Indiana Jones & the Sky Pirates

by Martin Caidin

  "Harry," Indy said between huge bites of his sandwich, "let me bounce some ideas off of you."

  Henshaw gestured with his own sandwich. "Go on. Let's have 'em."

  Indy glanced at Gale. "Anytime you feel I'm missing something, step in," he instructed her.

  She nodded. She would wait until she had something worth saying or asking.

  In the meantime, she knew she was in for an education. She knew how to fly an airplane, even one so large as the threeengined Ford. But she knew she was about to step into an area where she was a neophyte. Whatever Indy might advance would be measured and evaluated, and the response given, by Harry Henshaw—who was as much a technical intelligence specialist as he was a highly experienced pilot in everything from small trainers and fighters to huge transports and bombers.

  "Let's start with the zep," Indy said. "Harry, I want you to consider any statement I make as much of a question as it is a conclusion. You teach me about wings and things and I'll take you smoothly through tombs and pyramids."

  Henshaw laughed. "It's a deal."

  "Okay," Indy said, "the zep. Treadwell explained that they got at least three fighters into position to empty their guns into that thing."

  "Right," Henshaw said.

  "And they fired tracers," Indy went on quickly. "Which means, one, they didn't hit the liftinggas cells."

  "Possibility, yes," Henshaw replied. "Well, if that thing is lifted by hydrogen, then either it's got heavy shielding about the gas bags, which kept the tracers from hitting them—"

  "Dismiss that," Henshaw waved away the suggestion. "You're talking so much weight the thing could hardly get above the treetops."

  "Got it," Indy said, nodding. "Or the fighters could have missed completely."

  "Nope," Henshaw countered. "I checked. The pilots saw their tracers going into the top of the hull."

  "Then either those people aboard the airship were incredibly lucky," Indy said, hesitating before finishing his sandwich, "or they weren't using hydrogen, or any other flammable gas."

  "Congratulations," Henshaw told him.

  "That means they're using helium," Indy came back. "So where are they getting it?"

  "I thought you Yanks had a world monopoly on helium," Gale offered.

  "We sure do," Henshaw told her. "The main source is—"

  Indy gestured to interrupt. "Let me," he told Henshaw. "I've been doing some homework on this."

  Henshaw seemed amused with Indy's intensity. "Have at it, Professor." He smiled.

  "Mineral Wells, Texas."

  "Congratulations," Henshaw said, clearly impressed. "But there are also helium storage points—"

  "Too crowded," Indy said quickly. "Too obvious. They can't move something the size of a small mountain where people would go bananas at the sight of a huge gleaming airship zipping along without engines."

  "So they must have a base that completely conceals that airship?" Gale asked.

  "Give the lady a cigar," Indy said. "You know," he turned back to Henshaw,

  "each clue opens the door a bit wider to more answers."

  "Always does," Henshaw agreed. "A matter of the picture becoming clearer as you fit each piece into the jigsaw puzzle." He eyed Indy with a quizzical look. "Do I get the idea we've heard only part of your conclusions?"

  Indy smiled. "I know this may sound crazy, but it looks as if a mixture of anthropology and archeology has the answer we're after. That, and some old but very powerful superstitions, the latter enough to convince eyewitnesses to the airship to keep it a secret."

  "You're way ahead of me," Henshaw said, irritated that he wasn't following Indy fast enough.

  "Well, one of the best kicks to open the door came from Filipo Castilano,"

  Indy said. "Remember when Treadwell told us that Filipo had made vague references to a city in the sky? At best it seemed terribly tenuous. For all I knew, Filipo was deliberately disguising his message. Likely he figured I would extrapolate from what he was hinting at and come up with the answer he wanted me to get."

  "And did you?" Henshaw pressed.

  "Not at first," Indy admitted. "A city in the sky could be Asgard. Home of the gods. It might be Mount Olympus.

  Every culture has some land of city, or Eden, or heaven in the sky. But I had to keep in mind that Filipo could have been speaking more literally than I suspected."

  "Indy, you're playing games with us," Gale complained.

  "No; not really. I'm trying to have you accompany me on the process I was using to come up with the right answer."

  He ticked off the items on his fingers. "First, the airship can't possibly be using hydrogen. It would have been blown apart by now with its own jet engines. Plus the fact

  that it has—it must have—a huge open ramp at its stern, so that the discs can come in to be recovered. And they're also pouring out very high heat."

  "Agreed," Henshaw said. "Even a minor hydrogen leak would be a disaster."

  "Okay," Indy went on. "So we need helium. Shipping great quantities of helium out of the U.S. would attract too much attention. The government is paranoid on the stuff. But there's no problem in shipping helium by the tanker load inside the States. All you need is enough money and you can buy what you want, so long as no one figures it's going overseas.

  "Helium from Mineral Wells in Texas. But where would it go? How did this sky city fit into it? And if there really is a sky city, it has to be in name only. We just don't have cities drifting around the sky. What if it was a name an anthropologist or an archeologist, or even a student of history, would recognize? It might not be known as such by the public. It would be in a rare language, rare by virtue of belonging to an isolated group, that is. And if Castilano knew as much of Spanish history as I believe he did, he was pointing straight to the real Sky City."

  "You've been leading us down the garden path, Indy—"

  "Not really. It was only when I began to think along those lines that everything fell into place." He paused, relishing the moment. "You see, it's an Indian name. The Acoma Indians have occupied a massive redoubt for thousands of years.

  In fact, their history claims they lived in their fortified city three thousand years before the time of Christ."

  "Acoma! Of course!" Henshaw exclaimed.

  "What is Acoma?" Gale almost begged for the explanation.

  "Acoma is the Indian name for our Sky City," Indy told her. "It lies roughly southwest of Albuquerque, New

  Mexico. It's fairly close to the Zuni Indian Reservation, but it stands by itself.

  It's a huge mesa, in places well over three hundred feet high with sheer cliff walls.

  More specifically, Sky City in the Acoma language means Old Acoma.

  They have a language distinctively their own.

  "And they have their specific and particular beliefs, myths and traditions. The Acoma believe they all originated from deep within the earth, from a huge underground chamber they called Shipapu. Their race started with two girls created by their gods—Nautsiti and Iatiku. When the gods created these two girls, suddenly the race of Acoma Indians sprang to life. People, animals, dwellings, agriculture; everything. They built their homes hundreds of feet up in the sky— atop their mesa.

  It became known as the Pueblo in the Sky." "Sky City," Gale said softly.

  "And it is a natural, powerful fortification, with huge caverns and cave areas big enough to hold half a dozen of those airships. Throughout their history the Acoma Indians defended their territory with a savagery given special notice by the Spaniards when they were moving through those lands in their early conquests north of Mexico. When they reached Acoma—which in various linguistic derivatives means

  'the place that always was'—they ran into some very nasty people defending their sacred mesas."

  Indy leaned back and stretched his legs. "I recall reading the reports of a Spanish expedition leader, Captain Hernando de Alvarado. Back in 1540, Coronado sent him to learn the truth about this great place they'd hea
rd about.

  Alvarado was amazed to see the city hundreds of feet above them, the entrances narrow and so well fortified that an attack seemed impossible. In fact, his official report to Coronado stated flatly that Acoma was the most impregnable stronghold he had ever seen. He called it

  completely inaccessible, and reported there were more than six to eight thousand Indians living atop the mesa, all of them quite capable of standing off any force the Spaniards might have assembled."

  Indy rubbed his chin, searching his memory for details. "That's enough of the history, but it lets you know that Acoma is absolutely the perfect operational base for their airship. The local Indians—and the countryside has at least a dozen different tribes—have always believed they had a special connection to heaven. There was a specific event, um, I believe it was the fall of 1846. By now the Spaniards, of course, were gone, and the American army was doing everything it could to control the Indians. This one moment in their history, well, it certainly reinforced the Indians'

  beliefs. An American cavalry force was camped about a mile from the sheer cliffs of Acoma, and on this night a tremendous meteor came blasting out of space. In fact, it was so bright it turned the night into day. And it didn't come down. It tore across the sky, level with the horizon, lit up the world, and, apparently, rushed back out into space again."

  "Atmospheric skip," Henshaw said. "It happens sometimes. It makes a believer out of you."

  "Well, it's my bet," Indy said firmly, "and I'll stake my reputation on it, that's where we'll find that airship. And if they have a real handle on what's happening, then they absolutely must realize things are starting to come unglued with their program."

  Indy showed his concern. "The way these people have been operating, they've got to make a very serious move.

  Which means they could well decide to destroy even an entire city if they wanted to."

  "Destroy a whole city?" Gale showed confusion, even resistance to Indy's statement. "How could they do that?

  One airship, even a dozen, couldn't carry enough bombs to—"

  "Indy's right," Henshaw broke in. "They wouldn't bother with bombs, Gale.

  Too heavy, clumsy. They'd make a lot of noise and fire and kill a few hundred people, perhaps, even wound a few thousand more, but that's nothing on the scale of war."

  Henshaw shook his head. "We run what we call 'war games' on matters like this.

  Like, what would we do if we were in their place?" "What would you do?"

  Gale pushed. "If my intention was terror and killing on a huge scale, any one of several things or, more likely, a combination of them all. First, either from the air or from the ground you can poison the water supply of a major city. If your poison is slowacting, then enough time passes so that most of the people in your city would have absorbed fatal doses even before the poison starts to kill.

  Nerve paralysis, respiratory problems; that sort of thing. Then there are biological agents. It's not well known but at least four countries have already developed a mutation of anthrax that devastates people exposed to it. It could be sprayed from either the airship or those devilish saucers they've got. You wouldn't need great amounts, in terms of weight, that is. England, France, Germany, Russia, the United States, we were all getting into the biological agents game. Nasty and brutish, I'll admit—"

  "Horrible, you mean," Gale said with heat.

  "No worse, young lady, than an incendiary bullet in the gut, let me assure you," Henshaw said coldly. "Or being in the direct line of impact from a flamethrower."

  "My God," Gale said, very quietly.

  "Harry's right," Indy added. "And then there's poison gas. Back in the Great War they had lewisite, mustard, phosgene. Other types were being developed. Tens of thousands of soldiers died from gas attacks. Maybe they were the lucky ones.

  Tens of t h o u s a n d s more became blind or went mad or were crippled by gas."

  "And an unexpecting city doesn't have any protection against that,"

  Henshaw said emphatically. "No, I'm afraid Indy's right on target about these people.

  We've sent their carrier ship to the bottom, so they know we're ready to make a stand against them. We attacked their airship— rather futilely, I admit—but those British boys certainly went at it with everything they had. Now the hunt is on, and the sooner we find that airship and knock it out, the faster they'll lose the advantages of emotion and fear stirred up by those saucers and the airship itself."

  "I haven't heard either one of you say what I've been afraid you might say,"

  Gale told them. "Spell that out," Indy replied.

  "If they can attack one city," she said slowly, "why wouldn't they attack several, or even many cities?"

  "Oh, they could," Henshaw said quickly. "But mass destruction isn't the name of their game. It's fear. Mind control. Change the way people think and you can control them. If they believe in their gods, there are gods. If they believe they're helpless—"

  "Then they'll be helpless," Indy finished for him. "So the sooner we find that airship . . . " He let the rest speak for itself.

  They felt the Ford lurch from side to side. That brought their attention to the moment, to where they were, flying across the North Atlantic to cross by the Faeroe Islands on their way to Iceland. Turbulence increased with every passing moment, and they saw Foulois working his way back from the cockpit.

  "Why we ever bothered to give you people intercom headsets is a mystery,"

  Foulois said. "We've been shouting at you for ten minutes!" "What's up?" Henshaw asked. From the look on his face as he felt the trembling and shaking motions of the airplane, he didn't need the Frenchman to tell him anything.

  "We've got to work our way through a front," Foulois said. "We're into it now." He nodded to the cabin windows, and they saw the rain streaking the glass.

  "It's going to be a bit bumpy," Foulois went on. "Better strap in, put away any loose stuff."

  "Frenchy, I'll take your seat for a while, okay?" Henshaw said. "You can have some food and coffee—" "I realize you meant wine, didn't you, Colonel?" "Of course, of course. I need to use the radio to talk to Iceland."

  "Sorry, my friend. The weather. We lost voice contact with Iceland a while ago. But we're tracking off one of the Faeroes broadcasters and it seems we're right on where we belong. That Cromwell is like a bird dog. I think he can sniff his way to Iceland."

  "You really want wine?" Gale asked, as Henshaw headed for the cockpit.

  Foulois rummaged through his bag, bracing himself between the cabin floor and a seat. He held up a bottle in triumph. "Coffee never won wars, my dear," he said, taking a long swig from the bottle. "But if you drink enough wine, you don't even care who wins. A very civilized attitude, I might add."

  The next moment he was hanging in midair as the Ford dropped like a stone dumped from a cliff. He slammed into the cabin floor as the downdraft reversed.

  "A true Frenchman," Indy laughed. "Never spilled a drop!"

  Two hours later, strapped in, hanging grimly to his seat, Indy was ready to swear off flying for the rest of his life.

  The promise of "a bit bumpy" had become a madhouse of slamming about, yawing and wheeling, and pounding up and down, rivulets of water running into the cabin from the cockpit.

  "This is so invigorating!" Gale shouted above the din and boom of engines and thunder and wind.

  Indy struggled to keep his stomach where it belonged. Bright spots danced before his eyes. He no longer knew what was right or left or up or down. Then, as abruptly as it started, the uproar and violence ceased, and the sky brightened.

  Indy's stomach began a slow slide back to where it belonged, and through the cockpit windshield, even from well back in the cabin, he saw the volcanic humps of Iceland waiting for them.

  17

  A day and a half later they landed in Quebec, boneweary, musclestiff, groggy from lack of proper rest or sleep, and hating sandwiches. Henshaw went to the Canadian authorities, and arranged for
American Customs and Immigration to

  "forget" the usual procedures for entering the United States on the basis that this was an official government aircraft, crew, and flight. Tired as they were and desperate for showers and clean clothes, there was no rest for any of them. Cromwell put everybody to work on the Ford except Henshaw, who was "attending to" the tasks he'd received from Indy. They had flown the aircraft hard and long, and the years of experience told Cromwell and Foulois to pay strict attention to the small complaints they could sense and feel from the aircraft and the engines.

  Two hours later they were refueled, oil tanks filled, hydraulics and other requirements met. Henshaw returned to the aircraft. "Will," he asked Cromwell, "are we okay for a straight shot to Dayton? When we get there we'll have to take a break, and I can have our top maintenance people go over the bird stem to stern."