Kevin Anderson - Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Polly looked at Kaji, shivering. "I thought we needed to be careful back there, too."

"For all the good it did," Sky Captain said.

From the distant outcropping where they had stopped, the two other Sherpas began to shout excitedly. Kaji cocked his ears, listening to the Nepalese words, and then motioned for Sky Captain to follow him. "Come! Hurry!"

Summoning her last shreds of energy, Polly hurried after their guide as he climbed effortlessly up the final few feet of the mountain peak. The higher vantage let them see beyond the intervening ridge.

The last thing she expected to see was the impossibly huge shape of a transmitting tower rising from the deep mountain valley. The steel structure protruded above the tallest of the nearby crags, but its lower half was buried in snow.

Sky Captain stared, knowing the only person who could have built such a facility. "Totenkopf."

Polly came up next to him, panting. "From here at the top of the world, he could send commands to his robots anywhere!"

"He probably did. This is where Dex traced the signal."

When the wind died briefly, they could hear a low, electrical hum emanating from the gargantuan tower. A dim light blinked intermittently at its peak, though Sky Captain knew no aircraft would attempt to fly over the dangerous Kanchenjunga Range. He pushed ahead with renewed enthusiasm, scrambling down the steep and rocky path. "Come on. We're close now."

"Maybe they'll have hot coffee down there," Polly muttered to herself as she started after him.

"Tea, perhaps, but I do not think so," Kaji said.

When they reached the base of the massive tower, they stood knee-deep in snow. Sky Captain stopped in astonishment as the extent of the madman's Himalayan base became apparent. The high transmitting tower was merely the tip of Totenkopf's operations.

The transmitting structure was utterly dwarfed by the staggering vastness of an expansive subterranean excavation spreading out ahead of them. Immense blocky power stations stood like geometrical sentinels on either side of a gaping shaft entrance large enough for several of Sky Captain's Warhawks to fly inside. Transformers, ringed conical boosters, and thrumming storage banks created a technological storage dump around the barren rock. Spearlike icicles dripped from the exposed metal.

Sky Captain withdrew a pair of binoculars from his backpack and scanned the area, squinting against the bright snow. He could make out a shimmering maze of ice tunnels bored deep into a glacial mass and reinforced with steel beams. Other shafts in the mountain rock led to dark side chambers. Abandoned ore cars sat waiting on rails.

"What is it?" Polly looked on in awe, anxious to use the binoculars for herself. "Let me see."

But Sky Captain would not relinquish them. "It looks like a mining outpost." From the weathered appearance of the generators caked with ice and snow, the frozen ore cars, the drifts piling up on the fringes of the main shaft, he guessed that the mine had long since been uninhabited. Brute-force machinery had been left uncovered and unmaintained, ravaged by the effects of time.

Squinting, Kaji put his hands on his broad hips and stared at the distant forbidding sight. "Something bad happened here."

With his binoculars, Sky Captain followed the steel shape of a rail bridge that led into the mouth of the fantastic mine. Even with the mountain breezes, an eerie stillness cloaked the base. "It looks abandoned." He turned to Kaji. "Tell your men we're heading down there. I want to get a closer look."

Kaji nodded nervously. "Yes, Captain Joe. But this is… not a good place."

"It certainly isn't how I pictured Shangri-La," Polly said.

The older Sherpa turned to her. "No, not Shangri-La. Not here."

When they reached the huge generators that flanked the entrance to the gaping mine shaft, the five companions moved slowly inside the massive cave. The chilling moan of arctic winds echoed off the gorge walls behind them.

"At least inside here, we're sheltered," Sky Captain said.

"It's still not my idea of cozy," Polly said.

Wide-eyed, she stepped deeper into the fantastic cave. Suspended high above her, enormous stalactites of ice dangled from iron girders that crisscrossed the labyrinth. Giant drilling machines, heavy excavators, rail tracks, and ore cars cluttered the main chamber, all of them motionless.

Polly was the first to spot the emblem of a grinning iron-winged skull on all the equipment. "It's Totenkopf, all right."

Amid the clutter, Kaji found several old lanterns, which he managed to light. He handed one to Polly and another to Sky Captain, who led the way, driven by his own curiosity. "Dex!" he called once. The echoes shattering the frozen silence made him cringe.

As they walked slowly through the massive ice cave, reflected lights splashed against rugged glacial walls. Polly could see only dark shadows of strange shapes embedded deep within the thick ice — prehistoric creatures, fossilized remains from the last ice age, unearthed by Totenkopf's mining operation.

Accompanying them, Kaji seemed uninterested in the surreal exhibit. He wrinkled his wide nose. "The air smells like death, Captain Joe."

The five members of the group began to fan out, exploring. Polly walked along the base of one of the enormous but silent drilling machines. She wiped off a thick layer of sediment and dust. "Where is everyone?" The sound of her own voice spooked her.

Trying to hold her hands steady in the oppressive cold, she lifted her camera to snap a photo of the gargantuan machine. Before she clicked the picture, though, Polly noticed that the hook-nosed Sherpa had moved away from the others. Thinking he was unobserved, the man disappeared furtively down a dim side tunnel…

Sky Captain and Kaji found an elaborate control panel set against a bank of diagnostic machinery on a far wall. They passed an abandoned screen that served as a communication terminal. All the lights were dark on the controls, though. Sky Captain flicked a few switches, but got no response. Looking down at a shelf behind the workstation, the Captain discovered a bound log.

"Maybe Totenkopf did some things the old-fashioned way." Removing his gloves, he opened the book and began flipping through the brittle pages covered with handwriting. "Curious. The last entry was made… twenty-five years ago."

The Sherpa poked among a row of glass specimen jars that contained ore samples. He lifted one of the dusty jars, rattled it, and pressed his face close to the glass to study the contents. "Rocks. What was your enemy looking for?"

Troubled by what he read, Sky Captain closed the old logbook in alarm. "Uranium. A very rich and pure vein." Then he saw Kaji holding the specimen jar. "I wouldn't touch that."

The Sherpa's eyes widened as he looked at the jar in his hand, then quickly set it back on the shelf with all the others. He wiped his hand on his sheepskin jacket.

Sky Captain turned from the log and the communications screen and found an equipment locker beside him. Rattling the latch, he forced the old handle on the locker, and the door creaked open. Inside, he found bulky white suits with glass helmets. "Radiation suits. It seems Totenkopf didn't take any chances."

On a shelf above the thick suits, Sky Captain found a small boxy device with a gauge on its face. Lifting the device by the handle on its top, he flipped a switch, then watched the needle on the gauge immediately swing over into the ominously marked red zone. A familiar raspy crackle emanated from a tiny speaker.

Kaji turned apprehensively toward him. "What is it, Captain Joe? What's that noise?"

"This is a Geiger counter." Sky Captain swung the device, pointing the detector end in another direction, but the speaker only squawked louder, becoming a staticky roar. "And that noise indicates radiation. A lot of it. This whole mine is contaminated." He continued to scan the room, but the Geiger counter found no place that wasn't saturated. "We can't stay here."