Doc Savage: Death's Dark Domain Read Online Free PDF

WIND was howling among the ice floes of the far reaches south of the North
     Pole.
    Laden with snow, it swirled around the crevices of a rocky islet set in the metallic
     blue mural of the Arctic Sea. Driven flakes, like the fallen dust of long-dead stars,
     beat against an obdurate shape that might have been a crystal ball. Except the ball
     was blue and opaque, and sunk to its gleaming equator in the heaped snow of the remote
     isle.
    A hundred foot high blue agate standing on an Arctic isle, and as big around as a
     Manhattan city block.
    The ticking of hard snow particles was a constant refrain against the Strange Blue
     Dome. It went on for hours, seemed to have been going on for days, and promised to
     continue for weeks if not months to come. Grit, scoured off the outthrust crags of
     rock ringing the isle, was picked up to be commingled with the remorseless, biting
     snow.
    The grit was driven with a force that would have quickly clouded exposed glass with
     myriad scratches. Yet the glassy surface of the blue dome withstood the onslaught,
     showing no sign of abrasion. In fact, the sandpapery wind might have been the handiwork
     of Mother Nature, proudly polishing a mighty azure gem thrust up from the center of
     the earth.
    The Strange Blue Dome was no freak of nature surrendered by an upheaval of the earth’s
     crust, however.
    For a man, head bent before the wind, bundled up in a parka and sealskin boots, approached
     the object. The vast dome dwarfed him. It was utterly featureless, yet the figure
     stamped toward it as if it were an otherworldly sanctuary prepared to receive him.
    The man walked with a stick. It was no twisted bit of wood or branch. It could scarcely
     be any such thing. No trees grew for hundreds of miles in any direction. The tree
     line was far to the south of this distant spot, across ice-cake choked waters. The
     man did not lean on the walking stick, as would a cripple. Instead, he carried it
     in one felt-gloved hand, employing it to knock apart humps of snow obstructing his
     path.
    As he approached the blue phantasm, a strange thing transpired.
    A portal opened in the featureless shell of the Strange Blue Dome.
    It was uncanny. Looking at the thing, an observer would have sworn that no such portal
     existed. There were no cracks, no lines, nothing to indicate the dome was anything
     but a single shimmering piece of some unfathomable substance.
    Yet the portal had swung open. It smacked of magic.
    The man stepped through, and after a moment, the portal swung back into place. When
     its edges once again conformed to the curve of the Strange Blue Dome, the great blue
     gem of a structure once more presented the appearance of utter and complete solidity.
    The howling wind continued to abrade the shimmering blue half-sphere that was obviously
     hollow—and inhabited.
    No sound of wind penetrated the arching agate dome as the man with the cane stood
     stamping caked snow off his sealskin boots. He shucked off his parka hood, revealing
     a face denoted by an eagle-like handsomeness. Snow clinging to his hair was perhaps
     a shade lighter than the crisp hair itself. But probably not.
    His stamping done, the white-haired man proceeded to divest himself of his parka.
     He did this without laying aside his stick, which, shaken free of clinging snow, proved
     to be a dark cane of very good wood.
    The removing of the parka became something of a production, inasmuch as the white-haired
     one seemed completely loath to surrender the stick. It switched back and forth between
     gripping hands until the parka had been doffed. Then, the man removed his boots and
     climbed out of his soft bearskin leggings.
    “Jove!” he muttered at one point.
    After the entire complicated and cumbersome operation had been completed, the man
     stood in immaculate morning attire, complete with pearl gray vest and striped trousers.
    Given the fact that he had stepped from the howling wilderness of the North Polar