by Edwin Benson
HE HAD no further time either for speaking or listening to voices, because the Nazi plane whipped up again, its guns blazing at his belly. Tracer bullets screamed through the air alarmingly close. Instinctively Vorosh kicked the rudder and almost instantly found himself in the middle of a fight for his life. He, Pete Vorosh, American citizen, was in a dog-fight with a Nazi over Moscow! A Nazi who was firing at him with all guns. And he, Pete Vorosh, had no guns!
But all at once he grinned. This was it! No matter how it had happened, this was it! Out there was a Nazi killer. One of the Nazis threatening Moscow—trying to smash the city of his birth. Maybe he, Pete Vorosh, had no guns, but he had one of the finest fighting planes ever built—and right now he’d show a Nazi how an American could fly!
In the next five minutes, a Nazi did learn how an American could fly! Desperately that Nazi tried to get the strange plane in his sights, frantically he tried to avoid being rammed as it astoundingly appeared on his tail. Then fear crept up his spine. Why didn’t the fool fire at him? Amazement grew in his eyes as he observed the fighter had no guns. The fear downed. This would be easy . . . But in moments, the fear was back. It engulfed him. He turned, panic stricken, to run for home . . .
Then Pete Vorosh sailed in for the kill. Like an artist he flicked out with his prop, shattered an aileron, the rudder, a wing-tip . . . Reeling crazily, the Messerschmitt spun down to destruction.
Vorosh watched it go, a queer grin on his face. It was a frozen grin, and there was nothing of humor in it. Only a momentary savagery that held a certain horrible satisfaction in it, then was instantly replaced by a frown of distaste. One Nazi was dead—and there were many more to kill. But none of them would die for any other reason than that they themselves had chosen to die. Russia had not asked to be attacked. Pete Vorosh had not asked to be attacked. He had killed for one reason—self defense. The frown of distaste was because of another reason, which existed though he wished it didn’t; he had killed for vengeance!
Suddenly Pete Vorosh knew that he was going to stay here. Fate, and something incredible, unbelievable, had thrown him in the one spot he wanted to be. It had not been his doing, even if it was his desire. Now he would stay. Yes, he was an American, but he was Russian too—the kind of Russian that was a symbol, a symbol of a people who were just human beings with the desire to live in happiness and freedom.
“We will be fighting for the same thing in America, soon,” he whispered to himself. “I am an American. I will just be fighting a little sooner than other Americans, that is all.”
THE fight with the Nazi, swift though it had been, had carried him a long distance from the city itself. Below him now was open country, dotted with bright flashes of field guns, pocked with craters, and obscured by the smoke of bursting shells. Even above the roar of the P-40’s motor he could hear the sounds of battle. He had covered a hundred miles in that slashing pursuit of the Nazi. Suddenly he thought of his gas supply, and as he thought, the motor faltered, quit . . .
“Damn!” said Vorosh.
The next few minutes he was too busy to talk, picking a place to land the plane. He dove, got flying speed, headed for the rear of the lines. Below him, a column of tanks slashed forward, spitting red. Tiny dots that were Russian soldiers raced forward. Some of them fell. Others reached the tanks. One tank blew up with a terrific explosion. The man who had thrown the grenade died beside it. Another tank burst into flame, became an inferno of death for its occupants, veered crazily, and raced along at right angles to its previous course.
Vorosh had no time to see more. Below him, and ahead, was a field. In the center of it was one huge crater. But beside it was a long stretch that might possibly provide something better than a crash-landing. He headed the plane for it, dipped the nose momentarily, and then flattened out. The plane hit with a terrific bounce on the edge of the crater, lurched, then raced forward, on its wheels. It came to a halt with a jarring concussion against a haystack which was not as soft as it had looked.
Momentarily daed, Vorosh sat still until his head cleared, then he climbed stiffly out. He became aware that his fingers hurt. Taking off his heavy glove, he stared at swollen, frost-bitten finger-tips. His feet hurt too, now that he stood on them.
Up there in the stratosphere something incredible had happened. He had gone higher than he could imagine—certainly higher than a P-40 could go. It had been terribly cold. Colder than the stratosphere ordinarily was. That storm—it had been something unknown. Perhaps a storm from the upper reaches of the atmosphere; a vast sucking funnel that had drawn him up, carried him half around the world before it came down again.
But the storm in itself had been commonplace beside the mysterious woman’s voice, and the great skull that he had seen. Had he been delirious, out of his head? Had the voice and the skull been a figment of his imagination, enlarged to reality by his strange experience?
But no! The voice had come to him at a low level too, over Moscow! It had spoken sense. It had directed him to land at the airport. It had addressed him by name. Had called him Peter! And all the time, it had spoken in Russian. Was she here, in Moscow? Whoever she was? And how had her voice come to him?
It had seemed to emanate in his head, like . . . like mental telepathy!
PETE VOROSH stood very still for a moment, then, in his mind, he asked a question:
Who are you? What do you want of me?
There was no answer. In his head sounded no woman’s voice. Only the noise of booming guns, and crashing shells, and closer now, the chatter of a machine gun.
Vorosh tried it again. Aloud this time.
“Who are you?” he asked in Russian.
Behind him a man’s voice came.
“Perhaps you had better answer that question to me!”
Vorosh turned, stared into the grim face of a Russian army officer. A lieutenant, he guessed from the insignia on his coat. The Russian held a gun in his hand, trained straight at Vorosh.
“Who might you be, and how did you get here?” the Russian asked again.
“You won’t believe it,” said Vorosh with a wry grin. “But I guess I might as well tell the truth. I can’t think of anything else to say that would sound logical. I’m Pete Vorosh and I hail from Buffalo, New York, and I got here in one of Uncle Sam’s P-40’s which I was testing. I was caught in a freak storm, and carried here. Believe it if you wish . . .”
“Peter Vorosh?” the Russian asked.
“Well, in American, yes. Here, in Russia, I was called Peter Vladimir Voroshilov. . .”
“Voroshilov!” The Russian started.
“It’s a good name,” said Vorosh.
“Good!” exclaimed the Russian. “It is the best. My father fought under Voroshilov in the battle of Tsaritsin . . . Stalingrad now.”
The Russian stopped speaking, and for the first time, apparently, the significance of what he had been told sank into his consciousness. He turned to stare at the P-40, its nose buried in the haystack.
“American?” he said blankly.
“That’s right,” said Vorosh. “Straight from Buffalo, by stratosphere storm.”
“Storm?” The Russian gazed aloft, into the morning sky—and as Vorosh stared also into its calm blueness, the impact of realization hit him too for the first time.
Morning! An hour ago—it seemed—he had been in the air over Buffalo, and it had been afternoon.
“All night!” he exclaimed. “I was in the stratosphere all night!”
The Russian looked at him.
“You are mad,” he said. Then he looked once more at the plane—
“Or I am,” he finished. Abruptly he leveled his gun again, and his voice was harsh.
“Come with me. This is a matter for the commander.”
Vorosh hesitated. He looked at the P-40. So far as he could see, it was undamaged, or only slightly so.
“My plane . . .” he began.
The Russian whistled shrilly and a half-dozen men raced forward from where t
hey had lain concealed, rifles at the ready. The officer pointed at the plane.
“Guard it. Let no one near.”
He turned to Vorosh.
“Come,” he said shortly.
VOROSH preceded him off the field and finally down a road toward a group of tents.
The guard standing before one accosted them. The lieutenant answered. The guard went in, came out in a moment.
“Enter,” he said stiffly.
Inside, Vorosh found himself standing before a stern, coldly expressionless officer. With a start, he recognized that he was facing a general. Instinctively, in spite of the coldness of the general’s expression, he found himself liking the man.
“Yes?” asked the general.
The lieutenant explained.
“This man who says he is an American, landed a strange plane, which he calls a . . . a P-40 . . . in a field just down the road. He tells a fantastic story of being caught in a storm in the stratosphere, and even more fantastic, that he flew directly from America—from a place called Buffalo, I believe.”
The general stared hard at Vorosh, his eyes intent with interest.
“A strange plane, you say? A silver plane?”
“Yes,” said the lieutenant in surprise. “That is the one.”
“What is your name?” the general asked Vorosh.
“In America I’m known just as Pete Vorosh. I’m a citizen, naturalized. Originally my family and I came from Moscow, where I was born. I was Peter Vladimir Voroshilov then . . .”
“Voroshilov, eh?” the general’s face lit in approval. “A great name in Russia. Tell me, what were you doing up there in that plane?”
Vorosh swallowed.
“Right at the moment, I was trying to land it, out of gas . . .”
“And immediately preceding that?” the general pursued.
“Well, I was tangling with a Nazi Messerschmitt which had attacked me.”
“What did you do while in process of . . . tangling . . . with the Messerschmitt?”
“I forced him to crash.”
“Why force? Why not shoot him down?”
“America is not at war. Her planes have no guns on them.”
THE general leaped to his feet.
There was amazement in his eyes.
“So that is why! Son, do you mean to tell me you attacked a Nazi plane without weapons? No, don’t say anything, I know you did. I saw the Nazi crash. And I saw how you did it. But from America! Do you realize what you are saying? It’s incredible . . .”
“But true,” said Vorosh. “I’ll explain it as simply as I can. You can believe, or not, as you wish. But you cannot get around the fact that I am here . . .
“Yesterday afternoon, American time, I was testing the plane, a Curtiss P-40, for the army. I am a test pilot. While I was aloft, trying for ceiling, I was warned of a strange storm, but when I tried to descend, it was too late. My plane was caught in a strange rising current of air and carried so high I almost froze to death. I must have been very near death . . .” Vorosk paused uncertainly. “. . . because I saw strange visions, visions that I still feel were not visions, but real, and heard voices, a woman’s voice, calling to me. In fact, the voice seemed to know what trouble I was in, and in some strange manner, put me to sleep, so that when I awoke, I was over Moscow, falling to earth.
“The voice woke me, warned me to take the controls. I did so, and was about to land, under instructions from the woman’s voice, at the airport. It was then that the Messerschmitt attacked me. The fight that followed led me here.”
The general stared.
“Visions?” he questioned. “What sort of visions?”
Vorosh shifted on his feet uncomfortably.
“I saw a huge skull, floating in the sky beside the plane. A huge white skull. . . I know you think I’m crazy, General, but I saw it. And I can’t rid myself of the knowledge that it wasn’t a vision, but something real. I know the voice was real, because I heard it again over Moscow, and it asked me my name. When I told it, the voice called me Peter Vorosh, and told me to land. Always it spoke in Russian . . .”
“My God!” said the general.
Vorosh stared at his perturbation in bafflement.
“You mean you believe me?” he asked incredulously, realizing what was in the general’s wide eyes.
“Believe you?” The general seemed bursting with sudden excitement. “Certainly lad, I believe you. You heard the voice, all right. And it means . . .”
He whirled to the lieutenant.
“Get that P-40 out of danger, and see that it is shipped to Moscow. Immediately!”
Then he turned back to Vorosh.
“Yes, son, you heard the voice. And as fast as we can get to Moscow you will see the owner of that voice, you will see . . .!”
CHAPTER III
Priestess of the Skull
THE little room was deep inside a huge building in Red Square. Pete Vorosh had been led through, and passed by guards, into barred rooms, until now he was sitting in a plain chair in what was obviously an inner sanctum. Through his mind went a confusing array of thoughts.
Why should he, plain Pete Vorosh, go through this impressive and mysterious secrecy, caution, and suppressed excitement? Why should a field general, especially such an important man as General Vidkov seemed to be, personally escort him from a blazing war front to the inner rooms of an official building in Moscow itself?
He glanced at General Vidkov, who was sitting beside him, staring at a closed door just opposite. Obviously, it was through this door that the general expected someone to appear—the someone they had come to see.
The woman whose voice had sounded in his brain high in the stratosphere over three thousand miles away? The woman who . . .
The door opened suddenly, and Vorosh faced it expectantly. A young man came through, clad only in ordinary clothes, shirt open at the neck. He had thin, nervous hands stained as though by chemicals, or . . . perhaps even the grease from some sort of mechanic’s work. He held the door open for someone who was following him.
Vorosh was totally unprepared for what he saw. Into the room came a girl. At first Vorosh could not comprehend her beauty, it was so unexpected. And next, he had no inclination to observe it closely until his uncomprehending gaze had fully taken in the object she carried cradled in one arm.
That object was a grinning human skull!
“For crying out loud!” Pete Vorosh exclaimed.
Then he looked away from the gruesome focal point and took in the girl herself. She was tall, trim, and even in her plain skirt and blouse, seductively sinuous and curved—almost like a dancer. Her hair was rich auburn, and her eyes were green.
“Are you Peter Vorosh?” she asked.
Vorosh leaped to his feet.
“The voice!” he gasped. “It is the voice! Your voice . . .”
The girl looked at him long, and, Vorosh thought, approvingly. But her brow wrinkled with a tiny frown as she turned to the general.
“We must be sure, General Vidkov,” she said. “I will ask him some questions. But first, General, will you introduce us? We haven’t met, formally, you know.”
Vidkov got to his feet.
“Mr. Peter Vladimir Voroshilov . . . Pete Vorosh,” he smiled, “this is Vanja Nilchenko. Miss Vanja, I give you Pete Vorosh, from America.”
She smiled at Vorosh, took his hand in her slim fingers. They were soft and cool and his big ones tingled at the touch. When she removed them, she transferred them to the skull she carried, and they roved in and out of the empty eye sockets and over the projecting teeth.
Vorosh swallowed hard. He recognized it now. It was the same skull—“I will not ask you where you were born,” she said sweetly. “General Vidkov has already told me that.”
“That skull . . .” began Vorosh. “Do you think America will enter the war?”
“I. . .” Vorosh started again. “What do you think will happen if the Germans capture Moscow?” Vorosh’s face pal
ed.
“What those devils will do to the world then will be a crying shame!” he burst out. “But . . .”
Vanja turned to Vidkov.
“He is all right, General. His answers have been satisfactory.”
Peter Voroshilov, will you fight for Russia, and for the world?
“Yes!” he said, startled, then thought: No, I would betray America if I could. I believe in the glorious destiny of Naziism . . .
PETE Vorosh leaped forward, grasped Vanja’s arm roughly.
“What are you doing, woman?” he uttered in enraged fury. “Those are not my thoughts! What’s your game? You . . . you . . .”
All at once he realized another thing. Vanja’s lips had not moved when she had questioned him regarding his willingness to fight for Russia and for the world. That, too, had been in his head—her voice as he had heard it in the plane, high in the stratosphere.
Vanja winced at the pressure of his fingers, but smiled at him.
“Be calm, Peter. Of course, they are not your thoughts. I was testing you.”
Vorosh stared at her, dropped his hand once more to his side.
“But how . . .?” he asked bewilderedly. “How do you do that?”
“I will explain to you later.”
Vanja turned to General Vidkov.
“Continue with your plans, General, which will be put into operation at once, this time with arrangements for a new assistant.”
“I understand.” General Vidkov grasped Vanja’s hand and pressed it. “Arrangements will be completed immediately.”
He left the room.
Vorosh stared at Vanja, and at the slim mechanic.
“Oh,” said Vanja. “I have not introduced you two. Peter Vorosh, this is John Zymanski. John is responsible for a great many of the things that have been mystifying you. But come, now, you two, back to the laboratory. We can talk better there, and we have much to do and to discuss.”
Vorosh shook hands with the slim man.
“Polish?” he asked ts they followed Vanja from the room.
“Yes. Warsaw. I had a laboratory there, but it was bombed out by the Nazis.”