A calm suddenly came over him as he gazed into her blue eyes. His voice softened. "I wish we had more time, Polly. I only hope you can forgive me someday."
Polly looked at him quizzically. "Forgive you? Oh, for Nanjing…?"
"No. For this." Sky Captain pulled Polly close, kissing her hard. Then, without warning, he swung back and punched her squarely in the jaw. Knocked unconscious, Polly collapsed into Dex's waiting arms. The young man caught her, looking surprised.
"Take care of her, Dex."
"Sure, Cap." He struggled to hold on to Polly's limp form as Sky Captain raced out of the room. "Good luck."
The rocket's engines built up thrust for takeoff, consuming more and more fuel. The skyscraper-tall structure strained against the clamps holding it in place until the output had reached its maximum levels.
Setting his flight goggles over his eyes so he could see through the caustic fumes and stinging smoke, Sky Captain fought his way through the growing inferno as the island continued to shake. The intense vibrations made him reel from side to side. He ducked from an erratically swinging robot arm connected to an assembly line, then careened into a burly mechanical worker, then tripped and sprawled to the ground.
Robotic janitors followed their programming, striving in vain to keep the work floor tidy.
Sky Captain hauled himself to his feet and continued to fight his way through the rocky chamber. The chaos grew worse the closer he got to the rocket ship, but he staggered forward.
He finally emerged on the launch bay where he skidded to a stop. The mysterious black-clad woman stood there facing him, her arms at her sides. She adjusted her opaque goggles and turned a stony, perfect face toward him. She looked as if she had been waiting for him all along.
Sky Captain sighed, already exhausted by the thought of facing her again. But this woman was the only thing standing between him and the rocket.
They slowly circled each other, squaring off. He balled his fists. "All right. How do you want to do this?"
She swung her fist so fast he barely saw the blur. With a single blow, the woman knocked Sky Captain flat on the ground.
Dex and Dr. Vargas both carried Polly's unconscious body, while Dr. Lang led the way. "Here! Through this storage area!"
"We have to get away, Fritz!" Vargas cried, struggling to hold on to Polly's feet. Another chunk of the ceiling fell, crashing onto Totenkopf's neat desk.
"I know, I know!" Dr. Lang opened a sealed door at the rear of the inner sanctum. He argued rapidly in German, insisting that they hurry.
Out of breath, Dex followed. "With all these huge machines around here, isn't there one that could help us escape?"
"Of course," Vargas said. "Where do you think we are going?"
When they made their way into the echoing storage area, Dr. Lang raced toward a giant transport machine. "Ach! Here we are!" He yanked a grease-spotted tarpaulin off the front of a massive hovercraft cargo hauler.
"It's beautiful," Dex said, admiring the design. "And right now that craft is just what we need."
Lang moved boxes aside, tossing useless packages overboard in order to clear a space on the floor. Dex and Dr. Vargas laid Polly gently on the deck of the hovercraft, resting her head on a rolled blanket. After making sure she was safe, Dex scrambled toward the front section and its control panels. "I'm sure I can figure this thing out… fast enough, I hope."
Tucked on the floor of the craft, Polly fluttered her eyes, slowly regaining consciousness.
Dex scanned the controls and gauges, figuring them out in a flash. The large red button was an obvious place to start. He depressed it, and the lower engines roared to life as fans spun, compressing air and providing lift. As soon as they cleared the ground, he pulled back on a control stick. The transport heaved itself forward.
With a vibrating whistle of air, the lumbering transport moved slowly out of the collapsing cavern. Fragments of falling rock pummeled the sides of the hovercraft, the vehicle picked up speed, rushing toward the cavern's exit.
Dr. Lang stood beside Dex at the controls. "We used to fly this hovercraft all around the island. The best views of the volcano! But we had to stop when the prehistoric birds began to attack us. Poor Dr. Schmidt…"
Vargas clung to a railing on the opposite side of Dex. "Perhaps I should just have remained aboard the Hindenburg III." Then the old scientist glanced back to where Polly had been resting just a moment earlier. His rheumy eyes went wide with surprise. He tapped Dex's arm. "Excuse me."
Polly was no longer aboard.
After the inhuman blow from the mysterious woman, Sky Captain skidded against a wall. He shook his head clear as he struggled to pull himself up. "All right, so you know how to show off."
He lunged at her and swung his fist in a punch that should have knocked the wind out of a dinosaur, but once again the woman was too quick and too strong. With a swirl of her dark clothes, she struck him a second time, and Sky Captain was thrown to the ground again.
He launched himself back at her, hoping to land at least one solid punch before she flattened him a third time. He did succeed in dodging an uppercut, and they struggled back and forth. But Sky Captain was pounded yet again, and he dropped to the ground with crushing force, unable to stand.
This was humiliating. He was thankful, at least, that no one else was there to see him.
By the time the silent, implacable woman stood over him, he had mustered only enough stamina to get himself to one elbow. The woman withdrew her strange electrical device and raised its emitter. He knew that if she stunned him, he would not wake up before the rocket launched.
His female foe placed a black-gloved finger over the stunner's firing button. Before she could depress it, though, something smashed across her mannequin-perfect face with a brutal clang. The woman reeled backward, dropping her electrical stun weapon.
Sky Captain blinked blood and sweat out of his eyes to see an angry-looking Polly holding a length of pipe. A nice shiner had already started to form under her eye.
Before either of them could say anything, they heard a strange clattering from where the mysterious woman was lying on the ground. Impossible. The blow from the pipe should have killed her, or at least knocked her unconscious for a week.
The two watched in disbelief as sparks shot from the woman's writhing body. Her arms and legs jittered in impossible spasms. Her round black goggles had split apart, and her faceplate had been torn away. Beneath her shattered features, they saw a complex nest of gears and wires. The murderous woman was herself a machine, probably the most sophisticated one Totenkopf had ever built.
Reeling and weak, Sky Captain slowly climbed to his feet. He swayed to catch his balance as Polly walked up to him. He wiped blood from the corner of his mouth. "What took you so long?" He had no time to duck as Polly struck him in the chin with a right cross.
"Let's go," she said, turning away from him and marching purposefully into the launch bay. "But don't think that means we're even."
Sky Captain massaged his aching chin as he staggered to his feet again. "Jeez, Polly, it was for your own good. I was trying to protect you."
Muttering, he hurried after her into the grotto at the center of the mountain base. He remembered the blueprints Dr. Vargas had showed him, forgot his annoyance with Polly (temporarily), and sprinted toward a control panel. "We've got to get out there."
The thrumming, smoking rocket seemed very far away, out in the center of the cavern.
Showing more confidence than he felt, Sky Captain flipped a series of switches, then smiled as a telescoping gantry begin to hum and extend. "There we go, door-to-door service." He worked the buttons and dials, watching the gantry as it rose up and out and approached the rocket's upper module.