Foulois nodded. "I agree."
"Then that's it. Harry," Indy said to the colonel, "you've got the contacts. Will you attend to provisions and anything else we may need."
"Yes, just so long as you know that I think you're all crazy," Henshaw said with resignation.
"You still going with us?" Indy pressed.
"Of course," Henshaw answered. "I never made any special claims to be sane."
The flight westward, into the prevailing winds, was every bit as troublesome, even dangerous at times, as Henshaw had warned—and quite often worse. Weather in a variety of forms, all of it bad save for favorable tailwinds most of the time, swept down from the arctic regions. Cold air mixed with moist warm air along their route gave the Ford a hammering, noisy, jolting ride through sky-high potholes, bumps, and violent turbulence.
The weather proved so rotten the first leg of the trip that Cromwell and Foulois chose to land along the northwest coast of Scotland to sit out a period of horrendous rain and darkness. The field where they'd landed was deserted.
Cromwell and Henshaw went about the buildings trying to find anyone on duty. "Not a living soul," Henshaw mumbled through chattering teeth.
"Bloody mausoleum," Cromwell confirmed. "No lights, no people, no nothing."
"Let's tie the Ford down, and we'll break in to get out of this weather," Indy said immediately.
They dragged thick ropes from their equipment containers, lashing the airplane to the ground, throwing a thick canvas tarp over the cockpit. Gathering sleeping bags, they pushed through the storm-lashed night to an operations shack. A heavy padlock secured the door. Indy removed his Webley, firing a single round into the lock.
"Look," he said sourly. "Magic. Make a lot of noise and the door's opened."
"That's quite a key you have there," Henshaw told him. "I didn't know you were the criminal type, but I like your style."
"So do I," shivered Gale, pushing past Indy into the protection of the office. "I'll even buy them a new lock."
Thirty minutes later they had a fire blazing in a large potbellied stove, and soon afterward they were gratefully asleep.
Rain was still falling at the first sign of dawn. No one from the field had appeared. Henshaw returned to the Ford and switched on the batteries for radio power. In moments he was talking with a weather reporting center nearby. He hung up, switched off the batteries, and went to the door to call the others.
"It's still pretty cruddy where we are," he explained, "but I talked to Scottsmoor. They have spoken this morning with the islands along our path, and it's much improved the closer to get to Iceland. I suggest we move on out as fast as we can."
Indy looked at Cromwell, who nodded. Gale spoke up. "Rene, give me a hand with our gear in the office. Indy, I'll leave a note and some money to pay for the lock." She looked at the sky. "I know this weather. It's like two fronts converging. Harry, whoever you spoke to just left out one thing. Either we take off within the hour or we'll be on the ground for a couple of days."
"What makes you so sure?" Henshaw asked, just a touch too tolerant in his attitude toward a woman talking pilot language.
"Because I learned to fly in this country," Gale snapped. "Day and night for five months. I know it, you don't, so I suggest you get cracking, Colonel."
Indy laughed. "Sounds good to me."
Twenty minutes later they thundered along the grass strip into the air, climbing in a steady turn to take them northwest. At a thousand feet Foulois called Indy on the intercom. "Take a look out the right side," he told Indy. "Looks like our little lady knows the weather here better than anyone else."
In the distance, no more than a few miles distant, a huge wall of fog and rain advanced against the field they'd just left. "We'll be above this in several minutes," Foulois added, "and we ought to stay on top all the way to Iceland."
"Good show," Indy replied.
They flew at eight thousand feet in brilliant sunshine. Gale opened sandwiches, and brought them along with a thermos of hot tea to the cockpit. Like Indy and Henshaw, she preferred coffee while flying. They gathered near the rear of the cabin; away from the propellers, the noise level was almost comfortable and permitted easy speech.
"Harry," Indy said between huge bites of his sandwich, "let me bounce some ideas off of you."
Henshaw gestured with his own sandwich. "Go on. Let's have 'em."
Indy glanced at Gale. "Anytime you feel I'm missing something, step in," he instructed her.
She nodded. She would wait until she had something worth saying or asking. In the meantime, she knew she was in for an education. She knew how to fly an airplane, even one so large as the three-engined Ford. But she knew she was about to step into an area where she was a neophyte. Whatever Indy might advance would be measured and evaluated, and the response given, by Harry Henshaw—who was as much a technical intelligence specialist as he was a highly experienced pilot in everything from small trainers and fighters to huge transports and bombers.
"Let's start with the zep," Indy said. "Harry, I want you to consider any statement I make as much of a question as it is a conclusion. You teach me about wings and things and I'll take you smoothly through tombs and pyramids."
Henshaw laughed. "It's a deal."
"Okay," Indy said, "the zep. Treadwell explained that they got at least three fighters into position to empty their guns into that thing."
"Right," Henshaw said.
"And they fired tracers," Indy went on quickly. "Which means, one, they didn't hit the lifting-gas cells."
"Possibility, yes," Henshaw replied.
"Well, if that thing is lifted by hydrogen, then either it's got heavy shielding about the gas bags, which kept the tracers from hitting them—"
"Dismiss that," Henshaw waved away the suggestion. "You're talking so much weight the thing could hardly get above the treetops."
"Got it," Indy said, nodding. "Or the fighters could have missed completely."
"Nope," Henshaw countered. "I checked. The pilots saw their tracers going into the top of the hull."
"Then either those people aboard the airship were incredibly lucky," Indy said, hesitating before finishing his sandwich, "or they weren't using hydrogen, or any other flammable gas."
"Congratulations," Henshaw told him.
"That means they're using helium," Indy came back. "So where are they getting it?"
"I thought you Yanks had a world monopoly on helium," Gale offered.
"We sure do," Henshaw told her. "The main source is—"
Indy gestured to interrupt. "Let me," he told Henshaw. "I've been doing some homework on this."
Henshaw seemed amused with Indy's intensity. "Have at it, Professor." He smiled.
"Mineral Wells, Texas."
"Congratulations," Henshaw said, clearly impressed. "But there are also helium storage points—"
"Too crowded," Indy said quickly. "Too obvious. They can't move something the size of a small mountain where people would go bananas at the sight of a huge gleaming airship zipping along without engines."
"So they must have a base that completely conceals that airship?" Gale asked.
"Give the lady a cigar," Indy said. "You know," he turned back to Henshaw, "each clue opens the door a bit wider to more answers."
"Always does," Henshaw agreed. "A matter of the picture becoming clearer as you fit each piece into the jigsaw puzzle." He eyed Indy with a quizzical look. "Do I get the idea we've heard only part of your conclusions?"
Indy smiled. "I know this may sound crazy, but it looks as if a mixture of anthropology and archeology has the answer we're after. That, and some old but very powerful superstitions, the latter enough to convince eyewitnesses to the airship to keep it a secret."
"You're way ahead of me," Henshaw said, irritated that he wasn't following Indy fast enough.
"Well, one of the best kicks to open the door came from Filipo Castilano," Indy said. "Remember when Treadwell told us that Filipo had made vague ref
erences to a city in the sky? At best it seemed terribly tenuous. For all I knew, Filipo was deliberately disguising his message. Likely he figured I would extrapolate from what he was hinting at and come up with the answer he wanted me to get."
"And did you?" Henshaw pressed.
"Not at first," Indy admitted. "A city in the sky could be Asgard. Home of the gods. It might be Mount Olympus. Every culture has some kind of city, or Eden, or heaven in the sky. But I had to keep in mind that Filipo could have been speaking more literally than I suspected."
"Indy, you're playing games with us," Gale complained.
"No; not really. I'm trying to have you accompany me on the process I was using to come up with the right answer."
He ticked off the items on his fingers. "First, the airship can't possibly be using hydrogen. It would have been blown apart by now with its own jet engines. Plus the fact that it has—it must have—a huge open ramp at its stern, so that the discs can come in to be recovered. And they're also pouring out very high heat."
"Agreed," Henshaw said. "Even a minor hydrogen leak would be a disaster."
"Okay," Indy went on. "So we need helium. Shipping great quantities of helium out of the U.S. would attract too much attention. The government is paranoid on the stuff. But there's no problem in shipping helium by the tanker load inside the States. All you need is enough money and you can buy what you want, so long as no one figures it's going overseas.
"Helium from Mineral Wells in Texas. But where would it go? How did this sky city fit into it? And if there really is a sky city, it has to be in name only. We just don't have cities drifting around the sky. What if it was a name an anthropologist or an archeologist, or even a student of history, would recognize? It might not be known as such by the public. It would be in a rare language, rare by virtue of belonging to an isolated group, that is. And if Castilano knew as much of Spanish history as I believe he did, he was pointing straight to the real Sky City."
"You've been leading us down the garden path, Indy—"
"Not really. It was only when I began to think along those lines that everything fell into place." He paused, relishing the moment. "You see, it's an Indian name. The Acoma Indians have occupied a massive redoubt for thousands of years. In fact, their history claims they lived in their fortified city three thousand years before the time of Christ."
"Acoma! Of course!" Henshaw exclaimed.
"What is Acoma?" Gale almost begged for the explanation.
"Acoma is the Indian name for our Sky City," Indy told her. "It lies roughly southwest of Albuquerque, New Mexico. It's fairly close to the Zuni Indian Reservation, but it stands by itself. It's a huge mesa, in places well over three hundred feet high with sheer cliff walls. More specifically, Sky City in the Acoma language means Old Acoma. They have a language distinctively their own.
"And they have their specific and particular beliefs, myths and traditions. The Acoma believe they all originated from deep within the earth, from a huge underground chamber they called Shipapu. Their race started with two girls created by their gods—Nautsiti and Iatiku. When the gods created these two girls, suddenly the race of Acoma Indians sprang to life. People, animals, dwellings, agriculture; everything. They built their homes hundreds of feet up in the sky—atop their mesa. It became known as the Pueblo in the Sky."
"Sky City," Gale said softly.
"And it is a natural, powerful fortification, with huge caverns and cave areas big enough to hold half a dozen of those airships. Throughout their history the Acoma Indians defended their territory with a savagery given special notice by the Spaniards when they were moving through those lands in their early conquests north of Mexico. When they reached Acoma—which in various linguistic derivatives means 'the place that always was'—they ran into some very nasty people defending their sacred mesas."
Indy leaned back and stretched his legs. "I recall reading the reports of a Spanish expedition leader, Captain Hernando de Alvarado. Back in 1540, Coronado sent him to learn the truth about this great place they'd heard about. Alvarado was amazed to see the city hundreds of feet above them, the entrances narrow and so well fortified that an attack seemed impossible. In fact, his official report to Coronado stated flatly that Acoma was the most impregnable stronghold he had ever seen. He called it completely inaccessible, and reported there were more than six to eight thousand Indians living atop the mesa, all of them quite capable of standing off any force the Spaniards might have assembled."
Indy rubbed his chin, searching his memory for details. "That's enough of the history, but it lets you know that Acoma is absolutely the perfect operational base for their airship. The local Indians—and the countryside has at least a dozen different tribes—have always believed they had a special connection to heaven. There was a specific event, um, I believe it was the fall of 1846. By now the Spaniards, of course, were gone, and the American army was doing everything it could to control the Indians. This one moment in their history, well, it certainly reinforced the Indians' beliefs. An American cavalry force was camped about a mile from the sheer cliffs of Acoma, and on this night a tremendous meteor came blasting out of space. In fact, it was so bright it turned the night into day. And it didn't come down. It tore across the sky, level with the horizon, lit up the world, and, apparently, rushed back out into space again."
"Atmospheric skip," Henshaw said. "It happens sometimes. It makes a believer out of you."
"Well, it's my bet," Indy said firmly, "and I'll stake my reputation on it, that's where we'll find that airship. And if they have a real handle on what's happening, then they absolutely must realize things are starting to come un-glued with their program."
Indy showed his concern. "The way these people have been operating, they've got to make a very serious move. Which means they could well decide to destroy even an entire city if they wanted to."
"Destroy a whole city?" Gale showed confusion, even resistance to Indy's statement. "How could they do that? One airship, even a dozen, couldn't carry enough bombs to—"
"Indy's right," Henshaw broke in. "They wouldn't bother with bombs, Gale. Too heavy, clumsy. They'd make a lot of noise and fire and kill a few hundred people, perhaps, even wound a few thousand more, but that's nothing on the scale of war." Henshaw shook his head. "We run what we call 'war games' on matters like this. Like, what would we do if we were in their place?"
"What would you do?" Gale pushed.
"If my intention was terror and killing on a huge scale, any one of several things or, more likely, a combination of them all. First, either from the air or from the ground you can poison the water supply of a major city. If your poison is slow-acting, then enough time passes so that most of the people in your city would have absorbed fatal doses even before the poison starts to kill. Nerve paralysis, respiratory problems; that sort of thing. Then there are biological agents. It's not well known but at least four countries have already developed a mutation of anthrax that devastates people exposed to it. It could be sprayed from either the airship or those devilish saucers they've got. You wouldn't need great amounts, in terms of weight, that is. England, France, Germany, Russia, the United States, we were all getting into the biological agents game. Nasty and brutish, I'll admit—"
"Horrible, you mean," Gale said with heat.
"No worse, young lady, than an incendiary bullet in the gut, let me assure you," Henshaw said coldly. "Or being in the direct line of impact from a flamethrower."
"My God," Gale said, veiy quietly.
"Harry's right," Indy added. "And then there's poison gas. Back in the Great War they had lewisite, mustard, phosgene. Other types were being developed. Tens of thousands of soldiers died from gas attacks. Maybe they were the lucky ones. Tens of thousands more became blind or went mad or were crippled by gas."
"And an unexpecting city doesn't have any protection against that," Henshaw said emphatically. "No, I'm afraid Indy's right on target about these people. We've sent their carrier ship to the bottom, so they
know we're ready to make a stand against them. We attacked their airship—rather futilely, I admit—but those British boys certainly went at it with everything they had. Now the hunt is on, and the sooner we find that airship and knock it out, the faster they'll lose the advantages of emotion and fear stirred up by those saucers and the airship itself."
"I haven't heard either one of you say what I've been afraid you might say," Gale told them.
"Spell that out," Indy replied.
"If they can attack one city," she said slowly, "why wouldn't they attack several, or even many cities?"
"Oh, they could," Henshaw said quickly. "But mass destruction isn't the name of their game. It's fear. Mind control. Change the way people think and you can control them. If they believe in their gods, there are gods. If they believe they're helpless—"
"Then they'll be helpless," Indy finished for him. "So the sooner we find that airship..." He let the rest speak for itself.
They felt the Ford lurch from side to side: That brought their attention to the moment, to where they were, flying across the North Atlantic to cross by the Faeroe Islands on their way to Iceland. Turbulence increased with every passing moment, and they saw Foulois working his way back from the cockpit.
"Why we ever bothered to give you people intercom headsets is a mystery," Foulois said. "We've been shouting at you for ten minutes!"
"What's up?" Henshaw asked. From the look on his face as he felt the trembling and shaking motions of the airplane, he didn't need the Frenchman to tell him anything.
"We've got to work our way through a front," Foulois said. "We're into it now." He nodded to the cabin windows, and they saw the rain streaking the glass.
"It's going to be a bit bumpy," Foulois went on. "Better strap in, put away any loose stuff."
"Frenchy, I'll take your seat for a while, okay?" Henshaw said. "You can have some food and coffee—"
"I realize you meant wine, didn't you, Colonel?"
Indiana Jones and tyhe Sky Pirates Page 22
