Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Dex tried to suppress his glee. "I don't mind."

  Sky Captain tossed his gloves onto the workbench as he moved toward an arching doorway. "I want to know where these robots came from, Dex. Who sent them here. I'll be in my office."

  He didn't slow his stride as he walked into the Flying Legion's center of operations. Inside, the showpiece was a giant detailed map of the globe spanning four stories and taking up three walls of the research hangar. Uniformed technicians walked overhead on catwalks, using pointers and wooden sticks to mark regions on the map. A booming loudspeaker relayed new coordinates as other members of the Flying Legion reported in.

  Sky Captain spared only a glance for the bustling activity, though. He nodded to the crewmen, but he was intent on a doorway on the opposite side of the map room. He headed for his private sanctuary, the place where he could think best. The name in stenciled letters on the door read, CAPTAIN H. JOSEPH SULLIVAN.

  Barely containing his sigh of relief, Sky Captain entered the dark office and closed the door behind him. After a brief pause, he turned his back and leaned wearily against the door. His posture changed, and he reached for his aching ribs, feeling with fingertips to discover just how badly he had been hurt. The battle against the robot monsters had taken its toll, but Sky Captain knew never to let the world, or even the rest of his crew, see him like this.

  He walked gingerly through the tiny office to a small wooden desk and sat down, exhausted. Still in shadow, he opened a side drawer, pulled out a shot glass, and set it on the desk after sweeping file folders and paperwork aside. Sky Captain reached back into the deep drawer and withdrew a bottle: milk of magnesia. He poured a full shot of the chalky white liquid, raised it in silent salute, and grimaced in preparation before touching the small glass to his lips.

  A woman's voice startled him. "Tummy ache?"

  Sky Captain spun around, drawing his pistol with a smooth speed that would have made a cobra jealous. He aimed at the dark corner of the room from which Polly Perkins stepped into the light, smiling at him.

  Though surprised, he recognized her instantly. At first he reacted with pleasure, but then his expression darkened. Old wounds started to surface.

  "How you been, Joe? Miss me?"

  8

  A Blueprint from Totenkopf. A Warehouse of Sinister Prototypes. More Clues About Unit Eleven

  "Who let you in here?" Sky Captain was unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "Get out. Fat lot of good it does to have a hidden base if everybody, including annoying newspaper reporters, can just waltz in here."

  "Nice to see you, too, Joe." She demurely sat on the corner of his desk. "Dex said you might be in a mood."

  "Dex…" Gritting his teeth, he grabbed the black telephone receiver from his desk and dialed so roughly that he almost tore off the front of the phone. "Dex! Get in here!"

  Polly shook her head, nonplused. Her wavy golden hair was perfect. "It's been three years, Joe. Don't tell me you're still mad at me. I can't even remember what we were fighting about."

  Moving as if he was imagining a stranglehold, Sky Captain set the phone back in its cradle. He turned to Polly with a slow burn, speaking so distinctly he bit each word as it came out of his mouth. "You. Sabotaged. My. Plane!"

  "Right…" Polly said, her tone clearly saying the opposite. "Still suffering from delusions, I see."

  "I spent six months in a Manchurian slave camp because of you." He looked away as the harsh memories flooded back. "They were going to cut off my fingers — "

  Polly rolled her eyes; she'd heard this a million times before. "Joe, for the last time, I didn't sabotage your damn airplane."

  "And it was all so you could get a picture of Tojo Hideki in his bathrobe! Of all the ridiculous reasons — "

  She swung one leg over the other, relaxed. "You know, I'm starting to think you made up this whole 'sabotage' nonsense to cover up the fact you were cheating on me with your little mystery girl the whole time we were in Nanjing."

  "Never happened. All in your imagination."

  "Who was she, Joe? What was her name?"

  Still angry, he said, "All right, her name started with an F. Figment. Figment O'Your Imagination. Now who's having delusions?"

  Polly moved seductively toward Sky Captain at his desk, but he pulled back, raising his pistol again. "That's far enough."

  "What are you going to do? Shoot me?" Polly batted her eyelashes.

  The door swung open, and Dex hurried into the office. When he saw Sky Captain holding the gun on Polly, he grinned. "Great! You two made up. I knew you would."

  Sky Captain stood from his desk chair, leaving the shot glass of milk of magnesia untouched. "This was a pleasure, Polly. Let's do it again in ten years. Dex, escort Miss Perkins off the base. If she resists, shoot her. And don't forget to clean up your mess afterward."

  Dex looked at her shyly. "Hi, Polly."

  "Hi, Dex."

  The younger man's face flushed with embarrassment. "I… uh, I gotta…"

  "I know, hon. It's okay." Lifting her chin and showing no loss of dignity at all, Polly let Dex escort her out of the office. Sky Captain followed them to the exit and prepared to give the door a satisfying slam.

  Polly sniffed, then spoke loudly to Dex. "Just as well. I guess you wouldn't have been interested in this anyway." She dangled the strange schematic that Dr. Jennings had left in the theater.

  Even with just a glance, Sky Captain could see that the blueprint showed the detailed workings of the giant robots that had menaced Manhattan. He released his death grip on the door handle, seething. "Where did you get that?"

  Polly turned with a smug smile on her face. He reached for the blueprint, but she withdrew it. "Oh, there's more where this came from. A lot more."

  "I want that blueprint, Polly. Uh… Dex needs it."

  The younger man brightened. "Yeah, it would be useful."

  "You want the blueprint, and I want this story, Joe. And you're going to help me get it."

  Sky Captain took a deep breath. He would rather have been fighting any number of evil geniuses bent on exterminating humanity. Dex stood next to Polly, still grinning. "Hey, maybe we should show her, Cap. Maybe she can help."

  A quick look from Sky Captain shut him up, but Polly saw it.

  "Show me what?" She calmly folded the blueprint and stuffed it back in her bag, refusing to move farther from the office. "Show me what?"

  Out in the bright sunlight, Dex, Polly, and Sky Captain stood at the entrance of one of the Legion's warehouses. After fumbling in his pocket, Dex produced a ring heavy with jingling keys. Though he had dozens to choose from, the younger man selected the proper key without pause, opened a padlock securing the warehouse, and slid open the tall corrugated door.

  "Here we are, Polly. Wait till you see this." Dex flipped a switch, and the room lights shone down upon row after row of incredible scientific artifacts. "I always told Cap we should open a museum or something."

  The warehouse held a bizarre collection of mechanical oddities: giant burrowing machines with tractor treads and jagged conical prows, clunkier models similar to the robot giants that had just attacked New York City, coffin-sized glass cylinders holding electrical creatures that swirled about like lighting in a bottle, flying contraptions that defied description.

  Polly's jaw dropped. "My God, what is this? Where did they all come from? Dex, did you — "

  The younger man blushed. "Oh, no, Polly. Even I don't have enough imagination to create designs like these."

  She'd been following the exploits of Sky Captain and the Flying Legion for years now, and she knew most of the enemies they had fought. She remembered their battles with the Fossil: a man who, after injecting himself with Tyrannosaurus blood extracted from amber, was converted into an atavistic creature determined to bring back dinosaur rule. The Flying Legion had been severely damaged by the Fossil's pteranodon-style flying war vehicles.

  And then there was the Lensmaster, who had used meteorite gl
ass in a viewing scope that let him see into another, sidewise universe. The Lensmaster could step around the fabric of space, past the tightest security, to assassinate world leaders. When Sky Captain had finally cornered him, the Lensmaster fled through his scope and stumbled into an impossible dimension where he remained lost to this day…

  None of the contraptions, though, looked familiar to Polly.

  "They started appearing three years ago — an invasion of innovative robotic designs, all of them obviously created by the same design team," Dex said. "We've managed to keep it secret until now."

  Sky Captain didn't have much to say as Polly followed the two men down the center aisle of the warehouse. Every step revealed something new and incredible.

  Dex continued. "These machines showed up without warning, took what they wanted, and disappeared without a trace. Just like the recent attacks." He sighed. "Three years, and we still can't explain what they want or who sent them here."

  He led Polly past a row of damaged machines, then stopped at a fearsome-looking mechanical crab. "We found this one outside Buenos Aires on May fourth." He gestured to a machine that looked like a manta-ray hovercraft with dangling steel cables, each of which ended in hooklike pincers. "This one crashed fifteen miles from Vienna on June thirteenth."

  "June thirteenth?" Polly's brow furrowed as thoughts began to click together.

  "And this one came down in — "

  "Hong Kong, right?" Polly was excited.

  Sky Captain stopped short. "That's right. What aren't you telling us, Polly?"

  "And it was July eighth," she said, "in the evening."

  "How do you know this?" Sky Captain demanded.

  Polly did her best to look down her nose at him. "If you'd read the Chronicle, Joe, you might have followed the stories I've written. Those are the same cities where the scientists disappeared, and on the same dates. It can't be a coincidence."

  Dex shook his head. "Shazam! Not a chance, Cap. Can't be a coincidence."

  Sky Captain leaned closer, tired of games. "What else do you know?"

  In answer, Polly approached one of the stored machines. "If I'm right…" With her hand, she brushed off a layer of grime and dust to reveal an ominous, familiar crest in the form of an iron skull with metal wings. Her tone grew serious. "Dr. Vargas was the sixth scientist to vanish mysteriously. Then a man — another scientist — sent me a message and arranged to meet me at Radio City Music Hall today. He was terrified, said someone was coming for him. I asked him who he was so afraid of, and he repeated one name. Totenkopf! He nearly went white when he said it."

  "Totenkopf? Who is he?" Dex peered closely at the malicious-looking skull.

  Polly withdrew a German newspaper article from her bag. "Apparently, he's the invisible man. I went through every record in the library twice, looking for anything. Called every contact I have from Paris to Bangkok. This was all I could dig up."

  She spread the article on a flat surface of the deactivated machine. A grainy old photograph showed a group of seven men in lab coats surrounded by complex but unrecognizable apparatus. "Herr Totenkopf ran some kind of secret sciences laboratory stationed in Berlin before the start of the Great War. Something called Einheit Elf or Unit Eleven."

  Despite his annoyance with her, Sky Captain looked closely at the article, scanning the young faces of the Unit Eleven scientists. None of them looked familiar to him. He didn't want to admit that he couldn't read the German text of the newspaper clipping.

  "Nobody really knows what Unit Eleven was doing," Polly explained, "but there were rumors that they were conducting inhuman surgical trials on prisoners, and the facility was ordered shut down. Totenkopf disappeared with his research. There's still an international warrant for his capture. It's been more than thirty years since anyone's spoken his name, until today."

  "After all that time, what makes you think it's him?" Sky Captain asked.

  She pointed to a small inset photograph in the newspaper. "Note the insignia he chose for the unit."

  He could barely make out an iron skull with metal wings. "The scientist who came to see you… where is he now?"

  Polly looked at Sky Captain, a coy smile on her face. She dangled her information in front of him like a carrot on a stick. "So we're in this together… right, Joe?"

  He stared her down, first scowling, then frowning in resignation as he knew she'd beaten him. "Polly, none of this gets published until I say so. You don't write a sentence or take a picture without asking me first. Understood?"

  She nodded with solemn agreement. "Understood."

  When he wasn't looking, Polly shifted the small camera under her arm. She stealthily snapped a picture of one of the giant machines in the museum warehouse.

  9

  An Important Address. An Intruder in the Laboratory. A Dire Warning

  That afternoon, Polly's black Packard sped down a rain-soaked New York street, but it wasn't clear that she knew where she was going. Sky Captain sat sullenly next to her, staring straight ahead as she drove. He would have felt safer in the cockpit of his Warhawk, where at least he could have his hands on the controls.

  When he sensed Polly starting to smile at him, he grew annoyed. He refused to look anywhere but through the wet windshield at the street. Finally, exasperated with the waiting, he said, "What?"

  "I missed you, Joe." When he turned to look at her in surprise, she said, "Thanks for saving my life during the robot attack, by the way. If it wasn't for you, I would have ended up as a smear on the bottom of a big mechanical boot."

  "Oh? Were you down there?" Sky Captain turned to the side and concentrated on counting brownstone doorways, lampposts, traffic lights — anything to maintain his feigned uninterest. "I didn't notice."

  Polly continued to smile, not buying it. "I see you missed me, too. How nice."

  "Mind the road." He leaned closer to the rain-streaked windshield, trying to see where they were going.

  She slowed to a stop in front of a dark tenement building. "This is it, where Jennings is hiding — if my guess is right."

  Leaving the car parked at the curb, Polly and Sky Captain hurried down the sidewalk. The leather bomber jacket kept him dry, but the cold sleet quickly matted his short brown hair. Polly wore a tan trench coat and a black fedora pulled low. He remained close at her side, not wanting to appear to be following her lead, as they turned the corner into a darkened alley. They descended a set of leaf-strewn stairs, past a junk pile of debris at one corner of the landing, to the door of a basement shop. A small placard read: ALLIED CHEMICAL.

  After comparing the address to a scrap of paper in her hand, Polly knocked briskly at the door, but no answer came. "Hello? Dr. Jennings, it's Polly Perkins." She waited again, then knocked harder on the door. "Dr. Jennings?"

  She flashed Sky Captain a worried look, and he reached for the doorknob, rattling it. "It's locked." Looking around for another way in, he spied an open window above them on the second floor. "See that window — there…?"

  He began to concoct an elaborate plan to gain entry. In the junk pile on the landing, he found a length of old rope coiled around two sagging boxes and a broken chair. He untangled the muddy strand so he could tie a loop in one end. He pulled hard to test the strength of the rope, hoping the fibers weren't too rotted. "We might be able to get in through that window if I can attach a line."

  He heard a crash for his answer, and he looked to see Polly holding a rock in her hand. She smashed the door's window glass a second time, knocking the sharp splinters from the frame.

  She dropped the rock, reached inside, and unlocked the door. "Never mind, Joe. It's open."

  Sky Captain looked at Polly, his throat so full of conflicting words that he couldn't say any of them. Finally, he just brushed past her and pushed the door wide enough for them both to enter Dr. Jennings' lab. "I've seen my share of mad scientists and their laboratories. Usually they're better housekeepers than this."

  The small lab had been thoroughly rans
acked. File cabinets were yanked open, drawers emptied. Papers lay strewn all over the floor and on the overturned furniture. Broken test tubes and glass beakers littered the ground in puddles of colored, foul-smelling liquids. An off-kilter lamp lay sprawled against a wall; a writing desk had been smashed.

  "We're too late," Polly said.

  The two moved deeper inside, crunching through the debris. In the yellowish light of the dim lamp, Polly spotted a heavy metal cabinet in a far corner. Because iron brackets anchored the cabinet to the wall and floor, the vandals had been unable to tip it over. The latch to the cabinet had been broken.

  Without telling Sky Captain what she intended to do, Polly strode directly to the cabinet and pulled open one of the loose doors. She blinked in disbelief, then raised her camera.

  The cabinet held shelf upon shelf of glass jars. Tiny skeletons floated in embalming fluid, showing alien body shapes she had never seen before. "Looks like the remnants of aborted experiments."

  Then she saw something move, barely more than a shadow at the bottom of the cabinet. On the lowest shelf, Polly found another glass container — that one holding a live specimen. She couldn't believe her eyes: a living, breathing elephant no larger than a bar of soap drank from a miniaturized trough. It lifted its trunk and let out a tinny bellow, like a child tooting a plastic whistle.

  Beside her, Sky Captain knelt to stare at the tiny creature. He turned to her as if she was somehow to blame. "All right, Polly — no more games. Tell me what the hell is going on."

  She shrugged. "I was hoping you could tell me. Dr. Jennings wasn't very talkative during our brief interview."

  As the miniature elephant paced inside its doll-sized cage, Polly's eyes moved upward, hungry for explanations. She screamed and immediately regretted having done it in front of Sky Captain.