On the High Road to Oblivion

Chapter 6—In the Valley of Death

Dodge hurled himself to the side and tumbled away from the rail bed. He felt a rush of air as something whooshed by. By the time he stopped rolling, the disturbance had passed. Whatever it had been, it was gone now, vanished into the deepening darkness.

His attacker had also vanished.

Dodge lay motionless for a few seconds, expecting the Asian man to appear on the other side of the rail bed, and when that did not happen, he gingerly got to his feet and went looking for the man. There was no sign of him whatsoever; it was as if the strange manifestation from the tunnel had erased all memory of the man.

“What was that thing?” Dodge muttered.

His words were swallowed up by the ominous quiet that had settled over the woods. After the dual exertion of his apparently futile pursuit of Anya and the one-sided battle with the stranger, the silence was surreal. He gazed back up at the tunnel mouth, which was now almost indistinguishable from the benighted mountainside into which it led.

Anya jumped in that tunnel. Why?

Something came out of the tunnel. What?

Standing there, gazing into the black void, Dodge realized that the two questions might have the same answer.

A lot of good that does me.

He realized that he would not find that answer given his present circumstances. He was going to need some help, and that meant finding some vestige of civilization. Resignedly, he turned away from the tunnel and using the rails as his guide, started walking.

Dodge never once suspected that he was being watched. He passed within five feet of the shadowy figure hiding in the brush near the rail bed, but neither saw nor heard anything. A few minutes after he went by, the figure emerged from concealment, and without making a noise louder than whisper, followed.

The next morning, Dodge arrived in the small town of Burden Valley, Pennsylvania. He had not walked all night, though. In fact, his best guess was that he walked for no more than two hours.

He had followed the rails to a road crossing. The road was paved, though barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass each other. Dodge had elected to go right, the direction he assumed to be more or less north. That had led him to a farmhouse — belonging to a Mr. Jeffrey Kafer and family — where the better part of an hour was spent answering questions from the understandably suspicious householder. Once he had gained the man’s trust, there was no refusing the offer of supper and a place to sleep. He was desperate to make contact with Hurricane. The Kafer family didn’t have a telephone, but Dodge also knew that there was nothing to be gained by impatiently heading back onto the road. So, after what was almost a good night’s sleep, and a hearty farm breakfast of fresh eggs, bacon, and griddlecakes with honey and butter, he climbed into the farmer’s well-kept 1928 Model A pickup truck and made the last part of the journey — a distance of nearly ten miles — in relative comfort.

“There’s no town constable,” Kafer explained as he pulled up in front of the general store, one of a handful of commercial buildings that occupied the stretch of the highway that constituted Burden Valley’s main street. “But you should be able to place a call to the county sheriff from the phone in the mercantile.”

Dodge thanked the farmer and ventured into the establishment, where he was warmly greeted by the proprietor. “Ah, it’s our visitor. How do you do? I’m Wallace Haines — owner of the general store and town mayor. You can probably guess which job pays better.”

Dodge introduced himself with an easy smile, but he found it a little disconcerting that Haines seemed to be expecting him. Evidently there were few secrets in the small rural town. “I’d like to make a call to the sheriff’s department, Mr. Haines.”

“Sure, sure. Phone’s in the back.” Haines gave him an appraising stare. “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but seeing as I am the mayor and the closest thing to the law we’ve got, might I ask how it is that you came to be here, all scuffed up, hitching a ride from Mr. Kafer?”

Dodge answered this question as he had the night before at the Kafer family dinner table. “I fell off the train,” he said, affecting a guilty expression. “The Broadway Limited.”

“Ah, fell off. That’s a shame. I hope you weren’t in a hurry to get to Chicago. Could take a while longer now. So, ah, why would you be needing the sheriff?”

Dodge did his best to maintain a polite tone. “If it’s all the same, Mr. Haines, I’d rather tell the story just once.”

“I understand. Follow me.” Haines led him to a stockroom in the rear of the store and showed him the telephone, but the proprietor wasn’t finished with his questions. “So you must have walked along the tracks a good little while.”

Something about the man’s tone triggered an alarm in Dodge’s subconscious. “A few miles. I fell near the tunnel.”

“Saddle Mountain.” Haines nodded, sagely. “Did you… ah, see anything out of the ordinary?”

Perhaps because he was already trying to figure out how to live up to his nickname, with respect to the man’s inquiries, Dodge managed to hide his surprise. “I’m not quite sure what you mean?”

“I’ll be straight with you. Some folk hereabouts have seen all manner of strange things in the valley, especially near that mountain. Strange lights in the sky. Some even say there’s a ghost train.”

Ghost train? Why does that ring a bell? And then it clicked. “This is Burden Valley? That Burden Valley? I got a letter from a young man… Jim, I think it was.”

“That’d be Jim Perdue. His brother John and a friend went missing a while back. John turned up half-mad, with no recollection of what had happened, and naught’s been heard from the other fellow, Zeb Hathaway. You say you got a letter?”

“Yes. I’m a journalist.”

Haines nodded again, as if that explained everything.

“But that’s not why I’m here,” Dodge added quickly. “Honestly, this is a coincidence.”

Even as he said it, he remembered what his friend Father Nathan Hobbs often said about coincidences.

“So then… why exactly do you need the sheriff? Because if it has anything at all to do with the Saddle Mountain tunnel, then I can guarantee that you’ll get no help from him. He thinks we’re all bound for the loony bin.”

Dodge stared past the man, his vision fixing on a landscape painting that adorned a calendar, while his mind turned over this new information. Anya jumped from the train in the tunnel… something came out of the tunnel… “a ghost train.”

What’s going on here?

“No help from the sheriff, you say? Well then, I guess I’ll have to ask for help from another source.” He picked up the phone and dialed the operator. Within moments, he had a connection to New York City and the switchboard at the Empire State Building. He didn’t expect that he would find Hurricane still there waiting for him, but the big man would almost certainly have left a message for him. And he did.

“Mr. Hurley did leave a message,” the switchboard operator said. “I’ll read it now. ‘Dodge. Have tracked down Barron. Our friends are with him. He’s en route to unknown destination in the east. We are flying to Lisbon on the clipper. Leaving the Catalina for you. Will send telegrams with more information as we’re able. Good Luck, Hurricane.’ That’s all there is.”

Dodge’s heart sank. “When did he leave this message?”

“Last night at half past nine.”

He thanked the operator and hung up the phone. Suddenly, the mystery of what had happened at the tunnel seemed unimportant. One of his friends was in danger, and another was rushing off to meet it, and he was stuck in the middle of nowhere. He turned back to Haines. “I need to get to the nearest train station.”

“That’d be Altoona. It’s a bit of a drive, but there’s bound to be someone heading that way that can take you. I’ll put the word out.”

Suddenly feeling very weary, Dodge thanked Haines and took his leave of the store. He had spied the sign for a café when arriving in the town, and he made his way there, hoping more for a quiet place to bide his time more than anything else. He settled in at a table and nursed a cup of coffee, doing his best to ignore the stares of the establishment’s other patrons.

His mind never strayed far from Hurley’s message. Newcombe, along with Lightning Rod Lafayette, were with Walter Barron, and evidently being taken somewhere on the other side of the world. But for what purpose? Had Anya told him the truth about Barron? Had the industrialist abducted Newcombe in order to force the scientist to build some kind of death ray weapon?

As he was working on his second cup, a small voice intruded on his thoughts. “Excuse me, mister. Are you Dodge Dalton?”

A dark-haired young boy of no more than ten years, wearing tattered bib overalls and an earnest expression, stood before him. Dodge cringed inwardly. He hadn’t identified himself by his nickname, but evidently that precaution hadn’t been sufficient. Not only had the news of his arrival spread like wildfire, but the town gossip machine had also evidently put two and two together.

He managed a smile. “That’s right, son.”

The boy broke into a grin. “I didn’t think you’d really come.”

Dodge was also capable of simple addition. “You must be Jim Perdue.”

If possible, the boy’s grin got even wider.

“Have a seat, Jim. And a glass of milk, on me.” The boy scooted into the chair opposite. Dodge could see was on the verge of bursting with questions, and even though he knew what the question would be, he prompted the boy to ask it. “What’s on your mind?”

“Are you going to find out what happened to my brother and Zeb?”

Anya… the tunnel… the “ghost train.” Was there a connection? He had to know.

“Yes, Jim. Yes, I am.”

Dodge remembered well the old adage about never forgetting how to ride a bicycle, but after an hour of pedaling along the country roads in the western Appalachian foothills, he was ready to pen a coda. Something about the body not remembering. It had been years, maybe even a decade, since he’d last ridden, and his muscles had definitely forgotten. His legs felt like they were made of rubber and his backside felt like he’d been kicked there repeatedly by mule. But it was better than walking, or so he kept telling himself.

Although nothing looked familiar, he was traveling the same road he had walked the night before, and there was only one landmark he was interested in. When he arrived at the railroad crossing, he dismounted and stashed the bicycle — one of several purchases made at Haines’ general store — behind a stand of trees, just out of sight from the road. With the rest of his gear in a knapsack slung over his shoulder, he resumed his trek along the rail bed, this time heading east, toward the tunnel.

The opening to the passage through Saddle Mountain looked considerably less imposing by daylight, but Dodge approached it warily, recalling how quickly the ghost train — he didn’t know what else to call it — had appeared. With a dry-cell powered flashlight in hand — another purchase from Haines’ store — and hugging close to the soot-stained tunnel wall, he took a deep breath and ventured inside.

As he moved into the tunnel, he started sweeping his light across the area to either side of the rails. He knew that Anya had made her leap much further in, but if he was to identify the area where she had landed, presumably tumbling as he had, he first needed to know the appearance of the rail bed in an undisturbed state. He quickly fell into a routine: sweep, step, sweep, step. In a matter of only a few minutes, he was deep enough into the tunnel that the west entrance, through which he had come in, was a mere spot of light; the east end was not visible at all.

He soon found what he was looking for, an area alongside the tracks where the rock had been scattered and the layer of greasy soot smeared in a swath several yards long. This was, unquestionably, where Anya had made her leap.

But where had she gone next?

“She didn’t come out,” he said aloud. His voice echoed weirdly in the passage, but offered no other insights. He kept walking, looking for other signs of her presence, but soon even the trail left by her disembarkation vanished.

And then, as the endless darkness of the tunnel had almost eroded his resolve enough that he was considering turning back, the flashlight revealed something that stopped him in his tracks.

It wasn’t anything as obvious as the signs of Anya’s jump. He actually had to stare at the piled rocks for several moments to figure out why they had commanded his attention, but then he finally saw it: a distinctive line — an arc rather — where the chaotic jumble of stones did not quite meet. He followed the arc as it curved into the tracks, exactly at a joint where two rails met. He inspected the joint, and saw that the ends of the rails were not spliced together with a piece of riveted steel, as was customary and in fact necessary to prevent the rails from spreading apart and causing a train derailment. The arc continued under the rails and curved back toward the opposite wall of the tunnel. As his beam illuminated the tunnel wall, he saw something even more amazing.

The line abruptly became a vertical seam, stretching from the ground and up the side of the tunnel wall. About ten yards further down, a second seam marked the beginning of another arc that curved the opposite way. Dodge immediately saw that the two arcs formed a circle which extended beyond the tunnel walls on either side.

He was standing on a railroad turnaround — a section of track mounted on a platform that could swivel completely around, allowing a train car to be reoriented. Such devices were common in railyards, but Dodge could not conceive of a good reason for the railroad to build one in the middle of a tunnel.

There was a matching set of seams on the other wall of the tunnel, exactly where he expected it to be; the radius of the turnaround was bigger than the breadth of the tunnel, but that wasn’t what Dodge was looking for. He swept the light across every square inch of the wall until at last he found it: a protruding stone, smeared with sooty fingerprints. He tried wiggling it experimentally, then gave it a firm push.

Somewhere deep beneath his feet, there was a clank of machinery, and the ground beneath his feet began to move. There was a tortured squeal of metal moving against metal as the concealed turnaround started rotating.

The sections of tunnel wall between the seams slipped easily out of place, the edges beveled in such a way that, with only a dusting of soot now and then, they would be virtually invisible. Dodge saw that the wall section was not actually stone at all, but a façade of wood and plaster. On one side, the moving false wall revealed only a scalloped cut in the gutrock of the mountain, just enough to accommodate the false wall. The other side, however, opened to reveal a side passage, running perpendicular to the tunnel. A pair of rails had been laid in this new tunnel, and as soon as the rails on the turnaround matched those in the new tunnel, the machinery fell silent.

Although he knew he had only found one small piece of the puzzle — the tip of the proverbial iceberg — Dodge knew he had found the answer to the questions that had plagued him. Anya had jumped from the train because she had known about this concealed turnaround. The thing that had come out of the tunnel, and evidently obliterated his Asian assailant — the ghost train — had to have been a locomotive, probably an electrically powered car, concealed in this siding. Anya would have known about that, too. She had probably been driving it.

“What the hell is going on here?”

This time his voice didn’t echo.

Mindful of the fact that there was now a serious break in the rails on a major train line, Dodge ventured into the siding and located the switch that would rotate the turnaround back to its normal position. No attempt had been made to conceal it here. He pressed the button and hopped off the turnaround as the false wall slid back into place, sealing him within the siding.

As the noise of the machinery fell silent once more, Dodge realized that he was now no longer in the world of the familiar. The turnaround and this secret tunnel were evidence of some greater conspiracy. He was an intruder, trespassing on what he could only assume was enemy territory. How long before the men — and perhaps women — who had hewed out this tunnel and laid these rails became aware of his presence? Or did they already know?

Dodge switched off the light and stood in darkness, straining his senses for any hint of approaching footsteps or any other source of illumination. Nothing. He was alone in the heart of the mountain.

He side-stepped until his outstretched hand located the rough tunnel wall. Maintaining contact with it, he started walking. His progress was slow and cautious; he could ill-afford a stumble in the darkness. Sensory deprivation played havoc with his sense of the passage of time, but immersion in the total darkness heightened his perceptions such that he was soon able to detect a pinpoint of light ahead: the end of the tunnel. As that spot grew larger, he quickened his pace.

He felt reborn as he emerged into daylight and into what appeared to be a box canyon. The valley floor was sparsely vegetated, but the surrounding hillsides were dense with trees. The setting seemed idyllic at first glance, but the parallel rails were a reminder that he was not simply walking in the woods. The tracks led out of the tunnel and across the flat terrain as far as the eye could see.

The rails eventually brought him to a vantage point overlooking a secondary depression within the valley. Nestled in that low area was unquestionable evidence of human occupancy of the hidden valley, several small buildings and a single enormous structure that looked suspiciously like an aircraft hangar but much larger than any Dodge had ever seen. Dodge’s eye, however, was drawn to something else, or rather the absence of something.

The floor of the depression, like the valley, was more or less flat, with patches of grass and brushy areas. But at the near end, a stone’s throw from where Dodge now stood, the ground had been completely denuded of foliage. The patch was almost perfectly circular, and at least a hundred yards in diameter. As he studied the area, Dodge realized that it was not just that the plant life was been cleared; the ground itself seemed unnaturally smooth, as if pounded flat by heavy machinery. The circle bore the scars of a few disturbances, divots and scorch marks, as though an airplane had crashed there at one point, but otherwise the ground was as flat as the infield of a baseball diamond.

Dodge tore his gaze away from the strange circle, and studied the hangar and the surrounding compound for some hint of activity. There was none; the secret facility seemed to have been abandoned. Nonetheless cautious, he followed the railroad down to its terminus in the depression.

Up close, he saw that the buildings were not merely abandoned, but on the verge of collapse. The smaller buildings, nothing more than tar paper hastily tacked up on wood frames, were completely empty of furnishings or any other embellishments.

The hangar wasn’t in much better shape; a roof of corrugated metal, already starting to rust, stretched over a Quonset hut style frame, but unlike the smaller buildings, the hangar was not empty. As he stood in the doorway, Dodge gaped incredulously at the thing that almost completely filled the belly of the structure.

It was a dirigible.

Dodge had seen airships in the sky above the city, but never up close, never close enough to touch. It was too large to take in with a single glance, like the hull of an ocean liner in dry-dock. Yet, as he got past the initial surprise of the discovery, he saw that the airship, like everything else in the compound, was suffering from serious neglect.

The gondola and attached engine nacelles, which looked a little like an enormous twin-engine airplane with the wings removed, rested on the floor of the hangar. The gas envelope from which the gondola was suspended, sagged like tent with broken poles. Dodge realized that he was looking at a blimp, an airship that did not have a rigid internal frame like a zeppelin, but was more like a balloon, keeping its distinctive shape by virtue of gas pressure alone. This blimp had already lost enough of its lighter-than-air gas to make lift impossible.

Dodge thought about the letter he had received from Jim Perdue. He had already discovered the secret of the ghost train, and now it seemed he had a plausible explanation for the strange lights that residents of Burden Valley had observed in the sky.

He had the “how,” but no hint of the “why.”

And then there was the matter of “who.” Anya had known about the ghost train siding. He could only assume that her insistence on traveling aboard the Broadway Limited had been for the purpose of coming here, and of course, getting away from him. Could he trust anything she had said?

Dodge recalled Hurley’s message. Newcombe and Lafayette were with Barron; that much at least seemed to be true. So, was Anya working against Barron, as she claimed?

It was difficult to imagine a group of dynamite-throwing anarchists building a secret railroad and airfield in a Pennsylvania valley; that was something that could only be accomplished with a lot of money, and access to material and human resources on a grand scale.

Barron.

More pieces of the puzzle clicked into place. Barron had built the secret facility in the valley as a proving ground for some secret weapon — his death ray, perhaps?

But why had he abandoned it?

There were still missing pieces.

Dodge pushed under the sagging blimp and made his way to the gondola. From the front, it looked ordinary enough, but as he moved along its length, he saw evidence of catastrophic damage. The aft section of the fuselage had burst open like an overripe fruit, and the edges of the metal were oxidized — scorched, Dodge realized. He cautiously slipped through the gaping wound and entered the gondola, where the damage was even more pronounced. It looked like a bomb had gone off inside.

That’s why he needs Newcombe. His death ray blew up in his face; he needs the Doc to help him figure out how to fix it.

But why take him overseas?

Dodge shook his head. The answer to that question would not be found here. He turned to leave the gondola…

… and found himself staring down the barrel of a gun.

His gaze flickered up, but before he could focus on the face of the person holding the gun, the barrel moved, swiping toward his head, and everything dissolved into blackness.

Two rhythms in conflict pounded through Dodge’s skull, driving him out of the pain-free refuge of unconsciousness. As soon as he groaned aloud and opened his eyes, one of the beats — an external tempo measured out by a series of short, none-too-gentle, but nonetheless insistent slaps against his cheek — ceased immediately. The other however — the throb of pain that radiated from the side of his head where he’d been pistol-whipped — continued to pulse in time with his heartbeat. The source of both, the gunman who had taken him unaware, crouched in front of, with one hand raised as if to resume slapping.

“I’m awake,” Dodge muttered, trying to forestall further abuse. His double-vision gradually resolved, and he got his first look at the face of his tormentor, an Asian man of indeterminate age, wearing a stained and ragged-looking gray suit. Dodge didn’t see the gun, but the man no longer needed it; he had tied Dodge’s hands behind his back, securing him to an exposed beam in the interior of the gondola. The man’s jet black hair and facial features were similar to those of the man who had attacked him the previous night near the tunnel, but Dodge didn’t think they were the same person. A moment later, his captor confirmed the supposition.

“Where is Tanaka?” The voice was different, deeper, almost gravelly, without the sing-song quality he had heard from his first assailant; like that man, there was hardly any trace of an accent.

Dodge blinked. He knew who the man was referring to, but decided to play dumb. “I don’t know what that means.”

The man gazed back implacably, and Dodge braced himself for another physical assault. But instead of hitting him, the man simply said: “The woman jumped off the train. You followed her. Chu’i Tanaka followed you. What happened to him?”

Dodge saw no benefit in withholding the truth. “I don’t know. Something came out of the tunnel; another train, I think. It might have hit him.” Then he added: “I’m sorry.”

“If this is true, he died honorably.” His captor’s expression remained completely unreadable. “Where’s the woman?”

“I’ll tell you what I told your man, Tanaka: I don’t know. She got away. I thought she might have come here, but there’s no sign of her now.” Dodge let that sink in, then tried getting something back. “I’ve answered your questions truthfully. Now, would you mind telling me who you are? And why I’m tied up like this?”

The man rocked back on his haunches. “Tell me about the woman. Who is she?”

“You mean you don’t know?” Dodge narrowed his gaze. “You’re Japanese, right? I don’t know what you’re used to, but here in America, we have a custom of exchanging information.”

“You are in no position to make demands of me,” the man replied. “However, you are mistaken. I am an American.”

“You’re Nisei, then? The son of Japanese immigrants.”

“You know of this?” Dodge thought the man seemed impressed, but it was difficult to tell. “Very well, an exchange then. I am Ryu Uchida.”

“David Dalton.”

“I know who you are, Mr. Dalton. Now, tell me what you know about this woman.”

Dodge flexed his hands experimentally, testing his bonds; his fingertips were tingling with the loss of circulation, but he could tell that he was bound with wire, probably salvaged from the gondola wreckage. After a few seconds, he found where the ends had been twisted together — the wire was too thick to be cinched into a proper knot.

He felt a glimmer of hope. He didn’t know what Uchida had planned for him, but he didn’t foresee the Nisei suddenly having a change of heart, untying him and sending him on his way with an apology. But with enough time, he felt certain he could work his way free. He just had to keep his captor interested.

“She calls herself Anya. She’s a part of a European revolutionary group. They’re after Walter Barron. You know who that is, right? The arms manufacturer?”

There was a glimmer of recognition in Uchida’s eyes, but he offered no verbal confirmation. “Where was she taking you?”

“She never told me our destination, but she promised that she was going to help me get my friends back.”

“Where are your friends now?”

“I’m not certain. They might be with Walter Barron.” Dodge gave the wire a twist, but couldn’t tell if his bonds were loosening. “Your turn. What’s your interest in Anya?”

“That is none of your concern, Mr. Dalton. Do you know where Barron is now?”

Dodge got the sense that Uchida didn’t have many more questions for him, and that meant he was nearly out of time. What would happen then? He gave the wire another twist. “That’s what I hoped to discover here. I think Barron built this place. I was hoping to find some clue here about where my friends are. What do you say you untie me? We can look together.”

“There are no clues here,” Uchida answered gravely, and rose to his feet. He turned away, and for just a moment, Dodge thought he was going to simply leave him there.

That would have been preferable to what the Nisei did next.

“Mr. Dalton, it would be merciful on my part to simply put a bullet in your head. But a bullet, particularly from this gun — the Nambu type 94 8-millimeter pistol — would raise too many questions if your remains were ever found. I cannot take that risk. Your death must appear to be an accident.” He rooted in a small black duffel bag, and produced something that looked like a simple kitchen timer.

Dodge knew it was nothing as innocuous as that.

“This is a very small explosive charge,” Uchida explained patiently. “But when it detonates, it will ignite the hydrogen in the blimp. There will be nothing left of this place, or of you, Mr. Dalton. I will set it for five minutes. That should give me plenty of time to get well away from here, and for you to make peace with your God.”

He set the detonator on the floor a few feet from Dodge. “Sayonara, Mr. Dalton.”

Uchida wasted no time exiting the gondola, leaving Dodge alone with the audible ticking of the explosive device to keep him company for the last remaining minutes of his life.

Dodge breathed a curse as he redoubled his efforts to get free. His fingers felt like fat sausages. For all he could tell, he might have been twisting the wire tighter, but there was nothing to be gained in second guessing himself now.

As he worked at the wire, the newsreel footage he had seen of the Hindenburg burning up over New Jersey flashed in his mind’s eye. The zeppelin had been considerably larger than this blimp, but that offered little comfort. It wouldn’t be enough for him to simply get free before the bomb detonated; he would also have to extricate himself from the gondola and flee the hangar in order to escape the conflagration that would follow. How long would that take?

“I did not think he would ever leave.”

The voice was such a shock that Dodge squandered a few precious seconds staring in disbelief as a familiar figure crawled into the gondola. “Anya!” He shook his head to banish the torrent of questions that flooded his thoughts, and then winced as the simple gesture sent a new wave of pain through his skull. “Get out of here. There’s a bomb.”

“Yes, I heard what he said.” She hastened to his side and he felt her hands begin working at the wires.

“I didn’t think I’d see you again.” He said it more to hide his anxiety than as a prompt for to explain her presence.

“There is much to tell you…”

“Later.”

They said it together, and Dodge could not resist a chuckle. His bravo died quickly as he glanced at the detonator. Uchida may have denied being a citizen of Japan, but there was no question that the explosive device had been manufactured there; the dial on the timer was marked with incomprehensible Oriental characters.

Kanji script, Dodge thought, unable to recall exactly where he had picked up that bit of trivia. Still, it wasn’t difficult to recognize them as numbers, or to interpret their meaning. They had just two minutes left.

“It’s no good,” he declared, resignedly. Even if she got him free, there wouldn’t be time to escape the firestorm. “Get out while you can.”

Anya grunted as she kept working, but said nothing as another minute passed and the detonator began ticking down the last sixty seconds. Then, miraculously, Dodge felt his wrists move apart. Anya gave the wire one more twist and he was free.

Dodge scrambled to his feet. He reached out, as if to pull Anya along, but his hands were numb and useless. She needed no such assistance, however. Together, they dove for the breach in the side of the gondola and out onto the floor of the hangar.

“Run!” he yelled, and heeding his own advice, sprinted pell-mell out from under the sagging blimp.

They were halfway to the hangar door when the bomb exploded.