Indiana Jones and the Hollow Earth

by Max McCoy

  A few minutes later Indy said, "We have no weapons, except these two hunting knives. And my revolver and my whip."

  "Where are the automatic rifles and such?" Ulla asked.

  "I think we dropped them out of the bottom of the plane while we were fighting Dieter off."

  "What a waste." Ulla shook her head. "How much ammunition do you have?"

  "Five shots," Indy answered.

  Ulla nodded as she strapped on one of the hunting knives and gave the other to Sparks. "Well, we'll have to save those for an emergency situation. What about food and medicine?"

  "We have five cans of beans," Sparks said, "and they are frozen solid. A couple of them have busted open. We also have a tub of lard, a tin of sardines, and two Hershey bars. We have one standard camp medical kit, nothing fancy."

  "Not bad, considering," Ulla said. "Now, for my report. We have two sleeping bags, a blanket, one white-gas stove with a small canister of fuel, a box of matches, and one small American flag."

  "No tent?" Sparks asked.

  "No tent," Ulla said. "But we can build igloos instead. I will show you how. It's tough work, but it will be worth it in order to have some protection from the elements."

  "It could be worse," Indy said. "Ulla, do you have any idea how large this piece of ice might be?"

  "It's hard to tell," Ulla said. "But I would say it is at least a quarter of a mile. When we get our camp established, one of us should carefully walk the perimeter to see."

  "Sparks, did you manage to fix our position?"

  "That's what I was trying to tell you when the ice started to break," he said. "The fix I got from the sun doesn't make any sense at all. And look at the sun—look how red and strange it is. It's far above the horizon still, but it's like looking at a sunset, through layers of atmosphere."

  "The position," Indy said.

  "According to the fix I got, and my charts, we ought to be far below the Arctic Circle—like somewhere on the Norway coast. Obviously, we aren't."

  "Can you explain that?"

  "No," Sparks said. "But it's like we're on the lip of a huge—something—that's folding back into the earth. I know that's impossible."

  "Take another reading in a few more hours," Indy instructed. "Maybe you just made a mistake with the charts in the excitement after the landing."

  "I beg your pardon, Dr. Jones," Sparks said, "but I don't make mistakes with calculations. As a matter of fact, I find them strangely comforting."

  "Try it again, anyway," Indy told him.

  "With no radio," Sparks said, "and on a moving block of ice, how are they ever going to find us again?"

  "Everybody up!" Ulla called. "Prepare your knives, or whatever else you can find to dig with. We are going to erect some proper shelter."

  Six hours later Indy lay exhausted inside the domeshaped igloo of snow and ice while Sparks warmed a can of beans over the little stove. He reached for the tin of sardines and was about to open them when Ulla snatched them away.

  "I was going to share." Indy looked a little wounded. "These will serve us better as bait," Ulla said. "I can fashion a hook and we have some cord here to use as line. Maybe we can catch a fish that will feed us all day instead of just for an hour."

  "You've done this before, haven't you?" Sparks asked.

  "Not exactly under these conditions," Ulla said. "But yes, at various places around the world, my survival has often depended upon making the right choices at the right times."

  "Where's that American flag?" Indy asked, still smarting a little from Ulla's reprimand.

  "Why?"

  "I'm going to plant it on top of the igloo, to help whoever is searching for us," he said. "I can think, too, you know."

  When Indy had crawled outside with the flag, Ulla leaned over to Sparks. "Men!" she scoffed. "You must be careful not to bruise their egos too much. I was going to put the flag up myself, but we'll let Indy do it. It may make him feel better."

  "Gee," Sparks said, and bit his lower lip so he wouldn't cry. "You have anything to make me feel better?"

  Ulla put her arms around him and hugged him.

  "Don't worry, Nicholas," she soothed. "If you want to cry a little bit, if that will help, then go ahead. But we're going to get out of this all right. We just have to keep thinking, keep working, and above all not give up hope."

  In three days the food was almost gone, and Ulla had caught only one fish with the sardines from the tin. Indy had scouted for a quarter of a mile in either direction from their camp, but could see no end to the huge block of ice.

  "It's time we moved," he said when he returned.

  "I think we would be better to stay here," Sparks said.

  "There's nothing left here," Indy said. "We're out of food. We need to go on a foraging expedition. I have my revolver, and you can put your knife on the end of the flagstaff to make a spear."

  "But shouldn't we stay here so they can find us?"

  "Nicholas..." Ulla sighed. "It's been seventy-two hours and we have heard no noise, no airplanes overhead. If the Penguin did get off the ice and send a rescue plane back, they obviously don't know where to look. Now is the time to move."

  Sparks nodded and began packing his things.

  They set out toward the south, and for the next twelve discouraging hours they saw nothing but snow and ice. The monotony of the empty plateaus was occasionally broken by dangerous crevasses of glittering blue, sometimes with green seawater at the bottom.

  "Have you noticed something odd?" Indy asked. "The sun hasn't set. I know the day up here is something like twenty hours long, but in the three or four days we've been here it hasn't gotten dark."

  "Isn't this the land of the midnight sun?" Sparks asked.

  "Yes," Ulla answered, "but it doesn't stay light all day until the summer solstice, June twenty-first. We haven't been up here that long."

  They continued marching, growing ever more tired. After three more hours of the grueling trek, Sparks sat down dejectedly in the snow.

  "We're lost," he moaned, his chin in his gloved hands.

  "We may be lost, but we re still alive," Indy reminded him. "Come on, let's go. You can't just sit here, you'll freeze to death. We have to keep moving. Just a little while longer, all right?"

  "Oh, all right," Sparks snapped. "You sound like my father."

  Indy and Ulla paused.

  "I'll take that as a compliment," Indy said.

  The three trudged on. Two hours later they spotted a clump of dark bundles on the ice, and their hope gave them strength. As they approached, however, their spirits again plummeted.

  It was a campsite. A half-dozen corpses lay strewn about, and the carcasses of many more dogs, some still hitched to their sledges. Most of the bodies were covered in snow and a sheet of ice, but a couple of the men were still inside their rotting tents. Their heads, feet, and hands were bundled in rags. They looked as if they had simply lain down to go to sleep—until you noticed their noses, which had turned black and fallen away.

  "Why aren't they skeletons?" Sparks asked.

  "Putrefaction is caused by microbes inside the body," Indy explained, kneeling down to inspect one of them. "The cold keeps them dormant. Well, we have a knife here, and a rifle—but I'm afraid it's useless. The cold, it seems, hasn't stopped the rusting process."

  "You can't be thinking of robbing their bodies?" Sparks gasped in horror.

  "I'm sure if they could speak, they would say we were welcome to whatever could be of use," Ulla rationalized as she began to pick through one of the sledges.

  "Who are they?" Sparks asked.

  Indy knelt down and inspected one of the victims. The revolver in his belt was of the percussion variety, and beneath his heavy coat, his clothes were decidedly Victorian. On one of the sledges was tacked a large flag, and although it was heavy with ice, Indy could discern the pattern of the Union Jack beneath.

  "British, probably mid-nineteenth century," Indy said. "I'd say they were attempting to find the No
rthwest Passage. Probably the Lord Dwyden expedition."

  "You mean these guys are nearly a hundred years old?" Sparks asked.

  "The gentleman over there with the muttonchops is Lord Dwyden himself, more than likely," Indy said. "Sparks, why don't you make a quick survey of the site, and attempt to mark its location by dead reckoning from where we left the Penguin. This is of historical significance."

  "All right," Sparks said, a little awed. He took out his notebook and paused. "How do you want—"

  "Make a note of the location of each of the bodies, and of the sledges, and of the dogs. If you're up to it, you may poke around the bodies and see if you can get a name from each one. The least we can do is to notify their families back in Britain."

  "You mean their descendants," Sparks said. "They look like they all died at about the same time. Isn't that kind of strange? Do you think it was disease, or what?"

  "Or what," Indy said. "I'd say they died from vitamin A poisoning."

  "How can you tell that?" Ulla asked.

  "It's a logical guess," Indy explained. "In the early days of arctic exploration, people were in the habit—when their sledges grew lighter and they no longer needed as many dogs—of eating the surplus."

  "Ech!" Sparks was horrified.

  "They used Huskies to pull these sledges, but what they didn't know was that the husky stores an incredible amount of vitamin A in its liver," Indy said. "The liver was considered a particularly tasty and nutritious part of the dog. After a few dozen meals of husky, you ended up with vitamin A poisoning and died."

  "How do you know that?" Ulla asked.

  "I like dogs," Indy said. "I read about them. I'm named after a dog, after all."

  "Now you're pulling our collective legs," Ulla said.

  "Nope." Indy shook his head. "I adopted my own nickname. It drove my father nuts."

  "What's your real name?" Sparks asked.

  "When we get out of this," Indy said, "I promise to tell you."

  "I won't count on finding out, then," Sparks said. His discouragement had returned. "I'm afraid we're going to end up like these guys, and somebody will come along in a hundred years and say, 'What a shame—they didn't know that the combination of Hershey bars and sardines is fatal at arctic temperatures.'"

  "Then it's a good thing I used them for bait," Ulla said.

  "Sparks is clever even when he's whining," Indy said.

  "Have you found anything useful?" Ulla asked.

  "Maybe," Indy said. "Lots of bear skins. Most of them are pretty ratty, but some we can use. Candles. Half a jug of whiskey."

  Indy uncorked the whiskey and took a sniff.

  "Ugh," he said. "I don't know what this has turned to, but it's not drinkable."

  "Well, take the candles. We can eat the tallow if we have to. And I think this sledge is in pretty good shape," Ulla said. "The runners are good, the harness is in one piece, and the wood seems strong enough. Two of us could pull it while the third one rides. We could take turns."

  "Good idea." Indy brought the bear skins over and piled them on the sledge. "Sparks, I said you'd be able to rest soon. Sir, I give you your throne, at least until the next shift."

  "Swell," Sparks said, plopped down on the sledge, and covered himself with the skins.

  "Is there anything else we can use?" Ulla asked.

  Indy thought for a moment. "I don't think so. Most of this stuff is pretty far gone. But I took the poles from the tents, thinking we could use them for spears or to pitch our own tents with the bear skins."

  Ulla took up half of the harness and threw the other half to Indy.

  "Let's go," she announced.

  "Wait," Sparks said. "Don't you think we ought to say something? Like a prayer or something?"

  Indy paused.

  "Sparks is right," he said.

  "May I?" Ulla asked.

  "Be my guest."

  Ulla took the knife from her belt and held the blade aloft.

  "We give thanks to the Old Ones who have given us a thirst for life and have allowed us to drink deeply of one more day! We give thanks to the Dead Ones who have graciously shared their possessions to ease our journey! We give thanks to this vast and inhospitable world for the opportunity to test ourselves and know ourselves better than the timid ones who cower at home by their fires! And finally we give thanks to our enemies, for without them our swords would not gleam so bright nor our hearts beat so strong!"

  "Wow," Sparks said. "I was thinking of the Lord's Prayer, but that was swell, just the same. I'll have to try to remember that one to tell my pastor back in Iowa."

  "Ready?" Indy asked.

  "Mush!" Sparks said.

  "You're not getting my whip," Indy said.

  They made better time with the sledge, but it was strenuous going for the two "dogs." It wasn't long before Indy's back and calves began to ache, but since Ulla didn't complain, he wasn't about to mention it. Six hours later, when he couldn't stand the pain anymore, he sat down in the snow beside the sledge and rested his back against it.

  "I thought you would never stop," Ulla panted.

  "Come on, buddy," he said as he shook Sparks awake. His lips were so blistered it was hard for him to speak. "It's your turn to be the dog. Let Ulla rest for a spell."

  "I'm fine," Ulla said painfully. Her cheeks were sun-and wind-burned, and her lips were even more blistered than Indy's.

  "I know you're as tired as I am," Indy said. "One of us has to rest first. It might as well be you."

  "Oh, all right," Ulla grumbled as she gave up the harness and took Sparks's place in the sledge.

  "Do you smell the sea?" the teenager asked.

  "I've been thinking that myself for the last half hour," Indy said. "But there's so much frost up my nose I wasn't sure."

  "It's definitely the sea," Sparks said as he struggled into the harness. "And the terrain has gotten a bit hillier, too. Sort of like sand dunes, only made out of snow."

  "Yeah," Indy agreed. "It makes it a little harder to pull the sledge up one side, but we kind of slide down the other."

  After twenty minutes of pulling, Indy's legs felt like rubber and Sparks was sweating profusely.

  "Let's take a break," Indy suggested. "Be careful to wipe the sweat off your eyelashes, or your eyes will freeze shut. It's happened to me a couple of times already. And I think my nose is getting frostbitten."

  Sparks nodded as he leaned against the sledge.

  Ulla sat up.

  "What?" Indy asked.

  "Did you hear that sound?"

  "What sound?"

  "Shush." She placed a finger to her lips. "Don't move, don't speak."

  Barely audible, the sound of something moving across the ice behind them, behind the last dune, reached their ears. It would take a few steps, snort, and then take a few more steps. It sounded like a moose or some other big animal. Then it growled, a low, frightening sound, and there was no doubt.

  "Polar bear," Ulla whispered. "Indy, you had better get your revolver out."

  "You're kidding," he said.

  "No, I'm not," Ulla said. "I thought it had been tracking us for the last half mile or so, but I wasn't sure. They have a keen sense of smell, and when they're hungry they will eat just about anything."

  Indy drew the Webley.

  "Perhaps it's a small one," Ulla said. "Then we'll have something fresh to eat."

  "And if it's a big one?" Sparks asked.

  "The handgun won't stop it," Ulla said. "And we can't run away from it. It can run at about thirty-five miles per hour forever."

  The top of the bear's white head loomed above the dune, sniffing the air. Its coarse fur was matted and its muzzle was flecked with the dried blood of its last meal.

  "It's been hunting seal," Ulla said. "But it still looks hungry. It's going to charge us in just a few seconds. Indy, you put as many shots as you can into it."

  "Where do I aim?" he asked.

  "The skull is too thick for your little gun," she sai
d.

  "My little gun?" Indy asked, holding up the Webley.

  "A thirty-eight will do little more than make it angry," Ulla said. "But it's all we've got, I suppose. If we're lucky the bear will stand up—they usually do when they're about to attack—so they can use their front paws to tear you apart. Then shoot as if you're shooting to kill a man—the heart, the lungs. But lower, beneath the shoulders." The bear climbed up on top of the dune, stretching its long neck toward them. It bared its teeth, shook its head, and growled again. Then it paused, apparently unsure of its next move.

  "My god, it must weigh a thousand pounds."

  "More," Ulla said. "Some say that the polar bear can be bigger even than the Kodiak."

  "Maybe it'll go away," Indy said.

  "It won't." Ulla had her knife in her hand. "Sparks, be ready to use your spear if it charges you. If it charges Indy or me, you just run as fast as you can."

  The bear came loping down the dune toward them, snarling, with its head down. Its fat stomach rolled from side to side as it walked. Its fangs were bared and the claws on its front paws gleamed like black razors.

  Indy took aim, holding the Webley in both hands.

  "Not yet," Ulla whispered. "Wait."

  The bear roared, then stood up on its hind feet. It was nearly twice the height of a man. It was thirty yards away, and Indy took aim at an imaginary target the size of a pie plate in the center of its rib cage. He fired twice, in quick succession. The bear rolled over to one side on the snow, bellowing in anger.

  "You got him," Sparks said.

  Then the bear got up and charged directly at them. Indy got off one more shot, which struck the bear in the center of the skull, but it had no effect. Indy had two rounds left, and he was planning on saving them until the bear had him in its paws, when he would jam the Webley into its mouth and pull the trigger.

  At that moment a report that sounded like a cannon blast echoed across the snow and the bear was knocked sideways, ten yards away from the sledge. Another shot came as the bear tried again to rise, and this time particles of its skull and brains were scattered across the snow. The bear gave one last defiant look at its intended prey, then collapsed.

  "Where did that come from?" Indy asked.