The lead robot's legs became tangled in the sparking wire, its gears straining. As it stumbled, the other foot stepped on the rolling telephone pole, and the enormous mechanical monster lost its balance. With painful grace, the robot giant slowly began to topple.
The P-40 burst safely out of the alley and arced high. Sky Captain watched the huge walking monster fall.
On an earlier mission against the Rocket Robbers — villains who launched explosive missiles against armored bank buildings and then swooped into the rubble with jetpacks to steal gold bullion — one of the Flying Legion's heavy planes had been damaged. The brave pilot had barely been able to bring the large aircraft to the ground. Sky Captain had circled overhead, radioing advice and instructions, knowing the impact would be terrible. Leaking fuel, the heavy plane had crashed in Central Park like a blacksmith slamming a sledge into an anvil, the worst accident Sky Captain had ever witnessed. But when the robot monster smashed headlong into Fifth Avenue, the impact was far more spectacular.
The weight of the huge giant created a fissure that split open the pavement. The wide crack zigzagged up the street, directly between Polly's legs. She stood with her feet planted, her camera poised. As the action reached its crescendo, she clicked photo after photo, determined not to miss the shot this time. Then she stared directly in front of her, where the robot had collapsed only a few feet from her. Polly took a final picture, for good measure. One of them was sure to win a Pulitzer.
Suddenly, in the streets around her, everything stopped. The robot army paused. Sky Captain's plane raced away for another run, but the police ceased firing their machine guns. A breathless moment passed.
Strangest of all, the rows of giant robots stood frozen in the middle of the street. Beeping, chirping signals emanated from the antennae mounted to their blunt heads. The robots froze, as if listening to new instructions; then inexplicably, the mammoth walking army raised their metal arms in unison. With great blasts of rockets from their feet and the exhaust nozzles in their iron torsos, the huge machines lifted from the ground and flew skyward. From nearby streets, all the marching robots rose up like a flock of vultures taking wing.
As Sky Captain sped forward, prepared to launch another attack, the ascending robots cut upward into his path, and he had to dodge before his plane was smashed. The iron giants continued to rise in waves, until they were finally swallowed in the clouds as quickly as they had appeared…
* * *
Cowed New Yorkers began to peep out of their air-raid shelters, venturing into the streets to stare in awe at the damage the mechanical monsters had caused. Crowds stood out in front of buildings, watching as Polly approached the fallen robot sprawled along Fifth Avenue. Curious onlookers pressed closer to the iron giant like Lilliputians encircling a sleeping Gulliver.
Polly snapped another photograph. Maybe Editor Paley would give her a raise.
Finally, the droning air-raid sirens fell silent. The squadrons of walking robots had departed. Emergency vehicles rolled into place: fire trucks, ambulances, police cars. But the focus of the outcry seemed even greater two blocks away, where the army of robots had been headed. Anxious to discover what could be more intriguing than the fallen mechanical monster, Polly hurried after the curiosity seekers.
Now she saw — but didn't understand — what the robot force had been trying to do. The huge machines had torn open a gigantic crater in the ground, a gaping hole in Midtown Manhattan. Stripping away the street, the robot monsters had exposed New York City's massive underground electrical generators, the turbines and pumps that powered the entire metropolis. It reminded Polly of surgeons making an incision preparatory to the removal of a vital organ from a patient.
"What were they doing?" she muttered aloud, but none of the pedestrians around her answered. Maybe the machines weren't finished yet.
Lifting her camera, Polly snapped a photo of the crater just as Sky Captain reappeared. His P-40 soared overhead as he made sure everyone down on the ground was all right. Polly turned, a thoughtful expression on her face as she watched the aerial hero race away from her — as he so often did.
* * *
Finally, she got the headline story for the extra edition of the Chronicle. Ninety-point type, huge bold sans serif letters screamed out what everybody in New York already knew:
MECHANICAL MONSTERS INVADE GOTHAM by Polly Perkins
And there was one of her photographs, too. She had taken so many good pictures, Editor Paley devoted one entire interior page to a special photo insert. Though he had chastised her for risking her life so foolishly, as soon as she stepped out of his office and closed the door, she'd heard him yelling at the Chronicle's other reporters because they hadn't demonstrated the guts that she had. "You all missed the story of the century!"
This was one time Polly went down to the plant and stood watching the printing presses. She lifted the first copy as it came down the line, scanned her byline to make sure nothing was misspelled, and strutted proudly back to her office.
Radios tuned to different stations broadcast continuing updates of the recent disaster. The news reports overlapped, but the severity of the situation was already clear. Manhattan had not been the only target, but merely one step in an overall plan.
"… further details of the attack continue to pour in…"
"… central portion of the city is blacked out from radio communication due to damaged power lines and electrical failure…"
"… cables received from English, French, and German news agencies now confirm the attack was not limited to New York City…"
Assessing the scope of the robots' assaults, Polly brought a detailed world atlas to her desk, moving her glowing globe desk lamp so that she could spread open the large book. "Sky Captain" Joe Sullivan had tackled the enormous robots single-handedly over Manhattan, but the rest of the mercenary Flying Legion had responded to other emergencies across the world.
Hulking mechanical men stalked through the streets of Paris, damaging the Eiffel Tower, stripping the skeletal structure of its steel girders. In London, ranks of the destructive robots plodded past Big Ben, smashing two bridges across the Thames. Even in Moscow, faced by new Soviet Army tanks constructed on orders from People's Chairman Molotov, the mechanical men smashed the Communist defenders and began to tear apart new industries, raiding them for raw materials and heavy equipment.
Darting attack planes from the Flying Legion had met with minimal success. The robots, seeming to come from nowhere, performed their tasks and swatted aside all attempts to stop them. Then the iron giants departed, leaving only scars and mysteries.
"… the BBC is reporting that a steel mill in Nuremberg was virtually excavated by what witnesses describe as a mechanized tornado…"
"… news agencies in Paris and Madrid speak of strange burrowing machines rising from the ground, robbing entire communities of their coal and oil reserves…"
The mad genius who had invented these things — perhaps the mysterious Totenkopf Dr. Jennings had warned her about — must have a detailed scheme in several phases. She hadn't been able to find Jennings after he'd fled Radio City Music Hall, and now Polly understood that he had good reason to fear for his life.
And what had happened to Dr. Jorge Vargas, who had disappeared after the Hindenburg III had docked? It was all part of an overall scenario — she knew it. Resting her chin on one hand, she listened to the radio.
"Meanwhile, the world can only wait in wonder as government officials join with the mercenary forces of Sky Captain and the Flying Legion to uncover the meaning of these mysterious events…"
7
A Hidden Base. Inspired by Scientifiction. A Robotic Specimen
Even if they hadn't exactly been defeated, the menace of the giant walking machines was gone from New York. Sky Captain left the city far behind, rocketing across water, across land, through splashes of cottony clouds. Finally, he sped toward a steep, mountainous rise in the distance.
By now, the rest of t
he Flying Legion should be returning from their missions around the world. In all his years of adventuring, Joe Sullivan couldn't ever remember receiving so many widely separated distress calls coming in at once. A good day's work for the world's heroes. Whoever had built those terror machines was going to be a big problem.
With engines purring along, the P-40 began to climb, following the contour of the mountains until a camouflaged valley came into view. Nestled inside a pocket of densely wooded hills, reachable only through a confusing maze of winding dirt roads — or of course from the air — lay a massive operation: the secret base of the famous Flying Legion.
Awesome silvery zeppelins were anchored to mooring posts that rose high over the installation. A flat expanse of tarmac covered most of the valley floor. Runways extended in several directions toward the wooded mountains, offering options for takeoff and landing runs. Rows of war-rated aircraft were stationed on painted lines, ready for deployment in any emergency. A series of gargantuan hangars were spaced across the landscape, full of machinery, maintenance equipment, testing bays, and crew quarters.
Sky Captain felt a shiver of pride each time he came home. The location of the base wasn't common knowledge, for security reasons — but he felt that if the crazed megalomaniacs could just see what they were up against, half of them wouldn't even bother trying to take over the world. That would certainly make his job easier…
After a smooth landing, Sky Captain's Warhawk taxied down the airstrip, where he was met by his ground crew. Waving directions as they walked confidently backward, two crewmen guided his plane into one of the hangars. Inside the huge building, catwalks were strung like cobwebs from rafter to rafter. The maintenance team rushed forward to surround the Warhawk like a pit crew in a motorcar race.
Letting the engine idle loudly, Sky Captain slid open the plane's canopy. He had to yell over the noise. "She needs refueling — and freshen up the ammo on the wing cannons." He climbed out onto the wing spouting orders, as if his support people didn't know what they were doing.
"Right, Sky Captain."
"And check all the hoses for nicks. Plug up any bullet holes on the fuselage. The usual."
"Bullet holes? Did you get shot at, Cap? I thought you were up against giant robots — "
"I did the shooting, Jimmy. But with all that ammunition flying around, a few ricochets might've gotten me."
"We'll make her good as new, Cap."
"You always do." With an easy jump, he dropped to the sealed concrete floor of the hangar. He drew a deep breath, comforted by the smells of airplane fuel, hot exhaust, and engine grease.
"I want to get a look at the film from the forward cameras as soon as it's ready — those robot monsters were something else! And get me a duty log. I want all the Legion's squad leaders assembled in one hour. I'll brief them myself, and then I want to hear what they encountered out there." He wriggled out of his backpack. "Where's Dex?"
The nearest mechanic grinned. "Where else would he be, Cap?"
A colored comic panel torn from the Sunday edition of the New York Chronicle showed Buck Rogers in his futuristic outfit. While an alien villain held Wilma Deering hostage, Buck showed his stuff, intimidating the evil mastermind by pointing a ray gun at a steel wall. A text balloon read, "My sonic atomizer can slice through metal like a knife through butter."
The comic panel was taped to a drafting table with notes scribbled in the margin of the newsprint. Beside it, extensive blueprints showed detailed designs of a gadget that looked remarkably similar to Buck Rogers' sonic atomizer.
His brown eyes glittering with anticipation, Dex Dearborn — Sky Captain's right-hand man and technical genius — pointed his strange-looking pistol at the other side of the room. The ray gun had an aiming fin, colorful buttons, and a curved handle that looked like it was designed for an alien hand.
Dex wasn't sure if all the knobs and adjusting buttons were necessary, but he didn't want to second guess the revered comic artist. As soon as he proved that the sonic atomizer worked, he could probably add other functions to correspond with the ornamental controls.
With the pink tip of his tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth, he aimed the nozzle of the ray gun at a thick vertical slab of steel inside a cement bunker. The ray gun felt tingly in his hand, as if anxious to prove itself. Glancing over his shoulder, Dex called to his assistants, "All clear!"
Lab workers scurried from the thick-walled bunker to duck behind sheltered barricades. Dex pulled a pair of tinted safety goggles over his eyes, aimed the nozzle toward the center of the target plate, and squeezed the firing button.
Concentric rings of light struck the metal slab. An impressive warbling crackle thrummed out of the gun. Pulse after pulse of light shimmered against the surface of the steel plate. In less than a second, the metal began to glow white-hot, vibrating as it melted.
Releasing the firing button, Dex lowered the ray gun, impressed. "Excellent power output! And the gun mechanism isn't even hot." He set the ray gun on the table and hurried up to the metal slab as his assistants crept from behind the barricades, wiping sweat from their foreheads. Dex admired the results of the test: a huge melted hole in the center of three-inch steel.
"That Buck Rogers knows his stuff!"
Behind him, the giant doors of the research hangar rattled open to flood the interior with sunlight. Dex turned from the melted target plate, listening to the bass rumble of a powerful truck engine outside. Two of his assistants yelped in alarm and stepped away from the yawning doors as a massive semitrailer backed up.
On the trailer bed rested a giant robot carcass, five stories tall. It was battered and scratched but intact. Its once-blazing eye plate was now dim; the cables and gears were frozen; the power generator stilled. Dex couldn't believe what he was seeing. His jaw dropped. "Shazam!" He absently rested his hand on the hot metal of the target plate, then snatched it away and sucked on his fingers.
Silhouetted by the sunlight, Sky Captain strode into the hangar, his leather jacket halfway unzipped, his aviator goggles perched on his forehead. The semi driver shouted, sticking his head out the window and looking for directions as two Legion crewmen guided the flatbed backward. The prone robot was hauled slowly through the yawning doors. The iron monstrosity barely fit inside.
"Hello, Dex. See what I tripped up in Manhattan? I thought you might like to tinker a bit."
Dex put his hands on his hips jokingly. "I heard you describe it over the radio, Cap. I thought you said this thing was big?" But he couldn't maintain his nonchalance as he walked in a daze to the robot's giant welder-helmet head. He was dwarfed by the size of the mechanical behemoth. "Can I have it?"
"You figure out where it came from, and I'll get you one for Christmas. Promise." If anybody could dismantle and understand the enormous machine, Dex could. As always, Sky Captain had complete faith in him.
As a young and starry-eyed dreamer, Dex had worked in a malt shop often frequented by members of the Flying Legion. He'd done well in school, but spent most of his time reading comic strips and pulp magazines, watching movie serials, and listening to radio adventures. He loved to imagine the impossible while paying little attention to the practical. His parents had despaired of their Dexter ever making anything of himself.
But he'd loved to jabber to Sky Captain and the heroic members of the Flying Legion. The most important question of his life was: What if?
Captain Joe Sullivan had seen the genius behind the young man's enthusiasm. Dex truly believed in the possibilities and in himself — and so Sky Captain gave him a chance in the Flying Legion. He'd strutted into the malt shop one day, cocky and confident, and rested his elbows on the speckled counter. "If I give you all the resources and support you need, and you give me all your imagination and your best work, then I guess we'll be unstoppable. Right, Dex?"
Dex drew most of his inspiration from the "scientifiction" magazines he loved so much: Amazing Stories, Wonder Stories, Astounding Science Fiction, Marvel Scie
nce Stories, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Planet Stories, and so many others he could barely keep up with them all. His favorite authors gave him all the ideas he could possibly need: Jack Williamson, Edmund Hamilton, E. E. "Doc" Smith, even Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. G. Wells.
Some of Dex's inventions had been rather spectacular failures, but more often than not an innovation of his had allowed the Flying Legion to save the world. The improvements he'd made to Sky Captain's P-40 Warhawk alone were tremendous. Overall, Dex was worth his weight in collectible pulp magazines.
"So, Dex, while the rest of the Legion's been off fighting mechanical monsters, what have you been doing here in your cozy research hangar? Any breakthroughs for me?" Sky Captain looked meaningfully at the new ray gun and the melted hole in the steel target plate.
Snapping out of his reverie, Dex gestured for him to follow. "That was a good test. The sonic atomizer shows a lot of potential. But there's something else you need to see."
He led the pilot around the workbench toward an oscilloscope, where he flipped a switch. He tapped the curved glass surface of the cathode ray tube, tracing a jagged radio signal that appeared on the screen. "I recorded this signal just before the first machines appeared in New York, Moscow, Paris, Madrid, London. I didn't think anything of it until I played it back, while you were chasing giant robots."
Dex twisted a dial on his console. A series of ominous, repeating tones came through a small speaker. It had a rhythm, almost a melody of electronic information. Sky Captain leaned closer to the oscilloscope as if it would help him concentrate on the tones. "Morse code?"
"That's what I thought at first, but the syntax is more complex. There's a subcarrier hidden in the lower frequency. I think it's being used to control them — all the machines, from a central place."
"If it shows up again can you track it?"
"I can try."
"Good boy, Dex." Pulling off his gloves, Sky Captain gestured to the enormous robot lying prone on the semitrailer. "In the meantime, see what you can do with that big lug. Find out what makes it tick." Sky Captain gave Dex a mischievous grin. "You don't mind, do you?"
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow Page 4