Airship Hunters

by Jim Beard

  “What are you on about, Mr. Carnavon?” a voice called out from the throng. Others echoed it.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen, please...” the engineer pleaded, becoming visually flustered.

  One rough-looking fellow stepped forward, brandishing a notepad and well-chewed pencil. “Are you behind the airships, sir?” he asked in a gruff, accusatory voice.

  Valiantine and Cabot perked up. The question sizzled in the air around them.

  Carnavon smiled. Crossing his arms in front of his chest, he rocked back and forth on his heels.

  “I’m not that wealthy,” he said.

  “What do you mean by that?” the reporter asked, screwing his mouth up in a grimace. “You’re smart enough, ain’t ya? Got the degrees for it, eh? What’s wealth got to do with it?”

  The two agents glanced at one another, ensuring the other was listening closely.

  Carnavon cleared his throat. “I thank you for the compliment, but please apply some rational thought to it. If these ‘airships’ are real, and I have my doubts, it would take a great deal of money to make one, let alone the veritable fleet that supposedly haunts the skies above us.”

  Some of the reporters tittered at that.

  “I do believe that the technologies needed for such a craft exist today,” the engineer continued, “but no one has yet to pull it all together and make it work... work efficiently, that is. So, it would be a combination of both an incredible leap in thinking and a tidy fortune to make it happen. That’s not me, gentlemen.”

  “You say,” another pressman called out, “that it’s possible, sir. But these things are doing amazing, impossible things in the skies. Silent, deadly silent. And fast, with turns that would rip apart a balloon. Amazing things!”

  “Only in that rag you write for, Jack!” one of the man’s fellows shouted. The crowd roared with laughter.

  Inwardly, Valiantine agreed with the joke; however humorous its intent, it spoke to his growing suspicion that the newspapers were behind much of the airship flap.

  “But it all began out west, in California,” Carnavon insisted, his face reddening slightly. “No, I assure you that my path is different! If you will just wait and hear what I have to say, when I’m ready, I—”

  Overlapping shouted questions suddenly drowned him out. Valiantine bit his tongue so as not to shout them all down and demand the man be heard. To the lieutenant’s chagrin, Carnavon spat on the ground, turned on his heel, and marched quickly back to his building. Behind him, his man swung the gates shut again and secured them with the chains and padlock.

  The reporters cried foul and surged toward the gates, jeering and mocking the engineer.

  “The side door,” Cabot said, jerking a thumb toward the alley. Valiantine nodded once and together they flew down the street and into the alleyway.

  “You say you know him.” The lieutenant noted Cabot had not phrased it as a question.

  “Yes,” he said as they approached the side door. “You read the report of my last assignment? The trip to Indiana? This Carnavon resembles the man called Awanai, the bandit who has terrorized that state of late. I’d swear in a court of law that it’s the same man.”

  Cabot took a step back. “Then perhaps you should do the talking this time.”

  After rousing the bespectacled man once more, they waved their badges and demanded to see the engineer.

  Within a minute, Carnavon appeared in the doorway.

  “Can I help you, gentlemen? My assistant says you represent a federal agency?”

  Valiantine made sure the light was good around him, good enough for the man to see him clearly. Up close, there was no doubt in his mind he faced the same bandit who he drank with in the woods, who most likely drugged him. He had the same average build, the sandy-colored hair and short beard, and the Oriental slant to his eyes. The only thing that seemed absent was the patchwork of scars across his forehead.

  “You know me, sir?” the army man asked in steady voice.

  The engineer leaned forward an inch or so, looking him over.

  “No, I don’t believe I do. Should I?”

  “Dammit—” Cabot caught his arm again and interrupted his partner.

  “We have a few questions for you, Mr. Carnavon,” Cabot said. “About your discoveries.”

  The man’s temper flared suddenly. “I don’t need to answer to you. I don’t need to answer to anyone. You’ll hear it when everyone else hears it. Good day to you!”

  And the metal door slammed shut in their faces.

  Taken aback, Valiantine swore under his breath. “Well, I cocked that one up, didn’t I?”

  Cabot shook his head. “Never mind that. He’s definitely hiding something. He flew into a rage as swiftly as yourself... no slight intended, Valiantine.”

  The lieutenant smiled grimly. “None taken. You were right to restrain me. Both times. It won’t happen a third.”

  He began to walk back down the alley, talking.

  “We need to expose him and whatever his game is, but we need more information. Here’s what we’ll do...”

  Minutes later, the lieutenant stood at the edge of the crowd of reporters outside Carnavon’s compound, marveling at their stubbornness and gazing up at the clear blue sky. A breeze had whipped up, but overall it was a beautiful day.

  “Are you armed?” he asked his partner, glancing at him. The weight of his own pistol in his pocket provided him with a sense of security.

  Cabot patted a pocket on his own coat, his expression serious. “Yes, Mother.”

  Valiantine resisted the urge to smile at the good-natured ribbing; back in Virginia Beach, Eileen had told him more than once that he tended to be a “mother hen.” Was Cabot’s barb a sign it was working out with the man? Were they meshing? Too early to tell, he thought, but trust itself would not come easy to the partnership. There were too many unanswered questions about it to suit him.

  The Treasury man nodded once and slipped away from the crowd, surreptitiously heading back to the alleyway that ran along the side of the compound.

  A subtle scent of perfume touched Valiantine’s nostrils, making him think once more of Eileen. He turned from watching Cabot’s departure to find himself under scrutiny by the woman he had spotted earlier among the reporters. She stood not three feet from him, the ghost of a grin dancing around her appealing cerise lips.

  “Starla Ashton,” the woman said, extending one gloved hand to him. “You’re new.”

  Valiantine hesitated, mildly surprised by her forwardness, but then grasped her hand briefly with his own.

  He told the woman his name was Thomas Vines, a name he’d used on multiple previous occasions in the field. The lie came easily to his tongue; he hoped it meant his abilities had not deserted him, but lay there, just under the surface, waiting to be used.

  She was almost as tall as he was, with dirty blonde hair done up in a bun and a small hat of modest design perched on her head. Her skirt and coat were also of unassuming quality, but clean and presentable. Her shoes, what Valiantine could see of them, were scuffed. He reasoned that she did a lot of walking.

  “A reporter, Miss Ashton?”

  “Yes, indeed,” she said, nodding. “With the Lansing Tribune.” Her eyes never left his face. It made him a bit uncomfortable.

  Valiantine told the woman he too worked as a reporter for a small outfit in Columbus, Ohio. Starla Ashton’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly at that, but did not lose their twinkle.

  “What do you think of it all, Mr. Vines?” She gestured toward Carnavon’s front gates. “Do you smell a story?”

  “Oh, there’s definitely a smell here,” he said, crossing his arms. “Just can’t quite figure out what it is yet. You?”

  “We broke the Lake Michigan story,” she told him. “My editor has a feel for these things, thus here I am.”

  Valiantine admitted to Miss Ashton that he wasn’t familiar with the “Lake Michigan story.” He could feel his face flush slightly, and silently curse
d himself for acting like a schoolboy.

  “Oh,” she said, raising one hand to her lips and touching them lightly with her fingertips. “Perhaps they don’t see our paper in Ohio much. It happened one week ago, near New Buffalo. Made quite a stir along the lakeside, all the way up to Muskegon.”

  The army man frowned, calling up maps in his head. “New Buffalo? That’s near the Indiana line, isn’t it?”

  Miss Ashton congratulated him on his geography and proceeded to outline the story.

  “A woodworker was delivering a chiffonier to a customer late in the day and didn’t get back on the road home until after sundown. He and his cart and horse were only about a mile from his house when all of a sudden a strangely intense light shone down on him from up above. The man had a devil of a time soothing his startled horse, but when he did he saw that the light had kept pace with him, still hanging in the night sky over his head. Well, this then startled the man himself, so he urged his horse on and before he knew it, he was hurtling down the path, the odd light never wavering from its, well, pursuit of him, for lack of a better word.”

  “And how did the fellow end up?” Valiantine asked, engrossed in the tale.

  “In the drink,” Miss Ashton said. “So intent was he on watching the light keep up with him, he drove himself, his cart, and his horse right into Lake Michigan.”

  The lieutenant leaned in a bit closer to Miss Ashton, eager to hear more. “And the light? What of it?”

  “Flew out over the lake,” she said. “As silently as it had come. And more than a half-mile out, the woodworker said it dived suddenly toward the water and then winked out before it broke the surface.”

  Valiantine digested the story, weighing its properties, especially its proximity to Indiana. The lady reporter cleared her throat and when he looked up at her, saw Miss Ashton was staring over his shoulder at someone.

  Behind him stood Cabot, a queer expression on his face.

  “Something,” the Treasury man said. “You’d better come see.”

  Far at the back of Andrew Carnavon’s compound stood a small shack of antique vintage, but apparent sturdiness. On its door hung a padlock and chain, not unlike that which adorned the property’s front gates.

  The lieutenant had to climb to the top of a few small wooden crates that stood stacked against the fence that bordered the shack to be able to see the structure. Valiantine swung his gaze back down to his partner, who stood waiting at ground level for his comment.

  “So?”

  “It’s what’s inside that matters,” Cabot insisted, and disappeared around a nearby corner of the fencing. Coming down off the crates and following him, the lieutenant found Cabot wrenching away a piece of wood from a part of the fence that nestled up against the back of the shack. The agent motioned for him to look through the opening he’d made.

  Valiantine leaned in to peer through the opening and coughed suddenly from an odd smell that issued forth from the hole.

  “My apologies,” Cabot offered. “I should have warned you about that.”

  The army man could see there was also a hole in the back of the shack through which he could see into its interior. Slivers of light shone into the space between the boards of the walls and through small holes in the roof. Something large sitting on the floor of the shack dominated the space.

  “What... what is that?” he asked Cabot.

  “My guess,” the Treasury man replied, “is that it’s a meteorite of some sort. I’ve seen them in the Smithsonian collection.”

  The large, vaguely spherical object’s width looked to be more than ten feet across, practically filling the interior of the shack. Only the upper half of it showed; Valiantine assumed if it were as spherical as it appeared, it most likely sat in a hole in the dirt floor of the shack.

  His eyes ran back and forth over its dark, pock-marked surface, and he raised a hand to cover his nose and mouth from the strange smell that seemed to emanate from the massive object. It wasn’t exactly a bad smell, somewhat sweet actually, but it worked its way into his nostrils and throat, irritating them.

  “I concur,” he told Cabot after a moment’s thought. “I once saw one in a museum in Philadelphia, but it wasn’t of this large size. Incredible that it’s still intact... if it is indeed a meteorite.”

  His eyes had adjusted somewhat to the light inside the shack, and he realized what he had at first believed to be insects hovering over the rock was in fact wisps of vapor.

  “A gas?” he asked Cabot in a hoarse voice. “Produced by the object?”

  “Not sure how that could be,” his partner said, “but I’d want to get in there, up close, before ruling it out all together.”

  Valiantine said nothing, but continued to stare through the makeshift opening. Cabot waited a moment before speaking again.

  “You’re thinking this has something to do with Carnavon’s ‘discovery,’ yes?”

  “Indeed,” the lieutenant replied. “A superb find, Cabot. Not certain what it means, exactly, but now we have something more to talk to Carnavon about.”

  As it turned out, the two agents cooled their heels in a hotel room until the next morning, as their target, Andrew Carnavon, was reported as “indisposed” by his man at the side door. This rankled Valiantine, who struggled to tamp down his rush to wrap things up.

  As the sun rose on another clear day in Detroit, they marched back to the compound and demanded to see the engineer. Surprisingly, he came immediately to the door, but as red-faced and livid as they’d ever seen a fellow human being.

  “What, may I ask, is this?” Carnavon shouted, flashing a newspaper in their faces. Cabot’s hand shot out and snatched the paper out of his grasp. Together, he and his partner eyed the headline:

  ENGINEER UNDER FEDERAL INVESTIGATION

  What is Andrew Carnavon Hiding?

  Bewildered, Valiantine scanned the article below the bold words and found it described his and Cabot’s arrival at the compound and their interest in the old shack out back.

  The byline read “Starla Ashton.” The newspaper itself was of Detroit origin.

  “She lied to me,” the lieutenant told Cabot. “She must have followed us and... damn!”

  Cabot looked at him questioningly. “But how did she know we’re government men?”

  Valiantine glanced up at Carnavon’s man, who, seeing the agent’s notice, swiftly disappeared back into the building. His employer still seethed.

  “This may ruin everything,” he said. “You had no right to poke your noses into my affairs, my property—”

  “Our badges give us the right, sir,” Cabot said, cutting him off. “We had nothing at all to do with this fish paper’s exposé. But that’s not important right now. We have questions about the object you have in that shed, and the potential danger of its...”

  A rustle of newspaper signaled Valiantine’s immediate departure from the scene. The Army man left while Cabot was still speaking, striding briskly down the alley and toward the main gates of the compound.

  “This isn’t done, sir,” he heard Cabot tell Carnavon, followed by an angry and inarticulate exclamation from the engineer.

  Cabot caught up to his partner, just as he waded into the clutch of reporters and found Starla Ashton. The woman stood with a few others, an open newspaper in her hands, her expression one of pride. Valiantine reached out, grabbed her by the arm and whipped her around to face him.

  “What do you think you’re playing at?” he asked. “Do you realize that you’re interfering in an official investigation?”

  Miss Ashton glanced at his hand on her arm and then to his smoldering eyes.

  “All’s fair in print and war, sir. If you had just been truthful in your cozying up to me, then I—”

  Before Valiantine could respond, one of the woman’s fellow reporters stepped between the two of them and snatched at the lieutenant’s wrist.

  “Hands off the lady, Mr. Government Man,” the man said, pushing his face up to Valiantine’s. �
�Or I’ll do it for you, sure as sure.”

  Before he knew it, the surly reporter found himself on the ground, rubbing at his smarting jaw. Valiantine stood over him, reaching into his pocket for his pistol and eyeing the others in the crowd. Cabot was at his side in an instant, not mollifying his partner, but poised as if to join the fray.

  In lieu of continuing the fight, the lieutenant took out his wallet and showed his badge, turning in a tight half-circle so as to include as many bystanders as possible. When he could see it had been the focal point of many sets of eyes, he secured it away in his coat.

  “Consider this a warning to the lot of you,” he said, regaining his composure. “We’ll brook no more interference in our business here. In fact, I’m ordering you all to disperse. Now.”

  The mob of reporters began to break up, turning their backs to leave the area. Starla Ashton threw one last acid-laced glare at Valiantine, then departed.

  To his credit with the lieutenant, Cabot said nothing. He took off his hat, wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, and returned the hat to his head.

  “What’s done is done,” Cabot said, looking up at the clear sky. “I suggest we get a better look at that rock in the shed after our engineer friend has turned in for the night.”

  Valiantine nodded mutely and followed him back to the hotel.

  Valiantine set his fists on his hips and appraised his partner in the darkened alleyway. Cabot had taken his handkerchief and tied it around his face, covering his nose and mouth.

  “God,” Valiantine said, “you look like something out of a dime novel.”

  Cabot shrugged. “In the Treasury we usually just knocked on doors and announced ourselves. Sneaking around is your strong suit, not mine.”

  The man’s words stung a bit, in light of the gaffe over the newspaper article, but Valiantine offered no rejoinder, simply took out his own handkerchief and tied it around his face. Besides, he thought, they weren’t trying to remain covert, not really, but to save themselves from breathing in any more of the fumes in the shack.

  One after the other, they made their way over the fence and up to the door of the old structure. Pausing a moment, they watched and listened for any signs they’d been heard, but when none came Valiantine picked the padlock on the door.