“It doesn’t look like Rodney had very much fun,” Fiona said.
Sure enough, Lafayette stood at the edge of the platform, clutching the railing, and looked like he might pass out or throw up or both. Sorensen stood nearby, not quite able to conceal a look of contempt.
Newcombe shrugged. “I guess air travel isn’t for everyone.”
They moved over to join the other pair, and Fiona slugged the writer on the shoulder playfully. “Come along, Rodney. Let’s go warm you up with some cognac.”
Lafayette brightened visibly at the suggestion, and followed as Fiona, with Newcombe beside her, led the way down the platform. They had gotten just halfway when the scientist felt a slight change in his center of gravity. “Are we ascending?”
She nodded. “Climbing back up to our cruising altitude of 20,000 feet.”
“Watch your step,” advised Sorensen.
His warning came an instant too late. Lafayette’s feet suddenly flew out from beneath him and he landed flat on his back on the icy platform,
Abruptly, the airship tilted up sharply, and the platform was suddenly a forty-five degree slope. Lafayette flailed desperately to stop his slide, but his gloved hands could find no purchase.
Without even pausing to think about it, Newcombe dove after the writer. He succeeded in snaring Lafayette’s arm, but in so doing sacrificed his own handhold. Tangled together, the two men shot down the icy surface toward the open tail section and the waiting embrace of the Atlantic Ocean.
Chapter 8—Oceans Apart
The explosion knocked them both flat and peppered them with debris. But the expected firestorm did not immediately materialize.
Dodge shook off the stunning effects of the blast and pushed up onto his elbows to look around. Anya was doing the same a few feet away. Behind them, the gondola had been demolished and was spilling black smoke, but even as he looked, Dodge’s view of the control car was eclipsed as the torn pieces of the blimp envelope settled over him like a shroud.
The air felt strange — it even tasted strange. Poisonous fumes from the explosion, perhaps? He held his breath and crawled toward where he had last seen Anya, aware that at any moment the heavy fabric might become a sheet of fire.
They found each other a few seconds later. Dodge covered his face with a hand, hoping that she would understand his warning gesture, and then pointed to what he hoped was the shortest path to escape. She nodded, evidently comprehending, and started crawling alongside him. After only a few seconds of moving in this fashion, they emerged from beneath the collapsed blimp. Dodge expected to see an inferno blossoming behind them, but there was only a dissipating cloud of smoke and dust above the center of the blimp.
He turned to Anya. “Are you all right?” His voice sounded strange, like the duck in the Disney cartoons, and he reflexively put a hand to his mouth.
“It’s the helium,” Anya explained, her own voice comically high-pitched. “Barron uses helium in his airships. It’s perfectly safe.”
Safe or not, Dodge wasn’t about to linger in the hangar, especially not with Uchida lurking somewhere nearby. Grabbing his arm, Anya guided him to a door in the rear of the hangar.
As soon as he stepped outside, Dodge immediately saw the answer to some of the questions that had begun swirling in his head from the moment Anya stepped back into his life. Sitting idly on the rails, a few paces away from the terminus, was the ghost train.
“Train” was probably the wrong word, since it consisted only of a single car, presumably self-propelled. Although solid and tangible, riding the steel tracks on wheels of metal instead rather than ectoplasm, the vehicle was no less mysterious. It was uniformly black, about the size of a box car, but streamlined, without any angles or protruding exhaust pipes, tapered like a bullet at either end. Anya hasted over to it and, utilizing a mechanism hidden from Dodge’s view, opened a sliding panel to permit entry.
The interior of the ghost train car was considerably more prosaic. It looked like nothing more than the cargo area of a truck, presently empty, with openings on either end. These, Dodge discovered, led to seating areas. At the far end, where the ceiling began to slope, a single chair was positioned in front of a control panel that looked like it might have come from an electric trolley. Dodge saw that that the slanting panel was actually a transparent windshield of darkened glass.
Anya gestured to one of the chairs, then took the driver’s seat. She twisted a wheel-shaped control and Dodge felt the gentle push of acceleration against his body. The movement was smooth and eerily silent, but through the windshield, the landscape was flashing rapidly by.
Dodge cleared his throat and was pleased to hear his normal voice again. “First off, thank you for saving me.”
She didn’t look at him. “You’re welcome.”
“As you can imagine, I’ve got a couple questions.”
She laughed.
“I guess the first would be, why? Why did you come back for me?”
She glanced back at him. “That is difficult to answer by itself.”
“I can fill in some of the blank spaces,” Dodge said. “You knew about this place, about this train. That’s why you wanted to be on the Broadway Limited. But Barron built it all, right?”
“Yes. We have a spy very close to Walter Barron. That is how we knew of the plot to abduct you and the scientist. He also told me that Barron had abandoned this facility, so I knew that I could use it to effect my escape from you.”
“Which brings me back to my question; why did you come back for me?”
Though they had only been riding for a few seconds, the train car had already ascended out of the depression where the hangar was located and was closing on the tunnel. Anya continued to stare straight ahead as she answered. “I have been in contact with our spy. Barron is moving ahead with his plan to acquire the materials necessary to complete his death ray, and it appears that he has the cooperation of your friend, the scientist.”
“Doc Newcombe is helping Barron? I find that hard to believe.”
“I do not know what sort of persuasive methods were employed. I know only that Barron requires a unique sort of metal, something that your friend, Dr. Newcombe, is familiar with. Barron is on his way to Persia, where he believes he can locate a source of this metal.”
As the train slipped into the tunnel, plunging the interior of the vehicle into darkness, Dodge figuratively saw the light. If there was a substance that could make the impossible possible, it was the strange metal that the ancients had used to create the devices and weapons he had found at the Outpost. It seemed the legacy of violence attached to that place continued to live on in spite of its destruction. “That still doesn’t explain why you helped me.”
A light flashed on, a handheld lantern similar to the one he had used in exploring the tunnel. In its ambient glow, he saw Anya release the speed-control wheel, allowing the train to coast. “I would have thought it was obvious. We must prevent Barron from getting this metal. I need you to help me find it before he does.”
The answer made sense, but Dodge wasn’t about to take anything the statuesque blonde told him at face value. It wasn’t too hard to imagine Anya and her revolutionaries secretly plotting to develop their own version of the death ray. But if that were true, then he’d have a better chance of stopping them — of stopping anyone intent on creating such a terrible device — by beating them all to the prize.
“Why Persia?”
“Barron believes that there are ancient documents and maps in an undiscovered repository in the ruins of the fortress of Alamut.”