Pulp Fantastic Copyright © 2015 Christopher Helton and Jonathan M. Thompson. Pulp Fantastic is published by Battlefield Press, Inc., PO Box 861 Ringgold, Louisiana 71068 First printing. ISBN 0-9721419-8-7. Game system based on Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space, DESIGNED AND WRITTEN by David F. Chapman. Copyright © 2009 by Cubicle 7. Fantastic Universe, Pulp Fantastic, Fan-tastic World, Steel and Swords, Savage Adventures and Mystic East are all Trademarks of Christopher Helton and Jonathan M. Thompson. All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be duplicated without permission of the publisher or the copyright holder. Errata and other feedback can be sent to [email protected]. Attention: The bearer of this PDF has the permission of the publisher and the copyright owners to have one (1) copy printed for personal use via any commercial printer. If you are a clerk in a copy print center and you are reading this notices please do not treat our customers or yours as if they were a criminal — print this file. We are allowing it and you should also.
Writing: Chris Halliday, Christopher Helton, Jonathan Nichols and Jonathan M. Thompson
Additional Development: John Snead, DM Elliot, Anna Dobritt, Stephen J. Miller, Ramsey Lundock,
Neale Davidson, José Porfírio, Timothy Brannon, Eric Pavlat, J. Thomas Pavlat and Luke Green
Proofreading: T. R. Knight
Graphic Design, Typography and Digitial Pre-Press: Richard Iorio II
Playtesters: Jonathan M. Thompson, Adam R. Thompson, Terrece Thompson, Clay Weeks,
Chris-topher Helton, Ramsey Lundock, Mark Vorwerk and José Porfírio
Cover Art: Robert Hack
Nemo Diary by Shawn Hilton
What’s a Role-playing Game? 12
The Basics 12
How To Use This Book 12
Playing the Game 12
PULP! 13 Chapter 1 27 Characters 27 Attributes 27 Skills 27 Traits 27 Story Points 28 Rules 28 A Note On Dice 28 Setting 29 Example of Play 29 Chapter 2 33 Creating a Group 33 The Premise 33
Who are the Characters? 33
Who’s the Supporting Cast? 35
What Resources Do You Have? 35
Who Opposes You? 35
Connect It All Up 36
Creating your Character 36
Attributes 36
The Six Attributes 36
Awareness 36 Coordination 37 Ingenuity 37 Presence 37 Resolve 37 Strength 37 Skills 38 Areas of Expertise 38 Trappings 38
Assigning Skill Points 38
Skills List 39 Animal Handling 39 Athletics 39 Convince 40 Craft 40 Marksman 40 Medicine 42 Science 42 Subterfuge 42 Survival 42 Technology 42 Transport 43 Traits 43
Affecting your Character 43
Buying Traits 43
Traits List 44
List of Traits in order 44
Good Traits 44 Bad Traits 44 Special Traits 45 Psychic Traits 45 Creature Traits 45 Good Traits 46 Bad Traits 52 Special Traits 57 Psychic Traits 59 Story Points 62 Finishing Touches 62 Name 62 Background 62 Connections 62 Appearance 62 Equipment 62 Personal Goals 62
Groups & Bases 62
Story Point Traits 63
Good Group Traits 63
Bad Group Traits 65
Chapter 3 67
The Colonial World 67
Travel in the Colonies 67
Regions of the Era 67
The United States 67
England and Europe 68
North America 73
Australia 81
Antarctica 81
Chapter 4 83
Interesting Times 83
The Great War 83
The Roaring 20’s 83 Timeline 1901 – 1939 84 1901 84 1902 84 1903 85 1904 85 1905 85 1906 85 1907 85 1908 86 1909 86 1910 86 1911 86 1912 87 1913 87 1914 87 1915 88 1916 88 1917 88 1918 88 1919 89 1920 89 1921 89 1922 89 1923 89 1924 89 1925 90 1926 90 1927 90 1928 91 1930 91 1931 92 1932 92 1933 94 1934 94 1935 94 1936 95 1937 95 1938 96 1939 96
French Foreign Legion 100
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn 100
The Invisible College 100
Knights of the Round Table 101
MI7 102
The Air Cavalry 103
Pinkerton Detective Agency 103
Scotland Yard 104
International Criminal Police Organization 105
Red Headed League 105
The Tong of 106
the Black Scorpion 106
The Tsang-Chan 106 The Mafia 107 The Nazis 108 The Gestapo 110 The SS 110 The Ahnenerbe 111
The Mara Brotherhood 111
Chapter 6 113
Why Roleplay? 113
Why Use Rules? 113
Rules are meant to be broken 113
Don’t Cheat 113
Creating Your Character 114
Playing Your Character 114
Advanced Techniques 114
Research & Investigation 114
Action 115 Working as a group 115 Character Plots 115 Downtime 115 Conspiracies 116 Chapter 7 117
The Basic Rule 117
Unskilled Attempts 118
How a roll works 118
Intent 118
Difficulty 119
How well have you done? 120
Cooperation 120
Taking Time 121
Contested Rolls 122
Complications 122
Multiple Opponents 122
Exceptions 123 Characters roll and perform their actions 123 Reactions - Resisting the roll 123
Ongoing Reactions 124 Combat Complications 124 Getting Hit 126 Chases 126 Terrain 127 Pursuit! 127 Combat in Chases 127
Doing Something Crazy 127
Cooperating in a Chase 127
Losing a Physical Conflict: Getting Hurt 128
Levels of Injury 128
Fighting Damage 129
Marksman Damage 129
Other Sources of Injury 130
Mental or Social Conflicts 133
Bluffing & Deception 133
Arguments 133
Getting scared 133
Losing a Mental or Social Conflict 134
Loss of Attributes 134
Temporary Bad Trait 134
Forced To Comply 134
Healing 134
Natural Healing 134
Medic! 134
Multiple Injuries and Reduced Attributes 134
Story Points 135
Clues 136
Bonus Dice 136
Avoiding Failure 136
Ignore Damage 136
Ignoring Bad Traits 136
Inspiring Others 136
Altering the Plot 136
Gaining Story Points 137
Good Role-playing 137
Embracing Bad Traits 137
Completing Goals 137
Accepting Plot Twists 137
Helping Out 137
Maximum Story Points 137
Learning and Improvement 137
Attributes 138
Story Points 138
Leaving the Game 138
Getting Killed 138
Forced to Leave 138
Choosing to Leave 138
Chapter 8 139
Trappings vs Group Traits 139
Obtaining Equipment 139
General Equipment 139
Equipment That’s Not Listed 140
You Have It Until You Need It… 140
Improvising Equipment 140
Weapons 141
Guns 141
Pistols 141
Shotguns and Rifles 143
Machine guns 143
Sub-machine Guns 144
Beam Weapons 144
Sniper Rifles 144
Telescopic Sight 145
Other Ranged Weapons 145
Melee Weapons 146 Explosives 146 Armor 147 Lifestyle 148 Vehicles 149 Attributes 149 Traits 149 Sample Vehicles 149 Motorcycles 149 Cars 150 Military Vehicles 150 Airplanes 150 Zeppelins 152 Technology Levels 152 TL 1: Stone Age 152
TL 2: Bronze/Iron Age – Middle Ages 152
TL 3: Age of Reason 153
TL 4: Industrial Age 153
TL 5: Space Faring/Information Age 153
TL 6: Star Faring Age 154
Purchasing Items of Lower or Higher Technology
Level 154
Chapter 9 155
Building Inventions 156 Invention Traits 157 Augment 157 Bulky 157 Control 158 Convert 158 Delete 158 Detect 158 Disable 158 Feedback 158 Force-field 158 Fragile 158 Hungry 158 Innocuous 159 One Shot 159 Open/Close 159 Restriction 159 Scan 159 Simple Controls 159 Simple Mechanism 159 Slow 159 Transmit 160 Travel 160 Unreliable 160 Weld 160 Zap 160
Invention Story Points 160
Some Example Inventions 160
Gas Gun 160 Hypno-Disc 160 Rocket Pack 160 Sub-Etheric Electrosender 161 Chapter 10 163 Storyteller 163 Director 163 Referee 163
What do you need to play? 164
Basic Gamemastering 164
Taking Charge 164
Be Prepared! 165
Make The Players Do The Work 165
Relax & Have Fun 165
Hints & Tips 165
Rules & When To Bend Them 165
Death is not the end… 166
What To Do When Players Are Absent 167
Atmosphere 168
Experience and Gain 168
The Gamesmaster Is Always Right 169
Players 169
Chapter 11 171
Building a Better Villain 171
Motive 171
The Patriot 171
The Thrill-Seeker 171
The Quester 171
The Empire-Builder 172
The Glory Hunter 172
Just Plain Bad 172
Villain Archetypes 172
The Foreign Mastermind 172
Siwang Lung – The Death Dragon 173
The Mad Scientist 175
Doktor Todeskopf 176
Radium Man 178
The Cult Leader 178
The Black Lama 178
The Anti-Villain 180
The Pulp Nazi 180
The Corrupt Corporate 181
Rex Monday 181
The Dragon Lady 183
Du Kai Hua – Poison Blossom 183
The Baroness 183
Baroness Veronique Devereaux 183
The Masked Terror 184
The Crimson Claw 184
The Master Spy 185
The Great Dictator 186
General Vladic Kazan, Premier of Berezkia 186
The Mob Boss 187
Bruno Sposato 187
The Man-Made Monster 188
Die Schreck 189
The Mangler 190
The Hoxton Creeper 190
Chapter 12 193 Creature Rules 193 Size 193 Speed 194 Creature Skills 194 Athletics 194
Subterfuge 194 Survival 194 Creature Creation 195 Traits 195 Additional Limbs* 196 Aggressive 196 Amphibious 196 Armor 196 Aquatic 196 Bite 196 Burrowing 196 Claw 197 Constrict 197 Climbing 197 Enhanced Senses 197 Environmental 197 Fast-Moving 197 Fear Factor* 197 Flight 198 Frenzy 198 Grab 198 Immaterial 198 Immortal 198 Immunity* 199 Infection 199 Invisible 199 Leap 200 Lurker 200 Natural Weapons 200 Networked 200 Nocturnal 200 Passive 200 Poison 200 Possess 201 Replication 201 Savage Roar 201 Screamer! 202 Shapeshift 202 Slow-Moving 202 Snap 202 Special 202 Stalker 202 Stinger 202 Stomp 202 Strange Appearance 203 Teleport 203 Chapter 13 205 Animals 205 Alligator 205 Bat 206 Bear 206 Big Cat 206 Bird, Large 206
Boar (Wild Pig) 207
Chimpanzee 207 Gorilla 207 Monitor Lizard 207 Octopus 208 Rat 208 Scorpion 208 Shark 209 Snake, Constrictor 209 Snake, Venomous 209 Wolf 209 Cryptids 210 Ape, Giant 210 Ape Man 210 Kraken 210
Stinging Bell Plant 211
Mongolian Death Worm 212
Spider, Giant 212
Spider, Monstrous 213
Vampire Bat, Giant 213
White Ape 214 Yeti 214 Meh-Teh 214 Migoi 215 Fantastic Creatures 215 Eldritch Abomination 215
Minor Eldritch Abomination 216
Martian 217
Martian War Machine 218
Undead 218 Mummy 218 Skeleton 219 Vampire 219 New Vampire 219 Master Vampire 220 Werewolf 220 Zombie 221
The Enslaved Dead 221
Raptor 223
Tyrannosaur 224
Chapter 14 225
The Black Tie Affair 225
Robin and His Unmerry Men 225
Merry Men 226 Robin Hood 226 Aftermath 226 Lady Lilliamont 227 Mr Haberdrant of 227 22 Arcadia Avenue 227 Mr. Haberdrant 228 Underground Auction 228 Thug 229 Light Lance 230 Aftermath 231
All Seeing Eye 231
Bibliography 233
References 233
Movies and TV 233
Comics 234
The Genre 234
The Pulp Magazines 234
Reprints 234 Crimefighting/Superhero 234 Aviation/War 235 Horror/Weird Menace 235 Spy/Espionage 235 Adventure/Exploration 235 Detective Stories 235 Science Fiction 236 General 236 Comtemporary Pulp 236 The Era 236 Places 236 Appendix 239 Academic 239 Air Ace 240
Big Game Hunter 240
Brawler 241 Escape Artist 241 Explorer 242 Femme Fatale 242 Gangster 243 Gentleman Crook 243 G-Man 244 Jungle King 245 Law Enforcer 246 Mob Moll 246 Martial Artist 247 Masked Avenger 247 Mystic 248 Mystery Man 248 News Hound 249 Operator 250 Personality 250 Relic Hunter 251 Rocket Man 251 Science Hero 252 Scientist 252 Sea Dog 253 Soldier 253 Weird Inventor 254
T
he characters in a pulp fantastic campaign are like the heroes from the pulp magazines of long ago. They let the Players be faster, stronger and smarter, in a by-gone era where truth and justice could change the world for the better, even if only on a smaller scale. They are the technological knights who sweep from the tops of their gleaming high-technology towers with their wonders from the world of tomorrow. They are the shadowy avengers who step out of the darkness of back alleys to strike against the criminals who are choking their city. They are the garishly dressed masked mystery men who use the loudness of their anonymity to work against the forces of evil. They are the heroes of pulp fantastic. Back in the Pulp Era, the lines between those who were heroes and those who were villains were clearly demarcated in the stark contrast of black and white. The heroes were giants in their world, towering over even the colossal skyscrapers going up in the gleaming metropolis that they would safeguard. In the chapters that follow you will find the rules that are the backbone of character creation in pulp fantastic. But, these rules are only a part of the process of creating characters. Pulp heroes are stories, modern day mythol-ogies that reflected the time period in which they were created, as well as amplifying that world. Those stories should be the most important element of the character creation process, and those stories should take precedence over the rules. The rules of character creation should help to simulate the stories of the character, stories yet to be told, not limit them.If at times pulp fantastic sounds too corny to be true, remember this: The pulp he roes that inspire this game were not life-sized characters when they were created in the 1930s, and the decades have done little to make them appear any more realistic. They were larger than life colossi who stood astride the mighty metropolitan cities in which they were based, while their adventures spanned the globe…and sometimes beneath the Earth’s surface or far into outer space. These mythic figures were never intend-ed to reflect their contemporary world.
The pulp heroes were the last burst of those mass-pro-duced, formula-fiction factories known as the pulp mag-azines. Born about the turn of the century, the pulps — they took their name from the inexpensive paper on which they origi nally were printed — were usually of suspect literary quality, but besides in flaming the imaginations
of millions of readers, the magazines provided a fi nancial foothold for numerous writers who went on to create stories and books that are the great works that the pulps were (for the most part) not.
Ray Bradbury, Max Brand, Jack Lon don, Sinclair Lewis, Stephen Crane, H.P. Lovecraft, Walter Gibson, Lester Dent — the list of writers whose works appeared in the pulps is long. The list of styles and genres that flour ished in those magazines is just as long, they prom ised fantastic fantasy and thrilling thril lers: from the whodunnit to the horror story, from the Wild West to the moons of Mars, the pulps helped establish science fiction and fantasy in the literary experience of the early 20th Century.
The pulp publishers were in it, of course, for the money (some things nev er change). Fortunes flowed from the promises of the sensational and the sleazy. With literally hundreds of com petitors on the news-stands, the publish-ers constantly searched for the type of story that would sell. And, in the 1930s, they struck gold with tales of modern knights battling evil —the tales that pro vided the fodder for pulp fantastic.
The publishers could hardly help but notice that their largest-selling issues were ones featuring heroes — or villains — familiar to their audience, main char acters developed in earlier editions. From that formula, it was a short alley-vault to continuing series based upon the daring exploits of a Pulp hero. And it is the exploits of the hero that pulp fantastic and almost all other rpgs are influenced by.
The first of these pulp heroes was The Shadow; the nemesis of the night, born from the runaway typewriter of Walter Gibson in the early 1930s. The pulp bus iness was no more imaginative then than television or Hollywood is today; soon, a host of heroes was spawned to capitalize on the success of The Shadow, from The Spider and The Octopus to Doc Savage and countless others.
What is Pulp Fantastic?
Well, that is an easy answer. It is an alternate history set during what was called the “pulp era,” or the period in history existing between the wars. This game is designed to emulate the adventure stories from that period, this also includes radio dramas and modern movies set in the period.
SETUP
What’s a Role-playing Game?
You’re probably familiar with computer role-playing games, where you play a character in some fantasy setting. You wander around doing quests, levelling up, talking to other characters and getting new gear. Tabletop role-play-ing games are similar, but there’s one key difference. Instead of a computer running the game, there’s a human Gamemaster – and that changes everything.
Instead of being limited to what the game allows you to do, you can do anything you can imagine. Let’s say you need to get past a guarded door. A computer game might only give you the option of fighting the guard or stealing a pass. In a tabletop game, you can try anything – maybe you can persuade the guard to let you past, or bribe him, or sneak through the sewers, or forge a fake pass, or even convince the guard that he should be on your side. The Gamemaster (or gm) describes the world, the players decide what they want to do, and then the gm decides whether or not they succeed.
The Basics
Firstly, you need a few friends to play the pulp
fantas-tic rpg. One of you will be the Gamemaster, and the rest
of you will be the players. The game works with as few as two people (one gm, one player), but it’s best with 3-5 players. (By the way, if you haven’t decided who’s going to be the gm, then the owner of the book should take on that responsibility.)
Secondly, you’ll need to be familiar with the contents of this book. You don’t need to memorise the whole thing, but you should understand how the basic rules (chapter 7 – the basics) work, and how to make characters (chapter 2 – genesis).
Thirdly, you’ll need a few dice (the normal, six-sided ones). When an outcome is in doubt, you’ll be rolling dice to see whether or not your character succeeds. Let’s say you want to scramble over a fence to escape the gang of thugs that’s on your heels. You’d add your character’s Coordination and Athletics scores together, and then roll two dice. If the total of the dice plus your Coordination and Athletics is higher than a difficulty number set by the gm, you make it over the fence in time. If you roll badly... well, looks like you’ve a fight on your hands, unless you spend a Story Point.
Fourth, you’ll need a way to keep track of Story Points. Story points are a way for you to change a bad roll or alter the story in your favour. You’ll be getting – and spending – a lot of story points, so you’ll need a pile of tokens. Pennies, glass beads, jelly beans, cardboard chits, anything like that will do.
Got all that? Good. Let’s get moving.
How To Use This Book
The first part of this book (once you get past this introduc-tion) is all about set-up – how to come up with a framework for your group, and how to roll up your individual char-acters. A framework explains why all your characters are working together, and what it is they’re trying to achieve as a group. Are they fearless explorers of the unknown, uncovering the secret history of mankind? Are they the agents of a reclusive millionaire, searching for the secret of eternal youth? Are they a band of bored war-buddies, putting their battle-forged skills to use promoting truth and justice? Are they relic hunters in the employ of a major university museum, braving untold dangers for fortune and glory? Or have they all lost loved ones to the machi-nations of a nefarious evil mastermind, and are bound together in the cause of justice by grief and a thirst for vengeance? There are some suggested group frameworks on page 36.
Next, there’s the rules section. This covers everything hazardous and nasty that your characters might come across – what happens when you try to shoot a gangster, what happens when the gangster tries to shoot you, sneak-ing around, investigatsneak-ing mysteries and gainsneak-ing new skill and traits.
The Gazeteer describes the world of pulp fantastic, and players are encouraged to read that to help immerse themselves in the Pulp Era. The Organizations section describes the various groups – both good and bad – your heroes might encounter.
Finally, there’s the Gamemasters section and the Pulp Archetypes chapter. The former is full of advice and tips for running the game, suggestions for series outlines, along with a sample adventure to get you started, and the latter describes the many notable individuals the charac-ters may encounter.
Players are allowed to read everything apart from the gm’s section and the Pulp Archetypes chapter – if you spoil the secrets in there, the game might not be as much fun for you. Gamemasters, of course, can read the whole book.
Playing the Game
pulp fantastic is designed to be played in a series of
game sessions. Each game session takes up an evening. Think of each game session as an episode of your own tv series. Most of the events in a game session will be mostly self-contained – you’ll fight the threat-of-the-week and deal with the problems surrounding the current crisis – but there will be plot elements and mysteries and conspiracies that continue from episode to episode. Keep the metaphor of the television series in mind as you play the game – it’s a good guide for both players and Gamemasters.
new york city, 1937
T
he stake sank into the crumbled wall with a shunk and Veronica Pentecost sent the vampire back to Hell. As the last pockets of air wheezed out of the skeletal remains of the undead thing of the night, Veronica lit a cigarette and blew smoke into the fanged skull of her prey. Her client would be pleased. Satisfied with her victory, Veronica pulled her trench coat around herself and turned to exit the abandoned Brownstone.But before the detective could even reach the doorway, a most terrific upheaval of the earth occurred! Debris fell from the ceiling and came crashing to the floor. The walls buckled and began to give way as well. Veronica was going to be trapped in seconds!
Or rather she would have been, had she not vaulted through the doorway and into the street. It was perhaps not the safest of moves, but a resident of New York seldom is taught earthquake safety. And indeed that is exactly what appeared to be happening that very day in the nation’s largest city: an earthquake.
Asphalt streets were cracked and split open, building foundations had slouched and dozens wandered in the dust-filled air of the aftermath. As the tremors subsided, fire trucks and nypd arrived on the scene, eager to put out the blazes instigated by broken gas mains and fallen flam-mable materials. Residents turned out to help one another out from under the rubble and to rush those who were wounded to waiting ambulances.
In still other pockets of the neighborhood, plumbing had ruptured, spewing forth water and lowering the water pressure to a dangerously low level, a hazardous develop-ment for the firemen.
What could have caused such a disaster to occur in this part of the world? Veronica did not know, but as her wrist-watch began to blink red, she knew that she would be on journey towards the answer soon.
Hours later in the midtown Manhattan penthouse of mil-lionaire philanthropist Sterling Westinghouse, Veronica Pentecost brought her sleek and silky form to what would otherwise be an all-boys club.
And what a posh and expensive tree house that this boys club held their meetings in. Overlooking the city and out onto the Atlantic Ocean, the penthouse was furnished with every modern convenience conceivable (the largest
television set that Veronica had ever seen was placed in the lounge area near the bar. She thought momentarily that she might get to see “The Ed Sullivan Show,” but then realized that it most likely would not air due to the tragedy and the moderate damage sustained by the show’s studio theatre) as well as many a strange and ancient archeolog-ical relic.
As was instinctive to the detective, Veronica automatical-ly surveyed the penthouse in a flash, finding it full of the usual suspects:
Dr. Washington “Wash” Stuttz, archeologist and worldwide adventurer. He was a man’s man if there ever was one. Perhaps that is why Veronica disliked him so.
Chase Danner, former agent of the O.S.S. Although he was a skilled pilot and renowned man of action, Chase was yet to turn thirty and still had a brash and impulsive nature. Perhaps that was why Veronica was so drawn to him. Dr. Campbell Fleming, theoretical physicist and inventor. With a balding head surrounded by long, white wisps of hair, “The Doc” as he was known looked every bit the part of the prototypical mad scientist. Perhaps that is why he disturbed Veronica so.
And finally there was Sterling Westinghouse, millionaire Wall Street man and philanthropist (how rare those two titles were seen together). Whenever the world was in danger, Westinghouse would call upon Veronica and the three men mentioned previously. Together, they would confront the threat and always they would emerge victorious. Perhaps that is what gave Veronica hope when all seemed lost. “Ms. Pentecost,” Sterling Westinghouse said as he ap-proached her in one of his custom-tailored suits. He took Veronica’s hand and lightly kissed it. “We were worried. When you hadn’t arrived we feared you to be a casualty of the quake.”
“As you might imagine, it’s nearly impossible to make it across the city right now,” Veronica explained.
“I’ve had a late supper brought up and placed on the bar. If you’d care for any food or drink, please feel free.” “Rather get straight to work if you don’t mind,” Veronica said while taking a seat dangerously close to Chase. “Very well. Obviously, New York City has suffered a terri-ble natural disaster this day,” Sterling said, taking center stage as it were on a rise overlooking the lounge.
PULP!
SETUP
“But how?” Wash protested. “The city isn’t anywhere near a fault line?”
“Precisely, muchacho!” bellowed Dr. Fleming while his body quivered with nervous twitches and jerks of excite-ment. “Something is indeed rotten in the Big Apple and it’s not the garbage scows!”
“It is beginning to look conspicuously as if this disaster was not natural in any respect. For as you might not be aware, Moscow, London, and Paris have all suffered similar fates this day. Someone is orchestrating these earthquakes and I have been authorized to put an end to them. Doctor?” With that, Doctor Fleming stood up and snorted. He then motioned for the others to follow him as he walked away from the lounge. They proceeded to follow him to an open area of the hardwood floor where some sort of mechanical device stood. It was replete with tubes, wires, coils, and components hitherto unseen before by anyone in the room save for Jonathan. Excitedly, Doctor Fleming rubbed his hands together and then flipped a switch.
“Walla rutabaga!” the eccentric old man exclaimed as the electric device buzzed to life.
“It’s a doozy, Doc,” Chase said with a whistle. “What is it?” “In the aftermath of today’s quake, inspiration struck me! I became host to a grand idea that I hope will one day take root in the rest of the scientific community as well. Behold my fantastic device! The siesmo-locater!” Dr. Fleming said, pressing another button and causing his device to utter a series of beeping noises.
“Congratulations, Doc,” Wash grunted. “You’ve invented the seismograph…an instrument that’s been around for years.”
“Oh no…” Dr. Fleming said with all seriousness. “This is far beyond any seismograph. It is meant to trace energy and force of an entirely different order.”
“You were correct earlier, Dr. Stuttz,” Westinghouse inter-rupted. “Each of today’s catastrophic earthquakes occurred in proximity to no known geological fault lines. Therefore, they would have to be caused by a construct made by man that emanates powerful waves of force.”
“Force that I have called ‘epsilon waves.’ And now for the first time, you are about to witness my device track these epsilon waves to their point of origin,” Dr. Fleming said excitedly.
Without another word, his machine clicked and whirred and beeped in rapid succession. Within the center of the device was a globe of the world, a globe that turned slowly as a metal pointer dragged across the surface.
“It’s moving…it’s moving…” Fleming said with bated breath, anxiously awaiting the discovery of the location.
The metal needle drew a slow but deliberate line from New York City across the Atlantic Ocean, over the coast of North Africa, and finally came to rest in the center of the nation known as Egypt.
“I will telephone the airport and have your plane fuelled and furnished,” Westinghouse announced. “You will leave presently for the sands of Egypt.”
“Hot dog!” Chase slapped his hands on the machine, causing no small amount of consternation from Fleming. “I’ve been achin’ something awful to get back into the skies, Daddy-O!”
“Pack few personal effects, but make absolutely certain that you have your wrist communicators. Dr. Fleming and I will remain in constant contact with you,” ordered West-inghouse. “With you lies the hope of humanity, democra-cy, and most importantly…America itself! Godspeed!” Moments later, a C-47 lifted off from a municipal airport on Long Island. Chase Danner, one of the world’s top pilots, sat smiling in the captain’s seat as he nudged the plane higher and higher into the sky.
But perhaps he would not have been smiling so had he seen the mysterious man in the gray suit who stood at the airport, watching their every move before going to make a phone call…a call uttered entirely in German.
CAN OUR BAND OF HEROES LOCATE AND STOP THE SOURCE OF THESE EARTHQUAKES BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE?? AND WHAT OF THE MYSTERIOUS MAN IN GRAY FROM THE AIRPORT?
cairo, egypt The wailing of street vendors and beggars assaulted the eardrums of the three as they made their way through the marketplace. To Veronica Pentecost, the entire display felt dirty and untouchable as she continuously yanked her flowing robes away from grabbing hands.
“Want to explain to me again why the hell I have to wear this again?” Veronica cursed from behind her veil. “Because doll, that’s how women are supposed to dress round these parts.” Washington Stuttz explained. “Me and Chase here just look like a couple of white men. But if the locals got a good look at your gams, we’d be in the soup for sure.”
“How many times have you been here, Stuttz?” Veronica asked as she squeezed herself between denizens of the densely packed bazaar.
“I’m an archeologist,” Wash said blithely. “Can’t really call yourself that until you’ve been on at least a couple of digs in Egypt, toots.”
Veronica Pentecost took hold of Wash by the shoulder and spun him around to face her glare.
“One day you’re going to call me ‘toots’ or ‘doll’…and the next words out of your mouth will be ‘my crotch! She stabbed me in my crotch!’” threatened Veronica.
“That’s right,” Wash replied with a dirty smile. “I like ‘em rough!”
Mercifully, Chase arrived in their midst and broke the confrontation apart. He was wearing a turban and robes.
I
“So what are you supposed to be?” Wash asked incredu-lously.
“One of the first rules of espionage. Blend in with the populace and don’t call attention to yourself,” the young secret agent stated. “Got these from a vendor for a swell price.”
“Friends! Friends!” shouted a just-arrived stranger. The approaching stranger was a portly Arab man in an ill-fitting and equally ill-fashioned suit. A scraggly black beard surround his lips and chin, contrasting against the pale teeth of his smile.
“Welcome to Cairo, City of the Pharaohs! I am to be your guide here, Re-Zal Evad,” the man said with arms wide open.
“Sterling Westinghouse sends his compliments,” Wash said to him in response.
“You know this cat?” asked Chase.
“Westinghouse called me just after we took off and said he’d found us a local contact,” Wash said.
“And when were you going to let us in on that? I nearly blew this guy’s head off!” Veronica growled.
“Come! Come! I have hotel waiting for you!” beckoned Re-Zal Evad as he moved off into the sea of humanity that was the streets of Cairo.
A warm bath and a change of clothes later, our heroes found themselves in their modest hotel rooms, sitting and letting a ceiling fan attempt to push back the desert heat. Washington Stuttz sat on the bed and tuned the knobs of his wrist communicator until the vision of Sterlington Westinghouse came into view in vivid black and white. “We’ve checked into the hotel,” Wash reported to the boss. “Our expedition leaves tomorrow morning. Anything new?” “No new quakes just yet, thank God. Be careful…and contact me when you’ve reached the target,” Westinghouse ordered.
“Got it, boss,” Wash said before cutting the channel and lying back on his bed where he promptly fell asleep. Engulfed by the dense fog of exhaustion, Washington was oblivious that night to the cloaked figures that surround-ed the hotel and even made their way inside and up the stairs. Unaware was he that three of these cloaked ones in fact had arrived inside his room while he slumbered and snored. So light were their steps that not even the squeaky floorboard beside Wash’s bed uttered the smallest creak as it was pressed upon. The lead would-be-assassin drew the length of his scimitar blade from the cloth belt that was around his waist. Directly and with sinister intent, the assassin pointed his sword downward, raised high above the midsection of Dr. Stuttz. If performed correctly, Stuttz would never even utter a sound during his own murder. Were it not for a single, solitary bead of sweat fallen from the sword wielder to Wash’s nose, that is exactly what would have happened.
Wash groggily came to after being jarred awake by the impact of the sweat drop. His open eyes saw the assassins above him and immediately he gasped. This shocked gasp continued as the cloaked men jerked and jolted from the multiple gunshots that suddenly tore through their bodies. Once they had fallen to the floor, Wash could see Chase Danner standing in the doorway, holding a smoking au-tomatic handgun in each hand and smiling inexplicably. “Sorry to disturb you’re sheep countin’, Daddy-O. But it appears our hotel is surrounded by some mean hombres,” Chase said.
Washington Stuttz was not happy. They were in danger, he had just come within a sweat drop of being a shiskabob, and his rest was disrupted…meaning he would be well beneath his required 7 hours of sleep for the day. Wash reached into his leather travel bag and pulled from it an iron mace that dated to medieval times
“Sons of bitches must pay!” he sneered before following Danner into the hallway.
Veronica was already in the hotel hall when Chase and Wash arrived. She slapped a clip into her pistol as bullets ricocheted from all directions. The other attackers were now pelting the building with rifle and machine gun fire, indiscriminately shooting at the windows in hopes of hitting their prey. Boldly, Veronica charged to one such window and began to blazingly return fire.
“I could stand some help here!” she yelled to her cohorts. “You got it!” Chase said, taking a stance at another window where he let the attackers have it with both of his barrels. His reply came in the form of machine gun fire being raked across the face of the hotel.
Meanwhile, Washington Stuttz had entered the hotel lobby where guests were fleeing their rooms in droves and the night manager had ducked behind the front desk. Stuttz hid himself behind the potted palm trees near the stairs and watched as a group of men clothed exactly like the ones who had attempted to commit his murder ran into the lobby. As they approached the stairs, these men were met with the mace of Washington Stuttz.
The leading man got the mace in his stomach, the one who followed across his jaw, and another a pile driver to the top of the head. Over and over, swing after swing, bash after bash, Wash left the veiled attackers in a mess that was unfit to be viewed by any decent American.
Upstairs, Re-Zal Evad came out of his room, still wearing the soft, cotton cabana pajamas that he had bought in London. He was just in time to see Chase climb out of the window that was his firing position and take up a stance on the ledge.
“They’re splittin’!” Chase reported of their attackers, firing off a few rounds in their direction for good measure. “Friends! Friends!” Re-Zal chirped with great alarm. “Of what is this?”
SETUP
an attacker’s corpse from Wash’s room. “We were going to ask you the same thing. Any idea who these jamokes might be?”
“I have no idea who these could be!” Evad replied, per-plexed.
“Not a scrap of traceable evidence,” Veronica spat as if what she had said were a curse. Her hands continued to scour the body beneath her. “This fellow’s face is nonde-script, he’s got nothing personal on his body. All I can tell is that he smells like goat.”
“Yeah, but that’s everybody around here,” Chase said ig-norantly. “No offense, Re-Zal.”
“Oh none taken!” Evad said through a forced smile. “That one seems a little cold for your tastes, Veronica,” Danner chided, as Veronica could not give up the search. “Should try to find one a little hotter.”
“I don’t try anything, I just do it,” Veronica Pentecost stated as she stood to look Chase in the eye. “Want to try me?” With bloody mace in hand, Washington Stuttz came up the stairs just as Re-Zal Evad was growing very uncom-fortable.
“Well, that was a lovely way to spend the evening,” joked Wash.
It was a two-day journey into the desert to reach the target location. In a convoy consisting of two old Ford pickup trucks and the many camels brought by the local diggers and workers that Re-Zal Evad had hired, the three from America moved at a snail’s pace to their destination. On the morning of the second day, the expedition awoke to find that the tires on the trucks had been slashed during the night, along with many of the water skins they had brought along. The local help they had hired ran from the scene even as Evad begged them to stay on until they had reached their destination. To that, the workers only replied, “mesh mumken!” <impossible!> Evad then had to break the news that he and Stuttz, Danner, and Pentecost were on their own.
With the shapes of the great pyramids rising in the distance before them, the desert travelers finally arrived at the coordinates provided by Dr. Campbell’s invention. The destination itself was unremarkable, but as they dismount-ed from their camels while Washington rubbdismount-ed his chin and gazed upon the rock with great scrutiny, he rapidly determined the object’s true nature.
“It’s a tomb,” Stuttz stated glumly.
“I thought those were the tombs,” Chase said, pointing to the pyramids in the distance.
“Not all the ancient Egyptians were buried in pyramids,” Re-Zal pointed out politely before waddling across the sand to join Wash at the carved rock.
“Maybe your next question will be better,” Veronica sug-gested in a hot whisper directly into Danner’s ear. “Well let’s get started clearing the entry way,” Washington
suggested as he brought a shovel over to the rock-hewn door. “It’s a the grave of a commoner. Shouldn’t have to worry about any traps.”
But nothing could have been further from the truth. As Wash Stuttz led his crew through the tunnel that led into the ancient Egyptian grave, a set of heavy, wooden spears tipped with bronze launched out of the walls, seeking to skewer whomever they could and then block the way for the rest. It was only because of Wash’s quick reflexes that he was able knock the rest of the party backward and spare them the fate of certain impalement. Wash then immedi-ately set about to smash the crisscross of spears with his mace while Evad went back to the camels for a change of pants.
After the spears came the fire. Some form of flammable substance had been released through holes in the sandy floor of the antechamber ahead and lit by a torch fallen from the hieroglyphic-laden walls. Stuttz fell backward into the others from the blast of heat cast forward by the crackling flames
“Stand back!” Chase shouted, forcing his way past Stuttz and leaping through the fire. His feet found their mark on the modest sarcophagus that was in the center of the chamber. “Just tell me what I’m looking for!”
“How the hell should we know what an earthquake machine looks like?” Wash hollered back at Chase, hands to his head in order to deflect the heat.
“Boss? Are you there?” Veronica said into her wrist com-municator, wasting no time in taking matters to the top. “Yes, Ms. Pentecost,” a black and white image of Sterling Westinghouse said. “I am here.”
“Get Doc Fleming on the line,” she asked, the heat oppress-ing her succulent form.
“I need a few answers here!” Chase shouted as he did a veritable tap dance upon a grave, dodging the tongues of fire licking at his boot heels.
Elsewhere, the image of Dr. Campbell Fleming had replaced that of Westinghouse on Veronica’s wristwatch. His white hair seemed even more out of place than usual, his lab coat more stained, and his demeanor more harried than typical.
“What’s going on? What’s wrong?” he asked in rapid suc-cession. “I don’t have much time because I’ve got to get back to the lab! One of my atomic experiments is not going at all the way I had expected and I’ve left Miss Akimoto and my monkey in charge of things and I really shouldn’t even have departed because an isotope of this nature can be so readily…”
“The earthquake device!” Veronica cut him off. “What does it look like?!”
“The earthquake device?” Doc Fleming repeated the ques-tion. He then shrugged and gave Veronica a dumb look. “Heck if I know. Uhhh, it would have to be a massive me-chanical construct. Power cables and conduit should be
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stretching out from it, it should be radiating a great deal of power…can’t miss it,” Fleming explained.
“There’s nothing even close to that in here!” Veronica screamed.
“Huh, no foolin’?” replied Fleming, perplexed. “Might it be underground?” Evad suggested.
Then Chase pointed. In the direction of his extended finger was a conical wedge of metal, camouflaged in the corner of the antechamber amidst a few pottery urns. Stuttz looked it over skeptically. Could Chase reach it through the flames? As he looked around at the burning room, Wash decided that Chase Danner would have to and tossed a heavy cloth bag to him.
“Grab it and get out!” Wash ordered and then turned to Veronica and Evad. “The rest of you get out, too! I think this fire is a self-destruct mechanism!”
As his compatriots evacuated the tomb, Chase leaped upon the odd metal object in question. Rapidly he wrapped it in the heavy cloth as to protect his hands from what was now undoubtedly metal that had been heated to a most scorching temperature. Lifting it he felt resistance. With time running increasingly short, Chase Danner gave the object a mighty tug and felt it rip free. Beneath it stood now severed electrical wires and cables…leading to where Chase did not know.
Nor did he have time to investigate the matter. With smoke now beginning to fill the entire underground chamber, Chase took two more determined leaps and bounded his way past the ring of fire. Though fleet of feet, he was not fast enough to prevent the flames from licking across his legs and igniting his pants on fire.
Finally Chase emerged on the desert surface as the fire consumed the entire underground tomb. Immediately he fell to the sands, rolling about in order to extinguish the burning of his pants. Naturally, Veronica Pentecost im-mediately went to his side in order to determine just how much of his pants had in fact disappeared.
“Here it his,” a coughing and smoky Chase announced as he unwrapped the machine that he had carried forth from the inferno.
“You were lucky,” Veronica told him. “You could’ve gotten yourself burned alive by charging into the chamber that way.”
“I tell you, lady. There’s the safe way, there’s the dangerous way…and then there’s the Chase Danner way,” Chase said as he lit a cigarette that had mercifully not been ignited by the flames.
“A most tiny machine to cause such large earthquakes,” Re-Zal Evad said aloud as he inspected the salvaged device that was now sitting in the sands before he and Wash. At a loss, Wash activated his wrist communicator.
“You there, boss?” he asked aloud.
“I am here, Dr. Stuttz,” came Westinghouse’s voice from
half a globe away. It still astounded Stuttz how Doc Fleming could arrive at such marvelous inventions.
“Have Doc take a look at what we’ve found,” Wash said as he pointed his wrist towards the machine so that the two men in New York could see it for themselves. “It’s cone shaped, kinda bent at the ends, there are wires hanging out at the bottom from where Danner ripped it free…” “Mazoomba! It’s not the earthquake device,” the voice of Campbell Fleming said.
“You better be joking,” Veronica Pentecost said with no expression.
“As near as I can tell, it’s an amplifier…a mechanism that magnifies the quake waves as they move outward from their point of origin. There could be many of these hidden all over the world,” Doc explained.
“So what is it that we do now?” Evad said, asking the question that was now on everyone’s minds.
“We can only move on down the line,” Dr. Fleming replied through the wrist communicator. “I’ll use the seismo-lo-cater to run a trace.”
“It’s probably going to be a while,” Wash announced to the others. “If you want, Veronica, maybe you can go find a mirror somewhere and you can pretty up.”
“I think I’ll toss you back into the fire instead,” Veronica replied with complete sincerity.
“I’ve got it!” Dr. Fleming’s voice mercifully declared, break-ing the ugly silence between the bitter rivals. “Your next stop is…Zanzibar!”
All that Dr. Fleming’s audience of four could then think about is the hot, sandy, windy journey back to the C-47 parked at Cairo’s airport.
WHAT AWAITS OUR HEROES IN ZANZIBAR? WILL THEY EVER ARRIVE AT THE SOURCE OF THE TERRIBLE EARTHQUAKES? WILL VERONICA FINALLY SNAP AND JUST KILL WASH?
zanzibar Where was Washington Stuttz? That was the single ques-tion on the collective minds of Chase Danner and Veron-ica Pentecost as they raced through the streets of the island of Zanzibar, the two of them again finding themselves in a crowded and exotic locality. Shortly after Chase landed the plane on the island, the four of them dispersed in search of the earthquake machine. That was 8 hours ago. Wash had not been heard from since.
The streets were clogged with bicyclists, pedestrians, and a handful of cars that seemed antique by American stan-dards, and even a healthy amount of oxen driven carts were thrown into the mix. Amidst the teaming throngs of humanity, how could they hope to locate Stuttz…let alone the quake device?
“Zanzibar!” Chase hissed. “I’m back in Zanzibar!” “Not fond of ‘Africa’s Jewel?’” Veronica asked as she dodged
SETUP
a bicyclist and made the charge through traffic in order to get to the marketplace across the street.
“Was here about a year or two ago,” Chase explained as he tried not to bump into a table that was covered with a pile of green vegetables that he could not recognize. “We knew that the Reds were real interested in Africa. I went here on the sly-like to discourage what the Commies had in mind.” “You wouldn’t have been involved in a certain Soviet freighter explosion from around that time, would you?” wondered Veronica, again squeezing between pedestrians, some carrying heavy loads atop their heads.
“All I remember is how this damned humidity made me constantly sweaty,” Chase complained. Veronica stopped dead in her tracks, and then turned to face Danner direct-ly in the eyes.
“And what’s wrong with being sweaty?” she asked in her typically sultry way. Though known for his cool, smooth, hipster repartee, even this spy could be left speechless by the withering and unbridled eyes of Veronica Pentecost. Truth to tell, she loved every moment of reducing the young agent to a befuddled schoolboy.
“We…we’d better find Wash. Hey!” Chase shouted, grabbing the shoulder of a young, bare-chested boy who happened to be passing by. He displayed an old photograph of Wash to the boy, perplexing him even further. “Have you seen this guy?”
The young African boy shook his head negatively and then scurried off for fear of being further accosted.
“Well, that didn’t work. Time to try something else,” Chase said.
“WASH!” he screamed into the bustling crowd. “wash! where the hell are you?!” It was the best that Chase could come up with. At his urging, the two of them resumed their hurried pace of walking. “Let’s hope that Re-Zal is doing better than we are.”
Elsewhere, Re-Zal Evad was seated in a café, fanning himself with his hat as the ceiling fans did little to reduce the heat in the room. He looked about tautly and nervous-ly; worried that someone would see him there, even though there were only three other people in Zanzibar at that moment that might question his presence in a café. The waiter brought Re-Zal his drink, unknowingly bringing with it at least a small degree of distraction and comfort. And then the man in the gray suit sat down at the table and Re-Zal jumped agitatedly.
“Colonel Leermeister!” Re-Zal said in surprise.
“You have information for me?” the German asked hu-morlessly. He was bald, craggily faced, and seemed gen-uinely disdainful of life in general.
“Please sir!” Re-Zal begged in a hushed tone. “Do not call attention to me! There are ears and eyes about us!” “I am not concerned with that. I wish only to know what you have planned.”
After looking about to make certain that the café patrons were far more engrossed in their own business than in his, Re-Zal leaned across the table and divulged his secrets. “All is ready and in place. Dr. Stuttz already has been taken care of,” Re-Zal reported. “One of the natives here who is on my payroll is leading him to a substation of the earth-quake device that is located deep in the jungle...but he will never find it. There are a good many things in that jungle that will have their way with him and very soon, I will bring the others there for the same purpose!” “And they are unaware of your involvement?” Leermeister questioned.
“They suspect nothing!” a giddy Re-Zal replied.
“Stupid Americans,” the Colonel breathed through a toothy grin. “You have done well, Evad. Your payment will be wired to your account.”
“Oh one more thing if I may ask?” Re-Zal questioned timidly, the question bordering on ingratitude and causing a raised eyebrow from Leermeister. “I wish to go to America and see…movie stars! And listen to this jazz!”
Leermeister pushed his chair back and stood away from the table, never once removing his narrow, predator’s eyes from Re-Zal. Grabbing the edge of the table and the table-cloth, Leermeister flipped the table over, spilling the drink onto his sniveling conspirator. Without saying another word, the Colonel turned and exited the café.
“So…I suppose that was the infamous German temper,” Re-Zal said very very glumly as the contents of the table saturated him.
Once in an alleyway beside the café and off of the bustling streets, Leermeister removed what appeared as a small black and white television set from his suit coat pocket. He manipulated the contraption much as one would the wrist communicators invented by Dr. Campbell, turning small knobs to tune in a fuzzy black and white image and coaxing it into a clear form. A bald man with pointed ears, a slender goatee and vaguely Oriental features stared menacingly back at Leermeister from the screen.
“We have success, Your Excellency,” Col. Leermeister told the sinister figure.
Despite the language barrier between he and his native guide, Stuttz felt confident that at the end of the hike he would be staring at two things: the earthquake device and whoever had built it. The native guide seemed every bit as adept at finding his way through a foliage-ridden jungle as Wash, for Wash had certainly done his share of explor-ing in rough terrain. Along the way, Washexplor-ington had spoken with several villagers who had reported strange, mechanical sounds and strange, electrical glows emanat-ing from what used to be a temple of worship deep in the jungle, confirming the rumors that the guide had report-ed to him.
And now as the guided jabbered in a tongue incompre-hensible to Wash, he pointed past enormous, green leaves the size of elephant ears and directed Stuttz’s attention to
I
what lie ahead. It was indeed a temple, centuries old by Stuttz’s reckon. But by catching sight of the gleaming metal tube that was at the temple’s center, appearing entirely as an anachronism juxtaposed against the ancient stonework, Wash knew that his archaeological curiosities would have to take a back seat to the dangers that the world faced. He was, however, entirely oblivious of the dangers that lurked just around the corner for him. Wary of booby traps placed in the temple from ages for-gotten, Stuttz entered the structure that was overwhelmed by vines and other foliage. The metal of the device shined before him, looking most distinctly out of place amidst the ruins. He looked it over for a bit, studying all of its lights, wires and panels. All told, the entire thing was no longer than three or four barrels placed end to end. Raising his wrist to his mouth, he made what was to Stuttz, the only sensible decision.
“Doc, you there?” Wash said into the communicator. “I found the machine, but I’m a little out of my depth here.” “Well done Washington! Well done!” Dr. Fleming exalted from all the way in New York. “Now move over to the bottom of the device where you’ll see a nodule protruding. It should be the power coupling.”
Wash complied. He removed his fedora and ground himself through the dirt until he was underneath the rear com-partment of the technological cylinder just as if he were about to change the oil on a car.
“What am I looking for again?” Wash asked while strug-gling with the gizmo.
“A power coupling,” the Doc replied. “What’s it look like?”
“A black cable.”
“Is it bigger than a bread box?” “Of course it is! Don’t be ridiculous!” “I don’t see anything like that.”
“Really? Are you sure you’re in the right place?” “Pretty sure, yeah.”
“I don’t understand. Why don’t you see the power cou-pling?”
“Look Doc, if I knew that we’d be able to skip this conver-sation altogether.”
“Now where are you on the device again?”
“Just where you told me to go! Under the gizmo where the nodule protrudes!”
“Oh,” Fleming said with realization followed by a brief silence. “That’s not it then. Let’s start over.”
Dr. Fleming is indeed fortunate not have been in the jungle temple with Dr. Stuttz, as the latter would most certainly have shown the former just where he could place the device’s protruding nodule.
In time the proper instructions were conveyed and the machine was indeed deactivated. Wash tromped wearily out of the ancient Zanzibarian temple and met his native guide. Though his intellectual curiosity implored him to return to the structure in order to study it and discern its social and historical implications, physical exhaustion eventually won out in the argument.
“Let’s go,” the archaeologist said to the native. “I’ve had enough for one day.”
After they had been underway for a few moments, Stuttz looked back and noticed that his guide was no longer behind him, thus not fulfilling the obligations of a native guide. Where could he have gone?
Wash got his answer as the guide came running out of the dense trees, hollering in his native language. Though Stuttz attempted to steady the man and calm him down from hysterics, it was of no use. Instead, the native merely pointed behind them in the direction that he had just come running from…so that they could both watch the largest crocodile either of them had ever seen come rising out of the jungle!
“Oh great,” Washington sighed in exasperation.
Ominously it crawled, low to the ground and slithering its tail. Its powerful, beak-like snout opened ever so slight-ly and allowed a reptilian hiss to escape. In a desperate panic, the native guide charged the croc, causing it to open its ever-gaping maw. The guide moved swiftly to jam his walking stick between the upper and lower jaw of the great lizard, rendering the beast unable to bite. Infuriated by this, the crocodile mustered all the strength in its jaw and snapped the obfuscating walking stick as if it were a dry twig. The native guide then proceeded to be swallowed whole, down into the gullet of the animal.
Stuttz did not believe the croc to be sated, despite the human outline now in the belly of the beast. It eyed him with eyes cold and devoid of emotion. They appeared as two black pools, darkened voids which stared back at Wash. The giant reptile was rattled and it knew that he was there, making Stuttz a potential threat. Steeling himself, Wash drew his mace and prepared for the worst. First came its tail with a broad slash just slightly over his head. Stuttz jumped back a good six feet, narrowly avoid-ing connection with the spiny appendage. The second time around he was not so lucky. The tail swung back and slapped into Wash’s hand with surprising force. He watched helplessly as the mace rolled away and into the green, bushy, undergrowth of Zanzibar. The lizard moved swiftly towards him, mouth agape just as it had done with its previous victim. Empty-handed combat between a Harvard professor and a giant crocodile; sounded fair to Wash. With fight-or-flight instincts fully in place, Washington Stuttz leaped onto the crocodile’s head. The head was essentially flat and made for a perfect springboard. Wash was able to propel himself to the animal’s rear flank in order to grab hold of its tail. A wrestling match of evolu-tionary proportions commenced. Reptile versus mammal.
SETUP
Cold, indifferent blood versus hot, American blood. As expected, the crocodile put up a fierce fight. It flipped. It snapped. But Wash eventually was able to twist its tail enough to render it completely upon its back. Now came the most harrowing and treacherous part. Could he re-member how to do it? He had seen it done once before at the World’s Fair in New York. You pin a gator down and then gently rub its abdomen until it falls asleep. Of course this was a crocodile…and a big one at that. Still, there was little choice.
As a mother would to a child with a tummy ache, Wash-ington Stuttz brushed, rubbed, smoothed, and even ca-ressed the stomach of the croc. He fought the urge to twitch and wretch as his hand moved over the outline of the native guide, being slowly digested within the animal’s stomach. Eventually, the reptile massage paid its benefits and the crocodile collapsed, fast asleep.
Wash followed suit. He fell backward into the grass as a spent shell casing on the battlefield of the wild.
Through the tropical foliage and across the flimsiest of rope and plank board bridges, Re-Zal Evad led Danner and Pentecost on a most precarious trail that they could only hope would end in finding their colleague, Dr. Stuttz. “Hurry! Hurry!” Evad encouraged them, even as the rope bridge began to give and buckle under their weight. “This way!”
“And how exactly did you find out that he was here?” Veronica asked as she fought to keep her footing.
“I bribed one of the local officials!” Re-Zal said as if he simply wanted the line of questioning to end. “Now we must hurry!”
The end of bridge reached, the shores of Indian Ocean could be seen ahead with the sun setting in the distance. As fast as his stubby legs could carry his rotund body, Re-Zal ran to what appeared to be a log in the brush upon which a figure was splayed in exhaustion.
“Wash!” Chase exclaimed as soon as he recognized the figure and then joined Re-Zal in the beach foot race. Much to everyone’s surprise, it was not a log that Wash was upon, but rather a sleeping African crocodile. Stuttz was barely conscious, his mumbled and barely audible babble were made all the more incoherent by the proxim-ity of the jungle noises. Chase urged him to keep still and quiet while he administered a canteen of water to him and cautiously dragged him away from the deadly reptile. “What the hell happened to him?” Veronica asked as she arrived on the scene, observing Wash’s torn clothes and bloody scrapes. “Is he going to live?”
“He will live as long as the rest of you, fraulein, which I’m afraid is not very long,” came a sneering voice on the beach behind them.
Veronica spun on her feet, her handgun drawn and at the ready, only to find that they were surrounded by soldiers holding rifles who were dressed in entirely gray uniforms
and bearing the red and black emblem of the swastika upon their lapels. On their backs were metal gizmos the likes of which neither Veronica nor Chase had ever seen before. Standing amidst these troops was a triumphant Col. Leermeister, smiling like a fisherman who had just caught a prize trout. Bitterly resigned, both Chase and Veronica raised their hands in surrender as the barrels of each rifle pointed towards them.
“My name is Leermeister and I am Colonel in the Fourth Reich. I have pursued you halfway across the globe, mein fruends. At last, I may stop chasing,” Leermeister said calmly. “You have done well, Evad.”
With that Re-Zal Evad took his place at Leermeister’s side, stunning the ones who were once in his charge.
“Money is in my account now, yes?” Evad asked. Col. Leer-meister nodded affirmatively.
“There’s two things in the world I hate, Daddy-O,” Chase said to Re-Zal. “Nazis and traitors…and you gone and done did both of ‘em.”
“Enough!” the Colonel hushed. “It is time for us to depart.” Having said that, Col. Leermeister removed a flashlight from his belt and pointed it into the darkening sky. After flashing as series of timed pulses from the hand-held light into the sky, a response of similar flashing occurred. Then came a low, rumbling sound, as if the sky were about to become filled with large airplanes. But no such thing occurred. Instead, a large blimp came into view over-head…a blimp that bore the swastika emblazoned upon its canvas side.
“Come!” Leermeister barked. “We depart for New Berlin!” Despite Veronica’s obvious repulsion to their hands, the soldiers took hold of her and Chase and Wash, just before demonstrating that the contraptions on their backs were in reality rocket packs that would hoist them into the air and into the gondola of the Nazi Zeppelin. Where they would go to from there…none could say.
new york city “Dr. Fleming!” Westinghouse said sharply as he entered the wood-paneled room that had once been another study of his but was now an impromptu laboratory for Dr. Camp-bell Fleming, who was waving his hands defensively in response to his name being called.
“Not now, Westy!” Fleming pleaded in a manner resem-bling an epileptic seizure. “I’m up to my ass in alligators!” With that, Jonathan returned his full attention to the tuning knob of one of his devices.
“As is the rest of the world, Doctor. I’ve just received word that Bombay, India has just been toppled by a severe earth-quake. What is the status of our adventurers?” Westing-house asked.
“That’s just it!” Fleming explained. “I don’t know! Maybe they’re alive…maybe they’ve met an ill-fate. I don’t know…
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because I can no longer get into contact with their wrist communicators!”
Sterling Westinghouse paused briefly and allowed his gaze to drift while he mentally measured what his chief scien-tist had just told him. If the expedition of the three was indeed lost, then whoever was responsible for these in-sidious earthquakes had already won.
“You may have just written the world’s epitaph, Dr. Fleming,” Westinghouse said somberly.
HOW LONG CAN THE WORLD HOLD OUT AGAINST THE EARTH-QUAKE DEVICE? WHAT WILL BE THE FATE OF OUR CAPTURED HEROES? HAVE THE NAZIS RISEN FROM THE ASHES TO AGAIN TORMENT THE WORLD?
antarctica Silently and effortlessly, the Nazi blimp glided above the frozen wastes. Securely fastened to a chair in the gondola, Washington Stuttz looked down at the mountains of ice and swirling snows. Below him was the coldest continent on earth. Temperatures were regularly well into the hun-dreds below zero, any exposed human skin would freeze on contact with the frigid air, and with nothing but white in all directions, it would be so simple to become lost. There would be no means of escape for Stuttz and his crew this time.
“Don’t be so glum, Jack. I hear it’s nice down there, this time of year,” came the voice of Chase Danner, the man who was chained next to him and reading the creased copy of On The Road that he carried with him.
“Sure…if you call over a hundred degrees below zero ‘nice,’” Wash said with a sullen tenor.
“Sounds cold,” remarked Veronica Pentecost who was likewise chained to a nearby chair. “We’ll just have to keep each other warm, won’t we Chase?”
The Nazis dispersed parkas to the prisoners and soon the blimp descended and attached itself to a gantry tower born skyward out of the snow and anchored in a metal platform. The entire area around the tower was bustling with activ-ity as the Germans had apparently carved an airbase out of the ice of the Antarctic shelf. Snow crawlers and tanks scurried about with mechanics as Leermeister brought his captives down to the metal platform via elevator. At the edge of the apron platform was a gaping black mouth that formed the entrance to a cave. As the troops plodded them along in a hurry to get out of the cold air, Chase could see that the cave stretched deeply into the recess of the ground. But what’s more, the cave served as an improvisational aircraft hangar. And what aircraft it housed! Chase’s jaw dropped as his eyes fell upon them for never before had he seen their level of sophistication. Some were jets shaped as batwings, others as saucers (explaining to him the source of what people had been calling UFO’s. Little did the world know they weren’t from little green men, but from men more evil even than the Commies), and others were…yes they were! They had to
be! They were rocketships, on launch pads placed beneath silo doors in the rocky ceiling and pointing towards outer space!
“Damn,” Chase said with a long whistle. “I’d give my right nut to fly one of those babies.”
“When exactly did your people invade Antarctica, Colonel?” asked Veronica Pentecost as they were ushered into warmer parts of the hangar. Technicians and mechanics still moved about, shouting at each other in German.
“We’ve been here for a very long time, frauline,” laughed Leermeister.
SS troopers on guard snapped to attention and raised a flat palm upward as Leermeister approached victoriously with the prisoners. The guards stood as aside and allowed heavy doors to move away, revealing an entryway over which hung a swastika-bearing flag.
“Quite an igloo you got here, Colonel,” Wash remarked as his eyes wandered about. “Like something out of Buck Rogers.”
“This is all from technology invented by the Reich years ago,” boasted Leermeister as he led them through metal-lic hallways, dotted occasionally with electronic access panels and glorious portraits of Hitler. “Once you had invaded France in 1944, we knew that we were kaput in Europe. So into U-boats went our most secret technologies, our most brilliant scientists, and our most elite troops. All of them brought here to the South Pole to build this Neuschwabenland that you see here today.
“And while you stupid Americans occupied yourselves with your ridiculous victory parades, we were building rockets,” Leermeister said with a sly sneer. “And jet-pow-ered aircraft that far surpass any of the ‘kites’ in your arsenal.”
“This guy’s startin’ to bug me, Wash,” Chase said in anger as he attempted to wriggle loose of his captors. Stuttz cautioned him to remain as he was and allow for time to formulate a proper escape plan.
“I think you’ll find that the wings of liberty haven’t lost a feather, Herr Jack,” Stuttz bragged with all confidence. “America and her allies stopped you once before and we can do it again.”
“Ja? How interesting…” the Colonel smiled menacingly as he brought the prisoners to a halt by a closed door. “This time, Deutschland has allies of her own…and we’ve re-cently made an arrangement that will have most dire consequences indeed for America.”
With that, the Nazi opened the door. On the other side was a chamber that resembled a dining room, complete with a long and grandiose table with chairs and place settings all around. At the head of the table was a man in purple robes, a bald man with a sharp goatee and pointed ears. Slowly, the sinister being began to clap his hands…a considerable feat given his sickeningly long fingernails. “Welcome, Americans,” he said with an accent that was