Johnny Graphic and the Etheric Bomb (11 page)

Danny jammed the throttles forward, drew the yoke back as far as he could, and yelled, “Don’t stall, old girl!”

A murky wall of firs and pines suddenly emerged through the drizzle, branches dancing in the aeroboat’s headlamps. The forest rushed at them, columns of ancient green.

A loud WHUMP-THUD erupted beneath them, as brief as a heartbeat. The sickening percussion shuddered through the whole airframe—as if some giant had rung it like a gong.

The Z-509 wobbled but kept climbing.

Without warning the steep tilt of the deck sent Mel staggering. She stumbled back and fell past Johnny onto the cabin floor. He managed to deflect her a bit, so she only knocked her head a glancing blow against the navigator’s seat.

“Mel, what’s the colonel doing?” Danny shouted. “Mel? Johnny?”

“Mel’s down, Danny!” yelled Johnny, scrambling to get to his sister. “Knocked out!”

Chapter 21

Monday, October 21, 1935

Airborne Northwest of Zenith

“Miz Graphic! Miz Graphic! You okay?”

Jock squatted down as Johnny cradled Mel’s head in his lap. The co-pilot gently slapped the young woman’s cheeks. Johnny was worried sick. He’d never seen his sister look so queasy and pale.

Then he realized the aeroboat wasn’t climbing so steeply. It seemed as if they were out of the woods. Literally
and
figuratively. They hadn’t crashed. There were no more loud thumps, so that was good.

With any luck, the treetops had not smashed their pontoons. It was the middle of the night and they had no way to see any damage from their perches in the cockpit. They’d only know they were okay
for sure
when they set this bird down. Or if Johnny could alert the colonel and have him make a mid-air inspection.

First things first, though, thought Johnny. Get Mel upright.

“Come on, girlie,” Jock said. “I ain’t never had a passenger croak on me and I ain’t about to start now. Thought you were a tough ol’ gal, from what Danny told me.”

“Come on, Mel,” said Johnny. “You’re okay. Wake up now.

In the dim amber cockpit light Johnny saw Mel’s eyelids flutter and open. She muttered a few words, but he couldn’t make them out. The engine noise was still too loud. It took Mel’s eyes a few seconds to focus, but she clearly recognized him.

“Hi, Johnny,” she mumbled as he leaned in closely. “I seem to have misstepped somehow. And I’m not an ‘old gal.’”

Jock grinned. “You took a tumble, that’s for sure.”

“So we made it up off the river?” Mel asked.

“You betcha, Mel,” said Johnny, quite relieved. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t be yakking, now would we?”

Mel’s eyelids fluttered a bit more. “I think I’d like to rest for a while, if you don’t mind.”

“Just let me look at your eyes,” Johnny said. He knew from adventure books that the eyes could tell you if someone had a concussion. He examined Mel’s and they looked fine—the pupils were not too large and were both the same size.

“Do you feel dizzy or confused? Have a headache?” he asked.

Mel shook her head.

“Ringin’ in the ears? Nausea?” chimed in Jock.

Mel said no.

“Then let’s get you back to your seat,” Jock said, as he hoisted her up.

After they buckled Mel in, Johnny and Uncle Louie settled back in their seats—pillows behind their heads and blankets across their laps. But Johnny had a hard time falling asleep, unlike Uncle Louie. He tried and tried, and just couldn’t. He was quite wide-awake when the ranks of snow-capped mountaintops began passing by the floatplane, a bit after dawn. The view from twenty thousand feet was absolutely spectacular.

Mel woke up about that time and seemed to be perfectly fine, except for a little headache and a cranky mood. She took charge of distributing orange juice, coffee, and sandwiches—which tasted surprisingly good, especially for food wrapped in cellophane.

The Gianelli tri-motor arrived safely at the dock at Zephyr Lines’ Silver City base later that afternoon. Everyone piled out to look for any damage done by the tall pine trees of the Treport River.

Just as the colonel had reported to Johnny while they were still airborne, there were scratches and dents on the pontoons, and bits of greenery stuck in seams and joints and corners of trusses. That’s when they realized how close they had come to disaster. A takeoff climb only a few feet lower would have ended in a cartwheeling maelstrom of crushed metal and flame.

“The colonel saved our bacon,” Johnny pointed out. “If he hadn’t shown us where to go, we’d all be dead.”

“I promise,” Danny proclaimed after his inspection of the Gianelli, “that I will
never
ever
take an aeroboat up in the middle of the night on an uncharted river!
Ever!
Again!”

“But you did it, you and Jock,” Mel said, grabbing and waggling Danny’s forearm. “You’re the best pilots in the whole world!”

* * *

Johnny was agog at the huge Zephyr Lines base on Silver City Bay. There were scores of flying boats in wet docks and dry docks. They had flown all over the world, these aircraft. To destinations westward, such as the Orchid Isles, Majuro, Port Marlowe, Tor Chan. Back east across the fractured continent that had once been a country called the Free States—back before the First Border War. Beyond Freedonia’s great metropolis of Neuport, Zephyr Lines aeroboats flew east across the Lesser Ocean, to the Royal Kingdom, La Belle Republique, and points beyond. Johnny wanted to visit every single one of those places. And the way he figured it, his Zoom 4x5 press camera would take him there.

Uncle Louie, Nina, and the Graphics said goodbye to Danny and Jock, and took a taxicab into the city, through the gathering dusk and heavy rush hour traffic. Some kind of a blockage up ahead stopped them for a time in the middle of the three-mile-long Silver Gate Bridge. It gave Johnny a chance to view the city’s magnificent skyline. Silver City was the capital of the Coastal Federation, so Johnny wasn’t surprised that the downtown had even taller skyscrapers than Zenith—and lots more of them.

The weary travelers checked into the Paragon Hotel and had a quick supper in the cafe in the lobby. From their tenth-floor suite they could look out at the night vista of nearby Jadetown—where Mongke Eng had died. It was a little universe of colorful, flashing neon and ornate, exotic architecture. Somewhere out there were Monkge Eng’s daughters. And Johnny and Mel had to get an interview with at least one of them.

Mel and Nina went to bed at eight-thirty. Johnny hit the sack about nine, figuring that he would conk out immediately. But here he was, in this incredibly comfortable hotel bed, with his head spinning, his mind racing. There was just too much to think about, too much to worry about.

A while later he heard Uncle Louie answer a rap on the hotel room door. There was a muffled exchange of words. Johnny had no idea what it was about, but it didn’t matter for now. His brain and his body suddenly decided: enough of this nonsense, off to sleep with you.

Chapter 22

Tuesday, October 22, 1935

Silver City

Johnny put on his suit and hat, then his socks and shoes. He tiptoed through the sitting room and was about to sneak out the hotel room door, camera pack slung over his shoulder. Someone cleared her throat behind him.

He spun around. There stood Nina, dressed in her travel clothes, grinning and looking very pleased with herself. He was tempted to groan, but he knew that would be a bad idea. Nina did not like being groaned at.

Johnny started to say something, but Nina put an index finger up to her lips and pointed at Uncle Louie, snoring away on the sofa. She came over and nudged Johnny out the door. She gently closed it behind them.

“I was just going to shoot some local color,” Johnny sputtered in the hallway. “You don’t have to come.”

“You’re always going off now and having adventures by yourself, Johnny,” said Nina, hands on hips. “Every once in a while you ought to share them with your friends! I mean, I’m practically your cousin. Anyway, if you leave without me, I’ll go back in there and wake up Mel and Louie.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“I would.”

Johnny opened his mouth, intending to say a few choice words, but thought the better of it. “Well, okay, Sparks,” he yielded. “Come on.”

“Let me leave them a note,” said Nina, slipping back into the suite.

It was still dark outside. They walked through a public park across from the hotel and came upon Silver City’s grand MacDougall Fountain, lights still burning, with its statue of President MacDougall. He had been a tall, thin man with a haggard face and a beard. Cast in bronze, he was standing, looking somberly down, his hands clasped in front of him, the very picture of despair. Chiseled in the granite beneath his lanky figure were the words:

Back in school, Johnny had read about the capture of President MacDougall and the Free States’ capital by forces of the Old Dominion during the First Border War. This event led to a peace treaty and, ultimately, the division of the Free States into four countries. The triumphant Old Dominion. The Plains Republic, where Johnny and Nina lived. The Coastal Federation. And a remnant of the Free States that survived in the northeast, now called Freedonia—of which Neuport was the capital.

Johnny and Nina emerged out of the park onto a broad avenue that bordered Jadetown. Streetlamps threw down little puddles of light, illuminating a few ghosts who were standing around—bored, listless, depressed. Johnny said “Hi” to some of them, which prompted the specters to tag along behind the two kids.

Up the avenue stood a big, ornamental gate encrusted in sinuous, climbing dragons in red enamel and gold leaf. A green metal roof the shape of a witch’s hat crowned the structure.

This was one of the four ceremonial entrances into Jadetown—looming right over General Tang Boulevard. Johnny had read about them in a tourist magazine at the hotel. The two youngsters marched beneath the gate, half a dozen ghosts trailing behind—most of them immigrants from the Jade Kingdom.

For an hour, Johnny and Nina wandered through narrow, winding streets. Vivid aromas of spices and cooking oils wafted from the open-air restaurants. Roosters crowed here and there. It seemed almost every window had someone leaning out of it, waiting for the new dawn.

The two friends talked in spurts. About the murders. About the trip. About Mel’s interest in Danny.

As Nina had observed, Johnny and she
were
practically cousins. But they hadn’t gabbed this much in a while.

Johnny would never forget the day Nina came to live with them.

At first she had been shy and clung to Uncle Louie. But she’d lost both parents, too. So they had that in common. By and by the two kids began to talk, and they talked a lot about having no mom, no pop anymore. Before long they were hiking the woods together. Nina tagged along when Johnny took pictures, and he hovered over her shoulder when she monkeyed around with her radios. She impressed the heck out of him by actually flying the little floatplane that Uncle Louie owned—making her first solo flight when she was only eleven. Johnny had seen her do it.

Both kids were fascinated by gizmos, gizmos of any kind. And they sure did enjoy having adventures. But small adventures. Nothing like this, Johnny thought, nothing that could get you killed. And since he wanted to live to be a hundred, he preferred adventures that were exciting but
not
lethal.

“Hey, Johnny,” Nina said, as they studied a shop window full of exquisite ivory figurines. “Did you worry you were going to die on the Night Goose?”

Johnny regarded her with surprise. Could she read minds or something?

“Uh, not really. I just did what I figured needed doing. I had to keep that Steppe Warrior away from Mel as long as I could. If the colonel hadn’t arrived…” He shrugged. “I’d have done anything to stop that ghost.”

“But you could have gotten killed,” Nina said. “Both of you could have gotten killed.”

“Guess so. I could get hit by a truck this afternoon. Better to die for a good reason than no reason.”

Nina kept staring in the shop window. “Do you think we’re going to get through this whole thing alive?”

“Listen, Sparks,” Johnny answered, trying to sound self-confident. “Everything’ll be fine. No one’s gonna try to hurt us again.
Promise
.”

* * *

After taking some pictures in a market, Johnny paid for two bowls of rice, vegetables, and fish. He never could handle chopsticks, so the smiling cook found him a wooden spoon. Of course, Nina had no trouble with chopsticks.

The two youngsters gobbled up every bit, sitting on a couple of overturned wooden boxes. That’s when Johnny remembered to look at his pocket watch.

“Jeez Louise!” he exclaimed. “Almost seven. We’d better get back.”

It didn’t take Johnny long to realize that he had no idea exactly where they were. But he knew how to find out. Turning around, he addressed his troop of ghostly hangers-on. “Am I going in the right direction to get back to the Paragon Hotel?”