Operation Earthworm, Joe Archibald [top e book reader TXT] 📗

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.

"Well," I says. "We have a sub from Subterro. Wurpz, you just sit there at the controls and make sure that needle on the big dial don't move as I am sure this creep has it on robot so that this tub will automatically follow the course of the river."

"We are sure takin' a powder," D'Ambrosia yelps. "Look at the monitor!"

We see fish gaping at us from the screen that even Earth citizens with delirium tremens never saw, and I look quite anxiously at the instrument panel.

"A thousand miles per and we are climbin'," I says. "I am glad this Hitler used old Germanic on his subs, and that I majored in it once. I—er—I am gettin' arthritis all at once! The bends! Uh—er—look, peel them suits off the other creeps and fast, Zahooli, as I bet they can be inflated and made into compression chambers. They have got connections that plug into something."

We pull on the suits which were too big for the beetleheads and for a good reason. More bends than there are in the Ohio River are with us before we plug into the right socket. The suits bulge out until our feet almost leave the floor. I grin through my helmet at Wurpz.

The sub keeps purring and purring. The altimeter registers four thousand feet. It is a caution, an altimeter in a sub. Two hours later we shoot out through a hole deep under the coast of Brazil and I know we are in the ocean as the monitor shows some old wrecked ships about three miles from us. We disconnect the Subterro anti-bends kimonos and peel them off. Agrodyte Hitler is moving two of his arms when we climb toward the surface.

"Hah, we will make a sucker out of history," I says to Wurpz. "And wait until we show this creep to Professor Zalpha and Exmud R. Zmorro."

We come to the surface and contact an Earthian Franco-Austro atomic luxury liner. The skipper's pan registers on the viso-screen. "This is Septimus Spink," I says. "Commander of Inner Spaceship Magnificent Mole. I have come from the center of Earth with a captured Subterro submarine and Agrodyte Hitler, the Neofeuhrer. Over and out."

The universe goes into a cosmic dither when we slide into a berth in Hampton Rhodus. Thousands of citizens hail us as we ride to Metropolita in a Supercaddijet. Behind us in a truck trailer made mostly of transparent duralucite is our captive, the descendant of Adolph Hitler and three dead Subterro beetle people.

"Well, you won't give up so easy on a Spink from now on," I says to Zahooli. "We are heroes and will get medals. First thing we have to do, though," I says to Coordinator One sitting in the jet sedan with us, "is to take care of the hole Earth has in its head. All we have to do is drop that new bomb down the tunnel we made and it will wash up all those subs that are left and most likely cause a flood that will inundate Subterro. What do you think?"

The brass is still tongue-tied. "One thing I must do and that is see that a certain insecticide manufacturer gets a plug on Interplanetary TV," I continue. "Ha, we took the bugs out of this planet. It should work quite smooth from now on."

"I still believe in reincarnation," D'Ambrosia Zahooli says. "I have the darndest feeling I've been through almost as big nightmares with you before, Sep."

Interplanetary Press, Circa 2022, Junius XXIV—Professor Apsox Zalpha, eminent professor of cosmogony, and Exmud R. Zmorro, leading news analyst of seven worlds, have entered the Metropolita Neuropsychiatorium for a routine checkup. They emphatically denied that it was connected in any way with a lecture given recently by Septimus Spink, first man to explore inner space, at the Celestial Cow Palace in San Francisco. Both men expect to remain for two weeks. "Of course there is nothing wrong with either of us," Professor Zalpha told your correspondent. "But if you see a beetle, please do not step on it. It could be somebody's mother."