"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 half-shout. "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 glearning 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 tiying to extract information from what's available. First of all, we must gain access to whatever records there are that contain references to unexplained 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 diem. 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 Swtradhara. That's an ancient text from India in which astronomical events were recorded with incredible accuracy. And not by dewy-eyed 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 ciy 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?"
"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."
"What makes you so sure it was off-Earth?" Henshaw broke in.
"We calculated distance and speed. It was moving with a velocity in excess of two thousand miles an hour."
"So that leaves us with a memory," Indy said sourly, "and that's not much to go on."
"Why do you say that?" Castilano protested. "Fourteen eyewitnesses are but a memory?"
"That is all it is," Indy said with a no-nonsense tone. "It doesn't pin down anything but a sighting of something you cannot identify. Look, Filipo, if Will and Rene took up the Ford and did wild flying around this island and then flew away, and you had never before seen or heard of an airplane, and you had no pictures for later reference, what would you deduce from that sighting? I know, I know. Experienced, reliable observers are at hand. But when it's over, what do you have but a wild story? No matter if it's true."
"Wait a moment," Henshaw said abruptly. "There is one thing that hasn't come up before. The Empress Kali incident. And that flat craft that hovered? I read in the report of one eyewitness that he said the edges of the ship, or disc, or whatever it was, weren't clearly defined. He didn't use that phrase. He said the edges seemed to waver, shift in and out of focus."
Indy could hardly contain himself. It was exactly the kind of clue for which he'd been searching. He decided, at that very moment, to keep what he had just learned—what Henshaw's words had told him—to himself until later.
"Does that mean something important?" Henshaw asked.
"Sure," Indy said, feigning indifference. "Your witness has watery eyes." He rose to his feet, making eye contact with Henshaw, then spoke to the group. "That's it, everybody. We've gone over the ancient records and what we've come up with is that history is loaded with reports of unexplained things moving through the sky. None of which does us any real good except that we've followed the proper rules—examine everything possible. Be ready for takeoff tomorrow morning, please."
"What time, Indy?" Cromwell asked.
"Dawn."
Cromwell groaned. "You're destroying my beauty sleep," he complained.
Indy laughed. "Try a face-lifting instead." Indy turned to Henshaw.
"Let's go over the equipment list again, if you don't mind?"
Henshaw picked up immediately on Indy's unspoken request. Meet together, just the two of them. "Got it. I'll get the papers and meet you back here in ten minutes."
"Did it hit you about the same time?" Henshaw asked Indy.
"It sure seems like it. I'm still not certain of the connection, but when you started talking about the edges of the disc seeming to waver, well, my first reaction was heat distortion."
"You're picking it up quickly," Henshaw told him. "You're smack on target. Heat distortion; why didn't we put two and two together before!"
"Harry, you came up with the clue," Indy said quickly. You said this Coanda fellow was describing a blowtorch effect with an engine, right?"
"Exactly. We've got to speak with Coanda directly, Indy. Face to face. You learn more that way than you ever will from any paperwork. So either one of us, or the both of us, must go to France, and keep that trip absolutely quiet. Otherwise we make targets of ourselves."
Indy nodded. "Agreed. We'll work out the details later. Anything else?"
"Yes, and I got the news only this morning. This time it's the paperwork that provides what may be a critical lead for us." Henshaw smiled with satisfaction. "The paperwork was buried in old archives in France. I've had a team there with a cover story about exchanging planes and equipment between our museums and theirs. Know what they found? Sorry. Of course you couldn't. An entry in the patent office back in 1914 in Paris. Someone had applied for a patent that year." Henshaw paused. "For a jet engine."
Indy smiled. "A buck gets you ten the man's name was Coanda."
"You win," Henshaw said.
13
At five o'clock the next morning the team gathered by the Ford and pushed the airplane onto the dew-wet grass. Henshaw and Castilano were there for brief final conversations. "Everything you need for your crossing will be waiting for you at Bangor," he told Indy. "And you're in luck. I've been getting the weather reports from Canada and the ocean-crossing navigation ships at sea. There's a terrific high that will keep the skies clear most of the way and give you a dickens of a tailwind."
"Great. Thanks, Harry." They shook hands, and the rest of the team
boarded the airplane.
Indy wondered if this whole idea of his was really as crazy as it sounded. Crossing the North Atlantic in an airplane that could cruise steadily at only 115 miles an hour sounded like lunacy when you envisioned the huge ocean area before them.
"It's a duck walk, really," Cromwell had convinced him. "With our extra fuel—and we could even shut down the nose engine and fly on only two to stretch time and fuel—the trip will be a piece of cake. The longest stretch over water is only about eight hundred and fifty miles. Just one thing I don't fathom, Indy."
"Which is?"
"Why are you making a public spectacle of us? From what I've been hearing of this lot that's after you, I'd have thought you'd rather be out of sight as much as possible."
Indy patted Will Cromwell on the back. "Got to flush them out. This is the best way. Doesn't it seem just a bit strange to you? If these people really are gathering so much military might, why has no one come after us with all that firepower?"
"I hadn't thought about it, I confess."
"Confession's good for the soul, Will. You and Rene fly, I'll take care of the fun and games."
"As you say, Guv."
They climbed out into the sun breaking the horizon. Indy slipped on his headset and mike intercom to talk to the cockpit. "Frenchy, before we reach the Connecticut coast, hold an easterly heading until I call you back. You'll feel the upper hatch open for a few moments. I'll call you when it's closed."
"Right."
Indy felt the gentle bank and saw they were headed directly into the fiery disc clearing the horizon. He walked back to a storage locker, withdrew a mahogony box, and returned to the upper hatch where the machine-gun mount could be raised. He pushed open the hatch, picked up the box, and then stood on the gun mount so that his head and shoulders extended into the airstream. For a moment he struggled with the mahogony box.
Gale started from her seat to assist Indy, but Jocko placed his hand on her arm to restrain her. "This is for him alone," he said. The look on his face more than his words brought Gale back into her seat.
Indiana Jones and tyhe Sky Pirates Page 17