“In New Mexico,” Steve said, “the raw material was sand. The fusing element, what came from that fireball, was unbelievable heat. What we seem to have here”—he pointed to the roadway—“is some raw material—stone, sand, a mixture . . . I don’t know—that also was fused by heat.”
“Don’t you see?” Rudy said. “Heat. Fantastic heat. But not from a bomb. Heat that was controlled. Energy that was—”
“Beamed energy,” Phil Wayne said. “It’s got to be a beam . . . something like a laser, I’d guess. But they’d need a power source, wouldn’t they?” He looked from one to the other. “I mean, you’ve got to have a power source. Rudy, you said something about a crystal. But that’s not enough. Where’d they get the power? How could they—”
Rudy pointed upward. “It’s been there all the time, Phil. The sun.”
“But that’s not enough, doc. There’s got to be something that directs—”
His words snapped off as if by a thrown switch. They all heard it at the same time. Unmistakable. From above, from where Rudy was pointing. A plane. Steve didn’t wait to comment. He took off at a run back toward their C-47 parked unattended at the end of their improvised airstrip.
CHAPTER 12
He was in the open near the C-47 when he caught a clear look at the airplane swinging overhead in a wide circle about the plateau. At first he’d missed it. Sighting the plane against a sky filled with scudding clouds—he was surprised to see the first tendrils of mist racing at their own height and even below the plateau—was bad enough. Trying to get it down with the lack of proper depth perception because of one eye made it worse. He stopped where he was, shading his eye against the strange flickering light of the approaching storm, and saw clearly the markings of the Peruvian Air Force on the wings and fuselage. The pilot rocked the wings from side to side in a time-honored gesture. Steve was running again to the base camp beneath the C-47. Moments later he’d tossed a smoke grenade near the left corner flag marker of the airstrip. Bright-orange smoke billowed forth to show clearly the direction and general strength of the wind down the strip. Steve hadn’t hesitated to fling the grenade. When local officials want to land, better make it easy for them. They’ll come in anyway.
He watched the ship coming around into the wind, flown by a man who was obviously an old hand at mountain flying. He had a good ship for it—a modified Helio Courier; six-seat job with a big Garret turboprop in the nose. Power to spare, and she handled altitude with her big high-lift wings like a huge bird. The Courier was sliding over the grass as the other four caught up with Steve.
“That’s an air force ship,” Wayne said.
No one else spoke. The Courier landed neatly, the nose high into the wind, came to a stop in only half the distance of the improvised runway. It turned smartly to taxi back and park near their transport. They waited, silent, as the prop jerked to a halt and the cabin door opened.
First from the airplane was a man in military uniform. “I recognize him,” Mueller said quietly. “Colonel Simon Viejo. Peruvian Intelligence. Remember the list Goldman gave us? It had his picture.”
A second man, older, was helped from the Courier by Viejo. “That’s Yavari,” Jennings said quickly. “He’s the leading archeologist of Peru, probably the best man in his field anywhere in South America.” They started walking toward the plane, then stopped as Colonel Viejo leaned in to assist a third person.
Phil Wayne couldn’t believe the sight of the raven-haired beauty who stepped from the cabin, wind streaming her hair. Not even field boots and trousers, and a windbreaker, could hide the femaleness of the woman who stood with Yavari and Viejo watching the Americans. “I don’t believe this,” Wayne muttered, as much to himself as the others. “Who can that be?”
Jennings surprised them. “It must be Carla. Yavari’s daughter. And from what I’ve heard, she’s quite as capable as her father.” He started forward, saying, over his shoulder, “She should be. He trained her.”
They watched as Jennings was greeted warmly by the Peruvians. “Aaron,” Steve said, “I think you’d better do the honors. This is all we need . . . an intelligence officer, another scientist, and a white goddess. I think I’ll kill Goldman when we get back. If we get back.”
Within fifteen minutes of the Courier’s touching down, the sun had been blotted from sight by heavy, low clouds, and looking down from the plateau they could see clouds racing along a few thousand feet beneath them. The temperature was dropping fast, and what had become a chill was now on the edge of bitter cold. The wind was rising, bringing with it an uncomfortable mist. Steve and Colonel Viejo, with Mueller and Wayne trailing, went quickly to the Courier, turned it into the wind and secured the airplane with stakes and tiedown ropes. They carried several bundles of gear from the Courier to the big transport. Then, leaving the two Peruvians and Jennings and Wells in the airplane, to share their common scientific interests, they retired to the larger tent staked out beneath the C-47 wing.
Viejo got to it fast as Steve, Wayne and Mueller listened. Steve had been prepared from the moment the colonel stepped from his airplane to dislike the man. And understandably, he felt. Viejo was here only because there’d been serious trouble: attempted murder and arson, nighttime attacks against guests of the Peruvian government. Add in the gutted truck on the Ayabaca airstrip, the bodies kept waiting for government inspection and autopsy and the fact that these strangers had no sooner come into the Peruvian heartland than they had killed. Viejo—slim, rawboned, with a knife-edged moustache—made it clear he held none of them responsible. But at the same time, he pointed out, they drew trouble like flies.
“My government,” he concluded, “really has no choice. To prevent more questions and even a diplomatic problem we must keep with you Peruvian nationals who will remove all question of the propriety of your expedition.”
“That seems to settle that,” Steve said. “Let’s get on with it. From what we’ve learned so far, our next job is to work our way across the valley to Temple Mountain.”
Viejo nodded. “It will not be easy . . . I have the report, of course, of Major Ryland. What he had to say about the mysterious roadway he came across. If it does indeed exist in this area, then the legends of the Caya may after all have truth in them. Have . . . have you discovered anything?”
Steve glanced at Mueller and Wayne before turning back to Viejo. “The roadway”—he gestured across the field—“is about four hundred yards in that direction. It’s also an intersection.”
“There is no mistake?”
Steve explained what they had discovered, and the conversation among themselves. “In fact, Dr. Wells and Dr. Jennings brought back a piece of that roadway with them. It’s in the airplane with Mr. Yavari and his daughter. You can see it—”
“No, it will wait,” Viejo said quickly. “Better for Yavari to enjoy the moment before me. This is a dream coming true for him. You will understand there has never really been enough money to support extensive, costly archeological studies. There is just so much to go around, priorities, that sort of thing. But now that this has happened, and we are here . . . it is like the world opening up for him. I must, though, ask a sensitive question.”
“It can’t be more sensitive to us than those people who tried to kill us.”
“Of course. In fact, the question involves, I am sure, those same people. We have had a report that you are looking for precious stones, also gold, and that you have information that could lead you to such treasure.”
“Not a word of that story is true,” Steve said.
Aaron Mueller broke in. “Colonel Viejo, I’m sure you were briefed on our background.”
“There is no question about accepting your word, Mr. Mueller. How the story was created is the problem. The information was presented as coming, so to speak, from the horse’s mouth.”
Steve laughed. “I’m pretty sure I know where the story originated. Rudy. He must have done a real artistic selling job on Fossengen.” Steve then related in
detail their welcome from Odd Fossengen when they were loading the C-47 at Lima. “. . . the lost civilization, the jewels, and the gold . . . Fossengen apparently bought Rudy’s package.”
“I am not so sure,” Viejo said. “This man Fossengen has been a problem for a long time. He is dangerous. If I had my way I would either have thrown him out of the country or into jail.”
“Why haven’t you?” Mueller asked. “After all, when you consider the attack on the airplane . . .”
“But can you prove that? You lack proof for us to move against this man. We have had Fossengen under surveillance for some time. I do not believe he is the efficient merchant he pretends to be. He spends too much money. I can find no way for this man to have stayed in business as long as he has.”
“Someone’s bankrolling him?” Steve asked.
“I should think so, but he is a very generous man with his largesse—so generous that he has made powerful friends in important places. And since I lack proof—”
“It might help if you told us your thoughts about him,” Steve said.
“If he is not the merchant he represents himself to be, Colonel Austin, then he is a . . .”
He searched for the word and Steve proposed, “Front?”
Viejo nodded. “His government—his real name is not Fossengen and he is not Norwegian, although all his papers are in order—is remarkably interested in this area . . . the Sicuani River valley. It hardly has seemed worth all that effort. However, you have just told me you found a section of this roadway, or whatever it is, that until this moment has been only a dream, a theory. What are you looking for here, colonel, that justifies all the expense of your government?”
Steve had already decided to level with the Peruvian officer. Viejo was cooperating with them. He could have been heavy-handed, officious. So he laid it all out for Viejo: their discussion of the roadway . . . the strange properties of the surface material, its incredible durability . . . conviction that the material could have been formed only by the precision control of enormous energy . . .
Viejo asked questions, often turning to Phil Wayne; it was obvious the Peruvian officer was no stranger to electronic or related systems.
“Well, then, it all fits, doesn’t it?” Viejo said when Wayne finished. “Obviously Fossengen, or whatever his true name may be, is interested in more than precious jewels or gold. I do not think,” he said to Steve, “that, as you said, he bought your story. It seems he only pretended to do this. The crystal, or whatever we may find, is clearly of great importance.”
“Importance,” Wayne said, “is understating it, colonel. If the Caya managed to produce a crystal that had that much energy derived from a natural power source—appropriately enough, the sun?—think what could be done with something like this crystal and modern electronics . . .”
“I imagine,” Viejo said, “Fossengen and his people have done just such thinking. I believe we can expect to see more of him.”
“I agree,” Steve said. “And I don’t think there’s any question it was Fossengen’s group that killed Major Ryland.”
“Killed Ryland?”
Steve related the events that had taken place at Norton Air Force Base. Viejo shook his head. “If they would go so far as to assassinate an American officer in his own country . . .”
Mueller took over. “Colonel Viejo, I believe we had better brief Dr. Yavari and his daughter, as well as Jennings and Dr. Wells.”
“A question before we talk with them,” Steve said. “From what I understand, the high country around here . . . this plateau, the area around Temple Mountain and El Misti, all of this is considered sacred ground by the local natives?”
Viejo nodded.
“Then where did those natives come from?” Mueller asked. “The ones that tried to hit us at the airfield?”
“I expect they were brought here from the far north with the promise of much gold or other payment. They would not believe the local superstitions.”
“And no one around here could identify them either,” Steve added. “Fossengen seems to know what he’s doing.”
They shared a meal in the cabin of the C-47. Having certainly not expected a woman on this expedition, Steve found himself even more unprepared for Carla’s effect on him. Her dark hair rested casually about her shoulders in the refuge of the airplane cabin, whereas outside it had blown wildly. Now, in the soft glow of the lamps, he could also study her lovely features. Their conversation in the cabin, shared with the others, was of the roadway, the mixture of huge stones and smaller rocks that could be seen, barely, beneath the glasslike surface material. As Viejo had said, she had grown up, literally, on studies of Peru’s ancient past, and like Dr. Yavari had carried on the search to unlock the mysteries of an ancient people that had built a civilization still defying today’s science. Carla was separated from other women by more than her knowledge; she was a living thread from this ancient past to the present.
That night, when Carla was to be assigned her stand at guard, Steve made certain they would be together for those few hours. Outside the airplane and the small collection of tents, both of them in heavy, warm clothing, rifles slung to their backs, they walked slowly about the perimeter of the camp, careful to remain fairly close to the ghostlike airplanes in the mists. She was friendly to him; in the few minutes of conversation inside the C-47 cabin, she had made that evident. But he was hardly confident that it was especially personal. Perhaps even more to Carla than her father, because it was of her generation, the exploration of the moon was related directly to what they explored here in the dim past of their own people. There was that link, bond, between them.
Except he wanted Carla Yavari to know him as someone beside a man who had journeyed between worlds. He wanted her to know him as a . . . He looked at her in the mists of the bitterly uncomfortable night and decided it would be an advantage that they’d have plenty of time before he tried to get close . . . before she discovered he was steel and plastic as well as flesh and blood.
CHAPTER 13
By morning the lower mists were gone, banished by a changing wind and the rising sun. Dr. Jennings and Dr. Yavari met with Steve inside a tent, the charts of the area spread out before them. Where to go next was their problem.
“We could search forever,” Yavari said. “It would do no good. You see? Here?” His finger brushed the chart before him. “Valleys. Very deep. But a long time ago not a valley here. You understand? Earth tremors. Eruptions. Everything very much changed.”
Jennings nodded. “We’re all agreed, though, that our search area should lie between where we are and the volcano. It narrows somewhat where we must look to—”
“Dr. Jennings,” Steve broke in, “what you’re talking about is impossible. You know what this area is like?” He tapped the charts where the valley was indicated. “Have you ever tried to fight your way through this stuff? We’d have to just about chew and tear our way through. That would be rough enough if we were trying to get from one point to another, but to carry out a search?”
“Then we must find a way of narrowing the search. The small airplane,” he said suddenly. “We can use it to study the area—fly low over the general area between here and El Misti and—”
“Do you know what it’s like out there?” Steve demanded.
“You mean the winds, I suppose.”
“Yeah, doc, the winds. Here on the plateau they’re doing a steady thirty knots and gusting to forty or fifty. And that’s not the half of it. There’s the turbulence . . . the chop we’ll get off that range north of here, to say nothing of the downdrafts.”
“I’m not frightened.”
“You should be,” Steve said, “because I am.”
Yavari seemed excited. “It’s a good idea. Before, on other flights, clouds made observation impossible. Today there are only high clouds. A very good break for us.”
Jennings knew this high country well. Today was a relatively good day for aerial observation. Steve knew it. It was pos
sible to fly, but he didn’t like it. Whoever went along would quickly find out why. He left the tent to find Viejo and persuade him to let him do the flying in the Courier.
Rudy Wells declined the offer to make the flight. A look at the clouds streaming from the distant peaks and the intensity of the winds here on the plateau decided him against getting any farther from the ground than where his feet stood. Jennings and Yavari and Carla announced they would fly with him. Steve protested. They had no way of knowing what it was going to be like up there. Carla was at least young and strong, but her father and Jennings were . . . He gave it up and went to ready the Courier.
He checked out the airplane, personally checked to see that Jennings and Yavari were securely belted in the back seats, and ordered Carla to secure both seat belt and shoulder harness in the seat next to him. “No,” she said. “I need to use this.” She held up a 35-mm camera. “Especially made up for us,” she said, smiling at him. “A Polaroid filmpack so that when we land we’ll have the pictures we need.”
“The harness or you stay on the ground,” Steve told her.
For a moment it was a standoff. Outside the plane the others were aware of the obvious confrontation. Gusts rocked the Courier even with the tiedowns still secured. Carla looked coolly at the man with her, then secured the shoulder harness.
Cyborg 03 - High Crystal Page 10
