Smith's Monthly #9 Read online

  At the same moment the other two ships reported they were in position and stable.

  “Hold and be ready to turn with the moon,” Brian said.

  “Intercept signal,” Brian ordered the other ships.

  As one all turned green that they had the sensor signal.

  Then he turned to Marion. “Feed it.”

  Her fingers flew over the panel and the new programming for the Dog’s computer was fed through all six sensors.

  An instant later the moon started to turn off its course for Earth.

  “Stay with it, everyone,” Brian commanded to the other ships as he moved the Bad Business to maintain position and keep the feed to the other ships constant.

  The moon kept turning and somehow the EPL warships held their positions.

  “We got some swearing and close calls,” Kip said, “but everyone’s holding.

  “Ten more seconds,” Marion said. “And the virus will be loaded.”

  At five seconds Brian counted it down for the other captains.

  “Five. Four. Three. Two. One.”

  Marion signaled cut.

  “Get out of there now!” Brian shouted to the other pilots.

  As one, the other pilots moved their ships up and away from the rough surface of the moon.

  Brian had the Bad Business moving with them, pushing the ship as fast as he could to try to reach a safe distance.

  Twenty seconds later the moon vanished into Trans-Galactic drive space, headed back into the Dog’s territory and right for a large military base.

  “Clear,” Kip said. “All ships made it out of the wash zone from the drive.”

  Brian slumped in his chair, just smiling as both Kip and Marion applauded and laughed.

  Somehow, Earth had dodged that moon.

  Barely.

  FIVE

  CAPTAIN BRIAN SABER looked down into the wonderful brown eyes of Captain Dorothy Dot Leeds and smiled. “One more dance?”

  She laughed, the sound high and wonderful and something he needed to remember in the long days and nights at the nursing home. “Our bus back to the home is going to leave without us.”

  “Let it,” he said, pulling her close and enjoying the feel of her against him. Since they had turned the moon weapon back on the Dogs, the general had allowed all seven EPL warships to dock at Stevens Base for some well-deserved time off while in younger bodies.

  Brian and Dot had spent the first night dancing, then in his room on the base. The next day they had spent in meetings with the general and others, then dancing more that evening, then back to her room for the night.

  The General had approved their application to move to Stevens in a very short time, be married, and work frontline there with their ships and any crew that wanted to join them, based out of Stevens.

  As the General said, it was about time they had a staffed base full of frontline defenders. He wanted Brian to lead the wing of fighters. The EPL would still bring many in from Earth when needed, but a number based out on the edge of the frontier would be a good idea.

  But until that was fully approved, Brian and Dot now had to go back to Earth and the Shady Hills Nursing Home.

  With one last dance, they kissed and walked hand-in-hand to the transport, not saying anything.

  He kissed Dot one more time at her cabin door, then with a promise from her that she would help him with his applesauce at breakfast, he went to his cabin and took off his uniform, slipping back into his old nightshirt and crawling into the coffin.

  The very next thing he remembered, he was being carried by Lieutenant Magusson from his sleep chamber.

  His old stroke-damaged body now part of him again.

  Dot and Lieutenant Sherrie met them at the transport chamber.

  Brian so wanted to reach out to touch Dot’s hand, but he could no longer move his arms hardly at all.

  The cold air of the Chicago night hit him as the transport beam let them go in the nursing home center court.

  Above him the golden moon was full in the crisp night air.

  He stared up at it as the Lieutenant carried him toward his room.

  “Not so pretty any more, is it?” Dot said.

  She was right. It wasn’t.

  After this mission, he wasn’t sure if he would ever look up at the moon in the same way again.

  It was amazing how seeing the universe and defending Earth could change a person’s perspective on things in such a short time.

  Simple things, like staring up at the moon.

  What came before…

  Nineteen-year-old Danny Hawk, his uncle, and his best friend Craig, were in Cairo to look for his missing father. Danny had witnessed the death of his only contact in Cairo, Professor Davis, because the professor had Danny’s father’s journals.

  Danny knows that the men who had killed the professor were now after him and the journals. Danny finds the journals and gets his uncle and friend to safety in an airport hotel where he tells them what happened. They decide to keep searching for Danny’s father and try to rescue him.

  Along the way, Danny and Craig find some help from a street kid named Bud and twins from South Africa who had worked with Danny’s father.

  They managed to escape the men chasing them twice so far; Danny wasn’t sure their luck would hold a third time.

  And it barely did. They finally decided to head out of Cairo.

  Beyond the headwaters of the Amazon, in the Republic of Congo, after a few more close calls, they hire a guide to take them into the jungle in search of a lost ancient city.

  And even into the jungle on the Trail of Elephants, they are followed.

  Then Danny barely escapes death when he falls through a floor in an old temple. The rest rescue him, but when they reach the bottom the men following them throw down the rope and trap them under the ancient city.

  THE ADVENTURES OF HAWK

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  September 17, 1970

  Under the Lost City of Ishango, deep in the jungle of the Republic of Congo.

  “HAVE I SAID lately how screwed we are?” Craig said, staring at the pile of rope.

  Above them the hole in the floor of the temple seemed like an impossible distance away to Danny. Totally impossible.

  And the men that had been chasing them were up there, more than likely standing guard.

  Before anyone else could say anything, Hassatt held up his hand for all of them to remain silent. “We need to get away from this area quickly,” he whispered. “Just in case they decide they need a little target practice.”

  Danny glanced back up. Hassatt was right. Shooting them now would be like shooting fish in a bowl.

  Hassatt pointed to the rope on the ground. “Bring that.” Then he motioned that they should follow him.

  Danny picked up the huge pile of rope and his torch, and then he followed Hassatt and the others down through the cavern, heading for old stone stairs that led deeper underground. At some point, the stairs must have led to something in the big cavern, but rocks now covered whatever it was.

  Danny was glad that at least they were still alive. But they wouldn’t be for long if they didn’t find another way out of this cavern. Clearly, the two Hydra League men above didn’t think there was another way out.

  And Danny bet they knew the ruins.

  The six of them quickly wound their way down through a series of linked smaller caverns, following the ancient stone path and stairs carved six thousand years before. Danny, on one trip to the Southwest, had gone into Carlsbad Caverns. These caverns seemed very much like those. The deeper they got underground, the more stalactites and stalagmites they wound their way through.

  The colors of the stones shimmering in their torchlights were fantastic. Bright reds and blues and greens.

  The deeper they got, the louder the sound of the river became, filling everything. If Danny hadn’t been so worried about finding a way out, he would have enjoyed the cave exploring a lot more than he was.

&n
bsp; Finally, the series of small caverns opened up into a huge cavern with a river running through one corner of it, crashing down over rocks and then disappearing into a wall, clearly going deeper in to the ground than it already was.

  The stalactite-covered ceiling of the cavern was a good hundred feet over their heads. And from what Danny could see, there were a dozen smaller caverns leading off in different directions from this one. There was a maze of caverns under the ancient city. A maze that could easily get them lost forever.

  Hassatt, who had been leading them down the stone path of the ancient people, stopped in an open area and dropped the pack he had been carrying. “I don’t think they can hear us down here.”

  “You think they’re going to follow us?” Bud said.

  Hassatt shrugged. “Not for a week or so. Then they’ll come looking for our bodies.”

  “Great,” Craig said.

  Danny glanced down at the river. “We have water, that’s for sure. Anyone bring any food?”

  “A day’s worth for everyone,” Hassatt said.

  Everyone else shook their heads no.

  “We can stretch that to last a lot longer,” Hassatt said. “As long as we can drink that water.”

  “True,” Bud said. “Many times I’ve gone without food for a week, but I had water.”

  Danny glanced at his short friend. He didn’t want to know what the Cairo street kid had been through while trying to survive alone on the streets, but with comments like that, he was getting a good idea.

  “So,” Craig said, glancing at Danny, “what’s the plan?”

  Danny shrugged. “We find the next Hydra Journal entry. Then find a way out of here.”

  “How about we do both those things at the same time?” Bud asked.

  “Seems like a good idea to me,” Hassatt said, smiling.

  Danny agreed. They needed to find a new way out, since their way in was blocked to them, and more than likely guarded. Clearly, the ancient people used these caverns under their city, so it would be logical there would be more than one way in and out. If those ways were still open after six thousand years.

  Ed glanced around, then quoted the third Hydra Journal entry. “Under the teeming masses, the river becomes clear, the path muddy.”

  “Shall we try to find the muddy path?” Ernie asked.

  “As good a plan as any,” Danny said. “And the farther we get from those men back there, the happier I will be.”

  “I’ll second that,” Craig said.

  All six of them glanced back into the dark where they had come, then as one, they turned and headed down the stone pathway toward the loud river crashing over the rocks below them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  September 17, 1970

  Under the Lost City of Ishango, deep in the jungle of the Republic of Congo.

  “A PATH,” ED said an hour later.

  Danny was up on some rocks above the river, climbing to see if he could see anything from a higher position that they had missed. The stone path they had followed down through the caverns had just ended at the edge of the river like a docking port.

  But the river was tumbling over the rocks so hard just below the path that Danny couldn’t imagine even taking a raft down that river and into the dark tunnel.

  Hassatt had suggested that back when the path was built, the river had been calmer, and the tunnel led to other caverns. Maybe, but Danny doubted it. Six thousand years just wasn’t that long in the life of a river cutting through solid rock.

  “It’s a debarkation platform,” Ernie had finally said after they had explored the edges of the tunnel below the platform. “The ancient people were coming from up the river to here.”

  There must be something back in the cavern they had started in that the ancient people would raft to here, then walk the rest of the way. Whatever it was had clearly been covered in cave-ins and rockslides. Danny hoped the next entry in the Hydra Journal wasn’t back up there.

  That was when they had focused their attention upstream and Ed had found the path.

  Unlike the stone path they had come down into the cavern, this path was more natural and wound its way around and past rocks. The spray from the river caused it to be wet and slick and slightly muddy.

  “Well,” Craig said, “we found all the parts of the third Hydra Journal entry. Now what?”

  “We follow the path,” both Ernie and Ed said at the same time.

  “Might as well,” Danny said, glancing back up the cavern to where Bud had stationed himself as a lookout for the Hydra League goons. He waved for Bud to join them, then turned to everyone. “I want us all roped together in case we slip and fall in that river.”

  All of them agreed, and they waited until Bud joined them to put him in the middle.

  “I’ll lead,” Danny said. “I’m a good swimmer. Dr. Hassatt right behind me. Then Bud and the twins. Craig, you bring up the rear.”

  They all tied themselves into the heavy rope that they had lowered themselves into the cave with, spacing themselves four paces apart.

  “Everyone be careful,” Danny said. “Watch your step, but keep your eyes open for any ancient writing.”

  Danny took a couple of deep breaths, then, holding his torch high over his head to keep it as far from the river spray as he could, he started forward.

  The path wound its way along the rocks just above the water. In the tunnel, the river seemed almost calm and very black. Danny had no desire to go in that cold water and find out what lived in there.

  He wasn’t thirty paces into the darkness of the river cave when he noticed two things. The first was a giant spider web across the path, its web glimmering in the faint light and dampness.

  He eased forward and lit the bottom of the web on fire, using the flaring torch to break the web apart. Out of the corner of his eye he saw something move in the rocks, but he forced himself to not turn to look. It was just better to not know what lived down here in normally total blackness.

  Then, as he held the torch out directly in front of him, he noticed it was blowing back slightly toward him, the smoke catching him in the eyes.

  A breeze.

  He stopped and glanced back along the trail where everyone else had stopped waiting for him to move forward. “Notice the breeze?”

  “An opening somewhere ahead,” Hassatt said, smiling.

  “Now if it is only big enough for us to get through,” Ed said.

  “We’ll make it big enough,” Ernie said.

  Danny nodded, hoping Ernie was right.

  Danny led the way along the slick, muddy path beside the river’s edge. The path seemed to wind on forever. Clearly, this tunnel was not normally walked. There weren’t any rapids in the river, so whoever used this usually floated down from some place up ahead.

  “Any idea which direction we’re heading?” Craig asked from behind Danny.

  “I think we’re going west,” Dr. Hassatt said. “Toward the mountains beside the city.”

  Danny didn’t know if that was good or bad. He just kept going, moving slowly and carefully through the rocks.

  Finally, just about at the point he was going to have them stop and rest, the tunnel opened up into a giant cavern.

  Danny stepped a dozen steps out into the huge space, held up his torch, and stopped cold.

  From what he could see, the cavern was huge, bigger than even a massive football stadium back home. On one edge, the river had turned into a decent-sized lake, with a high platform right in the center of the room beside the lake.

  The platform faced a thousand stone seats that formed an amphitheatre around the platform.

  “The Great Council Chamber,” Dr. Hassatt said beside Danny, his voice hushed. “We found the ancient’s Great Council Chamber.”

  “There’s got to be treasure here,” Bud said.

  “Amazing,” Ernie said.

  “A stunning find,” Ed said.

  “Wow! Big place,” Craig said.

  All Danny could
do was stare.

  And wish his father were here to see this.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  September 17, 1970

  Under the Lost City of Ishango, deep in the jungle of the Republic of Congo.

  “WHAT IS THE Great Council Chamber?” Danny asked Dr. Hassatt after another minute of all of them staring at the huge cavern in front of them.

  “From everything I can gather,” Dr. Hassatt said, “the ancient people who lived here and in other great cities around the globe were governed by a group of ten elders. These elders were elected and served like a city government, representing the adults, both men and women, of the city. This is where everyone met to listen to the council debate, act and vote.”

  Dr. Hassatt pointed to the main platform beside the lake. “The Great Council would meet there and anyone who wanted could watch and listen. The important issues and elections would fill this place I’m sure. I had always hoped to find the remains of a Great Council Chamber, but never in this good a condition.”

  Dr. Hassatt started off toward the huge platform beside the lake. The floor of the cavern was paved in stone blocks and perfectly smooth. This entire room was an amazing piece of construction.

  Danny and the rest followed, moving slowly, staring at everything around them.

  Danny almost wanted to hold his breath as he climbed up the stone steps to the giant stage.

  A stone table with a polished top filled the center of the stage, but nothing else was left but dust. After six thousand years of being in the open, even in a dark cave, that made sense. No wood or cloth would survive the moisture down here.

  Behind the table on the stage was a stone wall. And across the top of the stone was carved hieroglyphs, large enough for everyone in the room to read, even from the top seats. It was the first writing of any type that Danny had seen in the ancient city.