by E. J. Blaine
A few last minute supplies were still being loaded. The basics were simple enough: food and water, ammunition for the guns, spare parts, and the basics they would take anywhere. In addition to that, Doc had set up a small laboratory in the ship’s unclaimed passenger cabin. Specialized equipment for that was still arriving via delivery trucks and motorcycle couriers carrying boxes plastered with RUSH stickers.
Finally, one last delivery truck drove away. Doc approached, holding a small wooden box under her arm, and declared that she was ready to go.
“About time,” Jack said in mock irritation. “We should be halfway across the Atlantic by now.”
Doc snorted at him. “As if you’d leave before every last strut was double-checked, every prop blade was reseated, every control cable was—”
“Okay! Uncle!” Jack said, laughing. “But let’s get moving. We’ve got a long way to go.”
They boarded the Daedalus and found Duke in the cockpit going over the charts. He reported that Deadeye and Rivets were in the engine room doing something to the motor linkages. Jack called them forward, and they met in the main saloon to review the flight plan. The first leg would take them across the Atlantic to Madrid, a journey that would take the Daedalus almost exactly two days at cruising speed. There they would drop off some special packages intended for AEGIS agents operating in Europe. They’d take on more food and water, and then set off again. They would cross over Italy and the Balkans, then skirt the Black Sea and fly over Turkey and Persia, finally crossing the Indian frontier south of Afghanistan. From there they would follow the line of the Himalayas to a remote town called Almora, where Doc’s local contact was based. In all, Duke explained, the trip would take six days, including their short stopover in Spain.
Six days to get from New York City to a remote village on the other side of the world. Across thousands of miles of oceans, mountains, and desert. Before the Daedalus, it would have been an epic journey by sailing ship, train, and probably weeks of dangerous overland travel to get there. They would fly there in perfect comfort in less than a week! The 20th century was shaping up to be a time of wonders, he thought. What else did science have in store for the future?
They climbed down the stairs to the tarmac and went as a group to bid goodbye to Edison. Jack noticed Doc kept glancing over to the approach road. On the way back, he fell in beside her and asked her why.
“I sent Doctor Rhys a telegram saying we were coming,” she answered. “I was hoping to get a reply before we left.” She sighed. “He’s got a radio at the field station. I’ll try to contact him from the ship.”
Then the last pre-flight checklist was completed, and the last hatches were closed. Jack, Doc, and Duke took their seats in the cockpit.
“Engines to station-keeping,” said Jack. “Clear ground crew.”
The ship’s electric engines spun up the ducted propellers and Jack could feel that he had control of the ship now. The ground crewmen released the lines holding the ship in place and withdrew. Jack saw Edison looking on with pride as Jack pulled back on the yoke and the Daedalus soared into the morning sun.
###
For two days, Daedalus flew over the Atlantic. The winds and the weather were with them and the trip was smooth and uneventful. The only concern came from Doc, who repeatedly tried to raise her friend Dr. Rhys on the wireless, but got only static in return.
They were on the ground in Madrid for just six hours, long enough to drop off their delivery packages and top off their supplies of food and water. Deadeye wandered off into town and returned a couple hours later with an odd looking pistol. It lacked a trigger guard and had a strange lever mounted alongside the frame.
“Been wanting one of these,” he said to Jack. “JoLoAr in .45 ACP. Look at that.”
Deadeye explained that the gun was meant to be carried with the chamber empty—which Jack thought was probably a good idea given the lack of a trigger guard. Then the lever on the right side of the frame let the user cock and fire the pistol quickly with one hand.
“Good for when you’ve got the other hand full,” Deadeye said with a grin. “With reins, handlebars, another gun, whatever.”
Jack admitted he could think of times when the feature would have come in handy, and Deadeye went aboard to examine his new plaything.
That left Doc. She’d gone to the nearby telegraph office to try and get some word from the mysterious Dr. Rhys. But when she finally came back, Jack could tell from the way she carried herself that she hadn’t had any better luck than she’d had on the way over.
“I’m starting to get worried,” she confided to Jack as they checked over the ship. “It’s not like Christopher to just go silent like this.”
“Well, keep trying,” said Jack. “Maybe it’s something simple. If it isn’t, we’ll be there in a few days. We’ll find out what’s going on when we get to Almora.
They launched and set out again, across the Mediterranean and the Italian peninsula.
The next day, Daedalus was over the Balkans. Duke had the controls and Jack was getting a cup of coffee in the galley when Doc came back from the cockpit. Immediately, he could tell something was wrong.
“Trouble?” he asked.
“I finally raised the field station,” she said.
“So he’s okay, at least?”
“It wasn’t Christopher. I gather it was an assistant who finally noticed someone trying to raise them and answered me. Christopher isn’t there. He went out hiking in the back country. He does a lot of that. Wandering around the foothills looking for plant samples. Except this time he didn’t come back. It’s been more than a week and there’s no sign of him, Jack. He’s gone missing.”
Chapter 8
It was mid-morning when the Daedalus arrived in Almora in the Himalayan foothills. It was a small town, a few hundred brightly painted homes clustered around the arc of a hillside. It gave Jack the impression of a place that had been built and patched and rebuilt over and over again, going back longer than anyone could remember.
Behind the town were the Himalayas themselves. An enormous curtain of snow-capped peaks. Even the Daedalus couldn’t make it over that range. Jack wasn’t surprised the local people had always assumed the gods lived in those mountains.
They came in low across Almora and made for the airstrip. It was a half mile or so outside the town, on one of the few pieces of flat ground in the area. Jack noticed they were making quite a stir below. People emerged from their houses to stare up and point at the gleaming airship gliding by overhead. Excited crowds ran along the road toward the airstrip to meet them as they landed.
“There’s the field station,” Doc said, pointing out a walled compound to the north of town.
“Maybe we’ll find some answers there,” he said. He hoped so. He knew Doc was concerned for her friend.
He brought Daedalus in low over the airfield and looked for a place to moor the ship that would leave the runway clear. It hadn’t been designed with airships in mind, but he found a gentle slope descending away from the far end of the airstrip. It would do.
Jack throttled the engines back to station keeping and let the Daedalus settle until the rear cargo ramp was on the ground. Then Deadeye and Rivets jumped out with field mooring equipment. They fired stakes into the earth from AEGIS-designed compressed air guns and moored the ship to them. Finally, Jack shut the engines down. They had arrived.
Jack and the crew spent a few minutes greeting excited townspeople and standing beside someone Jack took to be the mayor as he made a speech. As soon as they could, they left Duke to handle the diplomatic affairs, and Rivets and Deadeye to make sure no one got overly eager with the ship. Then Jack and Doc slipped away and set off for the field station.
They found it at the end of a narrow track leading uphill from the village. The station looked like it had been a fortress before Dr. Rhys took it over. Crenelated walls stood ten feet high, and Jack could make out weathered bullet marks in spots. The old place had seen war at
one time or another.
There was an open gate with a sign that identified the station. They walked inside and found neatly tended gardens surrounding a sprawling, two-story brick structure. Jack noted that the gardens weren’t designed for beauty. Different flowers were arranged in blocks beside leafy vines with colored stripes, or what looked like weeds with heavy seedpods hanging down. It was a collection of samples, Jack realized, no doubt arranged with scientific pursuits in mind, like a living card catalog.
“Christopher?” Doc called. “It’s Dorothy Starr. Is anybody here?”
There was no answer, but Jack was sure he heard a shuffling sound inside. He glanced over to Doc and saw that she’d heard it too. He kept a hand on the butt of one of his .45s as they went inside.
The interior was furnished with paintings of ancient kings and displays of weapons alongside bookshelves and collections of carefully preserved insects. Nothing was out of place. It was as if the inhabitants had just stepped out.
They passed through a sitting room with a harpsichord in one corner, then a small hallway. Again, Jack thought he heard the creak of a wooden floor somewhere. Through a pair of double doors they found an impressive library, but Doc paid little attention.
“Aren’t we looking for books?” Jack asked softly.
“This is the main library,” she said. “The field notes and journals will be in his study. He keeps that door locked.”
But the small door, hidden away behind a folding screen in a back corner of the library, wasn’t locked after all. “It’s been forced,” Jack said. He pointed out the broken wood around the latch. It creaked as Jack gently pushed it open.
“”Christopher?” Doc said once more. There was only silence.
This room had more of a personal feel. There was a large glass and bronze hookah beside an overstuffed armchair. The ottoman was stacked with hand-drawn maps and papers and a huge wooden desk sat in one corner. Above the desk was a portrait of an Englishman in a bright red army uniform. It looked too old to be Dr. Rhys.
“His grandfather,” Doc said. “He looks just like him though. Oh, something’s wrong! There should be a lot more books here.”
She studied the bookshelves built into the wall. “And the ones that are here are out of place. Someone’s been through here.”
Again, Jack heard something moving nearby. He homed in on a rattan panel on one wall, lined with a row of spears and polearms. Faint scratches on the floor, suggested that the panel slid to one side.
He gestured to Doc, and she moved around the armchair and readied her revolver.
“I don’t see anything here,” Jack said as he drew a .45 in his left hand and reached for the panel with his right. “We may as well—”
Jack yanked the panel aside. Behind it, a short, wiry man in a purple kurta screamed and hid his face in his arms. He stumbled back into the corner of the small storage closet and cried "I know nothing!"
Jack gestured with his pistol. “Come out of there! Who are you?”
“I am Adesh! I clean the house!” The man obeyed Jack, but kept his back pressed tight against the wall.
“It’s okay,” Doc said. She nodded to Jack and put away her pistol. Jack lowered his, but kept it out. “We’re friends of Doctor Rhys,” Doc said. “We’re looking for him.”
The man called Adesh suddenly lowered his hands and leaned forward to peer into Doc’s face.
“I know you!” he said at last. “You came here. Three summers ago, yes?”
“That’s right,” said Doc.
“You are a Doctor too!” Adesh said. “You came to ask Doctor Rhys about the ancient healers! I remember how happy he was to speak to you of his work! Yes! Thank God you’ve come!”
Doc managed to calm him down, and then they asked him what had happened. He explained that Rhys had left to go hiking in the foothills. It wasn’t unusual for him to be gone for a week or more, sketching and collecting specimens. But this time he hadn’t returned. Townspeople had gone out to search for him, but they found nothing.
“What happened to the rest of the staff?” Doc asked. “Someone answered the radio a few days ago.”
“Strangers came,” said Adesh. “Dangerous men. The others ran away, one by one. Only I am left.”
“What strangers?” Jack asked.
Adesh looked around the small study, and Jack saw he was trembling with fear. “Servants of the Nine,” he whispered. But then he would say no more about them.
“What happened to the books that should be here?” Doc finally asked, when it became clear they were getting nowhere asking about the mysterious Servants of the Nine. At this Adesh smiled.
“Before the Doctor went away, other men came,” he explained. “Westerners. To talk about the ancient healers, just as you did. But these were not good men. When they left, Doctor Rhys brought his notebooks to me and told me to hide them. Strangers come now and look through the house for them, but they do not find them!”
“Will you take us to them?” Doc asked.
Adesh nodded. “I think Doctor Rhys would want me to do so.”
He led them outside. The grounds behind the house were extensive, with a grove of trees and a pond. Beside the pond was a gazebo in the English style with a chair and small table from which Rhys could presumably sit and enjoy a cool drink while looking out over the water.
Adesh led them into the gazebo and pulled aside a few of the floorboards to reveal a wooden trunk. “The Doctor’s field work,” he said, proudly. “I have kept it safe for him.”
“Well done, Adesh,” said Doc.
Doc opened the trunk and started sorting through the battered notebooks inside. “This may take me a while,” she said.
Jack took the hint. He and Adesh withdrew and explored the grounds while Doc got to work.
###
It was almost sunset before Doc left the gazebo. Adesh had long since gone inside to resume his duties. When she emerged, Jack joined her. She clutched a small notebook of her own and walked quietly beside him, lost in her thoughts.
“Did you find anything?” Jack finally asked.
“Sorry,” she said with a smile. “Yes. Maybe. I hope so. All there was to find anyway. He talks about something called the Mother of Medicines. He was excited about it when I was here before, but it was just something he was tracking down. Now it’s all he writes about. Supposedly it cures, well, everything.”
“Including poisoning?” asked Jack.
“Maybe. I need to find someone who knows more. Christopher hints about a source who was teaching him the old arts. But it’s hard to make sense of his notes.”
They stopped off at the house long enough to reassure Adesh that they’d carefully hidden the trunk. Then they walked back toward the airfield.
Again, Doc was lost in her thoughts. If he wasn’t there, Jack wouldn’t have trusted her not to tumble down the hillside.
“But how would they do it?” she murmured at one point. “You’d kill yourself before you ever got down to a safe concentration.”
Jack didn’t ask. He’d learned to just let her mind work at times like this. When she had something, she’d let him know.
They were almost back when Jack heard an engine overhead. A biplane was approaching the airstrip. As it came closer, he recognized the model. He broke out into a grin.
“Well now, that brings back memories!”
“Huh?” Doc looked up suddenly as the sound broke her concentration. “Is that a Biff?”
“That it is,” said Jack. “Let’s go see who’s flying her!”
The Bristol F.2 “Biff” was a British two-seat fighter. Jack had had occasion to fly one a couple times during the war, and he knew Duke had done most of his flying in one. She was an agile thing, able to carry a pilot and a rear gunner and still keep up with single seat fighters. A rear-mounted Lewis machine gun in addition to her normal forward-facing Vickers guns gave the Biff quite a bite. They gave at least as good as they got from the German Fokkers. Jack still harb
ored a fondness for the airplane, and was well-disposed toward anybody with the good sense to fly one.
By the time they reached the airfield, the Bristol had landed and was taxiing back toward them. Duke, Rivets, and Deadeye joined them and watched as the pilot rolled off the runway onto the grass and cut his engine.
“How about that?” Duke said as he clapped Jack on the shoulder. “Haven’t seen one of those in a while.”
The plane had obviously once been Royal Air Force. The colors and numbers were still faintly visible on the rudder and fuselage. But now she bore the name, “Padgham Air Service.”
The pilot jumped down to the ground. He was a stocky fellow in a long leather flying coat. He pulled off his helmet and goggles to reveal a flushed red face and a bushy mustache.
“That’s a fine looking airplane,” Jack said, striding forward and offering the pilot his hand. “Which engine you got in her?”
The pilot’s brows furrowed a bit. “Sunbeam Arab,” he said as he shook Jack’s hand. “Just like it says on the surplus papers.”
Jack and Duke traded a look.
“Not flying that smooth you don’t,” said Duke. “That piece of junk would have shaken her to pieces by now. You managed to sneak a Falcon engine out of the RAF, didn’t you?”
“Certainly not,” the pilot said with a wink. “You lot know your airplanes though, don’t you? Gordon Padgham, Royal Flying Corps, later Royal Air Force, currently Padgham Air Service. Call me Padger.”
They made the introductions all around, and Padger couldn’t keep his eyes off the Daedalus.
“Enough about my old girl,” he said. “What in the world is that?”
“That’s the Daedalus,” said Jack. “Birds like yours will always be my first love, but for a dirigible, she’s a heck of a flyer.”
“She looks it,” said Padger. “What kind of props are those anyway?”
