The Perilous Polynesian Pendant

by Jason Lethcoe

  No more living inside books, he reminded himself. You’ve always wondered about your grandfather. Now you finally have a chance to be just like him!

  Andy took a deep breath and stood a little straighter. He stared back at his grandfather with a determined expression. “I give you my word. I’ll do my very best not to let you down, Grandfather.”

  Ned smiled warmly. “Well done. I’m counting on it.”

  Then Ned’s expression grew serious. “Now then, for your first job, I need you to recover a very special key.”

  Andy, who was feeling more than ever like he was moving about in a dream, allowed Boltonhouse to escort him to a secret hangar behind his grandfather’s mansion. It was a relief to be aboveground again, but he barely had a moment to register the fresh air before he spied a massive silver blimp.

  Andy marveled at the pristine ship hovering in the air. Hundreds of ropes tethered the zeppelin to the ground, preventing it from floating away. Andy couldn’t stop himself from grinning. He had never flown before, and now he was about to board an airship.

  Looks like I’ll be taking my first flight in style!

  Boltonhouse ushered him toward a large rolling staircase. The next thing Andy knew, he was climbing the stairs to the cockpit.

  I can’t believe this is actually happening! I’m about to go on a secret mission, and I haven’t even packed a toothbrush!

  Andy strode to the top of the rolling stairway. The pilot nodded to him in greeting as he entered the cabin, and Andy lifted his hand in a small wave. Suddenly, a thought occurred to him, and he wheeled around and blurted to Boltonhouse, “Wait! I can’t go. What would my parents say? I need to tell them where I am!”

  Andy heard a clicking sound and then the robot replied, “Not to worry, Andy Stanley. Your mother has been informed that you’ve decided to stay with your grandfather. She has been told to expect you home in a week.”

  “My mother knows my grandfather is alive?” Andy asked. “Why didn’t she tell me?”

  If Boltonhouse knew the answer to the question, he didn’t reply.

  Andy sighed and gazed around the cabin.

  The airship was a marvel of modern construction. Its massive, sleek silver body was designed to cut through the sky as silently as a cloud. The gondola at the bottom of the ship was outfitted with luxurious accommodations. Velvet couches were artfully positioned around the cabin, as were soft leather chairs. There were bookshelves holding publications of every adventure magazine in existence. As Andy took a seat, he was greeted by a private chef who offered to prepare anything he could imagine.

  Andy thanked the chef and politely refused. His stomach had begun to flip-flop all over the place as the reality of his situation had fully dawned on him.

  I couldn’t eat even if I wanted to, Andy thought. I’m too nervous.

  Andy settled himself in his seat and stared out a brass porthole, watching the earth below him gently recede. His right hand rested on a leather-bound mission briefing his grandfather had given him. With his left hand, he tightly held the Hodges Zoomwriter.

  Ned had told him that the journey to the tropics would take several days and that he should try to make himself comfortable. As he looked around, he didn’t think getting comfortable would be difficult.

  Andy looked out the window again. The ground was moving farther and farther away. Turning his attention to the mission briefing in front of him, he opened the file. The symbol of the Jungle Explorers’ Society was printed on the first page.

  This is amazing. It’s like being a secret agent!

  Curious, Andy began to read:

  Dear Grandson,

  The mission you are undertaking is of the utmost importance to the safety and security of the entire world. It is but the first of several adventures that I shall be imploring you to help me upon.

  Years ago, I was tasked with protecting a series of magical artifacts and ensuring that they are kept hidden from the rest of the world. These ancient treasured items are valued above measure, each being imbued with unusual powers.

  It is to my great embarrassment and dismay that enemies of the Society have learned the locations of some of these treasures and are trying to find and use them for their own nefarious purposes.

  I have a guess as to who might be behind the foul plot. The villain’s name is almost too terrible to mention, for merely hearing it has caused many who have had the misfortune of meeting him to tremble.

  Suffice it to say, this horrible man calls himself Professor Phink. He has been my adversary in all I’ve set out to do in my illustrious career. He is, I suspect, the one who arranged for my capture by the witch doctor who shrank my head.

  The funeral you attended was arranged to throw Phink off the scent. If he believes me dead, we may have a chance to catch him unaware and keep him from retrieving the artifacts.

  Of the many objects I have been tasked with protecting, none is more powerful than the Pailina Pendant. This is what I believe Phink seeks. I am trusting you to keep it out of his hands. You are, in fact, the only one I can trust. But to keep it from him, you must first find a key that can unlock the hidden chamber in which the pendant is hidden.

  By the time you read this, the villainous Professor Phink may well have become aware of your departure, for he has eyes and ears everywhere. If he finds the key before we do, the fate of the entire world may be at stake. The power it unlocks would bring disaster on a scale never before seen, and many innocent lives would surely be lost.

  Stay vigilant and keep your pen at hand! Phink will stop at nothing to thwart those who interfere with his plans, but in this case, the pen is indeed mightier than the sword. Ha!

  You’ll be landing in a few days at the Society’s hidden Hawaiian headquarters. There you will rendezvous with my friend and associate Albert Awol. He will give you additional information and equip you with the supplies needed to complete your mission.

  Enjoy your first adventure! And if you get nervous, here is a simple cure: stand on your head and recite the alphabet backward three times as rapidly as possible. When you stand upright again, you’ll find that you’ve completely forgotten whatever it was that was bothering you and have a pleasant dizzy feeling as well.

  Godspeed to you, Grandson! I only wish I were thirty years younger and could join you on this exciting expedition.

  Kungaloosh!

  Grandfather

  Behind the letter was a drawing of a tiki. It looked like one of the carved gods he’d seen in books about Polynesia, except it was pocket-sized and placed on the handle of an ornately carved wooden key. Beneath it were the words TIKI KEY.

  “Strange,” Andy muttered.

  Turning the pages of the file, Andy saw maps of Hawaii and the surrounding islands.

  As he closed the file, a feeling of resolve washed over him. If what his grandfather had said was true, then the fate of the world might indeed be resting on his shoulders. He straightened in his seat, removed the small leather notebook his grandfather had given him, twisted the cap on his pen, and wrote:

  Read the briefing. Will do my best.

  He hesitated, then added to the transmission the parting phrase his grandfather liked to use.

  Kungaloosh!

  His eyes were yellow. They were the first thing people noticed about him and the last thing his victims saw.

  Their particular hue was not a beautiful gold but was instead reminiscent of something pestilent. The whites of his eyes were also yellow, creating a macabre look. Anyone who made eye contact with him tended to look away immediately, a welcome reaction in his line of work.

  His eyes stood in stark contrast to the rest of him, all of which was cloaked in black. His ebony hair was plastered neatly away from his high, pale brow, and a rather diabolical pencil-thin mustache crept along his upper lip.

  From his perch on the edge of a wall at the Lostmore mansion, he watched the ascent of Ned Lostmore’s zeppelin with interest. He was especially intrigued by the young passenger he�
�d seen escorted onto the vessel. The wall he sat on provided adequate cover for his spying and had been frequented by the professor on many previous occasions. He had, in fact, sat there mere hours earlier to watch the events of Ned’s funeral unfold. He hadn’t believed for a second that the burial ceremony he’d witnessed was authentic. It had too much of his adversary’s style about it, which could only mean that somehow—against impossible odds—Ned Lostmore had survived his encounter with the witch doctor Phink had hired to shrink his head.

  Folding up his spyglass, Professor Phink turned his attention to a small shadowy figure beside him.

  “Our plan must not fail,” he said in his rich, sonorous voice. “Remember to stick closely to it. I cannot afford to have anything go awry. The Potentate has special plans for the Pailina Pendant, and she doesn’t take kindly to failure. Do you understand?”

  The figure next to him glanced up, her eyes crinkling as she smiled.

  “Of course,” she said.

  Abigail Awol was as different in appearance from the professor as was possible. Strikingly beautiful, with neatly coiffed hair, full ruby lips, and dark, expressive eyes, she was petite, standing a mere five feet tall.

  The girl was a strong ally, but Phink was not foolish enough to share the entirety of his plan with her. She had too much conscience, though she tried to hide it. But for jobs she didn’t need to know all the details of, Abigail was perfect. It was she who had arranged to have Ned’s head shrunk.

  With Ned out of the way, Phink’s plan should have proceeded like clockwork. The artifacts Lostmore had been guarding should have been left unprotected and easily procured.

  So why was Ned’s zeppelin headed skyward? Where was it bound, and had Ned Lostmore found some way to orchestrate a last-minute plan to stop him from achieving his goal?

  If so, he’s a fool, the professor mused. Hadn’t he always been one step ahead of that bumbling doctor and his ridiculous cures?

  Phink turned his cruel gaze back down to his agent.

  “I want to know who is on board before you shoot it down. Is that understood?” he snapped.

  “Perfectly,” Abigail replied.

  Then, flashing him her beautiful smile, she disappeared into the shadows.

  A board the zeppelin. Andy soon found himself unable to keep his eyes open. Before long, the light drone of the zeppelin’s engines had lulled him to sleep.

  The next few days of travel passed surprisingly quickly. Andy found that the zeppelin had been fitted with plenty of clean clothing, and its library had been stocked not only with all his grandfather’s books, but with hundreds of books about Polynesian history, mythology, and geography, which he happily settled in to read.

  Andy began with Ned’s book Witch Doctors: A Prescription for Madness? He had read it before, but now that he was on an adventure of his own, it was even more exciting to read Ned’s firsthand account of the challenges he’d faced while going up against mysterious jungle magic.

  When he had reread all of Ned’s books, Andy moved on to a series of books in the zeppelin’s library that were devoted to Hawaiian culture and history.

  Might as well do some light research before I get there.

  By the fourth day of the journey, Andy was feeling well versed in the history of Hawaii. He was immersed in a new book about the geography of Molokai when a loud bang interrupted his reading.

  What was that?

  Andy looked around the cockpit, confused and a little alarmed. He’d gotten so comfortable in the airship over the past few days that sometimes it was easy to forget he was suspended above the earth in a motorized balloon.

  Andy moved to one of the brass portholes and stared out. There was something flying next to him.

  “A biplane?” he murmured. He stared at the double-winged plane. It had a military insignia on it, but Andy couldn’t place the country it was from. “German, maybe?” he wondered. “No. Looks more like—”

  The blimp lurched violently to the side as several bullets tore through the cabin, exploding into the cabinets behind him.

  Andy covered his head with his hands, cowering behind the sofa. When the shooting stopped, he peeked over the couch just in time to see the biplane zoom past the cabin window.

  “We’re under attack!” he shouted.

  Andy stumbled toward the cockpit, aware of the roar of the biplane’s engines outside. The ship rocked from side to side, and the wind howled through the perforated cabin, scattering papers and throwing everything into disarray.

  Andy ripped open the door to the cockpit.

  “There’s a plane shooting at us!” he shouted. “There’s a—” The words died in his throat. The pilot’s seat was empty! Worse still, Andy saw that the airship was plunging toward the ocean. Through the windshield he could just make out the tops of two brightly colored parachutes. With a sinking sensation, he realized why he hadn’t heard any other panicked voices on the zeppelin. The crew had bailed out and left him behind!

  The zeppelin shook as another round of bullets tore through its hull. Andy heard a loud THUNK! THUNK! THUNK! as the shells slammed into the engines. A second later, the steady thrum of the propellers stopped and an eerie silence overtook the ship.

  A tremendous explosion came from behind him, and Andy was hurled toward the pilot’s seat.

  He caught himself on the seat and stood, staring out the windshield at the approaching water beneath him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the biplane pilot lean out of the cockpit. He turned toward her grinning face as she saluted him.

  Andy shook his head. I’ve got to find a way out! He glanced around the cabin and noticed an emergency exit. In a flash, he realized that the pilot must have used that door to get out at the first sign of danger.

  As the biplane receded in the distance, the full horror of Andy’s situation struck him. If he didn’t do something fast, the zeppelin was going to end up at the bottom of the ocean—with him inside!

  Andy wanted to scream, but he knew his best chance at survival was to remain calm. He rushed back into the cabin. Throwing open cabinets and doors, he searched for anything he could use.

  Finally, he spotted something. On a high shelf was a parachute.

  Andy grabbed it and strapped it on. This had better work, he thought, racing back to the cockpit. I don’t even know if I’m wearing it right! He leapt for the emergency exit and turned the handle. It didn’t budge. Locked! What am I going to—

  Suddenly, Andy remembered the key ring at his belt. The skeleton key! Of course!

  Andy grabbed the ring and shoved the rusty key into the lock. Come on! He grunted as he turned the key, twisting it with all his might. The lock was stubborn, but finally it gave way and the door flew open.

  Thank you, Grandfather!

  The wind roared in his ears, and the ocean surged below him. A second blast ripped through the ship as the other engine exploded in a ball of flame.

  There was no time to think, no time to consider the fact that he’d never used a parachute before. Andy hesitated only a moment as he gripped the sides of the doorframe, and then, with his heart in his throat, he jumped.

  Andy tumbled through the air. He felt like he was in the middle of a hurricane. His heart pounded faster than it ever had before, and it was all he could do to stay clearheaded instead of screaming.

  Why isn’t my chute opening? It’s supposed to open!

  Tears were pulled from the corners of his eyes, and the forceful winds continued to howl around his body as he fell farther and farther—faster and faster.

  Something’s wrong!

  Then, in a flash, he remembered that to deploy the chute, the handle on the pack had to be pulled.

  He cursed quietly to himself for forgetting such an obvious thing and frantically patted the straps around his chest, searching for the metal handle. For a moment, he thought it wasn’t there, and a new wave of panic rushed over him. But his desperately probing fingers soon found what he was looking for, and he jerked on the
metal ring as hard as he could.

  He felt the release of the folded nylon as it shot out of the pack.

  FOOMP!

  The parachute blossomed above him, and his fall was cut short with a hard, snapping jerk.

  Seconds later he was gazing down, searching for a safe place to land.

  But there was no land. There was nothing but ocean in every direction.

  When he’d seen pictures of parachutes in books, the descent had always looked peaceful—more like floating than falling—but the reality was quite different. The parachute had slowed his fall, but Andy was surprised at how quickly he was still moving.

  He hit the surface of the water with a tremendous splash, then plunged down, down, down into the icy depths, like a knife through butter. He was farther down than he’d ever been before in the murky depths of the ocean. His lungs screamed for air as he tried to paddle back to the surface.

  Andy’s fear of drowning propelled his arms upward through the icy water. He ignored the ache in his shoulders and back, telling himself over and over, I can do this. I’m not going to drown. I can do this!

  In a last desperate lunge, Andy burst from the surface, sputtering, coughing, and taking deep, shuddering gasps of air.

  His lips were trembling with cold, and he knew by the stiffness in his arms and legs that he didn’t have much time before his strength gave out.

  Andy gazed around, panicked. There are no ships. No anything!

  The thought of drowning at sea hadn’t occurred to him when he agreed to go on this mission. But now it was becoming an increasingly likely reality!

  Don’t panic! he told himself. Panicking will only make things worse. You’ll use too much energy trying to stay afloat!

  But he was panicking. A small wave crashed over his head, and he sputtered and coughed through chattering teeth.