Kevin Anderson - Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

"Vargas? Wasn't he the man who vanished right after the Hindenburg III docked?"

She brightened. "Why, Joe, you read my newspaper article."

"I heard it on the radio."

Polly didn't rise to the bait, pointedly looking back at the satchel's contents.

Sky Captain continued. "Vargas must have considered those papers important then. Jennings certainly did." He turned around to see her shaking her head in wonder. "What did you find?"

"Just some amazing background information." Polly lifted one of the typed dossier pages. "Totenkopf was awarded his first patent when he was only twelve years old." She flipped to another page and continued reading, deciphering the German as best she could. "By seventeen he had already received two doctorates and was one of the most highly regarded minds of his day. All of that was before the start of the Great War."

She paused. "Then a darker side began to emerge. First, animals started disappearing in his village — only to be found later, dead and mutilated, victims of unthinkable experiments. Then children…" Polly looked up, her expression sickened in the wan cockpit light. "Reports of missing children."

She found a loose folder inside the satchel and opened it to reveal curling old photographs. "One year after Totenkopf's disappearance, ominous rumors began circulating in the German Parliament, whispers that he had begun work on what was darkly hinted to be a" — she struggled with the translation — "a doomsday device. For decades, all efforts to locate Totenkopf have consistently failed. To this day, his whereabouts remain a mystery."

"How long has it been?"

"No one has seen him for more than thirty years."

"Judging from all those robots striking cities around the world, he seems to have been busy in the meantime." He glimpsed Polly opening a ledger. "What's that?"

Polly answered in a monotone. "Nothing that makes any sense." She flipped back and forth, comparing pages. "These are Unit Eleven's supply logs. One section lists page after page of plant and animal life. Two of every species. Thousands of them." She rummaged in the satchel again, puzzled. "Stockpiles of enough food and supplies to last a decade. Reserves of steel, oil, coal."

"Quite the wish list."

Suddenly, Polly recognized what she was reading. She remembered what Dex and Sky Captain had told her in the warehouse of odd prototype robots. "This is everything he's used his machines to collect over the last three years, plus other items he still needs! And here at the bottom, the ledger even includes the power generators from Manhattan. It reads like a shopping list from all over the world." Polly's voice grew hushed with awe. "What have you been up to, Dr. Totenkopf?"

Though she continued to study the documents, she made no further connections, reached no remarkable conclusions. After a moment, she realized that Sky Captain had fallen into his sullen silence again. He stared intently out the window while dawn began to break over the British coast, as if he could make them arrive at their destination faster by the sheer force of his will.

A thoughtful look crossed Polly's face, and her heart went out to him. "He'll be okay, Joe. Dex can take care of himself."

Sky Captain slowly turned to look over his shoulder. He didn't seem to know what to say.

"We'll find him," Polly reassured him.

The Warhawk flew onward.

Sky Captain's battered and reliable P-40 descended through a dense patch of cumulus, revealing the wrinkled and rugged contours of the earth, very close to the height of the clouds. High rocky peaks protruded from the cottony white ocean like jagged islands in an uncharted sea. Polly looked through the frost-etched cockpit canopy as the epic slopes of the Himalayas came into view.

"Those icy peaks are the Kanchenjunga Range," Sky Captain said like a tour guide. "We're crossing over the Tibetan Plateau."

"How close are we to Nepal?" She had tried not to ask the question too often during their lengthy flight, in which they had circled half of the globe.

"Right down there. If this were an atlas, you could see the letters on the ground." He took the Warhawk in a steep dive, plunging into the thick clouds. Polly didn't know how he could see the hazards, the treacherous peaks, the snowfields. But he flew on anyway, blind and confident.

Beneath the cloud layer, Sky Captain leveled them off, cruising along toward the base of the massive mountains. Polly saw windswept tundra, glaciers, naked boulders — and then a cluster of meager shelters and fur-lined tents spread out over a frozen lake bed.

"That's the base camp." He smiled. "All the comforts of home. We'll start there."

"We're a long way from Manhattan," Polly said.

As the P-40 circled overhead, a stout Nepalese Sherpa stepped out of a small shelter. He lifted his mittened hands to wave up at Sky Captain's plane.

"Ah, there's Kaji. He's expecting us." Two more men stepped out beside Kaji, gazing warily at the plane. All three were dressed alike in thick sheepskins, fur hats, and fleece-lined boots. The other two Sherpas did not wave.

The Warhawk glided to a smooth landing on the expansive white lake, kicking up crusty snow. Sky Captain taxied back along the icy surface until he rolled to a stop. Kaji and the other two Sherpas ran out onto the frozen lake to greet them as the pilot cut his engine.

When Sky Captain slid open the canopy, Polly gasped at the biting cold, but she bundled herself as well as she could. Sky Captain climbed out onto the plane's battle-scarred wing, then offered her a gloved hand. The lake's iron-hard ice was rough enough not to be slippery. As she stood there, Polly concentrated on not shivering.

Kaji came up to greet them, a ball of energy. He was in his late forties, but his weathered face had been etched by a lifetime of cold wind and blowing snow. "Captain Joe, my friend! I'm so glad to see you again."

"Good to see you, too, Kaji. I just wish it was under better circumstances." He gestured to Polly. "This is Polly Perkins. She's coming with us."

"How do you do?" she said, remembering her manners.

Kaji greeted her warmly, shaking her hand. "If Captain Joe has brought you along, then I am sure you can handle the rigors of the journey."

"She will," Sky Captain answered. It sounded like an ultimatum. He climbed back into the cockpit. "Let's get these supplies stowed."

Bellowing in Nepalese, Kaji spouted orders to his fellow Sherpas. One of them had a heavy brow, and the other sported a narrow hooked nose; both moved furtively, even in the open daylight. The two Sherpas took heavy boxes from Sky Captain as he unloaded them and set them on the wing. While Polly stood with her arms wrapped around herself to conserve warmth, the three Sherpas rapidly made an impressive pile of small crates and boxes.

"No wonder the cockpit was cramped," Polly muttered, looking at all the material.

Sky Captain handed a crate to the hook-nosed Sherpa as he spoke to Kaji. "Did you get the maps I needed? Detailed local surveys?"

"Yes, all of them drawn by native guides. Guaranteed accurate. They are inside the main tent." Kaji grinned, showing several missing teeth; then he hesitated in a long, coy pause. "Did you, perhaps, remember… something for me, Captain Joe?"

With a proudly satisfied expression, Sky Captain ducked down into the cockpit for the last time, searching under the main seat. He withdrew a trio of large, flat boxes. "Three cases, just like you asked."

Kaji took the boxes with a reverence reserved for holy relics. "A most incredible reward." The older Sherpa eagerly tore open the flap of the top box and reached inside. He pulled out a small round canister, grinning as he held it out for Polly to see. "Vienna sausages." He was misty-eyed. "By the gods, it has been so long!"