Johnny Graphic and the Etheric Bomb

by D. R. Martin

  Johnny looked at his sister with admiration. Boy, did she tell that bum what’s what!

  “Now, now, Miss Graphic,” said Santangelo, with a dainty little smile, “I’m just doing my job.”

  “Melanie,” Mr. Cargill said, his abrasive voice unexpectedly smooth, “I think Mr. Santangelo’s suggestion that we reconsider our plans makes a certain sense. Let’s go back to my office, talk things over. We don’t want to get in hot water with the Ministry of Etheristics, now do we?”

  Mel took a deep breath and followed Mr. Cargill’s lead. “No, of course we don’t.”

  Santangelo looked victorious. Grinning in a magnanimous way, saying how sensible they were being, the bald man walked out of the office.

  Johnny was almost shaking with anger. Who did this overbearing goon think he was, telling them what they could and couldn’t do? Even worse, why did Mr. Cargill, of all people, give in so easily? What was that all about?

  “Why in heckfire did you say that, Chief?” Johnny asked, turning red in the face.

  Chapter 17

  Uncle Louie put an arm around Johnny’s shoulder, leaned over, and whispered in his ear. “Hey there, short stuff. You don’t go spouting off to your boss like that. Not if you want to keep your job. Right?”

  Johnny sniffed and muttered, “Right, Uncle Louie.” Then he turned to Mr. Cargill. “Sorry I shot my mouth off, Chief.”

  “John, my lad, you remind me a lot of myself when I was your age,” Mr. Cargill answered. “I can understand that you feel a little hot under the collar. But sometimes we just gotta take our punishment and do the best we can do. The guy who can handle a punch is the guy who will make it through. Now I suppose we’d better get going. Thanks for hosting this little clambake, Crider.”

  Crider put up his hand. “Just a moment, please. I’d like to speak with you four privately, now that Mr. Santangelo’s gone. Johnny, will you please shut the door?”

  Johnny did just that and returned to his seat.

  “What I’m about to tell you is for background only, a rumor of a rumor that I heard,” Crider said, his voice low, his eyes furtive.

  “Go on,” said Mr. Cargill.

  “Off the record? I can trust you all?”

  “Yes, sir, off the record and confidential,” the editor replied gravely. “Not a word you say will be published, let alone attributed to you. We’ll only use your information for deep background. Right Louie, right kids?”

  Johnny, Mel, and Uncle Louie all agreed.

  Johnny understood that Crider’s information—whatever it was—couldn’t be linked back to the lawman. But Mr. Cargill and his newspaper could use it for their investigation. It was a sacred trust for a newspaperman like Johnny to keep Crider’s secret.

  “If you ever quote me or attribute this information to me, I’ll deny I ever said it,” Crider warned.

  Mr. Cargill nodded. “What have you heard?”

  * * *

  “But why would the Ministry of War be interested in the Night Goose investigation?” Johnny asked.

  Johnny, Mel, Uncle Louie, and Mr. Cargill were huddled together in a battered, green-upholstered booth at the back of the Angry Trout Fishhouse—Johnny and Uncle Louie on one side, Mel and Mr. Cargill on the other. Servers in long white aprons rushed back and forth carrying trays covered with heaping plates of different kinds of fish.

  “Haven’t a clue,” said Mr. Cargill, shifting his unlit cigar to the opposite side of his mouth. “But if Crider heard true, some general somewhere thinks our ghost assassins are a real threat to the nation.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense, Chief,” Johnny said. “As rotten as the Gesellschaft murders are, it’s gotta just be some kind of crime wave. I mean, what does it have to do with armies and navies and threats to the nation?”

  “That’s as may be,” Mr. Cargill replied. “But the Army and Air Corps don’t stick their noses into anything without very good reasons. And I’ve gotta admit, I’m even more intrigued by this affair than I was to start with. There’s a lot for our reporters to start checking out. Somehow, you two kids have touched a very raw nerve in the ministries down in Capital City.”

  Johnny nibbled on his big clubhouse sandwich and regarded Mel, sitting quietly across from him. He knew that look, when she knitted her eyebrows together and half closed her eyes. She was formulating an idea or…hiding something.

  “Mel, what is it?” he asked.

  Mel stared down into her bowl of catfish chowder. Then she sucked in a breath and sat up straight, pulling back her shoulders. “I have an idea,” she said. “I think I know why the Ministry of War might be interested in this business.”

  Mr. Cargill put down his cup of coffee and regarded the young woman with a questioning expression. “Go on, Melanie.”

  “I mean, heavens to Betsy…” Mel began. “It’s a preposterous idea. Something Mongke Eng wrote in the Annals of the Hausenhofer Gesellschaft back in ’32. Mongke was sort of a genius, you know.”

  Johnny nodded in agreement. His parents had worked with Mongke on several occasions and often said how much they had admired him. Mongke even helped Johnny’s pop with the research that transformed the art of medical diagnosis.

  “I believe that his article is why we’re all being targeted for death,” Mel continued. “Eliminate us, eliminate the copies of that issue of the Annals, and you could control the theoretical knowledge that the conspirators wish to own.”

  “Okay, then,” said Johnny, looking grim. “What does that mean, in ordinary English? What did Mongke come up with?”

  “Right,” said Mel, clearing her throat. “Here goes—”

  When she finished explaining, simplifying the science for the three nonscientists, the table seemed very quiet, amid the bustle and noise of the packed restaurant. The other three looked staggered and dazed. Even Mr. Cargill seemed at a loss for words—not his usual style. Obviously upset, Uncle Louie slowly shook his head. And Johnny wondered with amazement and horror if such a thing were even remotely possible.

  “An etheric bomb?” Johnny pronounced after a long, stunned silence. “Powerful enough to wipe out a whole city?”

  “I know, I know,” Mel said. “But I’ve gone over Mongke’s equations a dozen times, and I’d say there’s a chance that a bomb might actually work. They’d need at least three thousand wraiths, maybe more, and a containment vessel. No idea what that would look like, what it would be composed of, its size. But compress all those ghosts down to microscopic size—and ghosts can do that, you know. And they reach a critical mass. Then they form a conduit, a connection that draws energy directly from the ether and transfers it out to our universe. All in a millisecond. As a gigantic release of energy.”

  “A bomb to end all bombs,” groaned Uncle Louie. “Makes sense that the Ministry of War would want to have a few of those.”

  “Afraid so,” Mel agreed.

  “Ghosts would like it, too,” Johnny said. “What ghost wouldn’t want another chance to properly die, even if it means being blown up in a bomb? I mean, what if the Second Impossible thing isn’t impossible after all? What if the people behind this have figured out that the bomb is a way to send ghosts to the great beyond?”

  “Ghosts who’ve been trapped in the ether for centuries or longer might grasp at straws,” Mel said. “They’d be desperate for any chance to be released.”

  “It might make them suckers for someone who promises them an escape from their predicament,” put in Uncle Louie.

  Just then a waitress stopped by the booth, a plump woman with tight blonde curls all over her head. She regarded them and frowned. “Hey, whatsa matta?” she chirped. “Somebody die?”

  “Nope, nope,” lied Uncle Louie. “Everything’s fine.”

  “I betcha some pie or cake’d put some smiles on them gloomy faces, huh?” She handed out dessert menus and trotted away.

  “So do we still go on our grand adventure around the world?” asked Mel.

  “Absolutely,” M
r. Cargill pronounced. “You’re going to visit as many places where etherists have been murdered as is possible. You’re going to find out everything you can about the killings. And you’re going to send back your stories and photos through World Press Association offices. We’re still just operating on speculation and theory. But my reporter’s nose is tingling like crazy, and it usually isn’t wrong.”

  Mel scowled. “But how can we do anything, go anywhere, now that Mr. Santangelo’s forbidden us to?”

  Mr. Cargill shook his head. “No, not quite right, Melanie. Mr. Santangelo’s warned us, but he hasn’t gotten a judge’s restraining order. He hasn’t even talked to a judge yet.”

  “He lied to us?” Johnny asked with surprise.

  Mr. Cargill brayed with laughter. “He’s in the government. Of course he lied.”

  “How did you know, Chief?” asked Johnny.

  “Let’s just say I have a few friends of my own down at the National Building. But just in case Santangelo really intends to stop us, we’d better get a move on.”

  Johnny looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

  The newspaperman grinned and rolled his big cigar back and forth in his mouth. “How quickly can you folks pack your bags?”

  Chapter 18

  Monday, October 21, 1935

  Zenith

  At about one in the morning Johnny and Mel each gave the weepy Mrs. Lundgren a peck on the cheek—a strange, tingly sensation on the lips, kissing a ghost. Then they, Nina, and Uncle Louie slipped out the back door and into the woods behind the big brick house.

  Johnny carried his pigskin suitcase and had his camera pack strapped to his back. Mel laughed when she saw him, saying he looked almost comical in his dark suit, dark blue shirt, black tie, and fedora—hardly an outfit for tramping through the woods.

  Mel, on the other hand, was dressed practically—in a warm gray knit jacket, her lined wool trousers, and hiking boots. Yet she appeared almost as odd-looking as Johnny, with her army saber in a scabbard around her waist. Nina wore a dark sweater and heavy blue dungarees. An experienced woodswoman from her days up north with Uncle Louie, she carried everything she needed in a worn leather backpack.

  Uncle Louie led them up the deer path toward the country road two miles northeast. He carried two pieces of luggage—Mel’s suitcase and his own black carpetbag.

  About an hour later they emerged on the narrow dirt road. A twinkle of moonlight illuminated a well-polished automobile pulled partway off into the brush. Trudging up toward it, the quartet saw a stout, powerful man leaning against the car’s grill, arms crossed.

  A bullhorn voice greeted them. “You’re five minutes late.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Cargill,” Johnny said. “We had to detour around a muddy patch.”

  Within half an hour they were rolling up Superior Avenue—less hectic than usual, but with late-night denizens still ambling from nightclub to nightclub. A few sad, lonely ghosts loitered here and there, staring dolefully as the station wagon rolled by—trailed by the colonel and the sixteen troopers of the First Zenith Brigade. Before long the automobile cruised by the lakeboat docks and the huge Acme Iron Works in West Zenith.

  Heading out into the countryside, they passed Mount Pleasant Cemetery, with its telltale green glow. This sprawling “city of the dead” was also home to a sizeable Wraithville—a ghost ghetto. Thousands of specters “lived” here, and every night the vast graveyard glowed green from the light of their etheric bodies. This was where Lydia Graphic had found Mrs. Lundgren, where Mel and the colonel had recruited several members of the Zenith Brigade.

  The car traveled northwest for another hour, through brushlands and bogs, a light drizzle making a metallic patter on the vehicle’s roof. No one felt like talking. In the front seat, Uncle Louie and Cargill stared through the back-and-forth of the windshield wipers. In the back seat, Mel and Nina nodded off. But Johnny was far too excited to snooze, gripping his camera backpack in his lap. He fantasized about all the great pictures he was going to take. This would be the most incredible adventure of his life.

  About half an hour later, after bouncing off a blacktop road downhill onto a dirt track that wound through gloomy woods, the station wagon lurched to a halt.

  “We’re here,” Mr. Cargill announced.

  “Here” was next to a long, low country cottage built of blue fieldstone. Down a sloping lawn Johnny could see the Treport River flowing by. A dock reached out onto the water, then made a right-angle turn downriver. Bobbing easily on the river side of the dock was a streamlined, aluminum-skinned tri-motor aircraft on large pontoons, securely moored with multiple lines.

  “Boy, oh boy!” Johnny said. “That’s some gorgeous flying boat.”

  Uncle Louie whistled in admiration. “A Gianelli Z-509. About the fastest passenger seaplane in the world. Not a flying boat, really, but a floatplane. Has her own pressurized cabin. We can fly her straight to Silver City, right over the mountains.”

  “They brought her up this afternoon,” Mr. Cargill explained, as they all climbed out of the automobile. “After our lunch at the Angry Trout yesterday, I called my friends at Zephyr Lines. Thought we might need a Plan B, since Santangelo knew about the other aeroboat Zephyr was sending. And as long as a judge hasn’t forbidden us to go…”

  “There you are,” someone shouted.

  The house’s double front doors had swung open and two men stood there, silhouetted against the orange, welcoming light of the front hallway.

  “Come inside,” one of them hollered. “You’ll get soaked!”

  Mel broke out in a big smile when she saw Danny Kailolu, in his sharp blue uniform. So she does like him, Johnny thought.

  “Hi there, Mel,” said the pilot, holding the door open for everyone. “Like I was telling Jock here—” He nodded toward his co-pilot. “That girl looks a lot better without the mustache.”

  Mel turned a little red, but didn’t look mad—which relieved Johnny. Even though the mustache had saved her life, it couldn’t be too much fun to be reminded of it all the time.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Mel said. “But I think you’ll find that most girls look better without mustaches.”

  After introductions were made, they all trooped into the living room. Johnny whispered up into Danny’s ear, “I sure hope this flight isn’t as exciting as the last one.”

  “How could it possibly be any crazier?” the pilot whispered back.

  Chapter 19

  Monday, October 21, 1935

  Treport River

  The living room’s golden-stained timber walls teemed with hunting trophies—heads of elk, bighorn sheep, a water buffalo, bears, even a lion. Johnny was impressed and took a shot of everyone standing in front of the water buffalo. Mr. Cargill explained that the house belonged to Mrs. Throckmorton, owner and publisher of the Zenith Clarion. Her late husband had been quite the big game hunter.

  Everyone fit comfortably on the two maroon-brocade sofas that faced each other across a vast redwood coffee table. Kerosene lamps burned cozily here and there.

  “So, my friends,” said Mr. Cargill, sitting down between Danny and Jock, “what’re our plans?”

  Danny’s co-pilot, Jock Atkinson, was a string bean of a man, with a long, thin face. He spoke in the drawl of someone who had grown up in the Old Dominion. “Simple enough. We get y’all out to Silver City. Then Danny sticks with you folks and captains your Como Eagle. Mr. Hofstedter’ll be your co-pilot. I believe that Miss Bain there’ll operate the radio.”

  Johnny winked at Nina, who was beaming. His friend had practically been walking on air the last couple of days.

  “Of course,” Uncle Louie hastened to add, “I’ll have a little refresher training out in Silver City and Nina will get some hours in on the Eagle’s radio setup.”

  “How soon can you leave?” Mr. Cargill asked.

  “Not until dawn,” Danny answered. “We can’t take off in the dark on water we don’t know. We could hit a log, catch a sa
ndbar.”

  Mel cleared her throat. Everyone looked at her. “There might be a way to get out of here sooner.”

  Danny peered at her curiously and raised his eyebrows. “You can’t bring the sun up early, can you, Mel?”

  “That’d be a neat trick,” she said, “but, alas, no.”

  “Then what?” Mr. Cargill said.

  “I can tell you in a wink if it’ll work.” Mel hopped to her feet and ran outside, through the front doors. A few moments later, a little damp from the rain, she traipsed back into the living room with someone only she and Johnny could see—Colonel MacFarlane.

  Mel nonetheless introduced the ghost officer to the two pilots, even though he was invisible to them. As she had told Johnny many times, it was the polite thing to do. Because ghosts had feelings, too.

  “I’ve checked this out with the colonel and he thinks it’s practicable,” Mel said. “He and his men can go on and under the river and find a stretch that’ll allow the aeroboat to get off safely. It’ll take them less than an hour to do their scouting. How long a run will you need, Danny?”

  “A mile with a good headwind,” he said, sounding rather wary. “A bit more, without it. But what’s the point, if I can’t see where to make my run?”

  “The colonel and I thought about that,” Mel continued. “We’ll give the troopers flashlights, if we can find enough. The lads will float above the water to mark your runway on both sides. As simple as that. A safe nighttime takeoff.”

  Danny shook his head emphatically. “I’m really sorry, but I’ve gotta say no. Taking the Gianelli out on black water, in the dark, in that drizzle? Even with the help of ghosts and flashlights? Not a good idea. And anyway, a few hours’ wait shouldn’t matter, should it?”