“Upstream!” Dodge hoped his friends understood what he meant; there wasn’t time to be more explicit, but the creatures were advancing from the direction they had followed earlier, which left only one direction to go. He found Nora’s hand and pulled her along, hugging the cavern wall and staying as far from the river as he could.
More lights shone out from the adjacent tunnel, and in their diffuse glow, Dodge saw Hurricane and Vaughn right behind him, and behind them, dozens of small ghostly white figures. The second gunman emerged at almost exactly that instant, only to find himself surrounded by the fierce creatures. He had the wherewithal to bring his gun to bear, and a storm of lead slugs tore into the pack, but it was not enough. The creatures overwhelmed him.
No one else came out of the tunnel. The third crewman had either not ventured in after them, or had turned back. This was small comfort to the quartet that hastened along the unfamiliar path in total darkness. Dodge drew to a halt after about a hundred tentative steps. “Still there, Hurricane?”
“Right behind you,” the big man whispered. “I think those critters are busy with their fresh kill, but don’t ask me to put money on it.”
“We need to see where we’re going.”
“I’ve got a few matches,” Hurricane said.
“You’ll bring those things right to us with a light,” Vaughn intoned.
“I don’t think they have eyes,” Dodge said. “Or if they do, they’re probably sensitive to light. It might actually keep them at bay. We just need something to make a torch with.”
In an almost sad voice, Nora said: “I’ve got some paper. My notebook.”
Because he was a writer, Dodge understood just how much of a sacrifice it was. She tore off a few sheets, twisted them together, and passed them to Hurricane who struck a match.
Though the flame was tiny, their eyes had become adjusted to the darkness, and for a moment, it was like looking at the sun. Hurricane touched the match to the paper, then held it aloft.
Dodge thought he saw movement at the edge of the illumination cast by the makeshift torch. It might have been just a change in shadow as the yellow flame flickered, but there was no reason not to believe that the creatures were following them.
Their surroundings were almost indistinguishable from the section of tunnel they had passed through on their approach to the gates, but Dodge detected a slight incline on the path ahead. They continued forward, with Nora supplying more pieces of paper to keep their way lit. As they advanced, the ceiling dropped, forcing them down onto the naturally carved river banks and closer to the stream of acid. Even at that, they had to walk in a hunched over position. Then, just when it looked like they might have to start crawling, they reached the end of the tunnel.
The river broadened into a pool. The far wall, at the head of the pool, glistened with moisture seeping out of cracks and dribbling down into the acidic pond that fed the stream.
For a moment, no one spoke. Dodge knew the grim reality that they had hit a dead end was kept at bay only be their refusal to openly acknowledge it, and he was desperately hoping someone would discover some solution that presently eluded him.
For once, his hope wasn’t in vain.
Hurricane’s sharp eyes picked out a horizontal crack large enough to crawl through, just above the seeping rocks. “I reckon water used to flow through there once upon a time. It might lead us back to the lake.”
“Or another dead end,” Vaughn muttered.
“I’m certainly willing to entertain alternatives,” Hurricane drawled. When Vaughn didn’t answer, he continued: “Guess not.”
He passed the torch to Dodge, slung his captured Tommy gun across his back, and then began looking for handholds in the rock face. To everyone’s amazement, the big man seemed to move effortlessly on the nearly vertical surface, like a spider crawling up a wall. He picked out tiny protuberances for steps and insinuated his fingers into near-microscopic cracks, and in just a few minutes, was able to crawl into the seam he had previously identified. He crawled a few feet inside, then stuck his head back out. “Get on up here,” he called. “You’re gonna want to see this.”
After a short journey they emerged from the underworld in the cave Fiona had earlier identified as the grotto of the Sibyl. The fissure had probably served as a source of the mephitic vapors which had facilitated the ancient oracle’s trance states. It had been necessary to dig a little at the end in order to widen the hole enough to get out, but the proximity of daylight was enough to give Hurricane the will move mountains — or at least, very small parts of volcanic hills.
Von Heissel and his remaining crewman had evidently left in the second autogyro. Nevertheless, the group stayed vigilant as they hiked back to the Grotta di Cocceio, where they hired a cab to take them back to the seaport in Naples. Although Majestic was nowhere to be seen, it wasn’t hard to find people who had noticed the airship crossing their skies. The dirigible had last been seen heading west.
“He’s going back to the States,” Vaughn said. “He probably needs the resources of Barron Industries to carry out his scheme.”
“I wonder just what that scheme entails.”
Vaughn’s forehead drew into a crease. “He’s made no secret of his desire to build a larger version of the resonance generator. And it would be a powerful weapon.”
“Von Heissel’s always had delusions of grandeur,” Hurricane offered. “Whatever he’s got planned, you can bet the wave doohickey is just one piece of a much bigger plan.”
“He’s probably got everything he needs to build his new wave resonance device aboard Majestic,” Dodge replied. “If he’s going back to America, it’s because that’s where he plans to launch his attack.”
“I’ll contact Washington. They can intercept him; shoot him down before he ever gets close enough to do any harm.”
“Doc Newton is aboard that thing,” Hurricane said.
Nora added: “Rodney, too. And Miss Dunn. You’d kill them all.”
“To save hundreds of American lives? You’re damn right I would.”
Dodge nodded slowly. “It may come to that. But we need to at least try to save our friends.”
“What have you got in mind?”
“We’ve got to get aboard Majestic again.” Dodge didn’t know exactly how that was going to happen, but he knew it wouldn’t be pleasant.
When his two crewmen did not immediately return from their subterranean pursuit, Von Heissel felt certain they had met with some kind of misfortune. He hoped that whatever had befallen his crewmen had likewise taken care of the escapees — an attack by the pale creatures, perhaps. As much as he hated leaving while the fate of Dalton and the others remained uncertain, he needed to get back aboard Majestic. Nevertheless, he was not about to take the risk of his carefully laid plans unraveling because his foes had slipped through his fingers.
The departure of the Catalina flying boat from the sea port did not go unnoticed. As soon as the plane took off, the baron’s informant sent a short wave transmission that was picked up by the radioman on Majestic, which was in turn passed directly to Von Heissel himself.
If the baron was surprised or disappointed to learn that Dodge Dalton and his companions were still alive, he did not show it. He simply summoned Sorensen and told him what to do.
As the azure waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea fell away beneath the hull of the Catalina, Dodge began scanning the skies for Majestic. Hurricane’s sharp eyes soon picked the airship out, a black speck high above the cloudless horizon. The mere fact of knowing where she was however did little to lighten the mood. At more than ten thousand feet above the earth — or in this case, the sea — and moving at a constant rate of about one hundred miles per hour, their friends and enemies were as inaccessible as if they were on the moon.