Cyborg 03 - High Crystal

by Martin Caidin

  Jennings nodded agreement. “You know,” he said, “that these ancient people were truly a warrior people. They weren’t afraid of death, they were used to it. They were proud, fierce. And yet they never fought Cortez. Why did they permit themselves to be slaughtered?

  “The records do show that the Incas showed resistance to save their leader from degradation. And that resistance? First they apologized to the Spanish for not obeying them, and then soldiers in rank after rank stepped forward for voluntary slaughter. Offering their bodies and souls in the place of their leader. They didn’t try to save the life of the man who led them. What they seemed to want for him was the right to select his own means of death rather than have it forced on him by the Spanish. An act of superiority, you might say. Perhaps even arrogance.

  “In any case,” Jennings finished, “hardly indicating a people to be underestimated.”

  CHAPTER 7

  They stood in a small crowd, staring. “Well, there she is,” Steve said, finally, grinning at the others.

  “You mean we’re going into the high country in that?” The disbelief and shock in Aaron Mueller’s reaction was matched by Phil Wayne’s and Rudy Wells’s.

  “How about you, Dr. Jennings?” Steve asked their archeologist. “No complaints?”

  Jennings smiled. “I’d ride a mule to get where we’re going.”

  They sat on their packs and luggage. The object of their restrained affection, waiting for them when they’d landed at the main airport of Lima, Peru, at a height of thirteen thousand feet above sea level, was the airplane assigned to their expedition. It was parked at the far end of the field, away from the commercial terminal. Not exactly hidden, but far enough into the boondocks of the airport perimeter to attract at most a passing glance. An ancient Douglas C-47, descendant of the DC-3 twin-engine airliner that went into commercial service in 1935. The venerable Gooney Bird, beloved veteran of war, crosser of oceans and reliable iron bird of mountain passages. In its time and for years after, probably the greatest airplane ever built.

  “Okay, a few words so we keep our story straight,” Steve said. “This aircraft is officially registered to the University of New Mexico, which is also the official source of all our funds for this fishing trip. You’re all on the record as having received a grant for this journey. We have an open account with the federal bank of Peru. Mueller will run that part of our operation, so if you need anything take your problems to him.”

  Mueller got up from his improvised seat, walked beneath the high nose of the C-47. He shook his head and turned to Steve. “Look, you’ve no doubt seen the logs on this machine. Mind telling me how old it is?”

  “Date of manufacture is 1942.”

  “My God,” Wayne broke in, “it’s older than I am.”

  “How many hours?” Mueller pressed.

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “Twenty-eight hundred hours?” Wells said. “That isn’t too bad.”

  “Twenty-eight thousand,” Steve corrected.

  Rudy was incredulous. He turned again to survey the ancient flying machine. The paint had peeled in various places across the wings and fuselage and tail. Oil streaked the bottom of the engine cowlings and the wing under surface. Wells didn’t want to see anymore.

  Phil Wayne said, “Look, Austin, I’ve done some flying myself.”

  “How many hours?” Steve was studying Wayne with more than casual interest.

  “Oh, about fourteen, fifteen hundred. I’m just a private jock, really, but I did work at it. Still do, for that matter. Sometimes when you know a little it’s enough to scare you. I know this is a great old bird, but we’re at thirteen thousand feet. This thing is going to need ten miles to get off the ground if she’s carrying any kind of a load. How are you going to operate from short grass strips at this altitude or even higher when this . . . this thing can hardly get out of its own way on this field, which is paved and has good winds down the runway?”

  “Leave your gear where it is,” Steve told all of them. “Come aboard. I’ve got a few things to tell you.” They trooped into the airplane, leaned forward to climb the angled floor toward the cockpit, crowded about him until Steve motioned Wayne to the copilot seat on the right side of the flight deck.

  “All right,” Steve told him, “you people are going to fly with me in this bucket. Not just fly. We’re going into the tall oountry. We’re going in where no sane man would fly a machine like this. The Gooney Bird, great as she was and is, was never designed for operation at the altitudes in which we’ll be working, just like Phil said. But I’m glad to tell you that this rusty old bucket is a sham. Gooney is not what she seems to be.” He pointed through the side window at one of the two engines. “The Gooney Bird that everyone knows has two engines, each delivering twelve hundred horses. Not this Gooney.” He patted the throttles. “Beneath those cowlings out there we have under each hood no less than eighteen hundred horses. Thirty-six hundred total—almost twice as powerful as the standard bird. More to the point, those new engines fit within the old cowlings. No additional drag. Phil,”—he turned to Wayne—“take another look at those props.”

  Wayne peered through his side of the cockpit. “Well . . . hey, I see it now. They’re much fatter. You know, thicker than the standard blades.”

  “Right,” Steve told him. “There’s more than power under those cowlings. There’s some rather special supercharging. We get sea-level power all the way up to seventeen thousand feet. This Gooney has better performance at seventeen grand than a standard Charlie Forty-seven at sea level. Also all new control surfaces. Couple of things you don’t see with the naked eye. Better balancing, greater area, faster response. The flaps look the same but they’re not. They give more than twice the lift of the older airplane. Also, something we’ll use when we really need it. Leading-edge flaps. Just like the big iron birds without props that make all that noise and smoke. You’re all familiar with the 707 and the Boeing line. Remember how the leading edge of the wing comes alive for takeoff? Well, this old baby here has all those things going for her. And for especially tight spots, the bottom of the fuselage, just forward of that belly antenna, there’s a pack with six rocket bottles. They’ll really push this thing off the ground.”

  Steve got up from the seat. “Phil, stay right where you are,” he told Wayne. “In that side pocket against the bulkhead you’ll find the pilot’s handbook on this thing. Start reading. You’ve just been made copilot—”

  “Steve!”

  He turned instantly at the sharpness in Rudy’s voice. The doctor was by a left cabin window, pointing to the ground. Steve turned to his own window, looked out. By their gear, studying everything carefully, moving the packs, was a man they’d never seen before.

  “Mueller, please move your diplomacy out there quick,” Steve told the man from the State Department. “Keep him occupied. Talk to him. You’re the specialist at foreign relations.”

  Mueller looked at him briefly, turned and was gone. Through the windows they watched Mueller walk up to the stranger, who looked up, startled, then broke out a wide smile and extended a hand.

  “He recovers fast, anyway,” Wells observed.

  “Too fast,” Steve said.

  Jennings looked at him. “You sound as if you know the man.”

  “Never met him, but I’ll predict he knows us, who we are, at least something about what we’re doing here. And I’ll bet I know who he is too. It’s just that he surfaced a lot sooner than I expected.”

  Rudy Wells turned from the window. “You wouldn’t be talking about a certain Norwegian, would you?”

  “You mean the man Goldman told us about?” Jennings said. “That fellow . . . Odd Fossengen. Is that it?”

  “The same,” Steve told him. “By now Mueller should have shaken him out of his cover. Let’s go meet the man.”

  Both men turned as Steve and the others emerged from the plane and approached them. Mueller was civil enough, but Steve could tell he’d been frustrated by an opera
tor smarter than was expected.

  “Steve, this is Mr. Odd Fossengen,” Mueller began.

  “Mr. Fossengen,” Steve said, taking the outstretched hand. He made no move to introduce anyone else.

  “A pleasure, sir,” Fossengen said. Steve took a moment to size up what he saw. Fossengen was a big one, one of those heavy-set men with noticeable jowls surrounded by a thick neck and powerful shoulders. He wore dark glasses—a wise move at this altitude, where the sun burned more brightly than at sea level—but behind the glasses Steve could still see the eyes moving to take things in quickly. A very alert individual. Steve noticed something else—his hair, very blond, very frayed at the ends.

  “Why don’t you tell us what you were doing?” Steve said.

  “I don’t understand,” Fossengen said.

  “Sure you do. You were digging through our gear.”

  “My apologies,” he said. “I did not mean to give the wrong impression. I spend so much time in the back country. You have the latest equipment, I was interested. Anyone who goes into the back country would be. You understand? We help one another out here.”

  “How’d you know we were going into back country?” Steve said, deciding to ask a dumb question and let this man feel superior—maybe then he’d loosen up a bit and inadvertently reveal something.

  Fossengen laughed as he pointed to the assembled pack gear. “Where else, Mr. Austin, where else with all that? Anyone would know where you were going. In fact, I would say you intended to fly that machine to Ayabaca.”

  “You know a lot about someone who’s just landed,” Steve said.

  “No, by no means a lot,” Fossengen said. “I have been hoping for someone like you, Mr. Austin.” He turned to point across the field. “Over there, see? The red-and-white machine, the Aztec? It is mine but it has a problem—a new valve is needed for the left engine. It will take several days. Here in Lima”—he shrugged—“one does not expect swift delivery of parts. So I cannot fly my machine, and there is none at this moment available for rent or charter. So I go to the air-control center. All flights out of Lima are controlled. All those that go into the back country are even more strictly controlled. And I ask my friend in the center, does he know of anyone who will be flying that way? Someone with whom, perhaps, I may find room for myself and a friend. I am, as you say, hitchhiking. And my friend in the traffic center tells me the crew of a Douglas has requested weather information for the area east of here. Ayabaca lies that way, true?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then”—Fossengen extended his hands—“You see? There is nothing mysterious about it after all, and I am most urgently in need of such transportation. I would also be very glad to pay the way for myself and my friend, Mr. Austin.”

  “I can’t help you,” Steve told him.

  Silence, then: “I do not understand.” An edge to his voice now.

  “I’d like to help but”—Steve jerked a thumb at the C-47—“that aircraft belongs to the University of New Mexico. They’ve got rules. Our insurance, for example, doesn’t cover anyone who doesn’t work for the university.”

  “But we will sign any waivers, the risk will be all mine, all ours.”

  Steve seemed to be wavering. “Fossengen, I’d really like to, I really would, but I can’t do it. If the university people ever found out I’d be looking for a new job the next morning. Sorry,” he finished, shaking his head, then grinned quickly. “But my good friend here, Dr. Wells, he’d like to buy you a drink, I’m sure.” He glanced at Wells. “Rudy, why don’t you walk Mr. Fossengen back to the terminal and buy the man a drink on us?”

  Rudy picked it up quickly enough, moved forward and linked his arm with Fossengen’s. “Is it true what they say about gold in the Andes?” he was heard saying to Fossengen as Steve and the others watched them walk away.

  Aaron Mueller turned back to Steve. “Congratulations,” he said, “and I mean it. You handled that very well. By the way, the man’s a fake.”

  “I know,” Steve said, “and so is his name. He’s not even a Norwegian.”

  Mueller—Jennings and Wayne—showed their astonishment. “How do you know that?”

  “Well, once a long time ago I dated a girl—a brunette—who lived in Denver. She was a brunette, but she had this thing about being a blonde. Real fixation. So she dyed her hair as blond as that man who just walked away from here. And she had the same problem as he does right now. I said she lived in Denver, more than five thousand feet above sea level. Thin air. Cold. And too much dye used too many times to keep her a blonde. The ends of her hair, Mueller, split so badly that after a while she lost most of her hair. Did you get a good look at Fossengen? He’s no more a Nordic blond than you are.”

  “Then what is he?” Jennings asked.

  “Bad news, for sure,” Steve told him. “Look, you people start stowing our gear aboard. We’ve got a truckload of equipment to get into this bird. I didn’t want Fossengen or whatever his name is watching what we load. Rudy should keep him occupied long enough for us to do our job. I’m going over to the freight office to have a truck bring our stuff here.”

  The three men by the airplane watched him leave. “You know something?” Mueller said, “I’m beginning to be sold on that man.”

  CHAPTER 8

  The Vilcabamba hung on the distant horizon like a saw-toothed wall built by giants. From the small cockpit of the old C-47, Steve in the left seat and Phil Wayne in the right, Rudy Wells standing in the doorway immediately behind and between them, the mountains seemed slowly to drift toward them, lifting gently but steadily as they did so. The altimeter needle was pegged at twenty-two thousand feet, and for the moment they enjoyed calm air. This was the time in flight when movement of the airplane to human senses seemed to be suspended completely. The airplane was a capsule sealed off from the rest of the world. There was no sensation of movement. The panorama of a mighty mountain range assumed a new dimension, and the men felt as if they were a tiny pod floating through a sea while the distant world came to them. Even the sounds were muted, the engine roar a distant murmuring. Human bodies had become attuned to the vibrations of the machine and, in harmony, no longer resisted such forces and paid little or no attention to them. Ordinary flight became a magic carpet. Was the wind just outside that glass and that thin metal skin really shrieking past at some two hundred miles an hour? And the temperature . . . the outside gauge had crawled steadily around the dial to register forty degrees below zero on the Fahrenheit scale. Yet within this thin-skinned cocoon it was warm, comfortable. There was only one acquiescence to their environment. Each man had a lightweight oxygen mask strapped to the lower part of his face, and their voices had the metallic ring of radio intercom. For some time now no one had spoken. In the cabin, Dr. Jennings slept soundly, well strapped in. Aaron Mueller sat with his chin cupped in one hand, staring through a side window. The three men clustered within the nose of the old airplane yielded to the sights before them. Mountains of splendor were changing shape before their eyes, were emerging from haze and slanted sunlight to become individuals in their own right. And then they were over the Vilcabamba, approaching across its central flanks. At the same time they saw the sweep of clouds from their side, a thick layer of tumbling cumulous racing in to obscure the peaks.

  “Better look while you can,” Steve said. “Apparently we came in here during one of those rare breaks. In a couple of minutes . . .”

  In the brief moments of clear sight they looked down, awed by the tumbled and jagged rock face and peaks below them. The mountains were dark; rock that was black and dark brown, tinged with traces of deep red, and in the distance, with shades of gray-blue. Nothing seemed to live down there, not tree nor shrub nor bush. Just rock, naked and forbidding, with the only life clustered along its lower flanks, looking from up here, at their height, like moss clinging desperately to its host.

  Well ahead of them, and to the south, its flanks already covered by the fast-moving wave of clouds, they could make o
ut the blunt peak of El Misti, a thin spray of steam or smoke, or a mixture of both, issuing from the crater. The wind whipped immediately at the plume, flattened it at once, tore it away. Steve eased the C-47 into a gentle turn to the right. He wanted to come in to Ayabaca well to the south, heading due north, so they might have a good look at the lower heights—lower by comparison only with El Misti—where they hoped to begin their search.

  Steve turned to Rudy Wells. “Go back and wake up Jennings. I want him to have a look at the area. First impressions can be important, and we may not have this kind of break in the weather for a while. Tell him to come up here.”

  Rudy disappeared. Almost at the same moment they hit the first shock in the air, the wind blowing and tumbling away from the peaks. Steve glanced at Wayne, but he was already snugging his seat belt and shoulder harness. Wayne glanced at him and nodded. Good man, he thinks ahead.

  Jennings poked his head into the cockpit. “Doctor, there’s a jump seat right behind me,” Steve told him. “Get in and strap yourself down tight. It’s going to get a bit rough up here.” Jennings followed instructions, hauled his lap belt secure and grasped the seat ring behind Steve for added security. In just those few seconds, as the old transport moved deeper into the mountain air wave, they were taking sharp blows of turbulence. For a few moments Steve debated with himself about Phil Wayne flying through the area. He’d had time in light twins but nothing near the size of the C-47. Given ten or twenty more hours he could break in Wayne, but now wasn’t the time.

  “Phil, get that special chart out for Dr. Jennings.” Steve moved the control yoke from side to side, gently, the pilot’s signal that he had the controls. Wayne held up his hands and pulled the chart from his case, spread it out for Jennings to see.

  Steve held the Gooney Bird in a long turn until they were due south of towering El Misti. They were still in a break with the weather, although it surely wouldn’t last much longer. The transport shook from nose to tail as the C-47 was displaying her unhappy tendency in rough air to wallow from side to side. Steve wondered just how long Rudy would last before he admitted the inevitable and hastily swallowed some motion sickness pills. Or made a dive for a plastic bag. Either way the good doctor was sure to be unhappy. Then they were in perfect position.