocks. I saw sky, and more sky, and black clouds and smoke.

  The wheel was spinning around, Joe’s hands bleeding and ripped by his struggle to control it. I tried to move toward him, but the deck was the steepest hill I’d ever tried to climb. I could not move against it. I found myself flattened to it, pulled down. I slipped and fell; then my clutching fingers found the bottom of the wheel. I pulled myself up. The deck immediately reversed its angle, and I crashed forward into the wheel. I saw a pinwheel of dancing colored stars and my head spun.

  Then we righted again. I saw the ocean about us, a mass of whitecaps and waves forming a series of strange flat plateaus, arranged like moving escalator steps. And Joe and I were calmly holding onto the wheel, and it was not fighting us at all. Now we were headed in an easterly direction, exactly where we wanted to go. For one long, surprising instant there was silence all about us. The crewmen picked themselves up from the foredeck, shaking their heads. Jack Finn still clutched the donkey engine mooring. He looked around dazedly.

  And then, with no warning, the sky vanished again. At our stern arose another mountain of water. If the first wave was a mountain, this was Everest. It bore down on us, towering and forbidding. We were done. Joe turned his greenish face to me, smiling sickly.

  The deck shuddered, the engine gave a snarling screeching moan, and the Triton shook from stem to stern. We stood in a sea of water. The bridge room. The deck. Belowdecks. Salt water tore at my clothes, my eyes, my skin. I slipped and slid to my knees. One after the other Joe and I hit the deck, the bulkhead, the deck, the bulkhead. The Triton spun like a top, turning in every direction of the compass, completely out of control.

  I tasted blood and salt. I tasted rust and sulphur. The world was a thick, green swirl. I turned over, sliding on metal. And then again I was at the wheel, trying to right the Triton.

  Joe was stretched out on deck.

  “Joe!”

  He looked up dazedly. Blood oozed out of his cut forehead, passing over his filmed eyes. He crawled to me, trying to stand. The Triton veered around. We were headed in an easterly direction, speeding along swiftly and gracefully. I looked out over the bridge.

  It was the damnest thing. We were being carried along the crest of a gigantic tidal wave, like a surfboard. I took my hand from the wheel. The Triton continued straight ahead, plunging along, turning neither to port nor starboard, piercing through a wall of gray spray sheeting up in front of us from the crest of the wave.

  Joe was standing beside me, shaking his head groggily, staring out through the bridge window. All I could make out were vague shapes—whitecaps and spray intermingled.

  By now the deck hands were getting to their feet and looking about them dazedly. Jack Finn shook himself dry, peering back at me. I gave him a nod. He grinned and waved a hand. But he did not let go of the donkey engine.

  The spray vanished in front of us. Now I could see ahead of me.

  “Joe!” I cried. “An island. Right there ahead of us.”

  He was gripping the wheel too, his face tense, his eyes slitted. “My God! We’ll be driven on the rocks and smashed to bits!”

  We were riding the second of the two tidal waves. I saw the first one ahead of us now, a vast, spreading blanket of water, crashing against a projecting spear of rock jutting out from the island. A lighthouse stood on the far tip end. As I looked, the first wave crashed against the base of the lighthouse, whipping on past it. To the right of the lighthouse lay a peaceful harbor, with sails and rigging of many ships plainly visible.

  Even as we watched, horrified, from our grandstand seats atop the second wave, the first one hit the island. Water crashed over boat hulls, sent masts snapping in the air, banged ships ag
ainst the long wood dock. Water shot up high in the air, jetting into a thin mist, leaving splotches of foam swirling about in its wake.

  But the action of the first wave saved us. It hit the island and bounced back against our oncoming wave, cutting across it, dissipating its force. As we lay there outside the little harbor, we could actually feel the throb of the Triton’s screws as they grabbed the water and took hold.

  Wondering where we were, we brought the Triton slowly in toward the island.

  As if it mattered any more where we were. It was enough to be alive after the fantastic beating we had taken.

  I sank back against the bulkhead while Joe piloted the Triton toward the harbor, thinking that I’d love to give it all up for a job in a factory. The hell with the wide-open sea. I’d had it.

  In spades.

  Chapter 2

  Next morning, the water was calm enough for us to sail into the harbor of the island. It was misty and damp, but better weather than the day before. The island itself was a round, flattish hunk of rock and dirt, covered with the scrub brush and grass so familiar to the Irish Coast and its islands.

  We anchored clear of the wreckage in the middle of the harbor.

  “Not much of an island,” Joe observed.

  “Seems kind of spare,” I agreed.

  “Villagers must fish for a living.”

  “If you can call it a living,” I grinned.

  “How long do you figure it’ll take to get the ship back into shape?” Joe asked, glancing warily at me.

  I shrugged. “I checked with Jack Finn. You want to hear the bad news now?”

  Joe grimaced. “Might as well.”

  “Sprung plates in the bilge,” I ticked off one finger. “Salt in the fresh-water tanks. And a hell of a mess on deck.”

  Joe made a face.

  “Three or four days, the way Jack figures it.”

  “That’s the way the cookie crumbles.” Joe waved his hands in mute resignation. “Come on. Let’s get ashore and see what they’ve got in the way of supplies. We’ll need fresh water.”