Chapter3
“We’re being lifted off the road, Batman.” Robin’s voice was tense.
The Batmobile did not hold the road as snugly as before. The wheels were no longer supporting the entire weight of the car.
“We need more forward thrust. That will offset their pulling power.” Batman’s hand flicked to a switch.
There was a great rumbling roar as the rocket-accelerators came into play. Responding to the enormous thrust, the Batmobile leaped forward with renewed energy.
The blimp was hauled along the Batmobile’s path, as helplessly as a kite!
Over a meadow, through a narrow opening in a fence, the Batmobile sped to regain the highway. “Which way, Batman?”
“North. To Gotham City. We’ll deliver the Penguin and his henchmen directly to the city jail.”
In the blimp’s gondola, the Penguin raged at the controls of the blimp.
“Bah!” he said, noting there was no directional change in the blimp’s path. “Next time I’ll get a zeppelin to compete against that infernal Batmobile.”
“What can we do, Penguin?” asked one of his henchmen piteously. “You’ll think of something, won’t you? You won’t let us be dragged in with the blimp like some old alley cat.”
“Our engines aren’t powerful enough to battle the Batmobile. But there’s nothing to prevent us from turning our fire on Batman and Robin themselves, is there?”
The henchman’s face lit. “Say, that’s right. They don’t have any guns, but we do!”
“Take positions at the window. Try to pick them off!”
Three of the Penguin’s henchmen drew pistols and went to the gondola windows.
“Don’t fire until you see the whites of their faces,” said the Penguin.
They took careful aim.
“Ready…aim…fire!” said the Penguin.
Three guns boomed at once.
The Penguin pushed out a pane of bullet-shattered glass and craned his neck impatiently to look.
Beneath the blimp the Batmobile held to a steady course. The Penguin turned back to the men in the gondola.
“Blundering, pop-eyed fools! You missed them!”
“We couldn’t have missed them, Penguin. I had Batman square in my sights.”
“And I had Robin,” said the other.
“I could swear Batman was looking right up at me when I fired at him. I aimed right between his eyes!”
“Well, they’re not acting like a couple of ghosts,” the Penguin said. “They look remarkably healthy. Try again. This time I’ll watch to see what happens.”
The three men took aim—and fired. Penguin peered out through the window of the gondola.
“Drat,” said the Penguin.
He pulled his head back in.
“What’s goin’ wrong, Penguin?” one of the henchmen asked. “I won second prize in the underworld sharpshooting contest last year. A thing like this shakes a man’s confidence.”
“It’s obviously some sort of invisible shield over the driver’s seat,” the Penguin said. “Apparently Batman foresaw this kind of attack.”
“Maybe we can knock out one of the tires,” another henchman suggested hopefully.
The Penguin sniffed. “Try not to be any stupider than nature intended you to be. The Batmobile’s tires are bulletproof—and so is the body of the car. That infernal auto is better protected than an army tank!”
A gun clattered to the floor from a nerveless henchman’s fingers.
“Then we’re finished. We’re licked!”
“Not at all,” the Penguin replied. “The situation merely calls for emergency—although rather painful—measures.”
The Penguin’s sleepy-looking eyes glittered with a cold excitement.
“Never fear. I have an excellent plan to outwit them!”
On the highway below, the Batmobile was racing along at a steady pace.
Robin said cheerily, “Well, they’ve figured out by now that we’re protected by the transparent shield. The Penguin must be a pretty discouraged bird.”
“Never count your penguins until they’re safely caged,” Batman advised. “We’ve still got fifteen miles to go. That gives the Penguin more than enough time to devise some other scheme.”
A mile unreeled in less than a minute.
Then:
WHOMP!
A heavy crate landed on the highway to break open and spew forth glittering golden bars.
“I was afraid he’d think of that,” Batman muttered.
Robin gripped the wheel. “He’s dumping the gold shipment. Sacrificing millions of dollars to purchase his freedom!”
“He thinks we’ll be forced to recover the gold. He’s probably waiting right now to see what our reaction will be. If we don’t cut him loose, he’ll dump the next crate.”
“What can we do, Batman? We can’t abandon the gold!”
Batman swiftly unhooked the Batphone and dialed a number—the private code number on the phone used only for direct calls between Batman and Police Commissioner Gordon.
An instant later Commissioner Gordon’s voice answered. “Yes, Batman. What is it?”
“A crate full of gold bullion on Highway Ninety-six. Send out police radio cars to recover it immediately.”
“All right, Batman.”
“Tell them to follow Highway Ninety-six on a route north. The bullion is part of the shipment intended to go to Fort Knox this morning. The Penguin’s hijacked it!”
“The Penguin! Good heav—”
WHOMP!
Another crate landed on the highway to break open on impact.
Batman hung up the phone and tapped Robin’s arm. “Speed up to a hundred miles an hour. There’s a tunnel right ahead on this route. That’ll stop the Penguin from dumping any more gold bars.”
Robin’s foot pressed down on the pedal. “Hang on to your cowl, Batman. Here we go!”
Watching from the blimp gondola above, a henchman of the Penguin lapsed into despondency.
“He isn’t slowing down. And he isn’t cuttin’ us loose. He’s pickin’ up speed.”
The Penguin said, “Obviously he has some dastardly scheme to keep us from jettisoning the rest of the gold. Oh, dear!”
“What’s the matter, Penguin?”
“This is the highway going north to Gotham City, isn’t it?”
“That’s right.”
“We just passed the Andersonville interchange, didn’t we?”
“That’s right.”
“If memory serves me, there is a tunnel through that hill just ahead of us—and it’s coming up very fast. The Batmobile is leading us on a collision course!”
The henchman’s countenance turned ashen.
“We’re sunk, Penguin! The Batmobile will go through the t-tunnel. But we-we’ll c-crash head-on into the mountain!”
The Penguin sighed. “Batman has played his trump card in our little game of wits. I do believe he’s won. I did pretty well with the lark bunting—and the yellow hammer. But I’ve struck out—as a goldfinch.”
“You’re not giving up, Penguin? Not you!” another henchman protested.
“Only for the moment, dear comrades. One must always remember the truth of the old adage...” The Penguin stripped off his guard’s uniform to reveal himself in his accustomed finery. He picked up his flattened-out top hat, sprung it open to full size, and placed it carefully on his head. “‘He who steals and runs away, lives to steal another day!’”
“How can we run away? We’re stuck up here in this % $#$%! blimp!”
“You are,” said the Penguin with aplomb as he produced an umbrella. “I am not.”
With an insolent grin, the Penguin crossed to the door of the gondola, opened it, and stepped into space.
“He’s killed himself!” shouted one of the henchmen.
The Penguin had taken no such rash action. He pressed a spring in his umbrella which opened out above him in the flowering canopy of a parachute.
He began a leisurely descent to earth.
“Unfortunately,” he thought, “the gold is too heavy to take with me. But when one is deserting a sinking ship one can hardly choose a perfect means of escape.”
In the speeding car below, Batman and Robin witnessed the parachute-escape of the Penguin from the blimp.
“Shall we turn back and go after him?” Robin asked. Ahead of the Batmobile loomed the dark mouth of the tunnel set into the hillside.
Batman said, “I have to take care of the blimp and the gold shipment. But you can go back for the Penguin.”
The Batmobile sped into the mouth of the tunnel and halted. The blimp continued on its involuntary course straight into the hillside. There was a shattering, grinding crash—and the capsized blimp slowly settled toward the ground.
Batman leaped nimbly out of the Batmobile, which backed up, veered, and sped off in the opposite direction.
“Good luck, Robin,” Batman called after the Boy Wonder. “And be careful!”
Batman clambered over the hillside to where the partly crumpled gondola lay. Three dazed crooks were crawling out of it when Batman appeared.
Batman said, “The police will be along any minute. Just to pass the time until then, boys, we’ll unload the remaining gold shipment.” Batman put his hands on his hips and looked at the shaken survivors of the blimp crash. “Or would you prefer to put up an argument?”
“Who, me?” asked one.
“Anything you say is fine with me, Batman,” said the second.
“You’re the boss, Batman,” said the third.
Meanwhile, Robin in the Batmobile was speeding south along the highway, back to where the Penguin had come down.
“He was only a few hundred feet high when he jumped,” Robin thought to himself. “He couldn’t have maneuvered far. He must have landed near that clump of trees over there.”
Robin parked the Batmobile off the highway. He crossed to the clump of trees.
The Penguin was nowhere to be found.
After a moment Robin bent low. The winter grass was sparse and brown, but at the edge of a small knoll Robin found part of the grass pressed flat. “As though a man’s foot had stepped on it,” Robin thought. High on an oak tree he spotted a small white bare spot where bark was scraped loose. “As though something had grazed it,” Robin thought.
To the Boy Wonder’s trained eye the story was now clear. The Penguin in his descent had narrowly scraped past the oak tree, knocking off a part of the bark with the heel of his shoe, landing below its spreading branches.
But where had he gone?
At this moment the Penguin was safely wrapped up in paper.
To be accurate, the Penguin had hitched a ride on a truck delivering huge rolls of newsprint to a printing plant. Unnoticed by the driver, he had wedged his way into the center core of a huge newsprint roll and was now reclining there, not too comfortably, as the truck made its way south back along the highway.
From his hiding place, the Penguin heard the sirens of police cars responding to Batman’s call to Commissioner Gordon. Once he peered out to see the police rounding up stray bars of precious gold bullion that had rolled out of the broken crates. At an intersection the police held up the truck for a few minutes until the highway was cleared before waving it on its way.
The Penguin fumed. “All that gold would have been mine—if it weren’t for Batman! And that isn’t the worst. When word of this gets out, my chance of winning the Tommy Award will be practically zero. I must think of another scheme quickly. Something that will convince the Award Committee they shouldn’t count me out of the running yet!”
After an hour of riding in his cramped hiding space, the Penguin decided he must be far enough away to be in the clear. He wriggled out, waited until the truck slowed down for a traffic light, and skipped nimbly off.
It was almost dusk, and as the Penguin looked about him his wicked smile gleamed like a scimitar in the failing light. He decided that the fates were favoring him, after all.
He was opposite a huge factory gate, with a low-lying, ultramodern glassed factory behind it. A sign over the gate read: ROBERT O. LINK REMOTE CONTROL MACHINERY COMPANY.
“How delicious,” thought the Penguin. “Such a prosperous concern. And the name is an intriguing invitation. Robert O. Link—Bob O. Link, for short. Bobolink is the name of a bird—and that’s my cue for plunder!”
Robin stopped briefly at the intersection where the police were gathering up the last bars of the Penguin’s jettisoned gold bullion. Inspector O’Hara was supervising the recovery operation.
Inspector O’Hara came over to the Batmobile.
“Hi, Robin. Why are you out here alone?”
“Batman’s guarding the blimp with the rest of the gold shipment—and the Penguin’s men. I’m looking for the Penguin. Did he come this way, Inspector?”
Inspector O’Hara pushed back his police cap, scratching his head in bewilderment.
“Why, no. We stopped all the cars going each way until we cleared the highway. We’d sure have seen him if he’d tried to get past us.”
“Was there any vehicle that looked suspicious to you, Inspector O’Hara?”
“None I can think of. I’m sorry I can’t be of any help to you, Robin.”
Robin pursed his lips. “Perhaps you can be of help to Batman. Will you detail a few police to arrest those crooks and take charge of the blimp with the stolen gold shipment? It’s only a few miles north of here, at the tunnel.”
“I’ll do that right away, Robin. And good luck with your hunt for the Penguin.”
The Batmobile roared on. Alone at the wheel, the Boy Wonder’s mind was churning furiously. How could the Penguin have escaped once he’d landed on the ground? He couldn’t have used one of his flying umbrellas again. That would have been a sight no one would have forgotten. He couldn’t have tried to escape on foot. The Penguin’s peculiar physical appearance would have resulted in an immediate identification. No, he had to have taken the highway. That meant he must be hiding in some sort of vehicle. In a wagon? There are no horses and wagons on modern superhighways. In a car trunk? How could he have secreted himself in the trunk without the owner being aware of it? In a truck…
“That’s it!” Robin thought. “A truck with a loading platform in the rear—perhaps carrying some cargo in which the Penguin could hide. I should have thought of that before.”
The Batmobile sped on past the gate of a modern glass-walled factory. A bit further on Robin overtook a truck carrying heavy rolls of newspaper. Robin cut off the truck to speak to the driver.
“I think someone may be hiding in the rear of your truck. Do you mind if I have a look?”
“Mind? I’ll help you, Boy Wonder.”
Robin clambered into the rear of the truck and searched through the mountainous rolls of paper. Near the very top of the pile he found one on which the covering had been broken to expose the hollow core within—an opening large enough to have concealed a man.
“He was here, all right,” Robin told the driver. “But I’m afraid he’s gone now. I’ll retrace my steps. Somewhere along the way the Penguin must have found a better hiding place.”
Once again the Batmobile got under way, this time heading again in a northerly direction. Robin kept a sharp lookout for some place in which the Penguin might have sought sanctuary. A few miles along the highway he again approached the glass-walled factory.
Suddenly Robin stepped on the brake. The Batmobile shrieked to a halt.
“Robert O. Link Remote Control Machinery,” he read aloud. “Bobolink is a bird. That’s just the sort of idea that would appeal to the Penguin.”
Robin, the Boy Wonder, was learning to think like the Penguin at last.
A few moments later, Robin was in the office of the plant manager.
“I’m sorry, Robin,” the manager said. “There’s been no sign of an intruder in this building. Each visitor has to be identified. I’d be sure to know if a stranger had tried to get in.”
“I can’t see why the Penguin would pass up an opportunity like this. It’s a perfect setup for…”
The intercom on the plant manager’s desk crackled:
“Sir, will you come out to the main yard at once? Something’s gone wrong with the power equipment on display there.”
The manager clicked the switch and answered: “I’ll be there right away.”
“You’d better hurry, sir. I don’t understand this. But the power shovel is—EEYOW! IT’S RUNNING WILD!”
The intercom fell silent. Glancing out the window, Robin could see the main yard of the plant. Various power machines, operated by remote control radios, were stationed there for exhibit. The tallest and most imposing of these, a gigantic power shovel, was now in motion. Its caterpillar-tread body was grinding steadily forward.
The plant manager stood at his desk, paralyzed with astonishment.
“This is incredible. It can’t be happening!”
“There’s no one in the cab of the power shovel,” Robin said.
“There wouldn’t be. It’s operated by remote control from a radio sending set.” The plant manager’s voice cracked. “But—but how can it respond to signals if no one is sending them?”
“Someone is sending them,” Robin said quickly. “I don’t need two guesses to tell you who it is!”
He flung open the window and nimbly vaulted twenty feet to the courtyard below. He landed lightly and, ignoring the giant power shovel, headed straight for the radio control cabin at the far end of the exhibit yard.
A voice cried out a warning.
A shadow loomed over his head.
Robin shot a worried glance over his shoulder.
The great crane of the power shovel was swooping the shovel down at him like an angry projectile. He was directly in its path.
Robin flung himself headlong, scraping on his belly along the rasping concrete of the yard. The jaws of the shovel clanged together inches above his body. He felt the stir of wind created by the meshing of the iron jaws.
The crane hauled the shovel back again—while its motorized platform crunched toward Robin on slow-rolling caterpillar treads.
Robin ran.
He crashed into the open doorway of the control booth.
The Penguin, seated at a table, was operating the radio controls, using two levers on a small black box that resembled a radio. On a television screen nearby the response of the power shovel was clearly shown.
“Dear me,” said the Penguin. “I really thought I had you that time, Robin. I haven’t quite mastered the trick of this remote control gadget as yet.”
“You’ve had all the practice you’re going to get,” Robin said as he started toward him.
Then he stopped.
The Penguin held a revolver pointed squarely at the middle of Robin’s chest.
“I wouldn’t come closer if I were you,” the Penguin said. “This would be quite an unimaginative way for you to die. I’d almost be ashamed of myself if I were compelled to shoot you now. But I won’t have the least hesitation if you make it necessary to do it.”
Robin did not answer.
The Penguin gestured with his revolver toward a corner of the cabin. “Sit there,” be commanded.
“What are you planning to do?” Robin asked.
The Penguin’s long nose quivered. “I’m going to let you watch while I maneuver the giant shovel to crash into the accounting office of the plant—and neatly remove the safe which contains the payroll for one thousand people who work here. It should amount to a tidy sum. A very tidy sum!”
“You can’t get away with it!” Robin warned. “The alarm is out already. The guards will be swarming into the yard in a moment. They’ll stop you!”
“I’ve thought of that, dear boy.” The Penguin stood up from the table. Keeping the gun carefully trained on Robin, be moved to a counter where a dozen other black boxes waited with their protruding control levers. He reached up with his free hand quite deliberately and calmly and began to pull the levers on one box after the other.
In the small confines of the control cabin the results were all too soon apparent. The room shook with the vibrations of giant machines rumbling into action. On the television monitor screen, Robin saw the machines moving on a blind and purposeless course.
A bulldozer, careening like an out-of-control tank, crashed into a farm tractor. An angry hissing of steam came from a steamroller headed remorselessly into collision with an earthmoving machine. A farm tractor truck sped on its wildly errant course directly into the path of a derrick swinging a great steel ball. The swinging ball caught the tractor truck broadside and smashed it into a giant pile of debris.
In a moment the whole yard was turned into a pandemonium of shrieking machinery at war with other machinery. No human would have dared to venture into that inferno of metal gone mad!
Through the confusion, the gigantic power shovel moved on a straight relentless course toward the wall of the plant. Its caterpillar treads moved faster and faster until at last the great steel body slammed full tilt into the wall. The wall collapsed. There was a great shower of broken glass and metal stripping. In the wreckage, shown clearly on the TV screen, a few human figures struggled feebly. The giant shovel moved into the shattered wall and its jaws closed on a safe near the wall. The safe was lifted free and clear.
Robin could watch no more.
“You devil!” he cried.
He sprang for the Penguin. The sudden attack almost took the Penguin by surprise. He had time to fire a quick shot, but Robin’s arm knocked the gun awry. Then both Penguin and Robin toppled back over the table in a melee of flailing arms and legs.
For an instant the Penguin’s roly-poly form was on top of Robin. He got one arm free.
The Penguin raised the gun and brought down the barrel with sickening force on Robin’s head.
The Boy Wonder did not utter a sound. His arms fell limply. His head dropped to one side.
The Penguin stood up to brush the dust of battle from his frock coat.
“It serves you right,” the Penguin said. “I rather hope that didn’t kill you. It will be so much more fun to produce you—alive and kicking—as a prisoner of the Penguin!”
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