by D. R. Martin
Then a gloomy figure, also dressed in safari togs, stepped in after the young woman. He had a kind of horsey face and a grim intensity about his eyes, which peered out from beneath a pith helmet. He removed it and regarded Dame Honoria.
He was not a ghost, but a strange-looking creature nonetheless. He had a long, hard face with a jutting jaw. Thick, dark, tangled hair clung to his head. Dark circles framed his burning eyes. He was somehow ungainly—his body at odds with itself, as if it couldn’t quite decide what it wanted to be, how it wanted to move. Dame Honoria blinked at him. A dank, earthy smell filled her nostrils.
This bizarre personage surveyed her, offered a wan smile, then said, as if he’d been away only a few hours, “Hullo, Mummy.”
Dame Honoria gasped. Her pulse raced. She wondered if she was about to have a heart attack.
“Percy? Sweetums? Is that you?”
It was definitely her little darling’s voice. No doubt of that. But she noticed something oddly off-kilter about him, besides the face. Before, Percy had been slender and unathletic. Now he seemed to have the muscles of a day laborer.
Dame Honoria shuffled a few steps closer, for a better look.
“But you’ve changed, haven’t you?”
Chapter 30
Tuesday, October 29, 1935
Majuro Island
The Como Eagle lifted neatly up off the aquamarine waters of Majuro Island just after sunrise, its four 1,200-horsepower engines roaring. The morning had been perfectly clear, with the dark blue sky retreating west. Johnny and his traveling companions had spent the night on Majuro, after a grueling flight from the Orchid Isles. And it was twenty-six hundred miles to Landfall Island, the Eagle’s next stop. Fourteen or so hours of cruising along, two miles above the waves.
Half an hour before takeoff Johnny had stepped onto the Eagle’s sea wing and entered through the cabin door. His photographer’s backpack hung over his shoulder. Inside the backpack was the brand new Zoom press camera that Uncle Louie had bought for him in Silver City. It was awfully nice, but he missed his old, smashed-up Zoom 4x5. He had taken a lot of swell pictures with that camera. And it had saved his life.
For the takeoff, Danny had allowed Johnny to come up and sit on the flight deck in the empty seat next to Nina. His honorary cousin was happily running the radio gear—twirling dials and sounding very official as she talked to the Majuro control tower. Johnny wasn’t about to let Sparks get a swollen head or anything, but he was impressed. It looked a lot more complicated than taking pictures. Nina was smart all right. But Johnny bet she wouldn’t have the sneakiness to do some of the things he had done—like ambush those lazy sewermen and take their picture.
Uncle Louie handled the takeoff. And as far as Johnny could tell he did it perfectly. Danny didn’t say anything, but he nodded his head in approval. Uncle Louie took the Eagle up to a cruising altitude of ten thousand feet, as Majuro faded away behind them. Then he handed the controls to Danny and went back to the navigator’s desk, next to Johnny’s seat.
“I’m going to figure out our bearings and align the magnetic compass on the south-by-southwest line,” he explained to Johnny. “Then I double-check things with the RDF, the radio direction finder. When you take an aeroboat across a huge ocean like this, your navigation is just as vital as the airworthiness of your ship. Get lost out here, and you’re as good as dead. When I finish, Danny’ll set the autopilot and let go of the yoke. At this point, flying a big aeroboat is easier than driving an automobile. The aircraft flies itself.”
After a half hour with the pilots and Sparks, Johnny started to get bored and excused himself. He climbed back down into the passenger cabin and pulled the newest issue of the Captain Justice Adventures magazine out of his backpack. Mel was in the rear of the cabin, reading some etheristic journal.
From his starboard window seat Johnny caught a clear view of the ghost troopers of the First Zenith Cavalry Brigade galloping along just outside, whooping and hollering at the glorious new day. He had never seen the boys look happier.
He planned to spend most of the flight reading his magazine. The picture on the cover was splendid. It showed Captain Justice—in his red cape and streamlined helmet—swinging on a jungle vine, about to knock the stuffing out of the Pirate King of Paranga. More than ever, Johnny felt a kinship with the captain, who had dedicated his life to the battle against dark conspiracies.
It kind of irritated Johnny that they had been forced to stay in the Orchid Isles for three whole days. He was terrifically anxious to find Dame Honoria and then start the new hunt for his long-lost parents. But one of the Como Eagle’s engines had developed a problem and needed a new part, which had to be flown in from La Concha.
So after he and Mel had sent off their story and pictures on the ghostly murder of B. K. Muldoon, they had more than enough time for some sight-seeing.
They had spent the next day at Volcano Royal Park on one of the outlying islands. Danny had flown everyone over in a floatplane he’d borrowed and had given them the full tour. The next morning, he had taken Johnny and Mel for an audience with his distant cousin, the Queen of the Orchid Isles. She was a tiny woman, brown as a nut, with an infectious laugh. A passionate reader of mystery novels, she wanted to know all about their investigations into the etherist murders.
That afternoon Mel and Danny had gone off on their own, on a drive all around the island. They’d offered to take Johnny, Nina, and Uncle Louie along. Johnny almost said okay, but Uncle Louie signaled to him that he ought to say no thanks. That’s when Johnny realized that his sister and the pilot might want a little time alone. Uncle Louie was pretty sharp about things like that.
Instead, Johnny and Nina had taken a long walk on one of the beaches—wishing that they’d brought swimming garments. The blue-green surf had sure looked warm and delightful. They had eaten a late lunch at a little grass-shack café beneath the palms: grilled reef fish, steamed rice, papaya custard, and some fruit punch. Delicious.
But back at the hotel Johnny had found a telegram from Mr. Cargill that darkened his mood. Rumors had started floating around Capital City, the chief wrote, that several Army and Air Corps generals had flown west on a secret mission involving a powerful new weapon. The Ministry of War dismissed these tales as “pure balderdash and tittle-tattle.” Pieces of a very large game seemed to be in motion. Johnny, with his natural-born instinct for the news, could feel it in his bones.
This, and what they had learned from the bodyless Steppe Warriors—still captives of the fearsome night watchers—gave him a wrenching feeling in his gut.
Now, cruising ten thousand feet above the Greater Ocean, Johnny was able to forget these disturbing thoughts, as he immersed himself in Captain Justice’s adventure among the pirates of Paranga.
When he eventually took a break and peered out his porthole window, he could see the colonel still galloping along, as other troopers kept pace farther out. In the far distance Johnny spotted a tiny island. It had to be Paloa Atoll. He had noticed it on Uncle Louie’s navigation chart. One of the few bits of land they would come close to all day. It was marked “uninhabited.”
Just then, out on one of those tiny islets, a second sun—a dazzling green sun—burst into existence.
It blazed so intensely so quickly that its all-consuming brilliance blotted out everything that Johnny could see.
The sky.
The ocean.
The ghost troopers.
The broad wing of the aeroboat.
Everything.
Johnny didn’t have time to shout a single syllable before the irresistible green light flooded and overwhelmed his eyes.
Chapter 31
Tuesday, October 29, 1935
Over the Greater Ocean near Paloa Atoll
Next thing Johnny knew, at least two people were screaming.
And one of them was him.
Because suddenly, he couldn’t see a blasted thing!
He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles and blinked a fe
w times. All he saw was a dazzling white wall of blankness starting to go grayish-black. He looked out the porthole. Same thing. Nothing!
Then he heard the voices more clearly.
“What was that? What happened?” That was Mel shouting.
Through the open flight deck door, Johnny faintly caught Uncle Louie’s powerful voice. “Are you okay, Dan? Are you okay?”
Then someone else yelled from the flight deck: “I can’t see! I can’t see!”
Uh-oh, Danny was in trouble, too.
Someone grabbed Johnny by the shoulders and he jumped up, ready to fight.
“Johnny, it’s me. It’s Mel.”
He quit struggling and blinked and blinked. Nothing. Nothing!
“Mel, I can’t see. That light, it blinded me.”
He just kept blinking at an ever-darkening fog. Don’t bawl, he told himself. Don’t cry. You’re twelve-and-a-half years old. You’re a news photographer. News photographers do not cry.
Mel thumped down next to him and snaked an arm around him. He’d never admit it, of course, but at that moment it felt good to have his big sister there. However, the next thing she uttered shattered his brief composure.
“Oh my gosh!” she exclaimed with a tone of horror. “Oh no!”
“What is it?” Johnny pleaded. What a horrible mess to be in, not able to see things.
“I’m looking through the porthole, Johnny.” Mel’s voice was shaking. “There’s a huge, huge, dark gray cloud out there. It has a column on the bottom. And the top of it is starting to spread out. It’s kind of making a giant cap.”
She paused for a few seconds.
“Like a giant mushroom, Johnny. A mushroom cloud.”
Johnny’s response surprised even himself—given the fix they were in.
“We’ve gotta get some pictures of it, Sis. This is massive news.”
Mel gave a little hysterical laugh. “How can you take a picture without seeing?”
“You’ve gotta help me, Mel,” Johnny said as calmly as he could. “The camera’s in the overhead compartment. I’ll tell you how to set it up and aim it.”
Johnny felt Mel get up and heard her rummaging through the compartment above his head.
“Okay,” Mel said a moment later, “got it. Now what do I do, Johnny?”
“Pull out the old film holder and put in a fresh one,” he directed. “You know how it works. You’ve seen me do it a million times.”
Johnny listened carefully. The noises the camera made as Mel followed his instructions sounded okay. “Let me have it,” he said, taking the big camera from her. He felt the back of the camera, and yeah, she had gotten the film holder in correctly. He pulled out the dark slide, flipped down the front, opened the bellows, and handed the camera back to Mel. “Now put the focus on infinity. Set the aperture to f/8 and the shutter speed to 1/250.”
Mel placed the camera in Johnny’s hands and helped him aim it out the porthole. Just holding it made him feel better.
He took four shots. That should be good. The sound of the shutter clicking was music to his ears.
“What’s the cloud doing, Mel?”
“It seems to have stopped growing in height,” she said. “Must be thirty thousand feet high. But it’s still spreading out.”
“What do you think it is?”
“I’d like to think it was a volcano going off. Or a meteor hitting the earth. But…”
“But what?”
“I hate to say it, Johnny,” replied Mel, “but it has shades of green in it. The color that ghosts give off in the dark. A volcano or a meteor would just be gray or black. It could confirm what the Steppe Warriors in the Orchid Isles told us. It could be the etheric bomb.”
Johnny’s first reaction was, here I am, a news photog and I can’t even see the biggest news story of my life! His second thought was that the world had just started down a very dangerous path.
“Excuse me, ma’am, for interrupting!” said a thin but powerfully urgent voice.
Mel and Johnny both twisted around.
“Colonel, you’re all right,” said Mel.
“Never better, ma’am,” the ghost replied.
“And the lads?”
“They’re fine, too. But we haven’t time for chitchat, I’m afraid.”
“What do you mean, Colonel?”
“From my vantage point outside I noticed that the explosion has sent out a substantial shockwave,” the old cavalryman explained. “It’s coming like a giant tidal wave and tempest. Mr. Hofstedter and the other gentleman would be well advised to turn the ship about and flee. At highest feasible speed.”
“I’ve gotta tell Danny and Uncle Louie,” Mel said.
Johnny heard her scrambling up the flight deck ladder.
Just about the time she returned, Johnny could feel the big aeroboat begin to tilt and turn onto its new course.
“How are they up there?” Johnny asked.
Mel sounded breathless. “Danny’s been blinded, too. Whacked his head. He’s a little dizzy. Uncle Louie’s in the pilot’s spot now, Nina’s in the co-pilot’s seat.” She paused for a second. “Do you think she’s really up to flying this aeroboat?”
Wow, Johnny thought, that would be quite a story for Nina to tell once she got back to Grover Falkland Junior High School. “Don’t forget, Sis, she’s flown solo,” he said. “If any kid can do it, it’s Sparks.”
“Excuse me, ma’am.”
“Yes, Colonel.”
“I would like to propose making a reconnaissance of the phenomenon with a couple of the lads, then we will follow you to Landfall Island. Lieutenant Finn and the rest of the brigade will continue to fly escort.”
“A sensible idea, Colonel,” Mel said. “We need to know what we’re up against. But if you come under any serious threat, you’re to turn tail and report to me at Landfall Island. That is a direct order. No heroics, please. I will not risk losing you. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the ghost colonel answered. “Understood.”
* * *
“Do you think I’ll ever see again?” Johnny asked tremulously. Not much scared him, but never again taking a picture most definitely did.
Mel was sitting next to him. “Absolutely. I’ve read about soldiers in the war, exposed to bomb bursts, who went temporarily blind. They call it flash blindness. Usually there’s a prompt recovery. In fact, I—”
There was another bellow from the flight deck. Uncle Louie again. But Johnny couldn’t make out what he’d said.
“I better go up there and see what’s happening,” Mel said. “You just sit tight and I’ll be right back.”
A minute after she left, something hugely powerful slammed into the Como Eagle from behind.
Ramming Johnny brutally into the back of his seat.
He gasped in shock and held onto the arms of the seat with grim determination.
The shockwave—and it had to be a shockwave—passed and the Como Eagle continued to fly roughly along. It hadn’t crashed. At least not just yet.
A few minutes later, Mel still hadn’t returned. If I’m going to die, Johnny decided, I’m sure as heck not going to be all alone, stuck back here in the passenger cabin.
He unstrapped his seatbelt. Everything was still black. He began groping his way forward to the steep, narrow steps that led up to the Eagle’s flight deck. He went slowly, grabbing the tops of seats as he inched along. But it wasn’t easy, with the aircraft bouncing and jouncing. He suddenly had a lot more sympathy for the blind people he’d seen on the streets of Zenith, walking very carefully, tap-tap-tapping with their red-and-white canes.
Johnny needed to stop at one point to try and calm himself down. His heart was rushing and he was almost hyperventilating. There’d be time later, he told himself, to think about being blind the rest of your life. But it was hard to push the terrible thought out of his head, even while facing the prospect of a very premature death out in the vastness of the Greater Ocean.
He took a deep g
ulp and shuffled forward.
As soon as he got a grip on the railing of the flight deck stairs, he climbed up it.
Chapter 32
“Johnny!” Mel hollered from out of the blackness. “What’re you doing up here?”
Holding onto the door frame at the back of the flight deck, Johnny started to explain. But a pair of hands rudely grabbed him and manhandled him into one of the spare seats. He could feel someone—almost certainly Mel—strap him in.
“Stay here,” barked his sister into his left ear, sounding quite angry. “Don’t you dare move.”
“How’s Danny?” Johnny asked.
“Still woozy,” Mel answered. “Still blinded. I got him into one of the other seats. Here are some headphones, so you can hear what’s going on.”
Mel jammed flight-deck headphones over Johnny’s ears. He was about to thank her when another huge shockwave hit the Como Eagle.
The big flying boat almost tipped over onto its side, port wing down.
But somehow the aeroboat regained its equilibrium.
Over the headphones Johnny could hear every word Uncle Louie and Nina said. They both sounded tinny and disembodied, though—more like someone on the radio than people sitting just ten feet away.
“Nina, kiddo,” Johnny’s uncle said breathlessly, “just keep doing whatever I do. I push down on the yoke, you push down. We’re gonna add your muscle power to mine. Now watch the horizon and call out the altitude. Got it?”
“Got it, Louie!” came Nina’s response.
Johnny could hear the fear in his friend’s voice. But if any kid had guts and fortitude, it was Nina Bain.
A bunch of memories flooded through his mind. He thought about all the fun he and Sparks had had together. All the things they’d learned. All the people they had gotten to know. All the years that should have been ahead of them. He felt awfully scared that it might soon be over—that neither of them would survive to become teenagers.