The snow cleared, and scudding storm clouds moved about below, giving the travelers a bright view of icy peaks that stood high and remote in the distance. The two Sherpas pushed ahead, not wanting to rest next to their three companions. With a frown, Polly watched them go.
Sky Captain sidled up next to Kaji, who gazed into the sprawling Himalayan wilderness, undaunted by the frigid temperature. Extending a mittened hand, the Sherpa pointed toward the craggy peaks. "This is where civilization stops, Captain Joe. Ahead of us is only a blank on the map." He tightened his hat and his mittens. "We must be very careful from here."
Polly looked at Kaji, shivering. "I thought we needed to be careful back there, too."
"For all the good it did," Sky Captain said.
From the distant outcropping where they had stopped, the two other Sherpas began to shout excitedly. Kaji cocked his ears, listening to the Nepalese words, and then motioned for Sky Captain to follow him. "Come! Hurry!"
Summoning her last shreds of energy, Polly hurried after their guide as he climbed effortlessly up the final few feet of the mountain peak. The higher vantage let them see beyond the intervening ridge.
The last thing she expected to see was the impossibly huge shape of a transmitting tower rising from the deep mountain valley. The steel structure protruded above the tallest of the nearby crags, but its lower half was buried in snow.
Sky Captain stared, knowing the only person who could have built such a facility. "Totenkopf."
Polly came up next to him, panting. "From here at the top of the world, he could send commands to his robots anywhere!"
"He probably did. This is where Dex traced the signal."
When the wind died briefly, they could hear a low, electrical hum emanating from the gargantuan tower. A dim light blinked intermittently at its peak, though Sky Captain knew no aircraft would attempt to fly over the dangerous Kanchenjunga Range. He pushed ahead with renewed enthusiasm, scrambling down the steep and rocky path. "Come on. We're close now."
"Maybe they'll have hot coffee down there," Polly muttered to herself as she started after him.
"Tea, perhaps, but I do not think so," Kaji said.
When they reached the base of the massive tower, they stood knee-deep in snow. Sky Captain stopped in astonishment as the extent of the madman's Himalayan base became apparent. The high transmitting tower was merely the tip of Totenkopf's operations.
The transmitting structure was utterly dwarfed by the staggering vastness of an expansive subterranean excavation spreading out ahead of them. Immense blocky power stations stood like geometrical sentinels on either side of a gaping shaft entrance large enough for several of Sky Captain's Warhawks to fly inside. Transformers, ringed conical boosters, and thrumming storage banks created a technological storage dump around the barren rock. Spearlike icicles dripped from the exposed metal.
Sky Captain withdrew a pair of binoculars from his backpack and scanned the area, squinting against the bright snow. He could make out a shimmering maze of ice tunnels bored deep into a glacial mass and reinforced with steel beams. Other shafts in the mountain rock led to dark side chambers. Abandoned ore cars sat waiting on rails.
"What is it?" Polly looked on in awe, anxious to use the binoculars for herself. "Let me see."
But Sky Captain would not relinquish them. "It looks like a mining outpost." From the weathered appearance of the generators caked with ice and snow, the frozen ore cars, the drifts piling up on the fringes of the main shaft, he guessed that the mine had long since been uninhabited. Brute-force machinery had been left uncovered and unmaintained, ravaged by the effects of time.
Squinting, Kaji put his hands on his broad hips and stared at the distant forbidding sight. "Something bad happened here."
With his binoculars, Sky Captain followed the steel shape of a rail bridge that led into the mouth of the fantastic mine. Even with the mountain breezes, an eerie stillness cloaked the base. "It looks abandoned." He turned to Kaji. "Tell your men we're heading down there. I want to get a closer look."
Kaji nodded nervously. "Yes, Captain Joe. But this is… not a good place."
"It certainly isn't how I pictured Shangri-La," Polly said.
The older Sherpa turned to her. "No, not Shangri-La. Not here."
When they reached the huge generators that flanked the entrance to the gaping mine shaft, the five companions moved slowly inside the massive cave. The chilling moan of arctic winds echoed off the gorge walls behind them.
"At least inside here, we're sheltered," Sky Captain said.
"It's still not my idea of cozy," Polly said.
Wide-eyed, she stepped deeper into the fantastic cave. Suspended high above her, enormous stalactites of ice dangled from iron girders that crisscrossed the labyrinth. Giant drilling machines, heavy excavators, rail tracks, and ore cars cluttered the main chamber, all of them motionless.
Polly was the first to spot the emblem of a grinning iron-winged skull on all the equipment. "It's Totenkopf, all right."
Amid the clutter, Kaji found several old lanterns, which he managed to light. He handed one to Polly and another to Sky Captain, who led the way, driven by his own curiosity. "Dex!" he called once. The echoes shattering the frozen silence made him cringe.
As they walked slowly through the massive ice cave, reflected lights splashed against rugged glacial walls. Polly could see only dark shadows of strange shapes embedded deep within the thick ice — prehistoric creatures, fossilized remains from the last ice age, unearthed by Totenkopf's mining operation.
Accompanying them, Kaji seemed uninterested in the surreal exhibit. He wrinkled his wide nose. "The air smells like death, Captain Joe."
The five members of the group began to fan out, exploring. Polly walked along the base of one of the enormous but silent drilling machines. She wiped off a thick layer of sediment and dust. "Where is everyone?" The sound of her own voice spooked her.
Trying to hold her hands steady in the oppressive cold, she lifted her camera to snap a photo of the gargantuan machine. Before she clicked the picture, though, Polly noticed that the hook-nosed Sherpa had moved away from the others. Thinking he was unobserved, the man disappeared furtively down a dim side tunnel…
* * *
Sky Captain and Kaji found an elaborate control panel set against a bank of diagnostic machinery on a far wall. They passed an abandoned screen that served as a communication terminal. All the lights were dark on the controls, though. Sky Captain flicked a few switches, but got no response. Looking down at a shelf behind the workstation, the Captain discovered a bound log.
"Maybe Totenkopf did some things the old-fashioned way." Removing his gloves, he opened the book and began flipping through the brittle pages covered with handwriting. "Curious. The last entry was made… twenty-five years ago."
The Sherpa poked among a row of glass specimen jars that contained ore samples. He lifted one of the dusty jars, rattled it, and pressed his face close to the glass to study the contents. "Rocks. What was your enemy looking for?"
Troubled by what he read, Sky Captain closed the old logbook in alarm. "Uranium. A very rich and pure vein." Then he saw Kaji holding the specimen jar. "I wouldn't touch that."
The Sherpa's eyes widened as he looked at the jar in his hand, then quickly set it back on the shelf with all the others. He wiped his hand on his sheepskin jacket.
Sky Captain turned from the log and the communications screen and found an equipment locker beside him. Rattling the latch, he forced the old handle on the locker, and the door creaked open. Inside, he found bulky white suits with glass helmets. "Radiation suits. It seems Totenkopf didn't take any chances."
On a shelf above the thick suits, Sky Captain found a small boxy device with a gauge on its face. Lifting the device by the handle on its top, he flipped a switch, then watched the needle on the gauge immediately swing over into the ominously marked red zone. A familiar raspy crackle emanated from a tiny speaker.
Kaji turned a
pprehensively toward him. "What is it, Captain Joe? What's that noise?"
"This is a Geiger counter." Sky Captain swung the device, pointing the detector end in another direction, but the speaker only squawked louder, becoming a staticky roar. "And that noise indicates radiation. A lot of it. This whole mine is contaminated." He continued to scan the room, but the Geiger counter found no place that wasn't saturated. "We can't stay here."
Concerned, he looked up, suddenly noticing that the others were missing. He couldn't see or hear any of them. He turned to Kaji. "Where's Polly?"
18
A Shadow in the Tunnel. Lies and Exaggerations. A Lit Fuse
Sensing that the hook-nosed Sherpa's mysterious behavior would lead to some answers — or at least to an interesting news story — Polly crept along the twisting passageway.
Though Kaji's two companions had pretended to be surprised at the discovery of Totenkopf's frozen mining complex, this man knew exactly where he was going and what he was doing. Forgetting the chill in the air, she moved tentatively forward, holding the sputtering kerosene lantern to light her way. Confident in his furtiveness, the sinister Sherpa did not notice her sneaking after him.
As she followed the hook-nosed Sherpa's shadow, Polly rounded a bend in the tunnel. Up ahead, the corridor widened into a dead-end chamber blocked by a great metal door with a wheel lock in its center. Surrounded by iron reinforcement strips and heavy rivets, the barricade looked like the hatch to an enormous German U-Boat. Her lamplight spilled across a warning sign hung over the hatch VERBOTEN.
"I don't suppose this is the lunch-break room." Then she frowned, realizing that she could no longer see the furtive Sherpa, though he had nowhere to go except inside.
Curious, Polly stepped up to the heavy steel door, set her lantern on the stone floor, and used both hands to tug the locking wheel. Despite the abandoned appearance of the Himalayan facility, the mechanism was well oiled and maintained. The metal hatch swung wide.
After adjusting her backpack, she retrieved her lantern and held it in front of her as she entered the chamber. The rock-walled room was too large for the weak pool of light to do much good. Polly worked her way slowly into the pitch-black room, sweeping her lantern across the tunnel walls. She tried to be as quiet as she could. The place seemed cavernous, a huge storeroom of some sort. What had Totenkopf been doing in here? She saw stacked crates, wooden barrels —
Suddenly, her circle of lantern light fell upon the evil, grinning face of the hook-nosed Sherpa. He stood only inches from her, waiting with an outstretched knife. He pounced.
Polly reeled backward and let out a scream.
Sky Captain and Kaji moved cautiously down the tunnel. "Miss Perkins!" the Sherpa called.
"Polly!" Sky Captain's voice held more annoyance than concern. She was always wandering off, getting herself — or him — into trouble, or just losing her way. Back there in plain sight, the complex's main chamber was filled with giant drilling machines, deactivated robots, radioactive specimens, and a log full of information about Totenkopf's purpose here.
How much more did she want? Wasn't that enough to keep her interested?
The two men came to a fork in the tunnel, which led off in two divergent paths. He sighed. "Looks like we'll have to split up, Kaji. I'll meet you back outside, whether or not we find Polly. With the background radiation, don't stay here any longer than you have to."
Kaji nodded nervously. "Did you bring a Geiger counter, Captain Joe?"
"We don't need one anymore. Just assume the radiation is bad. Everywhere."
They each turned and proceeded down a different tunnel, calling out for Polly. Sky Captain strode along, grumbling, when he heard a woman's shrill scream coming from straight ahead of him. "Polly!" He raced down the tunnel, nearly slipping on the ice. His bobbing lantern threw weird patterns of light and shadow on the rough walls.
A moment later, he skidded to a stop at the storage chamber's open metal hatch. From inside Polly cried out again, a scream more angry than terrified, and he heard the sounds of a scuffle.
Sky Captain plunged into the room, waved his lantern around, and saw the Sherpa holding a knife to Polly's throat. She squirmed against the man's grip, but he pressed the blade against her soft flesh.
"Joe!" she cried.
Squaring his shoulders, Sky Captain stepped menacingly forward. A low growl came from his throat. "Let her go." He was ready to take the man apart with his bare hands.
Then, behind him, the heavy-browed Sherpa emerged from the shadows. He gripped a long curved knife of his own, poised to strike. "Give me the vials, and the girl will live." The man's intense eyes glittered in the lamplight.
"Vials?" Sky Captain's angry expression dissolved into one of confusion. "What vials?" He glanced a question at Polly, then turned back to the Sherpa with the heavy brow. "What are you talking about?"
"Do not play me for a fool, Sky Captain. I will not ask a second time." He nodded to his hook-nosed companion, whose thin lips twitched in a smile as he pressed the blade harder against Polly's skin and she squeaked.
Exasperated, Sky Captain put his gloved hands on his hips. "Look, I told you, I don't know what you're talking about." He lifted his chin. "You'll just have to kill us."
The Sherpa with the heavy brow shrugged. "As you wish. We can always search your corpses afterward." He nodded again, and his hook-nosed companion prepared to slit Polly's throat.
"Wait!" All eyes turned to Polly. The two Sherpas looked eager and hungry; Sky Captain, suspecting what she was up to, glared at her in exasperation.
Shrugging to loosen the hook-nosed Sherpa's suspicious grip, Polly worked her hand into her backpack, dug through the spare rolls of film, packets of food, and extra mittens, and hesitantly withdrew a small bundle of cloth she had tucked at the bottom. The dying words of Dr. Jennings ran through her head. If Totenkopf got his hands on these vials, it would be the end of the world.
But at the moment she didn't have a choice. Sooner or later, Sky Captain would figure out something… or she would have to do it for him.
Polly carefully unrolled the cloth to reveal the pair of sealed test tubes. The two Sherpas looked down, and their faces lit with evil expressions. She swallowed hard — at least the sharp knife was no longer cutting into her throat — and guiltily averted her gaze from the silent questions in Sky Captain's eyes. "I'm sorry, Joe."
The Sherpa with the hook nose snatched the tubes from Polly's hand. "This is most excellent. Now we have what we came for." Holding their knives ready, the two Sherpas slowly backed out of the room. "Good-bye, my friends. Your journey ends here."
The iron door swung closed behind them with a groan and a clang. By the light thrown off from the lanterns, they watched as the wheel lock clicked and spun shut. It was followed by the sound of a massive bolt sliding into place, like a gunshot echoing in the chamber. They were locked in.
Sky Captain turned to Polly, glaring. "Now… about those vials?"
She avoided him, more intimidated by his anger than she had been by the evil Sherpas. "I was going to tell you, Joe. You have to believe me."
"What was in them? Why are they so important?"
"I don't know. Really, I don't — "
He could not mask his contempt. "More lies." Frustrated, he paced over to the sealed metal hatch, yanked on the locking wheel, then kicked ineffectively against the door. Even with his thick boot, he hurt his toes.
"I'm telling the truth, Joe," she said, following him. "Dr. Jennings gave them to me just before he died. I don't know any of the details, but he said the countdown would begin and the world would end if Totenkopf got his hands on them. They were the last words he spoke."
Sky Captain found all this too incredible for words. "You expect me to believe that? You've done nothing but lie to me from the beginning." He kicked the door with his heel this time.
"Okay, I'm a liar, Joe, but I don't exaggerate. That's what Jennings said, back in his lab." Polly sniffed. "Wouldn'
t you tell the truth with your dying breath?"
"Unfortunately, you just might have a chance to find out." After straining against the locking wheel again, Sky Captain withdrew from the door. Then a realization formed in his mind. "So that's what Totenkopf was looking for all along: two test tubes. And he thought we had them? That's why he took Dex, and you didn't even tell me?"
"I'm sorry, Joe. I never meant for any of this to happen."
Fuming, he did not know what to say. Exhausted after all he had been through in the past couple of days, he squatted on the floor and leaned against the wall. Every step just got worse and worse. "Oh, did I tell you about the radiation? We've got to get out of here."
"No kidding."
With a frown, he turned away from Polly, listening intently. "Shhh." A faint hissing sound whispered through the air of the sealed room. "Do you hear that?"
For the first time since he had charged into the chamber, Sky Captain took the time to look around them. Standing again, he picked up one of the kerosene lanterns and held it high. "Where are we anyway?"
"I didn't have time to do much exploring, Joe. I had a knife to my throat."
Hundreds of wooden crates, reinforced barrels, and riveted metal boxes were stacked to the ceiling of the cavernous room. He stepped toward one of the crates and Polly helped him pry open the lid. With a gloved hand, Sky Captain pushed packing straw aside to reveal neatly layered sticks of dynamite packed like sardines in a can.
His eyes slowly panned the room with a look of dread at the sight of the hundreds of containers that surrounded them. Now he read the bold stenciled German words: SPRENGMITTEL and GEFAHR: DYNAMIT.
"Does that say what I think it does?"
Polly nodded. "This room is full of explosives."
"Well, that's a little more immediate than back ground radiation." He let out another weary sigh. One of these days, he was going to have a lucky break.
All around them, the hissing sound grew louder. The two of them scanned the large chamber. At the same time, they both saw a dozen lit fuses lining the wall, out of reach. Sparks rapidly climbed the strands and moved across the high ceiling toward the crates of explosives that filled the room.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow Page 10