At the Outpost of Fate

CHAPTER 8 — REACH FOR THE SKY

Dodge arrived promptly at seven P.M. and found Newcombe nervously puttering about the laboratory. "Ready to go, Doc?"

The scientist jumped as if startled. "Ah, Mr. Dalton."

"Might as well start calling me ‘Dodge.’ All my friends do." He started walking through the hangar, back to the area where the Float Car was stabled.

Newcombe’s mouth twitched, but he did not quite smile. "Dodge it is, then. Uh, Dodge, there’s something I need to…ah, explain."

"Can we do it along the way?"

"Well, that’s just the thing. There’s been a little—"

Dodge came to an abrupt halt as he caught a glimpse of a blonde-haired figure standing alongside the makeshift flying machine. The woman flashed a disarming smile. "My goodness, if it isn’t Mr. Dalton."

"Who the devil are you? Doc, what’s going on here?"

Newcombe hastily interposed himself between Dodge and the woman. "That’s what I was trying to tell you. This is Miss Dunham. She’s going to be coming with us."

Dodge shook his head as if trying to wake himself up. "No, she’s not."

The woman — Amelia — maintained her smile. "Come now, Mr. Dalton…may I call you ‘Dodge’?"

"No."

Her full lips turned down in a mock pout. "And I was hoping we could be friends."

"You were wrong, Miss Dunham."

Newcombe moved in close and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. "Dodge, she’s a reporter. She knows everything and says that if we don’t take her, she’ll tell the world in her newspaper."

Dodge was unmoved by the threat. "Let her tell them. She’s not coming with us. Now, Miss Dunham, if you’ll excuse us, we need to be going."

The blond woman suddenly scrambled into the Float Car and gripped the armrests of a chair. "You’ll not get rid of me that easy."

Dodge balled his fists, more to hide his frustration than as a display of belligerence. "Maybe you should reconsider the ‘easy’ option, lady."

Before he could advance however, another voice barked out a command. "Everyone stay where you are."

Dodge turned to find a uniformed soldier, wearing a helmet and armband that identified him as a military policeman, standing in the entrance to the storage area with his sidearm extended. "Dr. Newcombe, what’s going on here?"

The scientist gaped and stammered, but no coherent explanation was forthcoming. Dodge raised his hands submissively. "Let me explain, Sergeant. I’m David Dalton, one of the project directors. I can show you my authorization—"

"Can it, pal. I heard what you all were saying in here; something about leaving and taking Dr. Newcombe with you. You can explain it to General Vaughn. Until then, you’re all under arrest."

"Arrest?" The woman’s British accent and almost laughing tone made it seem as though she considered the whole encounter humorous. "Sergeant, I’m certain that you have no authority to interfere with Dr. Newcombe’s activities here."

"Stow it, lady. I don’t know you from Eve. Get down outta that thing and keep your yap shut."

Dodge stared fixedly at the pistol in the MP’s grip. He didn’t doubt that the soldier would take lethal action to prevent their escape, but chances were good that he would use it only if he saw no other alternative. If I can just make it to the Float Car… "Sergeant, she’s absolutely right. You are overstepping your authority and interfering with an important experiment." He took a bold step toward the machine.

"Halt!"

"Sergeant, there’s an unstable power source in this device and if you don’t at least allow me to shut it off, this whole hangar could go up."

The gun barrel wavered just a little and the MP glanced at Newcombe. To his credit, the scientist caught on to the bluff and nodded vigorously. "Very unstable."

The pistol again stabbed toward Dodge. "You stay put. Doc, you can get up in there and shut it down."

"I’ll stay right here." Dodge raised his hands a little higher and, as he did, took a sideways step toward the Float Car.

Newcombe gave a slight nod — a gesture directed mostly toward Dodge, then clambered into the device. "This will only take a moment, Sergeant…oh my!"

"What’s wrong?" The question was asked almost simultaneously by the three onlookers — Dodge, the MP and the attractive woman calling herself Amelia Dunham.

"The metal in your gun is reacting with the bronzium core. You really might want to think about taking a few steps back."

Dodge didn’t think that Newcombe sounded very convincing, but the MP seemed to buy it. Although he kept his bead on Dodge, the soldier began edging toward the door. "Just turn it off before it blows."

"Of course. I’ll have it one… two… and three!"

On cue, Dodge leaped for the Float Car. He felt a tingle of electricity crackling against his skin and at that very instant, a loud concussion filled the hangar as the soldier fired his pistol. Dodge continued his scramble into the vehicle, disdaining the repeated bursts of gunfire and similarly ignoring the yelps of the blond woman.

None of the bullets found their mark; it was as though the gun was loaded with blanks. In the instant that Newcombe activated the exoskeleton, causing the Float Car to lift off the ground a few inches, an impenetrable electrical bubble had been created around the craft. The projectiles from the MP’s weapon had hit a shield of energy that stopped them cold, leaving the occupants of the Float Car unscathed. But invulnerability was not the same as freedom.

Ignoring Amelia, Dodge muscled past Newcombe and gripped the controls. He didn’t know exactly how to fly the machine, but that wasn’t going to stop him from trying. He slid into the driver seat and gripped the steering wheel.

Newcombe had utilized basic automobile controls — a pair of foot pedals, a steering wheel and a gear shift lever — and for the most part, they worked much like their counterparts in a wheeled vehicle. The steering wheel turned the craft on a horizontal plane, while a tap on the "gas" pedal caused the whole thing to move forward. Dodge however gave it more than a tap and the Float Car burst forward, smashing into the tin wall of the hangar. The sturdy barrier of wood and sheet metal tore apart like wet paper and the craft with its three passengers exploded out into the night, leaving the stunned MP behind while he fumbled to reload his sidearm.

Once free of the enclosure, Dodge had a little more room to get comfortable with the controls. The Float Car was moving smoothly over the manicured landscape, keeping a constant elevation of only a few inches. From a distance, it looked exactly like a beat up old truck with an open cab, rolling across the field. Dodge however, needed it to do more than just float across the ground. "How do we make this thing fly, Doc?"

"The gearshift lever. Pull back to make it — whoops!"

Dodge had impulsively yanked back on the lever before the scientist had finished speaking and the result was that the small craft immediately shot skyward. "Got it," Dodge said, easing back on the stick a little to curtail the runaway ascent. Although it had lasted only a few seconds, they were now hundreds of feet above the lights of Fort Meade, their only point of reference. Without any source of external light, it was almost impossible to tell where the ground ended and the sky began. Dodge eased off on the accelerator control and turned the wheel, causing the machine to pirouette in mid-air as he scanned the horizon looking for a second reference point. After a few turns, he caught a glimpse of a distant black ribbon cutting a dark swath through the city lights and intuitively realized he was looking at the river.

Unlike an airplane or any other sort of flying machine, the Float Car made absolutely no noise as it raced through the night, so they had no difficulty hearing the low wailing noise that began to roll up from the ground. The sky was suddenly crisscrossed with the beams of high-powered searchlights which immediately began to sweep the area where the Float Car hovered.

"Air raid sirens," exclaimed Newcombe. "We’re still over the base."

"They’ll be putting planes in the air. We need to get moving."

"They will track us with radar," the scientist continued. "The radar antennas are aimed at the sky. If you fly low, you might be able to avoid detection."

Dodge complied immediately, pushing the stick forward and the craft swooped low to the ground. He leveled it out when he caught a glimpse of a few treetops just below and then accelerated in the direction of the river. He steered the machine in broad arcs to avoid the klieg lights that now seemed to be randomly sweeping the sky. Satisfied that the hunters had lost the scent at least for the moment, Dodge hastened on toward the river, deviating only when the way ahead took them through a well-lit area,

"Where are we going now?" asked a wide-eyed Newcombe.

"I chartered a boat-plane to take us most of the way to our destination. It’ll be a bit of a squeeze, but we should be able to stow the Float Car with the cargo; it’s not nearly as heavy as a real automobile." He playfully slugged the scientist’s arm. "Quick thinking back there, Doc. Bronzium, huh?"

"Something I read in a Secret Agent ‘X’ story," Newcombe confessed.

"I can tell already that I made the right decision bringing you along." It was only then that he realized that he had inadvertently brought someone else along as well. He glanced back to where Miss Amelia Dunham sat gripping the armrests of her chair for dear life; her face was so white that it positively glowed in the darkness. With the distinct impression that he wouldn’t have too much trouble convincing the woman to disembark at the earliest opportunity, he allowed himself a vindictive grin and returned his attention to the task at hand.

In fact, the blond woman was not nearly as terrified as her demeanor seemed to indicate. While the Float Car and its abilities certainly taxed her credulity, it took more than gut wrenching aerobatics to rattle the nerves of a woman who, only a day earlier, had parachuted off the Empire State Building into the heart of a hurricane. Yet, while Jocasta Palmer might have greeted the night’s activities with a laugh and a toss of her flaxen mane, she reckoned that her current alter ego would not be quite so sanguine and thus did her best to act the part of terrified damsel-in-distress.

The encounter with the MP had proved serendipitous; it was plainly obvious that the mysterious Dodge Dalton would not be as easy to manipulate as Newcombe. He seemed a stubborn sort and dead set on kicking her to the curb at the earliest opportunity. He had been unmoved by her threat to expose his activities to public scrutiny and her intuition told her that he would be equally immune to her feminine charms; so what did that leave? She continued to ponder this as the strange flying machine swooped low, avoiding heavily populated areas as its driver made a beeline for the river.

Dodge slowed their breakneck pace as he brought the Float Car down over the broad expanse of the Severn River and began cruising slowly up the water course, scanning the banks until he spotted the bonfire that Fuller had set as a beacon to guide him in. He steered the Float Car toward the ruddy glow and soon Jocasta was able to distinguish the outline of an amphibious airplane bobbing at the end of a rickety looking pier on an otherwise rural shore. As the craft settled down above the wooden deck, two figures emerged from the interior of the plane to greet them. She immediately pegged one of the pair as the policeman, but it was the other man, a stubbly saturnine figure wearing ill-fitting mechanic’s coveralls and a black watch cap, that raised her hackles. There was something familiar about the man, a nagging memory that she could not quite pinpoint. She didn’t associate his face with peril, but the simple fact of her tingling intuition was enough to raise her level of awareness. The rough fellow hung back, lingering near the aircraft, but the policeman advanced to greet Dodge.

"I take it there were a few hiccups," he observed.

Dodge grimaced. "Suffice it to say, our departure did not go unnoticed, but we stayed low to avoid the military radar beams."

"What about her?"

"A reporter who decided to tag along. There wasn’t time to put her off back at the lab." He raised his voice so that his words would be audible to the stowaway. "We’ll leave her here."

His eyes lingered on Jocasta, prompting her to flash her disarming smile, but before she could speak in her own defense, the lawman took the words out of her mouth. "Are you sure that’s wise? A reporter? She could expose this whole affair in the press."

"She doesn’t know enough to expose anything."

"Oh yes I do," she chimed. "I know everything. I was eavesdropping the whole time. I know about the Outpost and the theft at the Empire State Building. If you don’t take me along, I’ll tell the world."

Dodge growled and balled his fists threateningly, but the policeman again headed him off. "Like it or not, she’s right. And we really don’t have time to waste in discussing this." He turned to her and gave a mock bow. "How do you do, Miss? I’m Tom Fuller."

"A right proper gentleman, you are. Amelia Dunham of the London Daily Telegraph."

"You’re British?"

"And you’re quite the detective," Dodge interjected. "But as you said, we’re pressed for time. You can swap telephone numbers when we’re in the air."

Jocasta’s perfect lips turned down in a pout and she stuck her tongue out at Dodge. "Never mind him, Mr. Fuller. He’s just jealous."

"Please, call me Tom."

Dodge rolled his eyes and turned to Newcombe. "Doc, this is the FBI agent I told you about and this is…" He paused as he got his first look at the man in work clothes and then turned back to Fuller. "This is our pilot?"

"Mr. Burton." Fuller dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Just the man for, shall we say, discreet activities.

Dodge cast a skeptical eye at the pilot, a reaction that Jocasta shared. "Does he understand what we’re doing?"

"Mr. Burton was a bootlegger, flying cases of liquor down from Canada during Prohibition. His smuggler connections should speed us on our way."

"I’m your man," Burton intoned. "Whatever the job, I’m up for it."

Jocasta avoided making eye contact with the rough looking pilot and, sensing the need to gather allies, gravitated toward Fuller as she stepped out of the Float Car. The matter of the new face in their midst seemed to have derailed Dodge’s ire toward her, but there was no telling how long that would last.

General Frank Vaughn stormed into the radar command center like a force of nature. Beneath his immaculate uniform, he was a bunched knot of stress and rage — a rumbling volcano ready to explode. When one of the officers present glimpsed his stars and started to call the room to attention, Vaughn cut him off with a swipe of his hand and a guttural growl. "Carry on. I hope someone has some good news for me."

The officer remained rigid as an oak tree. "Sir, I — we tracked them for a while, then they dropped below our radar beams."

"Then what the hell good are you?" Vaughn took a deep breath and brought the eruption under control. He was an old warhorse and didn't fully understand the intricacies of newfangled devices like radar, which was kind of ironic considering that he had been put in charge of the top secret Office of Special Projects, the primary mission of which was to turn the technology of a highly advanced ancient civilization into a tactical and strategic advantage for the modern American military. "Do we at least have planes in the air?"

"Four squadrons, sir. Flying search patterns based on the known range of the…" The officer faltered, unsure of what to call the strange device. We may not know exactly where they are, but we know the limit of how far they've gone. And if they rise above two hundred feet, we'll see them right away on our radar."

"Put two more squadrons in the sky," Vaughn grunted, but with considerably less ferocity than before. For the first time since his phone had begun ringing — mere seconds after the air raid sirens all over the base had begun to wail — he was feeling like there was hope that the situation could be salvaged. Satisfied that there was nothing more that could be done in the search, he turned his attention to filling in the gaps in his knowledge of what exactly had happened at Dr. Newcombe's laboratory.

A brief phone call to the base commandant and five minutes later, the military police sergeant that had initially reported the security breach strode into the command center and snapped a smart salute.

"What happened, Sergeant?"

The man looked him in the eye as he offered a brief but detailed account of the incident and was clearly not as intimidated by the stars on his epaulets as the officer in charge of the search had been. Vaughn interrupted only once.

"David Dalton? That's the name he gave?"

"Yes, sir."

"And Dr. Newcombe was cooperating with him?"

"I'd say so, sir. He helped this Dalton escape. Told me something about…bronzium, I think it was."

"Interesting. Please continue."

As the MP finished his tale, Vaughn mulled over the implications of what he had just been told. Dalton. Why would he steal the flying apparatus when he already had unrestricted access to the source of that bizarre technology?

"Sir!" The officer in charge of the search could barely contain his enthusiasm. "We've found them. One of the spotter planes."

"Where?"

"On the Severn River." The man held the headphone of a radio set to his ear and repeated the detailed location as it was transmitted by the pilot. "They appear to be loading the device into an amphibious plane. We'll have to act fast to intercept them. I'll alert the commandant to send out the MPs."

Vaughn chewed his lip thoughtfully for a moment. What was Dodge doing? Why steal something that was, for all intents and purposes, already his? He could take whatever he wanted from that outpost of his in Antarctica.

And then it dawned on him. "As you were, Major. Let's just keep an eye on them for now. Let's see where they lead us."