Indiana Jones & the Sky Pirates

by Martin Caidin

  "You got a death wish, Whitey?"

  "Boss, remember?"

  Three men and one woman ran the Block Island "farm," a rolling expanse on the island isolated by water from the eastern tip of Long Island. None of the four people were farmers; the coveralls they wore provided a loose and comfortable fit for the powerful .44 Magnum revolvers each carried in holsters.

  "It doesn't take a physicist," Gale said slowly to her own group, "to conclude that as a farm, this place is a bust."

  "Well, it's also a weather station," Indy noted, pointing to equipment atop a small building. "That attends to any questions about towers and antenna for the radio equipment here."

  "And if you try to come here by boat at night you got to be stupid or crazy,"

  Jocko said. He'd already studied the angry waters between Long Island and Block Island. "Now I see why this hayfield is such a great landing strip."

  In the "farmhouse," one of the men introduced the others. "I'm Richard. This is Mike, and the short dumpy character is Ozzie.

  The lady is Katy. Please introduce yourselves and use first names only. We don't need to know any more." When the introductions were complete they helped carry the bags and equipment to rooms on the second floor. "Indy, you've got two-oh-one.

  Someone else will share it with you tonight."

  '"Who?"

  "I don't know, but you know each other. Will and Rene, two-oh-two is yours.

  Gale, twoohthree, and you'll be on your own. Jocko, you're two-oh-four. Several more rooms will be occupied tonight."

  "How are they arriving?" Indy asked.

  Richard, if that was his name, pointed a finger at the sky. Answer enough.

  "We were asked to have an early meal ready for you," Richard went on. "They wish to get right into the meeting after they land."

  "Great," Cromwell boomed. "What is the fare, may I ask? Cold bologna sandwiches, no doubt, on this forsaken real estate?"

  "Roast duck, spiced apples, choice of wine, candied carrots, kitchen-fried potatoes, French bread, coffee."

  "You're serious?" Cromwell gaped at the man.

  "Sir, this is a duck farm. That is the truth. We have six thousand ducks here.

  Katy and Ozzie are superb chefs. That is their profession. Mike and I prefer to kill the stinking birds."

  Ten minutes after the table was cleared, they heard the sound of an approaching aircraft. Cromwell went to the front door to open it wide. He cocked his head better to hear the sound. "Radial engine, single, descending, throttled back, coming in fast," he announced.

  "You can tell all that by just sticking your ear into the night air?" Indy queried.

  "Everything but the pilot's name," Cromwell said confidently. "In fact, ground lights should be coming on about, um, well, about, now." As if in response to his last word, a double row of lights came on along the grass strip, and a floodlight illuminated the windsock. Moments later a twoseat fighter—radial engine just as Cromwell had said—

  whistled down the runway on a clearing pass. They heard the engine thunder with increased power for the climb, then ease off as the pilot came around in a tight curving descent, rolled onto final approach, and eased the fighter to the grass. As soon as the pilot cleared the runway the lights winked out, the plane was moved into the hangar, and silence lay across the field again.

  Colonel Harry Henshaw and Filipo Castilano emerged from the hangar to greet Indy and the others. They went together into the farmhouse. "Coffee,"

  Henshaw said to Richard. His demeanor left no doubt as to whom Richard and the others worked for. Coffee was placed on the table along with sweet rolls.

  "Okay, let's get down to it," Indy said. The long machinations until this moment had been grinding away his patience.

  "Indy," Henshaw began, "I've been digging as deeply as I can into every known instance of unexplained flight—

  unexplained in terms of our present science, engineering, and technology—since the first historical records ever kept.

  I didn't do it myself, of course. We turned to every college and university and research office with which the government has any kind of contract. We leaned on them and we leaned real heavy. We have used everybody from Navajo shamans to longdeceased priests, thanks to the effort of Filipo, here," he nodded to Castilano.

  "We've gone into Hebraic, Moslem, Akkadian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Chinese, Japanese, voodoo, Hindu, every Christian sect and every ancient sect from people who made the ancient Egyptians look like Johnny-come-latelies."

  This was Indiana Jones's home territory. He was enjoying himself in a way he hadn't anticipated. "Witches, too?"

  "Witches, too." Henshaw wondered about the sudden smile on the face of Gale Parker.

  "Colonel, how deeply did you go into the Mayan, Aztec, Inca, and other cultures?" she put in.

  "All the way."

  "Your conclusions?" Indy asked.

  "I've come to the conclusion—and to the great amusement of my Vatican friend, here—that I feel I have missed ninety-nine percent of history."

  "Sounds reasonable," Indy said to settle Henshaw's mood. "Look, Harry, no one man knows it all, or even a small fraction of the past. Once you make a concerted effort, you find out that you've been blind to that past. It's too big, there's too much, and it's all convoluted with the intermixing of fact and fable."

  "What the devil are you trying to tell me?" Henshaw demanded.

  "Simply that I expected you to run into countless incidents, from reliable sources in our past histories, that tell the stories of machines that fly just like the ones we seem to be encountering now. Huge torpedo vessels. Gleaming gold and bronze and silver discs and wheels. Mother ships that spawn smaller vessels. Great scimitar-shaped craft that hurtle through the skies, that perform impossible maneuvers, that blaze brighter than the sun, that hover above the ground. It's a long and fascinating story."

  "Indy, are you telling me that what we've run into is simply a replay of ancient history?" Henshaw couldn't hide his disbelief.

  "To some extent, yes," Indy said.

  "Aha! I told you, Harry!" Castilano was almost gloating. "The history of the Church, the history before the Church, the histories before anyone even thought of any kind of temple! It's all there, it has always been there!

  And now we are again—"

  "Hold it, Filipo!" Indy said in a halfshout. "Save the absolutions for Easter, or whatever. Let's stick to the historical records. Stay away, all of us, from subjective conclusions."

  "You sound like my old history teacher," Henshaw laughed, easing the tension that had suddenly built up.

  "He should," Gale told Henshaw. "Remember? Professor Jones is the name."

  Henshaw nodded. "Okay. Where do we begin?" He shuffled through a thick stack of notepapers. By his side Castilano was doing the same. Gale looked for Indy to put something before him but all that appeared was a brandy snifter. He turned to Gale. "Take notes," he told her. "But about tomorrow, not yesterday."

  He winked at their fascinated audience—Cromwell, Foulois, and Kilarney. Only the newcomer to their group was fast enough to offer a slight nod in return. That Jocko, mused Indy, was hiding a very sharp mind beneath that gleaming smile and huge frame. He'd have to do some digging on his background.

  Indy changed his mind suddenly. He had planned for the two pilots and Jocko simply to be outsiders, permitted to

  "listen in" without participating. Then he realized how foolish was that judgment; Cromwell and Foulois were pilots.

  Aces! They could fly anything, and in the information they were about to hear, there might hide a sliver of data that would prove valuable to them.

  "Will, Frenchy? Come on closer. If you get a brainstorm about something, break in, all right?"

  Indy turned back to Henshaw and Castilano.

  "Okay. There are certain rules to follow when you're trying to extract information from what's available. First of all, we must gain access to whatever records there are that contain references to u
nexplained objects appearing in the sky.

  But in many of those cases we'll be dealing with emotion, religious experience, and inadequate record-keeping. So what we find may have no basis in fact, or it might hold fragments of truth mixed in with nonsense. The point I'm stressing is that the moment we run up against that kind of historical record, we've got to put it aside. Just plain dump it and go to whatever may be more substantial."

  Indy looked directly at Henshaw. "From any source." He hoped Henshaw got the message: bring up anything that might apply. Something had been stuck in the back of Indy's mind longer than he liked because he still couldn't fit it in with events taking place around them. During the work of arming the Ford TriMotor, Henshaw had mentioned a French scientist, Henri Coanda, who had worked on a rocket gun during the Great War. One of his other experiments had involved some kind of new engine that operated like a giant torch. Indy made a mental note to pursue that issue further with Henshaw.

  But for now they were far back in history, and he expected Henshaw to help keep things moving steadily. He was right.

  "Example." Henshaw could cut right to the bone.

  "The cave wall paintings and carvings in China's Hunan Province," began Indy. "They were dug with very sharp rocks, or flint; they were colored with ochre and pigments of unknown origin; and they show cylindrical vessels moving through the sky. I'd like to use them for reference, but you have whatever value they contain in this brief description. We're not even certain whether they were created by Homo sapiens or prehumans. On the matter that concerns us, it has no bearing."

  "Agreed," Castilano said with a nod.

  "Go on," Henshaw directed.

  "May I?" They turned to Gale. "I believe you must adopt the same rules for Chih-Chiang-Tsu-Yu."

  "Who is?" Henshaw asked.

  "Not is. Was," Gale emphasized. "He was the lead engineer in the royal court of China's Emperor Yao. I'd love to be able to question him myself," she sighed. "His records are astonishing. He described an encounter with an alien race come to earth, claimed that their craft shone in the heavens, and stated he actually made a flight to the moon and back with the aliens."

  "How long ago was this?" asked Henshaw. He was taken aback as those more familiar with the truly ancient records smiled at his question. "Four thousand three hundred years," Gale answered. "I mentioned this item because Tsu-Yu even described columns of luminous air—"

  "A rocket?" Henshaw asked, incredulous.

  Gale shrugged. "Who knows? Indy warned us against extrapolation, so all I'm doing is establishing a framework of historical reference."

  "Look, if we wanted to refer to a catalogue of such moments, we could. And we'd be justified," Indy said patiently.

  "There are records of visitations from outer space all through man's history, from every culture, and throughout every age. I could make a great case out of the Surya Sutradhara. That's an ancient text from India in which astronomical events were recorded with incredible accuracy. And not by dewyeyed stargazers, but by the Siddas and the Vidyaharas—" "What the devil are those?" Cromwell burst out.

  "Not what; who," Indy replied. "They were the scientists of India. They also described flights in alien spacecraft and then went on to write down how they flew, and this is a quote, "below the moon but above the clouds."

  "I will be . . . I mean . . . that is so bloody hard to believe!" Cromwell stammered.

  "Your belief, mine, anyone else's," Indy told him, "is not the issue. The accuracy of such reports, and how they may or may not relate to what our own people have come to believe are starships from Mars, or whatever . . .

  that's the issue."

  "Then we can hardly ignore the Santander caves of Spain, can we?" They turned to Henshaw, who held up both hands. "Sorry, I'm no archeologist or historian.

  But when I was in Spain I happened to be in that area, and what I heard sent me there quickly enough. I could hardly believe what I saw. Beautiful paintings in prehistoric caves. Paintings of discs moving through the sky."

  "And in more places than Spain," Castilano offered. "In fact, Indy and I ran into each other once on the Tassili Plateau. That's the Saharan region. Cave paintings of discs there as well."

  "The point is, we've brought up these places and their times," Indy said to move them along, "and there isn't a blasted thing we can do with this information except say, okay, here it is, here's what it depicts, we can't explain it, although we can debate from now to forever. Let me save all of us some time. Even as early as the fifteenth century B.C., people in North Africa were seeing all sorts of discs in the sky. Historians reported they flew with great precision, whatever that meant in the terms of those days.

  "Now, in a.d. 747, the Chinese left records of flaming objects cruising overhead and climbing. So we're getting a bit warmer."

  "What about the German sightings at Nuremburg in 1561?" asked Castilano.

  "Thousands of witnesses saw cylinders, discs, spheres—"

  "They saw the same thing in 1883 in Zacatecas," Gale broke in.

  "Is that in Mexico?" Jocko inquired.

  "Give the man a cigar," Indy told him. "You got it, friend. Only this time the sky was busier than Times Square on Saturday night. The locals saw more than four hundred aerial torpedos and discs. But we don't have to go that far back. It was, um, 1896 and 1897, right in the United States. California, Kansas, New Mexico, Texas, and so forth. All of a sudden people—thousands of people who were sober, reliable witnesses—saw strange airships all over the place.

  Including a bunch of them that landed. They spoke English, German, and some foreign languages nobody could understand. They also took off and then climbed with what people said was terrific speed."

  "And bloody well showed up again," Cromwell said. "In England, about twelve years later. They seemed much more advanced than the American visitors, but airships they were, all right."

  "Zeppelins, no doubt," Henshaw remarked.

  "No way," Indy stepped in. "At that time Germany had but three zeppelins flying, and they had poor performance.

  The British reports numbered in the hundreds, in thirty to fifty locations distant from one another on the same night.

  Besides, no matter what they were, they had engines, propellers, and wings, which is a pretty stupid thing to use on a zeppelin."

  "But there are more modern sightings of the discs," said Castilano.

  "Of course!" came a startled cry from Foulois. "Back in 1880, by a French scientist, Trecul, a member of the French Academy of Science. Ah! He was a master observer, a serious and sober man, and he swore up and down he had seen a golden vessel flying overhead. More to the point," Foulois continued, now standing as for emphasis, "he also saw the big ship release a smaller craft that shot ahead of the golden vessel. Indy, my friend, the exact words he used were 'mother craft,' and that certainly fits what you are seeking!"

  "Did he ever see it again?"

  "Non."

  Indy scratched his head. "What else do we have?"

  "I was with that expedition to China in 1926," Castilano said in a subdued tone. "I never thought I'd talk about it, but—"

  "Let's have it," Indy pushed.

  "Well, it simply never registered. I mean, an event in such a remote place. In fact, it was northern China, in the Kukunor district. That's rather close to the Humboldt Chain. To be even more specific, now that I'm rooting about in my memory, it was about nine-thirty the morning of August fifth. Not just myself, but the entire expeditionary group caught sight of something huge in the sky. Let me see, now." He absentmindedly rubbed an elbow and tapped a foot.

  "Ah, yes, we all agreed it was a large, even a huge, oval-shaped object."

  "Color?"

  "Gold. Burnished gold."

  "Anyone use binoculars?"

  "To be sure. At least four men. Had an absolutely clear view."

  "Any kind of exhaust trail?"

  "None reported. There could have been, but—"

  "Sound?"

&
nbsp; "None that could be detected. We were in the midst of a pretty good wind, blowing snow, that sort of thing."

  Indy wanted to break things with his hands. So close! So close, and yet . . .

  He studied Castilano. "Filipo, my friend," he said quietly, "did anyone among your group, a research group, for God's sake, take a picture?"

  Castilano looked stricken. He shook his head slowly. "How I have wished that we did. . . . I will tell you this, Indy.

  Whatever we saw was definitely oval. I have considered changing visual points, apparent shapes because of angle.

  It was oval, and if I had a picture, I believe it would be the only confirmed photograph at the time of an extraterrestrial vehicle."