Chessmen of Doom (6 page)

"Dead to the world," said Fergie with a grin. He looked thoughtfully out across the dark water. In the distance a tiny flickering light showed where Mike Flynn's boat-house was. Suddenly Fergie turned to Johnny. "Hey, John baby!" he whispered excitedly. "Let's borrow the boat an' go look at one of those islands we saw this afternoon. Whaddaya say?"

Johnny was flabbergasted. "Fergie," he whispered, "that is one of the dumbest ideas you have ever had! What if the professor wakes up and finds out that we're gone?"

"When we get back the prof will still be in dreamland," snapped Fergie. "Stop bein' such a worry wart!"

"The motor will wake him up," said Johnny stubbornly.

"So we'll use the oars," Fergie shot back. "They don't hardly make any noise at all."

Johnny was startled. He glanced down toward the water, and sure enough, there were two oars fastened to brackets on the sides of the boat. Biting his lip, Johnny paced up and down for a few seconds. "Oh, all
right!
"
he said finally as he turned to face Fergie. "But if we get into trouble it's gonna be all your fault!"

Fergie shrugged carelessly and started walking down to the shore. With Johnny's help he got the boat into the water, and then he pulled the oars out of the brackets and fitted the oarlocks into their holes. Johnny sat in the rear and tried to act calm and confident, though his nerves were very much on edge. Swiftly they glided away, with no sound but the gentle slosh of the oar blades as they hit the water. Fergie hummed "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and Johnny joined in, singing quietly. Soon they were among the tiny islands they had visited earlier in the day. A few cabin windows were lit, and they could hear laughing and the slamming of screen doors and the sound of radios playing. Fergie was steering toward a little island that sat all by itself, a long way from the others. As they pulled closer to it, Johnny began to feel afraid. A tight knot formed in his stomach and the palms of his hands felt sweaty.

"Fergie?" he asked in a trembling voice. "Are . . . I mean, do you feel anything strange?"

Fergie grinned. "Nope. You musta had too much of the prof's cooking." Actually, Fergie was lying. He felt nervous too, but he would never have admitted it to Johnny.

As they glided closer they could see a weak yellowish light shining in the window of a cottage on the island. A kerosene lamp, probably. A rickety dock reached out from the shore into the water, but no boat was tied up to it.

"Hey!" exclaimed Fergie delightedly. "How about that, eh? The people must be gone, so we can go in an' have a look-see. Just for a minute and then we'll leave. Okay?"

Johnny felt alarmed. He was normally a very law-abiding boy, and he didn't much like the idea of trespassing. But he knew with a sinking heart that he was going to keep his mouth shut and let Fergie lead him into trouble, because he did not want Fergie to call him chicken.

Expertly Fergie maneuvered the boat in toward the dock, and he grabbed a mossy post and held it while Johnny slipped a loop of rope over the end. As quietly as possible they clambered up onto the dock and padded toward the shore. Ducking in under some pine branches, the two boys followed a sandy path up toward the screened porch of the little cottage. The path turned right and wound past one side of the cottage, and the boys followed it till they came to a small lighted window. The window was too high for peeking, but after glancing around, Fergie found an old soda-bottle crate and set it under the window. He climbed up and peered in, and then he let out a long low whistle.

"Hey, John baby!" he whispered. "Get a load of this! This joint must belong to that strange character we bumped into on the street the other day! Come on up and look!"

There was room on the crate for two people, and after hesitating a bit Johnny climbed up and peered in. He saw a room with knotty-pine paneling, a fieldstone fireplace, and an old ratty sofa with the stuffing coming out of the arms. In the middle of the bare floor stood a well-scrubbed wooden table with a cane-bottomed chair facing it. On the table stood a kerosene lamp and a collection of ivory chessmen. They looked just like the ones that had spilled from the leather case after the professor bumped into the strange man in the British overcoat.

"My gosh!" Johnny whispered in an awestruck voice. "What do you think that guy is doin' out here?"

"Playin' chess without a chessboard," Fergie muttered with a laugh. "An' there's somethin' that looks like a chart on the table. I wonder if I can see what it is."

Putting his hands on the grimy windowsill and rising up on tiptoe, Fergie craned his neck and looked. With a little puzzled snort he lowered himself back down. "Huh! That's funny!"

"What's funny?" asked Johnny nervously.

"Well, it's a chart of the heavens. You know, with stars and planets and constellations—that's what it looks like, anyway. I said that guy was a fruitcake, didn't I? Well, this sort of proves it!"

Johnny said nothing. He found that he was getting more and more jumpy by the minute. Suppose that the man came back and found them here? Grabbing Fergie by the arm, he began to plead. "Come on! Let's get away from this place before something awful happens! I can't tell you why, but I feel like there's somebody here watching us!"

Fergie was about to exclaim that that was the dumbest piece of nervous nonsense he had ever heard of, when a harsh, grating voice behind them said, "Good evening, boys! And what do you think
you're
doing?"

 

 

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

 

 

Johnny's blood froze, and Fergie stiffened. Slowly the two boys turned around, and they found that they were staring at the nasty ruddy-faced man with the pointed mustache and the British accent. A halo of greenish light hovered about the man, and when he raised his hand, Johnny and Fergie found that they could not speak or move.

"What charming visitors you are!" sneered the man, as he stepped closer. "Of course, you did drop in uninvited, so you'll have to take the consequences.
Down on your knees, both of you! At once!"

Awkwardly Johnny and Fergie stumbled down off the box and knelt before the evilly grinning man. After a brief pause the man stooped and put his hand under Johnny's chin. He jerked the boy's head upward.

"Now, then, you little wretch, listen to me and listen carefully!" snarled the man. "I could kill you both so easily, but I'd rather not do that—not just yet. You two will die along with the rest. The earth will be a smoldering ball of rubble then, but I will survive as a spirit with heightened consciousness and great power. But why should I spend my time explaining things to morons? You'll see the face of doom in a very short while, and I want you to know that there's nothing—absolutely nothing—that you can do to stop me. As for that doddering old fool, that professor friend of yours . . . well, he isn't as smart as he thinks he is. No one can keep me from my destiny!
No one!"
He raised his hand in the air imperiously. "And now I am finished with you," he intoned, in a haughty voice. "When you go back you will not remember that we've met. You will not remember anything that I have said.
In nomine Tetragrammaton,
depart! Go back with fear in your hearts and blankness in your minds!
Vade inperditionem!
Begone, I charge ye, by the names of the twelve living spirits that stand by the throne of the Prince of the Air!
Go!"

The man clapped his hands twice, and his body seemed to melt into the shadows under the trees that grew close to the cottage. A full minute passed, and then Johnny and Fergie slowly pulled themselves to their feet. Johnny's neck ached, and he felt dizzy. He turned to look at Fergie, who was still acting woozy and shaking his head, like someone who has just been awakened out of a sound sleep.

"What—what happened?" asked Johnny in a thick, groggy voice. He could not figure out why the two of them had been on their knees, facing away from the cottage.

Fergie rubbed his hands over his face. "John baby," he said slowly, "if I knew what happened, I'd tell you. Somebody must've hit us on the head—that's the only explanation I can come up with. But who did it? And how come my head doesn't hurt?"

Johnny paused and looked around at the dark, menacing shadows of the trees. "I think we better get out of here," he said in a worried voice. "We might get murdered if we hang around much longer."

Fergie did not need any more encouragement. He grabbed Johnny by the arm and shoved him ahead and soon they were trotting along, double time, toward the dock and the boat that still bobbed on the choppy water. Quickly they piled in, and Fergie seized the oars. Johnny pulled the rope free of the post, and they glided away, driven by Fergie's strong strokes. The dark shadow of the island got smaller and smaller, and the fear that had gripped them melted away. But neither said anything. They both knew that they had had a strange and frightening experience, and they were still struggling with their feelings. There was a blank spot in their lives, time they couldn't account for, and this bothered them very much.

Back across the lake water they slid. Fergie rowed grimly on, and Johnny glanced absentmindedly about. Then he happened to look up at the starry sky. Suddenly he let out a sharp, loud exclamation.
 

"My gosh, Fergie!
Look!"

"Huh? Look at what?"
 

"Up overhead! In the sky!"

Fergie looked, and his mouth dropped open. A bright, long-tailed comet was burning in the sky. "Holy Toledo!" he gasped. "How about that! I didn't know there was one of those comin' our way, did you?"

"We wouldn't have known about it," said Johnny sourly. "The professor keeps turning off the TV news at night because it depresses him, and we aren't getting any newspapers." He bent his head back and stared some more. "That really is something, isn't it?" he went on in an awestruck tone. "I've never seen one before, have you?"

Fergie shook his head. "Nope. Well, now I guess I've seen everything! We'll have to tell the prof about this when he wakes up."

"If he isn't already waiting for us down by the shore," said Johnny gloomily.

When they got back to the island where they were camping, Johnny and Fergie were relieved to see that the tent was dark and still, with its flaps tied shut. Carefully Fergie nosed the boat in, and then he and Johnny dragged it up onto the sand as quietly as they could. They put the oars in the brackets and tiptoed back to the tent, lifted the flaps, and crawled inside. Their sleeping bags were ready for them, and the professor was in his, snoring peacefully. The little night-time adventure had turned strange, but they were lucky to have returned safely.

The next morning, as they were eating breakfast, Johnny cautiously brought up the subject of the comet. "Uh . . . professor? You know what?"

The professor swallowed a mouthful of eggs and turned to Johnny. "No, I don't have the slightest idea what, John," he said, grinning. "Tell me what."

Johnny squirmed. He was afraid he might accidentally tell the professor where they had been last night, and this made him jittery. "I . . . uh, well, Fergie and I were sitting up late last night after you went to bed, and—and we saw a comet!"

The professor nodded knowingly. "Yes, I knew that there was one on the way. I read about it in a newspaper at the library the other day. And for your information, there are two more coming, though they won't be visible till later this summer. The astronomers are all worked up because we haven't had so many comets in . . . well, a very long time. I'm an old geezer, so I remember Halley's Comet in 1910, but I'll bet neither of you has ever seen one before. Have you?"

Fergie and Johnny shook their heads. Then an odd thought came to Johnny. "Professor," he asked with a hint of nervousness in his voice, "what do you think is causing all these comets to show up?"

The professor shrugged. "Search me, John! I'm no expert on these things, but if I had to guess I'd say that there was a disturbance in the Oort cloud."

Fergie blinked. "The
what?"

The professor smiled complacently. "Got you with that one, didn't I? The Oort cloud is just a theory dreamed up in 1950 by a Dutch astronomer named Oort. He thinks that there is a whole mess of comets orbiting the solar system, way out beyond the farthest planet. According to his idea every now and then some asteroid or meteor plows into the Oort cloud, jars some of these comets loose, and sends them streaking toward the sun. At one time, by the way, comets were regarded as evil omens. But we know that's nonsense now. Comets are just a natural phenomenon, nothing more."

Johnny smiled weakly and felt his stomach turn over. He thought about the chart of the heavens that he had seen in the cottage. A vague fear began to form in his mind. "These—these comets couldn't hit the earth, could they?" he asked in a trembling voice.

The professor stared at Johnny for a second, and then he laughed loudly. "Good heavens, John!" he exclaimed. "What sort of science-fiction nonsense have you been reading lately? Comets may have hit the earth ages and ages ago, but it's not the sort of thing that happens anymore! Rest easy, we're not going to be blitzed by comets. When they pass the earth, they're usually millions of miles away, and then they zoom around the sun and go back into outer space. Whatever made you ask a question like that?"

Johnny stared at his plate. "I—I don't know," he mumbled. "Maybe it was something I read about."

"Well, you should read other things!" said the professor brusquely. "And now, if you two are through feeding your faces, I would like you to help me wash these dirty dishes and pack our things before we head back to the estate. Hop to it, gentlemen!"

Fergie and Johnny helped the professor take down the tent and clean up the campsite. They packed up their equipment and put-putted back to Mike Flynn's boathouse. As they drove to the estate, the half-memory of the strange incident on the Englishman's island kept flitting back into Johnny's brain. It was a maddening feeling, and Johnny would have enjoyed talking with Fergie about it. But he knew from the look on Fergie's face that he was going to clam up and pretend to be a tough guy. He would act as if the incident had never happened.