by Max McCoy
The ship pitched forward, as if to slam against the side of the mountain, but instead was swept into a tunnel that could not be seen through the storm outside. The tops of the masts were snapped off like pencils by the roof of the chasm, and lines and spars came crashing down onto the deck.
They seemed to hang in the air for a moment, as if on the lip of a waterfall, and then the Berserker hurtled downward in the darkness, trailing its wreckage behind it. There was no light in the shaft, and all had the sensation they were swirling down a gigantic drain.
Sparks screamed.
At the bottom of the shaft the little ship struck an underground lake with such force that she dove deep beneath the surface. The water surged over the decks with an explosive fury that nearly knocked Indy out. Tied by his hands around the mast, he could feel his body twisting helplessly in the water. But thanks to her watertight hull, the Berserker shot back to the surface like a cork.
Indy gasped.
It was perfectly still in this new pool of water. He took his pocketknife and cut himself clear of the mast, then freed Ulla.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
She gagged and threw up some water.
"I'll take that for a yes," he said.
Then Indy crawled aft, where he found Sparks unconscious but alive. He and Gunnar untied him and laid him on the deck, which was listing badly to port.
"How are you, Captain?" Indy asked.
Gunnar smiled and showed him a wrist that had obviously been broken while he was attempting to control the wheel. The bones were protruding through the skin.
"Ulla," Indy called. "Gunnar's injured. We have to take care of it right away."
Ulla staggered back to the wheel.
"Is this thing going to stay afloat?" she asked.
"I don't know," Indy said. "It looks pretty badly beaten up."
"Wait until I see my father and tell him about the shoddy workmanship on his bear-hunting boats," Ulla said. "Would an even deck be too much to ask for?"
With that, she went off to retrieve the whiskey from the cabin, then poured it over Gunnar's wound. Then, while Indy held a rope attached to Gunnar's right hand and pulled, she delicately pushed the bones of the forearm back beneath the skin.
Gunnar groaned and bit the stem of his pipe in two.
"We're not done yet." Ulla smiled. "I have to feel around a little more and make sure the ends match. Indy, I need a little pressure this time, just enough to—there, that's it."
Gunnar's eyelids fluttered.
"Indy, get me some sheets from below so we can bandage his arm up. It wouldn't be much of a splint, but it's the best we can do right now."
Then Ulla took the whiskey and turned to Sparks. She held his head while she poured a little of the beverage into his mouth.
He coughed and sputtered.
"How are you?" Ulla asked.
"I know I'm not dead," the boy said. "I hurt too much. My head feels like it's been hit with a baseball bat."
"You've got a pretty good-sized lump on your forehead," Ulla confirmed. "I think one of the spars might have caught you a glancing blow when they gave way."
When Indy came back on deck from the cabin, Sparks told him to look up. There, framed in the volcanic throat of the mountain, which glowed with flecks of lava, was a sky full of stars. And floating peacefully among the stars was the dark cigar-shaped outline of the Graf Zeppelin.
"I'm not getting it." Sparks grimaced. "If the sun never sets up here, then how can we see the stars? Maybe it's like being at the bottom of a well. They say you can see the stars at noon."
"I don't think so," Indy said. "That well thing is a myth. Maybe we're just in that two hours of darkness each day. That one star up there has to be the North Star. See it, just about dead center above us?"
"That makes calculations easy," Sparks said. "Latitude ninety degrees. As fantastic as it sounds, we have to be at the North Pole—or awfully close to it."
"No, we're not at the pole," Indy said. "We're under it."
Sparks whistled.
"Swell," he said. "How do you think the zep got through the storm?"
"They didn't go through it," Indy said. "They sailed over it. We took the hard way."
"And this is what they've been looking for all along?"
Indy nodded. "It's the entrance to something," he said. "I'm not exactly sure what, but something."
Suddenly the hair on the back of his neck and arms bristled. "Hey, do you feel that?" he asked.
"Yeah," Sparks said. "It feels like some kind of electrical discharge."
A nebulous rainbow of colors began to form in the night sky above them. Then the rainbow started to rotate, then it shot down and illuminated the interior of the volcano in a celestial light. The four voyagers were bathed in a mixture of blue and green and rose. The rainbow continued downward, seeming to disappear somewhere beyond the edge of their subterranean lake.
"The northern lights," Indy said.
"At least we can see now," Ulla commented.
The Berserker drifted over to the shore of the lake, where they tied it fast to a pillar of rock. Indy jumped down onto the gravel, then stood with his hands on his hips while he turned around and inspected the interior. About halfway up on one wall lay the wreckage of an aircraft.
"What do you think?" Ulla asked.
"I don't know," Indy said. "It must be a half mile away, at least. Do you think we can make it up there?"
Ulla studied the rock formations.
"I think so, without much problem," she said. "There seems to be a natural kind of stairway winding around the inside of the cone."
"Then we have to go take a look," Indy said. "It might be the Penguin. Gunnar, you stay here and take care of your arm. Sparks, do you feel like a little hike?"
"My head hurts, but I think I can make it," the boy said. "I'd hate to think of Clarence and the guys lying up there hurt."
"That's my feeling," Indy told him. "Let's get going."
It took the trio more than two hours to climb to the wreckage, and when they reached the plateau on which it lay it became obvious that it wasn't the Penguin, or any other type of twin-engine craft. It was a smaller plane, and although it had obviously tumbled some distance, the red-and-white fuselage was largely intact. It was a hydroplane, and one of its pontoons was missing. On the nose of the plane was a name, clearly legible: THE LATHAM. In white chalk, on the nose, was the following message: CREW DEAD. ATTEMPTING TO USE PONTOON AS CANOE. AMUNDSEN. 26 JUNE 1928.
"Well, now we know what became of Amundsen," Sparks concluded.
"No, we know what became of his plane," Indy corrected. "He obviously walked away from the crash. Smart, using the pontoon as a boat. But there's no chance he could fight that current and get to the outside."
"Maybe he didn't go to the outside," Ulla suggested.
Sparks stepped into the crumpled fuselage.
"Where are the bodies of the crew?" he asked.
"Amundsen buried them," Indy said. "In those rock cairns, along the wall here. Look, there's a name chalked on the largest rock atop each of them."
"Good," Sparks said. "I hate corpses."
Indy went deeper into the wreckage. He came out a few minutes later, plainly disappointed.
"The radio is all busted up," he reported. "The batteries are dead, anyway, after six years. And it looks like Amundsen took everything with him that wasn't bolted down, including the log."
"Well, the old man was nothing if not thorough," Ulla said.
Sparks stepped out of the plane.
"It was a long climb up here for nothing," he said.
"Not quite," a voice above them said. "It saved us from climbing all the way down to the bottom to kill you, no?"
"Reingold," Indy snarled.
On the ledge above the wreckage Reingold appeared, followed by his men. They were ten feet above Indy and the others, and the troopers began to scramble down.
"At your service," the SS captain said be
hind his drawn Walther. "I believe you have already met some of the other members of my squad, especially Sergeants Dortmuller and Liebel."
The officers in question jumped down onto one of the rock cairns, their submachine guns pointed at the trio. They were followed by a half-dozen troopers similarly armed.
"Oh, and of course we can't forget the newest member of the Thule Society, can we?" Reingold added with a triumphant smirk. "Dr. Jones, meet SS Specialist Alecia Dunstin. I believe you two once meant something to one another, but that affair, you could say, was doomed from the start."
He pulled Alecia forward so that Indy could see her.
"She looks rather smart in her uniform, doesn't she?" Reingold taunted. "And I must say, she has earned it. The journal gave us much information, but it was Alecia's clairvoyance that helped us to pinpoint the exact spot. Many people don't believe in that sort of thing, I'm afraid—until they have a well to dig, or a lost civilization to find."
"Don't," Alecia said.
"Dortmuller! Liebel!" Reingold shouted. "Help us down from here. You others, don't take your guns off them!"
Reingold straightened his jacket when he reached the ground. Alecia kept her eyes lowered.
"Specialist Dunstin, observe!" Reingold commanded. "It looks like Dr. Jones's flame did not last very long for you. It appears that he lost no time in finding a blonde to replace you."
"Don't believe him," Ulla told Alecia. "Indy's not my type."
"Silence the degenerate," Reingold said.
Dortmuller brought the gun up and aimed.
"Not that way, you idiot," Reingold said.
Dortmuller walked over and slammed the butt of his gun into Ulla's stomach. It knocked the breath out of her, but she remained on her feet.
"You give us Nordic types a bad name," Ulla managed to wheeze.
"Leave her alone," Indy said. "She has nothing to do with this. It's me you ought to be slugging in the stomach."
"All in good time," Reingold assured him. "Why don't we begin by asking about that precious yellow canister which you stole from us? Reichsfuhrer Himmler was particularly distressed to learn of its theft. His astrologer assured him it was vitally important to the future."
"Tell Himmler to go—"
"Careful, Dr. Jones," Reingold said. "You shouldn't say that."
"No, but I can think it," Indy spat. "Look, I'll tell you everything if you just let Ulla and the boy go."
"I have all of you," Reingold said. "Why would I let anybody go?"
"Because I'll kill you if you don't?" Indy ventured.
"Reach for that revolver under your jacket," Reingold said, "and my men will cut you to pieces. You're in no position to threaten anybody. Or to bargain, for that matter."
"Captain," Alecia said.
"No, my dear. In German."
"Hauptsturmfuhrer."
"Passable, but you need to work on your accent," Reingold said. "You sound like a London guttersnipe."
"May I have a word with Dr. Jones?" she asked, wiping away her tears. "I think I may be able to persuade him."
Alecia walked over, and now it was Indy's turn to stare at the ground.
"Nice boots," he said.
"Will you look at me?"
"No," he said. "You'll do that thing with your eyes and make me agree to anything." Indy paused, his body rigid. "Can you tell me why you betrayed me? Betrayed yourself?"
"I didn't betray you," Alecia said defiantly. "If anything, I was attempting to save your life. You know what these chaps are capable of."
"Too bad I didn't know what you were capable of."
"Don't thank me now," Alecia said, and crossed her arms.
"Or later."
"Indy, things went so horribly wrong between us," she said, and touched his sleeve gently. "And I kept having these recurring nightmares—prophecies, really—of people dying, even more than during the Great War. Death on the ground, in the sea, in the sky. Death raining down from the sky on civilian populations all across Europe and Asia. Cities reduced to ashes—with nothing but a single bomb."
"Science fiction." Ulla sneered.
"You don't know what it did to me," Alecia pleaded. "My spirit went into shock, my mind into a kind of fugue state. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. And the thing that got to me the most is that I saw you dying. I've seen what's going to happen to you, Indy—thrown into some horrible tomb in the desert with thousands of snakes."
Indy swallowed hard. "Snakes?"
"And then the tomb is sealed shut and that's it."
"Thousands of snakes?" He swallowed again.
"Millions of people are going to die, Indy, and you are one of them."
Tears rolled down her cheeks and dribbled onto the SS rune on her collar.
"A city destroyed by one bomb?" Ulla said. "You're obviously some kind of delusional charlatan who needs to justify her own importance."
"I believe her," Sparks said.
"Nobody is really going to win like this," Alecia continued. "I thought I had to do something to keep so many people from dying. Isn't it better that one side wins quickly rather than millions dying in a kind of hell on earth?"
"Not if the winning side is their side," Indy said. "That's the funny thing about life—there are some things worth dying for and some that aren't, and when you lose your ability to make that distinction, you're something less than human."
Alecia removed her officer's cap and looked at it with a wry smile, her thumb tracing the aluminum skull insignia on the black velvet band. Then she threw the hat over the side and began to unbutton her tunic.
"What're you doing?" Reingold demanded.
"I quit," she said.
She wriggled her shoulders and let the black jacket fall to the ground. Her hair spilled over the shoulders of her white blouse.
"Nobody leaves the SS," Reingold warned.
"Watch me," she said as she stepped forward. She took Indy's face in her hands and kissed him passionately. Indy returned the kiss and put his arms protectively around her.
"Get back," Reingold ordered. He advanced with the Walther held tightly in his left hand. "Of course I knew it would come to this eventually. Do you really think we would allow a woman into the SS? Quite a nice charade, though, while it lasted, wasn't it?"
"I love you," Alecia said, and kissed Indy again.
Indy saw Reingold's finger tighten on the trigger. He and Alecia were standing side by side, and he was unsure for a moment at which one of them the Nazi captain was aiming. When he finally attempted to push Alecia behind him, it was too late—and in the wrong direction.
When Reingold fired, the bullet flew within an inch of Indy's twisted chest and shoulders. It struck Alecia in the ribs, beneath her right arm, which was still around Indy's neck. Her lips were still pressed against his.
Alecia stiffened in Indy's arms as the coppery taste of blood entered his mouth from hers. The bullet had lodged in her right lung. As Indy slumped to the floor with her and cradled her head, Alecia looked into his eyes and smiled.
"There are some things worth dying for," she whispered.
"My God, no!" Indy screamed.
Reingold fired again, this time placing a bullet in Alecia's heart.
Her face tightened with pain, then her features relaxed and her blue eyes became cloudy.
Not a word was spoken. Nobody moved.
Then Indy drew his Webley and took aim at Reingold's chest. Sweat beaded on his forehead and upper lip, and his mouth was twisted in hate.
He pulled the trigger.
The hammer fell, but nothing happened. The cartridge was so waterlogged it would not fire.
Ulla reached out for the nearest soldier and grabbed the back of his collar while she swept his legs out from beneath him. By the time he hit the floor, her boot had already connected solidly with his jaw, snapping his head around at an unnatural angle. She took the short MP-40 submachine gun from his lifeless hands and turned it on the other soldiers.
The first
soldier that raised his weapon was hit by a burst that Ulla fired from her hip. He fell over the edge and tumbled down into the throat of the volcanic crater, bouncing off rocks and finally landing in a scalding pool of lava.
The other soldiers lowered their weapons.
"Kill him!" Reingold snarled. "Kill Jones!"
"Be my guest." Dortmuller gestured politely with one hand, then pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose with the other.
Reingold took aim at Indy's head.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Ulla said over the barrel of the MP-40.
Reingold shrugged, then tossed the Walther over the side.
"Let's get out of here," Ulla said. She reached down and relieved the dead soldier of three ammunition pouches.
"I'm for that," Sparks said. He grasped the barrel of a submachine gun from the nearest soldier and wrenched it away.
"I can't leave her," Indy said.
"I'm sorry." Ulla glanced at him sadly. "But she's dead. We can't bring her back, but we can save ourselves."
Indy didn't look up to meet her gaze. "What's the use?" he said.
With the barrel of her gun still pointed at the soldiers, Ulla walked over to Indy and pulled him with one arm. Free of his grasp, Alecia's head lolled to one side, but her eyes were still gazing at him.
Ulla knelt down and closed Alecia's eyes.
"Are you going to let her die for nothing?" Ulla shouted at him. "She died proving that she loved you—that nothing on this earth was as important, and that she was sorry for her mistakes. It was a perfectly beautiful and courageous act, and I am not going to let you waste it."
Indy gritted his teeth and fixed Reingold with a stare that made the SS captain's blood run cold.
"You reptiles did this to her." He bit out the words. "You took someone who was kind and gentle, and destroyed her, played on her fears of hurting others so that she would do your bidding. And then, when she became herself again, you killed her."
Indy holstered the Webley and held out his hands toward Sparks, coaxing with his fingers for some firepower.
Sparks threw him the machine gun.
