War or no war, it was a lousy way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
This was the part of his job that Corporal John Bellman hated the most. When he had enlisted just after Pearl Harbor, he had expected to be sent to the Pacific Theater to fight Japanese. He had excelled in Basic Training and earned the rank of Corporal, figuring on taking the battle to the enemy on their home ground. Instead, he found himself in Santa Barbara, California, and the only Japanese he had yet faced were also Americans.
“It ain’t right,” protested Bellman angrily. “Why, you might as well arrest Schmitt just ’cause he’s German or Pronzini ’cause he’s Italian!”
“This is different, Bellman,” remonstrated Sergeant Malcolm. “It’s like I keep telling you. A Kraut’s not necessarily a Nazi and a Wop’s not always a Fascist, but a Jap!” He shrugged indifferently. “Well, like the man said, Bellman: ‘A Jap’s always a Jap, whether he’s an American or not!’”
The “man” Malcolm referred to was no less a personage than the Commanding General for Western Defense, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt. His views, bolstered by similar ideas put forth by newsman Walter Lippman and other big guns, were behind Executive Order 9066, which dictated Bellman’s present assignment: round up all persons of Japanese ancestry in the Western Defense Zone for transportation to Army-run Assembly Centers inland. This batch would be held at Santa Anita Racetrack pending assignment to a more permanent facility being built near Mount Whitney.
Bellman didn’t like it. It sounded too much like what the Nazis were doing in Germany to sit well with him. He wanted to fight real Japs, not fellow Americans who just happened to have been born into yellow skins. He kept thinking of his mother’s Slavic Bulgarian lineage and, since the Tsardom of Bulgaria signed the Tripartite Pact a year ago this month, making it officially a member of the Axis, how easily the same reasoning might be made to apply to her … and possibly even to him.
Bellman was a broad-shouldered, square-jawed young man who could have just stepped off a recruiting poster. Malcolm, on the other hand, looked rather seedy by comparison. Neither had much love for the other, and the sergeant took great pleasure in showing the corporal that his own views were shared by the Big Guns while Bellman was seemingly a minority of one.
“We spent enough time jawing, Bellman.” Malcolm proclaimed officiously. “You and PFC Stonebender start rounding up the Japs while I see to the truck—” he grinned maliciously and pulled a battered copy of Doc Hazzard Magazine from his jacket pocket “—and catch up on my reading.”
Doc Hazzard stories were probably the most popular “time out” among the troops because, however overwrought and embellished the writing, they were always based on actual real-world adventures. Doc Hazzard was certainly physically impressive, standing six foot six and weighing two hundred and forty-five pounded, broad at the shoulder and narrow at the hips, inspiring the trend in padded shoulders for men’s suits that was only now giving way to Wartime rationing necessity.
But his main claim to fame was that, within the high-browed head on that Herculean body, was a brain equal to that of Edison, Einstein, Fleming, Ford, Westinghouse and the Wright Brothers all rolled into one. He had been everywhere and done everything, setting new records for altitude, distance, endurance and speed on land, in the air and on (and even under) the sea.
Everyone knew of some remarkable accomplishment of the golden-eyed, bronze-skinned physical and mental giant whom the press had dubbed “the Bronze Titan” even before he became the world’s greatest brain surgeon. Feared by the bad, loved by the good, Doc Hazzard was an inspiration to every man in America’s armed forces, even those who had never found the time to read his thrilling adventures in the pages of Doc Hazzard Magazine.
“Sam!” Bellman shouted to a nearby figure. “Let’s get things moving!”
Samson Stonebender nodded, rose up and turned around like a bear coming out of hibernation and called “Squad One! Squad Two! Squad Three! Squad Four! Fall in!” in a voice like a pipe organ playing at the bottom of a cement-mixer.
Samson was well named. He was built along the lines of Mount Everest and had been a professional wrestler before joining the Army. He had wrestled everything from alligators to water buffalo in addition to the usual line of strongmen and had recently won a $20 bet by picking up the front end of a half-track barehanded.
Understandably, then, his troll-like bellow brought a quick response from even his most recalcitrant charges. The thirty-two Army troops briskly formed up into four squares of eight soldiers each and snapped to attention, their bayoneted M-1 Garand rifles grounded next to their still-polished right boots. At Stonebender’s command, they shouldered their arms and reformed again into an orderly double line, sixteen on each side, facing each other like human walls before snapping back to attention and grounding their weapons. Sunlight gleamed off the bayonets that now angled slightly forward with gentle but nevertheless clear and present menace, the teeth in the jaws of their opposed ranks.
Stonebender, himself at standing attention, now commanded “Parade … rest!” As one, the solders moved their right feet thirty inches to the right and planted them with a resounding thump, while snapping the backs of their left hands smartly at the smalls of their backs. No one who saw them doubted that nothing could move them from their positions except another lawful order. The soldiers’ bearing, discipline and precision so impressed the civilian onlookers that even some of the evicted Japanese-Americans unconsciously assumed a stance resembling a military brace.
Stonebender did a smart about-face, dropped into parade rest with both hands clasped behind his back and announced, “Squads One, Two, Three and Four in position, Corporal Bellman!”
Bellman came up and began calling names from an alphabetized list. As he did so, Stonebender indicated to the named parties where they and their meager belongings were to be loaded on the waiting canvas-covered truck beds.
An hour later, Bellman was still calling out names and less than halfway through the alphabet. “Kobori, Miyoshi!” An old woman stumbled past with a duffle bag as big as she was. “Sam, help her with that!” Bellman called to the giant, sneaking a glance over to where Malcolm was sitting. The sergeant, sitting on the running board of the lead truck, never so much as looked up from his magazine.
“Koroshi, Shiro and Yuriko!” he called. Under his breath, he added, “I’ll bet Doc Hazzard wouldn’t have anything to do with a farce like this!”
“Quite true, young sir,” quavered a reedy but quite forceful voice. Startled, Bellman found himself looking down at a wrinkled little gnome of a man with twinkle in his wise-looking sloe eyes. The little man must have been over sixty, but he moved with the spryness of a youngster. What hair he had resembled strands of white silk, but the dark eyes were alert and his manner as lively as a child expecting a treat.
“Doctor Mark Hazzard, Jr. will indeed be outraged when he hears of this!” quavered the gnome-like little man. “It is a great injustice, and the Kinme-kyojin, the Golden-Eyed Giant, has little patience with injustice.”
“Father!” remonstrated the young woman at his side. “Don’t cause a scene, now of all times,” She looked to be about eighteen and very pretty in the delicate willowy way not uncommon among Oriental women. Both she and old man spoke perfect English with no trace of an accent. “Please, sir,” she appealed to Bellman, “my father didn’t mean to cause trouble.”
“No trouble at all, Miss … uh … Koroshi,” he stammered awkwardly. “Uh, look, Mister Koroshi, you and your daughter just get your stuff on the truck now, okay? And if we get a few minutes, I’d like to discuss this further with you.” Seeing alarm in the girl’s eyes, he hastened to add, “As it happens, I agree with you completely. I’m … uh … kind of a fan of the Bronze Titan myself. But things are already behind schedule, so I really do have to keep things moving right now.”
It would be several hours before Bellman could get back to Shiro Koroshi and his daughter. Then, as it turned out, it would be too late. Already forces were in motion that would prevent Bellman from carrying on his intended conversation, forces that would leave several men dead and dozens more hopelessly insane. An invisible storm was building, one that would destroy men’s minds and steal over two hours out of Bellman’s life.
The Sun was low in the sky by the time the last of the Japanese-American evacuees loaded themselves and their possessions onto the trucks. Bellman noted the time at the bottom of the roster: “1623 hours”—the military equivalent of 4:23 pm. He glanced up at the sky over toward the Sun, which had now become a squat orange mass near the horizon and opened his mouth to give a command he would never voice.
The sound came first: a high-pitched drone like a tuning fork being moved back and forth near his ears. It increased in intensity in seconds, piercing his skull with razor keenness. Then the light changed, taking on a harsh bluish glare that seemed everywhere at once. Bellman felt a wave of vertigo pass through him and his eyes lost focus. The piercing noise and blue glare vanished abruptly.
So did the Sun.
One moment it was there, an orange blob tainted by blue glare. Then it was gone and the sky was velvet black pierced by twinkling stars and dominated by a newly-risen Moon. The wind blew ten degrees colder, shocking Bellman out of his amazed stupor.
“Holy Hannah!” he croaked, feeling an unaccustomed tightness in his throat. “Did you guys see—” His strained voice trailed off in a choking gurgle as his larynx tried to perform an about-face like the one that Stonebender had executed so smartly after deploying the troops. Bellman suddenly became aware that he was in the middle of a panicked mob of terror-stricken Japanese-American evacuees.
The cause of the fear was not hard to determine. Sergeant Malcolm lay in a crumpled heap, his body a twisted ruin retaining only the slightest resemblance to human form. His head was smashed like an over-ripe melon against the pavement, its contents smeared across the sides of the truck and portions of the surrounding asphalt. His fingers were crooked into deathly-contorted claws that were still twisted around the shreds of his magazine.
About twenty yards away, PFC Stonebender stood like a grizzly defending its territory. His face was a mask of inchoate rage as he crouched as if he were back in a wrestling ring, swiping at the empty air above his head with ham-like hands, the fingers crooked into claws horribly similar to those on Malcolm’s cold dead hands. His voice was raised in an inarticulate growl more animal than human directed at whatever he thought he was fighting. At his feet lay the broken remains of his rifle and the spent casings of the rounds that it had contained. He had apparently expended all of his ammunition against whatever it was against which he was now raging barehanded, to no effect.
Bellman could not recall hearing any shots or screams … or anything else since the world disappeared in the glaring blue light.
He heard screams now. Horrified, he turned around in a complete circle, taking in a scene of terrible carnage and destruction. The Japanese-Americans evacuees were all cowering together in a knot of trembling humanity, while all around them utter madness reigned.
Of the thirty-three men Bellman had nominally held in his charge, only six remained alive. Like Stonebender, they displayed bizarre behavior. One sat sobbing uncontrollably and tearing at his hair, while nearby another convulsed in hysterical laughter. A third stared glassy-eyed at his own hands, twisting them this way and that in hypnotic fascination, as though examining some new and hitherto unrecognized treasure. A fourth perched atop a jeep, declaiming in fiery oratory and even fiercer gestures on the beneficial powers of electricity. Still another stood rigidly in approved Army standing rifle stance, firing his weapon at anything that moved and much that did not, including the Moon, heedless of the fact that like Stonebender he had long since expended all of his ammunition. Empty shell casings and a dozen wounded evictees attested to his accuracy beforehand, however, and those at whom he now aimed cringed with every click of the trigger.
The last of the survivors was engaged in the most grisly occupation Bellman had ever witnessed. He crouched over the body of one of his fellow men, who had apparently smashed his own skull repeatedly into the pavement as if trying to drive demons out of it. The fellow was humming happily to himself as he painted something on the side of a truck, using his fingers dipped in the blood that pooled around the other’s body. From where Bellman stood, the bloody finger-painting resembled the Japanese “Rising-Sun” sigil.
The other twenty-four men were sprawled about in attitudes resembling Malcolm’s. It was as though they had all been seized with acute apoplectic or perhaps epileptic fits simultaneously and convulsed themselves to death.
“They’re … they’re coming out of it!” sobbed one of the evacuees in tones of awed relief. Bellman took a shaky step forward, feeling cramps in every muscle, as if he had stood braced at attention all day long. He saw Stonebender slowing his murderous assault on the empty air, finally coming to a stop with an expression of dazed confusion. Others began coming around with the same expression of total incomprehension, expressions that quickly gave way to shock and horror as they, like Bellman, began to take in the scene around them.
“Sam!” screamed Bellman. “You—” He paused in momentary weakness, not sure what to do or say. Taking a hold on himself, thinking that with Malcolm dead it was now up to him the surviving troops, he went on strongly. “Get these people into the trucks right away!” he ordered briskly. “Something … screwy … is going on here, but we’re going to get to the bottom of it. First, though, we’ve got to finish the job we were sent here to do.”
He reached into the lead truck for the portable radio, taking care to avoid Malcolm’s bloody remains. “I’m going to call for reinforcements … and medics!” he gritted. He suddenly realized that it was really the only thing he really could do, but that thought didn’t make him feel much better.
Chaos reigned for a while. Bellman checked his watch to log the time of his call and got another surprise. It read 1854 hours—6:54 pm! “That’s impossible!” murmured Bellman. “It was 1623 hours just a minute ago!”
It was another two hours before order was fully restored. The reinforcements arrived, a full company of troops, along with two medical squads with their ambulances, and Bellman surrendered command to no less than a full Colonel. A quick roll call was run, bringing with it another surprise: everyone on the roster were all present or accounted for (read: deceased) except Shiro Koroshi and his daughter. They had vanished, along with their possessions, as if they’d never been there! None of the Japanese-American evacuees would admit to having seen them leave or, in fact, to even knowing them.
Bellman was at a total loss to make anything of the afternoon’s events. All he knew was that something horrible had happened, something for which there was no logical explanation. It frightened him to think that such a thing was possible.
The world had gone mad. He had lost two and a half hours out of his life, and his friends had gone mad before his eyes, some of them recovering as if nothing had happened. None of it made any sense.
“I’ve got to find some explanation,” muttered Bellman grimly. “Someone, somewhere, has got to figure this thing out!” He shook his head like a wet dog trying to shake itself dry. “Yeah,” he answered himself, “but who?”
As if in answer to that question, a strip of paper blown by the wind wrapped itself around his boot. Bellman stopped to retrieve it before climbing into the lead truck. It was a shredded piece of the cover from Malcolm’s magazine. On it, in garish canary yellow letters outlined in blazing scarlet, was the name:
Although she didn’t look a day over twenty-one, Cathryn “Cat” Hazzard had turned twenty-eight years old that morning … but, the way she was going, there was considerable doubt as to her living to make it to twenty-nine.
Cat Hazzard has always found birthdays to be problematic, if only because she had been born on April Fools’ Day, so what was supposed to be a day of celebration was also often tinged with almost as many tricks as treats. There was always the possibility that more than few presents would be jokes at her expense. As result, she always made it a point to treat herself on her birthday, usually in a way that any joke would be on everyone else.
Cat always tried to her life to the fullest, even when that meant putting it at risk, and today was no exception. She had determined that she was going to fully enjoy the entire day as if it were in fact her last day on Earth and would be entirely content to go out with a bang should that indeed be the case.
Cat’s two passengers were nowhere near as sanguine about such prospects as was she.
She stood the scarlet-trimmed shining silver Spartan 7W “Executive” monoplane onto one wingtip and dropped the nose into a steep dive, pulling up only ten feet above the water of the East River. Dipping a wingtip in salute to the tugboat whose radio mast she’d almost removed, she snap-rolled to the left, shot under the Queensboro Bridge, then pulled up sharply into a vertical climb to five thousand feet. Here she made a hammerhead turnover into a split-S and leveled out at fifteen hundred feet in a course southwest across midtown Manhattan.
The plane was a single-engine five-seat dihedral-winged monoplane with vacuum-operated flaps, powered by a supercharged 400-horsepower Pratt & Whitney R-985 Wasp Junior SB nine-cylinder air-cooled radial engine fitted with an eight-foot constant-speed propeller. Designed for comfort, the interior was spacious and featured eighteen-inch of slide-back seat room for front-seat passengers, armrests, ashtrays, dome lighting, deep cushions, cabin heaters, ventilators, extensive soundproofing, large windows and interior access to the one-hundred-pound-capacity luggage compartment. Dubbed Catbird, it was Cat’s pride and joy.
The brainchild of the Spartan company founder, William G. Skelly of Skelly Oil, who desired a fast comfortable aircraft to support his tastes and those of his rich oil-executive colleagues, the plane’s high performance allowed the aircraft to place fifth in the 1939 Bendix Air Race from New York to Los Angeles, piloted by aviatrix Arlene Davis, the first woman to receive a “4-M” multi-engine pilot rating and the first private pilot, male or female, to receive an instrument rating. The Spartan 7W had gone into production in March 1936, just in time for Cat to take the plunge and treat herself to one on her twenty-second birthday. It had gone out production two years ago and only thirty-four were ever built, making it a rare, precious and beautiful thing indeed. Among its more notable owners were aviator Howard Hughes, wealthy industrialist J. Paul Getty and King Ghazi of Iraq.
The plane had been listed at the staggering sum of $23,500—over a dozen times the annual income of the average Joe; enough, in fact, to buy nearly a half-dozen brand-new houses—but Cat had literally gotten it for a song by agreeing to “promotional considerations” in lieu of cash money. This entailed Technicolor newsreel footage of “the famous Doc Hazzard’s beautiful and adventurous young cousin, Cat Hazzard” piloting the plane just as flamboyantly as she was doing now, to a soundtrack that consisted of Cat herself singing the Fletcher Henderson arrangement of Irving Berlin’s “Blue Skies” backed by Benny Goodman & His Orchestra.
The resulting publicity had been just as good for Cat as it had been for Spartan, enough that she forgave them for describing her as a “fiery redhead”—a cliché that Cat resented because, for all its aptness in her case, she didn’t considered herself a redhead. Her hair, like that of her famous cousin, was a rich golden bronze.
In those relatively halcyon days before the War, Catbird had paid for herself several times over by giving Cat the means to fly quickly and comfortably wherever she chose, whenever she chose, more often than not in the pursuit of the excitement, action and adventure that she craved far more than material wealth. Now its use was severely restricted by Wartime regulations and fuel rationing that would, by definition, last for the Duration.
Her birthday present this year was a self-indulgent joyride, a flamboyant and spectacular splurging of the last of her civilian gasoline ration—she would henceforth be flying via the public airlines from now on, if indeed at all. While she trusted in her ability to finagle travel authorizations at need for the Duration, there was no guarantee that any of the civilian airlines would actually be able to keep their schedules.
For that matter, there was a distinct possibility that her Catbird might be pressed into military service as a utility aircraft by the U.S. Army Air Forces or even, under the terms of the Lend-Lease program, handed over to the British Royal Navy or the Soviet Air Force. As much as Cat loved her Catbird, she’d happily hand it over to her Uncle Sam the moment he asked for it.
Everything was different now that America was now in the War that she’d spent the last five years trying to avoid. Cat had had to get special permission to overfly the city not only from the mayor but also from the governor, the air raid wardens, the Army and the Navy. New York City was ringed with coastal defense fortifications at Fort Lafayette, Fort Hamilton, Fort Wadsworth, Fort Tilden and Fort Totten, fighter aircraft on alert at fighters at Floyd Bennett Field and ships tending anti-submarine nets in Gravesend Bay.
Just last month, a seven-inch shell had struck the Thirty-Seventh Floor of the Equitable Building in the Wall Street area. As people excitedly called newspapers to report a German attack, a sheepish Army officer at an anti-aircraft battery along the East River phoned the police to report that eight shells had accidentally discharged from his outpost. Seven shells fell into the river, but the eighth one—causing only minor damage, with no injuries—created some short-lived panic. Any unauthorized flight would no doubt draw a fire, not just ire, from the city’s hair-trigger defenses.
The situation was such that the normally headstrong, impulsive and Devil-may-care Cat took the very sensible precaution of obtaining permission for her joyride, in triplicate, from all of the Powers That Be who might have any jurisdiction. While Cat would donate her aircraft to the war effort, she had no desire to have it confiscated, which would the least she could expect for pulling such a stunt without dotting all of every I and crossing every T.
For now, though, Catbird was still very much all hers and she was feeling very much in the catbird’s seat—specifically, the left seat reserved for the pilot. “Well, boys,” Cat inquired sweetly, “what do you think of it so far?”
Her passengers, normally quite outspoken, were momentarily speechless due to an inability to determine up from down.
Predictably, it was Brigadier General Theobald Harley Cruiks, also known as “Sham”, who recovered first. “Are you referring to the plane ride or the plane itself,” asked the dapper Harvard lawyer with forced nonchalance. Despite his outward calm, the usually impeccable fashion-plate clutched his slim black swordstick in a white-knuckle grip. His rakish dove-gray felt Borsalino fedora had disappeared behind his seat.
“Why, both, of course!” Cat smiled wickedly, performing a barrel-roll as she spoke. “This bird is such a sweet number, it brings out the best in me,” she added, emphasizing her point with an inside loop.
“Hey!” protested a strident, childlike voice behind her. “Warn a guy when you’re gonna do that! I darn near busted my head that time!”
“Small loss that would be,” Sham sneered. “I’ve seen better heads than yours at the bottom of a street vendor’s cabbage cart cabbage fields.”
The head in question belonged to Lieutenant Colonel Andrus Padgett Playfair and admittedly it looked more at home on a gorilla than on a man. Along with an equally simian physique, it had earned its owner the nickname “Trog”. Whatever its outward shortcomings, Trog’s head had served him well in the brains department, making him the world’s leading industrial chemist. It had fared better than the wear-worn bilious green porkpie hat onto which he’d had the foresight to hold, but which was now much the worse for wear, its flat crown crumpled in the white-knuckled grip of one thick-fingered and incredibly hairy hand. Only the brim, which was sharply turned upward in the front in a manner carefully calculated to rankle his fashion-conscious cohort Sham, whose errant fedora sported a stylishly down-turned brim, had escaped Trog’s crushing death-grip.
“Yeah, and I’ve seen better suits than yours on stiffs at a mortuary,” grinned Trog, knowing Sham’s vanity when it came to clothes.
“I’ll ignore that remark,” returned Sham haughtily, “because you have the fashion sense of a Bowery bum.” He underscored his own sartorial elegance by ostentatiously straightening his diagonally-striped crimson and Navy blue silk Harvard Law school tie.
“And I’ll ignore that remark,” smirked Trog, “’cause I already showed you up in front of all your high-tone cronies, you hoity-toity snob. Hey, Cat, did you get a load of Sham’s phiz when that fancy-pants waiter brung me my Coke?”
Cat, who routinely ignored the continual banter between these two mutually antagonistic polar opposites, had to chuckle at that one.
Sham had taken Cat and Trog to the private dining room of the exclusive Croesus Club in the Waldorf Towers, the “hotel within a hotel” in the upper floors of the Waldorf-Astoria on Park Avenue, for her celebratory birthday luncheon. The Croesus Club was a very traditional men’s club that generally excluded women (derisively referred to as “females”) from the premises except in the dining room and, even there, one had to be a member, or the approved guest in the company of a member, to be seated at table. Along with the prerequisite that all of its patrician “Old Boy” members be worth at least five million U.S. dollars earned entirely through their own personal achievement, this archaic arrangement had led the popular press to dub the stodgy establishment “The Millionaire Boys’ Club”—a cognomen of which the snobbishly superior Croesus Club pretended to take no notice whatsoever, but were secretly quite proud.
The waiters in the Croesus Club dining room had the demeanor usually associated with a titled nobleman’s personal valet. In the middle of this oh-so-refined luncheon, Trog had pointedly summoned the head waiter and asked for a popular bottled soda pop in a spot-on impression of a wine aficionado ordering a fine vintage champagne: “I’d like a six-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola carbonated soft drink, in the bottle, with the crown cap still sealed, chilled to precisely forty-five degrees Fahrenheit—there’s a good man!”
Nothing of the kind could be found on the premises, carbonated beverages other than sparkling wine being deemed unfit for human consumption by the establishment’s culinary standards, but anyone who was admitted to table always got whatever they wanted, so they dispatched a liveried bellhop on a bicycle normally used to deliver telegrams four blocks west to the Radio City Music Hall, the only place known to the staff from which the requested item could be procured with any certainty. When the bellhop returned with the requested item and put on ice until it was at the specified temperature, the staff discovered that they had no opener of the proper type to allow their guest to uncap the bottle. Unperturbed by their regretful announcement of this unfortunate turn of events, Trog had taken the bottle with exaggerated care of a true connoisseur, then casually peeled the cap off with his back teeth, spat the cap into the silver service tray and emptied the bottle down his gullet in a single gulp.
“By gosh and by golly, that really hit the spot!” he’d exulted. The subsequent belch had been eerily reminiscent of the MGM Lion’s trademarked roar, were it to be delivered with the force of a thunderbolt. It had been audible throughout the dining room, rattling fine china and sterling silverware from one end to the other. The patrons had certainly been just as thunderstruck as if they’d been struck by actual thunder. The silence that had followed this outburst been equally deafening. The entire staff had been scandalized, though not one of them had so much as twitched an eyebrow, and Sham had nearly died on the spot of acute mortification when he and his guests had been requested politely but firmly to leave the premises at their earliest convenience.
“You Darwinian degenerate!” snarled Sham. “You almost cost me my personal apartments with that stunt! Even my man Jarvis probably won’t speak to me for a month!”
“Small loss, yourself!” gloated Trog. “That Jarvis hombre is the only snob in New York snootier than you are and—hey!” Trog stiffened in alarm. “Whoa, there, Cat! Don’t play ‘chicken’ with the Empire State Building, ’cause it ain’t gonna move!”
“Oh, calm down, you!” Cat retorted mildly. “We’re going to overfly the spire by at least a hundred feet.” She sighed heavily. “Honestly, you boys are getting so tame, you’re no fun anymore!”
To underscore her point and demonstrate her notion of what was fun, Cat buzzed the Eighty-Sixth Floor observation deck in a fair approximation of the biplane assault from King Kong. She waggled Catbird’s wings as it banked sharply around the Eightieth Floor, which contained her cousin Doc Hazzard’s offices and laboratory, then changed course to the northwest toward the Hudson River. As she did so, checked the oversized watch strapped to the inside of her left wrist, where it was clearly visible without taking her hands off the controls as well as being sheltered from accidentally striking or snagging on anything, as it might if it were strapped to the outside of her wrist according to the dictates of fashion.
Technically speaking, it wasn’t actually a wristwatch. It was an 18-size pocket watch mounted on a leather wrist strap, called a “wristlet” back during the Great War, when gunnery officers and military aviators, who needed to keep a close eye on the time in order to synchronize operations and navigate, also discovered that they needed to keep both hands free. They couldn’t do that with a pocket watch in one hand and the wristwatches of the day, which were considered to be women’s jewelry, lacked both the requisite accuracy and easy visibility.
Their solution was to turn a pocket watch into a makeshift wristwatch by using metal lugs to attach it to a leather strap. The resulting “trench watch” was also used by those who flew over the trenches, who also came up with the idea of wearing on the inner wrist. Her father had explained that convention and the practical considerations behind it when he’d presented it to her as his gift for her eighteenth birthday. It had been the last thing that he ever directed bequeathed to her with his own living hand. He had been killed eight months later, murdered by modern-day Spanish pirate called El Vorazo—The Hungry One. Even had it not possessed considerable intrinsic worth, that fact alone made the watch priceless to Cat.
Cat’s father had bought the watch on 4 August 1914, the same day that Great Britain declared war on Germany, in preparation for his deployment with the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Cat had only been four months old at the time, so she tended to think of herself and the watch as being exactly the same age, although it had actually been made at the turn of the century. It was, in fact, an exceedingly rare Winegarten’s Railway Regulator “Centenarian” Horlogère Suisse Chronograph, one of the most elaborate and precise pocket watches ever made. Like all Railroad Standard Watches, it was built to exacting specifications: only open-faced dials with the stem at the 12 o’clock position, a minimum of 17 functional jewels in the movement, 16- or 18-size only, maximum variation of 30 seconds per week or about four seconds daily, watch adjusted to at least five of the six possible positions, adjusted to temperatures ranging from 34°F (°1C) to 100°F (38°C) with compensation for spring-tension isochronism, indication of time with bold legible Arabic numerals with all 60 second/minute divisions, Breguet balance spring, micrometer adjustment regulator, double roller, steel escape wheel, and anti-magnetic protection.
The Winegarten Centenarian chronograph had all that and then some. The hands and numerals were coated with radioluminescent paint containing a mix of radium-226 and copper-doped zinc sulfide, producing a bright blue-green glow bright enough to use as a reading light—yet another reason to keep it shielded inside the wrist, out of the direct view of others. The palm-width 18-size main dial had four hands, one of which was an additional sweep Second hand, which provided the stopwatch function that made the timepiece a full-blown chronograph rather than a mere chronometer. Within the main dial, there were four dime-sized sub-dials, three of which had a single hand apiece, while the fourth had a triangular cutout instead of a hand. The sub-dials below the 3-, 6- and 9-o’clock positions indicated 12 Months of the Year, 31 Days of the Month and the 7 Days of the Week, respectively. The sub-dial at the 12-o’clock position showed the current Phase of the Moon and whether it was Day or Night. Rotating rings around the sub-dials at the 12- and 6-o’clock positions combined to indicate the 100 Years of the Century. Taken altogether, the various dials could accurately indicate the full date, time and Moon phase for any date between 1 January 1901 and 31 December 2000. It had been designed and built to work with fine precision over the entire span of the 20th Century, hence the name Centenarian.
In a single split-second glance at the big luminous dial of her Centenarian chronograph, Cat saw that it was exactly 2:32:19 pm on Wednesday, 1 April 1942, with the Moon just past Full, and that they had been airborne for an hour, 29 minutes and 11 seconds. “Right on schedule!” she murmured, ending with self-congratulatory chuckle.
Midway across the Hudson River, she performed a perfect 180° turn and descended in a smooth glide that ended directly in line with a block-long seven-story warehouse on Pier Seventy-Four. The faded and now somewhat shabby 10-year-old sign posted midway up the side of the windowless building somehow managed to appear unimposing and even a bit pedestrian compared with the other signage facing out from the Hudson River waterfront, but was still eye-catching and evocative of far away places with strange-sounding names:
The company logo, which many presumed to be an elaborate mariner’s compass rose, was actually a simplified and stylized Mesoamerican “Sun Stone” solar disc calendar, like the one unearthed in the Zócalo Plaza of Mexico City in 1790. Both the logo and the name “Yucatán” paid tribute to the Central American nation that had been the site of the inaugural adventure of Hazzard & Associates and still provided the gold that financed it. The sign was a kind of in-joke, as was the fictitious corporation whose sole import and export was Doc Hazzard and his crew of fellow adventurers. The building was actually a giant storehouse for Doc’s private air and sea craft, maintained in secret solely for use in his personal campaign against wrongdoers, which sometimes lead Doc and his crew around the globe. Recently, however, Doc’s globetrotting had been severely curtailed by Wartime restrictions, to which it was necessarily subordinate.
Catbird, like all of Doc’s own craft, was equipped with pontoons for landing on water. Cat made a perfect two-point landing just 100 yards west of Pier Seventy-Four and taxied toward the waterfront end of the warehouse. As the plane neared the building, the great doors slowly rolled back automatically in response to a radio signal bounced back from the special transponders that all of Doc’s crew carried. Cat now carried one as well, although it was solidly fixed within the firewall of the plane’s cockpit. This had been Doc’s gift to her: personal use of his private hangar and wharf space. Although he had extended this to her before by letting her dock her twin-masted schooner Cat’s Meow there, this was the first time he had given her craft free access to the facility whenever she chose.
Of course, she had often finagled access through Trog or Sham whether Doc liked it or not, so in a way he was merely bowing to the inevitable. Even so, Cat valued this rare sign of acceptance more highly than diamonds.
The plane slid smoothly into a water-filled concrete slip. Around it were dozens of other aircraft ranging in size from a single-seat speed plane to a giant trimotor transport. Cat’s sloop-rigged catamaran Cat’s Meow was moored nearby, beside Doc’s research ship, the Seven Cs. Doc’s refurbished U.S. Navy-surplus Group 1 O-class submarine Devilfish filled another slip across the way. Experimental aircraft using jet and rocket propulsion, a prototype helicopter, a metal-clad stratosphere dirigible and maintenance equipment took up the rest of the space. Behind them, the massive automatic doors rolled shut.
“Well, boys,” Cat purred, “what’s next on the agenda?”
“Next,” grinned Trog, “we zip up to Doc’s place, where we present you with our special gift and make you eat your words about our lack of nerve!”
“As much as I hate to agree with ape-shape here,” Sham interjected coolly, “for once I have to admit he’s right. What we have procured for you has required daring, resourcefulness, intrigue, finesse and certain amount of underhandedness.” Reaching behind the seat, he retrieved his Borsalino, inspecting it with a critical eye before putting it on and adjusting its rakishly down-turned brim to a very precise jaunty angle. Trog unselfconsciously fluffed his abused porkpie hat like a rumpled pillow back into a semblance of its original eponymous shape and clapped it onto his nubbin head with a comically exaggerated flourish, literally aping Sham’s much smoother and sophisticated manner, pushing the brim up and back as if he were brushing back a stray forelock.
While the “boys” (both of whom were at least twenty years Cat’s senior) were restoring their respective headgear, Cat took the opportunity to undo her brown leather flying helmet—a totally unnecessary accessory for a closed-cabin aircraft like the Catbird, but a stylish one nevertheless—shake out her lustrous silken golden-bronze hair, stow the helmet securely under the pilot’s seat and replace it with a pert little gold-trimmed brown velvet tilt-top hat, briefly checking her look in the cockpit mirror without appearing to do so. Her smartly tailored flight suit, although somewhat out of the ordinary, was stylish enough that she could wear it on the street at this time of day.
“We’ve outdone ourselves with this one,” Trog boasted gleefully. “When you see what we got for you, you’re gonna plotz!” His chuckle sounded like marbles cascading down a washboard. “For that matter, so will Doc!”
“You’d better hope that Doc never finds out about it!” snapped Sham acidly. “It’s not the kind of thing he’s likely to approve, especially now.”
“Whatever it is,” Cat enthused, “it must be good. You’ve never given anything a build-up like this before. So I give up, I’m hooked, you’ve got me! Now,” she frowned darkly and fixed them with a golden-eyed gaze, “what exactly is it?”
“Come on and see, ma chere amie!” Sham bowed gallantly toward the pneumatic shuttle tube to hide his anticipatory smile. Not so Trog, who grinned openly and said, “After you, Birthday Girl!”
As they disembarked from the plane, their relative sizes became apparent. Although Trog, at five foot two, was the shortest of the group, he outweighed the other two put together. His torso was broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, his shortness coming from stunted bandy legs that reinforced his simian appearance.
Sham was built more along the lines of a greyhound, an impression he sought to emphasize with carefully tailored clothes. His swordstick was more than an affectation, however. Sham was an expert fencer and the sword’s rapier blade was coated with a thin film of fast-acting anesthetic with the consistency of petroleum jelly. Ironically, he depended on Trog for his supply of the chemical, though neither would care admit to this.
Cat was easily the most impressive of the three. She was tall for a woman, almost as tall as Sham, and, like her famous cousin, she had the deep bronze skin-tone and reddish-gold hair, like spun copper, that had earned him his appellation of “Bronze Titan.” A more appropriate title for her would have been “Golden Girl,” as her coloration was a few degrees lighter than Doc’s. This golden aspect was further enhanced by her choice of apparel: a golden-brown “Sidcot” flight suit with burnished brass fastenings, brown leather flyer’s boots and a matching brown leather and canvas overnight bag. Her golden eyes were what truly set her apart, however. They were, like Doc’s, like pools of flake-gold that seemed to see beyond the surface of things to their true nature. Even more than her striking beauty and stunning figure, those eyes accounted for her ability to get her way in what was all-too-often a man’s world.
At the far end of the warehouse, they came to a strange conveyance that resembled a giant artillery shell mounted at the end of a ventilation duct. This was a passenger-carrying pneumatic tube car, similar in all but scale to the tubes used to send mail through skyscrapers. This was Doc’s private route from the warehouse hangar to his headquarters on the Eightieth Floor of the Empire State Building, seven 900-foot city blocks to the east and 1,250 feet straight up.
“What gives?” Cat asked sharply when the shuttle car refused to open for her.
“New precautions,” said Sham. He rolled back the cuff of the white kid glove on his left hand to reveal a massive wristwatch. “Standard military-issue Elgin A-11 Pilot’s ‘Hack’ watch—self-winding, 16-jewel sweep movement, guaranteed to be shockproof, waterproof, antimagnetic and immune to un-American influences but, most importantly, it has a Marvelite radioluminescent dial bright enough to read by.” The numerals and hands of the wristwatch dial, clearly visible even the gloom in this corner of the warehouse, suddenly glowed twice as brightly as Sham pressed it against a purplish glass plate next to the nautical-style hatch on the near side of the car. Something inside went ping! and the hatch popped open.
“And nobody thought to tell me about it?” muttered Cat darkly. She shared her cousin’s zest for adventure as well and resented being excluded, generally on the grounds that such escapades were too dangerous for a woman, although the fact that she was an incorrigible thrill-seeker may have had a lot more to do with it.
“I guess Doc figured you were better off not knowing,” Sham muttered dryly and perhaps a bit too loudly. Cat immediately resolved to test whether or not the lock would respond to the emanations from the luminous radium dial of her father’s vintage trench watch the way it did to the modern Marvelite model, just as soon as she could do so unobserved.
As soon as everyone was seated in the shuttle car and had their restraining belts fastened, Trog closed and secured the hatch and tripped the release lever. The passengers were suddenly subjected to several sudden changes in acceleration, air pressure, altitude, attitude and direction more devastating than Cat’s recent aerial joyride. The trip from waterfront warehouse to skyscraper penthouse, a combined horizontal and vertical distance of about a mile and a half, took only sixty seconds. The passengers spent at least twice that amount of time sorting themselves out after the car had jolted to a stop.
“Hoo-boy!” Trog blew out the breath he’d been holding. “I’m getting too old for riding in this scaled-up pea shooter!”
“Pull another stunt like the one in the Croesus Club,” offered Sham, “and you won’t have to worry about getting any older.”
“Count your blessings, shyster!” Trog grinned wickedly. “I coulda ordered a Pepsi! That comes in twelve-ounce bottles!”
“Are you two clowns coming?” Cat grumbled impatiently as she reached for the hatch release, “Or are you going to play Wisenheimer all day?” Left to themselves, she knew, Trog and Sham could go on like that for hours.
The shuttle car opened onto Doc’s laboratory. The white-enameled room took up two-thirds of the entire floor, an area equal to nearly a quarter of a city block. There was equipment for experimentation in every type of scientific endeavor from archeology to zoology, with especially large chunks given over to chemistry, electronics and physics. Near the shuttle terminus was a complete surgical operating theater and biology set-up, where Doc had developed several techniques that were now standard medical procedure.
At the far end of the room was a doorway leading to Doc’s library. This book-lined room was probably the world’s most complete privately-owned reference library, containing books on every factual subject ever consigned to print. Most of it was given over to science and medicine, of course, but many of the subjects were surprisingly mundane and others could only be described as outré in not outright bizarre. Although he referred to it whenever he had the slightest doubt about the facts of a given matter, much of the knowledge in the library usually served as mere confirmation of that which Doc carried around in his head.
Walking between a corridor formed by two massive bookshelves, the three came to another doorway, this leading to Doc’s office/reception room. The room was twenty feet wide and forty feet long but somewhat sparsely and simply furnished. A large ivory-inlaid Oriental table, which served as Doc’s desk, dominated one end of the room. Beside it was an antiquated Wells-Fargo standing safe, looking for all the world like an armor-plated refrigerator. Comfortable leather chairs, walnut cabinets and shelves containing souvenirs of Doc’s travels and a marble-topped credenza supporting a bank of telephones completed the furnishings. The floor was richly carpeted, the carpet being a gift from the Khedive of Egypt to Doc’s father, a portrait of whom hung on the wall behind the inlaid table.
Seated behind the table was a man poring over a bound volume almost as thick as it was wide. This in contrast to the man, who was thinner than it seemed possible for a living person to be. The skeletal gentleman wore an ill-fitting suit and an expression of someone engaged in deep deliberation. His attire was that of scholastic lecturer: swallow-tail cutaway coat, low-cut vest, striped trousers, wing-tip oxfords, wing collar and string tie. A silk-brimmed black felt homburg of the type favored by British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden sat precariously on the corner of the table. A powerful magnifying glass the size of a silver dollar and mounted in a horn-rimmed frame like a monocle hung around his neck on a black silk lanyard. When not in use, this modern day “quizzing glass” was clipped to the buttonhole of his lapel with the gold tie clasp adorned with the Miskatonic University sigil still securely held in place there. He was currently using the high-power magnifier as a reading glass.
“Felicitative salutations,” intoned the emaciated emeritus, looking up from the massive tome with an equally skeletal grin. “Eudaemonious nativital commemoration transpires, I presume?”
“Yes,” replied Cat, accustomed to the thin man’s habitual use of long words when short one would do just as well, “we’re having a wonderful time on my birthday. Where’s Doc?”
William Archer Longfellow, Professor Emeritus of Natural Sciences at Miskatonic University and sometime Associate to Doc Hazzard twirled his magnifying monocle with the look of a man pondering some vast mystery. “Concurrently,” he mused, “Doc has tergiversated extemporaneously on an enterprise of undisclosed disposition.”
Cat sighed and flopped into one of the leather chairs. “In other words, Doc went out but you don’t know where.”
“Shorty”, as Professor Longfellow was known to his friends, looked pained. “Probability indicates a contemporaneous collaborative conference with a materiality cognominated the Manhattan Engineer District.”
“‘Manhattan Engineer District’?” echoed Trog. “What’s that?”
“An unfathomable anagrammatism.” Shorty turned back to his book.
“This is getting us nowhere,” decided Sham. He turned toward Cat. “Do you want to wait here on the off chance that Doc shows … or go over to your place for the grand finale?”
“My place! You mean after all that build-up my present isn’t even here?”
The “place” in question was Cat’s Meow, a posh Park Avenue salon and gymnasium that boasted most of the New York Social Register among its clientele. It promised to reduce its clients’ weights while improving the tone of what was left of their physiques. Whatever else it might accomplish, Cat’s weight-loss program generally succeeded by removing a great deal of ballast from her customers’ pocketbooks.
Not that her advertising was in any way fraudulent. Her clients could have become the physical specimens illustrated in her pamphlets had they anywhere near the willpower to put in the necessary time and effort. Even so, Cat’s fees were just this side of outright piracy. Then again, most of her clients equated price with prestige and were only too willing to fork over whatever she demanded. Cat cheerfully charged all that the traffic would bear, serene in the knowledge that customers were getting exactly what they had paid to get, whether or not they actually applied themselves.
Cat’s own streamlined anatomy may have had some influence as well. The women would pay a pretty penny for any chance to look like her and the men were just as hopeful of acquiring a physique that could impress her. Had they known more about her, they could have saved their money. Or maybe not. For most, it was worth any cost just to be able to look at her doing her own workouts.
“It’s a shorter drive from here to your place than from the Yucatán Trading Company,” soothed Sham smoothly. This was true enough, but was a bit of a strength. Cat’s Meow was exactly two blocks east and two blocks south further away. Sham quickly followed up with a much more convincing argument. “Besides, we wanted to give Shorty a chance to present his gift first.”
“Shorty! You lanky long-winded bag of bones! Why didn’t you tell me you had something for me, instead of giving me your sesquipedalian scholastic shtick?”
“Purely theatrical misrepresentation, my dear vingtioctennial virago.” Smiling even more broadly, Shorty produced a flat jewelry case From a drawer in the inlaid table, which he opened it with a dramatic flourish to reveal a heavy pectoral necklace made of gold rectangles connected at the corners by heavy gold links. Each rectangle had a jade disk inset near the outer edge. Each disk was carved in the likeness of an ancient Mayan god.
“It’s beautiful!” gasped Cat. “Why, it must be worth a king’s ransom!”
“A princess’ ransom, actually,” said Shorty, lapsing into small words in his excitement. “This belonged to the Mayan princess Ixchebelyax. I found it at the bottom of a Mayan cenote or sacrificial well on my last expedition to Yucatán three years ago. I restored it using an electrochemical process developed by Trog and Long Shot and decided it would be just the thing for you.”
“Too bad Long Shot and Kenny couldn’t be here,” injected Trog, “But they sent you some stuff, too! Long Shot designed a new type of sunlamp that can give you a tan without any of the sunburn hazard of the ones you’ve been using and Kenny came up with a spring-powered resistance machine that can replace barbells and other weights for bodybuilding.”
Major Schatzi J. “Long Shot” Robbins and Colonel Sean “Kenny” Kenworth were Doc’s remaining two Associates. Long Shot, an electrical wizard whose anemic appearance and deathly pallor needed more than a sunlamp to reassure others that he wasn't in desperate need of a transfusion, was working on a new airborne radio detection and ranging system for the Army Air Forces that would do for aircraft what sonar did for submarines. Kenny, an engineer of unequalled ability known almost as much for his perpetually woeful countenance and bucket-sized fists as for his architectural and mechanical genius, was working with Boeing Airplane Company in Seattle as a subcontractor on the new XB-29 bomber.
Further expressions of camaraderie were cut short by a soft, low-pitched but nevertheless attention-getting buzzer.
Its effect on the four friends was remarkable. Shorty snapped the jewelry case shut, moved both it and the massive book aside and spread his fingers across the ivory inlays on the table. Each inlay was a cleverly concealed switch controlling a defensive device hidden somewhere in the room. Sham twisted the head of his swordstick, unlocking the drugged razor-edged rapier blade for a rapid draw, if necessary. Trog flexed his mighty shoulders like the gorilla he resembled, then drew an unusual pistol from a shoulder holster beneath his jacket. The gun was a .22-caliber Super Compact Automatic Machine Pistol or SCAMP, that fired high-velocity anesthetic “mercy bullets” at a rate of ten rounds per second. Both the pistol and its ammunition were among the first of Doc’s fabulous inventions, giving new meaning to the word troubleshooting.
Not to be outdone, Cat drew a handgun almost as strange as Trog’s SCAMP from her handbag. It was a .44-40 Model 1873 Frontier Colt revolver with wear-worn walnut grips, Arabesque scrollwork on the octagonal barrel and frame and a fanning spur welded to the hammer. The gun weighed almost four pounds and had a bore down which even the largest of men could fully insert a finger, provided he was foolish enough to try it. For all of its ornamentation, it was a deadly-accurate gunfighter’s weapon worthy of the Northwestern frontier lawman from whom she’d inherited it. Shortly after meeting Doc and his crew as a brash and independent eighteen-year-old, Cat had modified her Grandpa’s “Old Thumb-buster” to fire mercy bullets supplied to her by Trog and Sham to make her more like one of the gang. Even now, ten years on, she was still trying.
All four turned their attention to the door to Doc’s office. The buzzer was part of an elaborate alarm system devised by Doc to safeguard his headquarters from visitors with hostile intentions, a not-uncommon situation. Both passive and active electronic detectors in the elevators servicing the Eightieth Floor operated whenever someone boarded the car, sounding various alarms when certain conditions pertained. The low-frequency buzzer sounded whenever someone was carrying an unusually large amount of ferrous metal, as was the case with firearms or cutlery. The alarm buzzers were mounted not only in the penthouse office, lab, library and living quarters but also in the sub-basement garage and the waterfront warehouse/hangar, giving ample warning of impending trouble. The alarm ceased before the elevator arrived, to avoid tipping off the intruders that any warning had been given.
Radio transponders in the grips of the weaponry used by Doc and his Associates identified them as “friendly” to the detectors and kept them from setting off false alarms. Cat was such a frequent visitor to Doc’s Manhattan facilities that she had eventually wangled a transponder of her own, now sandwiched between the walnut grips of her six-shooter, which she carried with her everywhere.
The figure that appeared in the doorway, however, was far from menacing. It belonged to a small, willowy girl with shoulder-length blonde hair done up in “Victory Rolls” who couldn’t have been much over twenty years old, if that. She was dressed in an outdated gray ensemble consisting of a matching skirt, bolero jacket and veiled felt hat. Her features were delicate but remarkable: snub nose, full lips, high cheekbones. Her eyes were concealed not only by the veil but by a pair of dark glasses. In her arms she carried a long leather-covered case with intricate brass fittings. The case was over three feet long, four inches wide and three inches deep and she carried it diagonally across the front of her body, reminiscent of a soldier holding his rifle in the “Port Arms” position.
This, evidently, was what had set off the metal-detection alarm.
“Excuse me,” she ventured hesitantly in a soft, lilting voice. “I am looking for Doctor Mark Hazzard, Junior.” She gestured toward the raised bronze lettering and logo on the front of the open door through which she’d just entered:
Sham sheathed the blade of his swordstick and Trog slipped the SCAMP back into its holster as unobtrusively and nonchalantly as possible, grinning. Shorty also relaxed, taking his hands off the tabletop inlays. Cat, putting her revolver back into her handbag with obvious reluctance, continued to watch the blonde girl with undisguised suspicion.
“I’m afraid Doc is out at the moment,” began Sham, turning on the charm. “However, we are his Associates and confidants and I’m sure that, whatever your problem may be, we can at least get started toward its solution.”
The blonde girl pondered this for a moment, looking from one to another and clearly sizing them up: smooth operator, squat caveman, stringy beanpole, glamorous tomboy. She seemed to have taken as immediately a dislike for Cat as Cat had done for her. When she spoke again, her voice was apologetic but firm. “What I have to say to Doc Hazzard is for his ears alone. I shall leave this”—she shifted the brass-bound case smartly into an approximation of the “Present Arms” position—“by way of introduction. Tell him it belonged to his … advanced combat instructor. He will understand.”
She set the case down on the inlaid table with a smoothly graceful bowing motion and turned quickly to go. “I will return for it later,” she said over her shoulder.
“Wait!” called Trog, reaching after her with his long simian arms. “Hold up a minute and—oof!” As he stepped toward her, the soft-spoken girl pirouetted elegantly on one foot and drove the heel of the other into Trog’s midriff. He folded like a well-oiled jackknife as the girl stepped out the door without missing a beat. At almost the same time, the metal-detection buzzer went off again, indicating another elevator full of trouble on the way.
Cat yanked her revolver out of her handbag and sprinted after the girl, while Sham and Shorty blurred into action behind her. Sham unlocked his swordstick and sprang to Trog’s side, helping the chemist back on his feet. Shorty touched three ivory inlays, activating defensive mechanisms in the corridor, then vaulted the table and made for the door.
Cat caught up with the soft-spoken girl just as the elevator opened and disgorged a half-dozen armed men in freshly-pressed conservative dark-blue business suits, crisply-starched white shirts, narrow dark-blue silk ties and slate-gray fedoras. As soon as they saw the two girls, the men became wildly animated, shouting and brandishing their firearms. About that time, Shorty, Trog and Sham burst into the corridor and all Hell broke loose.
One of the intruders, apparently the leader, was armed with a Thompson sub-machine gun, which he swung up to cover Doc’s three Associates. As they continued to bear down on him, he squeezed the trigger while aiming at the ceiling, presumably to warn them off. To his surprise, the weapon refused to fire! The other five swung their automatic pistols up, aimed and squeezed the triggers with the same lack of effect.
The invaders’ firearms—along with Trog’s SCAMP and Cat’s revolver—had effectively been jammed by an electromagnetic device in the corridor, which Shorty had triggered from the inlaid table. This magnetized all mechanical weapons within range of device to such a degree that all of their moving parts were virtually frozen together by induced electromagnetic attraction. They were no longer capable of firing, reducing them to little more than oddly-shaped clubs.
Trog grabbed the barrel of the Tommy gun and yanked, jerking the man off his feet, then jabbed the butt into his face with enough force to and send him crashing backward into the wall. Swinging the gun like a baseball bat, he hit the next man so hard the stock broke off. Sham’s sword sang out of its sheath and nicked a third man on the ear en passant. The man slumped to the floor unconscious even before his hand had time to reflexively clutch at the wounded extremity. Shorty leaped through the air and wrapped his long arms and legs around the fourth attacker like a python strangling an antelope. Sham scored the fifth man’s hand with his drugged blade, disarming and anesthetizing him simultaneously.
Trog reached out a thick-fingered hairy hand and grabbed the last man by the face, all but ripping it off. The man clawed frantically to break the terrible grip while Trog brought the other hand down in a fist directly on top of his head like a mallet striking a tent stake, with a similar sound and effect.
Meanwhile, Cat found herself reaping the whirlwind. The small, willowy, meek-voiced girl seemed to turn into a tigress and Cat, no stranger to rough-and-tumble fisticuffs and jiu-jutsu herself, was almost immediately upended and slammed headfirst into the nearest wall.
Immediately, she grabbed the other girl’s ankles and jerked, in an attempt to return the disfavor. The girl performed a surprising three-quarter backward somersault with a half twist, landing solidly on both feet in a crouch instead of sprawling as Cat had intended, but she lost her veiled hat and blonde wig in the process, sending a fall of long straight silky black hair cascading all the way down her back.
Cat was off the floor in a second and the two came together with a feral feline snarl. Floor and ceiling changed places again, but this time Cat managed to stagger her opponent just as she herself was thrown. The girl’s dark glasses went flying as Cat landed inelegantly on her posterior.
“Blazes!” howled Trog, getting a clear look at the girl for the first time. “She’s a Jap!”
Cat lunged for the willowy Japanese girl, only to get smacked squarely in the nose with the outwardly thrusting heel of the girl’s upwardly cocked hand. The blow was potentially fatal, but it had been pulled at the last second, so all that Cat got was a bloodied nose and a brief encounter with oblivion. The girl ducked into the still-open elevator before anyone else could react, scooping up her fallen hat, wig and dark glasses as she went without breaking stride. Then the elevator doors slid shut behind her and she was gone.
“You’re all under arrest!” groaned the man from whom Trog had appropriated the now-broken Thompson. Raising himself weakly up on one elbow, he fumbled in his coat pocket and pulled out an official-looking black leather ID folder.
“I’m Special Agent Harrison of the FBI,” he gritted, flashing a badge. “And you four are hereby charged with aiding and abetting a fugitive, interfering with and assaulting Federal officers, harboring an enemy alien in wartime … and anything else I can think of by the time we get to court!”
Time seemed to stand still for several moments. Then:
“Don’t be too hasty, Agent Harrison.”
That statement was delivered calmly, in a deep resonant voice that was all the more impressive for its seeming restraint. It was like distant thunder, low-toned and subdued but possessing tremendous power.
The owner of the voice was equally impressive. He stood in the doorway to the office, filling it top to bottom and side to side, but he was so perfectly proportioned that his size was only made apparent by his close proximity to a such frame of reference. The impression he made was not so much of size or bulk as it was of sheer physical power. He exuded an animal vitality and magnetism so tangible as to be unnerving. In his presence, one felt as though there were a powerful spring was compressed to its limit within him and held in check only by the strength of his highly disciplined willpower, ready to be released instantly with explosive force. His hair was a coppery reddish-golden bronze only a shade or two darker than his deeply-tanned skin. His eyes were flake-gold, penetrating and magnetic. His face was a study in intellect, intense determination and virility. His stance was relaxed but poised, like a jungle cat that had learned to stand upright and wear clothes.
“Doc!” howled Trog, relieved. “You got here just in time, Doc! This mug and his pals are trying to railroad us!”
“Watch out with your accusations, monkey-boy!” flared Harrison, staggering to his feet. “We’ve got you dead to rights for assault, if nothing else.” Two of his men were still out from Sham’s drugged sword and a third was still prostrated from Trog’s clubbing. The other two, like Harrison, were just coming around. They retrieved their firearms, one or two futilely attempting to work the still-frozen mechanisms, before holstering them with expressions of extreme chagrin.
Doc ignored them all. He reached Cat’s side in three strides, bent down and used his white linen pocket handkerchief to staunch the flow of blood from her nose. Peeling back her right eyelid with his left thumb and forefinger, he checked her oculomotor reflex with light reflected from the domed cabochon-cut tiger’s-eye link on his right shirt cuff, then took her pulse by sliding his left thumb down to the right side of her neck and pressing it against the external carotid artery.
“This should dispose of your complaint, Harrison,” Doc remarked absently as he worked. He took an ID folder remarkably similar to Harrison’s own and tossed it offhandedly to the FBI man. “Is that sufficient? Or will I have to get the Director on the phone to convince you?”
Harrison’s manner changed abruptly as he scanned the contents of the folder. “No, sir, this is, ah, quite sufficient.”
Doc scooped Cat up with one arm cradling her head and the other under her knees and started to carry her into the office. “Trog, administer an antidote to Harrison’s drugged men and check the other for concussion or possible skull fracture. Harrison, you come with me.”
Doc crossed the office, stopping at the inlaid table briefly and pressed one knee up against the underside to deactivate the defense mechanisms and reset the control inlays. Walking quickly but seemingly without haste, he seemed to glide through the library and across the lab, where he laid Cat gently down onto the surgical table. Only then did he turn to address Harrison.
“Report!” he ordered softly, retrieving his ID folder. “What’s going on here?”
Harrison looked uncomfortable. “My team is assigned to trace fugitive enemy aliens within the jurisdiction of the New York City field office,” he explained briskly. “Four days ago, Army elements in Military Area Number One began rounding up Japanese-related residents of California, Oregon and Washington pursuant to Executive Order 9066 and the subsequent Civilian Exclusion Orders. There was some kind of disturbance during the operation in Santa Barbara, following which the FBI received a nationwide APB for two fugitives, a sixty-year-old Japanese man named Shiro Koroshi and his twenty-year-old Japanese-American daughter Yuriko, who’d allegedly been involved in the incident and subsequently fled the scene.”
Harrison paused, perplexed. A strange trilling sound has suddenly filled the room, seeming to come from everywhere at once. The moment that he paused to try and locate the source, the trilling stopped. He shook his head in consternation, took a deep breath and continued.
“Yesterday, a sharp-eyed porter on the Twentieth Century Limited express train inbound from the LaSalle Street Station in Chicago to Grand Central Terminal in New York spotted a Oriental girl passing herself off as a Polack with a blonde wig and dark glasses—caught her rubbing her eyes as he was passing in the corridor outside her sleeper compartment or something. In any case, he reported her to the conductor, who alerted my office. Unfortunately, the conductor tried to apprehend her himself as she was debarking and got his left arm dislocated by some sort of jiu-jutsu trick. By the time we could move in from our surveillance positions, she was long gone.” Harrison shook his head in disgust.
While Harrison had been speaking, Doc had been far from idle. He’d briskly washed his hands with medicinal soap and water, dipped them in alcohol, dried them with disposable paper towel from a foot-pedal operated dispenser and run them under a powerful ultraviolet “black light” lamp. Holding them upright to reduce the chance of contamination, he used one elbow to operate the lid release of an autoclave containing surgical instruments, gauze and rubber gloves. He donned the gloves, snapping them in place for an airtight fit, collected several sheets of gauze and began working on Cat’s now spectacularly swollen and misshapen nose.
“The conductor was admitted to Bellevue, where we conducted a follow-up interview that yielded no significant new information,” Harrison concluded his report. “We put her description out to the local police and taxi fleets and, about an hour ago, a hack checked in to report that he’d dropped her off a woman matching that description at the Empire State Building. I assembled a squad at our downtown field office and rushed over here, learned that she’d run up to your floor and came in like Gangbusters just as she was leaving.” In marked contrast to this dispassionate recitation of facts, Harrison suddenly glared angrily. “Then your gang jumped us!”
“A case of mistaken identity,” said Doc dryly. Cat moaned slightly as he adjusted her nasal cartilage with rubber-gloved fingers, producing a crackling sound disturbing like someone cracking their knuckles. “Charging into this place with drawn guns is not a good idea, as you and your men just found out.” Cat, still only partly conscious, gave a feral howl as something in the back of her nose popped into place with a sensation like a firecracker going off right between her eyes. Doc finished the operation with a small grunt of satisfaction and looked up. “By the way, who exactly are these fugitives you want so badly and why are they so badly wanted?”
Harrison frowned. “That’s the really screwy part of this mess,” he said bitterly, “We don’t really know! All we got was two Japanese fugitives, an old man and his daughter, who broke away from a Jap roundup in Santa Barbara during some kind of riot or disturbance. I heard a rumor that two dozen Army Joes were killed, but couldn’t even get either a confirmation or a denial. Somebody’s put a lid on whatever happened, probably the Army itself.”
“Descriptions?” Doc charged a syringe from a vial filled with liquid the color and consistency of maple syrup, which he then injected into both sides of Cat’s newly restored nasal cartilage. He did this with such speed, precision and gentleness that Cat hardly noticed, although she suddenly became aware of a faint brewery smell, although thankfully that faded away within a few minutes.
“The old man’s Japanese, about sixty, white hair and balding, stoop-shouldered or slightly hunchbacked, about four-eleven and one-ten, extremely agile for his age and physique, last seen wearing a light brown gabardine suit. The girl’s Japanese-American, about twenty, long black hair, very tan, moves like a dancer, about five-two and one-twenty-five, last seen in a blue-and-white gingham print dress with white ruffles. They disappeared with all their belongings, which were never fully itemized but noted as containing a lot of easily portable Japanese antiques and curios.”
“And our recent visitor?” Doc took a length of surgical rubber tubing and cut off two half-inch lengths, which he then dipped in alcohol, ran under the black light and popped into the autoclave. He took a pair of forceps out of the autoclave, used them to pick a cotton ball out of a large covered glass beaker and uncorked an amber glass bottle of clove oil, with which he sprinkled the cotton until it turned yellow. Using a second pair of forceps, he inserted one of the lengths of rubber tubing into the oil-soaked cotton and then inserted it into Cat’s right nostril. He repeated the procedure with Cat’s left nostril, looking for all the world like a cross between an alchemist and a juggler.
“She was traveling under the alias ‘Eureka Kurowski’ and purported to be a Polish-American from the Berwyn Township in Cook County, Illinois. She boarded the 20th Century Limited in Chicago with a matching charcoal-gray Samsonite suitcase and overnight bag and that funny-looking brass-bound leather case—”
“I’ll be taking charge of that,” Doc interjected firmly. Harrison didn’t argue.
“I’ll grant that most of the evidence is circumstantial, but I have no doubt that Yuriko Koroshi and Eureka Kurowski are one and same person,” Harrison summed up. “Beyond that, I’ve got zilch! No clue how she might’ve gotten from Santa Barbara to Chicago, no explanation for what happened out West or why she traveled all the way across the continent to give that case, much less what might have become of the old man.”
“There’s certainly been a few mix-ups,” agreed Doc. “My Associates and I will be taking over this case. Your men should have recovered by now, unless Trog slugged that one fellow too hard. If so, take him to this address”—Doc handed him a card—“and give this card to the doctor. He’s retired from public practice, but he’s still one of the best GPs in the world and was, in fact, one of my mentors back when.”
Harrison eyes the card dubiously. “Yeah, uh, thanks.” He hesitated, then said, “Look, Hazzard, you’ve got a good rep and all that, but are you sure about those guys of yours? They seems way too, ah, zealous. The way they came at me and my boys, like rabid dogs chowing down on a side of beef, especially that ape guy…” He shook his head and shuddered. “And that Jap girl seemed pretty chummy with them when she was leaving.”
“Let me put it this way,” Doc elaborated calmly. “Lieutenant Colonel Playfair is an industrial chemist working on a synthetic gasoline substitute for our warplanes. Brigadier General Cruiks is an attorney specializing in international law working out a trade agreement that would allow certain neutral countries to supply us raw materials without jeopardizing their neutrality. Professor Longfellow is one of the men who helped crack the Japanese “Purple” diplomatic code. My cousin Cathryn Hazzard almost got herself killed just now. More to the point, all three of those men are also my deputies.” He paused. “Does that answer your question?”
“Uh, yeah!” Harrison turned quickly and left, sensing a firm dismissal. Throughout this exchange, Doc had been completing Cat’s treatment. From a collection of duralumin plates, he selected a round-cornered equilateral triangle two inches on each side, pressed it flat up against the thumb of one hand and then wrapped them in his other hand to bend two corners of the triangle around, forming a shell approximating the contours of a human nose. Coating the inside of the shell with bone glue, he padded it with sterile gauze and eased it over the bridge of Cat’s purpling swollen snout, adjusting as necessary until it was a perfect fit, then securing it with lateral strips of surgical tape.
Cat began coming fully back to her senses just about the time Doc began stripping off his gloves and returning them to the autoclave. Her eyes refused to focus at first, then locked spontaneously on Doc’s.
“Wha’ hi’ me?” she asked weakly, sounding like she had a bad head cold. She tried to smile and failed miserably.
“A demure young lady visitor,” Doc told her amiably, “almost rearranged your face with perfectly executed—and purposefully uncompleted—bisen kyusho atemi-waza strike to the septum. An eighth of an inch higher and you’d have a nose like Trog’s.” Cat nodded, reading the unspoken comment in his eyes: a few ounces more pressure on such a blow would have been fatal.
“Supermalagorgeous!” exulted Shorty excitedly as he entered the lab with the brass-bound case, still examining it with his monocle magnifier. “An ultra-esthetic artifacture of superlatively exactitudinal contrivance!” he added breathlessly.
“We know it’s well-built!” Sham huffed impatiently. “But what’s in it?”
“It’s a sword,” Doc offered absently. He reached into a glass case full of bottles and pulled out one containing a reddish-brown liquid. He poured a few ounces into a beaker and gave it to Cat. “This should fix you right up.”
“Hold on, Doc!” objected Trog. “How do you know there’s a sword in there?”
Doc didn’t answer. Taking the case from Shorty with almost the same air of formality as the girl who’d left it, he set it on a nearby porcelain countertop and with obviously familiarity sprang the intricate brass fittings that held it closed. The case seemed to split in two lengthwise and fly apart of its own accord.
On a bed of crushed red velvet lay a Japanese Samurai sword. The scabbard was lacquered a glossy black with a delicate tracery of blue and silver entwining its length. The hilt was braided in black silk over sharkskin, with silver menuki hilt ornaments in the form of stylized chrysanthemums beneath the braiding. The silver tsuba, or sword guard, repeated the chrysanthemum motif. A kozuka, a tiny throwing knife, was incorporated in the scabbard, its hilt also wrapped in braided blue silk with a silver chrysanthemum crest.
“I’ll be superamalgamated!” breathed Shorty. “It’s a katana, a Samurai backsword.” In his excitement, Shorty forgot to use long words. “It must be at least two hundred years old. I’d place it in the Yoshimune shogunate … or perhaps even earlier, in the reign of Tokugawa Iyeyasu.”
“More likely Toyotomi Hideyoshi,” offered Doc. “The blade was forged during the Sengoku ‘Warring States’ period by Sengo Muramasa for the Taira general Oda Nobunaga, who never lived to use it. The original sword was broken up when its next owner, a man named Kagehiro, was forced to commit seppuku ritual suicide for treason. The blade was given to the spy who had exposed the traitor before he could act, a Shinobi mercenary known only as … Koroshi.”
“‘Koroshi’?” Shorty snorted at that. “Well, I’ll be superamalgamated! Depending on which Japanese characters are used to write it, that name could be written and read as Ko-roshi—‘Child-Teacher’—or Koro-shi—‘Murder’!” He shook his head and chuckled softly. “I take it that this Koroshi fellow was a professional assassin, then? One of the so-called ‘Invisibles’?”
“Among other things, yes,” agreed Doc. “The Koroshi clan was among the elite of the Shinobi mercenaries. They hired themselves out as assassins, bodyguards, spies, counter-spies, troubleshooters, military consultants, just about anything involving stealth and deception, you name it and they probably did it. They were some of the finest fighters in the world, raised from earliest childhood to be the strongest, fastest and fiercest there were.”
“Jove!” exclaimed Sham. “It sounds like these Shinobi were brought up the same way you were, Doc. Think of it! Japanese supermen … perhaps even an army of supermen!”
“Thankfully, there aren’t any more Japanese fighters like that left in the world.” Shorty was so caught up in the heat of the moment that he still using short words. “All of the Shinobi clans died out over half a century ago, well before Japan began its imperialist expansion. They were all destroyed when Emperor Meiji outlawed traditional ‘evil customs’ in 1877.”
“Not quite.” Doc took the sheathed sword out the case and held it up reverently. “The Koroshi clan survived the Meiji Restoration. Asano Koroshi, the last of the Shinobi masters, became a secret advisor to the Emperor in exchange for amnesty and his clan’s help in wiping out all of the other mercenary clans—a daring act of stealth and deception. The Muramasa sword was reconstituted in its present form, with the kikkamonsho chrysanthemum crest signifying Imperial service emblazoned in the Koroshi colors: blue, black and silver. Asano’s twin sons, Shiro and Shigeta, were born in 1880 and raised in the deadly art. Shiro, as the elder son, inherited the Sword of Koroshi.”
“This isn’t making any sense!” protested Trog. “How does a twenty-year-old Jap girl come to bring us with a two-hundred-year old sword? And why?”
“Yuriko Koroshi is no more a ‘Jap’ than you are, Trog,” replied Doc sternly. He replaced the sword in its case and locked it shut. “She is a Nisei, a second-generation Japanese-American and, as such, an American citizen by birth. She brought me her father’s sword as a calling card … and a call for help.”
“Then you overheard our conversation with her?” asked Sham.
“Not exactly. I came up in our private express elevator just as she was leaving in one of the regular elevators. But once I heard Harrison’s descriptions and realized who she was, everything else fell into place.” Doc’s private elevator provided direct high-speed service from his penthouse office to the main lobby and sub-basement garage. It was a pneumatic job similar to the shuttle tube and, like it, only accessible to Doc and his crew.
“So our mystery girl is part of this hired-killer Koroshi clan?” put in Trog. “No wonder she mopped up the floor with Cat and me! She’s been trained to be one of those superhuman whatchamacallits!”
“Shinobi, yes.” Doc nodded. “Shiro became disenchanted with his life in Japan. His father Asano wanted him to succeed him as head of the clan but, while studying the clan’s traditional lore on poisons and their antidotes, he had become more interested in medicine. When Asano finally died in 1915, he divorced his Japanese wife—it had been a traditional arranged marriage, in which he’d had no say—and emigrated to America, eventually settling down in Santa Barbara, California, where he became a prominent innovator in the field of neurosurgery. He was one of my mentors, in both neurosurgery and what he liked to call ‘advanced combat instruction.’” Doc smiled briefly at the memory, then frowned.
“Unfortunately,” he continued sadly, “after a few decades of failing to get recognition and acceptance that he deserved in this country, he began to become bitter and reclusive. Despite his many medical contributions, he was denied American citizenship due to the 1924 Alien Exclusion Act. As if that weren’t enough, his Japanese-American second wife was killed during the 1930 California race riots, which ironically enough were initially anti-Filipino, not anti-Japanese. His daughter Yuriko, who is also studying medicine, is his only living relation here in America.”
“This is all leading up to something,” mused Sham in his best courtroom manner. “This man Shiro is a master of military arts, notably assassination and unarmed combat. He came to America to get away from all that, but has become embittered by his inability to achieve the American Dream. Now, apparently, with the Japanese Internment going into effect, he’s wanted by the FBI as an enemy alien … and his daughter turns up here and lays his antique sword on our doorstep as a calling card!”
“Obviously,” he concluded, “Shiro and Yuriko Koroshi think that you have some kind of obligation toward them beyond just you having been Shiro’s student. The question is: what?”
“There must be more to it than that!” Cat put in fiercely, wincing as her nose gave her a twinge. “If she came to us for help, why did I almost get my face caved in? Doc, what exactly are we involved in here?”
“The only thing you’re involved in,” Doc chided sharply, “is in celebrating what’s left of your birthday.” Turning to the others, he added, “Brothers, I’m afraid this is one problem where you can’t help me, either. I’d appreciate it if you would accompany Cat back to her place and forget everything that happened here today.”
Before they could protest, Doc had turned and glided from the room. The men stood frozen in their tracks, stunned by his abrupt rejection. Even Sham was stricken speechless, reduced to open-mouthed staring.
“Well!” said Cat, at last. “What do you guys make of that?”
None of them had any answer.
Doc Hazzard sat immobile behind the inlaid Oriental table that served as his office desk, looking for all the whole like a heroic sculpture cast in bronze.
He didn’t stir from his chair until he heard Cat and his Associates file out of the lab into the central corridor and the private elevator car drop away. Rising as smoothly as if on oiled bearings, he quietly but swiftly circumnavigated his penthouse headquarters. Satisfied that he was indeed alone now, he went to the antique Wells-Fargo safe in the corner of his office. Opening it with a few deft turns, he reverently laid the Sword of Koroshi inside. Then, hesitantly, he removed a large brown leather-bound scrapbook that bore the Hazzard family coat of arms in the middle of the cover, beneath which was embossed with a name in gold leaf above a small escutcheon of the British Baronetcy Badge of Ulster—in escutcheon Argent, a sinister hand couped at the wrist and erect Gules, surmounted by an Imperial Crown proper, encircled with a wreath of roses, shamrocks and thistles combined Or on a field of Azure—wrought in gold, silver, carnelian and lapis:
Doc opened the scrapbook and leafed through the pages with a faraway look, as if the faded images within brought back memories that had lain dormant for decades. Inside the cover was a map of Andros Island in the Bahamas with a red ⊗ laid at a point off the north cove: 25° 11′ North latitude × 78° 02′ West longitude. On the facing page was a picture of a three-masted schooner, its name clearly visible on the bow: Orion. Below it, a stunningly lovely young woman proudly displayed her new-born baby, bundled in a canvas sail. She bore a striking resemblance to Doc’s cousin Cat, though she lacked Cat’s tomboy fire, and had thick mane of hair as black as a raven’s wing, gathered into a high flowing ponytail loosely braided with bright ribbons and ornaments, and equally dark doe eyes.
The subsequent pictures were of Doc at various stages in his life: diving in the South Seas, on safari in the African jungles, working in the laboratory, flying various aircraft, climbing mountains, performing Olympic gymnastics, practicing with weapons ranging from a Berber assegai spear to a swept-hilted Pappenheimer rapier to a .303 Short-Magazine Lee-Enfield Mark III rifle with a Hesketh-Prichard 20x50 telescopic sight, lifting weights, performing surgery, studying in a library amid stacks of books, standing before a geodesic dome made of cobalt-blue metallic glass deep in the Arctic. Doc passed over all but two of the pictures and, although he gazed at them intently, his eyes focused well beyond them without really seeing them.
One showed Doc as a boy of ten dressed in something resembling a pair of black canvas pajamas. Standing next to him was a stoop-shouldered Japanese man in similar garb whose height almost matched that of the young Doc. The next picture showed a 25-year-old Doc in a white intern’s coat. Standing with him was his father and the little hunched-over Japanese man, who had his arms around a young woman in a kimono holding up a five-year-old girl, also in traditional Japanese dress. The woman, many years younger than the man, closely resembled the girl who had brought Doc the Sword of Koroshi.
Closing the scrapbook, Doc once again seemed to freeze into a bronze statue as he stared off into space. From somewhere deep in his throat came a trilling throb, like the purr of a giant cat combined with the hum of wind in the wires. It was a sound Doc made less and less often lately, an unconscious habit he had picked up in Tibet years before. It indicated profound revelation or deep and total concentration.
Arriving at a decision, Doc went from total immobility to smoothly coordinated action with a suddenness that would have startled any witness. Placing the scrapbook back into the safe and locking it, he crossed to the bank of telephones and picked up the receiver of an Automatic Electric long-distance rotary phone, which used Stowger automatic stepping switches to allow users to connect their own calls without operator assistance. He dialed the requisite 11-digit number—a 1 to engage the long-distance service, a 3-digit regional Central Office Code, a 2-digit municipal Exchange Code and finally a standard 5-digit subscriber number—entirely from memory.
“United States Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Office of the Director,” replied a crisp officious voice. “How may I direct your call?”
“Special Deputy U.S. Marshal 4153, for the Director,” Doc stated with equal officiousness. “Priority communication, closed-circuit and scrambled. Authorization: United States Code, Title 28, Chapter 33, Part II, Section 561, Paragraph 1933d.”
“One moment, sir!” There followed a long pause, then a rapid series of bleeps, clicks, tweets and chirps began droning in the background like a chorus of angry crickets. “Circuit sealed and scrambled, sir. The Director will speak with you presently.”
Thirty seconds went by before a deep, husky voice said, “Hazzard? What have you got? Not about that Manhattan Engineer District business, I hope!”
“No, John, this is personal,” said Doc evenly. “You’ll probably hear part of the story from one of your field men, Special Agent Harrison.”
“Harrison!” gasped the voice. “He’s supposed to be taking care of those fugitives from that, ah, West Coast Japanese internment business.”
“So I heard,” replied Doc dryly. “Look, John, this is no time to play games with me. I’m up to my neck in something and I don’t know quite what it is. I think you do or, if not, you know who does.” Doc paused, then said “I’ll find out eventually, one way or another.”
The other man sighed. “Alright, Doc. What do you want to know?”
“I want to know what happened in California that’s gotten everyone so worked up.” Doc’s voice suddenly became stern. “And I’d also like to know everything you’ve got on Doctor Koroshi.”
Cat Hazzard was fuming even before Doc’s passenger pneumatic tube car was on its way to the sub-basement garage. The sensation of dropping ninety stories before the pneumatic decelerator crushingly kicked in did nothing to improve her outlook.
“Perceptible radiations of hyper-acute dissatisfaction super-emanate,” remarked Shorty, polishing his monocle magnifier on his coattail. “Sublimation of discomposed sensibilities in companionable divertissement may disseminate alleviation.”
“Yes, I’m really steamed and, yes, venting would probably help,” sighed Cat, stepping out of the car. “You’re probably right, but I just can’t let things go that easily. Doc’s into something so ominous he’s even afraid to let you in on it! We’ve got to help him, even if he doesn’t want it.”
“You heard Doc,” gritted Trog. “He told us to forget anything happened. He’s got a line on something, or he wouldn’t have said that. All we’d accomplish by disobeying his orders is to get in his way.” He paused, then added tactlessly, “I’d think you’d’ve learned that by now!”
“Normally,” observed Sham, “I’d disagree with ape-shape here on general principles, since he usually talks like a chemist, which is to say that he’s full of empty retorts. But this time the poor benighted fool has unknowingly uttered Truth. So let’s go over to your place, see all the nice presents we’ve gotten you and do exactly as Doc said, hmm?”
“Besides,” Trog interjected, “what can we do? We haven’t got a clue as to what’s going on or even where to begin.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” mused Shorty. His use of short words surprised the others almost as much as what he had to say. “Back when our uninvited visitors first tripped the metal detector alarms, I activated three defense devices: the gun-jammer in the central corridor, a second gun-jammer in the reception room … and the tracer fog in the designated elevator cars!”
Shorty was referring to a device in the ceiling of the elevator car which released an invisible chemical fog. This settled over the occupants and was absorbed by their skin and clothing, after which it evaporated continuously for several hours due to their body heat, only to condense on anything in their proximity until the last of the fog had worn off of them. The stuff was completely odorless and invisible until illuminated by ultraviolet “black” light, at which time it glowed a fiery electric blue. In effect, it left a trail of glowing blue particles on the ground wherever those dosed with it walked and on anything with which they came into contact. If they got into an enclosed vehicle, enough of the tracer fog generally leaked out to supply a trail to follow.
“William Archer Longfellow, I love you!” exclaimed Cat. “With that stuff on her, we can follow her anywhere she goes.”
“At least,” added Sham, “for the next few hours we can.”
“I dunno,” Trog shook his head. “Doc told us to stay out of it. I ain’t sure about this, especially since the shyster here started agreeing with me, but what I said before still goes. Doc’s never steered us wrong before.”
Cat’s eyes narrowed dangerously, then she smiled sweetly. “Well, then, you boys do what you want,” she said airily. “As I recall, there’s very little difference between the black-light projectors you use and the ultraviolet sunlamps that Long Shot built for my salon…”
“Fer cryin’ out loud!” bellowed Trog. “Play nice for once, Cat! You know darn well we can’t let you—”
“You can’t stop me, ” Cat grinned, silencing Trog with fingers to his lips. “But I don’t see why you can’t come along to see that I don’t get into trouble.”
“That’s blackmail!” protested Sham.
“That’s right,” agreed Cat. “Are you coming with me or not?”
“We capitulate provisionally and disinclinationally,” sighed Shorty. Trog and Sham grudgingly added their own assent.
“Great!” said Cat, a note of menace creeping into her voice. “The next time we meet that Oriental hellcat, I’ll be ready for her!”
As she strode determinedly toward the parking spaces, Cat did not notice the three men behind her look first at each other, then toward Heaven.
Corporal John Bellman paced nervously back and forth. This served to relieve some of his tension, but only reinforced his apprehension by underscoring the small size of the cell.
“Relax, John,” rumbled Samson Stonebender. He turned over on the bunk, causing it to groan in protest. “Everything’s gonna be fine.”
“Fine!” Bellman snarled. “We’ve been attacked by something so fantastic it hasn’t got a name, seen over two-thirds of our men killed and the rest reduced to screaming lunacy, lost a couple of hours out of our lives—”
“You lost the two hours, John,” objected Samson. “I was attacked by transparent green things that nobody else could see.” The giant shuddered, eliciting another protest from his overloaded bunk.
“Alright,” sighed Bellman, “so everyone experienced something different. We all went temporarily insane, but most of us eventually recovered. That’s bad enough. But the Big Brass are acting as though we somehow had something to do with it!”
Stonebender shrugged, sending yet another tremble through the bunk’s frame. “It’s like you said, John. Something real screwy’s going on. All we really know for sure is that those two Japs you talked to disappeared at the same time we got hit by … whatever it was … and that none of the Japs we were rounding up were affected. That’s pretty scary, when you consider that the Japs’ve had it their own way since Pearl Harbor!” He blinked as a uncomfortable thought suddenly struck him. “Maybe the Brass are scared, too!”
“How many times do I have to tell you, Sam, those poor folks out there are not ‘Japs’! ” Bellman sat down on the stool that was their only furniture other than the bunks and a small table the size of a nightstand. “They’re fellows Americans, some of them native-born, with the full citizenship that goes with that, just like it does for you and me. We’re all getting a raw deal because of this War. Everyone’s so fired up about Pearl that they’ve forgotten who the real enemy is!”
“Look, John, I know how you feel, but I also know what I saw.” The giant shook his head uneasily. “At least, I think I do. All I know for sure is that those horrible green hobgoblins I saw and those two hours you lost and all the other fantastic stuff that happened was on purpose. If it’s a Jap weapon, then it figures that maybe they somehow worked it so that Japs are immune to it, right? It hit all of us whites hard, killed most of us and left the others mixed up in the head, but those yellow-skinned ‘Americans’ of yours didn’t get so much as a headache!”
“Alright, then,” replied Bellman. “What if this thing is a Japanese-made weapon? And what if it doesn’t affect those of Japanese blood? Suppose the Nazis developed something that only affects those who aren’t Aryans—whatever that actually means? That wouldn’t mean that ‘Aryans’ who weren’t Nazis were enemies because the weapon didn’t affect them. It would only mean they had enough Aryan blood to be immune to this hypothetical whatever-it-is.”
“Why do you keep pushing it, John?”
“Because it’s important, Sam! Listen, if all this is true, if Japan has a weapon that only affects those who aren’t Japanese, then Japanese-Americans may be our only defense against it! Look, if they’re immune and we’re not, then they should be the ones carrying the guns and rounding us up for own safety, not the other way around.”
“Boy howdy, John!” the giant grumbled, scratching his head. “You sure know how to turn things around on a guy. But ain’t you kinda spinning your wheels? I mean, from where I’m sitting, it doesn’t look as if anyone else’s thinking that way.”
“Yeah,” agreed Bellman dismally. “That’s what has me so worried!”
The luminous fog trail seemed to cover half of midtown Manhattan and ended abruptly in a dead-end alley in Chinatown sometime around midnight.
After leaving Doc’s Eightieth Floor headquarters, Cat and her still hesitant escorts headed for Trog’s penthouse suite, consisting of two of the six apartments that took up the top five floors of the twenty-story Earle & Calhoun co-op apartment building at 55 Central Park West. It had apartments ranging from three to nine rooms each, the largest of which had four bedrooms, and featured a dropped living room developed by Victor Earle and his brother Guyon that was nearly entirely open to the entrance gallery, which had traditionally been held as a separate room. The modernistic Art Deco exterior of the building was also somewhat non-traditional, with rakish fluted finials and winged setbacks around a centrally-placed decorative tower that concealed the building’s rooftop water tank. As the brick facade rose upward from the foundation, it changed shade from a deep purplish-red brown to a yellowish-white tan, shading through forty different hues of earth tones in the process.
Trog occupied two adjoining units, 19F and 20F, which together formed a forty-five-hundred-square-foot penthouse with eleven-foot ceilings, two functioning fireplaces and a thousand-square-foot terrace. In addition to the spacious entrance galleries, two dropped living rooms (one of which had been turned into an impressively extensive library), a kitchen, a dining room, two bathrooms, two master bedroom and two guest rooms, Trog’s suite also contained a complete chemical laboratory and a small stockpile of gadgets designed by Doc specifically for his Associates. Cat, Trog and Sham had come here for these items so as not to alert Doc to the fact that they were pursuing the fugitive Koroshi girl behind his back. Sham kept a similar stockpile in his apartment in the Waldorf Towers, but Trog had co-invented the chemical tracer fog and felt that it was only right and proper to get it from his place. “Besides,” he added with a wide toothy grin, “I don’t think that any of those snobs at the Waldorf Towers would be happy to see the three of us back there together any time soon!”
Inside the door, they were greeted by an unusual looking animal. Vaguely resembling a pig, the beast had long spindly legs and oversized ears and displayed a marked affection for the group except for Sham, whom it regarded with an equally marked antipathy.
“Curb your hog,” gritted the dapper lawyer, casually dislodging the creature’s snarling snout from his pants cuff with a single sharp whack with the tip of his swordstick, “unless you want fresh bacon!”
“Don’t pay any attention to the namby-pamby ambulance chaser, Corpus,” cooed Trog, scooping his porcine pet up protectively in his huge hairy hands. “He’s just mad ’cause he had to leave that pet what’s-it of his penned up in his apartment with old prune-faced Jeeves when we took Cat to lunch.”
The pig, Corpus Delicious by name, grunted happily. Like their owners, Trog’s pet Arabian razorback and Sham’s pet Amazon Black Howler monkey Alchemy, which bore a startling resemblance in both general appearance and mannerisms to Trog, generally displayed all the mutual affection of a cobra and a mongoose. For their part, Trog and Sham professed the same if not greater disdain for each other’s pets as they did for one another. This four-way Mutual Depreciation Society wasn’t helped by the fact that Trog had encouraged his porcine pal to develop a taste if not a hearty appetite for Sham’s swordstick and expensive wardrobe, which led to Corpus gnawing and chewing on them with abandon whenever possible. Sham had retaliated by dressing his two-foot, forty-pound simian sidekick up in child-sized versions of Trog’s everyday attire, right down to the unsightly green porkpie hat.
“You’re not thinking of taking that thing along, are you?” groaned Sham.
“Why not?” Trog hooted in a manner worthy of the aforementioned Howler monkey. “Just ’cause it’s too far out of our way to pick up that spoiled simian simp of yours is no reason to leave my little buddy Corpus behind.”
“Excuse me for interrupting,” Cat burst in impatiently, “but we came here to pick up a black-light projector and goggles, not to argue over pet peeves!”
“Indisputable veracity,” agreed Shorty. “Precipitant celerity being prerequisite, auto-assistance is ultra-indicative.” So saying, he went to the storage closet and began removing the apparatus they sought.
“Yeah, well, I got some other fish to fry!” Trog reached onto his hip pocket and withdrew what looked like an antique pocket watch with a hinged cover, decorated with a dime-sized domed cabochon crystal. Trog hefted the thing in his palm like a man evaluating a newly-unearthed treasure.
“This should make the searching a little easier,” he said, heading for a small, curtained-off alcove at the far end of the lab. “I’ll just be a moment—”
“What’s he up to?” Cat asked Sham, who had suddenly developed a sour expression.
“Pulling a rabbit out of his hat,” replied Sham dismally. “For once, the Darwinian derelict did something right!”
“You guys are starting to get on my nerves with this evasion game,” Cat muttered ominously. “Just what has Trog got?”
“Pictures of our wayward quarry,” sighed Sham, pulling a device identical to Trog’s from his vest pocket. “What’s galling to me is that he thought of it and I didn’t.”
“Supermalagorgeous!” Shorty exulted. “An ultra-miniaturized photographic mechanism of manumetrical dimensions.”
“Trog and I both had them,” explained Sham. “Doc designed them for espionage and similar undercover work and we were given them for field-testing. Unlike the VEF 9.2mm Minox, the current darling of the spy crowd, Doc’s new subminiature camera can be operated with one hand and, because it looks so much like a pocket watch, it can even be displayed openly without attracting attention. Trog must’ve snapped a few pictures of the girl with on hand while he was reaching for her with the other … just before she kicked him onto his keister!” He could help smirking over that.
“Beautiful!” breathed Cat. “Now maybe we’ll have got something more than vague descriptions when we go looking for her!”
A few minutes later, Trog appeared with the photographs, still wet from the developer. There were three: two taken before the girl had decked him and one taken in that shock-frozen moment after Cat had dislodged her disguise.
Both night and rain had fallen by the time they reached the street. The rainstorm, the first of Manhattan’s famed April showers, swept across the streets with driving force. The group piled hastily into the car they’d taken from Doc’s sub-basement garage, a three-year-old Lincoln-Zephyr V-12 sedan equipped with bulletproof glass and chassis, now powered by a Lycoming aircraft engine. Cat, remembering how she’d just blown her own gasoline ration for the Duration, felt a twinge of envy every time the car’s “X” Unlimited gasoline ration sticker caught her eye.
The rain forestalled an argument over who would drive, a situation which usually occurred anytime Cat joined Doc’s crowd when Doc himself was absent. This time, Trog and Sham almost tripped over each other trying to open the car door for Cat. So Cat ended up in the driver’s seat with Shorty on her left with the ultraviolet projector. Trog and Sham piled into the back while Shorty mounted the black-light on the dashboard.
Trog’s suite at 55 Central Park West was nearly three miles from Doc’s skyscraper penthouse: five blocks down the West Central Park Driveway to Seventh Avenue, nineteen blocks south down West Fortieth Street, two blocks east to Fifth Avenue and seven blocks south to the Empire State Building. It had taken Trog, no conservative driver himself, almost five minutes to drive them uptown from the Empire State Building’s sub-basement garage to the basement garage below 55 Central Park West. Cat drove them back in two.
The car took the corner at Thirty-Fourth Street on two wheels, made an illegal U-turn halfway up the block, sending up a rooster-tail of dirty water, and sloshed to a halt at the Empire State Building’s main entrance, breaking six different city driving ordinances in the process. Fortunately, the car was equipped with a set of Doc’s priority-exemption license plates. Shorty reswallowed his heart and adjusted the black-light goggles over his eyes, sneaking a glance at Trog and Sham in the rear-view mirror. Neither appeared unduly alarmed, but then both had just flown with Cat earlier that afternoon.
Shorty reached over and switched on the black-light projector. To the others, nothing seemed to happen. But from Shorty’s point of view, a soft blue glow seemed to light up the rain-drenched street, penetrating mist and drizzle as if it weren’t there. The goggles registered everything in stark contrast, like an overdeveloped black-and-white photograph.
“Negative indications with regard to phosphorescent phenomena,” he reported.
“Let’s try around the block,” said Trog, reaching for another set of goggles. Cat made another illegal U-turn, heading west toward Sixth Avenue, but before she could turn left to check the west end of the Building, Trog let out a yell rivaling a foghorn in volume.
“Got it!” yelled Trog. Although the street remained dark to the ungoggled observer, the view through the goggles changed dramatically. “She exited on the west side, walked north up Sixth and then turned left, heading west along the south side of Thirty-Fourth Street!”
From the large revolving glass doors halfway down the block, a strip of electric-blue phosphorescence stretched toward the intersection of Sixth Avenue and Thirty-Fourth Street, like the trail of a giant snail rendered in luminous paint, then made a right-angle turn down Thirty-Fourth Street. Wherever the tracer-fogged subject went, the condensation of the constantly-evaporating gas left such a trail. The stuff was not water-soluble, so the rain didn’t affect it. Only when the stuff was full dispersed would it finally become undetectable.
“Give me a pair of those goggles!” Cat demanded sharply.
“You can’t drive and ride shotgun both at the same time,” observed Sham. “You drive and we’ll navigate … it’s safer!”
Cat started to reply, then clamped her teeth together. Sham was right. She gunned the engine and headed west up Thirty-Fourth Street as fast as was safe in the rain and gloom. “So navigate!” she snapped.
“Keep going!” urged Trog. “The trail runs in a beeline up the street … and then disappears at Broadway!”
The trail didn’t exactly disappear. Near the intersection of Thirty-Fourth Street and Broadway, just west of Sixth Avenue, it zigzagged into Macy’s Herald Square. Trog ran in and went straight to the floorwalker. Flashing his Army Reserve ID showing him to be a Lieutenant Colonel, insinuated that he was with the G-2 Army Counter-Intelligence Corps and showed the better of the two pictures of Yuriko Koroshi in her blonde disguise, saying she was a material witness to a recent incident involving national security—all of which was essentially true in some sense, if not exactly the way he framed it.
The floorwalker responded that the girl had come in somewhat breathlessly, had bought a gold-brocaded red silk Chinese gown and departed in something of a hurry out the Thirty-Third Street entrance.
Trog returned to the car, which then performed another set of hairpin turns, coming to a halt at the aforementioned exit. The trail led straight across the street to the Statler-Hilton Hotel. Another quick conferral with the elevator operator in the lobby indicated that the lady in question had come in and gone directly to the ladies’ room, after which she hadn’t been seen. Trog carried the news back, and Cat went in to investigate, bag in hand and hand in bag, cradling her Frontier revolver.
A search of the ladies’ room uncovered a cast-off blond wig, dark glasses, gray skirt and bolero jacket and ruffled white blouse. No trace of their former owner turned up, however. Swearing softly under her breath, Cat returned to the car.
The trail resumed on the Seventh Avenue side of the building. Apparently the girl had slipped out the window after changing disguises. The glowing blue strip went down a block and then over to the Pennsylvania Station where it dimmed and spread considerably near the taxi stand.
“She must’ve caught a cab here,” observed Sham. “Lucky for us the thing wasn’t airtight, or we’d’ve lost the trail completely.”
The trail went straight as an arrow east down Thirty-Fourth Street, back past the Empire State Building at Fifth Avenue, continuing past Madison to Park Avenue, where it then turned south. “Blazes!” exclaimed Trog. “She had the cabby take her straight down Park, as far as these goggled eyes can see. I think she’s making for the Battery, maybe to catch a ferry. Staten Island, Governors Island, Liberty Island—just about anywhere!”
This wasn’t quite true. The glowing strip followed Park Avenue for more than twenty blocks to Union Square, where it veered southeast into Broadway, where it continued south for another twenty blocks, but it turned left into Canal Street—straight into the heart of Chinatown.
Now the trail zigzagged: Canal Street to Bowery, Bowery to Mott, Mott to a nameless alley behind one of Chinatown’s many restaurants. It came to a dead end against the wall of a dilapidated boarding house after narrowing and brightening, indicating that the quarry had dismissed her cab and was back on foot.
“An enigmatic conundrum,” said Shorty, “circumstantially indicative of spontaneous dematerialization.”
“Yeah,” agreed Trog, “it surely does look like she vanished into thin air.”
“More likely into solid wall,” put in Sham. “You don’t suppose she went through a hidden passage do you?”
“Even if there is a hidden passage here, how in blazes would she know about it?” snorted Trog. “She’s lived in California all her life, right?”
“Shorty,” Cat interjected urgently, “try angling the black-light up a bit.”
“Vertical precession.” Shorty acknowledged, then adjusted the black-light so that the beam crept up the wall. As it did so, a narrow ribbon of blue radiance flared in the invisible light.
“I’ll be superamalgamated!” breathed Shorty. “She escaladed perpendicularly and infenestrated.” Over his shoulder he added, “An inspired inference of imaginative intuition, Cat!”
“She must be part fly to climb a wall like that,” Sham observed.
“More like a spider, if you ask me!” gritted Cat. She opened her handbag and checked her revolver with deliberate exactness. “Let’s go get her!”
But as Cat opened the car door, Corpus Delicious’ huge ears suddenly shot straight up and the previously placid animal began to squeal like an untuned radio. The animal jumped up and down, biting Trog on the wrist in its frenzy to escape.
“Blazes! What’s the matter with you, Corpus?” howled Trog, grabbing at the razorback as it threw itself against the windshield, scrambling over Cat and Shorty in the process. He managed to get a firm grip on the scruff of its neck after throwing himself across the seat back.
“Listen!” said Sham, cocking his head to one side. “Some kind of high-pitched hum, like a dynamo. It’s setting off that porcine pest the way an air raid siren does a dog!”
“Where’s it coming from?” asked Cat. Within half a minute, the drone had become so loud that it vibrated the glass in the car’s windows.
“Triangulation of the epicenter by stereo-location is counterproductive,” yelled Shorty, “but visualization of luminescent emanations impends!”
The car was suddenly surrounded by a corona of blue-white light, reminiscent of an electric arc light, only dimmer and more diffuse. It increased in brightness until it overwhelmed the nearby street lamps, matched by the weird droning sound and the frenzied squealing of Trog’s increasingly panicked porker.
“It’s coming from up there!” cried Trog, pointing to the upper story window at which their quarry’s luminous trail had abruptly ended. As they all turned their eyes to follow his pointing finger, the glass exploded from the window in shards and rained down on them, followed by a man’s body that smashed into the roof of the car so hard that it dented fully along its length, then bounced and rolled limply onto the sidewalk. An ornately-carved ivory knife hilt protruded from left side of the man’s chest, directly over his heart.
Immediately, the four were out of the car and around the body. The man was dressed in the clothes of a Chinese dockworker. He wasn’t dead yet, but was going fast. He managed two words before he died: “Gra … Fan—!”
All eyes went to Shorty. As the resident expert on language and customs of faraway places, he was the most likely to know what the man had meant.
“It’s incredible!” Shorty gasped, lapsing into short words again, his voice all but drowned out by the eerie drone. “That hilt appears to be that of a Burmese dha-hmyaung … and Gra-Fan is a secret order of bandits that originated in Burma and spread throughout southeast Asia, but…” His voice trailed off in bewilderment.
“But what?” howled Trog impatiently.
“This man is neither Burmese or even Chinese!” returned Shorty. “He’s … Japanese!”
As if Shorty’s final word had been a signal, the strange drone suddenly rose to an ear-splitting crescendo. Simultaneously, the group was spot-lit in a circle of luminous blue fire. Shorty screamed, doubling over and clutching his head. Sham suddenly began tearing at his clothes, ripping the sleeves from his exquisitely tailored coat, then the buttons from his brocaded vest and the legs from his razor-creased trousers. Trog started to move toward Sham, then stopped dead in his tracks, staring sightlessly into the night. Corpus Delicious bounded away and fled down the street as fast as his long legs would carry him, squealing like a stuck pig.
For Cat, it was the beginning of a living nightmare. Hot prickly flames seemed to course through her like powerful electrical shocks. Her body became limp and lifeless around her, like a punctured balloon with the air leaking out. She sagged and slumped facedown into the rain-swollen gutter like a Raggedy Ann doll filled with soft doughy clay instead of rags, clay that was liquefying and becoming more insubstantial by the second. She came to rest in the gutter with her gauze-packed and intubated nose submerged in a half-inch of cold dirty water!
Unable to move, unable even to cry out in horror, she found herself drowning … in a rain puddle!
The papers were full of the Japanese invasion of the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippine Islands, which did nothing to ease Bellman’s feeling of helpless frustration.
Not even the funny pages were any fun, as Little Orphan Annie’s Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks returned from some remote locale where he, Punjab and the Asp had been fighting for the Allies with the rank of Lieutenant General (albeit not wearing a military uniform) and Flash Gordon, having returned to Earth and received a military commissioned as a Colonel, had returned to the planet Mongo, where he was now in a hospital in war-torn Tropica being held at gunpoint by the traitorous Captain Brazor. There was no escaping from the War, even in the Sunday funnies, not even the 25th Century, where Buck Rogers faced off against the still-belligerent descendants of the Japanese from the Rising Sun Planet.
“Take it easy, John,” advised Stonebender from his creaking cot. “Things are bound to change sooner or later.”
Things did. Less than a minute after Samson’s solemn pronouncement, a squad of MPs ushered Bellman and the giant out of their cell and down the hall to a small briefing room. Inside they were greeted by no less a personage than the Commanding General of the Western Defense Command himself, Lieutenant General John Lesesne DeWitt.
“You two wouldn’t happen to know anything about a call I just received from Secretary of War Stimson, now would you?” growled the general.
Answered by their stunned expressions, the general nodded grimly. “I didn’t think so.” he sighed. “Somehow that big bronze buttinsky must’ve gotten wind of this on his own!”
The officer stared off into space for a moment, like a man contemplating the profound mysteries of the universe. Recovering himself abruptly, he turned on the two nonplused non-coms with his best West Point manner.
“Effective immediately, you two are restored to active duty and assigned to act as special assistants to—” he paused reflectively, then smiled maliciously and went on. “You’re assigned to assist a reactivated Reservist captain assigned to something back east called the Manhattan Engineer District. He’s our leading authority on defense against biological, chemical and radiological weapons. It all ties in with what you claim happened to you in Santa Barbara last week.”
Bellman and Stonebender exchanged glances of mutual bewilderment. Then DeWitt dismissed them curtly and they were escorted out of the room somewhat briskly by the MPs. The escort did not stop at the corridor. Within minutes, the two found themselves strapped into the back of an XTBF-1 Avenger three-seat torpedo-bomber. They had hardly caught their breaths when the plane roared off down the runway and jumped skyward. The pilot ignored them, pointedly concentrating on the job of flying them eastward.
The journey was interrupted only twice, both times for refueling. Bellman and Stonebender were allowed to stretch their legs while this was done at Buckley Field, Colorado and Scott Field, Missouri. Otherwise, they spent a painfully cramped time of it in the plane, three hours on each leg of the trip.
By the time the plane touched down at the New York Municipal Airport-LaGuardia Field on Long Island, they had been at it for twelve hours, nine in flight and three on the ground. By that reckoning, it should have been around 2100 hours or 9pm, but they had lost three more hours from the time zone difference between California and New York, making it close to midnight.
No sooner were they out of the plane than they were hustled into a waiting 1937 Ford De Luxe V8 Fordor sedan, completely nondescript but displaying a “C” Official Gov’t Business gasoline ration sticker, with two hard-bitten men seated in front. Despite their civilian attire, they had the stone-faced look that Bellman had come to associate with longtime MPs and Army top-kicks. Bellman took them to be Military Intelligence agents or perhaps even FBI men.
The car leapt away from the airstrip and raced into the night despite a fairly heavy rain shower. Bellman settled back to enjoy the ride, there being little else he could do. Stonebender had already slumped into his usual snoozing posture, just as he had throughout the flight. Despite his limited Army experience, the giant had already learned that one should never pass up any sack time or chow that became available.
The route was simple and direct: Whitestone Road to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to the Queen-Midtown Expressway, then under the East River through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel to Forty-Second Street and down Fifth Avenue. As the car approached the Empire State Building, something happened that brought both Bellman and Stonebender bolt upright in their seats.
The skyline was suddenly lit up by a hellish blue glare.
“What’s going on here? A dock fire?” growled their driver, then laughed wryly. “Talk about your bloody blue blazes!” Shrugging, he turned to the Bellman and Stonebender and said, “Whatever it is, it’s none of our business. We got an appointment with a Very Important Person upstairs and we sure as heck don’t want to keep him waiting, so let’s move it.”
As the driver and his partner got out, Bellman and Stonebender exchanged wordless glances and nodded grimly. Then they too got out with slow deliberation. As the driver turned to lead them into the skyscraper’s lobby, Stonebender raised a fist and brought it down like a hammer on the man’s head. There was a dull smack upon impact and the giant’s victim went down like a puppet with its strings cut.
At the same time, Bellman scorched a hard right into the other man’s midriff and followed up by clasped hands and brought down hard on the back of the head, just above the neck. As Bellman had expected, both men were armed with .45 Colt Army automatics in shoulder holsters. Bellman confiscated the weapons, handed one to Stonebender, then helped the giant drag the semiconscious pair over the wall of the building to one side of the entrance but under the awning and thus out of the rain, which was finally beginning to let up. After propping their former escorts up against one another and the wall, where they sprawled looking like unusually well-dressed drunks, the two soldiers jumped into the front of the car, Bellman at the wheel, and roared off in the direction of the eerie blue glow.
“That’s the same thing that hit us in Santa Barbara!” Bellman voiced their mutual observation. “I don’t know how, but this time we’ve got to stop it!”
“That stuff sure gets around fast,” rumbled the giant. “I wonder if those transparent green hobgoblins came along with it?”
“We’ll find out in a few minutes!” replied Bellman grimly.
Now that the rain had stopped, they made much better time driving across town toward the baleful light. Guided by the flickering blue glare, the car followed roughly the same course that Cat and Doc’s Associates had just an hour or so earlier. They got lost for a while in the maze of Chinatown, but found their way to the alley by aiming for the brightest portion of the otherworldly glow, like the Magi following the Star of Bethlehem in the Christmas stories. It was just as well they did, as the strange light flickered out just as they located the alleyway. They were guided further by the weird hum, which faded more slowly.
The misappropriated vehicle screeched to a halt beside Doc’s souped-up Lincoln-Zephyr, swerving to avoid the body sprawled beside it.
Bellman and Stonebender popped out of the car like fresh toast, Bellman holding the .45 Colt automatic taken from their former driver’s shoulder holster at the ready. The giant was similarly armed, the gun looking like a toy in his ham-sized fist.
“There was one heck of a fight here just minutes ago,” yelled Bellman, toeing a piece of broken window glass and looking around desperately. “Up there, it must’ve been,” he added, pointing with the pistol to the now-empty window frame.
“Over here!” boomed the giant from the other side of the car. “More casualties, only these’re still breathing.”
Trog, Sham, and Shorty lay contorted on the wet pavement. Trog was still frozen in a rigid, statue-like pose, while Sham lay on his back with almost all of his clothes torn off, his face a mask of bewilderment. Further on, Shorty was twisted like a thin pretzel afflicted with palsy emitting inarticulate growls.
A sudden clatter yanked the soldiers’ attention away from the stricken trio, At the far end of the alley, a shadowy figure had reeled and stumbled into a set of trash bins. Instantly, the two were on top of him. They found a short, stocky Chinaman in longshoreman’s clothes slumped over in the refuse, his right arm held by the wrist in his left hand. The limb had been neatly chopped off at the shoulder.
“Gojira…” whispered the dismembered Chinese, his eyes glazing and rolling upwards. “Gojira … demon … from the sea … destroyer of men’s minds—!” The man shuddered and died with two final words, enunciated like a verbal salute: “Gra-Fan!”
“‘Go-ji-ra’?” echoed Bellman softly. “That sounds like Japanese!”
“He came this way,” boomed Stonebender, pointing out a trail of blood left by the dead man. Bellman sucked in his breath sharply, then stepped forward determinedly.
“The … trail … goes back out through that arch,” he said over his shoulder. “It must lead back to where he was wounded, which probably means to this ‘Gojira’ fellow he was raving about.”
Stonebender caught up with Bellman in three strides, at which time they both broke into a trot, following the grisly trail with guns at the ready. It twisted down several more back alleys until it came up short at Columbus Park. A dozen bodies littered the manicured lawn, all of them Oriental, who judging from their dress ranged from Burmese to Chinese to Korean to Siamese. Some wore Western attire, mostly longshoremen’s garb, like that of the man who’d died at their feet, or Merchant Marine crewmen’s uniforms.
One of the combatants remained on … its … feet, one that stopped Bellman and Stonebender dead in their tracks. It was manlike in form, but there the resemblance stopped. Six feet tall, the thing measured a full yard across the shoulders and was encased in armor composed of overlapping plates and bundles of rods tightly wrapped in silken cord, resembling a weird cross between man and armadillo. The armor was flat black, as were the gauntlets and helmet the thing wore. The helmet was a dome with a wide flange extending down to protect the neck and shoulders. Two blade-shaped “horns” swept up from the brow to form a shape midway between a “V” and a crescent Moon.
It was the face, if you could really call it that, within that helmet that froze the soldiers where they stood. Peering out from beneath the blade-horned helmet was a naked skull with red eyes blazing from the otherwise empty sockets. It was not the skull of a man, however, but more like that of an ape, with massive outthrust jaws with needle teeth, fanglike canines and shelf-like bony brow ridge.
The huge jaws opened slightly and a deep, spectral voice boomed out resoundingly. “I … am … Gojira!”
Bellman was spooked. Without thinking, he leveled the commandeered firearm and squeezed the trigger. The gun jumped in his hand and boomed eight times as Bellman slowly and deliberately emptied the clip into the ebony-armored apparition. Eight sparks blossomed in different places on the armored figure, including the heavy brow between those awful, blazing eyes, Otherwise, nothing—the skull-faced thing didn’t so much as flinch. The massive jaws dropped open wider and the head tilted back slightly as a horrible rattling sound that could have been mocking laughter or the last breath of a deep-sea diver choking to death echoed across the park.
Stonebender’s own jaw dropped, then his gun fell from fingers rendered suddenly nerveless. Recovering, the giant bellowed like a maddened bull, lowered his head and charged the monstrous thing full-tilt. The thing stood its ground unwaveringly until, seconds before impact, it moved with blinding speed, both arms making complicated circular motions reminiscent of semaphore code. Stonebender seemed to perform a backward somersault, jackknife and one-and-a-half gainer all at the same time, landing with a resounding thud only a foot or so from where he’d started.
“We three have met before,” blared the skull-faced man-thing. “You have felt the touch of my gaijin seishin-hakaisha, my inferior-mind destroyer, and lived to tell of it. So be it. As it was then, so shall it be now. Only, this time, I leave a message for you to deliver. Tell the Seidouhito, the Bronze Man, that Gojira, the Demon-from-the-Sea, has taken his kinswoman Cathryn Hazzard. Tell him that Gojira, the Destroyer-of-Men’s-Minds, wishes two things in exchange for her safe return: the Sword and the Daughter of Koroshi. Tell him that the Rising Sun will sweep the world before it, with Gojira in the vanguard, wielding power such as men have never before seen!”
An ominous humming drone had begun during the thing’s speech, rising in volume as he spoke. Upon his final word, an arc of electric-blue light appeared between the horns of his helmet, then blossomed into a globe of blue-white glare. Glare and drone increased in intensity until they were all that Bellman could see or hear.
Then there was nothing. Suddenly, Bellman was deaf and blind. This only lasted a few seconds before the world came rushing back at him. And a vastly changed world it was.
The bloody bodies that had littered the field were gone. Except for bloodstains now visible in the grass in the light of the dawning Sun, there was no sign that a gory battle had taken place here only hours before. Stonebender, standing off to one side, gave a start when Bellman reached up to finger his throbbing head. Behind him were the three men they’d found unconscious in the alley, the one with the shredded clothes wrapped in a blanket like some long-ago Plains Indian, although all three were somewhat sodden, having been soaked to the skin by the naturally-produced rainstorm that had preceded the artificially-induced brainstorm. They too looked up in surprise as Bellman moved, making it obvious that once again he had lost several hours of his life to the strange blue glow.
As he shook his head, trying to take in all the changes, another figure stepped into view. Bellman recognized him instantly, having seen him hundreds of times in newsreels, photographs and illustrations.
“Doc Hazzard!” Bellman’s voice was a harsh croak, his vocal cords not yet quite recovered from the effects of the glow.
The Bronze Titan wore an Army Air Forces uniform with the insignia of a Captain, an Army Reserve Medical Corps patch and a Master Flight Surgeon badge. Bellman suddenly realized that Doc Hazzard must be the “Reservist Captain” to whom General DeWitt had referred earlier as his new commander. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He settled for giving as crisp a salute as he could muster under the circumstances. “I mean, Captain Hazzard, sir!”
“Corporal Bellman,” Captain Hazzard intoned briskly, “I think we’re overdue for what I suspect is going to be a very unenlightening debriefing … for both of us!”
After a while, Cat Hazzard decided she liked the new silk dress, but she disliked the new bracelets intensely.
The dress was a golden-brown silk kimono trimmed with gold brocade, cut in the traditional Japanese style. The color suited her, she decided, although the lack of undergarments made her feel somewhat insecure, although that had little to do with why she kept testing the sturdiness of the gold brocade obi, the wide sash tied in a bow at the small of the back, frustratingly out of reach.
The bracelets were another matter. They were, if anything, too secure. They were made of high-grade stainless steel, connected by a hinge instead of a chain and double-locked around her wrists using the “stack” technique, so that her forearms were held parallel to one another, with her hands facing in opposite directions. Silk cord was wrapped around the hinge and looped through the obi, an arrangement that prompted her continual testing of the strength of its binding. Judging by the legend Universalfessel Deutsche Polizei D.R. Pat. August Schwarz Berlin S.W.11 stamped above the locks, they were standard German Police issue. Did the Gestapo now have agents in America? Or were the cuffs merely evidence of the inevitable result of trade and cooperation among the Axis powers? No matter. The end result was that, although she was free to move about the room, her hands were restrained efficiently by uncompromising steel handcuffs.
The kimono, the handcuffs and a pair of Japanese split-toed stockings were her only garments.
She had awakened in the lower berth of a steel-framed bunk bed, in a trapezoidal room. The walls against which the berths were flush were perfectly straight and square, seven feet on a side. The other two walls were of different widths, ten and eight feet respectively, and curved, the narrower wall bowed inward and the wider one bowed outward.
In the middle of each of the curved walls was a hatch, six feet high and thirty inches wide, with six dogs spaced around the perimeter—watertight doors. From this, Cat concluded that she must be aboard a seafaring vessel, in which case all four of the “walls” were actually bulkheads. This would account the cabin’s odd wedge shape. The hatch dogging wheels had removed on the inside removed, thus turning a four-person crew cabin into a prison cell.
The gently rolling deck underfoot was also steel, covered with corrugated black composition, thick and springy, while the bulkheads and overhead were enameled glossy white. Soft white light emanated from a frosted glass hemisphere set in the middle of the overhead.
Given that she seemed to be below decks in a ship of some sort, it might also be a good idea to give some thought to where exactly said ship might be heading. For that matter, it might be an equally good idea to give thought to how exactly she had gotten here.
Cat’s last coherent memory was of lying paralyzed face-down in a puddle of cold, dirty water and choking as the vile stuff filled her gaping mouth and tube-filled nose. She shuddered slightly as she remembered the feeling of helplessness and terror as it flowed unimpeded down her throat. The recollection reminded of her of the injury to her nose, which perversely began to itch. She had to bend almost double to bring her nose within range of either of her hands. When she finally managed it, she was surprised to find that her nose was no longer encumbered by Doc’s medical handiwork. Although still somewhat tender and puffy, it otherwise seemed as good as new. Just how long had she been non compos mentis?
More than anything else, she regretted the loss of her Centenarian wristlet watch. If she still had that, she would know exactly what time it was and might be able to figure out just how long she’d been unconscious. As it was, she had no idea time or even what day it was or even whether it was day or night. She gave an unladylike growl of frustration. She could forgive her captors for taking her weapons and her clothing that might have concealed weapons, but taking the watch that was her father’s final birthday present to her, that was going way too far! She resolved to personally punish the miscreant, if it was the last thing she ever did
She had lost consciousness while still in that perilous and potentially fatal position. Someone had rescued her from an ignominious near-certain death by drowning and brought her here, wherever here was. That slippery little snake Yuriko Koroshi, perhaps? Cat’s lips formed a hard line at the very thought. Then she snorted and made a wry face at her own single-minded pettiness. Here she was, pursuing a personal grudge over a minor disgrace, while still in the midst of serious danger. Doc would laugh his head off if he ever found out about that!
Her musings were suddenly interrupted as the hatch of the smaller bulkhead clacked open swung wide, as if propelled by a powerful kick. Had Cat been trying to open that hatch or lying in wait behind it, this forceful entry would’ve knock her six ways to Sunday. Whoever had abducted her wasn’t taking any chances when it came to dealing with her.
That was bad news but good to know. She couldn’t take any chances dealing with them.
A figure in jet black Japanese oh-yoroi armor with an inhuman skull for a face stepped into the chamber. When it stood erect, the upswept black metal horns of the kugawata attached to the stylized chrysanthemum mayedate badge on the front of the kabuto helmet, designed partly for ornament and partly to entrap an enemy’s blade, came within an inch of the ceiling.
Weirdly glowing red eyes fixed her with a burning glare as the fanged, outthrust needled-toothed jaws opened and a deep sepulchral voice boomed and echoed off the walls.
“Welcome aboard the Kairyuu Maru, the Sea-Dragon, my dear Koneko-chan!” The armored figured made the slightest of bows. “I am Gojira, the Demon-from-the-Sea, commander of this craft and all aboard her.”
Cat had learned enough from Kaori “Holly” Hale‘akala, her hulking Hawaiian-born Japanese-American “house girl” (whose actual duties included bodyguard, chaperone, chauffeur, chiropractic nurse, companion, cook, multilingual interpreter and physical fitness coach), to know that Koneko-chan meant something like “Little Miss Kitty-Cat” in Japanese, although the chan honorific had an affectionate and possessive connotation usually reserved for intimate and personal conversation. It was apparently meant as an endearment, but Cat didn’t trust Gojira’s display of courtesy any more than she was cowed by his weird but admittedly intimidating get-up. She found his use of the term anything but endearing.
“Aren’t you afraid you’ll rust?” Now that her nose was no longer stuffed with gauze, Cat managed to sound a lot more chipper than she felt. “Living in the sea and all, I mean.”
“You jest, Koneko-chan! That is good! It shows the admirable trait of courage in the face of the unknown. This rare quality is shared by your cousin, however, and so I have taken you hostage to deter him … and to secure certain accessions.”
Cat snorted derisively. “You’re holding me as hostage and for ransom?”
“You doubt my ability? I assure you that, like the Seidouhito, the Bronze Man, I am the product of intensive training toward the end of producing physical and mental perfection. But his training was the product of only a single lifetime’s study, while mine is the result of a hundred generations of continuous refinement.”
“Doc has never had to stoop to hiding behind a fright mask, Gojira-san. Nor has he ever kidnapped a paralyzed woman to blackmail an opponent.”
“That may be so. Or it may rather be that he lacks the resolve to separate himself from sentiment, thus proving his inferiority. It is not from lack of power that I use these methods, Koneko-chan, for I am the master of an incredibly powerful force, one whose effect you have already personally felt. I could as easily take what I want, but I prefer to play the cat in this matter, with you as the cheese! It pleases me to make the Seidouhito come to me, submit and humbly give me what I want.”
“I wouldn’t be so confident if I were you, Gojira-san. You don’t strike me as having too much grit, not if you have to deprive a girl of her clothes and put her in irons as well.” She screwed up her face. “My nose itches something fierce and it’s all I can do just to touch it!”
“I have made you as comfortable as possible under the circumstances.” Gojira sounded almost apologetic. “But this is war, Koneko-chan, and certain necessary indignities are unavoidable. As to your clothing, that was merely common sense. Your handbag alone yielded an inordinate number of personal weapons, including a most beautiful antique firearm, which I have claimed for my own personal collection, should the situation not develop necessarily to my advantage.”
“Thief!” Cat spat angrily. “You had no right to do that. That gun belonged to my grandfather!” A sudden realization made her snarl like her namesake. “Are you also the dastard who stole my father’s watch?”
“Spoils of war, Koneko-chan, even as you are. However, I shall be most fair. I will happily trade your so-precious pistol and timepiece for Yuriko Koroshi and the Sword of Koroshi. After all, the relationships are similar. Yuri-chan is blood of my blood and the sword is a Koroshi clan heirloom that is—and should always have been—rightfully mine!”
“Then you must be—”
“I am Gojira, the Demon-from-the-Sea! That is all anyone need know!” The armor-clad figure turned abruptly. “I have business to which I must now attend most urgently, Koneko-chan. Akiko, the young woman from my entourage who attended to your change in wardrobe, will be along within an hour or two to feed you and attend to any of your other physical needs. I regret that you must remain shackled, as she is not a fighter on par with you or Yuriko. If all goes well, in due course you and your most excellent firearm will be released to return to your former life for however long such an existence remains possible in coming New Order.”
Gojira stepped through the hatch and started to draw it closed. He stopped midway, produced a sound midway between a death-rattle and mocking laughter and added, “If not, you will be taken to Japan, along with your gun and watch and anything else you might possess that might take my fancy, there to be officially designated as my personal property!”
The clanging of the hatch echoed in Cat’s ears for a long time.
“Um, the jaws were thicker and the fangs were longer … and, uh, and I think there was a crest or shield between the horn-like things.”
The pencil in Doc’s powerful bronze fingers flew across the pad, sketching in Bellman’s corrections and descriptions. “Can you describe the crest?”
“It was about the size of a open palm and looked to be some kind of flower … like a daisy with a double row of petals.”
Doc sat completely immobile for several seconds, then quickly sketched a small emblem between the horns on his diagram.
“That’s it!” Bellman breathed incredulously. “That’s it exactly! How did you know?”
“Shorty?” Doc turned the sketchpad around for the others to see.
“Yes, Doc!” In marked contrast to his usual manner with everyone else, Shorty contrarily always used small words when addressing the Bronze Titan. “The emblem on the mayedote badge is the Blue Chrysanthemum jo-mon, the crest of the Koroshi clan.”
“Koroshi!” exclaimed Bellman. “This whole incredible mess revolves around a skinny old man and a young girl?”
“And a mythical Demon-from-the-Sea, don’t forget,” put in Sham. “How does this Gojira item fit into it?”
“The sea-demon Gojira was a yokai or totemic spirit to the first Koroshi,” explained Doc. “Each of the Shinobi clans had a demonic totem, which they used to heighten their supernatural reputation. They wore masks of these demons when making forays against their enemies to frighten them into careless moves if not outright panic and deter any thought of pursuit.”
“He’s an ugly critter, alright!” agreed Trog. “What’s that get-up he’s wearing, Shorty?”
“Ostensibly, it purports to be superannuated personal machicolation, exemplary of the post-Kamakura or pre-Tokugawa dynastic chronologies. Certain neoteric rectifications in the design of the kabuto, or flanged helmet, particularly the contrivance of the kuwagata, the decorative horns, would seem to indicate a more recent derivation.”
“And the fully-articulated gorilla skull?” queried Bellman. “That looked awful real to me!”
“Apparently it’s some kind of ultra-refined explication of the preternal menpo, the demonic totem mask that Doc mentioned earlier. The delineation is a composite of cranial constituents assimilating Pithecanthropus erectus, or Java Man, and Tyrannosaurus Rex, or King Dinosaur.”
“Whew!” Trog shook his head. “You mean this skull belongs to something that’s half-caveman, half-dinosaur? What a monster!”
“There’s no proof yet that any of this is real,” observed Sham, “except for that mind-blasting blue glow, that is. That was all too real!” He gave an involuntarily shudder at the recollection.
“Half the people in Manhattan must’ve seen that light last night.” Bellman stood up and began pacing. “How is it that there wasn’t a word of it in the papers or on the radio today?”
“You missed the early morning editions,” explained Sham, “since you were still recovering from your trance at the time. Doc broke a standing policy of never making a public appearance or statement and announced he’d developed a new kind of radio detection which was so powerful that it ionized the local airspace, producing both the blue glow and that strange sound.”
“And they bought that?” Bellman threw up his hands in exasperation.
“Most people trust Doc, as well they should!” said Trog. “He ain’t steered anyone wrong yet, so why don’t you start trusting him? Us, too, for that matter.” This from the man who’d spent several hours earlier that day searching for a runaway razorback that, when found hiding in the bushes in a state of belligerent terror, had had to be sedated before it could be brought back here to Doc’s penthouse, where it was now snoring like an idling steam engine.
“I thought I did, once. But that was before someone or something in Samurai armor started stealing chunks of my life, tossed Samson Stonebender around like a sack of flour and left four dozen dead men littering the landscape between here and California.”
“What about that, Doc?” put in Sham. “Anything on those autopsies you’ve been doing?”
“Nothing that helps,” replied Doc evenly, setting aside the sketches. “All of the deaths here were caused by fairly straightforward things like knife and gunshot wounds, with the occasional concussion-from-blunt-instrument. The reports from Santa Barbara showed the mental effects of our mystery weapon. Those who died from it show evidence of brain herniation similar to that caused by meningitis, but centering in a different area of the brain in each case. Those who survived suffer some localized brain swelling and attendant intracranial pressure, but not the herniation evident in the fatalities.”
Doc reached into a drawer in the inlaid table and drew out a thick folder of typewritten pages and photographs. “Whatever this thing is, it definitely affects the brain but doesn’t affect any two brains exactly the same way. So Bellman loses all awareness of time passage, Trog’s motor function freezes, Stonebender hallucinates transparent green gremlins, Shorty suffers convulsions and Sham perceives an intolerable sensation of being bitten all over, due to an overload of his epidermal sense of touch.”
“What makes it selective, though?” mused Bellman. “Why does it only affect Caucasians and not Orientals?” He looked expectantly at Doc, who continued to shuffle the pages as if he hadn’t heard. So it’s true, thought Bellman, Doc Hazzard pretends not to hear any questions he’s not ready to answer. He exchanged silent, knowing looks with Doc’s men that served to confirm the point.
Bellman had always heard that Doc Hazzard and his Associates played things close to their vests, but now he was beginning to appreciate just what that meant. No one, for example, had said about the disappearance of Doc’s cousin Cathryn, who’d been with Doc’s Associates when Gojira had struck them down. If they had any concerns regarding her whereabouts or safety, they certainly hadn’t let anything on any time he or Stonebender were present. He presumed that this was because there was nothing the two soldiers could contribute in that regard. Or, unlike the encounters with Gojira and his mystery weapon with which they’d been directly involved, perhaps Doc and his friends simply didn’t think that what may or may not have happened to Doc’s cousin was any of their business.
“Brothers,” Doc spoke up abruptly, “I think we are being caught in a crossfire!”
As the others turned questioning eyes toward him, Doc laid out several of the photographs side by side on the table. All showed the same things: bodies of the men found in Columbus Park with close-ups of their effects. “A close examination of these pictures shows that there are two distinct groups of men. One group, in dockworker’s and longshoremen’s clothing, is predominately Chinese, with an admixture of Burmese, Hindi and Mongolian. These were armed with weapons traditionally associated with their respective criminal elements: strangling cords, ice picks, daggers, hatchets and poisoned needles, with the occasional silenced firearm.” He laid out another row of photographs. “The second group, in Merchant Marine uniforms with the ship identification removed, carry Chinese, Korean or Filipino weapons but are actually Japanese or possibly half-Japanese.”
“So what we got is a bunch of Japs in Chink clothing using that blue-light gadget being wiped out by real Chinese criminals?” growled Trog.
“It’s more than that, I’d say,” observed Sham grimly. “If these pseudo-Chinese have been around a while, and by all indications they know their way around pretty well, then we’re dealing with a well-entrenched spy ring!”
“Supermalagorgeous!” Shorty exulted. “An introvolutional phenomenosity of ratiocination!”
“Huh?” Trog, Sham and Bellman chorused.
“Yes, Shorty,” replied Doc evenly, “it is a rather twisted notion. But both you and Bellman heard one of these men mention the Gra-Fan, the mysterious ‘Council of Nine’ presided over by the infamous Doctor Wu-Hanshu. The Gra-Fan token—three metal triangles of gold, copper and silver interlocked to form a nine-pointed star—was found on the bodies of three of the genuine Chinese longshoremen, who were apparently in charge of that faction in this … turf war.”
“Wu-Hanshu?” echoed Sham. “Wasn’t he the man you suspected of rebuilding Shawn Twilight as the Tick-Tock Man three years ago?” Sham shook his head. “I wonder who he is and what he has against you … and, by extension, against us!”
“More importantly,” Doc mused, “what exactly are Doctor Wu-Hanshu, Gojira and their respective gangs doing here in America … and is what they’re doing reason for their current conflict or is there something else behind it, about which we still know nothing?”
“As long as you’re asking questions,” Bellman grumbled, “how about this one: what are we going to do about it? We’ve lost two dozen soldiers, Sam’s in the hospital with a dislocated shoulder, concussion and Lord knows what else, and the Japs think we’ve got Yuriko, who for all we know could be in the hands of these Gra-Fan people. It doesn’t look too good to me, let me tell you.”
“It is indeed a most unfortunate situation,” a singsong voice proclaimed from the doorway. As one, the heads of everyone in the room shifted instantly toward it.
The voice belonged to an extraordinarily tall and well-built middle-aged Oriental gentleman, whose black-and-red pin-striped raw silk zoot suit had a killer-diller swing coat with a drape shape, a tough cuff, reet pleats and shoulders padded like a lunatic’s cell, topped with a snappy black wide-rimmed tando with a wide vermilion silk band, from which a long iridescent black-and-red schlappen tail feather jutted jauntily. The tight pegged cuffs of his high-waisted wide-legged trousers were all but tucked into the high tops of his pointy-toed French-style shoes. A polished-brass Albert pocket watch chain draped from the man’s belt to just below the knee, then back up and into his right trouser pocket. For all its extravagance, the crispness and quality of the man’s outrageous outfit rivaled anything worn by Sham in recent days. A precisely-trimmed military-style black pencil moustache adorned his upper lip, otherwise his face was distinguished only by its calculated expressionlessness.
Amidst all of this hep-cat finery, perhaps to belie it, the man wore a white-on-blue enameled badge bearing the twelve-rayed Sun emblem of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuo-Min-Tang Chinese Republican Nationalists the size of a silver dollar in his double-width left lapel, directly over his heart. The KMT was currently leading the fight against both the Japanese occupation forces controlling the puppet-state of Manchukuo in Manchuria and much of China’s eastern seaboard while keeping the Chinese Communist “Red Army” at bay in the hinterland. Whether or not he was as much of a hepster as his threads made him out to be, he was clearly a man of strong convictions who proudly displayed them for all the world to see.
“Permit me to introduce my unworthy self.” With his left hand, he doffed his hat to reveal closely-cropped black hair, then swept it theatrically across his waist and gave an elegant bow that somehow gave the impression of being accompanied by a heel-click that never came. “I am Lin-Fong, owner and proprietor of Shang-Jih Imports of Manhattan, at your service!” With an elaborate flourish, he drew back his coat and removed the end of the watch chain that had been tucked out of sight in his high waistband to display the hidden fob. “My card, good sirs.”
Glittering in the light was a nine-pointed star comprised of three interlocked equilateral triangles of polished copper, silver and gold: the token of the Gra-Fan!
“I was wondering how long it would be before one of you came to me,” Doc remarked matter-of-factly.
Lin-Fong’s expression didn’t change. “Have you also deduced that for which we now contend?”
“I presume it to be an infernal device developed by Doctor Wu-Hanshu and stolen by someone from the Japanese forces currently occupying Manchuria and coastal China. Although, to be fair, the device didn’t actually originate with Doctor Wu-Hanshu nor even in China, but was initially developed in a much cruder and less controllable form in Tibet by—”
“You’ve made your point, sir.” Lin-Fong interrupted hastily. “There is little to be gained in letting such details spread any further.”
Doc shrugged indifferently. “And now you want to join forces to recover the … shall we call it the ‘Brainstorm’, Mister Fong?”
“You have a gift for appropriate description, Doctor Hazzard.” Tucking his Gra-Fan token back into his pocket, Lin-Fong strode into the middle to the room with the poise and grace of ballroom dancer, his right hand raised as if ready to begin snapping his fingers. “But in point of fact we actually have something else in mind to propose to you.” He eyed Doc and his men shrewdly. “We have decided to withdraw from battle at this point.”
“Blazes!” exploded Trog. “You mean you want us to take on the Japs for you while you take a powder? Why you oily—”
“Trog!” reproved Doc mildly. “Let him finish, Brothers. He wouldn’t be here unless he had something to say important enough to warrant further listening.”
Trog opened and closed his huge hairy hands as though wringing imaginary necks, but made no effort to put his thoughts into action. “Alright,” he grated, “let’s hear it.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” smiled Lin-Fong. “Your reputation for seeing to the heart of things is not unfounded. Here is our proposal.” Reaching behind his swing coat to something secured at the small of his back, he produced an all-too-familiar object: Cat’s beloved .44-40 Model 1873 Frontier Colt six-shooter.
“Cathryn Hazzard is now our honored guest at a place of restful seclusion, where she will remain until all of this unpleasantness has been successfully concluded!”
By the time the Japanese girl appeared, Cat Hazzard was already halfway out of the handcuffs.
By bending her neck so that her chin touched her breastbone and sucking in her gut until she could hardly breathe, a feat that she could have performed much more easily were it not for the cumbersome kimono, Cat had gnawed and tongued the knots securing the silk cord that bound the hinged handcuffs to the obi sash around her waist enough to untie them.
With the relative freedom of movement that this afforded, she removed and straightened mattress springs to serve as crude lock picks. She expended seven of these makeshift probes getting the double-locked cuffs unlatched to the single-lock position. This was no mean feat, as double-locking is supposed to prevent anything but the regulation key from opening the lock, but Cat had learned the trick after much painstaking effort over the course of several years.
But then, it was Cat’s considered opinion that escapology should rightly have been included in William J. Fielding’s What Every Young Woman Should Know, along with unarmed combat and wilderness survival, not just the purely hygienic information for which that book was justly famous.
At that, she owed her success in this current instance as much to Dame Fortune as to her own skill, as reflected in the decision on the part of whoever had applied the cuffs to use the “stack” technique. Had this nameless and faceless individual applied the “straight” technique and positioned her arms parallel to one another, elbow next to elbow and wrist to wrist, so that hands pointing in the same direction, the cuffs could have been locked with the keyholes on the side facing away from her hands, making it impossible for her apply the picks. But because the “stack” technique had been used, her hands were secured facing in opposite directions, with the elbow of one arm next to the wrist of the other and vice versa, one of her hands was necessarily on the same side as the keyholes no matter which way the cuffs faces.
Since Cat wasn’t ambidextrous like Doc, who had trained from infancy to use every muscle in his body with equal facility, it was fortunate that the cuffs had been applied with the keyholes in such a way that they were manipulable by a pick held in her right hand. Given sufficient time, she might conceivably have picked the lock left-handed, but not within the time between Gojira’s departure and the Japanese girl’s arrival.
The sound of the inboard hatch-wheel clacking open galvanized her. Cat jumped across the room, landing in a half-crouch behind the door just as it opened to admit the Japanese girl.
She was dressed oddly in a black pajama-like garment of heavy, durable material obviously designed for much rough-and-tumble wear. Cloth leggings bound her calves, rubber-soled cloth slippers covered her feet and her hands were gloved, all in the same black material. Her head was shrouded in a loose-fitting black hood that covered all but a narrow strip across her eyes.
“Miss Hazzard?” the girl whispered softly. Cat’s foot lashed out in a vicious roundhouse kick at the girl’s abdomen, which she intended to follow up with a double-fisted hammer blow to the head.
Neither the actual nor the intended blow ever made contact. The black-clad girl seemed to be psychic, for she squatted even as Cat’s kick lashed out at her and sprang upward and forward, somersaulting over the scything foot. She performed a tuck-and-roll into a full layout in midair, landing and first balancing and then pirouetting backward on her right foot, while her left leg first bent double horizontally and then snapped straight out to full extension, thrusting the heel of her foot solidly into Cat’s midriff.
“Oof!” Cat grunted and sat down heavily, hands folded over her midsection.
“Excuse please, Miss Hazzard,” apologized the Japanese-American girl softly. “You took me by surprise and I reacted without thinking.” Reaching down a helping hand, she hauled Cat to her feet with surprising ease for so small a girl. With the other hand, she pulled back her concealing hood.
Cat blinked in astonishment, but was too busy getting her wind back to say anything. Yuriko Koroshi smiled with rueful understanding.
“I’d ask you what put your nose out of joint, but I already know. What say we call a truce, at least until we are out of here? Gojira will be back soon and he is someone that neither of us can handle.”
Cat nodded vigorously. “Gojira’s … Shinobi … like you?” she managed.
Yuriko’s previously impassive face went through a rapid succession of expressions—shaking her head in vigorous negation, contorting in sudden anger, then looking pleadingly prayerful, unutterably sad and, ultimately, resigned to whatever it was that had troubled her—all in the span of a few seconds. “I fear that Gojira may, in fact, be … my father!”
While Cat digested this bit of news, Yuriko reached over and removed Cat’s handcuffs. She did this by gripping both sides of the lock plate of each cuff on either side of the lock in a very precise manner and applying a pressure that whitened all of the knuckles on both hands. Cat had seen Doc perform a similar feat on occasion. It was a trick of skill as much as of brute strength, but it was also no job for a frail flower. Cat’s estimate of Yuriko went up.
Each shackle sprang open so suddenly that it seemed to fly off the wrist. Yuriko held onto the hinged section to that the cuffs wouldn’t drop onto the composition flooring, then tucked them away into her bulky garments, presumably for later use should the need arise. Reaching into a backpack that Cat hadn’t previously noticed, she came up with a bundle of black cloth. This unrolled into a duplicate of Yuriko’s all-concealing black outfit, right down to the cloth shoes. “Here! This will be more suitable for getting out of here … and probably more comfortable as well.”
While Cat changed clothes, Yuriko Koroshi glided out into the corridor and adopted an attitude similar to that of a watchdog. She seemed totally relaxed, yet at the same time charged with energy. It was a characteristic that Cat had come to associate with Doc, an explosive readiness combined with an easy fluidity. Doc always seemed more restrained, though.
While she was adjusting the unfamiliar garments to better fit her taller and admittedly more full-figured form, her stomach began to growl, reminding that her last meal had been her luncheon with Sham and Trog, at least twelve hours earlier and probably twice that long. She found herself wishing that she’d gotten fed before attempting to escape, then remembered that Yuriko had appeared before Gojira’s handmaiden could show up to feed her. Sighing, Cat willed her stomach to shut the heck up and joined Yuriko in the corridor. This extended only a short distance, ending in an open hatch way. Two more hatches, one on either side of the corridor, were dogged shut.
Lying on the floor of the corridor were two men in Japanese Imperial Army uniforms, complete with side arms. One clutched a Type 14 8mm Nambu semiautomatic pistol—essentially a Japanese knockoff of the old German P08 Luger Pistole Parabellum, neatly splitting the difference between the 7.65mm and 9mm models—while the other had half-drawn his Kyuuyon-Shiki Guntoh Type 94 mass-produced officer’s Samurai sword, which was a far cry from the hand-craftsmanship of the Koroshi katana. Both men appeared to be quite dead.
Yuriko ignored the bodies, stepping daintily over them to a hatchway on the far side of the cylindrical hub. Cat followed somewhat less gracefully. The hatchway led into a steel tube reminiscent of a manhole. A steel ladder ran up the side of the tube to a heavy round watertight hatch. Three more bodies lay on the deck, two Japanese soldiers and a U.S. Merchant Marine.
“You’ve been busy!” said Cat dryly. Then, “Are they all … dead?”
“Dead, yes. Oh, very yes!” replied Yuriko softly, her face going through the same rapid-fire series of expressions as when she admitted fearing that her father and Gojira might be one and the same, then calmly ascended to the ceiling hatch. “Please don’t get the impression that I’m some sort of bloodthirsty killer. I’m really not.” She paused, clearly groping for words. “It’s just that the War overseas has finally come to us, here and now. Like it or not, we’re now soldiers, operating in enemy territory. I simply couldn’t risk any of those men sounding the alarm.”
Cat nodded. “You don’t have to sell me, Yuriko. We’re both on the same side, I think … now.”
Yuriko smiled as she opened the overhead hatch. Above it was a short tubular vertical tunnel, with U-shaped rungs running up the side, ending in another manhole-sized watertight hatch.
“You’ll have to dog that hatch behind you before I can open this one,” Yuriko whispered.
Cat felt her ears pop as she dogged the lower hatch and again with Yuriko opened the upper one. The tube opened into a dimly-lit cargo hold. “Where are we?” asked Cat, dusting herself off.
“Aboard the S.S. Hai-Lung—if the kanji ideograms on the bow and stern mean the same thing in Chinese as they do in Japanese, that means ‘Sea Dragon’ in English. According the ship’s registry, it’s a Manchurian freighter that gained refugee status when Japan took over Manchuria ten years ago and joined the U.S. Merchant Marine auxiliary soon after Pearl Harbor. When I escaped from Chinatown after Gojira snared you and your friends in the trap that he’d set for me, I doubled back and followed them here. I’ve spent the last few hours casing the place and waiting for Gojira to leave to come aboard and attempt a rescue.”
Cat crouched down on the floor and stared down the hatchway. “Gojira said he had some unfinished business. He must’ve meant going after you again.” She looked up. “He also called that”—she pointed down the tubular passage up through which they’d just climbed—“the Kairyuu Maru, which he said meant ‘Sea Dragon’, too.”
Surprisingly, Yuriko gave a stifled giggle. “The meaning depends on which kanji you use to write it. Many Japanese words are homophones, so compound words often have multiple meanings, depending on which of the same-sounding words one chooses. In this case, Kairyuu Maru is a nautical pun, because with different kanji it can mean either ‘Sea Dragon’ or ‘Ocean Current’—Maru is just a word used to designate a ship.” Cat noted that Miss Koroshi had refrained from mentioning the inherent double meaning of her own name. Now back to her usual quiet demeanor, Yuriko went on. “There are two ships here: a Chinese cargo ship on the surface called the Hai-Lung … and a submarine called the Kairyuu Maru attached to that ship’s keel like a giant barnacle, connected by a watertight tube running from one to the other. The tube is a mobile caisson similar to those used by underwater tunnel builders. The whole arrangement is an impressively clever subterfuge.”
“Two ships, one of them a sub, both called ‘Sea Dragon’ but in different languages?” Cat shook her head, then dogged the hatch and stood up. “It makes sense, though. They can take a Merchant Marine cargo ship anywhere up or down the coast with little or no question, perhaps even on a regular schedule, carrying the sub attached to its bottom past the submarine defense traps just as slick as you please. Once they’re out in the open sea, the sub could separate and go on whatever mission they choose, then rendezvous back with the ship whenever they want to get back into the Hudson River … or anywhere else deep enough to handle a ship with ten times the normal draft!”
“We’d better get out of here quickly,” cautioned Yuriko. “We can hash this over at our leisure when we’re safe in Doc Hazzard’s office.”
They made their way through the hold and up a ladder to the deck. Yuriko halted suddenly, holding up a hand to restrain Cat. “Shimatta! Something’s gone wrong!”
“What is it?” Cat whispered.
“I left three men hidden here when I went down. Now they’re gone!”
Cat peered out into the darkness. At least one full day had gone by while she had been imprisoned, and it was again night outside. It was clear, however, with a nearly-full waning gibbous Moon illuminating the rig-cluttered deck, albeit admittedly at a low angle. “I don’t see anyone out there.”
“I’d feel better if we did. Ships this size is busy even at night and I saw half a dozen men in addition than the ones I … encountered … awhile back.” She shuddered. “It is unnaturally quiet … ominously so.”
“Is that why we’re whispering?” asked Cat, trying to ease the tension.
Yuriko relaxed a bit but remained alert and continued scanning the dark intently. Signaling her movements in advance with a hand on Cat’s forearm, she guided their way across the cluttered deck, retracing the path that she’d taken coming in.
Twenty feet short of the mooring hawser at the bow that was apparently Yuriko’s goal, they were stopped dead in their tracks by a sharp, explosive hiss. Instantly Yuriko and Cat crouched down as low to the deck as they could. Four-pointed razor-edged steel stars the size of silver dollars materialized in Yuriko’s hands.
Another hiss sounded immediately to their right, then another from behind and slightly to their left. Cat wished she had her six-shooter, as she could shoot the head off a rattler at thirty paces and the hisses had a distinctively serpentine quality to them.
Before either of the two young women could make another move, they were caught in the blinding white glare of an overhead floodlight. For several seconds they were completely blind, transfixed like the proverbial deer in the headlights, during which time a dozen noosed silk cords swished out of the surrounding darkness, entrapping them as effectively as net. The cords whistled through the air with a serpentine hiss.
The women were immobilized instantly. Yuriko’s Shinobi throwing stars dropped from her hands and clinked on the deck. Within seconds, there were so many cords, all drawn as tightly as possible, that they were wrapped like mummies and bound close together, cocooned at the center of a gigantic spider web. Struggling against the silken cords only seemed to draw them tighter and movement soon became all but impossible. Cat felt her heart clench like a fist and wondered if the inscrutable Yuriko was subject to the same feelings of despair.
“Please forgive our unseemly restriction of your liberty, Miss Hazzard, Miss Koroshi,” a sibilant voice filtered out of the darkness. “We have but recently recovered this property of ours, so heinously misappropriated by the Japanese along with our homeland, and we thus feel justified in taking stock of all that it contains, which alas also includes your worthy selves.”
The speaker stepped into the light, causing Cat to gasp in sudden recognition. The man was tall and slender to the point of emaciation, dressed in a robe of teal green Ch’ang-an silk embroidered with an opalescent white-and-gold Kweichow batik peacock, his hairless skull half-covered by a pearl-encircled black Mandarin cap topped by a coral bead. Almond-shaped eyes of a luminous chatoyant jade-green glittered beneath his lofty Shakespearean brow, framed by gaunt cheeks and divided by a sharply aquiline nose. His hands, clasped now in a prayerful attitude, were long-fingered and spidery, the nails over two inches long, each protected by an elegant Ch’ing Dynasty lung-shou “dragon’s claw” cloisonné and guilloché gold filigree nail guard. A foot-tall Golden Marmoset wearing a doll-sized replica of his green robe and black cap perched on one bony shoulder with its foot-long tail wrapped around his neck.
“We’ve met before, but we were never properly introduced,” murmured Cat sarcastically. “I only saw your face and heard your voice, but only on a television screen. If Doc’s surmise was correct, you must be the international criminal Wu-Hanshu!”
“Doctor Wu-Hanshu, if you please, Miss Hazzard!” It was impossible to tell if the Mandarin gentleman was anywhere near as annoyed as his words suggested, his voice remained unwaveringly cordial. “I am a Doctor of Philosophy from Edinburgh, a Doctor of Law from Christ’s College in Cambridge, a Doctor of Medicine from Harvard, a Doctor of Natural Sciences from Heidelberg and a Docteur-Ingénieur tres honorable avec félicitations from La Sorbonne. My friends, out of courtesy, call me ‘Doctor’.” The Chinese bowed with exaggerated courtesy. “It is always gratifying to be recognized by name and reputation alone, especially when adequate introductions have been lacking. We did indeed meet somewhat indirectly three years ago, when you were an involuntary guest of my … agent … the late Shawn Twilight.”
The green eyes seemed to glow with an inner light, which Cat found both frightening and hypnotically compelling. She was simultaneously both attracted and repelled, like a rodent fascinated by a serpent. A quick sideways glance, which was all she could manage, showed her that Yuriko felt the same thing.
“What happens now?” asked Cat, ignoring Wu-Hanshu’s ingratiating manner.
“You will be returned, along with your newly-acquired companion, to your former quarters. There, I fear, you must both be subjected to the further indignity of being restrained and under constant guard by one of my agents.” At his gesture, an Oriental girl in traditional Japanese dress stepped into the pool of light and bowed graciously.
“This is Ming-Toy, a most able agent who has until now been known as Akiko, a member of Gojira’s personal staff. She, like the others now in control of this ship, are servants of the Order of the Gra-Fan and its Council of Nine, of which I am honored to be President.”
“So I’m to be a … guest … again?”
“As tiresome to me as it is to you, yes, I cannot afford the distraction your freedom would impose and your continued presence may prove useful in dealing with your cousin, the oh-so-formidable Doctor Mark Hazzard, Junior.”
“Everyone seems to think I’m the apple of Doc’s eye!” complained Cat. “It’s making a shambles of my social life and causing both me and Doc no end of trouble. You may be defeating your own purpose, Doctor, because I think Doc may be getting fed up with having to rescue me.”
“Enough of this pointless prattle!” exploded Yuriko, who had been silent until then, wrapped in her own thoughts. “As long as we are to be your prisoners, at least do us the courtesy of answering important questions instead of making idle chatter.”
“Your request is quite reasonable,” replied the Doctor, “provided of course that your questions remain equally within reason.”
“Why are you after Gojira?” Yuriko had returned to her usual calm. “What has he ever done to you?”
“He stole, or at least was the recipient of, several pieces of property belonging to me. These were taken from my stronghold on an island in the Hei-Lung-Jiang or Black Dragon River, which you call the Amur River, in Dongbei-Jiusheng, which you call Manchuria and the Japanese now call Manchukuo—the establishment of which originally earned me the Guanhua sobriquet Fu-Manzhou or “Martial Manchurian”—when that region was conquered by the Japanese ten years ago. It has taken me that long to trace these items to him. I was alerted by their use in your abduction from the American authorities in Santa Barbara.”
“Are you saying that the device or whatever-it-is that makes that mind-bending weird blue glow belongs to you?”
“Just so. As is the submersible craft where Miss Hazzard was so recently held, which will serve to contain you both for awhile yet, and this ship to which it is attached, originally launched as the S.S. Hei-Lung, the Black Dragon, after the river in which it was launched. The submersible itself is properly called the Shao-Hei-Lung or Little Black Dragon.”
“You’re setting a trap for Gojira, then?” put in Cat. “Waiting for him to return with the rest of your … property?”
“Just so. I will recover that which is mine and punish those who have offended my honor by taking it, after which I will return again to my own private and personal concerns.”
“What of my father?” Yuriko’s tone made it clear that this was what had been troubling her all along. “Where has he been taken and what part does he play in this affair?”
“For all intents and purposes,” said Wu-Hanshu evenly, “both you and your father vanished completely after the incident in Santa Barbara. As yet, only you have reappeared. My agent Ming-Toy, in her guise as Akiko, heard nothing mentioned about him, even though she had acquired a trusted position within Gojira’s entourage. Either he escaped detection completely, as you did for a time, or his importance is such that Gojira trusts no one else with information concerning his part in this affray.” He paused, as though reluctant to proceed, then added, “And, yes, it is quite possible that, as you have clearly already surmised, your father is Gojira.”
Yuriko’s expression indicated that her worst fears had been confirmed, but she said nothing.
Cat took the opportunity to put in another question of her own. “What’s your connection with the Tick-Tock Man incident? Why was Shawn Twilight important enough to you to warrant such action on his behalf? I always thought the both of you prided yourselves on being independent cusses, so I’ve never really understood how anything could’ve brought you two together, much less why you would rescue him in the first place and then go on to help him mount an assault on Doc and me.”
“That, Miss Hazzard, is a purely personal matter and, as such, of no concern to anyone other than myself.”
“The deuce it isn’t!” Cat fumed. “I was kidnapped and held hostage and threatened with the proverbial Fate-Worse-Than-Death, so I figure that sure as heck makes it my business.”
“A point,” conceded Wu-Hanshu grudgingly, “but on that topic I will continue to demur further comment. The matter is now entirely between myself and Doctor Hazzard and, following his capture, it will be settled in a manner in accordance with the traditions of the Order of the Gra-Fan. It should suffice that your cousin, like Gojira, has transgressed against me and, like Gojira, has incurred my wrath. You figure into this equation only incidentally, an ‘innocent bystander’ as it were.”
Cat’s eyes narrowed at the mention of Doc’s “capture”. She had already opened her mouth to speak several times during Wu-Hanshu’s discourse, so she was completely fired up by the time he finished.
“I don’t know what you’ve got against Doc but, if he did anything against you or your interests, it was because you were doing something you had no business doing. If it has something to do with Shawn Twilight, you’ve got no complaint against Doc whatsoever, because every time Doc went up against him, it was after he’d attacked Doc first. In the last case, he was only rescuing me … a situation which is repeating itself right here and now!”
“So it is. I’m glad you perceive that, Yes, Doctor Hazzard is once again about to charge to your rescue but, this time, he faces an opponent of greater magnitude than himself, one who has prepared for this eventuality for nearly twenty years.” Wu-Hanshu smiled in way that was in no way reassuring. “And now, Miss Hazzard, Miss Koroshi, I really don’t have any more time for idle chatter. I must prepare the final phases in my campaign against both Gojira and the Bronze Titan.” He bowed slightly, then threw out one hand in a casual gesture.
Cat, whose sense of smell had been noticeably impaired since Yuriko smacked her in the nose, suddenly became aware of a heavy mimosa perfume, cloyingly strong, filling the air around her. She felt her head spinning as the deck under her feet seemed to bend and stretch, until finally it rose up and slapped her solidly upside the head.
The old man stood on the street outside the Empire State Building and stared upward. This in itself was not unusual, for even though the giant building was entering its second decade, it was still regarded with a bit of awe even by some New Yorkers, despite notoriously blasé attitude toward such things.
The Oriental oldster was no rubbernecker, however. His almond eyes bored into the building, prying out the mysteries of its construction missed by all but keenest and most knowledgeable observer. Where others saw only a vertical expanse of pink or gray granite and Indiana limestone, the oldster noted hand and footholds, tracks for window-washing scaffolds, ledges, joints and air channels. He mapped the face of the building as a mountaineer maps the face of a cliff and with exactly the same intent in mind.
The old man appeared to be a Chinese janitor or office cleaner. This deception was carefully cultivated in his dress and manner, especially the obsequious way in which he slouched and shuffled. No one glanced twice at either the old man or the canvas bag he carried, nor would they remember seeing him half a minute after he had gone his way.
It was an ancient art this man practiced, the art of stealth, secrecy, perseverance, patience and endurance known to its Shinobi practitioners as nin-jutsu and often called the “Art of Invisibility” by those not privy to its mysterious ways.
Shiro Koroshi shuffled into the spacious Art Deco lobby, with the bag under one arm and a push broom over his shoulder, seeming to shrink in on himself until barely more than the image remained. Two Military Policemen—the same two who had picked Bellman and Stonebender up at the airport—just inside the door watched him walk by without taking notice, despite the fact they had been alerted to keep an eye out for an elderly Oriental, an injunction that had been redoubled after the massacre at Columbus Park. It was a measure of Shiro’s skill that he wore no more disguise than a custodial coverall “uniform” and reinforced the impression with the addition of a push broom. The canvas bag was carried in a way that made it appear one with the coveralls and thus effectively hidden in plain sight.
The trick was more psychological than physical. Shiro no longer thought of himself as Shiro, instead he was now Tang-Sun, a menial Chinese-American office cleaner. He only thought those things that the imaginary Tang-Sun would think. As Tang-Sun, his only concern was getting to his place of work and earning his meager salary, so that his wife and many children would be properly fed and clothed and his face maintained. Shiro would be Tang-Sun for as long as his mission required it … until he reached the place and time at which he had previously set in his mind for Shiro Koroshi to return.
And thinking indeed made it so, for it was not Koroshi whom the guards passed without comment or notice, but the sad-eyed and feeble old Chinese janitor Tang-Sun, who shuffled quietly past the banks of elevators at the far end of lobby to the custodial employee’s service lift, which he accessed with a key on the jingling ring of dozens of keys drawn casually from his well-worn and work-stained coveralls.
In point of fact, he had only acquired the key ring scarcely ten minutes earlier by waylaying one of the building’s actual custodians just outside the door and injecting him with a powerful hypnotic drug extracted from commonly available herbs, using a makeshift hypodermic cobbled together from an eyedropper and a hollow 16-gauge piercing needle recently “liberated” from a waterfront tattoo parlor. The waylaid custodian was currently sleeping peacefully in a room Shiro had rented in the Sheraton-Atlantic Hotel just across the street the night before, but as a result of hypnotic suggestion and fatigue from spending several hours answering Shiro’s probing questions about his place of employment.
Because it ran upward not from the Lobby but from the deepest sub-basement, the service elevator only ran up to the Seventy-Fifth Floor. Due to engineering limitations shared by all the lifts in the building except Doc Hazzard’s pneumatic tube car, which operated on an entirely different principle, conventional elevators can only travel a maximum of eighty floors, forcing a change of elevators at the Eightieth Floor (if not at a lower floor) for anyone traveling all the way up to the Eighty-Sixth Floor observatory. Had he used one of the regular elevators, he could have ridden directly up to the Eightieth Floor, but that would have caused everyone to take a close and critical look at the lowly and normally invisible janitor in their midst, defeating the purpose of the carefully-crafted disguise.
Tang-Sun rode the elevator up to the Seventy-Second Floor and made his way down the corridor to an unoccupied office, which was being made ready for use by the recently created Office of Civilian Defense and currently headed by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. He let himself in with a passkey obtained along with the service elevator access key and the custodial uniform. Once inside the office, Tang-Sun vanished and Shiro Koroshi reappeared. The transformation was instantaneous and complete. One moment he was the subservient Chinese-American janitor, the next a dynamically spry albeit stoop-shouldered Japanese-American elder.
With quick but fluid movements, the Shinobi master stripped off the custodial coveralls, beneath which he wore a loose-fitting pajama-like black garment made of canvas-like material. From the bag that he had carried in with him, he pulled out a pair of rubber-soled cloth shoes, supple fingerless leather gloves with reinforced palms and black ceramic knuckle caps and a close-fitting black hood that covered all but a narrow strip across his eyes. Into the sash-like belt of the garment he tucked a variety of metal implements in black-lacquered cases.
The last item to come out of the bag was an otherworldly thing: a skull! Actually, it was only half of a skull, a skeletal face with massively outthrust jaws lined with the needle teeth and prominent canines of a carnivore and heavy beetling brow ridges. Discs of red crystal mirrored on the back like one-way glass were set into the eye sockets. These allowed unobstructed vision from behind the skull-face but, to anyone viewing it from the front, their reflected light made them appear to be demonic glowing red eyes.
It was an ancient Shinobi devil-mask of Gojira, the Demon-from-the-Sea!
Shiro wrapped the mask reverently in black silk and tucked it into the front of his black uwagi jacket, then glided over to the window. The same engineering limitations that restricted the elevators to an eighty-floor vertical span also prevented any building from rising more than thirty floors at a time. As a result, skyscrapers are built in a series of blocks of diminishing size, creating a series of terrace or balconies where a smaller block sits atop a larger one. The windows on the Seventy-Second Floor opened not onto empty air but onto a section of the rooftop of the larger Seventy-First Floor, which formed a narrow ledge around the building seven hundred and eighty feet up. The next such setback bracketed the east and west ends of the Eighty-First Floor to form two terraces, which were actually the rooftops of Doc Hazzard’s world-renown Eightieth Floor headquarters.
Stepping out onto the narrow ledge, Shiro ignored the seventy-two story drop to the street below. Peering intently at the Indiana limestone and granite exterior walls, he soon spied what he sought: the narrow metal track embedded in the limestone facing that accommodated the retaining bolts for a window-washing scaffold.
Shiro removed eight metal spikes from his sash. These were made of steel coated with a flat black lacquer. About eight inches in length, half of each spike was hexagonal, the planes crosshatched for a sure handgrip. The other half was flattened and honed into a hollow-ground double-edged stiletto blade. The edges were coated with fast-acting poison derived from the fugu, a Japanese variety of the fish known variously as the pufferfish, puffer, balloonfish, blowfish, bubblefish, globefish, swellfish, toadfish, toady, honey toad, sugar toad and sea squab. This toxin was a hundred times more poisonous than potassium cyanide.
Broad leather bands were wrapped around the palms and backs of his gloves. The bands were densely studded across the palm with steel hooks patterned on the claws of a cat, allowing the wearer to climb sheer walls like a lizard. Shiro carefully inserted the bladed ends of the sinister-looking spikes into loops in the backs of the bands, four spikes on the back of each hand, and then began scaling the side of the building by hooking into the retaining bolt slots in the nearest scaffold track. Hand over hand, he began to pull himself up, one foot at a time, his weight supported only by the steel cat-claws on the palm of each hand.
The wiry old man ascended the side of the building with fluid grace and surprising speed. At a rate of one foot per second, the eighty-foot climb to the level of the Eightieth Floor windows took only a minute and twenty seconds. It would have been an impressive feat for a man a third of his age, and he performed it as casually as the average man might climb a ladder to the roof of his house, with no conscious thought given to the possibility of a fall onto the street, now well over eight hundred and fifty feet below.
Shiro came abreast of one of the windows of Doc’s reception room. The glass was tinted amber and had several unique qualities, not the least of which was its ability to withstand direct fire from the most high-powered bullets. The old man hung outside the window by one hand as he reached into his black uwagi jacket and retrieved with a small red-and-black striped parcel, which he pressed against the pane near the upper left corner of the window frame.
Pulling himself up parallel to the window, Shiro peered around the frame and into the office. Doc, Trog, Sham and Bellman were just finishing their discussion with Lin-Fong, who had just displayed Cat’s antique revolver. As soon as Shiro saw the zoot-suited Gra-Fan emissary, his eyes narrowed to slits and a hiss escaped between his clenched teeth. He quickly reached over and pulled a cord on the back of the black parcel.
The red-and-black package disintegrated in an incandescent ball of white flame. It was a strangely silent explosion, producing only the barest whoosh! of sound as it dissolved the amber window and part of the frame in a wash of blast-furnace heat. The parcel had contained a compound of magnesium and powdered iron known as thermite capable of burning through a steel I-beam, even underwater. It was the perfect device for stealthy sabotage or silent entry into an enemy fortification.
“Blazes, Doc!” Trog bellowed angrily. “Are we gonna let Smiling Sam the Zoot Suit Man here get away with this? Why, for two cents, I’d—” He broke off as the window vanished in a blaze of glory. “Look out, Doc!”
Shiro jack-knifed like an Olympic diver, snapping his wiry body around in an acrobatic maneuver that catapulted him through the window feet first. Along the way, he brought his hands together, drawing one spike from the back of each hand with the nimble fingers of the other. As his feet touched the floor, he threw them with a practiced flick of the wrists directly at Lin-Fong like the ultra-streamlined daggers that they actually were. He had already drawn another pair of throwing spikes before the first pair were even halfway to their target.
Lin-Fong proved to be a fast thinker … and even faster actor. He side-stepped so quickly that he seemed to turn to smoke, dodging out of the way of the first pair of spikes, and continued side-stepping without a pause, all the while fanning the hammer of Cat’s old Frontier Colt in his hand like Wyatt Earp at the O.K. Corral. He fired all six rounds so rapidly that it seemed like a single continuous peal of thunder.
He was more than fast, though. He also shot with inhuman accuracy. The second pair of throwing spikes seemed to make sharp turns in midflight as they were intercepted by rounds from Cat’s antique horse pistol, which was charged not with Doc’s anesthetic “mercy” bullets but with high-velocity full metal-jacketed .22 Hornet rounds that packed more wallop than the .44-40 lead slugs for which the weapon had originally been chambered. Three more rounds impacted squarely in Shiro’s chest with dull muffled thumps at almost the same moment that the now somewhat bent spikes clattered across the floor. The sixth barely missed the old man’s head, clipping the edge of his black canvas zukin hood before biting a fist-sized chunk out of Doc’s office wall. Shiro’s body was halted in midflight by the impacts and dropped to the carpeted floor like a rag doll filled with lead shot.
Doc’s reactions had been almost as rapid. He crossed the room in three long strides, his hand lashing out like a striking cobra to slap the smoking gun from Lin-Fong’s hand and send it bouncing off the wall, which is what caused the sixth and final shot to go wild. On the backhand, Doc chopped the Oriental behind the right ear, laying him out horizontally in the air, to fall to the floor unconscious.
The others were too frozen with surprise to do more than draw sharp breaths. Ignoring the fallen Chinese, Doc turned and knelt by the fallen Shiro, pulled off the black hood and made a quick examination. The oldster was still alive, thanks to the skull-faced devil mask, now a shattered ruin inside his black uwagi jacket, but the ribs in the chest beneath were badly broken by the concussion and scored by several pieces of ceramic shrapnel. Doc knew at a glance that the old man couldn’t live much longer.
“Ichiban-chan!” whispered the broken old man, his lips frothing with blood. “My Number-One!” He coughed, his chest rattling. “Beware … the blue glow … that burns the brain…”
“I understand,” said Doc, his face a brazen mask. “A broadcasting device designed to act like a thalamencephalon bypass, but working imperfectly.”
The old man smiled, then gasped, “Abunai! … Beware! Gojira … Gojira is … Tetsuhito…”
“Joukyou wa yoku wakarimasu, Sensei. I totally understand the situation, Teacher.” Doc’s tone was both solemn and soothing. “Gojira has made a strong opening, Meijin-sama, capturing our respective young Tokin and calling Ote, but I have already begun countermeasures that will preclude Tsumi and, in fact, likely force Sennichite if not Jishogi. You have taught me well, Sensei. For that reason, and that reason alone, I … we … shall prevail!”
Ichiban-chan…” The wise old eyes glazed and the patriarch’s last breath sighed away.
For a long time, no one moved or said anything.
“Blazes!” gulped Trog, finally. Looking from the empty window frame to the bloody corpse to the unconscious Chinese and the crater in the wall, the hairy chemist whistled softly between his front teeth, amazed.
“Say, Doc,” he ventured, “what did you mean when you said that this Brainstorm thing worked like a thal … thalama … watchamacallit?”
“And what did Koroshi mean when he said Gojira was ‘Tetsuhito?’” chimed in Sham, nervously half-drawing the blade of his swordstick and slamming it home again.
Doc ignored both questions. With extreme care and gentleness, he lifted the body of the old Shinobi and carried it into the laboratory. He left the others in a state of complete consternation behind him.
“Tetsuhito,” Shorty remarked to no one in particular, “is Japanese for ‘Iron Man’.” He slumped into one of the leather-covered chairs, twirling his monocle magnifier absently by its ribbon.
“‘Gojira is the Iron Man’?” Trog sighed heavily. “What does that mean?”
“Yeah, and why did Doc slug Lin-Fong when it was Koroshi who did all of the attacking?” Bellman mused. “You know, the longer I hang around you guys, the less I know about what the heck is going on. Uh … shouldn’t we do something about reviving this Lin-Fong character?”
“Let him sleep,” rumbled Trog angrily. “I never liked the oily so-and-so anyway, trying to get us to do his dirty work for him! I was all set to rearrange his smug face myself when all … this … happened.” He waved a hairy hand to take in the entire room, unconscious Oriental and all. “Shorty, what was all that Japanese gobble-de-gook Doc spouting there?”
“Meijin is a Japanese title signifying a master of Shogi, the General’s Game, the Japanese equivalent of chess, based on the Chinese game Hsiang-ch’i in much the same way that the Japanese game Go is based on the Chinese game Wei-ch’i.” Shorty spoke as if lecturing to a class, but continued staring off absently into space. “The rest of what Doc said was an assessment of the current situation in Shogi terminology. In chess terms, what he said was that Gojira had made a strong opening, captured Shiro’s and Doc’s promoted Pawns and called ‘Check!’ but that something Doc’s already done will forestall a checkmate and force either a stalemate or an impasse.”
The room became quiet again until Doc returned from the lab and hauled Lin-Fong up onto the toes of his pointed shoes by the double-wide lapels of his swing coat and slapped him awake. This procedure drew a raised eyebrow from Sham and an exchange of looks between Trog and Shorty, but none of them made any verbal comment. Bellman failed to realize that anything untoward was going on or how out of character Doc was behaving.
Since the beginning, when he’d told his Associates to let him handle this case alone, Doc had been acting strangely. It was as though he really didn’t want to get involved in the affair, despite its obvious importance. He seemed remarkably indecisive and tentative, almost timid, which was quite unlike him. Only Cat’s precipitous action, which had gotten them all embroiled in what was now being called the Columbus Park Massacre by those who actually knew about it, had forced the Bronze Titan’s hand.
Lin-Fong awoke with catlike suddenness. His first word was, “Koroshi?”
“Dead.” said Doc with an awful calmness. “You killed him. Why?”
“Self-defense! You saw him attack me!”
“I also saw you shoot both of his bo-shuriken spikes out of the air,” Doc noted with uncharacteristic venom. “We’ll let that pass for now, as I don’t have the time to sort out the truth from the half-truths and the lies that you’ve already told and are bound to continue to tell me. Suppose you tell us what you really came here to tell us, so we can get this farce back on the road.”
Doc’s golden eyes bored into Lin-Fong’s almond ones, which met his unflinchingly. They seemed to share a moment of mutual understanding denied to the others. Lin-Fong nodded slowly, with the cold appraisal of a jackal for a lion.
“You are everything I’ve heard you were!” he murmured. “Very well, here’s the story. Our mutual enemies operate from a ship called the S.S. Hai-Lung, anchored off a pier in the Upper West Side, about a mile or two upriver from your Yucatán Trading Company warehouse. Attached to the underside of the hull is an advanced submersible ship designed by Doctor Wu-Hanshu and stolen from him during the occupation of Manchuria, along with the basic Brainstorm device. This ship, renamed the Kairyuu Maru, is their true transport, with the Hai-Lung serving only as a sub tender and a means to foil the submarine nets which surround the harbor.”
Throughout this recitation, Lin-Fong became more and more self-assured, until his voice finally became arrogantly commanding. “A force will be sent from the Shang-Jih Import Company to the pier to capture the Hai-Lung. While this is happening, you and your men will attack the Kairyuu Maru in your own submarine, the Devilfish. I will accompany you and coordinate the assault. I have a trunk full of equipment for that purpose outside in the corridor.”
“Where is Cat? At this Shang-Jih Import Company?”
“Both your cousin Cathryn and Koroshi’s daughter Yuriko are currently safe and sound. Your kinswoman will be returned to you upon the, ah, cessation of hostilities.”
Doc seemed to ponder this for a moment, then abruptly he released Lin-Fong and turned away. He retrieved Cat’s revolver and examined it for a time, checking the mechanism thoroughly. He seemed satisfied with whatever it was he had found.
“Brothers,” he said presently, “you will escort Lin-Fong and his equipment to the Devilfish in one of our special cars and give assist him in stowing it aboard. I’ll join you there in about an hour, after I’ve cleared up a few loose ends here.” He turned to Bellman. “Corporal Bellman, you may accompany us if you so decide. Otherwise, you are dismissed from further service with me and free to go wherever you please, pending new orders from General DeWitt.” Without waiting for an answer and without a backward glance, the Bronze Titan glided silently out of the room through the semi-hidden door to his private living quarters.
“Blazes!” rumbled Trog. “Well, let’s shake a leg, you guys. Orders is orders, no matter how whacky they sound at first.”
“O ye of little faith!” sniffed Sham. “Doc’s never led us wrong yet, you antediluvian ape!” Despite his outward good cheer, it was difficult to tell if Sham really felt that way or was simply exercising his usual policy of pointedly disagreeing with Trog. “You coming, Bellman?”
“I’d never be able to live with myself if I quit now!” said Bellman. “I’m sure that Sam feels the same way.”
Doc waited until everyone had left before returning to the office. He had changed into his signature Hazzard & Associates branded “business” suit: bronze-leather boots, brown whipcord cargo trousers, khaki drill-cloth shirt, silvery gray nylon utility vest and bronze-leather jacket, gloves and aviator’s helmet. He then strode over to the bank of the phones, selected one connected to the local exchange and dialed a number from memory.
“This is Mark Hazzard, Jr.” he said when he’d gotten his party. “I want you to check the registry and give me everything you have on the S.S. Hai-Lung, currently docked on the Hudson somewhere north of Pier Ninety-Six and south of the Seventy-Ninth Street Boat Basin.” The answer came in a surprisingly short time—or perhaps not so short, considering that Doc’s authority was backed up by both the Justice and War Departments. As he listened to the report, Doc nodded grimly, his golden eyes narrowing slightly.
“Yes, just as I thought. Thank you.” As he hung up, a strange trilling note briefly filled the room.
Doc set about making rapid but complex preparations. He went to the lab and assembled an arcane collection of electrical and chemical components, which he packed neatly and solidly in an unmarked aluminum box not unlike a small suitcase. He opened his jacket to expose the basket-woven 8-ounce 1050-denier high-tenacity parachute-nylon utility vest, the pockets of which he filled from a number of bins along one wall of the lab.
Returning to his office, Doc opened the safe and removed the katana, the Sword of Koroshi, from its antique brass-bound leather case and placed it carefully in the metal suitcase. He locked the safe and placed a manila envelope containing the report, which he’d written while his Associates had been in his office getting ready to go help Lin-Fong collect his trunk and move it to the Devilfish, on top of it.
On the face of the envelope, in Doc’s stylographic handwriting, was penned:
Satisfied with these preparations, Doc returned to the lab, where he confronted the body of Shiro Koroshi, which lay as if in state on a small surgical table. He poured the contents of a nearby flask over the body. “So it ends, Youfu-sama, with all of our mutual obligations coming due at last. I wish it were otherwise. Yasashisa sayonara, Maijin-sensei!” Doc took a small pellet from his vest and dropped it on the body. There was a dull pop, followed by a hiss like frying bacon. Within seconds the body had dissolved into a cloud of oily vapor that was quickly wafted away by an overhead ventilator. A minute later it was as though the body had never existed.
Quietly, Doc went to the “Flea Run” pneumatic tube shuttle and went to join his Associates at the Yucatán Trading Company warehouse.
The Devilfish resembled a steel shark, ome hundred seventy-five feet long and eighteen feet abeam, with a draft of fifteen feet and a submerged displacement of six hundred fifty tons. Six steel rails running from bow to stern allowed the craft to skate along under polar ice, as did the retractable conning tower that heightened her shark-like appearance with its finlike profile. The steel fish was literally armored against virtually all hazards of the deeps.
“Blazes!” howled Trog as he eased the heavy trunk down the narrow amidships deck hatch. The Devilfish had three decks, with the uppermost deck—nicknamed “the Attic”—holding ship’s stores, provisions, cargo and ancillary equipment. The main deck, which was not only the widest but ran the entire length of the sub and also had the most headroom, held the engines, control systems and crew quarters. The lowermost deck—nicknamed “the Basement”—held the fuel cells, batteries, compressed air tanks, ballast tanks, ventilators, air filters and most other engineering works other than the engines themselves. The trunk had to go down through two hatches, one horizontal and one vertical, while negotiating a narrow ladder well between the two, all of which were barely large enough for it to fit.
“I’ll be danged if I ever saw any radio gear like this before, and I seen plenty!” Trog complained loudly.
“This is not conventional wireless by any means,” Lin-Fong commented. “It was designed by Doctor Wu-Hanshu himself and operates on a completely new principle. It can be received only by another set of the same design.”
“Impossible!” objected Sham. “I’m no expert on radio, but even I know that any radio transmission can be intercepted. Why, antennae here on Earth are receiving natural radio emissions from the Sun and even empty space!”
“True enough,” agreed Lin-Fong, “but although conventional radio could conceivably be retuned to detect the carrier waves from this set, they can’t make them audible, much less intelligible. Ordinary wireless uses a fixed frequency and modulates the amplitude or width of the wave. This set uses a fixed amplitude and instead modulates the frequency or wave length. This frequency-modulation system imposes certain restrictions on the distance that one can transmit or receive, but has other advantages. It is less susceptible to interference and static, for example, and much superior as a carrier for image orthicon generated television signals.”
“I wish Long Shot were here to explain what you just said,” grumbled Sham. “I guess we’ll have to take your word on it … until Doc gets here.”
“How about a little less gab up there and a little more hustle?” complained Trog. “While you guys have been debating which end barks, me and Bellman have been doing all the heavy work!”
“As it should be, you hairy accident of nature!” Sham clattered down the ladder, swordstick in hand. “Manual labor suits you better than men of intellect like Lin-Fong and myself.”
“‘Intellect’!” snorted Trog. “Well, you two are certainly both men of something, but ‘intellect’ ain’t what I’d call it. You’re both too slippery to suit me.” He glared to underline his sentiment. “You oughta join that Gra-Fan, Sham, ’cause you’d fit right in! I don’t trust either of you as far as I can throw you.”
“You’re just jealous, you obtuse orangutan!” Sham retorted with a superior sniff. “You have no appreciation for any of the finer things in life.”
Much of Trog’s current ire with Sham was due to the fact that, immediately upon arrival at the Yucatán Trading Company warehouse that housed Doc’s hangar and boathouse, he’d gone directly to his personal locker and changed clothes. While his new attire was certainly more suitable for a sojourn on a submarine, it was also more in keeping with a weekend yachting excursion: a navy-blue double-breasted blazer with gold buttons and Commodore’s shoulder boards and sleeve rings, sharply creased gray slacks, a white woolen turtleneck, navy-blue deck shoes and a skipper’s hat with a double row of gold oak leaves on the visor, worn at a jaunty angle. Technically speaking, Sham was entitled to the Commodore’s rings and oak leaves, his Army Reserve rank of Brigadier General being the equivalent of the Navy rank of Commodore, and he’d been careful to omit the gold star that indicated a line officer, but Trog objected to his nautical finery on general principles.
Trog himself had also changed into something more suitable for shipboard, as had Shorty and Bellman, but they wore much more practical attire: deck shoes, bell-bottomed sailor’s breeches and crew-necked pullover sweaters under waterproofed canvas coveralls. As a results, they looked deckhands next to Sham in his yachtsman’s attire and Lin-Fong in his zoot suit.
“I don’t want to bust up your little Abbott and Costello routine,” Bellman interjected, “but I’m just a little concerned about all this. This Gra-Fan crowd doesn’t sound too much better than the Japanese, abducting Doc’s cousin to force an engagement he’d probably make anyway. You’ll pardon me, Mister Fong, but I go along with Colonel Playfair here. I flat out don’t trust you!”
Lin-Fong seemed unconcerned by his lack of popularity. “There are three grades of fellowship, Corporal Bellman. First are true friends, such as yourself and the unfortunate Samson Stonebender … yes, I know all about that encounter. Next comes the friend-of-your-friend, such as Doc Hazzard’s mutual friends Playfair and Cruiks, who associate and work together effectively despite their obvious disapproval of one another. The final grade is the enemy-of-your-enemy, which is our current relationship. You and I be antithetical to each other and even have some diametrically opposed goals, but we cooperate toward the common goal of defeating our common enemy. Consider America’s current alliance with Soviet Russia as a template. Trust between us need not be an issue so long as we both distrust our common enemy even more!”
He bowed and added, “Now, if we are through pontificating, I must set this machinery in operation, a delicate task requiring a degree of peace.” The others took the hint and left him to it.
“I wonder where Shorty got off to?” offered Trog as they settled down in the wardroom just forward of the control compartment.
“He said something about checking the diving gear for ‘utilitarian implementability’,” replied Sham. “He seemed to think that we’ll end up having to board this Jap sub while still submerged!”
“Crazier things have happened already, shyster,” observed Trog. “You remember what that Koroshi fellow said, about Gojira being the Iron Man? I think he meant it literally, that Gojira really is a man of iron, like that Tick-Tock Man thing that nabbed Cat three years ago.”
“That’s possible,” conceded Sham, “but not likely. Doc did indeed conclude that Doctor Wu-Hanshu was the likeliest suspect to have been behind the creation of the first and insofar as we know only Tick-Tock Man out of what was left of Shawn Twilight after the Tibetans got through with him. Gojira, who or whatever he is, appears to have stolen most of his arsenal from the not-so-Good Doctor. So Gojira might be a former servant of this Gra-Fan gang, which seems to be active all over the world, without regard for national boundaries.”
“Jehoshaphat!” exclaimed Bellman. “How can you guys be so casual about all this? You’re talking about double-dealing on a scale that would make Benedict Arnold look like a piker!”
“We run into this sorta stuff a lot, so we’ve gotten used to it.” Trog grinned like, well, like an ape. “You can’t always tell the Good Guys from the Bad Guys even with a scorecard … until Doc finally pulls the last rabbit out of his hat.” He grinned even wider. “Which is all the more difficult on account of Doc don’t even wear a hat!”
“I wish I shared your faith,” sighed Bellman. “I used to think I did. I used to read about the Bronze Titan and dream of meeting him and maybe being on a case with him … but, now that I actually am, I just wish it all had never happened!”
“Yeah, well you just keep on trusting Doc, old son. He’ll not only wrap this mess up neater than a Christmas package, he’ll see that everybody ends up getting their rightful due. Why, I’ll bet he’ll even see to it that Koroshi’s daughter gets a fair shake and don’t end up in jail—”
“Jove!” Sham suddenly paled. “I just had an awful thought!”
“All your thoughts and ideas are awful, you mealy-mouthpiece. What makes this one so special?”
“This Gojira is one of those Shinobi supermen, right?”
“Well, he tossed that gargantuan Stonebender guy around like a beanbag,” agreed Trog. “And he wears Japanese armor with the Koroshi clan colors and crest and they were top dogs among the Shinobi clans. But Shiro Koroshi was the last of Koroshi Shinobi masters and he’s dead now.”
“But Shiro’s not the last of Koroshi clan,” gulped Sham. “That’s the awful thing that just occured to me. Koroshi’s daughter Yuriko has had enough of the Shinobi training to mop up the floor with you and Cat and anyone else who ever got in her way! Has anyone ever seen both Gojira and Yuriko in the same place at the same time?”
“Blazes!” groaned Trog. “Only you could think of something as lowdown and despicable as that and make it sound so dang reasonable.” He rubbed the area where he’d been kicked as if remembering the power of the blow. “When the Good Lord laid out the blueprint for your brain, He musta used a pretzel for a straightedge!”
“While we’re on the subject of devious happenings,” Bellman put in, “I’ve got one for you wizards. The Gra-Fan moved in on Gojira’s gang here in New York after they heard about their blue-light gadget being used in Santa Barbara. So just how did they hear about it, when the Army clapped a lid on the event so tight that no one under the rank of General but Stonebender and I knew what had happened?”
“An individual exemplification of multifarious mystifications,” offered Shorty from the aftward hatchway.
“One of these days you’re gonna get a charley horse in your tongue,” warned Trog. “What’ya been up to, O Sesquipedalian Stringbean?” He smirking, having practiced saying “sesquipedalian” for weeks for just such an occasion.
“I have exhaustively aperculated various conglomerations of respiratory apparatus and coadjuvanated the construction of esoterically enigmatic electronic instrumentality imported by Doc.” The skeletal scholar jerked a thumb back to indicate the area behind him.
“You helped Doc install something on board?” deciphered Sham.
Doc materialized in the hatchway behind Shorty. “A little something of my own to compliment Lin-Fong’s FM radio gear.” he said simply. “We’d best be getting under weigh now.” With that, he ducked back into the control compartment so quickly that he seemed to vanish like a bursting soap bubble.
“Hot dog!” exulted Trog. “We’re finally gonna glom onto this thing! Boy, just wait’ll I get my lunch shovels on that armored ‘Iron Man’ item. I’ll turn him into scrap iron for the war effort.” He sauntered out of the wardroom whistling the tune of the recent Charles Tobias and Cliff Friend hit “We Did It Before (And We Can Do It Again)”.
Sham rose with quiet dignity, twirled his swordstick with a flourish that rested it across one shoulder like a rifle and followed Trog, humming the slighter older Johnny Mercer and Rube Bloom tune “Fools Rush In (Where Angels Fear To Tread)”.
Bellman and Shorty shared a look that was more expressive than any words before following.
The Hai-Lung appeared to be a rusty old hulk of a broken-down hoofer, a typical example of the class of ships known as tramp steamers. Only when it was viewed under infrared light did it become apparent that the rust that encrusted its hull was only artificially oxidized iron filings glued over completely sound and painted metal.
Doc folded the infrared filter back from the eyepiece of the periscope, it having served its purpose. The golden eyes missed nothing: the camouflaged antennas for the special frequency-modulation radio, more antennas for reception of a majority of the rest of commercial and military radio spectrum, oversized cargo hatches to accommodate unorthodox cargoes, artificial weathering created by careful applications of acid on otherwise brand-new plates.
“It’s a ‘Q-ship’—an armed warship disguised as an unarmed freighter!” observed Doc. “A remarkable job of camouflage, worthy of the Shinobi tradition of the Koroshi clan. It’s registered to the Shang-Jih Import Company.”
He lowered the periscope to a depth of ten feet below the waterline. The submarine Kairyuu Maru was dimly visible below the keel of the Hai-Lung, a lenticular shape sixty-five feet long and abeam with a draft of about eighteen feet. Doc and Shorty called it an oblate spheroid, while Sham and Trog described it as resembling a curling stone and the new Mars “M&M’s” button candy, respectively. Bellman thought that it looked like two pie tins joined together at the rims, resulting in something unlike anything he’d ever seen beyond the cover of an Astounding Science-Fiction Magazine.
Still, you couldn’t beat that curvilinear shape in terms of being both hydrodynamically streamlined and equally pressure resistant in every dimension. Two vertical fins were set side by side at the “rear” of the circular hull, with three sets of coaxial contra-rotating variable-pitch screws enclosed in streamlined fairings between them. The lens-shaped sub was painted battleship gray except for the fins, which proudly displayed the Rising-Sun sigil, although it could only be seen from the side and even then only when the sub was afloat on the surface. In the murky water, even the red sigil was all but invisible, but Doc had fitted a unique ultraviolet filter in place of the infrared one, which was capable of penetrating the underwater shroud.
“Doctor Hazzard!” Lin-Fong’s voice came over the intercom. “My men are in position around the pier. Be ready to take action against the Kairyuu Maru submarine.”
Trog snorted derisively. “Doc’s been ready to take action longer than he has!”
“Something’s happening!” yelled Sham from his position by the sonar. “It sounds like the sub is detaching from the freighter and moving off on its own!”
“It is,” confirmed Doc. “Trog, take us in fast!”
When Doc had acquired the Devilfish, it has been powered by two five-hundred-horsepower Busch-Sulzer diesel engines for use on the surface or at snorkel depths and two four-hundred-horsepower battery-powered Diehl electric motors for use for deep-sea operation. Doc had replaced the original engines and motors with two one-thousand-horsepower Westinghouse electric motors powered by Doc’s own hydrogen fuel cell design, based on Sir William Roberts Grove’s original 1894 hydrogen “gas voltaic battery” prototype fuel cell, backed up by Waldmar Jungner nickel-cadmium alkaline batteries imported from Sweden.
Doc’s sub was rigged so that it could be controlled by one man, although it operated best with a crew of three. Trog gunned the Westinghouse motors to full speed and plunged the ship forward, guiding it by an ingenious optical system that gave the view forward on a hooded viewer like that of an old-time Mutoscope.
The other sub had dropped from its berth below the Hai-Lung like a dead weight. As it dived, it began to spin on its vertical axis. It dropped all the way to the floor of the Hudson, where its spinning motion stirred up the muddy river bottom in a roiling, churning cloud.
A more effective smoke screen would be hard to imagine.
“We’ve lost him,” Doc decided quickly. “Trog, bring us up under the Hai-Lung. We’re going to dock with the freighter using that submarine’s own mooring mount.”
“Doctor Hazzard,” Lin-Fong’s voice came again. “I have lost contact with my forces ashore. What has happened?”
“We don’t know yet,” Trog took it upon himself to answer, “but we’re gonna find out any minute now!”
The hatch of the Devilfish’s access tube connected with the airlock on the keel of the Hai-Lung with a dull clang. The diameters of their respective hatches didn’t quite match, but the access tube was the larger and fit snugly over the Devilfish’s hatch. Just to be sure of a watertight seal, Doc activated the pump that inflated the rubber “crow’s nest” around the hatch that made it more seaworthy in storming weather. The expanding rim of inflatable conning tower, whose diameter was greater than either hatch, should lap over the larger-circumference hatch of the Hai-Lung’s airlock and provided a pressure wall around them both.
Doc was out of the control compartment and up the ladder well before the vibration of the mating of the two vessels stopped, night-sight goggles over his eyes and black-light in hand.
The hold of the Hai-Lung was a clutter of motley gear scattered haphazardly in what to the naked eye would have been almost pitch blackness. It was also the scene of an otherworldly massacre even more bizarre than the one in Columbus Park. Bodies were strewn everywhere, twisted in fashions that were for the most part anatomically impossible under normal circumstances. It was as though giant hands had picked them up, wrung them and thrown them back down again.
“Blazes!” gulped Trog. “What in the Sam Hill coulda done that?” His normally exuberant voice was uncharacteristically subdued.
“The Brainstorm!” gasped Sham. “These men must have all gone into convulsions violent enough to leave them like—” he indicated the sickening tableaux with a sweep of his swordstick—“that!”
“But they’re all Orientals!” Trog objected. “The Brainstorm ain’t supposed to affect them!”
“Get down!” barked Doc. Something blacker than the surrounding near-blackness swooped at them, missing by inches. Suddenly the air was filled with unidentifiable flying shapes slashing at their faces and necks.
“Hold your breaths!” ordered Doc as he scattered a dozen anesthetic gas bulbs from his utility vest. Although the stuff was normally invisible, it glowed whitely in the ultraviolet beam of Doc’s black-light, adding to the spectral atmosphere of the otherwise dark cargo hold. Indistinct black shapes began dropping like flies all around them, making awful rubbery thumps.
“I’ll be superamalgamated!” Shorty breathed in awe. “Desmodus rotundus … vampire bats … and Corvus corax principalis … Arctic ravens … and all of them at least twice their natural size!”
“Lookit their beaks, claws and fangs!” yelled Trog. “They fluoresce kinda yellowish-green in the black-light!” He looked closer. “Some kinda neurotoxin, maybe.”
“Poison!” Sham rasped. “That’s what did for these poor devils.”
“Keep an eye out for other creatures,” cautioned Doc. “Wu-Hanshu is noted for his use of venomous animals and insects as weapons!”
“Wu-Hanshu!” howled Trog. “He’s the head of the Gra-Fan and they’re supposed to be on our side!”
“Look out, you ugly baboon!” snarled Sham as he impaled a foot-long Amazonian Giant Centipede on the point of his sword. It had been crawling down the side of a crate toward Trog’s neck.
“Watch it yourself, ambulance-chaser!” Trog returned the favor by blasting a Brazilian Wandering Spider off Sham’s jaunty skipper’s hat with a single shot from his SCAMP. The jacketed .22 Hornet round bit a large chunk out of the hat as well as demolishing the spider. The gunshot was deafening, sounding more like the roar of a cannon as it echoed throughout the enclosed space of the cargo hold.
“Jove!” bellowed Sham, as much because he could barely hear himself speak as from outrage. “Be more careful, you trigger-happy troglodyte! You nearly blew my brains out!”
“Nah!” countered Trog, taking aim at something else crawling toward him from the darkness, something with glowing eyes, fangs and claws that was almost half as big as he was. “Too small a target!” Trog toggled the selective-fire lever of his SCAMP to the second detent and fired a five-round burst, producing a roar like the lower register of a bull fiddle being played loudly enough to drown out an anvil factory.
While this was going on, Doc whipped forward, black-light secured in the middle of his forehead with an elastic headband to free both his hands. That was a prescient action on his part, because within a few moments he tripped a hidden trigger that caused a 30-foot Green Anaconda to drop onto him from and overhead cage. At the same time, two Hamadryad king cobras struck at his neck from shoulder-high compartments in the nearby bulkhead.
Doc caught the cobras by the necks with lightning-quick moves, literally picking them out of the air with his hands. Squeezing the sides of their jaws to force their mouths open, he jabbed the cobras’ fangs into the heaving sides of the constrictor snake now wrapped around his upper torso. The anaconda shuddered and relaxed, slipping off him like so much sodden rope. Doc squeezed the cobras again, this time behind their heads, producing a crunching noise like a box of strawberries trod underfoot, then cast the dead serpents aside.
Just then a light came on in the darkened hold. It was a narrow-beam spotlight and it illuminated only one item in the entire area: a Plexiglas globe four feet across. The limp form of Cat Hazzard, dressed in some kind of loose fitting black pajama-like garment, could be clearly seen.
“Cat!” bellowed Trog. “Hang on, Cat! The cavalry’s on the way!”
“No!” Doc delivered that single word with enough force to stop Trog dead in his tracks. “It’s a trap—some kind of three-dimensional televisor!”
The unmoving form of Cat Hazzard suddenly shimmered and dissolved, to be replaced by the face of an Oriental with cat-green eyes, a lofty Shakespearean brow and a hairless skull the color of old ivory.
“How perceptive of you, Doctor Hazzard!” The sibilant voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. “You escaped this trap, a highly-electrified stereoscopic projection. You avoid my poisonous pets with an almost animal cunning. Now you must escape the menace of your treacherous ally and, finally, you must track me to my home ground and face me there! I shall await you, Doc Hazzard, where this entire sad contretemps began. Please, don’t disappoint me … or your cousin Cathryn!”
The image flickered and was gone, to be replaced by that a leering naked skull.
“Back to the Devilfish!” grated Doc. “Unless I miss my guess, this entire ship is rigged to explode!”
If there was a world’s record for abandoning a ship down a narrow tube into a submarine, Doc and his crew must have set a new one. The Devilfish had no time to pull away. They could only crash-dive and hope for the best.
Up on the surface, the S.S Hai-Lung shuddered and jumped out of the water, belching fire and smoke from every opening. It jackknifed in on itself as the keel broke amidships, appeared to attempt to tie itself in a knot and, failing that, came apart at the seams. When it was all over, there was nothing left above the waterline but bits and pieces not much larger than kindling.
The shockwave pushed the Devilfish all the way to the bottom of the Hudson and several feet down into the mud as well. To the anxious occupants of the Devilfish, it was like being inside a gigantic bell tolling to announce Judgment Day. The sub’s hull groaned and popped under the terrible strain, but it held.
“Jove!” muttered Sham weakly. “Now I know what it’s like to be inside an exploding firecracker!”
“Is everyone alright?” asked Doc, apparently unfazed. Upon receiving affirmative replies from all four of his companions, he hustled them into the forward section of the submarine.
“We’ve got to get under cover before Lin-Fong activates the Brainstorm!” he explained. Had he suddenly announced that the world was flat and they were about to go over the edge, he wouldn’t have created a bigger stir. “Say what?” roared Trog. “You mean that Lin-Fong—”
“Is either one of Gojira’s lieutenants or Gojira himself!” Doc finished. “The Gra-Fan medallion he displayed to establish his identity was probably taken from one of the bodies in Columbus Park. His intention was to lead us into a trap from the very start. Meanwhile, the real Gra-Fan managed to capture the S.S Hai-Lung and the Kairyuu Maru submarine attached to it. This fact was communicated to Gojira in time to change his plans, probably through FM radio transceivers like the one Lin-Fong gave us. He then decided to use us and our Devilfish submarine to try and recapture the Gra-Fan ships. If we’d succeeded, he’d have swooped in and used the Brainstorm to take it from us. If we’d been killed in the attempt, well, we’d be out of his was for good. Either way, he stood to gain!”
“But how did you know he was a phony? Even Shorty couldn’t tell he was a Japanese!” Sham shook his head incredulously.
“Lin-Fong used the Shinobi trick of assuming the identity of another by mental self-imaging and projection. I recognized the technique immediately but, even if I hadn’t, he gave it all away when he told us the name of his supposed import company.”
“His company?” said Shorty. “Shang-Jih? That’s just Mandarin for ‘New Dawn’!”
“Translated figuratively, yes.” agreed Doc. “But translated literally it means—”
“Supermalagorgeous! How could I have missed it!” Shorty slapped himself on the forehead. “‘Rising Sun’!”
Before any more could be said, they were interrupted by an ominous droning hum. This ran up the scale until it was no longer audible, but could still be felt as an irritating burning vibration, like ammonia poured in the ears. Hellish blue haze filled the air. Immediately, Doc activated the electronic gear that he’d brought aboard for this very situation.
This began emitting a soft, soothing tone that eased the pangs in the ear. An amber radiance spread like a protective umbra to ward off the blue glare of the Brainstorm. It’s effect could still be felt, but vastly diminished.
Trog felt his limbs become stiff, Shorty began to shiver, Sham began to itch all over and Bellman felt lightheaded and somewhat removed from reality, but that was all. Doc developed an odd expression of a man fighting to hold something in, but none of the others could tell what he actually felt.
“It’s … working…” gasped Bellman.
“Not well enough!” Doc made some final adjustments to the submarine’s controls, then gestured toward the forward hatchway. “Into the wardroom! Quickly!” Doc herded his crew ahead of him into the wardroom, where he dipped into the unmarked aluminum suitcase and produced what looked like skullcaps made of silver mesh. “Put these on fast, before—”
Whatever it was that Doc feared might happen next must have happened. The soft amber glow started to flicker and dim, the soothing tone to sputter and die. The Brainstorm seemed to scream in triumph as it rose to a crescendo that overwhelmed their senses. Suddenly, the black-armored figure of Gojira came into view on the other side of the open hatchway, standing in the middle of the control compartment of the Devilfish, the blue glare blazing from his wide-sweeping horns. Whatever it was that had resisted his evil radiance has failed. Doc slammed the hatch, dogged it, then took the Sword of Koroshi from the aluminum case and used it like a crowbar to disable the hatch wheel locking mechanism. It was his last voluntary action before he succumbed to the preternatural power of the Brainstorm.
In the control compartment, Gojira exulted, stamping one foot and slapping his thigh. Doc and his crew had fallen and their submarine Devilfish was now his! He had lost many men in the assault on the Hai-Lung, but now it was worth it. His most potent enemy, other than the Chinese Devil Doctor, was defeated. The Brainstorm had proven its superiority over the Seidouhito, the Bronze Man, whom he had always considered his most dangerous opponent.
Now Gojira, Shinobi Demon-from-the-Sea, could complete his mission. He could return triumphantly to Japan, where the Brainstorm would be developed into an even stronger weapon, one that could sweep inferior races from the face of the Earth, over which the Rising Sun would ascend to its proper place of glorious supremacy.
The massive fanged jaws parted and Gojira’s death-rattle laughter echoed throughout the submarine as the Demon-from-the-Sea prepared to surface and pick up his remaining men.
Cat Hazzard awoke to find that once again she’d had an involuntary change of wardrobe and living accommodations.
Her first impression upon waking was that she was either ill or suffering the after-effects of whatever it was that Wu-Hanshu had used to knock her out, but she soon realized that the pitching, rolling, yawing and shuddering that she felt were actual objective physical sensations, not something symptomatic of debilitation. Moreover, they were the all-to-familiar physical sensations of being aboard a ship under weigh somewhere out upon the open sea. It turned out that she was not entirely correct in her assessment. She was actually aboard a ship under weigh somewhere out beneath the open sea!
She was dressed in a leotard-like garment that covered her torso and neck like a second skin but left her shoulders, arms and legs bare. It was made of some kind of synthetic material with a texture and consistency like leather and the suppleness of fine silk. It was seamless and no closures or fastening other than two sets of snap fasteners in the collar, one set directly beneath each ear, and a much more discreet set at the groin, which she presumed to be the equivalent of the “fireman’s flap” in a traditional red flannel union suit. The color was metallic yellow, with smooth satiny finish that caught and reflected light like flowing molten gold.
She was lying on her side curled up on a large black velvet “harem” pillow inside what at first seemed like a giant fishbowl. It was a hollow ball four feet across made of the same type of Plexiglas used in the nose and ball turrets of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, laminated to a thickness of over an inch. Set in the top was a chrome-steel hatch about two and a half feet across, secured with large laminated padlock clearly visible on the other side of the Plexiglas. The hatch had ventilation holes that admitted air and sound and, in fact, Cat could feel a steady breeze blowing down on her, although she couldn’t hear a fan. A clear rubber intravenous tube of the sort used for blood transfusion, filled with a yellowish fluid that looked remarkably like chicken broth, had been threaded through one of the holes and ran down to a needle secured with surgical tape to the crook of her left elbow.
She resisted her immediate impulse to remove it only by the greatest exercise of willpower and discipline of which she was capable.
Exploring under the harem pillow, she found another metal surface, the same size as the overhead hatch, with ventilation holes that sucked at her fingertips as she probed them. On closer inspection, this covered a combination garbage disposal and sanitary facility, with the pillow and the cover providing a modicum of privacy for its use. There was even an ample supply of lemon-scented disposable hygienic paper towelettes, three of which would be more than sufficient for a safari-style sponge bath. Clearly, then, this bubble was a highly-advanced solitary confinement prison cell.
Cat suddenly felt like a zoo exhibit, the Plexiglas globe suddenly feeling uncomfortably more and more like the fishbowl to which she had first mentally compared it. That’s ridiculous! she thought giddily. No water. If anything, it would have to be terrarium. Cat’s stomach grumbled loudly, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten for at least a day or two, although she didn’t feel at all hungry. She wondered how long it might be until feeding time in this particular zoo.
As with the cabin in which she’d previously confined, the dimensions of the globe suggested that whoever had designed it used the International Metric System. Four feet was roughly equal to 125 centimeters, while 30 inches was about 75 centimeters. Cat had no doubt that the hand that had designed and crafted the submersible ship itself had also designed her strange new accommodation: the hand of Doctor Wu-Hanshu!
Stretching, Cat found her new quarters were not as cramped as they first appeared. She could stretch her legs out by arching her back and stretch her back by folding her legs. Having relieved the tension in her muscles, she took stock of her surroundings outside the globe.
She was in a wedge-shaped room whose four “walls” ran at very odd angles. Three of the four walls came together at one hundred and twenty degree angles, forming one-half of a regular hexagon, with hatchways set in the middle of all three walls—or, since they had hatchways, the three bulkheads. The overhead curved down and the deck curved up, meeting midway to form the fourth wall, a curving section of the ship’s outermost hull!
The wedge-shaped room was crammed with medical equipment rivaling anything that Cat had ever seen in Doc Hazzard’s laboratory. Everything in the room was streamlined and modern, reminiscent of the “World of Tomorrow” exhibits of the recent New York World’s Fair. Across the room Cat could see another Plexiglas bubble, set on a chrome-steel pedestal, within which Yuriko Koroshi sat cross-legged on a big black velvet pillow. The bases of the bubbles appeared to grow out of the deck in the “corners” on either side or the room.
The Japanese-American girl was sitting upright with her back straight in the “neutral spine” yoga “lotus posture” and appeared to be sleeping, yet there was an palpable quality of intense alertness about her. She wore a silvery metallic white “leotard”—or, given that this was a submarine, could it be some kind of swimsuit?—like Cat’s gold one and her silky black hair had been unbraided and combed out, falling down to her waist in a sable cascade.
Seeing this, Cat suddenly became aware that her own bronze tresses had been combed through. Also, her skin tingled slightly as though it had been recently scrubbed. Someone was taking no chances on her having any weapons or escape devices concealed on her person.
Before Cat could catch Yuriko’s eye, the hatchway in the middle bulkhead clanked open and Doctor Wu-Hanshu stepped through. He no longer wore the outré and flamboyant green silk robe and black Mandarin cap that had made such a vivid impression during their previous encounter, but was now clad almost nondescriptly in a sable-collared gray greatcoat, white silk scarf and a sable Karakul astrakhan hat. Instead of the golden nail guards, he wore a pair of white kid gloves. His pet marmoset would always draw undue attention, but now wore a doll-sized black Barathea jacket with silver buttons, starched white shirt, black silk bow tie and cummerbund and a Highland bonnet with the Glengarry cap badge and tartan band—a “monkey suit” in every sense of the term.
As Cat watched, Wu-Hanshu removed the hat, scarf and greatcoat and stowed them in a nearby locker. Under the greatcoat he wore a plain gray silk Changshan tunic and trousers, suitable for shipboard wear. He had apparently worn the matching traditional black skullcap under his hat, just as he’d worn the Changshan under his greatcoat. His marmoset seemed content to continue wearing its monkey suit.
“Good morning, Miss Hazzard, Miss Koroshi,” he greeted them in a sibilant monotone. “I trust you are enjoying your sojourn aboard the Shao-Hei-Lung.” He turned the swivel-mounted leather-padded captain’s chair mounted in the exact center of deck so that it faced back toward his encapsulated captive audience and sat as if enthroning himself as master of all he surveyed, which at the moment he certainly was.
“Shao-Hei-Lung?” repeated Cat. Her voice sounded strange in her ears, as if she were speaking through a cardboard tube or an old-time phonograph trumpet.
“‘Little Black Dragon’,” he translated. “The submersible component of the Chinese Q-ship S.S. Hei-Lung or Black Dragon. When you were previously confined here by those who stole her from me, she was called the Kairyuu Maru or Sea Dragon. Now that she’s back under my command again, where she rightly belongs, I prefer to use her original name.”
“You spoke of a journey,” observed Yuriko. “Where are we going?”
“And where are we now?” added Cat.
“We are on our way to Manchuria, or Manchu-Kuo as it is now called, by way of the Arctic Ocean.” With his elbows firmly propped on the leather-padded arms of his captain’s chair, Wu-Hanshu steepled the fingertips of his long-nailed hands together, speaking with the distracted air of someone talking to himself. “At present, we are entering Baffin Bay about a hundred miles west of Greenland, following the Canadian Northwest Passage from the North Atlantic to the North Pacific pioneered by the Irishman Sir Robert McClure in 1854 and the Norwegian Roald Amundsen in 1903, but we shall be unencumbered by ice. In due course, we will thread our way through the Perry Channel, Barrow Strait, Viscount Melville Sound and McClure Strait into the Beaufort Sea, then turn south and west past Point Barrow, Alaska into the Chukchi Rise. By this time on the day after tomorrow, we will have traversed the Bering Strait and entered the Aleutian Basin on the last leg of our proverbial journey of Ten Thousand Miles.”
He gave a melodramatic mock sigh. “Alas, this voyage would be of historic significance had the Japanese not already made it several times, in both directions, over the last decade. During that time, they were able to map out all of the North American submarine defenses and, more importantly, where those defenses were lacking or nonexistent. Fortunately, like their Nazi counterparts, the Japanese Kokka-shugi fascists are meticulous record keepers.” He smiled mirthlessly. “Should some of the information that they’ve recorded in such loving detail ever make it to an international court of law, such bureaucratic zealotry will undoubtedly prove their undoing.”
“They certainly had a heck of a racket, though,” opined Cat. “From New York to Japan and vice versa by the polar route, under the sea! It’s no wonder that they thought that they could get away with something like Pearl Harbor!”
“Be assured that I have personally put an end to this particular ‘racket’!” hissed Wu-Hanshu. “That which was mine is mine again! It remains only to neutralize the stolen encephalatron and dispense vengeance on all those who stole from me to complete my triumph!”
“And we,” Yuriko observed pointedly, “are to be part of this vengeance?”
“Alas, this is so.” the Mandarin pronounced gravely. “You will both be held hostage to ensure that Doctor Hazzard and Gojira comply with my terms and appear in the appointed place at the appointed time.”
“And if they don’t?” Cat already knew the answer to that, but she wanted it spelled out. She detested threats by innuendo.
“In that case, I’m afraid you will be killed in a manner guaranteed to cause your respective patrons to regret their decision. The procedure will be filmed in Technicolor with live sound recording for posterity and forwarded to the guilty parties.”
Cat shuddered and wished she’d kept her mouth shut. “That’s what I call breaking into pictures the hard way!” she said with more brass than she felt.
Wu-Hanshu smiled with genuine amusement. “If your cousin has even half of your strength of character, Miss Hazzard, you have absolutely nothing to fear from me.”
“Everyone is so darned nice to me after they’ve just threatened me with torture and death,” sighed Cat. “I can’t imagine why I find it hard to trust them, much less take them at their word.”
Yuriko fidgeted slightly, then said, “Doctor, what exactly are you trying to do here? Beyond revenge, I mean? This submarine, that fantastic mind-blasting device … someone who could create such things must have some compelling reason for all this beyond mere personal grievance. You don’t strike me as being interested in accumulating more wealth and surely you already have enough power for a thousand men!”
Doctor Wu-Hanshu’s cat-green eyes blazed as he considered the question. “Power,” he said finally, “is a means to an end, not an end in itself. To achieve the ends that I seek, I shall require nearly absolute power!”
A strange cloudiness filled his green eyes, as though a translucent membrane had dropped over them. Wu-Hanshu’s voice became markedly softer and more singsong, with the faraway quality of one describing a sublimely numinous vision.
“My eventual goal, Miss Koroshi, is greater than my own immediate concerns or even the destruction of the Japanese Empire, which I have planned in detail. It is a dream that I have pursued lo these many years, twice a normal man’s lifetime. I am one hundred and two years old, give or take a few months and, for seventy-five of those years, I have actively worked toward this one goal: the restoration of the Ch’ing Dynasty of the Celestial Empire of China!”
“You seem remarkably spry for a man in his second century, Doctor.” Cat remarked cattily.
“I owe my apparent youthfulness to a certain Burmese herb, the oil of which retards the aging process and, under certain conditions, even reverses it to a certain extent. It may interest you to know that my marmoset Pek-ho, who served as guinea pig for the elixir, is himself now entering his sixth decade.” He dismissed the entire matter impatiently with a preemptory wave of his long-fingered hand. “I myself was born at the beginning of the Third Quarter of the Hour of the Ox on the Day of the Ram in the Month of the Yin Earth Ram in the Year of the Yang Metal Rat in the reign of the Ch’ing Emperor Hsuan-Tsung Tao-Kuang—in Western parlance, 2:45 in the morning on June 30th, 1840—in Chi-Nan, the capital of Shan-Tung Province.”
“You are both Americans and thus have absolutely no sense of history, so please attend while I attempt to educate and enlighten you.” Wu-Hanshu’s voice now took on the tone of a storyteller, melodious and lyrical, sometimes soaring with wonder, sometimes tinged with biting sarcasm. “In those days the 9th Ch’ing Emperor, the 7th Ch’ing to hold the title Huang-Ti or Yellow Emperor, who was called the T’ien-Zi or Son of Heaven, ruled by the T’ien-Ming or Mandate of Heaven from the Dragon Throne in the Great Within in the Forbidden City in Pei-Ching. China was called Chung-Kuo, the Middle Kingdom, around which all other lands were arrayed and all other peoples were outer Barbarians, Foreign Devils.”
Cat found herself fascinated by the Wu-Hanshu’s narrative, which would normally have been of no interest to her beyond what it might tell her about her captor. “Voyages of discovery and emigration were forbidden, as was trade with the Barbarians, as they had nothing to offer the Celestial Kingdom of Chung-Kuo that it could not find within itself. We had the Lun-Yu or Analects of K’ung-Fu-Tzu, whom you call Confucius, and his blueprint for the practice of government, the transmission of learning, social and ritual propriety, righteousness, loyalty, filial piety, humanity and what distinguishes the ‘Superior Man’ from the less enlightened one.” Something in Wu-Hanshu’s intonation suddenly made Cat realize that what he was relating was less a history of China than an autobiography, relating his own personal history with that of his country, to which he still felt inextricably linked. This became clearer as his story progressed to include his involvement in several turning points in that history.
“But the Foreign Devils of the British East India Company and the Dutch and the Russians and the Germans and Americans and Japanese desired China’s wealth of silver and tea and silk and, to acquire them, they came despite the Imperial decrees and brought with them a monstrous thing that they taught the Celestial people to need of them: Opium! Millions became slaves to the drug, myself among them, for the trade had been going on for decades before I was born. For a hundred years the forbidden trade went on from Kwang-Chow, which you call Canton, with everybody getting their ‘squeeze’ in the Chinese way, until it became a severe squeeze on the Celestial economy. Then did the Emperor issue his Vermillion Decrees and ordered the Barbarians in Kwang-Chow held to ransom for 20,000 chests of opium.” Wu-Hanshu paused and smiled briefly at this point, before continuing his narrative, which was now sounding more and more like a single torturous and protracted tale of woe.
“The Foreign Devils retreated to Hoeng-Gong, then a virgin island, and resolved to wage war to regain their opium and their faces and to blast open the walls of China to their trade. They blew the Celestial junks-of-war out of the water and sixteen British men-o’-war sailed up the Pei-Ho or White River to the very Heavenly Gates of Pei-Ching. The Barbarians demanded trade treaties for their Queen and the return of the 20,000 chests plus the island that they called Hong Kong. It was the first of many Unequal Treaties. After the Opium Wars came the foreign settlement in Shang-Hai, then more and then still more, until they all bled China white. At this time, at the age of thirty, I was appointed Governor of Kwang-Tung Province by the Dowager Empress Tz’u-Hsi T’ai-hou. I worked diligently to undo the intrusion of the Foreign Devils, arming myself with knowledge of their most advanced science and technology, but already it was too late. There were too many of them and more coming all the time.
“Then came the rebellion of the I-ho-Ch’uan or Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, whom Westerners disdainfully called the Boxers, of which I was a high-ranking member. It lasted a mere fifty-five days before the combined armies of the Foreign Devils crushed the Boxers utterly and afterwards extracted further Unequal Treaties and concessions and heavy indemnities. To ensure payment, they seized the customs, railways and communications offices and levied heavy duties to protect their own products manufactured by Chinese labor.
“Affluence disappeared in China. There were no more wealthy Chinese, only millions of Kuli and peasants and a few middlemen and corrupt Imperial officials and Warlords and China was bled whiter. Then came the Revolution of 1911 to overthrow the corrupt Imperial government and to break the power of the Warlords and to bring China into the 20th Century with a strong Western-style democracy. But the Foreign Devils did not want any democratic nonsense for China, because they wanted to keep their Unequal Treaties and extraterritoriality and taxes and war indemnities and cheap Chinese labor. So they sided with the Warlords and the military satraps and bled China whiter, working the people eighteen hours a day for a bowl of rice, taking 70% of the crops in rent and extracting taxes fifty years in advance!”
Wu-Hanshu’s voice took on a dangerous edge now, as he catalogued the many injustices he sought to avenge. A note of fanaticism crept into the sibilant singsong and his eyes went from cloudy filminess to fever brightness. “Then came the ‘Great War’ and America promised China an end to the Unequal Treaties if she would join the Allies. But at the peace conference at Versailles in 1919, the Allies did not end their valuable Treaties, they traded them to each other and divided Germany’s among themselves and bled China whiter still! And then in 1921, a young librarian named Mao Tse-tung and eleven other angry young men started another revolution, this one Communist. China became divided against herself just when she needed all her strength, for shortly thereafter the Japanese invaded China to consolidate her Unequal Treaties and to turn Manchuria into a Japanese colony!
“Now, even as I speak, the great Celestial Kingdom lies in shambles! The Chinese government is in the hands of the Kuo-Min-Tang, the Chinese National People’s Party, led by a wealthy military aristocrat named Chiang Kai-shek who is supported by America! When Mao Tse-tung offered to form a coalition to save China from the Japanese, Chiang ordered them fired upon, destroying any hope of reunification! Besieged from within and without, she has no hope except one: the unmatched scientific supremacy of Wu-Hanshu!” He nodded his head in a princely bow and made a graceful sweep with his right hand to indicate the arcane equipment around him, including the Plexiglas prisons of his audience and, by extension, the submarine in which they all now traveled. Then he locked eyes with Yuriko, captivating her as a cobra would a field mouse.
“You can imagine my dismay, then, when I learned that my outpost in Manchuria had been captured and its myriad mechanisms appropriated to be used against me! It is for this unpardonable insult-on-top-of-injury that Gojira must pay!” He stopped, took a deep breath, shuddered and regained his full composure. When he spoke again, it was with the same remote affability that he’d shown previously. “In time,” he intoned quietly, “all that has gone before will be restored to its former glory under my rule and I will ascend to the Dragon Throne and guide my beloved Chung-Kuo to her rightful place as the Center of the World. And this time, there will be no outer Barbarians and Foreign Devils to rape and despoil her, for this time her boundaries will encompass the entire planet! First, of course, I must topple Japan and the rest of the Axis. Then I must undermine the economies of the remaining nations so that, when I lead China on the path to her second Golden Age, there will be none to oppose her.”
He frowned, turning his baleful gaze on Cat. “I had intended to found a dynasty, Miss Hazzard, one that would rule for the proverbial Ten Thousand Years. Alas, I have outlived my capacity to produce progeny and, of the ones I have produced, all were female, of whom only my most ungrateful and traitorous daughter remains. Like Britain’s Henry VIII, it appeared that I was unable to produce viable sons. It has occurred to me that Nature always seeks balance, so my inability in this regard might be an unforeseen side-effect of the longevity elixir. Whatever the reason, since I had been denied a natural male heir, I used my scientific knowledge to produce one artificially, a man who showed early on that he had the potential to indeed be my rightful heir and successor. His name you know, for you have encountered him face-to-face—or, more correctly, what was left of his face—during his third and final conflict with your cousin, the renowned Doctor Mark Hazzard, Junior.”
“You mean that—” Cat gasped in horrified realization.
“That your so-admired ‘Doc’ Hazzard killed my son and only male heir, Xi’an Huang-hun … Shawn Twilight!”
“Blazes!” groaned Trog Playfair as he stretched and tried to unknot the kinks in his muscles. “That was even rougher than the last time!”
“How long were we under?” croaked Sham, his normally smooth voice strained by the ordeal, “Anyone have a guess?”
“We’ve been out for thirteen days, twenty-two hours and forty-seven minutes,” offered Doc matter-of-factly. “I started my chronograph’s built-in stopwatch just before I lost consciousness.” He stroked his jaw, measuring the growth of his beard stubble. He’d immediately noticed the degree of such growth on his men and what he saw didn’t match what he’d expected. “But, somehow, we only appear to have experienced only a few days’ worth of actual physical metabolism, at most. We seem to have been put into a state of hibernation, if not outright suspended animation.”
“I wonder where we are?” said Bellman. “We’ve obviously been moving most of that time and, by the vibration, I’d say we’re moving along at a pretty fair clip right about now.”
Shorty answered that one, pointing to his M2 Brunton Pocket Transit oscillation-damping compass, now advertised as “the Archaeologist’s Best Friend” following word that he personally used one. “Indications of ultra-extreme proximity to the hyperborean confluence of geomagnetic emanation.” he confided.
“That means we’re somewhere near the North Pole!” exploded Sham.
“The North Magnetic Pole,” Doc amended, adding “So Near and Yet So Far…”
Doc’s Associates understood that he was referring to the fact that his Refuge of Seclusion, a dome-shaped retreat containing one of the world’s most advanced scientific laboratories, along with a stockpile of advanced weapons and defensive devices, was located near Allen Lake on Prince of Wales Island, just a few dozen miles south of the North Magnetic Pole. It had been directly above the Pole when it was built, but the Magnetic Pole had been drifting northward at about six to ten miles per year and would eventually move over to Bathurst Island.
“Say,” Trog rumbled, “how come we ain’t been overrun by Japanese? They gotta be in control of the Devilfish, since we ain’t.”
“I managed to jam the hatch mechanism before blacking out,” explained Doc. “Since all the welding equipment is in the diving compartment at the bow, they haven’t been able to get through to us. Unfortunately, they have both the Conn and Engineering and thus full control of the sub, so we’re in no position to try and retake them any time soon. The moment we even try to undog and open the hatchway to the control compartment, they’d be all over us like Gangbusters. They also control the Attic and the Basement, but fortunately they can’t cut through the deck to get to us that way without jeopardizing the structural integrity of the sub, so they won’t try it until we’ve arrived wherever they’re taking us. Given that started off in the Hudson River and currently appear to be somewhere near the North Magnetic Pole, probably in the vicinity of the Barrow Strait or Viscount Melville Sound, I’d say that they’re hightailing it back home to Japan.”
“At least we can get out of the sub whenever it gets wherever it’s going,” Sham pointed out. “We have access to the diver’s airlock up front, in place of the torpedo tubes.” The O-class submarine from which the Devilfish had been derived had held a torpedo bay in the bow equipped with four 18-inch torpedo tubes, plus a sealed compartment that held four more torpedoes. Doc had replaced the torpedo bay with a six-foot cubical airlock that could accommodate two deep-sea divers at a time. The watertight storage compartment was now dedicated to storing and changing into and out of diving gear.
“There may be a much simpler reason that they haven’t come to finish us off,” Bellman offered. “They may think that they’ve already finished us off, nearly two weeks ago, when Gojira hit us with Brainstorm! I’m pretty sure that he hit us with everything he had, so by rights we should all be dead now.” He looked at Doc with something bordering on awe. “Whatever your gizmo did back there before it was eventually overwhelmed may not have protected us entirely, but its counter-effect is probably why we’re all still alive to have this discussion.”
An uneasy silence descended on the group, with Doc’s Associates nodding silent agreement and Doc himself looking extremely embarrassed by what he clearly thought to be unearned praise.
“First things first!” Doc announced briskly. “We may have only subjectively aged a few days, but we’ve all been objectively comatose for nearly a fortnight. Even a much lesser blackout of a few hours would be nothing to take lightly. We’ve got some recuperating to do!” He led them forward into the galley, beyond which lay the compact and spartan but surprisingly quiet and comfortable eight-berth sleeping compartment—nicknamed “the Bunkhouse”—with two lee-cloth equipped double-bunks on either side, a washroom that included both a traditional nautical head and an aircraft-style chemical toilet as well as a lavatory and an industrial-style “deluge” shower stall, the diving compartment and the bow airlock.
From lockers in the galley, Doc began handing out two-gallon drums of water and the full range of Army field rations, including the newly-developed Type K, which wouldn’t be distributed to the American troops at large for another month or so. “Everyone should use the head, refresh themselves and drink at least a half-gallon of distilled water each before chowing down. Then I’ll give everyone a complete physical, beginning with myself, after which we’ll begin the necessary reconditioning exercises, followed by another round of hydration and refreshment.”
Everyone was more than ready to call it quits three hours later, when Doc was satisfied that everyone was indeed as hale and hearty as possible under the circumstances. They had all gotten an entirely new appreciation of Doc’s famous “Self-Development Method”: a two-hour daily course of isokinetic, isometric and isotonic “dynamic tension” exercises that pitted one set of muscles against another to the betterment of both. Doc had done these exercises, two full hours each day, every day, throughout his entire life. Performing those same exercises alongside him made the others keenly aware of just how effective they were and how far apart Doc was from the average man as a result of his dedicated and disciplined adherence to doing them.
“Jove!” Sham gasped when he’d downed his final 8-ounce cup of distilled water. “If we can make the enemy hurt half as much as I do right now, we may not only get out of this mess but nail their sorry hides to bulkhead!”
No sooner had the dapper lawyer said this than the hatchway at the far end of the sub’s living quarters that lead to the diving compartment began to rattle and clank. Someone from outside the submarine was trying to get in!
“I’ll be superamalgamated!” murmured Shorty, drawing his SCAMP and leveling it at the hatch. Trog had already beaten him to the draw. Sham slammed the cup he was still holding down onto the wardroom table and grabbed for his swordstick.
“Hold it, Brothers!” Doc interposed. He began turning the hatch wheel to expedite opening it and added, “I think that our unexpected guest is not a foe but … an ally.”
The hatch swung open to reveal a gargantuan figure that all but filled the compartment beyond. Although encased in a thick rubbery diving suit that made him resemble something from another world, the newcomer was readily recognized to all present, if only by his extraordinarily large physical dimensions.
“Jehoshaphat!” exclaimed Bellman. “It’s … Samson Stonebender!”
“Hello, John!” boomed Stonebender, squeezing through the hatch like a grizzly bear easing through the entry flap of a camper’s tent.
“Sam!” Bellman exulted, then sobered and continued in a scolding tone. “You’re supposed to be in the hospital with a concussion and a dislocated shoulder! What in blazes are you doing here?”
“That was a little something me and Doc here cooked up,” replied the giant. “Faking a dislocated shoulder’s easy when you’re double-jointed like I am and a concussion’s even easier to fake when you know what symptoms to simulate.”
“But why? And what have you been doing all this time?” Bellman was confused as much by his own reaction as by Stonebender’s reappearance. Something about the man looked wrong, but he just couldn’t quite make out exactly what it might be. He was missing something here, something important. What could it possibly be?
The giant shifted uncomfortably and looked to Doc for help. While he and Bellman had been speaking, Doc had taken a restraining bolt from a locker in the galley and walked aft to the hatchway to the control compartment, where he applied it to the hatch wheel locking mechanism. He retrieved the Sword of Koroshi, double-checked to be sure the mechanism was fully immobilized, then brought the sword aftward, where he respectfully stowed it in a duffel drawer under one of the upper berths in the Bunkhouse.
“Samson Stonebender,” said the Bronze Titan, “is an agent of the FBI. Since Pearl Harbor, he’s been assigned to keep an eye on Shiro Koroshi in case the Japanese tried to contact him. Shiro’s brother Shigeta, who remained in Japan, went on to become head of the Tokkou-Kempeitai, the Japanese Special Higher Police, their equivalent of the Nazi Gestapo. It was felt they might try to enlist Shiro’s Shinobi talents here in America by playing on his family ties and disillusionment.”
“After the events at Santa Barbara,” Stonebender put in, “I was in over my head, then came the Columbus Park massacre. Doc had been told that I was FBI by the Director himself, so we arranged my ‘hospitalization’ so that I could do some independent undercover work in Chinatown, tracking to run down Yuriko and get a line on those dead Merchant Marines. I had just traced them back to the freighter Hai-Lung when Lin-Fong crawled out of the woodwork. Doc had me sneak aboard the Devilfish through the forward airlock and stow away in the diving compartment as an ace-in-the-hole. I had to do some fancy dancing when Professor Longfellow double-checked all your diving gear, but he never even knew that I was there. I’ve been camped out there with my own cache of rations, using the airlock for waste disposal, until we damn near got blown out of the water. Before I could pick myself off the deck, we got hit with the Brainstorm and transparent green devils started beating my brains in until I passed out!”
“What I’d like to know,” Sham interposed pointedly “is what makes Shiro Koroshi so darn important? Those Shinobi skills aren’t reason enough to go after him—Gojira himself appears to be a Shinobi master!”
“Yeah,” piped Trog, “and what could an old Shinobi master and his young daughter have to do with this Brainstorm thing, anyway? The Japs went all the way from New York to California to get him and it wasn’t just to renew family acquaintances!”
“I can explain that.” Doc rubbed the back of his neck and smiled sheepishly. “I probably should have let you in on this earlier, but I’d really hoped to settle this business on my own, because of my personal obligations to Shiro and Yuriko.” Doc paused, as though deciding exactly how much he should say, before continuing in an unusually subdued manner.
“As you all know, my father turned my early development and education over to a group of scientists and other experts whom he’d gathered from around the world with the goal of producing what he called the “Man of To-Morrow” and others have called the Paragon, the Superhuman, the Superior Man and der Übermensch. He strove for a Platonic ideal of mens sana in corpore sano—a sound mind in a sound body—by combining maximum athleticism with maximum scholarship through both continuous education in all of the arts and sciences and continuous physical development and exercise. To the extent that I have indeed become experts in most scientific and mental disciplines and have personally broken all of the current Olympic records at some time or other, he succeeded. Those of you know me also know that my upbringing has also left me severely deficient in many aspects of life that most people take for granted.” Doc’s three Associates chuckled at that and Doc himself gave a rueful smile.
“Sometimes, the mountain wouldn’t or couldn’t come to Muhammad and I would be sent on an ‘apprenticeship’ with someone with a unique skill or highly specialized knowledge that was not available anywhere else. Such was the case with Asano Koroshi, the last master of Shinobi and special advisor to the Meiji emperor Mutsuhito. My father managed to persuade him to teach the secrets of Shinobi to someone who not only wasn’t a member of the Koroshi clan but wasn’t even Japanese. I don’t really know just how he did that, although I suspect that he won Asano over with his vision of actually producing a true superman using purely scientific methods and by appealing to Asano’s not inconsiderable vanity.” Doc smiled wryly at the memory, confirming that Asano Koroshi had not been one to minimize his own importance.
“Asano decided that it would be better for me to learn from his two sons, Shiro and Shigeta, rather than directly from him, claiming that he could be more objective that way and also assess his sons at the same time as he assessed me. I began my apprenticeship in the Spring of 1911. Japan was still flush from its victory in the Russo-Japanese War six years earlier, but the Meiji emperor’s health was failing and both revolutionary and reactionary elements had begun to oppose many of the changes that he’d decreed throughout the Restoration. The Taigyaku Jiken or High Treason Incident, in which 26 leftist anarchists were arrested for allegedly plotting to assassinate the Emperor, had just occurred the previous May and 11 of them were executed on 24 January 1911, just a few months before I arrived. I was only ten years old at the time, but already almost as tall and nearly as physically developed as my designated instructors, which helped somewhat, so my reception was still a bit chilly.” Doc smiled again.
“Shiro and Shigeta were as different as night and day. Shiro was a pacifist who embraced the ideals of the Meiji Restoration and thought that much of the Shinobi secret lore could advance the common good of the nation if made public and applied to engineering, industry, medicine and science. Shigeta, like Asano, craved power and personal advancement and was a militant who felt that, having defeated China in 1895 and Russia in 1905, that Japan should begin establishing its own colonial empire by 1915, which it would indeed do with their ‘21 Demands’ against China during World War I. He quickly decided that he had better things to do than tutor a gaijin in things that were best kept in the family, so Shiro became my one and only Sensei or Teacher. I studied with Shiro and his 10-year-old son Shibumi, for the next two years, becoming his Ichiban or ‘Number One’ student.” Another smile, this one tinged with both deep affection and personal pride.
“You mastered nin-jutsu in only two years, at the age of ten?” Stonebender shook his head incredulously. “It took me twice that long just to master judo and jiu-jutsu!”
“The old Meiji emperor died at the end of July 1912, about a year after I began training with Shiro, attending cabinet meetings almost until the day of his death. His successor, the 32-year-old Taishou emperor Yoshihito, contracted cerebral meningitis within three weeks of his birth and had been in poor health all his life. His physical and mental weakness prompted a shift in political power from the old Genrou oligarchic group of elder statesmen to the Diet of Japan and the democratic parties. This further inflamed Japanese militarists like Shigeta, leading to a political crisis that interrupted the earlier politics of compromise. The Army Minister resigned when the Prime Minister tried to cut the military budget, bringing down the entire Japanese Cabinet. Both the Army Minister and Prime Minister refused to resume office and the Genrou were unable to find a solution, leading to more still more demands for an end to Genrou politics.”
Doc paused to knock back a cup of water. “Japan seemed to be becoming more democratic, with both a weak Emperor and an unpopular Zaibatsu or family-controlled industrial monopolies. Despite old guard opposition, the conservative forces formed a party of their own in 1913. They won a majority in the House over in late 1914. Having lost their previous attempts to steer the country into a more military posture, Shigeta and the militarists had bided their time until the reactionaries took power and, after Japan joined the Triple Entente and declared war on the Central Powers in August 1914, they and the Zaibatsu were pretty much in the driver’s seat, albeit still behind the scenes. Their influence wouldn’t become overt until the Taishou Emperor died of a heart attack brought on by pneumonia in December 1926 and Hirohito became the Showa Emperor, leading directly the expansionist Japanese Empire that we’re fighting right now.” He paused for another cup of water.
“Of course, I had left Japan long before all that, going on to continue my education in other parts of the world. I joined the French Escadrille de Lafayette in May 1916, over a year before America declared war in April 1917, flying the Nieuport 17 and SPAD S.VII out of Luxeuil-les-Bains over Verdun.”
Doc held up his hand in a halting gesture. “But I digress. Shiro Koroshi taught me a lot more than the Shinobi ways of stealth, secrecy, perseverance, patience and endurance and the tricks of hiding in plain sight or appearing to be somewhere else. He was also a Maijin or grandmaster of Shogi, the Game of Generals. While it’s almost always called the Japanese version of chess, it’s actually an even more complex strategy game, with more pieces—40 instead of 32—on each side and a larger playing field—81 squares instead of 64. All of the pieces except the King and Gold General, which is the equivalent of a Queen, can be ‘promoted’ and acquire different and stronger moves, although that can sometimes prove disadvantageous. Any captured piece can be returned to the board to fight for the opposing side, so every capture is potentially a new piece for the player who captured it. Western Chess pales in comparison. Shiro took the game’s lessons about life to heart and passed them on to me.”
“Blazes, Doc!” Trog slammed his hairy fists together with a sound like two rams butting heads. “What life lessons could you possibly get from a game where turncoat treachery is built into almost all of your playing pieces and any of them can be used against you?”
“Well, for one thing, it teaches you not to presume that everyone will always be on your side and that only a fraction of the people upon whom you rely are completely loyal to you. It teaches you that almost any resource you have can not only be taken away but used with equal facility by your opponent. Above all, it teaches you to be careful with everything you have and never presume that everyone on your side will always be on your side.” Doc gave the first genuine smile since boarding the Devilfish. “Brothers, that’s a very valuable lesson. It teaches you that those golden few on whom one can always rely are very golden indeed!”
An uncomfortable silent descended, with no one saying anything until Doc continued as if his earlier train of thought had never been interrupted.
“Perhaps the most important lesson that you learn from Shogi is that the ability to change the allegiance of captured enemies works both ways, so its always possible to turn your strongest opponent into a most valuable friend and ally.” Doc’s three Associates gave a collective start, knowing as they did that Doc routinely converted the callous criminals and other bad apples that they captured during their adventures into decent law-abiding citizen by erasing their memories and retraining them with the necessary values and skills to contribute to society. It had never occurred to them that he might have gotten the notion from one or more of his mentors. “But teaching is never a one-way street. Good teachers always learn valuable lessons from their pupils, if only by learning about them. Shiro had always chafed at the authoritarian and militaristic hierarchy in which he’d be raised, especially after he became interested in medicine. He found in me an example of something completely different.”
“You taught him medicine?” Stonebender gasped incredulously. “At the age of ten?” He shook his head. “What am I saying? You were flying a SPAD over Germany at age 15!”
“Hoo-ha! hooted Trog, slapping his thigh. Sham chortled and even Shorty made a scholarly tutting sound. “Doc was big for his age, almost as big as he is now, and nearly as beefed up. He said he was 19, that being the minimum age they’d accept without parental consent. We always figured that he was younger because of his, ahem, lack of experience with Les Jeune Filles, who were drawn to him like flies to honey. We took him for an Old Money prep-schooler, just shy of the recruitment age and touchy about it. He had what it took to get the job done, though, so no one was asking all that many questions. The Frogs were big on Pentathlon and had new recruits compete in it to separate the sheep from the goats. Doc—we started calling him ‘Doc’ right off the bat, because he always knew something about everything—Doc could outrun, outswim, out-fence, outride and outshoot the lot of us from the get-go. It wasn’t until the War was over that any of us realized that he’d only been 14½ when he signed on.”
“He still hadn’t reached the minimum age when the War ended,” Sham noted. “His birthday’s November 12th, the day after Armistice Day, so he was technically still 16 on the 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month. He didn’t turn 17 until early the next morning.”
“And Doc didn’t start out flying the SPAD,” Trog added, grinning. “He had to work his way up from the Nieuport first. So he wasn’t actually flying a SPAD over Germany at age 15. That had to wait until he was 16.” All three of Doc’s Associates snickered and snorted over this, sharing a long overdue laugh together. Bellman and Stonebender didn’t see what was so funny about it, but then they were too young to have served in the World War I, even by lying about their age. Bellman decided that it was a case of one having to have been there in order to get the joke.
Doc ignored his Peanut Gallery. “I knew Red Cross ‘First Aid’ and other emergency lifesaving techniques, but that’s hardly medicine. No, it was simply that, although I’d been raised in an environment of iron discipline and intense mental and physical training like Shiro, I’d also grown up in a free and democratic society that valued individual liberty and self-determination. Shiro had already decided that the ancient recipes for deadly drugs and poisons might be adapted into lifesaving medicines and remedies for the population at large, but only after I happened to mentioned how Claude Bernard’s 1842 study of curare, digitalis and strychnine had revealed the selective action of drugs, leading directly to the use of those toxins to treat central nervous system disorders and coronary arrhythmia, did he realize that some of his Shinobi poisons might be used to the treat if not cure some of the neurological disorders from which then-Crown Prince Yoshihito had suffered all of his life.”
“Given that the Taisho emperor’s health never improved,” observed Bellman, “I take it that he never found anything that actually helped.”
“He never got the chance—at least, not then.” Doc replied grimly “The Meiji emperor died midway through my apprenticeship and it was as though the Sun had gone out. According to Japan’s state religion Shinto, the Emperor is a living god, so his passing was mourned as such, but it was worse than that, because the new Taisho emperor was widely perceived to be physically and mentally unfit. Shiro’s father Asano, in particular, had worshipped the Meiji emperor as a god and revered him as a man, but couldn’t bring himself to regard the Taisho emperor the same way. He was too loyal and devout to actually oppose his new Mikado, but neither could he bring himself to give more than token support. He withdrew into near-total seclusion, shutting himself away with the Sword of Koroshi that had become his badge of honor and wasting away in his isolation. He neglected his exercises and his health began to decline, until he himself died three years later, widely believed to be the result of heartbreak and despair.”
The expressions on the faces of Doc’s Associates showed that they didn’t believe any such thing. “Shiro had to take on more and more of the disagreeable aspects of being Emperor’s ‘special advisor’ on espionage, disinformation, deception and assassination. Things only worsened over the next year. Shiro continued my training as diligently as ever, but between his new cabinet duties and the need to keep his brother Shigeta and the militarists in check, he had little time for anything else. By the time that I finished my studies and left Japan, Shigeta and the militarists had already begun agitating for colonial expansion, The next year, Japan joined the War on the side of the Triple Entente and soon began making demands for territorial concessions from China, with escalated into Japanese annexation and colonization of the Chinese mainland. By then, Shiro had become one the few remaining voices against Shigeta’s proposals for what was called the Daitoa Kyoeiken or Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.”
“Jehoshaphat!” exclaimed Bellman. “You make Shigeta Koroshi sound like the Japanese equivalent of S.S. Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler! Political mastermind, master of assassins, head of the Japanese Gestapo…”
“Their respective positions are indeed analogous,” agreed Doc. “The Tokkou-Kempeitai was established in 1911 specifically to investigate and control political groups and ideologies deemed to be a threat to public order and by 1925 had expanded to include branches in every Japanese prefecture, major city and overseas locations with a large Japanese population, including Shanghai and Berlin. It’s now composed of six departments: Special Police Work, Foreign Surveillance, Koreans in Japan, Labor Relations, Censorship, Arbitration and Thought Section of the Criminal Affairs Bureau. But everyone knows who Himmler is and what he does, while few even know that Shigeta exists, much less his actual importance.” Doc smiled mirthlessly. “I have no doubt that Shigeta has had a hand in this Brainstorm business from the start.”
“Jove!” Sham looked as tough he’d just been struck by lightning. “You don’t suppose that this Shigeta Koroshi chap could actually be Gojira, do you?”
“Hardly.” Doc shook his head gravely. “Shigeta would never leave the center of his spider’s web, much less risk himself outside Japan. But Gojira is definitely a member of the Koroshi clan. No one else would have any interest in recovering the Sword of Koroshi enough to expose themselves and risk the entire operation. Whoever it is has a personal interest in the Koroshi succession, which has been in contention since Asano died in 1915. That’s when Shigeta challenged his elder brother Shiro for the position of Jonin or ‘Top Man’ of the Koroshi clan, citing Shiro’s well-known pacificism as evidence of cowardice. They fought a duel, with Shiro wielding the Sword of Koroshi and Shigeta using a pair of ninjatou or shinobigatana, straight-bladed shortswords designed to be easily concealed, whose blades were usually drugged or poisoned. Shiro won the duel and retained both the Sword of Koroshi and his position as the Koroshi Jonin. Shigeta lost one of his arms, severed at the elbow.”
“Hah!” cackled Trog. “No wonder you knew that Shigeta and Gojira couldn’t be one and the same!” His grin widened to the point that it threatened to split his face open. “But it seems Sham here would fit right in with the Shinobi: amoral, deceitful, devious, tricky, underhanded … and he uses a straight-bladed shortsword with a drugged blade concealed in a walking stick!” He guffawed. “Now if only he could make himself invisible, we could find a use for him other than drawing enemy fire with his fancy clothes.”
“‘Hah’, yourself!” Sham replied with total equanimity. “I might has well be invisible with a big ugly ape like you around. Who would possibly notice anyone as easy on the eyes as I am when an orangutan dressed like a hobo bearing down on them with murder in his eyes?”
“If we must have a name for whoever’s wearing that Koroshi armor, let’s just say ‘Tetsuhito Koroshi’ and leave it at that.” Once again, Doc continued where he’d left off as if nothing else had been said. “Shortly after the duel, while Shigeta was still recovering from the loss of his forearm and hand, Shiro divorced the woman whom his father had arranged for him to marry and left the country, abandoning her and their 15-year-old son Shibumi and taking the Sword of Koroshi with him.” Doc shook his head sadly. “I don’t know why he felt compelled to that extreme. He never confided that to me when we renewed our acquaintance ten years later and I didn’t even learn that he’d left Japan until then. At the time, I was halfway around the world, preparing to join the French Aéronautique Militaire without my own father’s knowledge and consent. Like just about every young American male, I thought the War would be a grand and glorious adventure in which I could truly prove myself.” Doc’s Associates grinned at that.
“When Shiro arrived in America in 1919,” Doc went on, “he was on his own and had to earn money for his medical studies. He did odd jobs and began teaching jiu-jutsu and Shogi in Santa Barbara, where he soon fell in love with Tamisen Kenobi, a Nisei or second-generation Japanese-American girl twenty years his junior. It was shortly after their marriage that my father and I learned about his difficulties offered to pay his way through medical school in return for his previously mentoring me in nin-jutsu techniques and Shinobi traditions. In 1926, Shiro and I studied electrophysiology and neurochemistry together at Stanford, before I went on to study neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins. Yuriko had been born just four years earlier, but Shiro had already begun teaching her the Shinobi ways. In 1929, Shiro and I collaborated on developing a new type of brain surgery to rehabilitate criminals by isolating them from their criminal experiences: the thalamencephalon bypass.”
“Supermalagorgeous!” breathed Shorty. “So Shiro conceptualized the methodology and epistemology of your rehabilitative institution.”
“Yes,” agreed Doc. “Shiro’s collaboration made the Phoenix Foundation possible.”
The Phoenix Foundation was where Doc sent the malefactors whom he inevitably encountered during the course of his troubleshooting work to be reformed—literally. Located on Lake George in upstate New York, it was made out to be nothing more than a privately-funded hospital and sanitarium with progressive educational facilities, specializing in the rehabilitation of people with head injuries resulting in amnesia and other mental disorders. It was here that Doc turned hardened criminals into honest, productive citizens who knew nothing of their past lives.
Only the relatively small but significant percentage of those who fell into the hands of Doc and his Associates were deemed to be beyond rehabilitation within the conventional penal correctional system, but those did were sent to the Phoenix Foundation, where they underwent a systematic cerebral and psychological overhaul. First, a group of psychologists administered a drug in vapor form that put them in a deep hypnotic state during which they were probed for the details of their criminal experiences, which were recorded for future reference. Sometimes transcripts were sent to the appropriate authorities to help bring other criminals to justice.
Then a group of surgeons trained by Doc performed the brain operation. This was a delicate procedure. Needle-like electrodes were inserted through the right tempo-parietal junction, which controls human ethical judgment, and the dorsomedial nucleus of thalamus, situated between the cerebral cortex and the midbrain, which regulates long-term memory retrieval, and into the areas of the thalamencephalon, which connects the thalamus to the hippocampus and amygdala, which regulate aggressive behavior and impulse control. Various points in these sections were transected by an electric arc. finally, whiskers of gold filament were inserted into the brain to reconnect selected neural pathways, restoring some and redirecting others.
The procedure was nothing like what most people imagine when they hear the words “brain operation.” The patients never had the tops of the skulls removed or their cerebral cortices cut with a scalpel. The parts of the brain that regulate memory, behavior and aggression are all under the underside of the brain. To access them from above would require removing the brain entirely from the cranium, modifying the limbic system structures in question and then stuffing it all back where it belonged, all without doing any damage.
The ethmoid cribriform plate is a bone in the skull that separates the nasal cavity from the brain. It is located at the roof of the nasal cavity, between the orbits of the eye sockets. This cubical bone is lightweight and fragile due its spongy construction, making it easy to penetrate.
Once through the ethmoid bone, the hippocampus, amygdala, anterior thalamic nuclei, septum pellucidum, pineal gland, limbic cortex and fornix were all directly manipulable with the appropriate instruments. None of these cephalic bodies were excised or damaged in any way. Quite the opposite, except for the initial amnesia-inducing procedure, the goal was to restore normal function to parts that had become dysfunctional. Per the Hippocratic Oath, the first priority was to do no harm.
The result was not only to isolate the subjects from any recollection of their past criminal associations, but to reduce their capacity for aggression. They retained the normal, healthy aggressiveness needed to compete in society, but lost the pervasive hostility and viciousness that characterizes the hardened criminal. Most importantly, the became incapable of acting aggressively in pursuit of a goal that they knew to be ethically wrong. Trog called it an “artificial conscience” and, in many ways, he wasn’t entirely wrong.
Following the post-operative physical and psychological therapy, an entirely new identity was created for them. These “New Men” (and, occasionally, “New Women”) were then scientifically educated in good citizenship and a useful trade suited to their individual personalities and preferences, on the theory that people perform best doing work that they enjoy. All of the Phoenix Foundation’s “graduates” had their physical appearances altered to a certain degree, not only the preclude their subsequently being recognized as their former selves, but also to give them a physical appearance that more closely matched their new mental self-image. Many of them went to work for Doc as agents and investigators, using the innate qualities and predispositions that they’d originally turned to nefarious pursuits to bring other miscreants to justice and acting as Doc’s eyes, ears and occasionally hands all over the world.
“In 1930,” continued Doc, “the year after we co-developed this breakthrough technique, anti-immigrant riots began in southern California, initially against Filipino-American labor union activists and Mexican-American Chicano and Pachuco underclass, but quickly escalating to include anyone who wasn’t of European ancestry. What started out as an agricultural dispute turned into a full-scale racial confrontation, during which Tamisen Koroshi was killed by a shotgun blast to the face. I was visiting at the time and managed to get 8-year-old Yuriko away from the mob that killed her mother, but it was a close thing. My, ah, distinctive tan made me just as much of a target as anyone else.” Doc frowned, then resumed his usual stoic matter-of-factness.
“Shiro was embittered not only by the loss of his beloved wife, but also the shabby treatment that he had received from America as a whole.” Another frown. “I felt partly to blame for some of this. We had to keep this revolutionary new technique secret if I was going to use it effectively toward achieving my ultimate goal of ridding the world of its baddest bad apples, so Shiro could never receive credit for his contributions to science. Instead of being recognized as a neurosurgical genius, he ended up operating a small general practice in Santa Barbara, generally among the less well-to-do non-Caucasian population. And although he’d become a master neurosurgeon, he was still barred from American citizenship by unfair immigration laws. Then came the War and the Exclusion Order, which took away what little he had and forced him and his daughter out of their home and into an internment camp as ‘undesirable aliens’, despite the fact that she was an American citizen by right of birth.”
“And that’s when this Tetsuhito Koroshi, in the guise of Gojira, ‘rescued’ Shiro and Yuriko from the Army troops assigned to round them up.” Stonebender interjected grimly. “Or, at least, it was his plan to grab them and maybe field test the Brainstorm at the same time. As we all know, they both got clear somehow.”
“Yes,” agreed Doc. “Tetsuhito needed Shiro’s knowledge of the human brain to perfect the Brainstorm device. He probably expected to be able to play on Shiro’s disillusionment and ancestral ties, with the additional advantage of having Yuriko to use as a lever if that didn’t work.”
“But Shiro fought ’em instead!” Trog scratched his nubbin head in befuddlement. “I still don’t see why he didn’t go along with them, after all everything you’ve described going against all those years.”
“Shiro may have been bitter about America, but he had become even more disenchanted with Imperial Japan decades earlier,” explained Doc. “Also, his daughter Yuriko, whom he loved all the more following the death of her mother, was American born and raised, Shinobi training notwithstanding. She has always been and still remains as loyal and patriotic an American as anyone here. When she used her Shinobi skills to escape and come to me for help, bringing the Sword of Koroshi with her, Shiro had no choice but to follow her lead, whatever his feelings about the raw deal they’ve gotten to date.”
“Now it’s all starting to make sense!” exulted Sham. “Both Shiro and Yuriko adopted disguises and made their way across country separately to see you, but Yuriko somehow got spotted somewhere along the way and reported to the authorities—a woman traveling alone attracts more attention than would any man. When the police and FBI started looking for her, Tetsuhito and his fellow Japanese agents were tipped off as to where she had been and where she was going!”
“And,” Stonebender summed up, “expecting her to adopt the same ruse that they were using, they set their trap for her in Chinatown.”
“All of this is very interesting, of course,” Bellman objected impatiently, “but none of it gets us anywhere. We’re still stuck here with Tetsuhito and his Japanese troops in control of this sub and those Gra-Fan people in the other sub on their way to who knows where, but probably someplace a long way from where we’re going. And whatever it was that Tetsuhito wanted Shiro to improve on that Brainstorm thing, it doesn’t seem to need it. The darn thing’s plenty effective as it is, without any improvement whatsoever.”
“The Japanese are beginning to feel the same way themselves,” agreed Doc grimly. “We’re almost certainly on our way to Japan via the polar ‘Northwest Passage’ through Baffin Bay, the Barrow and McClure Straits and the Beaufort, Chukchi and Bering Seas. Given our bearing from the North Magnetic Pole, we’re about midway across the Viscount Melville Sound about now, which means that we’re also about halfway to Japan.”
“Incontrovertibly,” concurred Shorty. “A pellucidly demonstrable probability.”
“Great!” fumed Bellman. “So now that we know where we are, all we have to do is bust out of here—” he waved one hand to indicate the entire forward end of the submarine—“find a way to neutralize this Brainstorm thingy, recover control of the submarine before it gets into Japanese-controlled waters, figure out where the Gra-Fan sub is heading, intercept it and then rescue Cat Hazzard and Yuriko Koroshi from an entire army of fanatical thugs and whatever else the madman who designed all this diabolical stuff in the first place can throw at us!”
“Exactly!” Doc confirmed mildly. The seriousness with which he said that one word struck the others more forcefully than a thunderbolt.
“You,” charged Stonebender with mock severity, narrowing his eyes and pointing an accusing finger at Doc, “have got something up your sleeve!”
Doc nodded. “Yes, indeed I do.”
Gojira, the Demon-from-the-Sea, was displeased.
“You tell me the gaijin still live, Akusei-senchou?” he grated through dragon-like jaws. “I used the gaijin seishin-hakaisha—the inferior-mind destroyer—at full power, which has always proved fatal before. How could they still be alive?”
The man who responded to this reprimand bowed abjectly, kneeling as if he fully expected to have his head cut off. He wore a Japanese Imperial Navy uniform with the shoulder boards, collar tabs and sleeve rings of a Shousa, the Japanese equivalent of a Navy Lieutenant-Commander and Army Major, not that of a Taisa or Navy Captain and Army Colonel, but his sleeve rings were surmounted by the sakura no Daimon or five-sided “cherry blossom” crest indicating that he held the position of a Senchou or shipmaster and thus entitled to be called “Captain” even though that wasn’t his actual military rank. “Sumimasen, Gojira-sama! So sorry, Lord Gojira, but it is indeed so! The seishin-hakaisha appeared to have killed them when you captured this vessel almost two weeks ago, but we weren’t able to confirm this because of the jammed forward hatch. For the last hour or so, my men reported hearing sounds of them moving about and talking, but cannot discern what they are saying.”
“Amaterasu!” swore Gojira. “I had thought to be rid of them, like those soldiers in California! If not dead, at least reduced to mindless vegetables. Whatever resisted my broadcast, although it ultimately failed, must have served to shield them to some degree.”
The black-armored figure moved with surprising fluidity and ease for one so encumbered, gliding out of the engine room, where he and crew has strung hammocks and makeshift furnishings, into the control compartment, where he was greeted with respectful bows from the pilot and sonarman on duty. He halted next to the jammed hatch leading to the wardroom and forward section in which Doc and his men had taken refuge, his posture that of a man enraged and ready to commit mortal violence.
“I should have had this torn open and had their bodies brought out when my crew first came on board!” he rasped. “I will not make the same mistake twice!”
His gauntleted right hand touched a rheostat disguised as a decorative piece on his breastplate. Immediately, an arc of blue light flickered into existence between his sweeping kuwagata, the semi-decorative horns of his helmet that warded off an opponent’s downward sword strokes. As he advanced the power, the blue flicker expanded into a blazing ball of blue-white glare. A strident droning hum filled the room, increasing in volume and rising up the scale toward inaudibility. Despite the assurances that they’d received that the incandescent display and terrible sound wouldn’t harm them, they backed as far away as possible without abandoning their posts. They’d seen what horrific things the blue light and banshee wail could do—had already done—to scores of men much bigger and more imposing than them.
The blue glare played over the hatchway, reflecting back like the baleful blue blazes of the fiercest flames from the hottest griddle in Hades, then it winked out as Gojira cut the power. The ear-piercing shriek, which had shaken their nerves and rattled their brains, dropped down the scale to a humming drone and subsided. Even so, eerie echoes still seemed to throb throughout the ship’s hull and fittings.
“There was no resistance to the broadcast this time!” Gojira brayed triumphantly. The recently-reprimanded Captain Akusei, who had been watching from behind with an expression of horrified fascination on his usually inscrutable face, scurried forward to press the pickup of a sensitive stethoscope against the hatch and listened for several minutes.
“There is no sound from within except for the usual straining of the superstructure at this depth and speed,” he reported. “I can discern no movement nor any breathing or other signs of life.”
“We will personally make certain this time!” rasped Gojira angrily. “You will assemble a work crew and a death squad, remove that hatch, even if it means removing the hatchway frame entirely, then gather the bodies of the fallen Americans. Find the Sword of Koroshi that is somewhere within, use it to decapitate them all, then bring both the head of the Bronze Man and the Sword of Koroshi to me!”
“As you command!” said the officer, bowing deeply. “It shall be done immediately, Gojira-sama!” Although his face remained impassive, inwardly Captain Akusei wondered if his chief were not indeed the demon that he made himself out to be.
On the left armrest of Doctor Wu-Hanshu’s throne-like captain’s chair aboard the Shao-Hei-Lung, a small blue light glowed brightly for several moments, then flickered and died. The cat-green eyes of the Mandarin doctor noted this, then filmed over for several seconds. When they cleared, his satanic face bore an expression of serene acceptance of Ming-yun or, as Westerners called it, Fate.
“My instruments,” he announced sibilantly to his encapsulated captives, “have just registered a burst of radiation in the encephalatron’s frequency range sufficient to burn out the entire nervous system of any animal within its sphere of influence smaller than an elephant.”
Yuriko bowed her head. “I’m sorry, Miss Hazzard. Your cousin was a great man and a good noble friend to both my father and myself.”
“Doc’s been written off before,” Cat replied icily. “It’s never happened yet. You’ll excuse me if I have my doubts about it now.”
“Naturally,” Wu-Hanshu agreed sagely. “It would be unscientific to draw definite conclusions from a single data point. Still, Doc Hazzard is after all merely human and I have no doubt that nothing human could survive such irradiation.” He looked thoughtful. “It is a pity he did not live to face the Trial, but somehow appropriate that he should fall before a device of my contrivance.”
Cat made a rude noise. “Famous last words!” she sneered, but deep down she was not certain just how certain she really was.
It’s never happened yet. Cat repeated to herself, then had a second thought. But it only has to happen once…
John Bellman had had his doubts about Doc Hazzard’s methods, but watching the blue glow spread out from center of the Devilfish toward the nose until it enveloped the entire forward section had changed his mind. He was only now beginning to realize just how far ahead of everyone else the Bronze Titan really was.
Now he saw that Doc had been holding back for reasons of his own. Had the anti-Brainstorm gadget not been damaged by the explosion of the Hai-Lung, this whole bloody business might have been resolved back at Hudson River waterfront nearly two weeks ago. Yet even as Doc had been making preparations to counter the Brainstorm, he’d also made preparations for the failure of those preparation. He’d also probably made contingency plans in case this operation didn’t work out as planned, but Bellman seriously hoped that he’d never find out.
How had Doc known to stock polar diving gear aboard the Devilfish is the first place? It had taken Bellman a while to work out what had been obvious to Doc from the outset. The S.S. Hai-Lung and its parasitic submarine component had originated in China and was being operated by Japanese. The ship had initially come to New York from China via the Panama Canal, as most Pacific-to-Atlantic ship traffic does, but there’s no way that the submarine could’ve gotten through the Canal undetected and, for that matter, the ship couldn’t have negotiated the Canal with the submarine attached to its keel. So the submarine must have traveled to New York separately one of four ways: around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, through the Strait of Magellan at the southern tip of South America, via the Northern Sea Route along the Russian and Norwegian northern coasts to the Barents Sea or via the Canadian Northwest Passage. No matter which route it took, it would have to negotiate polar waters.
Even if Lin-Fong hadn’t tipped Doc off to the existence of the Kairyuu Maru, Doc would still have planned on a possible traverse of the Arctic or Antarctic. If they failed to stop the Hai-Lung in the Hudson, a radio call to Panama would’ve blocked its escape back to the Pacific and Japanese waters. It might’ve sought refuge in Germany but, if so, they’d be an easy target for the Atlantic Fleet, which could be alerted just as easily. That left only one viable escape route: the Northwest Passage. There were no Allied forces deployed along that route. If the enemy vessel got out of the Hudson, it would be best to have polar gear aboard whatever pursuit vehicle was deemed most appropriate. Once Doc knew he was up against a submarine and chose to use the Devilfish to counter it, his addition of the polar diving suits was, in retrospect, an obvious precaution. Bellman wondered why it had taken him so long to figure all this out, then it suddenly came to him:
Doc Hazzard, like his mentor Shiro Koroshi, was a genuine chess grandmaster, always thinking several moves ahead.
After completing his final round of “treatment” to offset the effects of their long coma, Doc distributed concentrated protein bars of his own formulation, one apiece. Though these closely resembled Tootsie Rolls in terms of size, shape and consistency, they definitely didn’t taste anything like the military D-Ration Hershey’s Chocolate bars that Bellman had halfway expected, but rather more like bacon dipped in maple syrup and sprinkled with chopped peanuts. Bellman hoped that something like them would find their way into the K-Rations, but seriously doubted that anyone in the Army would ever be so lucky.
Doc had led them all the way forward to the diving compartment, where they began unpacking the diving gear that he’d had Shorty bring aboard and stow away while the others loaded the FM radio gear that Lin-Fong has stolen from Wu-Hanshu. They were heavily-insulated one-piece coverall diving suits with dome-like Plexiglas helmets. He even had one that would fit Samson’s giant frame, although it had originally been tailored for Kenny Kenworth, the massively-built engineer of Doc’s crew, now off in Seattle helping Boeing to design the next generation of American long-range strategic bombers.
Bellman hadn’t appreciated the need for the concentrated nutrition bars until they’d started exerting themselves, after which he was grateful for the extra energy and clear-headedness that they supplied. He appreciated the purpose-built polar diving suit—his had originally been made for Long Shot, Doc’s relatively puny but surprisingly tough electrical and electronics expert, and thus a rather snug fit—even more.
It was literally freezing cold outside the sub, skating below the polar ice well north of the Yukon, but the spongy rubber suits were so well-insulated that Bellman felt no more chill than he would taking a dip in a Missouri creek back home. Only the eerie silence produced by that same insulation, along with the wading-through-gelatin sensation when he tried to move quickly through water that seemed to be at least half slush, brought home the reality of the situation. He and Doc’s Associates clung to the sled-like steel runners that enclosed the sub’s fusiform hull near the point at which they came together at the stern, just forward of the tail planes and screws. They used rubber-sheathed steel grapples created just for that purpose. Doc had designed and built them years earlier, anticipating that one day he might have to perform repairs to the hull while the ship was still running submerged.
They’d gone out the forward diving airlock just minutes before the blue glow had bathed the nose of the sub. Bellman shuddered from something other than cold. Even from this distance and with the protection of both the intervening cold-thickened seawater and the odd silvery mesh skullcaps Doc had distributed, he still felt the eerie touch of that otherworldly force. He hoped that it was just his imagination, as Doc himself was not certain how effective the “sanity shields” would be. The skullcap, designed to retard and divert the Brainstorm in a manner similar to both a reflector and lightning rod, was only a stop-gap measure intended as a last resort. In any case, any truly effective Brainstorm barrier, such as the one that had ultimately failed in the control compartment two weeks ago, would be too massive to be portable.
Doc waited until the actinic blue aurora had died out completely before moving forward along the topside starboard runner until he reached the fuel-cell heat-exchanger radiators and emergency hydrogen-purge exhaust ports. He waited five more minutes before signaling his waiting Associates to begin their assigned diversionary tasks.
Grinning like the Cheshire Cat, Trog scooted up the runner like a monkey scaling a tree until he reached the snorkel, just aft of the periscope and leading downward directly into the control compartment. Sham and Shorty, clinging to the port and starboard underside runners, also moved forward to positions beside the ballast trim tanks and battery compartments.
Bellman and Stonebender took up their assigned places, Bellman at the main entry hatch within the collapsible conning tower amidships and Stonebender at the forward diver’s airlock at the nose through which they’d all emerged.
Doc manually opened the emergency exhaust ports, purging all of the anode-side hydrogen from the fuel cells that powered the electric propulsion system, stopping the chemical reaction that generated all of the electrical energy not already stored in the batteries. Being a suspenders-and-belt man, Doc also shut down the radiators that bled off the extreme heat generated by that fiercely exothermic reaction, which had no other place to go. If the fuel cells continued to operate after being flushed of their hydrogen, the waste heat would quickly climb until it tripped the automatic governor and forced a shutdown. The result would be the same, whichever method worked first, and within minutes, the rotors of the twin 1,000-horsepower Westinghouse motors stopped turning, the pervasive throbbing vibration died and the propulsion screws slowed to a stop. Immediately, the others began executing their designated tasks.
Sham drew his sword and plunged it through the maintenance access hatch of the battery compartment, stabbing through several layers of insulation and piercing both the anode and cathode of the primary storage battery. The steel blade provided an excellent conductive path between the two, even before seawater flooded the compartment through the hole he’d cut through the insulation. The batteries quickly became inert blocks of nickel and cadmium as saltwater diluted or displaced the dry potassium hydroxide electrolyte, when mixing the two didn’t result in an exothermic chemical reaction. The brief but intense electrical arcs that accompanied the resulting short circuits resembled lightning bolts and were similarly dangerous, but the heavy insulation of the polar diving suit protected Sham from the discharges as effectively as it kept out the cold. Without either fuel cells or the batteries, the submarine’s entire electrical system was now dead.
Within the sub, the Japanese who had until now had been in charge felt a surge of panic as it became very dark and very quiet…
As soon as Trog reached the snorkel, which allowed the submarine to refresh its internal atmosphere while submerged, drilling upward through the ice when necessary, he popped an upended bucket over the intake. Opening a valve on a spare compressed air tank, he created an air pocket within the bucket of sufficient size to allow him to manually detach the failsafe that prevented the snorkel from being opened under water. He then opened the intake valve to full aperture and popped in several smoke, tear gas and anesthetic gas grenades. Reclosing the valve and reattaching the failsafe, he shimmied aft down the runner to the topside propylene glycol de-icing tanks and opened valves to manually release the chemical, which would melt the overhead ice or, at least, soften it enough that the sub could break through.
Shorty used his geologist’s rock-pick to pry open the safety covers of the ballast trim tank emergency valves that released compressed air to blow all of the ballast. Shorty began opening the valves in the precise order and at the exact intervals that Doc had specified. This took several minutes, during which the emptying tanks whistled as shrilly as an air raid siren and the air pockets they created expanded and merged until they completely filled the tanks. The vessel bucked and shuddered like a harpooned whale, then began nosing toward the surface and heeling over first to one side and then to the other. By that time, Stonebender had reached and begun flooding the forward airlock and opening the hatch, while Bellman had reached and begun extending the conning tower to its full height.
Aboard the Devilfish, the Japanese occupiers groped in the darkness, pitched into bulkheads as the decks rolled beneath them, choked on tear gas and smoke. Someone managed to break out the firefighting gear, only to get himself hopelessly tangled in the hoses. No one noticed when men began keeling over from the anesthetic vapor…
Doc closed the exhaust valves and reopened the radiator feeds, then joined Bellman and Trog inside the conning tower, where they’d secured themselves to stanchions. Shorty and Sham, having attended to their tasks, had already joined Stonebender inside the forward divers lock. They were none too soon. The Devilfish nosed into softened ice with a heavy metallic groan and an ominous creak that ran from stem to stern. Ice and metal strained against each other with a sound to put nails on a blackboard to shame, until the ice suddenly gave with a sharp teeth-rattling jerk. Doc and his men, prepared as they were for the impact, were nevertheless severely jolted and thrown from side to side.
The Japanese occupiers, totally disoriented and demoralized, were taken completely by surprise and thrown end over end against walls that had once been floors and ceilings. The sub came to rest on its port side, inclined upward through the ice at a 30° angle, just as Doc’s calculations had predicted that it would. The seawater in the conning tower drained out, allowing Doc to open the open the topside hatch so that he and his crew could enter swiftly through the now-horizontal ladder well. Since the electrically-operated airlock pumps were now out of commission and operating the manual pumps would’ve taken at least an hour, having the submarine “beached” on its side was the best way to get both the topside and forward passages open and clear simultaneously.
The interior of the submarine was of course pitch dark, except for luminous beads embedded into the overheads and deck sidings, which would glow from their own radio-luminescence for centuries. That was sufficient for finding one’s way to the escape hatches of a disabled submarine, but not for navigating one’s way into one and taking it over. Doc and his men lit their way using handheld black-light lanterns. The Plexiglas helmets of their diving suits had been coated with a clear chemical that made the ultraviolet rays visible, but in somewhat fantastic manner. Everything in the submarine seemed to glow a bright electric blue, as if it had been painted with a fluorescent dye.
“Yaaa-hooooo!” roared Trog as he turned left through a sideways hatch and all but dived into the control compartment from the now-horizontal ladder well, landing on the portside wall. He almost deafened himself in process due to the insulating properties of his diving suit. Except for Sham, who never went anywhere without his swordstick, Doc and his crew had been separated from their SCAMPs and other conventional weapons, which were stowed away in the Attic or racks in Engineering, so they had armed themselves with various tools scavenged from their personal kit in the Bunkhouse and up forward in the diving compartment, augmented with the chemical grenades and other gadgets from Doc’s utility vest. Trog carried a makeshift mace made from, of all things, a monkey wrench padded with foam rubber wrapped in duct tape. Trog would have been just as happy using it unbound, but Doc insisted that he make his bludgeon nonlethal.
Captain Akusei had donned a respirator as a precaution just as soon as he had first smelled smoke, which explained why he was still conscious. He yanked an 8mm Nambu semi-automatic from his belt holster and emptied the entire clip into the charging anthropoid shape. The bullets lodged harmlessly in the thick spongy “skin” of the suit or ricocheted off the Plexiglas helmet, which had been designed to withstand the enormous pressures of the deep. Suit notwithstanding, the impacts brought Trog to an abrupt halt, each gunshot hitting him like the fists of a heavyweight prizefighter. Each of the head shots made the Plexiglas helmet ring like a massive bell being struck by a sledgehammer.
Sam Stonebender, coming in from the nose, made his way aft along the portside walls of the Bunkhouse, galley and wardroom and squeezed into the control compartment through the half-dismantled hatchway, jumping down with a ponderous thud. Crossing the compartment in two steps, Stonebender slapped the smoking pistol out of the Japanese captain’s hand, then backhanded him with a hand the shape and size of an entrenching tool. The unfortunate Japanese bounced off what once been the deck and was now a bulkhead, after which the he sprawled on the corner in a somewhat fetal position.
Trog and Stonebender made their way aft through the horizontal ladder well to Engineering without further opposition, probably because there was no one left conscious to oppose them. Then, as they neared the middle of the aftmost compartment, they were confronted by the black armor-clad figure of Gojira, the Demon-from-the-Sea. And a demon he now truly appeared to be, haloed in the otherworldly blue glow of the black-light, further illuminated by the eerie green glow of the luminous beads outlining the deck and overhead to either side, all of them reflecting from the crimson crystalline eyes in his half-ruined ghostly white skull face.
“I should have killed you all the first time we met,” he whispered hoarsely, reaching for the control rheostat, “instead of trying to dupe you into running interference with the devilish Chinese doctor for me!”
Trog’s makeshift mace suddenly flashed through the air, spinning like a tomahawk, and smashed into Gojira’s demon-skull face with a sickening thud. The armored figure staggered slightly, shook it’s head as if to clear it and straightened again. The lower jaw of the skull-face fell off, along with a dozen teeth and one of the fangs, but otherwise there seemed to be no significant damage.
A shuddering vibration ran through the submarine’s hull, accompanied by a shrill whistle that quickly subsided into a reassuring susurration—the air circulation system had just come back on. The lights in the overhead, now on the right side of those facing aft, flickered back to life, dimly at first, then they blazed brightly for a moment before dimming to steady standard brightness. While Trog had been engaging Captain Akusei in the control compartment and then making his way with Stonebender into Engineering, Doc had gone straight to the Basement, where he’d jury-rigged bypasses around the shorted primary batteries and brought the shutdown fuel cells back online, restoring the Devilfish’s electrical power.
The man in the Koroshi armor was reaching for the Brainstorm control rheostat again when Doc suddenly landed behind Trog and Stonebender with hardly a sound. Stepping between Trog and the demonic armored on the other side of the compartment, he held up an apple-sized glass ball full of silvery metallic powder.
“Don’t try to use the Brainstorm, Shibumi-san!” Doc warned.
“So,” rasped the demon, “you know who I am.”
“I’ve known for quite some time, Shibumi. Shiro called you Tetsuhito as he lay dying after you shot him, but you yourself, in your guise as Gojira, had already referred to me as Seidouhito. It was a long time ago, but how could either of us ever forget that Seidouhito and Tetsuhito—‘Bronze Man’ and ‘Iron Man’—were Shiro’s kage-henmei ‘shadow names’ for us when we both trained together, like equally-matched twin brothers, under his firm but gentle guiding hand. So I already knew that you had to be his son Shibumi, half-brother of Yuriko, nephew of Shigeta, who now heads the Tokkou-Kempeitai. Gojira had to be one of the Koroshi clan and couldn’t possibly be either Shiro or Yuriko. That left you or your uncle and he was no longer fit enough for such a mission and, in any case, too important to leave Japan for such a chancy scheme as this.”
“My ‘chancy scheme’ has proven itself, Seidouhito-san!” hissed Shibumi Koroshi. “We were never brothers, however much my father might have treated us as such, and we were never equals, except in your deluded gaijin mind. Certainly not after he first called you his Ichiban, his Number-One! I may have been ‘Iron Man’ when we last trained together, but I have long since been tempered into Steel. In any case, Iron has always been superior to Bronze and Steel is more superior still. Now I have a weapon that will scatter your inferior kind before it like dust before the Kamikaze, the Divine Wind that protected us from the Mongols.” His gauntleted hand closed on the rheostat. “Your Bronze Age ends here and now, Seidouhito! Testsuhito now begins his own Iron Age, ushering in a bright and shining new Age of Steel!”
“All that you have is a maladjusted instrument stolen from another, an instrument that you don’t really understand.” Doc hefted the glass ball as if estimating its weight, although he most certainly knew that to within a grain. “And if you try to use it now, I guarantee it will backfire on you.”
“Bakayarou!” laughed Shibumi. “Stupid fool! You think you can bluff me so easily? I know your reputation for warning foes, but I’d rather die trying to kill you than be captured and dropped back into play on your side of the board.” He twisted the rheostat to full power and screaming blue light flared from his helmet’s horns. “Die, fool!”
Doc threw the glass egg like a fastball, snapping it off with the same blinding speed with which he had previously caught two king cobras in mid-strike. The ball struck Shibumi’s helmet squarely on the Koroshi crest between the horns with such force it seemed to explode. Shibumi was suddenly enveloped in a cloud of silver motes that turned into blazing blue sparks in the glare of the Brainstorm.
A crackling hiss like frying bacon filled the air, along with the sharp tang of ozone. Shibumi stiffened, then convulsed, as streamers of blue fire erupted from his black breastplate. The armored figure reeled and staggered, tearing at his helmet. Something beneath the surface of the armor plates over his midriff exploded like a flashbulb and the blue glare of the Brainstorm flickered and died. The fearsome Gojira, the Demon-from-the-Sea, collapsed like a deflating balloon and sprawled limply on the deck, silvery particles sifting down upon his smoking armor like volcanic ash.
One down, thought Doc Hazzard grimly. One to go.
No one moved for several seconds except Doc, who sprang forward and knelt to examine the fallen demon-figure. He pulled off the skull-face mask, revealing the face of Shiro Koroshi as he had been in his 30s, with clipped military moustache and close-cropped hair of the man they had known as Lin-Fong. He still lived, though just barely.
Trog was the first to recover his voice. “It’s Lin-Fong, except he ain’t! I mean, he sorta looks like Lin-Fong, but now he looks even more like Shiro Kiroshi.” He scratched his head. “Did he always look like this and just make us all think he was Chinese?”
“Yes and no,” Doc replied offhandedly. “When he came to us, he was wearing inserts that changed the shape of his jawline, cheekbones and nose, making him appear more like a Chinese than a Japanese. But he also used an ancient Shinobi ‘mind-over-matter’ technique, whereby practitioners visualize themselves as someone else so completely that it becomes their actual self-image, which they can then project so forcefully that others see them almost exactly the same way that they now see themselves.” Doc gave a rare chuckle. “Whatever else you might think about the zoot suit, it provides ample space for hidden pockets in which to store all kinds of weapons and tools while hiding them in plain sight. He could probably change his physical appearance several different ways with items that were always at hand on various parts of that outfit.” He sobered. “Sometimes, the best way to hide is in plain sight, drawing attention to a false persona in order to conceal your true nature.”
“I’ll be superamalgamated!” Shorty heaved a sigh of relief. “As a trained professional ethnologist, I was most apprehensive that the identity of the individual whose alleged responsibility for this hypothetical oversight and other evaluations of similar conundrums previously shrouded in such impenetrable obscurity as certain previous disclosures may have led us to presume might indeed in point of fact have been one whom your present interlocutor is in the habit of defining by means of the perpendicular pronoun.”
“No,” Sham assured him, “you weren’t fault for not spotting the fact that these Shinobi spies weren’t actually Chinese.”
Stonebender scooped up a handful of the silver powder and rubbed it between his fingers. “Iron fillings?” he ventured.
“Powdered aluminum chaff,” said Doc. “It’s highly disruptive to anti-aircraft radio detection and ranging tranceivers and thus good for creating electromagnetic interference in general. Shibumi’s Brainstorm was absorbed and reflected back at him by the cloud of chaff, which also served to shield us from the broadcast.”
Powerful bronze fingers picked at the armored plates, prying them off to reveal a mass of peanut-sized vacuum tubes and transformers the size of children’s building blocks, most of which were blackened or slagged. In the midst of this was a small capsule containing something that glowed like a smoldering ember by its own brilliantly glaring actinic blue light, not by reflected black-light. Doc yanked loose and held up for the others to see.
“I’m afraid the thing’s completely burned out,” he announced. “We’ll probably never know exactly how it worked, except that it was built around this!”
“Blazes!” breathed Trog. “I’ve seen something exactly like that before somewhere, but I can’t rightly think just where!”
“Bah!” snorted Sham. “You just plain can’t think, period!”
“Supermalagorgeous!” exclaimed Shorty excitedly, then once again lapsed into normal verbiage. “Of course you remember seeing it before! It would be impossible for any of us to forget. That’s a fragment of the ‘Blue Meteorite’ whose literally mind-numbing effects were used by the would-be conqueror Ngo-Wei after it fell to Earth in Tibet eight years ago!”
“Yes,” confirmed Doc. “A piece of it must have fallen into Wu-Hanshu’s hands. Unless, of course, Wu-Hanshu was actually the one who originally discovered its mind-altering properties. Ngo-Wei could’ve just as easily been one of his minions who stole a piece of it and struck out on his own, just as Ngo-Wei had a falling out his own treacherous partners in crime.” Doc produced a roll of black electrician’s tape from his utility vest and began wrapping the glowing blue shard.
“In it’s natural state, its yet-to-be-determined radiation only suppressed cognitive brain functions generally, reducing anyone within its radius into non-sentient beings, unaware and unresponsive to anything around them—easy prey for those insulated from the effect. The Brainstorm device used frequency-modulated radio amplification and ultrasonic vibration to modify the effect and make it selective to specific bands of the spectrum that correspond or resonate with human brain waves. This sample no longer radiates at brain frequency any more unless stimulated to higher energy levels. The most this sliver of extraterrestrial matter can probably do now is give you a headache if you stare at it too long. Still, it’s best not to take chances—”
Doc produced a waterproof rubberized steel matchbox from another pocket, dumped the matches out into a nearby waste bin and tucked the fragment, wrapped so fully that it would barely fit, snugly inside. Satisfied that both the sample inside the box would be safe from further damage and that nothing outside the box would be exposed to the radiation that it still produced, he tucked the box back into his vest.
“Jove!” Sham shook his head. “You mean that Wu-Hanshu took something literally out-of-this-world, which could already destroy human minds by its own eldritch nature, and refined it into something even more deadly, something racially selective?”
“No, that was an unforeseen side-effect of tuning the meteorite’s incoherent and chaotic natural radiation and focusing them into a narrow band of coherent frequencies. The Brainstorm is essentially a MASER, a device that produces coherent single-frequency electromagnetic waves through amplification by stimulated emission of what would otherwise be incoherent multi-frequency radiation, but it operates at the same frequency as human brainwaves. Although every individual brain is unique, families of brains tend to be more alike than not. What we call ‘races’ are actually just extended families. When the beams frequency is narrow enough, it only affects those families within that narrow band.” Doc produced a penlight, peeled back Shibumi’s right eyelid with his left thumb and forefinger, checked his oculomotor reflex. He then checked both ear canals, nasal passages and, levering the unconscious man’s mandible open, the mouth and back of the throat. Whatever Doc’s exam found, he kept it to himself.
“Actually, the Brainstorm device is out of adjustment,” Doc continued throughout his exam. “It was apparently intended to affect everyone exactly the same way that it did Bellman: isolating the cognitive functions of the brain from their sensory input and suspending all personal awareness, even that of the passage of time. The fact didn’t become obvious until I realized that, alone of the European-Americans who survived the initial attack in Santa Barbara, Bellman was the only one who didn’t suffer any physical damage.” Stonebender gave sudden start and cast a long hard look Doc’s way, but said nothing. “That could only have been because his individual reaction was in phase with the major portion of the broadcast, which still remained fully coherent.”
“When the Japanese removed the device from the laboratory of Wu-Hanshu’s Manchurian stronghold, they probably tinkered with it, unknowingly knocking it out of kilter. It began broadcasting on frequencies that stimulated or suppressed parts of the brain it wasn’t intended to affect.” Doc had completed his preliminary examination of Shibumi and began studying what was left of the Brainstorm device in earnest. “See that bright mark here? It’s on what’s left of a frequency modulation circuit, similar to that used in Wu-Hanshu’s stealth radio set. It marks where the phase coherence between the two oscillators was originally set. There’s no way that this adjustment could have been made without direct manipulation using a pair of needle-nosed pliers.”
Doc turned his attention back to the prostrate Shibumi Koroshi. “I don’t think the Brainstorm was originally intended as a weapon at all. It was probably designed for therapeutic medical work, a kind of electronic anesthetic, although there are several other interesting possible applications: painless surgery or treatment for intractable pain, restraint of the uncontrollably manic or violently insane, treatment for insomnia and other sleep disorders, human hibernation if not outright suspended animation—we all got a taste of that and perhaps even a greater understanding of cognition and consciousness in general.”
“Blazes!” howled Trog. “You mean we’ve been through all this hullabaloo and whoop-to-doo over some kinda sleep-making machine?”
“By rights, you should’ve been immune!” Sham sneered. “You’ve been walking around in your sleep all your life.”
“Speaking of sleep,” Doc interjected smoothly, “our Japanese guests may begin recovering any minute now. I took care of the three in the control compartment on my way here, but you three”—Doc indicated his Associates—“should start dosing the others and hauling them back here so that can secure them all together.” Fitting deeds to words, Doc produced a glass phial of what looked like cigarette filters suspended in oil. “Hold your breaths for a minute or two, everyone!” Uncapping the phial, he fished out two of the filters and placed one each in Shibumi’s nostrils, quickly recapping the phial as he did so. The anesthetic-soaked nose plugs were good for six hours and much more safe, effective and convenient than an injection or physical restraints. Doc produced two more phials and tossed one apiece to his three Associates. “Let’s get cracking, men!”
Turning to Bellman and Stonebender, Doc continued without a pause. “You two will help me secure the prisoners in the hammocks they’ve strung up over there. As you can see, we’ll have to strap them in standing up until we can right the sub. After we’ve secured the prisoners, repairing the Devilfish and getting her shipshape will be the next item on the agenda.”
Doc’s submarine sabotage had been carefully planned to be reversible, but it was neither a quick nor an easy task. For one thing, it took several excursions onto the ice to apply patches and reinforcements to the hull where needed. Carefully calculated adjustments of the ballast and trim tanks had to be made in advance so that the sub would right itself once it was entirely back in the water, without comprising its current relative stability. Every excursion in and out of the vessel and even trips fore and aft had to be coordinated to maintain the load balance and distribution in and around the submarine to preserve that stability. It was an orchestrated balancing act performed by untrained bystanders who were already feeling more than little tipsy. Bellman constantly felt like he was walking on eggs, any one of which might actually be a hand grenade. Every groan and shudder in the vessel or the surrounding ice was enough to give him heart palpitations.
It took several more hours until Doc was satisfied that the ship was indeed shipshape except for what Trog called its “bad attitude” and “leftist inclinations” but eventually every item of loose gear was stowed and every hatch battened, including the one to the wardroom that the Japanese had all but dismantled. From supplies stored in the Attic, Trog produced a much more potent chemical de-icer than the ethylene glycol that had initially opened the hole in the ice around them. Doc directed deployment of canisters of the stuff at critical points around the Devilfish, which were equipped with electrically operated solenoids to release their contents simultaneously in response to a signal from the control compartment.
Before beginning the actual operation, however, Doc handed out what appeared to be round Band-Aids. “Press your index and middle against the side of your neck just under the hinge of your left jaw until you find your pulse.” Doc advised. “That’s your carotid artery. Stick this directly over the strongest pulse you can find. If you still can’t find it by the time I get back, I’ll help you.” Doc disappeared aft with the box of “Band-Aids” to apply them to their sleeping Japanese prisoners.
Everyone had received First Aid and Buddy Care training and had no trouble finding their pulse and applying the circular adhesive patches as directed. Stonebender sniffed his suspiciously. “What is this?” he asked. “Medication? For what?”
“Motion sickness.” Trog grunted. “It’s got a few milligrams of scopolamine that seeps through the skin and into your bloodstream, on a beeline to your bonnet.” He grinned. “Sham and me wore them when we went flying with Cat back when this whole thing started, so we wouldn’t lose any of our very expensive lunch!”
Doc appeared at the hatchway, quickly checked that everyone had their patches in the proper place, handed out web belts to use as restraints and assigned stations around the control compartment. Getting to those stations entailed some intense physical effort and considerable acrobatic contortion, after which they had to secure themselves in place without falling off their precarious perches. Again, Doc checked the end results before proceeding any further.
“Okay, everyone!” Doc called. “Check your restraints one last time, then brace for maneuvers. Ready? Set? In three … two … one … go!” There followed a staccato or rapidly firing relays, like a 21-gun salute performed with champagne corks, and then the ice and sea around the sidewise submarine suddenly began to fizz and bubble like an aquarium full of Alka-Seltzer. Within minutes, the ice had boiled away, allowing the sub to drop back down into the sea and right itself.
“Yee-hah!” Trog let out with a piercing rebel yell. “Ride ’em, cowboys! Yippee-ti-yi-ay, Mother Hubbard!” The Devilfish dropped into the water heeled over onto its port side and almost immediately began rolling upward until it had not only swung fully upright but also heeled over onto its starboard side. Then it swung back, up an over onto its port side, albeit less acutely. And so it went for the next uncountable few minute, swinging back and forth like an inverted pendulum until, much too much later, it settled into a gentle rocking motion. Bellman’s head continued to spin long after that, while the continued churning in his stomach made him insanely grateful for the amazing effectiveness of Doc’s motion sickness patch. Beside him, the normally imperturbable Stonebender was looking decidedly pale, clearly wishing that he had two of those little patches. He muttered something indistinctly to himself, as if to help focus his mind and keep his gut under control:
“Little Ivan, swaddled tight
Cannot move from Left to Right
Thus the mighty Russian nation
Tolerates no deviation”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the control compartment, Shorty, who was showing no signs of physical discomfort whatsoever, was singing softly to himself to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star:
“Scintillate, scintillate, globule aurific
Fain would I fathom thy nature specific
Loftily poised in the ether capacious
Strongly resembling a gem carbonaceous…”
What in blazes is that all about? thought Bellman. Oh, well, whatever floats your boat. Or, in this case, flubs your sub. Bellman blinked and wondered if maybe the motion sickness medication might have some minor side-effects, such as making people think and say silly things.
Things began to settle down now that the Devilfish was back under weigh, but that raised the question of where exactly they were going to go next. They had set out in pursuit of the Japanese stealth submersible that had been attached like a barnacle to the keel of the S.S. Hai-Lung in the Hudson, which had in fact turned out be a stolen Chinese sub designed and built by Doctor Wu-Hanshu, but then the Japanese had unleashed the Brainstorm and taken over until just now. Had the Devilfish been following Wu-Hanshu all this time or just taking the shortest route back to Japan? Everyone wondered about this, but no one wanted to discuss it. Predictably, it was Sham who finally gave voice to the question that was on everyone’s collective mind. “I say, Doc,” he ventured, “how are we going to track down Wu-Hanshu and find Cat and Yuriko when we have no idea of where they are or where they might be going?”
“I have an idea or two in that direction.” Doc replied offhandedly. “Wu-Hanshu said that he was returning to the place where this whole affair began, which I take to mean that he’s returning to the laboratory in his former stronghold in Manchuria, now Manchukuo. I’m sure that one of our Japanese prisoners can tell us the location, if it comes to that.”
Trog grinned. “That must mean you’ve got a better way.”
“Something more direct, anyway.” Doc suddenly turned to face Samson Stonebender. The two were of equal height, so Doc’s golden eyes bored directly into the big man’s dark ones. “I’d like you to surrender your FM radio transceiver.”
Doc’s announcement took everyone by surprise except the giant, who remained calm and even somewhat cheerful. “You’ll find it in my kit bag, disguised as a family Bible with a locking cover,” he replied matter-of-factly. “You could probably use narco-hypnosis to make me to reveal the necessary passwords and recognition codes, but that it won’t do you any good, since you couldn’t possibly know the secret language of the Order of the Gra-Fan.”
“Gra-Fan!” echoed Bellman incredulously.
Doc nodded. “Samson Stonebender has been a member of the Gra-Fan all along. He’s been in contact with Wu-Hanshu since the incident in Santa Barbara, reporting our every move!”
Cat Hazzard gritted her teeth and strained, as she had for the past three hours. Every muscle in her body felt as though it had been stretched taut and pounded with a sledge hammer, then allowed to snap back. Repeatedly. Interminably. For as long as she could remember. Although she tried to keep her breathing deep and regular, in time with the contraction, she was getting shaky with fatigue. Her breath rasped and caught in short, whimpering sobs.
Her shoulders were braced against the velvet pillow, her legs raised to press the balls of her feet (or heels, she had taken to alternating them) against the rim of the hatch sealing her globular cell. The technique was simple and mechanical: press, relax, shift over an inch or so, press, relax, shift. Slowly the rim was giving … slowly but surely, the rim of her prison was being pushed off.
Now if only the hatch gave way before she did…
After Wu-Hanshu had left the laboratory, Cat and Yuriko had had plenty of time to themselves to contemplate their situation. Cat had noticed that the hatch was not bolted to the Plexiglas, but set into a heavy metal collar that fitted to the Plexiglas rim the way the hub of a wheel was fitted to a tire. All that held it in place was the narrow metal flange. Unfortunately, though relatively thin, the flange was made of high-grade chromium steel.
“Give!” Cat gritted through clenched teeth. “Come on, blast you, give!”
Cat had communicated her findings to Yuriko by signs, pointing to the flange and outlining its circumference, indicating its narrowness with her thumb and forefinger. Yuriko had come up with the idea of pushing it off with main force after a quick inventory of their resources turned up nothing with which to try prying the inner rim loose.
Cat had indicated her concern about the intravenous lines in their left arms by pointing to the crook of her elbow, extending her thumb and jerking it away in a hitchhiking gesture. Yuriko had considered for a moment, then shook her head vigorously and tapped her wrist as if indicating the time on a wristwatch: Now is not the time.. She indicated the hatch above her and held up her index finger, then pointed at the crook of her left elbow and held up her index and middle fingers in a “V” sign. Hatch first, IV second. Cat nodded agreement and there began a not entirely friendly competition as both women strove mightily to be the first to get free.
Tense, relax, shift, tense, relax, shift … Cat felt as though she were killing herself with each compression. Her legs ached when she relaxed and shook when she tensed, her neck was stiff, her abdomen felt like it was on fire and her shoulders felt as if an entire legion of Nazi storm troopers where standing on them in hobnailed boots. Perspiration covered her from head to toe, burning her eyes and salting her tongue. Her temples throbbed and pounded like a rapidly-firing howitzer.
It was the most painful, backbreaking work that Cat had ever done in her life and, despite her present wealth and privilege, she was no stranger to hard work. Although she ran a posh Park Avenue salon and health spa now, she’d been born and raised in the Canadian wilderness along the rocky coast of Vancouver Island and currently taught strict physical fitness disciplines to both men and women by her own personal example. Even so, the sustained effort of the past few hours had all but exhausted her and she’d only prised up less than a third of her hatch rim.
Cat was suddenly reminded of Doc’s two-hour daily exercises, spent pitting muscle against muscle in just this manner. Did Doc go through this kind of pain two hours every day? He must, because in the course of his exercises he built up the same all-over film of perspiration and tensed all of his muscles until they shook. Yet never had Cat seen him so much as grit his teeth. His face was always set in an impassive bronze mask, seemingly oblivious to pain and fatigue. Most of time, he actually appeared to have a serene Mona Lisa smile, as if listening to a soothing internal lullaby at only he could hear. Maybe that was the secret source his unique trilling sound.
Across the room, Yuriko strained against the rim of her prison hatch just as Cat did, with same mechanical regularity of movement and breathing. She seemed to be in a trance, relaxing every muscle except those that she was tensing at any given moment. Although she tensed every muscle from her shoulders to her toes, she did so in smoothly undulating waves, relaxing each set of muscles completely the moment the tension moved from one set to the next and back again. While she too was soaked with perspiration and breathing hard, she might as well have been engaged in nothing more difficult than a tennis match for all that showed in her face. Yuriko had to be feeling the strain just as badly as Cat was, so why couldn’t she have the decency to show it?
Shinobi training, thought Cat resentfully. It’s just not fair! A moan escaped from between Cat’s clenched teeth. For this—and any number of other imagined slights—I could easily learn to hate her and the horse she rode in on!
Yuriko relaxed, shifted, tensed, relaxed, shifted, tensed. Suddenly, the lid of her prison popped out and fell to the rubber composition flooring with a dull clunk. As it did so, the IV tube threaded through it was yanked cleanly out of Yuriko’s arm like a bad tooth strung to a slamming door. She had clearly been expecting this, because she already had a wad of unwrapped moist towelettes in her right hand, which she slapped over the minor wound in the crook of her left elbow even as she relaxed every other part of her body. Her hand sign hadn’t actually meant “Do this first and that second!” as Cat had assumed, but “The first thing will take care of the second thing.”
Realizing this, Cat also collapsed at the bottom of her own globe, her breathe sighing out of her in a long, drawn out whimpering sob. It’s over! It’s finally over! Her sense of relief lasted only a moment, washed away by a flood of burning resentment. Their escape attempt had been an unspoken contest between the two of them, a trial of both physical and mental prowess, and Cat was furious at having lost out to the little Japanese-American yet again. Why did that Oriental ophidian have to be so blasted good at everything?
Shinobi training, thought Cat bitterly. Like Doc. So perfect—so blasted inhumanly perfect! She took a deep breath, then another, forcing herself to relax, to be calm, to hide her pain and humiliation, to work like a finely-tuned machine with no hint of her frail humanity.
Yuriko was climbing shakily out of her globe, clearly exhausted but equally clearly not accepting any physical rebellion against her indomitable will. Cat, too exhausted even to move, caught her lower lip between her even white teeth and forced back the hot tears of pain, frustration and ignominious defeat that she felt welling up in her golden eyes. Yuriko staggered over to Cat’s globe, reeled against it for a second. Cat smiled weakly up at her, brushing the back of her hand across her eyes to hide them and the feelings they might betray, making it appear that she was merely wiping the sweat from her brow.
“Yuriko!” she sang sweetly. “How about finding a crowbar or something and getting me out of here…” Even as she spoke, Cat was reaching for the towelettes under her pillow to make a makeshift dressing for the puncture in her left arm.
The Japanese-American girl nodded and turned toward Wu-Hanshu’s workbench. “I’ll have you out in a jiffy!”
Right, thought Cat. And then we’ll hit these Gra-Fan johnnies like Gangbusters and you’ll see just how tough Cat Hazzard really is!
Cat’s eyes narrowed dangerously and her mouth quirked in a mirthless smile. She was determined that no one, not Doc or Yuriko or anyone else, would ever have to rescue her again. She would show them she could take care of herself.
And may the Good Lord have mercy on anyone who got in her way!
“Why would Sam contact the Gra-Fan?” asked John Bellman, nonplused. “He’s an agent of the FBI—you said so yourself!”
“I’ll wager that he’s been an agent of the Gra-Fan a good deal longer,” Sham remarked dryly. “It certainly explains a lot: how they knew about Koroshi so quickly despite the news blackout, how they found out about Yuriko’s escape and arrival in New York and how they knew we were about to attack the Hai-Lung.” He drew his sword and covered Stonebender, while Trog and Shorty relieved Stonebender of the Japanese pistol and sword that he’d taken from the hapless Captain Akusei. “No doubt the Gra-Fan has many more agents in our government offices other than Stonebender.”
“When did you first become suspicious of me, Doctor Hazzard?” the gargantuan gangster asked calmly. “After escaping detection these many years, I’m curious to learn what finally gave me away.”
“I knew you were not what you seemed when I realized you were immune to the effects of the Brainstorm,” Doc replied matter-of-factly.
Stonebender looked startled, then smiled thinly. “I should be used to this by now. You saw through my little act from the first, then?”
“It was rather obvious. Bellman was particularly susceptible to the Brainstorm and reacted by losing all sensory perception. Yet he was able to describe your reaction to the Brainstorm, your physical struggle against transparent green things which only you could see. How could you still be suffering the effects of the Brainstorm from which Bellman had already recovered, yet not have any of the brain damage of the others who remained afflicted afterward? The only likely explanation was that you were faking it.” Doc paused reflectively. “You corrected that mistake after the second attack, having already fallen to Gojira in physical combat and seeing no reason to fake symptoms of mental impairment where a trained neurologist”—Doc indicated himself with his right thumb—“might observe your behavior, but you had no problem faking a dislocated shoulder and a concussion when I asked you to do so. You were altogether too good at it.”
“Ah, so. I overplayed my hand.” Stonebender sighed. “I thought that I working myself into your confidence and, all the while, you were giving me more than enough to hang myself.”
“Just so,” Doc confirmed. “Then there were your symptoms: visual hallucinations of inhuman attackers against whom you had to contend. The autopsies of the brain damage suffered by those who died didn’t support anything like that. There were exactly three effects that the Brainstorm could induce—suppression of brain activity, hyper-stimulation of brain activity or cross-connection of brain activity—none of which can be consciously faked. The obvious conclusion is that already knew what the Brainstorm did to the brain, knew that couldn’t fake it, so you faked dementia in hopes that it would be mistaken for the results of a short-circuited brain. That suggests that, in addition to being immune to the Brainstorm, you had some hand in developing it. I threw out a lot of neurological jargon in your presence that you pretended not to understand, some of it incorrect, but I could see catching and ignoring every deliberate mistake that I made. Isn’t that so, Doctor Stonebender?”
“Guilty as charged.” Stonebender nodded acknowledgement. “Like yourself, I’m a neurosurgeon, trained by Doctor Wu-Hanshu himself to assist in his experiments and perform procedures deemed unworthy of his skills. I knew that the best that I could do was simulate berserker rage, but to do so I’d have to attack someone or something and keep attacking so long as the encephalatron will still operating. I decided to ‘attack’ something only I could see, by simply reliving and miming actual wrestling matches in which I had competed while working undercover as a professional wrestler.” He looked down and his feet and shook his head ruefully. “I guess I got carried away.” He looked back up at Doc. “And to what do you attribute my obvious-in-retrospect immunity?”
“The fact that you’re Mongolian, not Caucasian.” Doc concluded. “I’ve performed enough facial reconstruction to recognize the almost imperceptible residue of your epicanthic eye-folds and the slightly more apparent signs of rhinoplasty and other facial alterations. These aren’t difficult operations for even a mediocre surgeon, which Wu-Hanshu is most assuredly not.”
“And, once you knew that I was a surgically-altered Mongolian, immune to the encephalatron, you also knew that I hadn’t been comatose for over a week and accordingly noted the discrepancy in the length and volume of my facial hair—too thin for over a week’s growth on a Caucasian but too long for someone whose metabolism had been curtailed for so long. Yes, I see now all of the clues that gave me away, so evident to someone actively looking for them.” The man known as Samson Stonebender clasped his hands across his middle and bowed respectfully, a mocking smile on his lips. “Permit to introduce myself. Doctor Chien-Shiung Shao-Shan, M.D. Johns Hopkins, Tertiary Special Surgical Assistant to the President of the Council of Nine of the Order of the Gra-Fan, at your service.”
“Chien-Shiung is ‘healthy and strong’ and Shao-Shan is ‘Little Mountain’,” translated Shorty. “An ultra-intrinsically appropriate cognomination.”
“Oh, yeah?” piped Trog. “Sham, give me that pig-sticker or yours and let’s if I can’t whittle the Little Mountain down to an oversized mole hill!” He eyed Shao-Shan meaningfully. “We should just put you to sleep and string you up next to our Japanese guests back in Engineering while we glom onto your little trick radio?”
“How are we going to use it, though?” wondered Bellman. “Like Sam—I mean Shao-Shan—here said, we don’t know their passcodes or secret language.”
“I don’t think Doc plans to contact them,” Trog chuckled. “Except maybe as a last resort, that is. There’s more than one way to use a radio transceiver!”
“Give me a for instance.” Bellman was now totally at a loss.
“For instance, you can rig one radio to home into another’s carrier wave and follow the signal right to it. And if you have two transceivers with sufficient separation and known positions, you can triangulate the signal and can plot the relative position of the other station to within a few dozen yards!”
Trog gave a laugh like a rusty nail being pulled out of green timber. “We’re gonna use Shao-Shan’s radio to lead us right to his boss!”
As a source of ready-made exotic weapons and the makings of same, one can hardly do better than the comprehensive mobile laboratory of an acknowledged mad scientist and criminal mastermind.
Once out of their Plexiglas prisons, Cat Hazzard and Yuriko Koroshi soon found that the chamber in which they’d been held in vitro was a veritable arsenal. All of Yuriko’s Shinobi gear had been stored in the lockers in which Doctor Wu-Hanshu kept what Cat thought of as his “street” clothes. They went about arming themselves to their bright, smiling teeth.
Yuriko had been studying medicine the past two years and had picked up quite a bit of chemistry, especially the composition of anesthetic gases. She set about mixing up a batch of dicyclopropane, the same colorless and odorless gas Doc used in his anesthetic grenades. She also had a great deal of knowledge of poisons and drugs derived from her Shinobi training, which lore she also put to use making debilitating irritants. Her medical training also supplied the answer to a question that had been bothering Cat since she for awoke inside a Plexiglas globe.
“What exactly was that stuff we’ve been having pumped into us all this time?” Cat rubbed the inside of her left elbow, now properly bandaged with a gauze pad and surgical tape. “I’ve been having nightmares that we’ve been forcibly addicted to drugs or, worse, turned into human guinea pigs to test some horrific potion or other.”
“Parenteral nutrient admixture,” Yuriko replied, looking up from the condenser from which we extracting the final product of some arcane distillation. “Liquid food. It’s basically an intravenous bolus of saline and electrolyte solution containing a balanced mix of glucose, salts, amino acids, lipids, essential vitamins, minerals, chloride, acetate and trace elements such as calcium, magnesium, phosphorous and potassium. It’s why neither of us is starved and dehydrated, despite not having eaten for days or even weeks.” She wrinkled her nose. “I suspect that we had our stomachs and gastrointestinal tracts flushed before we were hooked up to the IVs and popped into those overgrown Erlenmeyer Bulbs over there.” She patted her abdomen. “I don’t know about you, but I haven’t been the least bit hungry even though my tummy’s been growling ever since I awoke.”
“Well, it sure beats a plate of thin gruel shoved under a cell door,” allowed Cat, “but the whole notion of having stuff into me without my prior knowledge and consent still gives the willies and the galloping never-get-overs.” She shivered. “To say nothing of the aforementioned nightmares.”
While not a scientist herself, Cat was a voracious reader of Scientific American, Popular Science and National Geographic and had accumulated a respectable amount of scientific know-how from her decade-long association with Doc and his Associates. She also had practical experience with industrial chemicals and the latest physiotherapy equipment at her Park Avenue health spa, including a lot of electronic gear used in dermatology and electrotherapeutic muscle stimulation. While most of the stuff that she found in Wu-Hanshu’s lab was too advanced for her to even identify, much less figure out how it worked, Cat managed to puzzle out some of it. Her golden eyes really lit up, however, when she spied a tank whose markings indicated that it contained compressed helium gas.
The sight of it brought back a flash of memory about something Doc’s resident electrical and electronics wizard Long Shot Robbins had told her about the gas when they’d been talking about airships following the Hindenburg disaster. He’d opined that increasing use and reliance on electronic navigation would eventually make airships unreliable even if they used helium for lift instead of hydrogen, due to a little-known property of helium gas. If Wu-Hanshu had another Brainstorm device or anything akin to it on board, the peculiar property that Long Shot had mentioned might be just the thing to neutralize it, along with every other piece of electronic hardware aboard.
“Any idea of where we are now?” asked Cat absently, by way of conversation.
“Not the foggiest,” replied Yuriko, sealing another batch of nemuri-gona sleeping powder in a glass bulb. “Somewhere between Alaska and Japan, I guess. Do you think we should let some of these poisonous reptiles loose? They might make an excellent diversion.”
“Heavens no!” yelped Cat, shaking her head vehemently. “Absitively posolutely not! Those horrible things are Wu-Hanshu’s pets as well as his weapons. We don’t know how well he’s trained them, but they certainly won’t attack him or anyone associated with him. They’re much more likely to attack us, the outsiders here, if we let any of them loose.” She cracked open the valve of the helium bottle as far as it would go. “You can be sure that he’s taught them to obey him and those in his employ while teaching them nasty, sneaky tricks to use on everyone else!” Her voice seemed a bit higher in pitch than normal. She smiled. Good! It’s already working!
“Good point,” agreed Yuriko. She handed Cat two spongy objects like cigarette filters. “One of these in each nostril will protect you from the nemuri-gona sleep powder and other noxious inhalants that I’ve concocted here. The Shinobi stealth clothing covers everything but the eyes and fingertips—the neko no te or ‘cat’s hand’ gloves were designed so we could feel our way in the dark—but we have these laboratory safety goggles to protect our eyes and we can wear surgical rubber gloves under our cat-hand gloves.” As Yuriko spoke, her voice began to rise slowly but steadily in pitch. “We should thus be effectively immune to all our own chemical weapons and most anything else of that nature we might find ready-made elsewhere in the lab. We certainly won’t get caught by Wu-Hanshu’s up-the-sleeve knockout drug trick again!” Yuriko frowned. Her voice now sounded like something out of a Walt Disney cartoon.
The six glowing hemispheres overhead began to dim and flicker. Yuriko glanced up in alarm, but Cat gave a squeaky laugh and raised a hand to quiet her fears. “It’s just a stunt of mine,” she explained, sounding like Donald Duck speaking in falsetto. “I’ve released a large volume of helium gas, which is starting to work on their light bulbs, vacuum tubes and anything else that depends on an evacuated volume to operate.”
“We’re going to need light to see by,” Yuriko observed fretfully. “Will whatever the helium’s doing besides reducing air density also knock out flashlights as well?”
“Yes,” replied Cat, “but I think that I may have the answer to that, too. We’ll slip these infrared filters you found among the photographic gear into the goggles, like this. We won’t be able to see anything but high-contrast monochrome, but we’ll at least be able to see clearly in the dark—something our opponents most certainly won’t!”
Yuriko started to say something, stopped, then spoke hesitantly. “Miss Hazzard … Cat … I don’t know why it is so, but I sense a very deep hostility in you—”
Cat started to reply but the willowy Japanese-American silenced her with a gesture. “I realize that in our first encounter I humiliated you in front of your friends and, for that, I sincerely apologize. Every move I have made since the Army took custody of me and my father has been forced upon me by circumstances over which I had no control. I only know this one thing, Cat: if we are to succeed in this endeavor, we must work together as a team. We cannot afford the slightest ill will toward one another.”
Cat suddenly felt torn in two opposite directions. Part of her wanted to tell this little upstart that she, Cat Hazzard, didn’t need any help from her or anyone else she’d do it all herself if it came to that. The other part recognized the truth of Yuriko’s words and realized how childish it was to let her wounded pride rule her as it had.
Yuriko watched Cat’s inner war without comment, hoping that she hadn’t misjudged the cousin of Doc Hazzard. Suddenly, the lights dimmed to extinction, plunging the room into darkness except for a murky greenish glimmer coming through the portholes and the illuminated dials of various instruments scattered here and there. It was enough for them to make out their immediate surroundings, but only just barely. Yuriko groped for both her goggles and the infrared filters that she’d set aside for them, hastily putting them together and slipping them into place. And just in time, too: one by one, the illuminated dials began to go out. When Yuriko next saw Cat Hazzard, it was as a ghostly chiaroscuro-dappled figure.
The spectral Cat Hazzard extended her hand. “We’d best get moving, partner. Things are going to start jumping any second now. We want to give them six sorts of Sheol this time, don’t we?”
Yuriko smiled and clasped Cat’s hand with relief. “Yes, sister! Together, we’ll give them all Nine Circles!”
Somehow, this exchange seemed appropriately solemn and poignant, even though the two women still sounded like animated cartoon mice.
“We’re losing the signal!” croaked Trog. He fumbled with the knobs on the crackle-finished black box that had been concealed in Shao-Shan’s fake Bible to no effect. Sham, sitting across the wardroom with Lin-Fong’s much larger Bakelite transceiver reported similar difficulty. “I wish Long Shot were here. He can make these things sit up and roll over. Mine just keeps playing dead!”
Doc said nothing, but made some adjustments to first Shao-Shan’s miniature FM radio set and then Lin-Fong’s full-sized one. He succeeded in recapturing and boosting the gain on the signal that they were trying to track, but it was evident that the strength of that signal was dying away even as he tuned into it more exactly. “Change our heading 45° to starboard,” he called over his shoulder “Extend both antenna leads as far as you can.” In the control compartment behind them, Shorty quickly made the necessary course adjustment, while Bellman and Shao-Shan operated the electric winches that paid out or retracted the insulated leads that connected each FM transceiver to its respective antenna. While the sets were of remarkably different sizes, one being the nearly size of a steamer trunk and the other closer in size to an overnight bag, each connected to a 300-ohm twin single-turn quadrilateral loop antenna exactly 30 inches on a side, which could be broken down into innocuous-looking pieces of common hardware.
One antenna was now floating in an inflatable marker buoy being towed behind the Devilfish as it cruised southwest across the Bering Sea, while the other hung from a weather balloon tethered amidships. The buoy was currently trailing 100 yards behind the sub, while the balloon was about 100 yards above it. Both could be extended, but only another 25 yards each. Their relative positions, along vectors 90° apart, gave a baseline of 140 yards between the two signal reception points, which would increase to 175 yards at maximum extension. The first bearing had been taken while the sub has been traveling due south, the next while it was traveling southwest. It had turned due west before Doc took the third and last bearing, just before they lost the signal.
Five minutes later they lost the signal entirely, but not before Doc had obtained the final bearing taken to triangulate the position of the FM transponder signal broadcast from Wu-Hanshu’s stealth submersible in response to a series of dots and dashes that spelled out the letters “C” and “Q” in ITU Morse Code—dah-di-dah-dit dah-dah-dit-dah—signifying “Calling All Stations” in international radio conventions. The pronunciation of the “CQ” letter combination sounds like the first two syllables of the word sécurité or “safety” in French and the words “seek you” in English. All automatic radio transponder circuits are designed to respond to a CQ signal with a distinctive signal similar to a telephone dial tone to help locate them in an emergency in which the operator is disabled or otherwise unable to transmit an acknowledgement. Doc had confirmed that both of the captured FM set such a transponder, giving him the means to remotely trigger a known signal onto which they could triangulate.
“Okay, that’s about all we’re going to get.” Doc finished plotting the last readings and then raised his voice in series of commands. “Trog and Sham, shut down those transceivers, pack them up and stow them aft in Engineering. Bellman and Shao-Shan, cut those leads, toss them overboard, seal the topside hatches and stow the winches back in Engineering. Shorty, take us down and steer two points aport. Set the autopilot on a heading of 112°30′ magnetic, bearing west-southwest, and then join me up here in the wardroom.”
“You want us to jettison the antennas and leads?” asked Bellman. “That’s sending an awful lot of valuable gear for Davy Jones. You don’t want us to reel all this stuff back in?”
“Reeling it all back in and stowing it all away is more trouble that it’s worth,” replied Doc. “We’re better off closing the distance between us and our quarry as quickly as possible, without wasting time with equipment that’s outlived its usefulness.” Doc nodded toward Shao-Shan. “Jettisoning the antenna also removes any possibility that our guest might try to use either of those radio sets to try and warn Wu-Hanshu that we’re coming.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper!” Bellman grinned and tossed Doc a snappy salute before snapping smartly to work. Shao-Shan smiled ruefully but said nothing. He’d given his parole in exchange for not be quartered with the still slumbering Japanese POWs, now sequestered up forward in the diving compartment, which made an adequate makeshift brig once all the diving gear was transferred aft and the hatch wheel latched down. It rankled him that his word was deemed to be a less-than-adequate guarantee, but understood that he was rightly considered to be on probation at this point. Even minimal trust had to be earned, however much one might presume that one might deserve it on general principles.
While the others completed their assigned tasks, Doc plotted the bearings and vectors of the three radio contacts among the three FM transceivers on a U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office, Bureau of Navigation nautical chart spread across the wardroom table. He worked quickly and had finished all of the plots by the time the others had gathered together again in the wardroom. Trog handcuffed Shao-Shan to one leg of the table, making as little effort to disguise his glee at doing so as he did his distrust of the self-professed Wu-Hanshu lackey and Gra-Fan double agent.
“They must have found out we were homing in on them and shut down their transmitter,” Sham hazarded.
“Why’d they do it so gradual, then?” snarled Trog. “That don’t make any sense. If they were gonna shut it down, they’da shut it down all at once!”
“Ambuscade ensnarement is an ultra-conspicuous potentiality,” noted Shorty.
“A trap, huh?” translated Trog. “Now, I can believe that!”
“Where are they now?” asked Bellman. “Their last position, I mean.”
“I estimate it to be somewhere in the Chishima Islands, north and east of Hokkaido,” replied Doc, pointing to the USNHOBN nautical chart. “What do you think, Shorty?”
The skeletal scholar looked at the coordinates Doc had computed. “One of the northernmost,” he agreed. For the benefit of the others, he explained, “The Chishima—or, as the Russians call them, Kuril—Islands are a chain of active volcanic islands stretching northeast from Hokkaido, the northernmost of the main Japanese islands, to the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia. There are about forty of them, the largest being Kunashiri, Etorofu, Uruppu, Shimushiru, Katsuwa, Shasukotan, Onne-kotan, Paramushiru, Ariato and Shumushu. The island closest to this position is a tiny one just north of Shumushu, called Hinotori. Hinotori is also the most recent, I believe, having been formed only a century or so ago.”
“Any inhabitants?” asked Sham. He self-consciously adjusted the blazer of his once-snappy nautical attire, which now looked all the worse for wear from literally having been slept in for over a week, although Sham had recently repaired the hole in his still-jaunty Commodore’s cap so neatly that one had to actually use Shorty’s magnifying glass to find the patch.
“Ainu fisher folk, mostly,” replied Shorty. “The Ainu are a Caucasian race displaced by the Japanese far back in antiquity, the way the Europeans displaced the native American Indian. There have been some Japanese military bases on the larger islands, Paramushiru in particular, since the Japanese annexation of the islands from Russia as war reparations 35 years ago.”
“Blazes!” yowled Trog. “You mean we gotta take on the whole Japanese Navy?”
“I rather doubt that,” sneered Sham. “Wu-Hanshu is going to steer clear of the Japanese as much as we are. Still, one wonders why he took the chance of running so close to their territory.”
“He had little choice,” Shorty expounded. “The Chishima Islands stretch across the region between Hokkaido and Kamchatka like a fence, separating the Sea of Okhotsk from the North Pacific. The only other way through is to go almost a thousand miles to the south, around Japan and in through East China Sea, and even then you’d have to take a similar risk—the Ryukyu Islands bridge the region from Kyushu to Taiwan in exactly the same manner.”
“Yeah, yeah, I was just asking!” groaned Trog. “What do we do now, ring up the Japanese and tell them where to find Wu-Hanshu, so they can sink him for us?” He grinned lopsidedly. “That’s what Shibumi tried to do siccing us onto him back when.”
“We’ll leave the Japanese out of this and hope they’ll be none the wiser,” replied Doc. “Shorty, make the necessary course changes to take us to the position we just charted and start extrapolating their probable course based on their last relative heading. Trog and Sham come aft with me. We’ve got some work to do setting up some Geiger-Müller scintillator tubes.”
“Geiger counters?” gasped Sham. “Aren’t those for finding uranium and other radioactive minerals?”
“Not exactly,” corrected Doc. “What they do is detect the ionizing radiation—alpha and beta particles and gamma rays—released during the radioactive decay of those minerals. In this case, we’ll be using scintillator tubes to detect the ionization trail created by the atomic pile that powers the engines of Wu-Hanshu’s submarine.”
Shao-Shan, who was sitting handcuffed to the table leg, stared at Doc like one who has seen a miracle. “How could you possibly know?” he hissed.
Doc didn’t answer, pretending as he sometimes did not to hear the question. It would not do to tell an avowed enemy that Doc was one of the guiding minds behind the Manhattan Engineer District, which was the code-name for the project to develop an atomic bomb. He was familiar with all aspects of atomic science, having written and published the best-selling Atomic Research Simplified four years earlier.
Back at the Hudson River waterfront, when the Devilfish was approaching the freighter S.S. Hai-Lung, Doc had examined the strange lens-shaped sub under both infrared and ultraviolet light. It had all of the hallmarks of the corona of ionization emitted by a uranium-fueled atomic pile had been clearly visible and Doc, having worked with a similar albeit less advanced atomic pile no more than two days earlier, had recognized it’s telltale spectrum instantly.
Under Doc’s direction, Trog and Sham began erecting the Geiger counter and connecting it to a seawater sampling device in the nose of the sub. They did not notice that Doc was more than usually remote.
Doc was thinking that they’d better overtake the other sub within the next day or so, at the latest. His last check of the fuel cell generator output had shown it lagging demand by a considerable margin and putting a severe drain on the hastily-repaired batteries. The Devilfish had enough juice to make landfall on Hinotori, but certainly no more than that, and the batteries would not take them much further in their depleted condition.
Unless they managed to overtake and commandeer the other vessel, they would be stranded like a beached whale in the middle of enemy territory!
Silently and invisibly, Cat Hazzard and Yuriko Koroshi moved through the Shao-Hei-Lung, leaving chaos in their wake. While the sub’s crew groped in the mysterious darkness, the two women slipped quietly in their midst guided by their infrared glasses and struck them down one by one. The effect was the same as if the crew really were being stalked by vengeful spirits.
Unbeknownst to them, Cat and Yuriko were re-enacting Doc’s sabotage of the Devilfish, only from the inside. The sub was first plunged into Stygian darkness, and then the crew was rendered helpless by means they could neither see nor resist. Within an hour, Cat and Yuriko had rendered all of Wu-Hanshu’s minions incapable of resistance or performing whatever shipboard function they’d been assigned and taken complete control of the sub.
Or so they had thought. They got a surprise when they reached the control compartment. It was the now-familiar three-sided semi-hexigon shape that characterized all of the compartments around the circumference of the circular submarine, but where all of the others had either the ceiling or the floor curve downward or upward to form the outer wall, here both the ceiling and the floor curved smoothly into one another to form an sideways arch. Furthermore, the entire 90° sweep of that arch was made of Plexiglas at least a foot thick, providing a panoramic view forward and 30° upward and downward. The view through this window-wall was, to say the least spectacular.
Standing there in a pool of light cast by a large antique oil lamp sitting in the middle of the deck and filtering in through the window-wall was Doctor Wu-Hanshu, still wearing the gray Changshan tunic and trousers and black skullcap. Behind him, through the thick arch of the window-wall, they could see the open sea, lightening from turquoise to aquamarine green as the sub rose toward steadily toward the surface.
“It took me quite some time to figure out what was happening,” the Chinese doctor remarked calmly. “Had I done so more quickly, some of my acolytes would now be conscious to greet you. As it is, you have me at a slight disadvantage. I, on the other hand, have the advantage of being on my home ground, which I believe makes us about even.” His voice, while sibilant and wispy, seemed perfectly normal. Either the helium in the air had dissipated or it had somehow been filtered or flushed by some unknown means. In any case, the debilitating effect of the helium gas on the control compartment’s electronic equipment was evident, even if the continued presence of the gas wasn’t.
“How is it you are still, um, fully functional?” inquired Cat tactfully. She continued looking around for Wu-Hanshu’s marmoset. If his primate pet was also still fully functional, then their seeming two-to-one advantage in numbers might actually be one-on-one.
“I work with highly toxic substances a great deal, Miss Hazzard,” he replied as if stating the obvious to one who should know better, “and, as might be expected given the nature of the Order of the Gra-Fan, there is a great deal of intrigue among those with whom I work most closely. I have therefore found it more expedient to develop wide-spectrum immunities to a wide range of drugs and toxins than to rely on protective equipment.”
The submarine broke the surface at that moment and all three occupants of the control compartment were too busy maintaining their equilibrium against the sudden violent shifting of the deck to comment further. Through the window-wall, Cat and Yuriko could now see that the sub was now floating on the surface just off a small, volcanic island. The still-active cone rose majestically above the white-clad mass that ran all the way down to the narrow strip of beach. The gray expanse of sky above indicated they were still in Arctic climes if not in the sub-Arctic regions. The island itself resembled Japan’s Mount Fujiyama as it would appear if transported bodily into the middle of the ocean.
“Where are we, if you’ll pardon the cliché?” asked Yuriko. “The Aleutians?”
“The Chishima-no-Kuni islands, north and east of Japan,” Wu-Hanshu replied. “The island of Hinotori, to be exact. In Japanese, Hi-no-tori literally means ‘Firebird’ and refers to the Japanese equivalent to the Chinese Feng-Huang or Phoenix.” He nodded toward Yuriko. “Ah, but then, one of you already knows this.”
“I may understand the Japanese language, but my native language is English—American English,” Yuriko snapped with startling fierceness. “Why can’t I get that across to anybody?”
“We are effectively at a stalemate,” said the Mandarin evenly, ignoring Yuriko’s outburst. “Your release of the helium into the air circulation system has effectively destroyed all communications and navigation equipment aboard this vessel. It has also made continued travel beneath the sea and, thus, travel past the Japanese Navy forces stationed in this vicinity, impossible.” He smiled, but the smile didn’t touch his cat-green eyes. “You two and I are quite literally in the same boat, so you will need my knowledge and skills if you both want to survive to be rescued by the formidable Doctor Hazzard. Always presuming, of course, that he has the insight and imagination to find out where we are.”
“Do you honestly think that you can use us as bargaining chips to get Doc to let you go, after all you’ve done against me—to us—to date?” demanded Cat. “You must be some kind a genuinely cockeyed optimist!”
“Not at all.” The Chinese doctor held up his right hand, in which he clasped a plunger connected by a cable trailing behind him until it disappeared into a hole in the deck that had clearly been cut both recently and hastily. “This is a pressure switch of the type commonly called a ‘dead-man switch’ by Americans.” He nodded graciously toward Yuriko with a smile that now looked quite genuine.
“So long as I continue pressing down the spring-loader switch with my thumb, nothing happens.” His voice took on lecturing monotone that was nevertheless riveting. “Should I release the switch for any reason, a mechanical toggle will be released down on the Engineering deck below us and the neutron-absorbing silver-indium-cadmium alloy control rods that suppress the atomic chain-reaction that powers this vessel will be completely withdrawn. This will allow the reaction to reach and pass a critical limit, at which point all of the radioactive fuel will disintegrate into its component atoms, turning a substantial amount of matter into pure energy, according to the ratio prescribed in Einstein’s now-famous equation. The resulting atomic explosion will make the 1883 Krakatoa volcanic eruption, which was felt all around the world when I was a 43-year-old Imperial Chinese bureaucrat, look like a New Year’s firecracker. It will vaporize not only this vessel but most of the island over yonder.”
He sighed with genuine frustration at the looks on their perplexed faces. “I do not expect you to fully comprehend the enormity of atomic power,” he continued without the slightest trace of condescension, “any more than your medieval ancestors understood enormity of chemical power until they’d seen it demonstrated with gunpowder. Imagine that this vessel were powered by a conventional steam boiler whose governor would be thrown wide open by this switch, only picture a boiler the size of the Empire State Building.”
“He’s bluffing.” decided Yuriko.
Cat wasn’t so sure. “I don’t know, Yuriko. Doc’s been working with atomic power for a several years now and even published a best-selling book about it back in 1938. He’s been working on something he calls an ‘atomic pile’ ever since Enrico Fermi won the Nobel Prize, a year after Doc wrote that book. Doc seems to think such an atomic pile could explode like nobody’s business if it contains what he calls a ‘critical mass’ of fissionable material.” She shuddered. “Personally, I wouldn’t want to take a chance on it!”
Yuriko pondered this a moment. “You seem to be up on the science of physics a good deal more than I am, so I’ll take your word for it.” She shrugged. “I was majoring in biochemistry at the Santa Barbara State College as part of my pre-med studies when the War broke out, but I still have no idea how you pulled that trick with the lights.”
“Just something I picked up from Long shot, Doc’s resident electronics wizard.” Cat suddenly felt uncharacteristically modest. Wu-Hanshu’s frank regard might’ve had something to do with that. “He was telling me one day why zeppelins would’ve become obsolete even if they’d used helium instead of hydrogen. The radio and other electronic gear on helium-filled zeps had to be kept well below the gas cells, preferably underneath the gondola, because helium is naturally monatomic and thus doesn’t form molecules, even with itself, like hydrogen does. Individual atoms are so much smaller than even the smallest molecule that they can penetrate through practically any of the substances normally considered airtight. Glass and rubber are as porous to helium as Swiss cheese, so the stuff has to be kept at lower temperature and extreme pressure to keep it from bleeding away through even steel canisters.” She sneaked a glance at Wu-Hanshu, who smiled and nodded at her as he had to Yuriko.
“Anyway, if there’s any concentration of helium in the surrounding air, any electronic gear containing vacuum tubes, glass rectifiers or any other device that relies on pure or rarified gasses to operate is soon ‘poisoned” by helium infiltration. Light bulbs won’t work, either, because the helium reacts with the filament at high temperature. Even so-called ‘cold light’ bulbs need a very specific and balanced chemical mixture, so helium poisons them, too.”
“Bravo, Miss Hazzard!” Wu-Hanshu clapped his hands together just once, but with what appeared to genuine appreciation. “Alas, you were all too correct. My bioluminescent bulbs, based on the natural luminous emissions of the angelfish, require an exact balance of luciferin pigment and luciferase enzyme to produce their artificial light, so the addition of the helium did indeed upset that delicate balance.”
“And that brings us back to your alleged atomic pile.” Cat now confronted him directly. “We can’t be sure that you’re telling the truth but, then again, we can’t be sure that you’re lying, either. I’m sure that Doc will be able to determine which it is when he’s in a position to hear the details, but he’s not here. I’d be quite willing to call your bluff if I hadn’t already heard Doc say something to the effect that it was theoretically possible.”
“More than theoretically possible, my dear,” Wu-Hanshu smiled. “I have been building these generative atomic piles for 35 years now and I’ve actually initiated a runaway regenerative atomic fission ‘chain-reaction’ in order to observe it’s power firsthand, albeit from what I deemed to be a safe distance. It turned out to be too close a distance. Despite my cautious nature, I underestimated the actual explosive force. That test took place in the Tunguska River area of Siberia on 30 June 1908 at 2:45 in the morning, marking both my own 68th birthday and the birth of my artificially-engendered son Xi’an Huang-hun or, as your knew him, Shawn Twilight. To this day, scientists from all over the world still seek a natural explanation for that blast!”
Wu-Hanshu gestured with the plunger, his cat-green eyes glinting dangerously, “I assure you, Miss Hazzard, that I speak the truth! Scorned women notwithstanding, even scorned American women notwithstanding, Hell hath no fury like an atomic bomb!”
“Thar she blows!” howled Trog from the periscope. “That wacky-looking ‘M&M’ sub’s about half a mile off our port beam … and just sitting there like a wooden duck!”
“Trap!” gritted Sham.
“Maybe not,” Doc interjected. “The way their radio went out indicates some kind of malfunction. The fact that she’s on the surface, despite the possibility of being spotted by Japanese patrols, suggests some major technical difficulty on board.”
The Devilfish was itself cruising just below the surface, ready to dive deeper at a moment’s notice. Only a hour or so earlier, she had just narrowly avoided being spotted by a low-flying Yokosuka H5Y1 Type 99 Model 11 Navy Flying Boat, code-named “Cherry” by the Allied forces. The twin-engine parasol-wing maritime reconnaissance flying boat carried a crew of six and was armed with twin .303 machine guns and two 550-pound bombs. Most were used for transport and training, but some were used for coastal anti-submarine patrols.
“Take us up, Trog.” Doc decided. “Circle around to her bow and stand by. Like the Devilfish, that ship’s built for research, not war. Without torpedo tubes, there’s little anyone inside can throw against us without showing themselves first.”
From the aluminum suitcase that he’d brought aboard, Doc took out his prototype SCAMP Carbine, a heavier and more powerful version of his fabulous SCAMP handgun intended to give American troops the same firepower that the Schmeisser MP-40 Maschinenpistole gave the Nazis. The SCAMP Carbine was essentially a SCAMP rechambered for the standard Army-issue .30 Carbine cartridge currently used in the M-1 Garand and equipped with an integrated 9-inch barrel extension, a 7-inch quick-change 30-round “stick” magazine, an 8x40 Unertl M41 scope, a hinged fore-end grip that folded down and split into a bipod and a collapsible 12-inch shoulder stock. It could be fired from the hip in full auto for suppressing fire, in 5-round or 10-round bursts for targeted rapid fire or in semiautomatic single-shot to drop a man 600 yards—a third of a mile!—away. In addition to this selective-fire capability, the SCAMP Carbine had the same stopping power but half the weight and twice the accuracy and range of the M-1 Garand.
Unfortunately, the SCAMP’s frame had to be machined from a single solid block of duralumin to handle the temperatures and pressures of full-automatic fire and most of the other parts also required similar precision engineering, making quick and easy mass production nearly impossible, even in wartime. Doc had only been able to produce just enough SCAMP Carbines for himself and the U.S. Army Contracting Agency’s Small Arms Test Unit evaluation team at the Army Test Center at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and all of them were virtually handmade “one-off” pieces, so the Army brass had reluctantly rejected his SCAMP Carbine in favor of less expensive, “exacting” and “finicky” small arms. The prototype that he’d decided to bring with him was the only SCAMP Carbine in the world that wasn’t currently under lock and key at the Aberdeen SAT Unit.
After racking the retracted stock back to full extension and performing a quick regulation “Manual of Arms” inspection, Doc loaded a clip of anesthetic “mercy” bullets and stuck a clip of “demolition” rounds into the opening between the snaps that fastened his utility vest.
“I’m going up on deck,” he announced. “If anyone over there does try something, I should be able to pick them off with this.” That statement impressed Doc’s men more than one would think, since they knew how rarely Doc used any kind of firearm. He normally refused to even carry one, preferring to rely on his own highly-developed physical and mental abilities augmented with advanced scientific gadgetry.
The standard Army .30 Carbine cartridge fired a round-nosed 110-grain fully copper-jacketed lead slug that the M-1 propels to a muzzle velocity of 1,900 feet per second. The mercy bullet replaced the jacketed slug with a Plexiglas capsule filled with an anesthetic liquid that penetrated skin to enter the bloodstream and, if not immediately absorbed by whatever it touched, quickly evaporated into an anesthetic gas. Either way, it would put the average man into a stupor even if it didn’t knock him out entirely.
The demolition round replaced the lead core of a standard round with two chemicals, one liquid and the other a granular solid, both of which were inert alone but, when mixed evenly together, became as explosive as an Army Mk IIA1 “pineapple” hand grenade, albeit without the heavy casing and fragmentation effect. These two chemicals were separated by a glass sheet that required at least 60 times the Earth’s gravitational force to break, which was only slighter lower than the “kick” produced by firing the cartridge but much more than force than dropping or even taking a hammer to the round would produce. The 1:20-inch rifling twist made the round spin at 6,000 revolutions per second, mixing the two chemicals thoroughly enough to become explosive, within a second after leaving the barrel, during which time it covered just over 630 yards. As a result, even an accidentally discharged round couldn’t explode unless it traveled a safe distance.
As with the SCAMP itself, the Army had rejected Doc’s alternative ammunition. Despite the built-in safety features, the Army brass felt that they were technically complex enough to require specialist training to use under battlefield conditions. More importantly, though, many felt that they violated the spirit if not the letter of the Geneva Conventions. The mercy bullets, despite being nonlethal, were deemed to be chemical and biological weapons, forbidden under the 1925 Convention prohibiting the use of “asphyxiating gas, or any other kind of gas, liquids, substances or similar materials.” Declaration III of the 1899 Hague Convention prohibited the use in warfare of bullets that easily expand or flatten in the body, while the 1858 St. Petersburg Declaration renounced the wartime use of explosive projectiles under 400 grams—just over 14 ounces—in weight.
The fact that, as the name implied, the demolition rounds were intended to provide a safe and effective means to demolish enemy fortifications and strategic infrastructure such as bridges, railroads, fuel repositories and ammo dumps or sufficient firepower to take out heavy war machinery like tanks and planes made little or no impression. If the troops at large had access to something, sooner or later they’d use it as an anti-personnel weapon. The idea of a handheld machinegun was troubling enough, but the notion of a handheld artillery piece was positively horrifying. Considering what had happened with the .45 Thompson sub-machine gun between the World Wars, Doc had to reluctantly agree that a mass-produced SCAMP and its ultra-powerful custom ammunition, in the wrong hands, might create even more problems around the world than deploying them in this war, however restricted and tightly controlled that deployment might be, could ever hope to solve.
The Devilfish surfaced as smoothly and cleanly as a sounding whale and warily circled the Wu-Hanshu’s circular submarine. Doc took up his position on the Devilfish’s conning tower. He could almost make out the outlines of a human figure through the transparent section at the bow of the pocket-watch-shaped submarine, but nothing more. Doc’s eyesight, while remarkably keen, was still human. His sometimes remarkable eyesight was the result of training in the science of observation more than the superhuman perception with which he was too often credited.
An 8x40 telescope magnifies an image that would otherwise be 40mm or just over an inch and a half across until it’s now 320mm or over a foot across, eight times larger, but now you have to pick out a specific detail in field of view that covers an area 64 times larger. One has to know exactly where to point the telescope and focus it most effectively for a given distance in order to best see the object of one’s interest. While you’re busy focusing on something small and far away in a vastly magnified field of few, it’s easy to miss something else even more important elsewhere with that same expanded view.
Doc was a master at seeing things, both near and far or large and small, that others missed. Doc now saw what the average man, even one using an even more powerful telescope, would never even have known was there, because his attention would’ve been focused entirely on the riveting figure standing immediately beyond the Plexiglas “nose” of the oblate spheroidal submarine. Recognition of exactly what—and whom—he was seeing followed almost as quickly. A low trilling welled up in Doc’s throat.
The hatch of the alien submarine clattered and flew open. Doc looked up, mentally calculated the distance of the hatch relative to the window, shouldered the SCAMP Carbine and drew a bead on the emerging figure, all in a single continuous quick and fluid movement.
Cat Hazzard waved excitedly. “Ahoy, Doc!” she hailed. “You’re just in time to settle a very sticky question regarding atomic chain reactions!”
Doctor Wu-Hanshu sat in the lotus posture of the padded seat served as the pilot’s station of the Shao-Hei-Lung, the atomic pile’s control-rod retraction activator cradled casually across his crossed ankles. “It is a direct mechanical connection, you see, independent of the electrical, hydraulic and pneumatic systems. It activates an explosive device that forcibly ejects all of the damper rods simultaneously and, for intents and purposes, irreversibly. It is a ‘suicide switch’ in every sense of the term.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Doc clipped. “Just as I don’t doubt you have absolutely no intention of ever using it.” Doc’s golden eyes and Wu’s cat-green ones met and locked. “Suicide just isn’t your style, Granduncle, and we really don’t have time to play games, not with that Japanese military staging area on Paramushiru so close by. It’s only of time before one of its patrol planes spots us floating here on the surface and alerts them to our presence.”
“Wait! What? Grand … uncle!” Cat squeaked as if she were still breathing helium. “You mean that this—this—”
“Criminal?” offered Wu-Hanshu helpfully. “I’ve been called worse, I assure you.”
Cat glared. “Do you mean to tell me that this”—she took a deep breath—“internationally-wanted, universally-despised, vain, venal, vengeful, verminous, vexing, vicious, vile, violent, virulent, voracious villain is somehow … related … to us?”
“In a word, yes.” answered Doc matter-of-factly. “His father was also our mutual great-grandfather. Different mothers, of course. Great-granddad apparently got around and, sometimes, also got up to no good. Just as Wu-Hanshu, in turn, has also gotten around and up to no good. He was, in fact, the father of the late Shawn Twilight, as well as being the one who rebuilt him as the Tick-Tock Man.”
“What in blazes are they talking about?” whispered Bellman.
“Shut up and listen!” Trog hissed back. “Boy, this sure explains a lot!”
“Not to me, it doesn’t,” Bellman complained, but he shut up and listened.
“You knew this all along?” Cat turned on Doc fiercely. “That really burns me up! Here I get waylaid and kidnapped and stuffed in a fishbowl and lugged halfway around the world in a submarine under the polar ice and all the time you knew what was going on and you didn’t tell me!”
“There wasn’t time,” Doc pointed out reasonably. “Besides, you were in absolutely no danger—”
“No danger!” Cat nearly choked. “This leftover from the Yellow Peril was going to dismantle me an inch at a time if you didn’t show up on schedule!”
Wu-Hanshu cleared his throat pointedly. “I fear I misrepresented myself in that regard, Miss Hazzard. I was having my little joke at your expense, a small diversion to pass the weary hours. Your esteemed cousin is quite right, you were in no danger, at least not from me. The Japanese would have killed you without a second thought and, given a chance, still might. You were just a Pawn in the game, as it were, albeit one promoted to Queen fairly early on.”
“I like that even less,” Cat spat, fingers drumming ominously on the butt of her recently returned six-shooter. “What about your son? Weren’t you trying to get Doc tried by this Tribunal of the Gra-Fan of yours for killing your only male heir? And weren’t you going to try and have him executed for that?”
“Not exactly,” the Mandarin said slowly. “Your cousin has been on trial all along, but not in the way that you imagine. Had he made the slightest mistake during this testing period, he might have been severely injured if not killed, but not to satisfy my personal honor or to exact vengeance. I suggested that such might be the case for motivational purposes—and, admittedly, for my own amusement—just as I used you for bait, in order to force him to follow me to the appointed place.” He paused, considering his next words carefully.
“Xi’an Huang-hun, whom you knew as Shawn Twilight, was my only male heir and the only one with the potential to replace me as President of the Council of Nine of the Order of the Gra-Fan. Three times he went up against Doctor Hazzard and all three times he was ignominiously defeated, despite having had my personal assistance on the third attempt. This suggested even more potential on the part of Hazzard, especially given that despite these three failures Xi’an had proven himself the best candidate in every other regard.” All eyes had been on Wu-Hanshu as he spoke, but a series of sidelong glance went Doc’s way.
“Xi’an Huang-hun,” murmured Shorty. “Huang-hun means ‘dusk’ or ‘sunset’ and Xi’an means ‘Western Peace’. Reading backwards in the Chinese fashion, that’s ‘Sunset on the Peace with the West’. Clearly, you were grooming him to take on all of Western civilization!” He chuckled. “It’s interesting that he chose to translate Huang-hun as ‘Twilight’ but to pronounce Xi’an phonetically as ‘Shawn’.” He shook his head. “Yet another exemplification of premeditated misdirectional and obfuscatory multilingual paronomasia!”
“Yeah,” grunted Trog, “another sneaky bit of wordplay in more than one language, hidden in plain sight!”
Again, Wu-Hanshu completely ignored the interruption. “I proposed that, given our distant but nevertheless undeniable blood relationship, that Doctor Hazzard might be my best prospect to replace Twilight as my designated Heir and Successor. There was some heated debate among the Council as to Hazzard’s actual qualifications and whether or not his success was due to his own ability or the vagaries of chance. I myself have been thwarted time and again by members of the British Colonial Office and Scotland Yard, men who in no way come close to matching me intellectually or organizationally. Perseverance and dumb luck on their part—or treachery on the part of one of my servants—resulted in my defeats more often than not. I was therefore tasked with making sure that such was not the case with here. I could only nominate him to be my Heir and Successor by demonstrating his obvious worthiness to the Tribunal in no uncertain terms.” He paused again and once again his cat-green eyes met Doc’s flake-gold ones.
“With the death of Xi’an, my plans for the future of the Order of the Gra-Fan and the restoration of China were thrown into chaos. As it now stands, China will either be reduced to a mere province of the Japanese Empire—a toothless dog being wagged its former tail—or become a totalitarian Communist state like the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It is unthinkable to allow my daughter to succeed me, for although she is capable she is also unreliable and disobedient and would pervert the grand design of the Gra-Fan for her own purposes. I need someone ready to take the reins who shares my vision of a world uncluttered by ignorance and war and poverty and disease, someone capable of surmounting all odds and opposing the present world order as I have done. But to satisfy our traditions, this man had to be a blood relative who could justify his succession by right of inheritance. Ideally, he would be one who could take my wayward daughter in marriage and so perhaps curb her disrupting influence.”
“No!” Doc stated firmly and with finality. “Absolutely not.”
“This was a triumph!” Wu-Hanshu continued as though Doc hadn’t spoken, his eyes filming over again. “As we say in China: ‘Da-huo cheng-gong!’ It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction. You have not only eluded all of our traps and successfully tracked me halfway around the word, but also defeated one of our major enemies and, in the process, recovered valuable assets held too long in that enemy’s hands. Now, having surmounted all of the obstacles placed in his path by the Gra-Fan to date, Doctor Hazzard must finally face the Tribunal of the Council of Nine, not to try him for the death of my son Xi’an Huang-hun, but to confirm once and for all his worthiness to replace Xi’an as my Heir and Successor and, eventually, the next President of the Council of Nine of the Order of the Gra-Fan!”
Yuriko Koroshi wanted to be alone. She had much to think about, having just inherited a grave responsibility and an even graver obligation.
Upon his arrival aboard the Shao-Hei-Lung, before confronting Doctor Wu-Hanshu to resolve the standoff with the suicide switch, Doc had taken her aside and, in a few brief but well-chosen words, he had told her what had happened to her father and how it had happened. As before, he had identified Gojira as Tetsuhito Koroshi, describing him as her uncle Shigeta’s son, not her elder half-brother Shibumi, to spare her feelings as much as possible. Then he had presented the Koroshi clan katana that he’d brought over from the Devilfish with him with the appropriate ceremony due such an object of generational veneration. In so doing, he had acknowledged Yuriko as the rightful Jonin of the Koroshi clan, as her father had been before her. It was to achieve this position among the remaining Shinobi that Gojira had pursued her and the Sword of Koroshi with which she’d been entrusted across the country. It was also why she’d entrusted it in turn to the aegis of Doc Hazzard.
It was an “honor”—and grave responsibility—that she neither wanted nor was able to refuse.
What she wanted to do—what she had done for several minutes after receiving the news—was throw her arms around Doc’s neck and cry into his chest. Doc had allowed it as long as he reasonably could, then gently if awkwardly disengaged. He had things to do, not more important per se but of more immediate concern to everyone on both subs. She said that she understood and so she did. That didn’t mean that she wasn’t still physically, mentally and emotionally crushed by her new situation.
Trog had graciously offered his services in Doc’s stead almost immediately thereafter, but Yuriko had politely declined. She had, in fact, fled the area the moment everyone’s attention focused on Wu-Hanshu again, making her away over to the Devilfish now lashed to the Shao-Hei-Lung’s portside bow line mooring cleat, using the Goodyear synthetic-rubber tractor tire that served as a bumper to kept two hulls apart as a stepping stone.
Now she paced the empty wardroom of the Devilfish—she’d had enough of the Shao-Hei-Lung to last her a lifetime and there was literally nowhere else in this part of the world she could go—running her hands across the lacquered sheath of the legendary Sword of Koroshi, wondering what she should do. She still had years of medical school to finish, provided the authorities back Stateside would let her. It was more than likely that she would be arrested and sent to a War Relocation Center immediately upon their return to the United States. Not that she would have the money to pay for school any more. With her father and his medical practice gone and no money of her own, she had no financial resources and little or no prospect for finding sufficiently well-paying work in wartime America even if she did somehow escape Internment.
She remembered the all-too-brief surge of relief upon hearing that her father hadn’t and never could have been Gojira, then the devastating sense of loss when she heard that he was gone. Doc’s obligation to the Koroshi family, to her personally, which he had incurred when he had rescued her after failing to protect her mother those many years ago, was now paid. She could not look to him for the money she would need, though he would not begrudge her a penny and, in fact, would gladly pay for her education and even find her a job in one of his many charity hospitals around the globe.
No, now that she was the Koroshi Jonin, she couldn’t continue to accept his charity. She had to make her own way and take care of herself by herself.
She sat down at the wardroom table and tried to think and meditate without worrying or fretting, a state of mind that the Zen Buddhists called mushin no shin, the mind of no mind. Shinobi used the no-mind state to clear their thoughts immediately before and immediately after any mission involving violent conflict or killing. Compared to that, her relatively mundane problems and concerns must assume their actual unimportance compared to the actual life-and-death situations that the Shinobi had been created to resolve. She drew a six-inch length of the Sword of Koroshi and looked at the reflection of her eyes in the blade’s mirror-polished surface. The blade of the katana was believed to hold the soul of the Samurai who wields it. Shinobi didn’t share that belief, but nevertheless Yuriko now hoped to find her soul—and that of her father—reflected in the blade of the Koroshi family heirloom.
A slight but unusual noise from the far end of the Bunkhouse broke her concentration. Even at rest, the submarine was quite noisy, being subject to all of the creaks and groans resulting from wind and wave action against the hull and the corresponding reactions of the structural elements that characterize all seagoing vessels, plus the noise of air circulation systems and hydraulic actuators, so she disregarded it until it repeated again. It was a soft, shushing sound like the rustle of leaves blown gently over rice paper. Whatever it was, it certainly seemed quite out of place in the supposedly-empty sleeping quarters of the unoccupied submarine in which she’d taken refuge.
A sudden realization caused her to draw the Sword of Koroshi and assume a ready stance on the balls of her feet. Her instincts and training served her well because, unbeknownst to her, the sub wasn’t unoccupied! The diving compartment just forward of the Bunkhouse was where the Japanese crew had been imprisoned!
Cautiously, she glided across the rubber-cushioned deck of the wardroom toward the darkened Bunkhouse, sword at the ready. Something rustled in the darkness ahead of her, just off to her left. She adjusted her stance imperceptibly to expedite a sword strike in that direction, just as a black-shod foot lashed out at her from the upper aftward starboard sleeping berth. She had just enough time to curse her own stupidity before stars seemed to explode in front of her eyes. She reeled, the sword dropping from her suddenly spastic fingers, but before she could either fall or try to stop her fall, powerful hands closed around her throat, one throttling her windpipe shut, the other pressing thumb and forefinger against her carotid artery and jugular vein. She was unconscious before she even felt the need to try and take another breath.
Shibumi chuckled to himself as he bound Yuriko with black silk cords taken from her own Shinobi gear. He had stripped off the Gojira armor to reveal a shouzoku or stealth suit identical to hers and even better equipped. A true Shinobi always carried at least three sets of gear secreted among his effects and was always ready to improvise something should he not be able to reach any of it. For example, the binding cords wouldn’t hold Yuriko for long once she regained consciousness, but they would hold her long enough for Shibumi make sure that she would remain unconscious more than the few minutes that it took to recover from the sleeper hold that he’d just applied. For this he used the anesthetic-laced nose plugs that Doc had used on him during the recapture of the Devilfish. The original anesthetic had long since evaporated, but Shimbumi had impregnated the plugs with the traditional Koroshi nemuri-gona sleeping powder, which worked just as well, if not better.
After rolling the bound and sleeping Yuriko into the lower aftward portside sleeping berth, Shibumi picked up the Koroshi katana with the attitude of a religious man handling his most sacred relic. No more would he have to depend upon outlandish foreign gadgetry to accomplish his ends. With this talisman of his most revered ancestors and his own Shinobi skills, he would pluck victory from the very jaws of defeat. He had easily tricked his half-sister, despite her having been raised in the same tradition. Surely this was a sign from Heaven that he had its blessing!
There was no better argument for Shibumi’s belief that he was the beneficiary of divine providence than the fact that he was still alive, sound of body and mind and now free to work his will once again. The aluminum chaff the Doc Hazzard had dispersed around Shibumi had caused the Brainstorm to backfire on him, but the reflection and refraction of the Brainstorm’s brain-frying radiation had saved him from its worst effects, which depended on the frequency being uniformly focused within a specific band of wavelengths. The reflected and refracted waves had lost their coherence and thus their concentrated effect. Instead, Shibumi had been subjected to an amplified version of the original Blue Meteorite effect, which only suppressed the cognitive brain function, without destroying it. He’d been into a state of suspended animation, as had Doc and his men had been when Doc’s anti-Brainstorm device had caused a similar disruption of what should have been a fatal dose of the coherent beam.
Doc had seen that Shibumi was in a catatonic state during his physical examination of Shibumi and had dosed him with the anesthetic nose plugs as a matter of course even though he didn’t expect him to recover any time soon. That had given Shibumi access to the nose plugs, which no one had had occasion to remove, giving him the means to subdue and secure Yuriko in the same way that Doc and subdued and secured Shibumi’s men. Poetic justice, that—yet another sign of Heaven’s favor!
Shibumi’s men had had a better life since Doc had retaken the Devilfish. Previously, they’ve been confined to the control compartment and Engineering, where they lived in squalid conditions, sleeping in hammocks strung between the engines and hull and eating steamed rice from a few 100-pound bags that they’d brought aboard with them, along with a Coleman Model 520 Military Burner white-gasoline stove and other outdoor camping gear, including some chemical toilets, purchased at the same Macy’s Herald Square department store where Yuriko had bought her Chinese disguise. After their capture, they’d been confined in the forward diving compartment, where they’d been given Army cots that’d been stored, unbeknownst to them, in the Attic upper deck of the Devilfish, along with vastly superior camping gear. They were allowed to use the sub’s washroom, eat their fill of Army rations and in every other respect treated like Prisoners of War under the terms of the Geneva Conventions.
Shibumi had been blissfully unaware of all this, still rigidly catatonic in his armor on a cot in the forward airlock, now the POW officer’s quarters, which he shared with Captain Akusei. Doc had set up an IV hydration and nutrition tube for the comatose Shibumi not unlike the arrangement that Wu-Hanshu had made for his fully-functional distaff detainees, leaving it to his fellow POWs to take care of his other needs. Things might have remained that way, but then the Devilfish had caught up with the Shao-Hei-Lung and it became clear that Doc would need all hands to deal with securing it. He’d given the Japanese POWs a choice: they could be physically restrained, bound to their cots for the duration of Doc’s excursion to the other sub, or they could be injected with a chemical that would induce a coma until they received the antidote. They decided that they’d prefer to sleep through whatever might happen next and soon the makeshift brig had been turned into a den of hibernating humans.
And there lay the final proof that Shibumi enjoyed the helping hand of Heaven. There was no need to lock down the diving compartment hatch so that it could only opened from the aft side, only to secure it normally. And so it was that, when Shibumi’s cognitive brain functions returned, he found himself to be the only conscious and self-aware person aboard the Devilfish. He’d removed the IV, stripped off the cumbersome and now useless medieval armor and availed himself of all of the amenities that had been provided to his men, all the while planning his one-man campaign to turn the tables on his enemies. He had begun amassing his personal arsenal when he heard the sounds of Yuriko boarding the Devilfish and quickly retreated back to the diving compartment. He prepared plans for both attack and defense and was gratified to discover that Yuriko was not only alone but preoccupied, inattentive enough to be easy prey. Now, with the Sword of Koroshi in his hands at long last, he was prepared to act!
“Suburashii! Magnificent!” he whispered, smiling. “I will take the Seidouhito’s head and personally lay it at the Emperor’s feet!”
There was, it seemed, a price to be paid for Heaven’s beneficence: having prepared the Path for its chosen virtuous warriors, Heaven then threw up obstacles to make treading that Path difficult enough that they must still prove their worthiness. Shibumi’s initial plan had been to use the Devilfish radio to notify the Imperial Japanese Navy forces amassing at Paramushiru to invade and conquer the Aleutian Islands south and west of Akaska to the presence of the enemy submarines and continuously broadcast their exact position. It wasn’t going to be that easy. All of the transmission circuits had been rewired to the two FM transceivers used to triangulate the location of the Shao-Hei-Lung. Frustratingly, AM reception worked just fine and he could hear the communications going on all around him, but he couldn’t transmit so much as a dit and he hadn’t the knowledge or skills to fix it. His radioman was fast asleep in the diving compartment, as were all of his crew, as unwakeable as if dead.
If the gods who had brought him back from his own living death demanded proof of his worthiness, Shibumi was more than ready, willing and able to rise to their challenge. He tightened his grip on the Sword of Koroshi, drawing strength and resolve from the talisman and badge of honor that symbolized his clan. He was now the rightful Jonin, as he should have been all along, and he would use the Sword of Koroshi to prove that beyond any shadow of a doubt! The Samurai who ran the Japanese military had long despised the Shinobi for their treacherous and dishonorable ways, despite the many successes that those ways had brought them. Now, he, Shinobi Koroshi, would show that the Kiroshi were not only Shinobi but also Samurai! The Emperor had always known this, but now so would everyone else…
As Shibumi climbed up through the ladder well, he opened the watertight storage bin just below the topside hatch and removed the 26.5mm Molins No. 1 Very pistol and a half-dozen one-inch signal flares from it. He did not doubt his invincibility in the slightest, but it wouldn’t hurt to have the backing of the Imperial Japanese Navy. The flares could be seen up to 25 miles away and the staging area on Paramushiru, springboard for the upcoming invasion of the Aleutian Islands, was only 50 miles to the southwest. Surely one or more planes in the Paramushiru base’s air patrol would be close enough!
“Shawn Twilight made me virtually the same offer the second time we met,” Doc said shortly. “I’ll tell you much the same as I told him. Your plan is unworkable. Millions will die, needlessly, to no good end. Violence can only destroy, it cannot build up again. Your new Chinese Empire would be no more effective toward solving the world’s ills than the Japanese Empire is now or Hitler’s ‘New Order’ is doing in Europe. I can do much more for the world by eliminating your Gra-Fan than by joining it!”
“I told you he wouldn’t go for it, Master,” sighed Shao-Shan. The giant had come aboard with Doc and his crew rather than split up Doc’s forces by leaving someone behind to guard him. Doc could have dosed him the coma-inducing drug, but felt that the double-agent was pragmatic and practical enough to see reason where Wu-Hanshu might not and help Doc convince his Master that it was better to give up on the current project for now and try again later—hopefully, sometime after the current war with the Axis was over.
“Suppose,” the Mandarin proposed sibilantly, “you went ahead and succeeded me with the understanding that you would have absolute authority over the Order, as I do now. You could then set about dismantling the organization should you still see fit to do so. All I ask is that you try my way first.”
Doc shook his head, sadly. “If nominated, I will not accept. If elected, I will abdicate and establish a new and democratically elected Council. That’s the only way for any people to be governed: by their own minds and hands, working together for the common good.”
“China can’t govern herself!” Wu-Hanshu hissed. “It needs an Emperor, ruling by the Mandate of Heaven. The Chinese will never accept anything less than a single, all-powerful ruler whom they can literally worship.” Once again his voice took on a riveting hypnotic intensity. “Believe me when I say that, without a full restoration of the Ch’ing Dynasty, with either you or I as Emperor, China will either remain under Japanese control or become a totalitarian state worse than any currently extant. Chiang Kai-shek is at heart a warlord and will ride whatever tiger he must to remain Generalissimo. His Kuo-Min-Tang becomes more Marxist-Leninist every day—he’s not called the ‘Red General’ for nothing—and he will turn on America the moment he feels that he no longer needs it. He’ll ride the wave of populist nationalism and, as a Hero of the Revolution, will arrange to have himself installed as the Chairman of the eventual Communist regime that results when the dust finally settles.” His eyes filmed over.
“His wife Soong Mei-ling is even worse, a Methodist minister’s daughter who graduated from Wesleyan College as one of the 33 Durant Scholars, whose New Life Movement would turn China into an anti-Semitic Christian authoritarian state more repressive than Nazi Germany. And the Maoist Red Army is worse yet—their totalitarian Communist doctrines will make those of Lenin and Stalin look tame by comparison.” His cat-green eyes regained their full clarity, locking with Doc’s golden orbs. “But you, Doctor Hazzard, with the force of your personality and strength of character, you and you alone could counter all of them. Become the next President of the Council of Nine of the Order of the Gra-Fan and, ultimately, the Ch’ing-t’ong Manzhou—the “Bronze Manchu”—who could unite all of the warring factions! You could be not only the next Ch’ing Emperor, but something new: the first Ch’ing-Tong Emperor—the Bronze Emperor! You could become the savior of all that has ever been good and true in China!”
Doc was tempted, at least by the notion of taking over the Gra-Fan for the sole purpose of disbanding or subsuming it within his own global organization. And therein lay the danger—embracing evil with good intentions, thinking to subvert it from within, only to find that it is yourself who has been subverted. The Chinese doctor’s argument was seductively clever. He was risking his entire program on Doc’s integrity, and the hope that Doc would inevitably succumb, as he himself had, to the allure of absolute power.
“No, Granduncle.” Doc shook his head. “It is too much power for any one man to hold. No man can wield such authority without being seduced and corrupted by it. If your people really can’t accept democratic self-government, then there really is no hope for them until they can.”
“Then we appear to be at an impasse,” said Wu-Hanshu. “I will not release this vessel to you to take back to New York as spoils of war. You will not agree to accompany me to Manchuria to reclaim the rest of what is mine—and could be ours. My vessel has unlimited endurance, but thanks to your resourceful cousin it can no longer navigate. The electronics on yours remain fully functional, but sooner or later you will run out of fuel or battery power to keep them running. Both of us have something the other lacks, but we cannot sit here debating these issues much longer. One of us must give in to the other or both of us will fall to the Japanese.”
“The question may already have become academic,” said Shao-Shan, pointing toward the window-wall. “Look!”
Six flares burned white-hot in the Arctic sky, their light momentarily outshining the midnight Sun!
Doc was the first one up on the Shao-Hei-Lung’s circular deck, followed closely by Cat, Trog, Sham, Shorty, Bellman and Shao-Shan. Wu-Hanshu observed the ensuing events from his position at the control compartment’s window-wall, still holding the suicide switch in his claw-like long-nailed hand.
Shibumi Koroshi raised his legendary katana triumphantly. “You are beaten, Hazzard! The Empire of the Rising Sun is ruled by the Arahitogami, the Incarnate Deity who rules by the Tenmei, the Mandate of Heaven, making it invincible!”
Cat had recovered her grandfather’s revolver and her father’s watch when she and Yuriko had combed through the gear that the Japanese had left aboard the Shao-Hei-Lung when Wu-Hanshu had retaken her, at which time she had been shocked to learn that it had been 9:01:23 am on Friday, 10 April 1942, with the Moon midway between Third Quarter and New—over a week since Gojira had stolen it from her! She now grimly drew her grandfather’s six-gun and fired from the hip, fanning all six rounds into the black-clad figure in a manner eerily reminiscent of the way that Shibumi had gunned down his own father with the same weapon. The range was extreme for the pistol, about fifty feet, but the weapon had been reloaded with fresh high-velocity jacketed .22 Hornet cartridges. Unlike Shibumi, Cat didn’t have to deflect incoming thrown blades, so all six rounds struck home in the middle of Shibumi’s chest.
Shibumi staggered under the onslaught, backing up a step with each impact. Then he straightened, laughing harshly. Sunlight gleamed off bright steel chain mail through the rents that the rounds had torn in his black uwagi jacket. He was wearing a bulletproof undergarment every bit as good as an Army flak vest. “Foolish girl! Even if you had succeeded in killing me, there’s nothing that can save you.”
Sham felt something tug sharply at the handle of his swordstick. Looking down, he saw that the sharkskin-wrapped brass-bound Malacca wood handle and spring-steel blade had vanished. He looked up again just in time to see Doc alight on the deck of the Devilfish, sword in hand, scarcely ten feet from the deadly Shinobi master.
“Banzai!” Shibumi exulted triumphantly. He drew his blade with a lightning quick turn of the wrist that swung the razor edge outward and forward in a vicious overhead arc that cut to the side at the last second and scythed toward Doc’s neck, turning what might otherwise been merely an extraordinarily fast iai-jutsu “quick draw” into a single swift decapitating stroke. The Bronze Titan ducked his head aside so quickly the sword stroke seemed to pass through him as through he’d turned to bronze smoke. He riposted with his own borrowed sword, lunging almost too quickly to follow, striking with such force that the point might well have penetrated the bulletproof vest had it struck head-on. At in the last split-second, Shibumi twisted his torso that he was only struck a glancing blow. Even so, the sword point grazed his side hard enough to strike sparks off the mail vest and score a bright line across its interlocked steel rings.
Of those witnessed the sword fight that followed, Professor William Archer “Shorty” Longfellow and Doctor Wu-Hanshu were probably the only two witnesses with the knowledge to appreciate what they were seeing: a literal clash of civilizations, East versus West, as exemplified in the respective weapons, strategies and tactics.
While it can be wielded single-handedly to both cut and thrust like a Western cavalry saber or cutlass, the Japanese katana is designed primarily as a slashing weapon. The sword that comprises one-third of the Sanshu no Jingi or “Three Sacred Treasures of Japan” in the Japanese Imperial Regalia, a blade comparable to King Arthur’s legendary Excalibur, is called Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi or the “Grasscutter Sword” because it could reputedly mow down enemies like so many stalks of grass, creating a gale-force wind with every swing. Japanese kendouka swordsmen prefer the tenouchi two-handed grip, not unlike that used when swinging a baseball bat—some argue that the mandatory kendou training of Japanese youth during the Meiji Restoration may have contributed to baseball’s subsequent popularity in Japan—and employ a slashing technique intended to dismember or decapitate opponents, if not cut them in half.
The most popular kendou technique is the Kesa-giri choyaku-suburi, in which the katana is wielded rather like a pickaxe, raised up and back over one’s head and brought down and forward in a slightly diagonal chopping motion while lunging forward. In ancient times, Samurai would often test the quality of new swords using the tameshigiri “test cut” on condemned prisoners, bisecting them from one shoulder to the opposite hip in a single stroke. The “test cut” is still performed today, both to test swords and to show off a swordsman’s technique, although nowadays a rolled-up tatami floor mat made from igusa soft rush straw is used instead of a living human being.
The katana’s razor edge is so hard that striking an equally hard or harder object could result in chipping. As a result, unlike Western schools of fencing and sword technique, most blade-to-blade contact is discouraged in favor of evasive body maneuvers. If evasive action isn’t feasible, kendouka swordsmen block with the unsharpened back of the blade, beating aside their opponent’s descending strikes. The katana’s kissaki point is only sharpened on the same side as the blade’s edge, from which it curves smoothly up the straight and unsharpened back. While it can run a man through with a single thrust and even pierce armor, it’s point is more akin to that of chisel than the double-edged ogive that Westerners think of a sword point. The tsuki or thrust technique is generally used against the neck and throat, mostly using the preferred two-handed grip.
The blade of Sham’s swordstick was the polar opposite of the katana, a light slender sharply-pointed one-handed dueling rapier or épée de cour smallsword ideal for thrusting attacks but with razor-sharp edges that allowed it to make relatively shallow slashes in almost any direction. It was fully sharpened along both edges, with a stiletto point that would’ve skewered medieval chainmail and would give even a modern flak jacket a run for its money. Where the katana had handcrafted from Tamahagane “black sand” volcanic iron in Japan’s Sagami Province according to traditional Soshu Den methods that over time become an almost religious ritual, the swordstick’s blade had been hydraulically drop-forged from modern SAE 9260 silicon-manganese spring steel in Pittsburgh by United States Steel, whose American Bridge Division had built both the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings. The Latin motto Ollis salus populi suprema lex esto (“Let the good of the People be the supreme Law”) was engraved into the fullers in elegant 18-karat gold script.
Whereas the Japanese prized strength and hardness, the swordstick’s modern blade epitomized strength and flexibility. It could be bent almost 90° and still spring back to absolute straightness and, although the edge could be nicked, it wouldn’t chip except under conditions that would likely break the blade in twain. Where the katana cut through the air with a whistle like a lashing whip, the swordstick’s blade sang through the air with a warble like a musical saw. Where the katana gleamed drily due to its distinctive and unique hamon or blade pattern, the swordstick’s blade glistened wetly due to thin coating of viscous anesthetic drug capable of putting even the most massive human being into a helpless stupor almost immediately following the slightest scratch or pinprick. Ancient tradition versus modern technology, a slashing weapon that could stab versus a stabbing weapon that could slash, the Iron Man of the East versus Bronze Titan of the West.
Neither weapon had much in the way of a hand guard and what minimal guards that they did have were primarily to prevent the wielder’s hand from sliding onto the blade during thrusts rather than to protect their hands from an opponent’s blade, so in that regard they were equal, just as they were in sharpness and strength. Doc had superior reach—both the swordstick and the katana were about 36 inches long with 29-inch blades—because Doc’s arms and legs were significantly longer, but the swordstick only had half of the mass of the katana and, even backed with Doc’s full strength, couldn’t deliver anywhere near the same wallop. The katana was massive enough that it could easily chop the swordstick’s rapier blade in two should Doc attempt a square-on block or parry, even though the katana might also chip or break in the process. These physical aspects limited both opponents’ options, so the adaptability of the combatants was, as always, of paramount importance.
The katana could easily dismember or decapitate an opponent with a single blow, while the swordstick could only slice off a finger, nose or ear at best. On the other hand, the swordstick’s drugged blade could fully incapacitate an opponent just by drawing blood. The drug would certainly reduce a nicked or pinked combatant’s fighting effectiveness and slow their reactions considerably, even if they didn’t go to sleep outright. But the swordstick’s “Magic Touché” would literally wear off with every strike against anything other than exposed skin, including the opposing blade. The longer and more intense the engagement became, the more quickly the swordstick’s drug coating would degrade, until at last it was reduced to the original bare metal. Whatever advantage it might give him had a built-in time limit.
Shibumi had trained in the nitou-jutsu Two-Sword Technique, in which a katana was paired with the only slightly smaller wakizashi, one in each hand, so he could use the katana single-handedly in either hand as well with the favored two-handed grip and could—and often did—switch from one hand to the other whenever it was advantageous to do so. He also knew all of the Shinobi tricks of illusion, legerdemain and misdirection that could confuse an opponent about his actual intent and plan of attack. Doc had trained with saber at the Mensur-Studentenverbindung in Heidelberg, the rapier at the Dardi school in Bologna, the épée at the Fédération Internationale d’Escrime in Paris and the foil with the Amateur Fencers League of America in New York City. He, too, could wield a blade equally well with either hand and had trained in the secret ways of the Shinobi. Both men were masters of their respective styles of swordplay and both were in peak fighting form.
Those unfamiliar with swordplay might expect such an encounter to a long and protracted affair, filled with dramatic and dazzling displays of daring dueling dexterity—the very image popularized in Hollywood films. Such was not the case here. As it often happens in actual swordfights, the action is so fast and tightly controlled that the final outcome is determined within seconds and generally by something other than the quality and skill of the individual combatants or their weapons. Victory is usually the result of a mistake or mishap on the part of one’s opponent, not one’s own superior technique or equipment. It’s less about the personal skills of the individual duelists than on their characters and how they deal with unexpected events and incidents completely beyond human control.
That said, during those few brief moments before the vagaries of chance intervened, it was indeed an amazingly close and memorable match.
The swordfight started off fast and furious and escalated quickly, both combatants’ moves accelerating into a series of speed-blurred movements. Ho! Ha-ha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust! The sword blades seemed to vanish, appearing only as occasional flickers of silver as they briefly reflected glints of sunlight. Sparks flew where they clashed and cloth flew in all directions as the two literally flayed all of their unreinforced upper-body garments. Only their fantastically developed reflexes kept the chests underneath from being slashed as well and then not always, but then they both wore bulletproof vests. These were soon heavily scored, although neither combatant had yet sustained so much as a scratch, despite all of their best efforts.
They locked blades near their respective hilt, ricasso to habaki, trying to force the other off-balance by main strength. Shibumi began to give way before the power of Doc’s incredible sinews when the swordstick’s thin sword blade suddenly separated from the hilt with a musical twang and went flying off who knew where. The tempered steel blade had been more than strong enough, but the brass-bound Malacca wood handle had been designed as much for show as for utility and had suddenly failed catastrophically under the strain of the combatants’ titanic reverse tug-of-war.
Doc stepped back a pace and fell automatically into a half-crouch, arms spread, balanced on the balls of his feet. Shibumi slashed downward with the sword and Doc leaped, not to the side or rear, but forward. His foot lashed out and caught Shibumi in the midsection while the Bronze Titan’s cabled hands clamped on the Shinobi’s wrists like bronze bear traps, thumbs stabbing into nerve clusters in Shibumi’s wrists while pulling them away from one another. Echoing a move that Yuriko performed when Cat ambushed her, Doc turned a half-somersault in mid-air and released his hold. Both the Sword of Koroshi and its wielder went flying in vastly directions and trajectories. The sword plopped into the sea a few points off to starboard and the man smashed with stunning force into the Devilfish’s recessed conning tower.
The total elapsed time from the moment that Shibumi attacked with the Sword of Koroshi to the moment the sword went overboard and Shibumi hit the deck was exactly 57 seconds.
Doc’s crew sent up a ragged cheer, but it was suddenly overshadowed by the drone of a plane engine. A Japanese patrol plane flew in low from behind the conical mass of Hinotori, heading straight for the two surfaced submarines.
The floatplane made a pass, banked sharply and lined up for an attack run. It was a Nakajima E8N2 Type 95 Model 1 reconnaissance seaplane, a single-engine two-seat biplane on floats code-named “Dave” by the Allied forces, armed with two .303 machine guns and two 66-pound bombs. Both submarine were not only partially crippled, bobbing helplessly on the surface, but also lashed tightly together, making them literal sitting ducks.
An earsplitting roar filled the air over the surfaced submarines as a full thirty rounds of .30 ammunition cut loose within a span of three seconds!
The roar of the gunfire was nothing compared to the series of explosions that followed. The Japanese “Dave” floatplane suddenly exploded in midair amid a flurry of detonations as if a string of Chinese New Year firecrackers had been replaced by a string of full sticks of dynamite. Pieces of the floatplane rained down lie smoldering confetti, with no single piece bigger than the palm of Cat’s hand.
Doc lowered the smoking SCAMP Carbine that he’d retrieved from the stanchion on the deck of the Shao-Hei-Lung where he’d secured it before engaging Shibumi Koroshi on the deck of the Devilfish. He had fired the entire 30-round stick of .30 Carbine demolition rounds into the oncoming floatplane, disintegrating it with the equivalent of thirty hand grenades all lobbed into the same area at once. The rapid series of explosions, combined with floatplane’s forward momentum and its own onboard fuel supply, had shredded the relatively fragile airframe like rice paper and ignited the pieces like flash paper. Doc tried not to think about what it must had done to the crew.
When Cat had cut loose on Shibumi with her Grandfather’s old hog-leg, freshly reloaded with .22 Hornet rounds with 35-grain full-metal jacketed tungsten carbide cored bullets propelled by cellulose trinitrate instead of black powder, and did little more than stagger him briefly, Doc had realized that his anesthetic mercy bullets could only bring him down with the luckiest of shot, even on full automatic. He’d switched to the demolition rounds, then thought better of it. Firing explosive rounds at their own sub wasn’t a good idea. Killing Shibumi wouldn’t bring Shiro back, whereas bringing Shibumi back alive might gain them valuable information about Japan’s military and intelligence deployments. If all else failed, Shibumi could always be rehabilitated through the Phoenix Foundation, after which he might be able to do enough good with the rest of his life to make up for some of the evil he’d already committed. That was why he immediately decided to engage Shibumi one-on-one with Sham’s swordstick.
That, and the sudden irresistible urge to personally wipe that smugly superior self-satisfied smirk off Shibumi’s face.
“We’ve got to get out of here right now!” Doc called to the others. “That plane had more than enough time to radio our position to Paramushiru. An entire squadron can be here in fifteen minutes!”
“That’s it, then!” Shao-Shan shrugged fatalistically. “We’re goners now.”
“Don’t bet on it!” Trog growled. “Doc’s probably got another ace or two up his sleeve to get us out of this. But, like he says, we’d better get moving!”
“Look out, Doc!” yelled Sham, pointing. “He’s getting away!” The defeated Shinobi master had jumped over the side into the frigid waters and was swimming swiftly toward the shore of Hinotori.
“We don’t have time to waste on him,” called Doc. “Get below, batten down those hatches and prepare to dive!” He tossed a telephone lineman’s handset that he’d brought up from within the Devilfish over to his crew on the deck of the Shao-Hei-Lung. Trog snagged it out of the air like an outfielder catching a pop fly.
“We’ll keep in touch through that,” he called. “I rigged a phone line between the two submarines when I lashed them together. I connected your end of it to the FM antenna, so patch that handset into the intercom system and we should be good to go!” Before anyone could protest, he had vanished into the Devilfish, which promptly began blowing ballast in a crash dive.
As the Devilfish began descending, the bow of the Shao-Hei-Lung began dipping down with it, canting the stern of the sub up at an ever-increasing angle. Doc’s crew wasted no time piling into the access tube and dogging the hatch. “Take us down!” he howled, then muttered under his breath, “As if we had a choice! It’s sink or get blown out of the water and the Devilfish will drag us under. One way or another, we’re going down. we’ll just have to hope and pray that we can make it back up again!”
A 12-plane hikotai or squadron consisting of an even mix of Nakajima A6M2-N Type 0 Model 11 Suisen 2 or “Hydro-Fighter Type 2” amphibious fighters and Yokosuka D4Y Suisei or “Comet” dive bombers, code-named “Rufe” (although most Americans would identify it as a “Zero” or “Zeke” equipped with pontoons) and “Judy” by Allied forces, scrambled into the sky from Paramushiru for the barren piece of volcanic real estate known as Hintori. Unlike the coastal patrol planes, which were nearing obsolescence if not retirement, these were all new models. Their presence here indicated the degree to which the Japanese were building up toward launching a major campaign. The target had to be either Soviet Russia or the U.S. Territory of Alaska, but the Japanese government had wisely decided to continue the April 1941 Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact, signed just two months before Nazi Germany launched “Operation Barbarossa” the previous June, breaking the August 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
The Japanese decision to maintain the Japanese-Soviet Nonaggression Pact even after the other Axis powers had attacked the Soviet Union was in keeping with their strategy of expanding southwards and invading the European colonies in Southeast Asia instead of their neighbor to north and west. They kept a careful watch on the Chishima Islands to make sure that the Soviets kept to their word, but otherwise steered clear of Soviet territory. The massive build-up in the most northeastern extent of Japanese territory could therefore only be aimed at Alaska.
The Japanese Navy aerial attack squadron found no sign of the submarines reported by the patrol floatplane, nor even any sign the floatplane itself. It had been shredded into wreckage too small to be seen from any significant altitude and even sunlight glinting off the more reflective pieces was lost in the reflections of the waves themselves.
Just as they were about to turn back for Paramushiru, the “Rufe” pilot flying point spotted a flash of reflected light from Hinotori. The squadron leader authorized two “Rufe” fighters and a “Comet” dive bomber to peel off and investigate. They found a shivering half-frozen Shibumi Koroshi huddled on the beach in a pit scooped out of the sand using his zori straw sandals, from which he’d signaled using a pocket mirror that he carried in order to spy around corners. The two fighters returned to the formation while the dive bomber landed to take the unauthorized individual into custody for interrogation. Shibumi immediately identified himself as Tokkou-Kempeitai and demanded that he be allowed to use the dive bomber’s radio to contact the base Commandant to report critical information and request an all-out hunt for the now-submerged submarines.
The pilot didn’t quite laugh outright, it soon became clear that he had little or no regard for the shivering and bedraggled castaway whom he’d been dispatched to take into custody. Heated words were exchanged, but in the end Shibumi was crammed into back of the “Judy” muttering vahue threat. He would have to wait until he was turned over to the interrogators, who would be Tokkou like himself, before he could report to the Commandant and request the deployment of anti-submarine warcraft.
Cursing profusely and vehemently, Shibumi promised all who would listen (and those who wouldn’t) the removal of their stubborn heads when the High Command learned how their obstructionism had allowed two enemy submarines, one filled with valuable and irreplaceable technology, to escape. The military pilots and their aircrews were unimpressed by this. They knew their value in the scheme of things and estimated the value of a failed spy and saboteur as being much lower. The Commandant took him much more seriously and ordered his entire fleet to scour the area all the way to Kamchatka, where it came into range of Soviet shore batteries. There was no sign of enemy submarine activity of any kind.
Imagine the pilots’ surprise when they were later honored by selection for the first wave of the newly-formed Kamikaze Tokubetsu Kougekitai or ‘Divine Wind’ Special Attack Unit.
Yuriko awoke groggily in the aftward portside lower berth in which Shibumi had left her. The first thing she saw was Doc Hazzard’s flake-gold eyes, looking down at her with heartwarming gentleness and genuine concern. “Wake up, Snow White!” Doc crooned. “Ding, dong! The Wicked Warlock has fled!”
Yuriko smiled. Doc’s use of the name “Snow White” was not only apropos to her current situation, but also a play on her name, which meant “Lily” in Japanese. “I thought that Snow White could only be awakened by a kiss from the handsome Prince,” she murmured teasingly.
Doc blinked. “Given our relationship and the fact that I’m quite literally twice your age, that would have been … inappropriate.”
Yuriko giggled. Doc was acting so solemn and proper, so much her sempai, her mentor, that she couldn’t help but imagine all of the inappropriate things that they might do together alone in a submarine. What had happened to his shirt? It had been ripped to rags hanging around his waist, leaving his upper body bare except for what looked like a multi-pocketed flak vest, now heavily scored by the Sword of Koroshi. The muscular definition of his arms was simply incredible. It’s wasn’t the pumped up physique of a muscleman, but rather the total lack of subcutaneous fat and his distinctive golden-brown tanned skin, which highlighted the development of the underlying muscle fiber, allowing it to show through to best effect. He really did look like a heroic bronze statue brought to life! Every sinew stood out as it tensed. Looking at those arms was like looking at an anatomical chart painted bronze and brought to life. She suddenly longed to run her hands all over him and find out if he were flesh or metal.
Yes, he was old enough to her father, but her actual father had been old enough to be her grandfather. In fact, the exact same number of years had separated Shiro and Tamisen as separated Doc and Yuriko. She had a sudden wild impulse to point that inconvenient fact out to Doc here and now, just to see his reaction.
But then she suddenly another inappropriate and much more troubling thought. If she was indeed “Snow White” in this story, then the “Wicked Warlock” must most certainly be her previously-unknown kinsman, Tetsuhito Koroshi, who had wielded the stolen Brainstorm device in the guise of the Koroshi clan’s youkai totem, Gojira, the Demon from the Sea. Fled? That must mean that he’d somehow escaped … with the Sword of the Koroshi!
Yuriko sat up in alarm, so suddenly that she would have cracked her head sharply on the underside of the upper berth had not Doc’s steadying hand intervened. “Whoa, there, Tiger-Lily! You’re still recovering from the effects of the Koroshi nemuri-gona.”
“The Sword!” choked Yuriko. “The Sword of Koroshi! Tetsuhito took the Sword of Koroshi from me! If he has escaped back to Japan with it—”
Doc shushed her. “The Sword of Koroshi is indeed gone, but Tetsuhito no longer has it. It’s down in Davy Jones’ Locker, somewhere along the line where the Sea of Okhotsk meets the North Pacific. Hopefully, it will rust in peace at the bottom of the sea, never to cast a shadow over your life ever again.” He rummaged around him and gave up with a shot glass full of a viscous dark red liquid. “Here! This should fix you right up, Yuri-chan!”
Yuriko sniffed it suspiciously. It had a spicy aroma reminiscent of cinnamon, nutmeg or ginger but not quite like any of them. “What it is?”
“Grandmother Maní-okka’s Herbal Remedy,” Doc replied, with no hint of sarcasm. “It’s made from an extract of the leaves of a Mesoamerican variety of the yaca root, also known as cassava, which is used to treat hypertension, headache and pain.” He smiled. “Believe me, it’s good for what ails you.”
Yuriko sat up again, slowly this time, took the glass and knocked it back. The taste and consistency reminded of the cherry-flavored cough syrup that her father used to give her when she was a child, but the spiciness of it was incredible. It was hotter than the strongest Jalapeño chili pepper or Tabasco sauce she’d ever had growing up in Southern California. It went down her throat like molten lava, spread like a tidal wave across stomach, and then made a beeline for her heart, from whence it shot through every artery and vein in her body. When it hit her brain, it was like a flashbulb going off behind her eyes. Her eyes watered and her sinuses became clearer than they had ever been before in her life.
“Wow!” Yuriko squeaked as if breathing pure helium when she finally regained the ability to speak. She couldn’t find words to describe what she was feeling, so she handed the glass back to Doc and wiped her eyes with the tail of her black uwagi jacket. Her entire bloodstream seemed to filled with white-hot flame. She felt ready, willing and able to uproot a giant redwood tree and use it as a baseball bat to knock the Moon all the way to Pluto. She finally gasped, “Hot-cha-cha-cha! A little of that stuff goes a long, long way!”
“Yes, it packs quite a wallop,” agreed Doc. “But don’t dismiss it as some sort of Kickapoo Joy Juice. The active ingredient has the same medicinal potential as that found in cinchona, coca and tobacco. Unfortunately, the particular strain of yuca from which it’s derived only grows in a small hidden valley in Yucatán.” He frowned. “Harvesting it in bulk would also destroy the people who’ve lived there for millennia but were kind enough to give my father the recipe for the asking. It would be extremely bad form to repay their generosity by destroying their lives, just for a medication that could never be mass produced.” He smiled again. “Do you feel up to helping me get things squared away here now?”
“Oh, very yes!” She rolled back her sleeves as if posing for the “Rosie the Riveter” poster. “‘We Can Do It!’” she quoted. “What’cha got?”
“What I’ve got is a bunch of Japanese POWs on ice in the diving compartment up forward.” Doc frowned again. “That’s how Tetsuhito was able to surprise you. When my Associates and I faced off against him, he tried to use the Brainstorm against us again, but this time I had a countermeasure that caused it to backfire. I thought that it had fried his brain, but what I presumed to be a more permanent effect was apparently quite temporary and he recovered much more quickly and with far less debility than I would ever have thought possible. In any case, I didn’t think it necessary to sedate him as I did the others, so when he eventually woke up there was literally nothing holding him back. For that, I must sincerely apologize.”
“Now you’re just giving me static, Doc!” Yuriko snorted. “I thought that Brainstorm thing was unstoppable, but you not only stopped it, you made it backfire? I’d’ve written off anyone who had taken a hit from it at close range, too. Get real!” She stood up, looking ready to go to work. “So about these POWs?”
“I need to clear the diving compartment so I can use it to leave the sub without surfacing. That entails moving the POWs out and the diving gear back in. Since the POWs are now under chemical restraint, it should be safe enough to keep them here in the Bunkhouse, but it’s probably a good idea to check their physical condition, make sure their IVs are working properly and take corrective measures as needed.” He looked at Yuriko expectantly. “I thought that, with your medical schooling, you could attend to the POWs while I was getting the diving compartment shipshape again.”
Yuriko snorted again. “You want me to be a one-woman Bedpan Brigade?”
Doc grimaced. “With their vastly-reduced metabolism, it shouldn’t come to that but, yes, I want you to act as a nurse.”
“Hey, it’s copacetic, Doc! I was just pulling your leg!” Yuriko swung her own legs out of the berth and stood up. Or, at least, she tried to stand up. Halfway to her feet, she plopped back down on the mattress and cracked the back her head against the duffel drawer of the upper berth. “Ow! I must be weaker than I thought!”
“No,” Doc assured her. “The Devilfish is currently listing two points aport, so the deck is angling up about 23° on the starboard side. It’s because the Devilfish and the Shao-Hei-Lung are still lashed together, our amidships starboard sled rail to their portside bow line mooring cleat. When we first submerged, the angle was twice great, but they eventually took on ballast as trimmed to the same depth. Unfortunately, the two vessels have different buoyancy characteristics, so there’s no way they’ll ever ride at exactly the same level.” He extended his arm as a handhold on which to lever herself up. “Let’s try that again, shall we?”
Doc led her forward through the Bunkhouse and washroom to the hatch of the diving compartment. Like all seagoing vessels, the Devilfish was constantly pitching, rolling and yawing ever so slightly, but that was no problem to someone who had learned to walk first a tightrope and then a slack rope before she was five years old. Once she adjusted to the additional starboard pitch of the listing submarine, Yuriko had no trouble maintaining her equilibrium. As they passed through the washroom, she paused for a moment and gazed wistfully at the shower, then blushed deeply when her stomach suddenly growled with embarrassing volume and persistence. Doc all but smacked himself in the head. “I’m an idiot. Of course you’d like to freshen up a bit first. And when was the last time you ate?”
“I don’t rightly know,” Yuriko admitted. “I don’t know how long Cat and I were unconscious before we woke up on the Shao-Hei-Lung and, while we were confined there, Wu-Hanshu had us on the ultimate liquid diet, literally pumping nutrients in saline solution directly into us.” She patted her left inner elbow. “I haven’t had any solid food since we were captured aboard the S.S. Hai-Lung, about what? Three weeks ago?” Her stomach growled again at the very thought of how long it might have been empty.
“I see.” Doc didn’t mention that he was using almost the same technique with his prisoners. Yuriko would see that firsthand in due course. “If you haven’t had solid food in all that time, we’d better start you off easy before turning you loose in the galley.” He retrieved one of his concentrated protein bars from a pocket in his utility vest and gave it to her. “We’ll start you off with this, and then maybe some soup and bread until your stomach settles down and gets back to work properly.” He pointed out various pieces of equipment next to the more obvious sanitary facilities. “That’s a compact electric washing machine, that’s a hot-air tumbled dryer and that’s a universal laundry press that can iron any item of apparel in a single pass—I hope to bring all three to market when the War is over. But you’ll need some other clothes to wear. Let’s see…”
Doc began rummaging through the duffel drawers in the Bunkhouse. “My Associates and I all keep spare shipboard work clothes here—Long Shot’s closest to your size… Here we go! Plimsolls, gym socks, bell-bottomed denim dungarees, chambray shirt, even a knit watch cap!” He looked over at Yuriko and gave an embarrassed cough. “We, ah, don’t have any ladies’ undergarments.”
Yuriko laughed. “Except for the traditional Japanese shitagi, neither do I!” Seeing Doc’s discomfort, she sobered. “An appropriately-sized men’s cotton undershirt and briefs or even boxer shorts should do me just fine.” Then she giggled. “You have to admit that it’s a lot more acceptable for a woman to wear men’s underclothes than the other way around!”
Doc laughed dutifully and dug out one of his own spare work shirts to replace the one that Shibumi had slashed to ribbons. “Ditto outer garments, for that matter.” He suddenly remembered Hollywood publicity stills of Marlene Dietrich, Josephine Baker, Gloria Swanson, Anna May Wong and Katharine Hepburn in tuxedos … and Trog showing up at the Croesus Club dressed like Mae West and claiming to be Sham’s new fiancée. A snapshot of the incident had made the tabloids, clippings of which had an honored place in Trog’s scrapbook. No one else had ever found that image to be anything but horrific. “Okay, I think that you’re all set here. There’s soap and shampoo in the shower, but of course it’s all unscented. The soap is pHisoHex pH-neutral medical scrub and the shampoo is the same no-frills institutional stuff used in hospitals, orphanages, jails and prisons.”
“So it’s going to be denim work clothes and jailhouse soap from here on in, is it?” Yuriko sighed. “I suppose that I should start getting used to that, since the authorities are going to hustle me off to an internment camp just as soon as we dock on American soil.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it, Yuri-kouhai!” His tone was uncharacteristically cold, but Yuriko was warmed by him referring to her as his protégée. “If this were a truly just world, they would award you the Congressional Gold Medal.” Yuriko’s eyes widened at that. A Congressional Gold Medal was currently the highest civilian award in the United States. It was awarded to an individual who performs an outstanding deed or act of service to the security, prosperity and national interest of the United States. Recipients included Wilbur & Orville Wright, Charles Lindbergh, Thomas Edison, Dr. Walter Reed, the officers and crew of the Byrd Antarctic Expedition, George Cohan, Howard Hughes and William Sinnott. Surely Doc couldn’t believe that of her? Apparently, he most certainly did.
“Yuriko,” Doc continued with surprising gentleness, “you and your father were about to be locked up by your own government, despite the fact that both you and your mother were born and raised in America, for no other reason than that your ancestors came from Japan. Rather than accept rescue from this unjust imprisonment offered by actual Imperial Japanese agents on American soil, you crossed the entire American continent to bring the object of the chief agent’s desire to me and alert me to a grave danger to national security, a new and deadly weapon that had already taken the lives of over two-dozen American soldiers during their attempt to transport you and your Japanese-American neighbors to an internment camp. Upon learning that the chief of these Imperial Japanese agents was a close blood relation, you remained loyal to the country that had already betrayed you and still regards you as an Enemy Alien.”
Doc shook his head sadly. “All that—and more—spells ‘All-American Hero’ in big shiny gold letters in my book!”
Put that way, Yuriko had to allow as how perhaps she might actually deserve some official recognition and perhaps even some special dispensation after all. Then she remembered Doc’s own proviso: If this were a truly just world. It wasn’t a just world. If it were, she and most everyone she’d ever known growing up would never have been rounded up for internment in the first place.
As if sensing her thoughts, Doc continued, “Well, I’ll just duck back into the galley and start heating up some soup for you while you get cleaned up and change into those fresh clothes.” He gave her an final encouraging smile as he stripped off the rags of his shredded shirt and shrugged into his own fresh one, then turned smartly on his heel and headed aft to the galley sandwiched between the Bunkhouse and the wardroom.
Yuriko slipped out of her black canvas shouzoku stealth suit, carefully turning it inside out before dropping it into the washing machine, and set the zori sandals and the black leather randoseru backpack aside. As she added detergent, which she noted had been compressed into small uniform cakes, each of which was the equivalent of one scoop of the soap powder from which they were made, she suddenly became self-consciously aware of what a sight she must make standing naked in the middle of sanitation compartment bent over the washer. What if Doc came back or even just glanced across the Bunkhouse from the galley on the other side? Not that Doc, a medical doctor quite familiar with human physiology both inside and out, was the kind of man who would even consider sneaking a peek, but what if he just happened to—?
Her heart raced, her breath quickened and she felt her face burning from something quite the opposite of shame. The sudden wayward thought excited her in way that frightened her, because she’d never before considered herself to be a wickedly wanton woman. She remembered her earlier sudden desire to run her hands all over Doc’s torso, which only made the delightfully wicked feeling even stronger. She stood up to her full height, shifting her weight onto one foot in a much-practiced neko-ashi-dachi or “cat-foot-stance”, and sneaked a sidelong glance of her own toward the rear of the sub. She could indeed see across the Bunkhouse through the galley to the wardroom, all the way to the hatch of the control compartment, but Doc was nowhere in her line of sight. Conversely, then, she was nowhere in his. This made her feel more than a little disappointed, but no less excited over the possibility that this could change at any moment.
These things happen, she thought with a delicious rush she hadn’t felt since she was a schoolgirl going gaga over Jimmy Stewart. We’re both adults here and we’re here on a mission, for crying out loud! She smiled. Still, if Doc should get an eyeful when he’s not expecting it, well, good for him! And, if it gives some ungentlemanly ideas, more power to him. He’s certainly earned it! She stepped briskly into the shower stall, closed the curtain behind her and set about cleaning both body and mind.
It was more difficult than she expected. Unlike the washing machine, which was ridiculously easy to use—drop in the clothes and the appropriate number of detergent tablets, close the lid and press a mushroom-shaped button on top with Start/Stop engraved on it—Yuriko couldn’t immediately figure out how the shower worked. It consisted of an openwork “box” made of half-inch copper pipes, eight feet tall and four feet wide, set above a four-foot-square drain but with no visible corresponding overhead shower head or other plumbing. On the wall or bulkhead or whatever it was called were two inverted bottles labeled Soap and Shampoo with toggles mounted underneath, whose function was obvious, but nothing resembling a faucet knob, handle or valve. Instead, there was a lever of the sort Yuriko associated with slot machines, labeled Pull, between the two dispensers.
’Pull Me!’,” she thought, feeling more than a little like Alice in Wonderland. Okay, I’m game. Here goes nothing! As soon she had yanked the lever all the way down, Yuriko was immediately deluged from head to toe with torrents of pleasantly lukewarm water. There wasn’t a shower head, there were a dozen: one in each of the eight corners of the box-like framework of pipes and four more midway down each of the four vertical pipes. Each nozzle pointed toward the exact center of the elongated cubical space enclosed by the pipes and all twelve sprayed a jet of water with the force and volume of a firehouse. In the five seconds that it took the spring-loaded lever to flip back up to its original upright position, Yuriko was as thoroughly drenched as if she’d dived into the deep end of an Olympic pool. Only her innately stoic nature and years of intensive training kept her from screaming loudly enough to be heard on the other submarine.
The operation of the deluge shower was now painfully obvious. Pull the lever once to get soaking wet, lather up with liquid soap, pull the lever a second time to rinse, apply the shampoo and then pull the lever the third and final time to rinse again. There was a sponge and a washcloth to take care of serious grime, but Yuriko didn’t need to use either of them. The total time for a full and complete bath was between 45 seconds and a minute. It was quite sensible and efficient, really. It took her longer to wring the water out her hair than it had for the actual shower bath. It took even longer to towel herself dry and get dressed in Long Shot’s hand-me-downs. She used one of towels to wrap her still-damp hair in a turban and went to join Doc. Halfway across the Bunkhouse, the enticing aroma of hot food made her almost forget the ordeal in the shower.
Almost. “Thanks for warning me about the shower!” she snapped bitingly as she stormed into the galley. “I was expecting maybe a trickle from a single sprinkler and I got hit from all sides with Niagara Falls driven by a tornado that could’ve blown me halfway to Oz!”
Doc cocked a quizzical eyebrow but otherwise continued his culinary preparations. “You seem to have made it back okay,” he commented dryly. “A pity about your little dog, though.” He took a sip from the spoon that he was using to stir the soup. “Still, brindle Cairn Terrier meat makes a really nice broth…” Yuriko couldn’t help but laugh at that and, suddenly, it was as if a great weight had been lifted off her shoulders. She started giggling so hard that her eyes watered. Doc waved his hand expansively toward the wardroom. “Supper’s just about ready. Have a seat and I’ll have it served in a jiffy.”
The wardroom table and chairs were mounted on hydraulically damped universal joints that, except for extraordinarily sudden or forceful changes in the submarine’s attitude, kept them perfectly level. Now that Yuriko thought about it, she realized that the same was true for the berths in the Bunkhouse. She hadn’t realized that the submarine was listing while she was lying down because the bed had automatically tilted to maintain a level sleeping surface. The berths were more like cradles than like bunk beds. Small but important little touches like these seemed to characterize everything that Doc created. Amazing!
“Soup’s on!” Doc sang, making it sound like the French word soupçon. Despite the tilt of the deck and the inevitable wave motion, he glided in from the galley like the head maître d’ on an ocean liner, laying out what Yuriko had to admit was a fine spread. Two tall frosty glasses of rehydrated Carnation Evaporated Milk, a choice of two different soup dishes—Campbell’s Condensed Chicken with Noodles served with Ritz Crackers and Campbell’s Condensed Cream of Mushroom served with Saltines—and a platter of wheat noodles topped with melted sharp cheddar cheese and sprinkled with herbs. There was nothing heavy enough to upset her recovering stomach, but lots of good nutrition and a variety of wonderful tastes, all from whatever could be scrounged up and thrown together in five or ten minutes from fairly basic ship’s stores. Yuriko went for the chicken with noodles and Doc took the cream of mushroom without expressing any preference.
Doc had rolled up his sleeves while preparing supper and never bothered to unroll them. Yuriko enjoyed watching the play of muscles and tendons in his cabled bronze forearms almost as much as she did the taste of the unexpectedly savory impromptu meal. Since he’d prepared and served it, she offered to clear away and wash the dishes, but Doc shook his head. “You don’t know where or how to stow them and it would take longer to show you than to do it myself.” Catching her look, he added, “I’ll meet you halfway—you clear and wash and I’ll dry and put away.” Yuriko had to admit that this was as fair as the balance between their respective contributions was likely to get for the time being. It was while they were doing the dishes together that Doc asked a question that Yuriko never expected to hear from anyone, much less him.
“How do you feel about suicide, Tiger-Lily?”
With her own sleeves rolled up to her elbows and her forearms in dishwater, Yuriko looked over at him, stunned. “Suicide? You mean seppuku or, as the popular press so vulgarly calls it, hara-kiri? I think it’s a ridiculous. If you’ve really loused things up, the best thing to do it to try and find some way to make it better, not show how sorry you are by killing yourself. It is rank cowardice, is what it is. The Samurai and Shinobi use it to express guilt for something evil that they’ve done or remorse for something that they failed to do but, in both cases, they’re passing a death sentence on themselves and then executing that sentence.” She shook her head sadly. “Either way, it doesn’t do anyone any good and certainly doesn’t fix whatever it was that went wrong.”
“No,” Doc replied, not meeting her eyes, “I was thinking more along the lines of the tokubetsu kougeki ‘special attack’ or the fukuryuu ‘crouching dragon’, gyokusai ‘shattered jade’ and kaiten ‘returning to Heaven’ attacks. You know, the banzai charge in which someone has no hope of surviving, much less winning, but tries to inflict as much damage as possible before they’re inevitably killed themselves.”
Yuriko stopped what she was doing and turned to face him. “Has it come down to that? For us, I mean?”
“Just about, Yuriko-chan, just about.” Doc finally turned to face her, looking grimmer than she’d ever seen him before. “When we took back the Devilfish, we damaged the batteries and lost at least half of the hydrogen fuel. We’re not quite dead in the water, but we’re limping along on quarter-power and don’t have enough juice to make it out of enemy territory, much less get back to American soil. The only thing that can save the Devilfish is the atomic pile that powers the Shao-Hei-Lung, which can produce nearly unlimited energy, certainly enough to power both vessels and then some.” He shook his head, “But that would be mean becoming dependent on and ceding control to Wu-Hanshu, who has absolute control over the pile by virtue of his ability to destroy it at will.”
“Only by blowing it up!” The look on Doc’s face showed her that she was incorrect even as she spoke. “What? You think that he’ll actually blow himself up rather than surrender that pile? I thought you had already called his bluff on that!”
“The pile may indeed contain a critical mass of fissionable material, but expelling all of the control roads may not be enough to make it go super-critical and explode. As the chain-reaction begins to build, it generates more and more heat. Once it reaches 3,140 Kelvins, which is about 5,190°F or 2,865°C, the uranium and plutonium dioxides that make up the atomic ‘fuel’ will begin to melt. The molten fuel will only keep getting hotter in a self-perpetuating positive feedback loop until it melts through the bottom of the pile and the keel of the submarine. When it hits the seawater outside the sub, the superheated steam will destroy the engines and most of the Engineering section, but may not destroy the entire sub. Wu-Hanshu, in the control compartment on the opposite side, might even escape unscathed. The pile will be destroyed and the Shao-Hei-Lung will be dead in the water but, without electronics, she’s already crippled enough that he needs our navigational gear as much as we need that pile.”
Yuriko shivered. “What happens when that massive molten mass after it drops into the water? Can’t it still go boom?”
“If it does, we’ll never know it, any more than we would if Wu-Hanshu sneezes hard even to lose his grip on the activator.” Yuriko paled and Doc went on quickly. “It’s more likely that it’ll reach a stable but extremely high temperature, hotter than molten rock, in which case it’ll burn its way through the bottom of the sea and keep on falling until it reaches a stratum hot enough to vaporize it—maybe even all the way to the center of the Earth.” Doc smiled reassuringly, then frowned again. “But there’s another possibility, something that Wu-Hanshu may have completely overlooked. There’s one situation where we might want to explode or melt down the pile. Neither vessel can leave the immediate area without the help of the other. We can, however, travel fairly freely within that vicinity, the more so since the Japanese will be expecting us to try and escape, not to turn around and attack with everything we have … including that atomic pile!”
Yuriko’s heart turned into ice in her chest and sank all the way down to her toes. She suddenly knew why Doc had asked how she felt suicide. How much of Doc’s willingness to pursue this plan depends on my answer?
“Since the Devilfish now has a monopoly on navigational capability,” Doc continued relentlessly, “I can control where we go with our remaining fuel and electrical power. I can put us into position to wreak havoc on the Japanese naval fleet that’s amassing at Kashiwabara on the northeast end of Paramushiru. An atomic explosion detonated under the water there would not only destroy most if not all of the vessels at anchor but also create a tsunami that will sweep the surface or all but the heaviest sea craft and could conceivably wipe out the onshore airbase. We could do to the Japanese fleet here what they did to us at Pearl Harbor!”
Yuriko stared. He really means it! she thought. Then, And maybe he’s right. Something like that could change the entire course of the War in the Pacific by breaking the Japanese momentum and delivering a crushing blow to their morale. To indicate her own seriousness and concern, she addressed him with phonetic rendering of his first name and the honorific for mentor, just as she had done while growing up. “Maruku-sempai, what if the pile doesn’t explode like a bomb? What if it just melts down and starts burning its way down into the ocean floor?”
“It could still create tremendous damage, Yuri-kouhai.” Doc replied, addressing her in like fashion. “If the pile’s atomic fuel is ejected directly into the water, rather than first melting through the hull of submarine, it’ll still superheat the surrounding seawater, causing it to boil, which should take out a fair number of ships. When the containment vessel inevitably ruptures, exposing the innermost core, there’ll be a steam explosion comparable to a ‘blockbuster’ bomb, which will also damage or sink ships in the immediate vicinity. The most unpredictable effect might also be the most potentially devastating: when the superheated fuel melts its way down into the seafloor, it will do so directly above the magma chamber that feeds Chishima Iouyama, a highly active somma volcano located on the northern end of Paramushiru. It’s one of the most active volcanoes of the Chishima Island chain. There’s no telling what might happen when all that lava starts erupting just of the coast, especially with the pile’s added oomph.”
“And, since Wu-Hanshu has already set the charge that will initiate the pile to explode or melt down, all you have do is have your Associates over there overpower Wu-Hanshu—or maybe just cut the control cable—when the time comes!” Yuriko nodded in admiration, if not agreement. “I suppose they’ll have to find the control-rod ejection mechanism that you’re sure must be there in order to get the effect you want, but that shouldn’t really be problem.” She eyed Doc shrewdly. “Okay, Doc, you’ve convinced me that your plan can work. So now you want to know if I’m copacetic with being blown to atoms or suffering whatever other horrible certain death we’ll have to endure in the process?”
Doc nodded gravely. “Yes, that’s pretty much it in a nutshell. My Associates and I face this prospect with every mission we undertake. They knew the job was dangerous when they took it and are prepared to give their lives if needs must. ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’ Or his country.” He looked rueful. “But you’re not one of my Associates, you’re a civilian in every sense of the word. Moreover, you’re a young woman with her entire life still ahead of her. I can’t sanction even the attempt to do anything like this without your wholehearted approval and full cooperation. Are you truly ready, willing and able to throw your young life away in defense of a country that has already betrayed your trust and treated you and your late father so shabbily? I will fully understand if you aren’t, in which case I’ll have to come up a completely different and non-fatal plan.”
Yuriko had finished the dishes and opened the suction valve that would drain the sink completely despite it being tilted at a shallow angle. “How much time until you’ll be ready to try and blow us all to Kingdom Come?”
“Another day or so, at most.” Doc spoke matter-of-factly, not wanting to influence her decision one way of the other, “I have to clear the diving compartment, go outside to investigate the actual situation and communicate the plan to my Associates clandestinely before we’re finally in position to initiate the operation.”
“A day or so at most,” Yuriko echoed with equal offhandedness. Abruptly, she walked aft into the wardroom and plopped down in the nearest chair. Her face went through the same rapid-fire series of expressions as when she admitted fearing that her father might be Gojira, ending in a look of serene acceptance. Then she rested her left elbow on the table and her chin on her left fist in the pose of Rodin’s The Thinker. Doc sat across from her without a word, his face completely expressionless. Presently, Yuriko looked up and eyed shrewdly. She had clearly made up her mind and as much as said so. “Okay, Doc, I’m in—but only after you give me something that I could never have under any other circumstances.”
Doc was, for once, completely taken aback. “What could I possibly give you, in present circumstances and the limited means at hand, that you don’t already have?”
Yuriko started to speak, then blushed flaming red and finally stammered, “I, I don’t want to, to die … unfulfilled!”
Doc clearly had no idea what she might be trying to say, which seemed to infuriate her. Her face went from red with shamed embarrassment to livid with frustrated resentment. “I … don’t … want … to … die … until … I’ve … lived … first!” She bit off and spat out each word, then drew a deep breath, let it out and concluded calmly. “I don’t want to die until I’ve experienced what life is all about!”
“No, no, no, Snow White!” Doc choked as understanding finally dawned in his flake-gold eyes. “You … I … we … but we’re— You can’t be serious!”
“I’ve never been more serious in my life,” Yuriko stated flatly. “And, if things go according to plan, I never will be.” The way her eyes narrowed reminded Doc of his cousin Cat when she was about do something reckless, but her smile reminded him more of the proverbial cat who’d eaten the canary. He started to reply but she shushed him with a peremptory wave of her hand.
“Quid pro quo, sir, this for that!” she concluded, stabbing a forefinger in his broad muscular chest. “If I’m going to throw away the rest of my life, no matter how noble or patriotic the cause, then you sir must first better be ready, willing and able to show me the time … of … my … life!”
Since he would probably just splutter incoherently, Doc maintained a stoic silence. He knew that, whatever he did end up saying, Yuriko would get the last word.
In this highly controversial newly-discovered and never-before published “Lost Chapter” of this newly-discovered and never-before published Doc Hazzard adventure, the readers are shown exactly transpired aboard the Devilfish between Doc Hazzard and Yuriko Koroshi in the hour or so between the end of Chapter XVII: Quid Pro Quo Vadis and the beginning of Chapter XVIII: Hiding in Plain Sight. Due to the mature subject matter of the so-called “Lost Chapter” and the difficulty in reconciling its portrayal of Doc Hazzard with the rest of the novel, to say nothing of the rest of the series, it has been decided not to include it here with the main text of the story, but a link to it is provided for the benefit of those who wish to read it. Should you choose to follow that link, be warned in advance that individual and parental discretion is strongly advised!
The uncharacteristically “spicy” nature of this chapter, along with the uncharacteristic behavior of Doc Hazzard and the shockingly views he espouses therein, have led many pulp scholars to conclude that the entire chapter may originally been an “April Fools’ Day” joke perpetrated by author Cainnech Roberson on the editor of Doc Hazzard Magazine in honor of Cat Hazzard’s birthday, a joke extended and expanded into an outright hoax perpetrated by author Peter Jairus Frigate when he announced his discovery of the unpublished original manuscript in his 1973 retrospective biography Doc Hazzard: His Eschatological Life. The ongoing controversy over the legitimacy of this portion of the text has resulted in the decision to remove it from the numbered continuity of the story and to present it separately, numbered sequentially so that it may be read it as if it were an integral part of the story.
Read it here!
Doctor Wu-Hanshu sat serenely in the lotus posture with the atomic pile control-rod retraction activator in one long-nailed hand and the telephone lineman’s handset in the other. He was eying the handset suspiciously, as if doubting whether it was functioning properly. Raising the handset back to his ear, he querulously admonished, “I don’t think that I heard that correctly. Would you repeat that?”
“I said that I’m calling your bluff once and for all, Granduncle.” Doc’s melodious baritone sounded a bit tinny over the makeshift telephone line but was otherwise quite clear. “Surrender yourself and your vessel immediately … or blow the pile and kill us all. Either way is fine with us, because either way we win!”
For a man delivering a life-and-death threat that encompassed his own demise and that of most of his closest family and friends, Doc sounded remarkable cheerful. He didn’t sound at all smug or superior, because that would have been insufferable enough that Wu-Hanshu would have no choice but to release the switch just on general principles, but strangely content and self-satisfied. “I take it from both your words and tone that you believe that the situation has developed not necessarily to my advantage and the general trends have all turned against my interest.”
“About as far as they can go,” Doc agreed. “It’s time for you to either put up or shut up. Either we all work together, leave together and live … or we all die right here, right now.”
Wu-Hanshu considered this for a moment. “May I ask what prompted this sudden ultimatum?”
“Determination to make our lives and deaths mean something,” Doc replied sincerely. “You put us all in a box where it appeared that you held all of our lives in your gnarly old hand. You have absolute control of the atomic pile and can blow it at any time. But your Sword of Damocles hangs over your own head, and any one of my Associates can also cut that thread, either by taking you down or simply by triggering the explosion themselves. Once we realized that we could change the consequences of the pile going super-critical into something worthwhile, something worth all of our lives, you lost any hold on us imposed by your ultimatum. So use it or lose it. You’re out of options.”
Wu-Hanshu’s eyes filmed over momentarily, then cleared to a feral gleam. “I still fail to see what has changed in our relative positions or how you can benefit in any way from my ejecting the atomic chain-reaction control rods.”
“Instead of traveling northeast toward Alaska, we’ve been traveling southwest to Paramushiru and are now directly under the Japanese fleet anchored just off Kashiwabara.” Doc still wasn’t smug, just stating facts without any note of triumph. “You may control the pile, but my Associates have disconnected it from the engines, so the Shao-Hei-Lung is now just as dead in the water as the Devilfish will be when its fuel cells and batteries finally die. That, by the way, is the limiting factor on these negotiations—when I no longer have enough power to get us all out here, we’ll have reached the Point of No Return, at which time we’ll blow the pile ourselves, destroying ourselves but also as much of the Japanese fleet as careful advance preparation and blind luck will allow.”
It seemed a long time before anyone spoke again, but it actually only five minutes. “I will consider surrendering myself, my acolytes and the Shao-Hei-Lung, but not unconditionally. I have but a single condition, but is non-negotiable. Nevertheless, I think that you will find it be both reasonable and satisfactory to your overbearing personal sense of justice.” He paused just long enough to let what he had just said sink in, then stated his single term of surrender:
“Amnesty.”
Doctor Wu-Hanshu had told Cat Hazzard the truth when he’d told her that Japanese Kokka-shugi fascists were meticulous record keepers. Doc’s Associates had found detailed nautical maps of all of the Japanese islands, including charts of all of the anti-submarine defenses, current as the previous month. Shorty had translated these and relayed the information to Doc via the telephone line, allowing him to navigate both submarines into the harbor and into the heart of the Japanese invasion fleet. He also knew the way back out again and even places where both submarines might surface undetected long enough to effect the repairs and modifications that Doc had in mind.
The spot that Doc ultimately chose as most suitable was, in fact, the leeward side of Hinotori, shrouded in perpetual fog created when the hot air rising out of the volcano mixed with the prevailing sub-Artic winds streaming in toward the south and west from the Bering Sea. The fog not only hid any surface vessels from visual observation at any distance beyond a quarter-mile, but the Japanese charts indicated strong aerial turbulence that prevented the air patrols from flying over and shoals that deterred surface patrols. The Japanese solution to this obvious blind spot was to post spotters along all of the surface approaches to it and submarine nets below. Of course, those same charts pinpointed all of the sub traps, allowing Doc to plot a course around them.
After moving the eight Japanese POWS—the skipper, two pilot/navigators, two radio/sonarmen, two mechanic/engineers and a mate/cook/supercargo—into the Bunkhouse, Doc had flooded the airlock, gone out and disconnected the two submarines and swum over to the Plexiglas nose of the Shao-Hei-Lung, where he’d carried on a brief conversation with his Associates in Amslan, the American Standard Sign Language. Then he had returned to the Devilfish, taken her up to the surface in the Hinotori blind spot, dropped anchor, reflooded the airlock and opened the hatch. He’d floated above the hatch in his polar diving suit, watching and waiting as the Shao-Hei-Lung maneuvered until its top hatch was directly below, then began to ascend. At it did so, a metal collar around the hatch began to extend. Doc had worked a control that extended an identical collar below the airlock and stood by, ready to make sure that the two collars engaged properly and try to align them manually if they didn’t.
Doc never left things to chance.
When he’d first laid eyes on the structure welded to the keel of S.S. Hai-Lung in the Hudson River, Doc had recognized it as the same mobile caisson that he’d adapted into an internal airlock for the Devilfish. As result, he knew how the docking mechanism around the outside of the hatch worked and that he could emulate it closely enough with the Devilfish’s retractable conning tower and inflatable crow’s nest to create a temporary watertight seal, at least long enough to enter the ship from below. He also knew, from the moment forward, that the stealth sub could dock with the Devilfish using their matching docking collars. It had worked just as he’d expected, which was gratifying, but this was only the beginning of his planned modifications to both submarines.
Doc turned on the pumps that drained the airlock while filling it with air, then tapped three times on the hatch with a monkey wrench. He waited, then tapped again. He was about the tap again when he heard a series of seven taps sounding from the other side: dah-dah-dit-dit-dah dah-dah (“Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits!”). Doc undogged the hatch and Trog popped his misshapen head and shoulders up, grinning from ear to ear.
“Nyah, what’s up, Doc?” he piped cheerfully. “Long time, too much sea!” He thrust up a big hairy hand full of cables. “240-volt AC, 1000-watt DC, your end of the intercom telephone line, just like you requested. We’ll need to add a rectifier to turn the 240-volt AC output from Wu-Hanshu’s generators to the 120-volt AC that we use, but we got all the fixings stored up in the Attic.” In his other hand, which he’d held out of sight, he proffered a complicated-looking handgrip with a length of cable attached to one end, which appeared to have been torn asunder without regard for neatness. “I gotta a souvenir for you, Doc! Wu-Hanshu’s stripped-out suicide switch!”
Doc opened the aft hatch of the airlock and began connecting the ends of the cables that Trog had just brought him to the ones already laid out there. Trog wasn’t at all surprised to see a rectifier already in place on the AC cable. The cables ran to wall bracket next to the hatch on the other side of the diving compartment, now latched fully open, and thence to the overhead, from whence they ran all the way aft to Engineering, tacked to the overhead at regular intervals with recently installed U-bolts. Doc came back to the hatch and prepared to dog it for safety’s sake when he cocked a ear. “What’s all that noise down there?” he called to Trog’s retreating head and shoulders.
“That’s Cat screaming bloody murder and cursing you for seven shade of Shinola,” Trog replied with a nasty laugh. “It seems that she didn’t appreciate not being consulted about your plan to blow up an atomic pile under the Japanese fleet. She seems to feel that she was left out in the cold again, especially since you apparently did consult with Yuriko Koroshi.”
“I see.” Doc sighed. “Okay, tell her that I didn’t consult with you lads, either.” This was true. He’d delivered the news as a fait accompli to his men as well as to Wu-Hanshu. “Tell her that, rather than being left out, she was actually included and recognized as one of the gang, presumed to be ready to do what needed to be done at a moment’s notice—or no notice at all.”
“Okie-doke, Doc!” Trog rumbled, his voice echoing now up the length of the access tube. “I’ll see if I can get a word in edgewise. Right now, she’s down on men in general and you in particular!”
The story of my life! Doc thought as he strode aft. Fire down below, iceberg dead ahead! Yuriko sat cross-legged on a stool propped up in the galley, from which she could watch her eight POW “patients” sleeping in the Bunkhouse for any sign that they needed medical assistance. The look that she gave him would have liquefied helium had there been any in the air. Doc handed her the disabled and detached dead-man’s detonator in passing. “Souvenir!” he called back over his shoulder.
“I don’t want any consolation prizes!” Yuriko screamed after him. She looked down at her souvenir, smiled, then looked up at Doc’s receding back with a face frozen into an icy mask. “You’re … dis-pic-able!” she hissed through clenched teeth.
Doc checked all of the electrical connections from stem to stern before throwing the last of the switches that would feed power from the atomic pile in the submarine below into the motor and batteries up here. After satisfying himself that everything was working in Engineering, he went back forward to the control compartment and used the telephone handset there to call down to Shorty and Sham in the Shao-Hei-Lung’s engine compartment.
“Okay, turn on the juice!” All of the lights aboard the Devilfish flared brighter for a moment, then returned to the normal luminescence. Doc tracked down some stray 60-cycle hum that he heard in various electrical and electronic gear and made the appropriate corrective adjustments. Soon, everything was humming just as it should, with no dissonance. He got back on the phone. “Everything’s working on this end. Let me know when you’re ready to deploy the electromagnetic grapples.”
While only the Devilfish had a undersea diver egress airlock system, both submarines were equipped with remotely-controlled pantograph manipulators with electromagnets of the sort used in scrap yards to allow the subs to pick up items from the ocean floor. They were designed for undersea research and salvage, but Doc had imagined another use for them. Since they didn’t have the facilities or equipment to weld the two hulls together, Doc’s plan was use the grappling arms to clamp the Devilfish and Shao-Hei-Lung together in a mutual embrace.
The manipulators on the Shao-Hei-Lung were mounted on the bow, fully retracted into pods on either side of the control compartment. The pilot of the sub could work the crab-like claws almost intuitively, because they were always within direct view the control compartment’s panoramic window-wall at the bow. They were designed not only to pick things up but, thanks universal joints at both ends of the telescoping arms, could also reach up, over and back like the arms of an excavator and deposit their load in a bin at the forward end of the top deck. They would now perform the same operation, but grasp the nose of the Devilfish as solidly as possible.
In stark contrast, the Devilfish’s manipulators were mounted amidships, just below the port and starboard side rails. The samples that they picked up could be brought onboard through the forward airlock or, if too large, held fast against the keel. Their operation was directed through one or another of a dozen infrared and ultraviolet scopes distributed around the hull. With his face pressed against the hood covering a closed-circuit television display tube, Doc worked the manipulators to grasp and hold the Shao-Hei-Lung’s port and starboard tail fins.
A massive shudder ran through both vessels, accompanied by horrific groaning, creaking and other sounds of metal being straining toward its breaking point, combined with a disconcerting upward tilt of the Devilfish’s bow and a corresponding downward tilt of the Shao-Hei-Lung’s stern. Eventually the train wreck sounds subsided and the mated vessels assumed a uniform 30° upward pitch. “Time for the moment of truth!” Doc telephoned. “Blow all ballast! Surface! Surface! Surface!”
This was not only the acid test of the mutual grip of the two sets of grapplers, but also the final step in the repair work necessary to get both vessel shipshape for the journey to the nearest American military base, which was on the westernmost of the Aleutian Islands off the south coast of Alaska. Work parties would have to go outside to inspect and repair the hulls of both vessels. The creaking, groaning, moaning and shrieking seemed even worse, as did the pitching, rolling, yawing and twisting, but eventually both vessels settled down to the normal motion typical of all ocean-going vessel. The noises in their hull subsided, but still remained disturbing even to those accustomed to seafaring. Doc opened the exhaust port and air intakes, started the ventilation fans and climbed up the access tube to open the top hatch, then got back on the horn. “All ashore who’s going ashore! Work parties first, then anyone who wants a breath of fresh air and to stretch their legs.”
Doc sat back and watched the passing parade: Wu-Hanshu’s acolytes in coveralls carrying electric arc welder and paint sprayers, then Doc’s Associates in their diving gear, then a still-seething Cat Hazzard and finally Yuriko Koroshi, who been had relieved of her POW/patient-watch duty by Doctor Shao-Shan.
“Dang, I wish Kenny and Long Shot were here!” grumbled Trog as he trooped by. “If ever we needed an engineer and an electrician, it’s now!”
Cat ignored Doc until she just passing him, at which point she hissed, “You’re … dis-pic-able!”
Yuriko was a bit more direct. “I hate you, Doc Hazzard!” she stage-whispered in passing. “I hate you, hate you, hate you!” Even a trained Shinobi couldn’t stamp her foot on the deck plates of a submarine canted downward on a 50% grade, but she almost pulled it off.
At about the same time that Yuriko started climbing up the ladder well, the telephone buzzed. There was only one person left who could be on the line. “It’s your nickel,” Doc stated flatly. “What’s left for us to discuss at this point?”
“What, indeed!” Wu-Hanshu seemed genuinely amused. “Why don’t you come down here and visit with me while the repairs are underway? I think it’s time that we got to know each a little better. If you disagree, well, why don’t we sit down together and discuss it?”
“As it happens,” Doc replied evenly, “I really don’t have anything better to do just now. I’ll be down shortly.”
As he passed Shao-Shan on his way to the airlock, the giant Gra-Fan agent quirked an eyebrow and jerked his thumb back toward the ladder well aft of the control compartment that Doc had just vacated. “I know why your cousin in mad at you—she’s been on a tear about it for the last few hours—but whatever did you do to upset Little Miss Yuki-Onna there?” He was referring to the “Snow Woman” of Japanese mythology, a youkai or demonic spirit whose breath could freeze a man solid. “I thought that Shinobi were imperturbably stoic and emotionless.”
“Not until they until reach the age of discretion,” Doc riposted, referring the Oriental tradition that a woman generally becomes a wife at 16 and a mother at 18, but isn’t considered fully mature until she’s 30. “Seriously, though, the real problem is that I disappointed her in her imagination.”
“What do you mean, you disappointed her in her imagination?” Shao-Shan looked genuinely confused. “Do you mean that the she has imagined that you disappointed her? Or that she has somehow disappointed you? Or—”
“Both men and women get disappointed by the reality of their lives,” Doc explained, “but women alsp get disappointed in their imagination of reality. When they invest the emotion and spirit into something, they begin to imagine possibilities. They don’t just build castles in the air and then move into them, they go out and buy furniture and drapery. Yuriko imagined a happy ending to this whole mess we’re in, the best happy ending possible, and tried to make it happen.” He sighed. “She had written the script and the score and had all of the production numbers all worked out and had mentally cast herself and me in the starring roles. But when she played the scene, I not only didn’t follow the script, I stepped on her lines and upstaged her. Her castle in the air went down in flames all around her, furnishing and drapes and all. She rightly blames me for that, but the real problem is that she got disappointed in her imagination, which is ten times worse than being disappointed in reality.”
Shao-Shan’s eyes widened with sudden revelation. “Ah, so!” He looked at Doc with even more respect. “I see now why you’re considered woman-proof. You understand them all too well!” He grinned wryly. “So how are you going to deal the ensuing Pandemonium that is a woman scorned? Doubled, with your cousin also on the warpath and after your scalp?”
“They’re both upset, but they’ll both get over it and be all the better for it,” Doc replied calmly. At Shao-Shan’s skeptical look, he elaborated. “Yuriko has had a hard life, growing up Japanese-American in California, but despite all the Shionobi training she’s a dyed-in-the-buff true-blue American. Her whole world fell apart after Pearl Harbor when her American-ness was challenged and, on paper at least, taken away from her by Executive Order as well as unjust laws enacted before she was born. She and her father had already lost their home and livelihood and were on their way to detention for the Duration when this Brainstorm thing began, then she lost her father after first being convinced that he might be behind this mess, and then being captured and held by Wu-Hanshu, which did nothing to help her self-esteem. Then she and Cat escape and turn the tables, but he has an atomic ace up his sleeve and again she is held to ransom with everyone’s lives now also at stake. Get the picture?”
Shao-Shan nodded. “I get it. I understand that you’re willing to cut her some considerable slack, but—”
“But me no buts,” Doc interrupted with a hand on Shao-Shan’s broad chest. “She’s had a hard time and it’s only going to get harder, but she saw a way out, one that would give her life meaning, even if it meant ending her life altogether. She saw a happy ending in which she could play a starring role and she went for it. But it didn’t pan out and now she’s back out on the street with her hat in her hands, looking for a handout that she’s too proud to accept … and its killing her.” Doc frowned, then smiled. “But she was born American, raised American and she was willing to die an American, so she’ll get over it and she’ll get by in the end. I’ll help all that she’ll let me, but she’ll mainly do it all by herself, because that’s what both the Shinobi training and American upbringing have taught her to do. Get up, get out, get around, get over and get through. She’ll make it because she really is an American.” He lowered his hand and nodded sagely. “Just like me.”
Shao-Shan stared. “I’ve been in and among your people all this time and I thought I knew you, but I realize now that I was fooling myself. I didn’t really know you at all.”
“You were playing the part of an American,” Doc agreed softly, “but you never bought into any of the things that make Americans what they are. At heart, you’re still a Manchurian patriot, the valued retainer to a Manchu prince and would-be Emperor who would like nothing better than for that to happen. You called yourself an American, but you still think of him as ‘Master’ and yourself as his good right arm.” He clapped Shao-Shan on the shoulder. “I wish you well, Doctor Shao-Shan, but you were quite right. For all your dedicated study and superlative mastery of our dialect and idiom, you never really understood what it means to be an American.”
Shao-Shan bowed, a deep and heartfelt bow of genuine respect, and waved Doc on his way. They’d kept his Master waiting long enough.
Doctor Wu-Hanshu sat enthroned in the pilot’s seat in the control compartment of the Shao-Hei-Lung, gazing upward through the window-wall at a perpetual fog bank beyond. There was no telling what he might be seeing in those inchoate swirling mists. Perhaps he was reliving the glory days of China’s past that he still hoped to recreate. Perhaps he was already scheming how he was going to recover from this most recent loss and reclaim his Manchurian stronghold. He might simply be napping or otherwise conserving his strength and energy. He was, after all, nearly 103 years old.
He didn’t stir when Doc crossed the threshold behind him and gave no notice that he was aware of Doc’s presence until the Bronze Titan had reached the middle of the control compartment, at which point he rose to his full height, turned to face Doc squarely, clasped his hands across his midsection in a way that displayed his gold lung-shou “dragon’s claw” nail protectors to greatest effect and gave the slight but respectful bow of equals. If he had any difficult with upward slope of the deck or the amplified pitching of same resulting from being on the surface, it was in no way apparent. Standing tall again, he swept his left hand expansively toward the navigator’s seat just to starboard of the pilot’s chair that he’d rightfully claimed for his own. “Please, be seated!”
He was dressed to the nines in full Mandarin court dress: gold-brocaded peacock green slippers, gold-brocaded peacock green mang-p’ao dragon robe with a cheng-lung facing dragon embroidered on the exposed li-shui skirt, gold-trimmed peacock green p’u-lang jacket that exposed the robe’s brocaded ma-ti hsiu “horse-hoof” cuffs and ling-t’ou court collar, p’u-fang “Mandarin square” displaying his court rank as Governor of Kwang-Tung Province suspended from an gold and jade su-tshu necklace and a gold-trimmed peacock green Mandarin cap topped with a stiff upright peacock feather tassel. He waited for Doc to turn the navigator’s seat to face port and be seated comfortably before turning the pilot’s seat to face starboard and seating himself with a graceful sweep of his court robes. “May I offer you refreshment?” His golden marmoset Pek-ho, dressed in the robes and cap of a courtier, stood at the hatchway with hua-cha tea service on a silver tray.
“Yes, please.” Doc actually had no need for refreshment, but Wu-Hanshu had gone to a great deal trouble setting this up, so it was be most ungracious of him to decline. “Ah, jasmine-scented green tea!”
“Not jasmine—that would be too mundane for such as we!” Wu-Hanshu poured two cups of steaming liquid, took one in his left hand and handed the other to Doc, then made a graceful gesture of dismissal with his right hand. The marmoset executed a faultless bow and departed with the tea service. “This is orchid-scented oolong or ‘black dragon’ tea—it’s my own invention.” He took a sip and waved expansively to indicate their surroundings. “Since this vessel was originally named Shao-Hei-Lung, the Little Black Dragon, I felt that own personal blend of Black Dragon tea would be the most appropriate beverage with which to drink to our continued good health and fortune.” He took another sip, watching Doc all the while. “Would you believe it that I initially considered naming her Yingwu-Luo?”
“‘Spiral Sea Snail’?” Doc sipped from his own cup in a precise imitation of Wu-Hanshu’s mannerisms, which had the air of formal ritual. “I presume that you were paying homage to Jules Verne’s Nautilus. Your goals have always struck me as being similar to those of Captain Nemo.”
“Quite so.” Wu-Hanshu smiled with genuine warmth. “After reading a copy of his 1863 debut Cinq semaines en ballon a year after it was published, I began collecting all of his works immediately upon publication. Voyage au centre de la terre in 1864, De la terre à la lune in 1865, Vingt mille lieues sous les mers in 1869 and Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours in 1872—what are now collectively known as Les Voyages Extraordinaires—were always my favorites. They inspired my interest in science and subsequent belief that only by embracing and mastering Western scientific methodology, while retaining and expanding on its traditional medicine and wisdom, could China maintain and expand her place in the world.” Another sip. “Alas, my voice wasn’t heeded in the halls of power and I had to act upon my principles and develop all of this”—another expansive and inclusive gesture—“alone.”
“I, on the other hand, was always guided by my father.” Doc sipped his tea reflectively. “Although I ended up doing pretty much anything and everything that he ever asked of me, somehow all of those things were things that I would probably have wanted to do any way. I mean, what red-blooded American boy wouldn’t have wanted to learn how to ride a horse, shoot a gun, drive a car and fly a plane?” Another sip. “As for the academics and the daily exercises, well, my father and the tutors he engaged for me always made those a challenge, a competition and a game that I knew I could eventually win if I just applied myself.” He smiled. “I loved Verne, too, but I always found myself correcting his arithmetic or critiquing some of his scientific reasoning. Of course, by the time I was born, we’d had another generation of scientific progress to call much of his 19th Century science into question. But that only reminded me of the importance of questioning the conclusions of modern science and conventional wisdom.”
“We have arrived on the same road from different directions,” Wu-Hanshu murmured suggestively.
“We have arrived on the same road from opposite directions,” Doc corrected mildly. “And it remains to be seen where our parallel but separate paths will ultimately take us.”
“Ah, yes, your father!” Wu-Hanshu stroked his chin. “I crossed paths and, to some extent, swords with Mark Hazzard and his brother Alex back when they were exploring Yucatán. They, too, objected to both my goals and my methods.” He chuckled. “I was quite surprised to see that your cousin Cathryn still using her grandfather’s old 1873 Frontier Colt revolver. Your uncle Alex almost shot me right between the eyes with a .44-40 Winchester Center Fire round from that self-same weapon back in the summer of 1896. Not that I didn’t deserve it, mind you—I’d tried to kill him with a Brown’s Coral Snake for interfering with my harvesting of leaves of the maní-okka root that only grows in the X-làabch’e’en Valley. Your father, uncle and I called a truce when it became apparent that we all had the same interest in keeping the place—and both its flora and its inhabitants—a secret from the wider world.” He sobered. “Your father was directly responsible for your mother’s death, you know.”
Doc did not do a spit-take, but it wasn’t for lack of provocation and timing on Wu-Hanshu’s part. He did have to swallow his mouthful of tea in a painful gulp before replying, however. “Now you’re just being nasty!” he snarled. More amicably, he added, “My father did everything he could for her, both before and after she took sick for the last time.”
“My point is that she died as a direct result of his actions,” Wu-Hanshu continued doggedly. “She and her sister would have lived to a ripe old age, as their father has, had your father and uncle not removed them from the geographically isolated and, let’s face it, genetically inbred community and taken them out into the world at large, where they were constantly exposed to diseases against which they had no immunological defenses.” He raised his hand to ward off any protest. “Yes, I know, he immunized her against every disease known, but only half of the known diseases are even treatable and many of those that are still aren’t curable. He knew he was playing Russian Roulette with her life and that it was a game that they were bound to lose sooner than later. The only reason that your aunt lived long enough to give birth to your cousin is that your uncle settled down in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, far from any large human population. Your father was far too civilized for your mother’s good.”
“It was the women’s decision to leave X-làabch’e’en as much as it was men’s,” Doc observed pointedly. “They wanted see the wider world and become a part of the civilization from whence their menfolk came.”
“How it could be otherwise?” Wu-Hanshu finished his tea and set the cup on the deck. Pek-ho the marmoset materialized as if by magic, retrieved the empty cup and vanished, all within the span of a few seconds. “The twin sisters Ix-Chel and Ix-Chup chose to marry the very similar-looking male outlanders when, as co-rulers of X-làabch’e’en with their elder brother Chaahk, they could have had any man in the valley or even several of them. As convenient as it was for the twin sisters to wed a pair of similar-looking brothers, they must have also shared the brothers’ love of the exotic and foreign. Two adventurous women in love with two manly adventurers, what could be more natural—and, in the long run, more deadly?”
Again, he cut off Doc’s incipient protest. “Please forgive me, it was never my intention to impugn either your father and your uncle, or either of their womenfolk, but the fact is that the women’s deaths from Western diseases was indeed a foregone conclusion. I call it the ‘Pocahontas Syndrome’ after the daughter of the 17th Century Virginian Tsenacommacah chief Powhatan, who converted to Christianity, changed her name to Rebecca and married the English settler John Rolfe in 1614. Two years later, she accompanied him on his return to England together, where she became the toast of London before retiring to the Rolfe family home at Heacham Hall in Norfolk. She took gravely ill and died a year later, in March 1617. The state of the medical arts being what it was, the exact cause remains unknown, but theories range from smallpox, pneumonia or tuberculosis to poison. My own guess is influenza, which wasn’t identified by that name until the Irish natural philosopher William Molyneux did so in 1694.”
“Why are you unearthing this particular skeleton now?” Doc finished his own tea and set down his cup in the same way, watching as Pek-ho repeated his magic appearing-and-disappearing act. “Why so much focus on my personal history and where it has intersected yours?”
“Because that past created and has great impact on our present circumstances … and will no doubt have a bearing on our future dealings.” He heaved a sigh and let his breath out slowly in the manner that a Chinese Zen master had taught Doc three decades earlier. “You’ve been hiding yourself and your mixed heritage in plain sight all your life, even though it defines who and what you are and how you perceive the world, through a perspective that combines the ancient and traditional with the new ultramodern, just as mine does. ‘Bronze Titan’—you’ve taken the most outward sign of your mixed blood and made it both a personal trademark and a badge of honor! I cannot but be impressed by both your audacity and its unqualified success for over nearly half of this century.” He looked at Doc shrewdly. “Does your spitfire cousin even know that she, like you, is half-Mayan?”
Doc looked pained. “They’re not ‘Mayan’, they’re Itzá, although they speak Ch’olti’, one of the Western Branch dialects, rather than one of Yucatec dialects as one might expect—there’s a bit of an anthropological mystery there, which my father, myself and Shorty Longfellow have been trying to unravel unsuccessfully all these years.” He shook his head ruefully.
“But the ‘Bronze Titan’ business was my father’s idea,” he continued. “He’d made it known that I’d been raised in the tropics, which had given me a deep near-permanent tan, like the protagonist in Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, to hide the obvious by calling attention to it before anyone else raised any question about it. Later, Chester Trent, the man who writes the fictionalized accounts of my troubleshooting successes under the name ‘Cainnech Roberson’, picked up on it and even titled the first story The Bronze Titan to make it both my literal and figurative trademark. He calls the technique ‘hanging a lantern on it’ and it’s apparently quite common to have a character in a story raise a objection to some anomaly before any reader might.”
Wu-Hanshu nodded. “My own raconteur, Arthur Henry Lucan Weld writing as ‘Zach Rommel’, calls it the ‘Cyrano de Bergerac Effect’—if your character has some outstanding feature that might distract or repel your audience, make it a distinguishing feature and call attention to it in a positive way that makes it seem an attractive or ennobling virtue. The Ugly Duckling was actually a young Swan, destined to be more beautiful than any of his detractors. The best way to hide something, especially something that might otherwise draw the eye, is in plain sight in broad daylight with bells and whistles.”
Doc looked a bit embarrassed at that. “My father used to quote a line from William Congreve’s 1694 poem The Double Dealer:
No mask like open truth to cover lies
As to go naked is the best disguise
The Truth is almost always hidden in plain sight. Much of my success at solving mysteries that others find impenetrable lies in the fact that the answer has been there all along, staring them in the face, and was never really hidden at all, but too obvious to fully register.” He fished into a pocket and produced a small glass phial containing a pair of dime-sized domed discs made of brown glass the same color as that used in beer bottles soaking in saline solution. “Speaking of disguises, between us we have enough documentation to pass you and acolytes off as Kuo-Min-Tang members working against the Japanese both in China and abroad, but all of the descriptions specify brown eyes. These contact lenses should allow you to blend in without having to explain your green eyes with some really clever song and dance.”
“When are you finally going tell her?” Wu-Hanshu seemed genuinely concerned. “She really deserves to know.”
“It didn’t learn about my own heritage until I was 30,” Doc replied with no hint of defensiveness. “My father certainly never mentioned it—hiding in plain sight had become habitual, I suppose, even or perhaps especially with family. It wasn’t until my father was murdered and I went down to Yucatán that I realized the truth, that Chaahk was my uncle-in-law and that his daughter Maní-jiyu was my cousin.” Doc almost blushed. “She must take after her twin aunts, because she was also attracted to outlanders or, at least, to me.”
“That must have been extremely … awkward,” Wu-Hanshu agreed, chuckling. “Especially given that the Q’eqchi’ people of the X-làabch’e’en Valley have no taboo against marriage between cousins. However did you dissuade her?”
“Mainly by appealing to her father’s vanity and prestige,” Doc admitted with a grimace. “As the son of brother-in-law, I already had the same social status as an actual son-in-law. As heir to one of his sister’s share of the tribal lands, I was co-equal with him some regards. I suggested to him that, were he to adopt me as his son, it would raise both of our statuses, putting me in the line of succession but also making me co-equal to his daughter. He arranged the blood-sharing ceremony the next day and Maní-jiyu and I became my blood-brother and -sister and thus ineligible to marry one another.”
“Clever,” Wu-Hanshu acknowledged. “She couldn’t press her suit without defying her father and her own firmly-held beliefs.” He stroked his chin again. “You know, there’s some question as to whether or not you and Cathryn are actually cousins or, in fact, half-siblings.”
“Yes,” Doc replied. “In looking through my father’s diary and scrapbooks, I found indications that he’d briefly considered naming me Alex Hazzard, Junior instead of Mark.” He looked uncomfortable again, but not really embarrassed—they were, after all, only discussing a hypothesis. “It seems that the twin sisters liked to fool people by trading identities and seeing how long it took people to figure it out, if indeed they ever did. They were all, as you noted, quite adventurous and enamored of experiencing new things. As a result, Alex Hazzard could’ve been my father with my mother and her father with my mother’s sister and no one outside the four would have been any the wiser.”
“Yes, and it’s almost impossible to prove scientifically one way or the other.” Wu-Hanshu observed. “Physically similar brothers married to identical twin sisters—the consanguinity among the offspring of any pairing is simply too close to determine definitively with current patenity techniques.” He looked Doc straight in the eye. “So when are you going to tell her?”
“I’d always planned on telling her when she turned thirty,” Doc replied matter-of-factly, waving a hand airily. “That would put us on an equal footing, age and experience-wise, of dealing with our family heritage. But this war may still be dragging on come April 1st, 1944. If so, I’m inclined to wait until we know who’s won. If it’s the Nazis, well, then she’s better off not knowing and perhaps giving something away.” He stood, folded his hand across his middle and bowed the respectful bow of equals. “Thank you for the tea, Granduncle, and for the conversation. I’m sure that it’s given us both a lot to contemplate in the days to come.”
Wu-Hanshu rose and returned Doc’s bow, remaining on his feet until the Bronze Titan passed through the hatchway before sitting down in the pilot’s seat with a contented sigh. He clapped his hands softly and waited until Pek-ho materialized at his side in the navigator’s seat. “It won’t be long now, old friend,” he told the marmoset. “Our time is coming to an end, but we leave the world in good hands, guided by strong minds and good hearts.” He scratched the marmoset gently behind the ear with one of his gold nail protectors. “For the first time in a long time, I have genuine hope for the future!”
As Doc climbed the access tube of the Shao-Hei-Lung into the airlock of the Devilfish, he remember another poem that his father used to quote, illustrating the difficulty of determining the truth of a given situation.
In old Manchuria lived a Prince
Who rested on a throne of gold
And dreamt he was a butterfly
With silken wings both bright and bold
That flew out over spring-green hills
Until at last it came to rest
And dreamt it was a Manchu prince
Asleep beneath his golden crest
Who dreamt he was a butterfly … hai!
Which is Truth and which is Dreams?
Is Manchu man or butterfly
Or any semblance what it seems?
Despite advance warning of its arrival via tight-beam shortwave radio, a shocking surprise greeted the U.S. Army personnel stationed on the island of Attu in the Aleutians a week later.
An ungainly and otherworldly craft identifying itself as American, but looking like nothing on this Earth, sailed placidly into Chichagof Harbor on the east side of Attu. This otherworldly thing resembled a shark conjoined with a sea turtle like Siamese twins. While a full 48-starred American flag flew from a pole in the middle of the whale’s back, the turtle sported a “Rising Sun” sigil on the two tailfins. The red central orbs of these sigils had been painted over with dark blue, with a five-pointed white star painted over that, so that the sixteen red rays splayed out across the fins formed the stripes of a radial analog of the American flag that flew so proudly from the flagstaff mounted just behind the collapsed conning tower of the U.S.S. Devilfish. The oblate spheroidal craft to which it was clamped and connected had been renamed the U.S.S. Nautilus.
Trog took great delight in purposely mispronouncing the name “Nautilus” as “Naughty Lass” and never got tired of explaining that only a naughty lass would hook up with the devil’s fish. Most everyone he told this joke laughed, at least the first time, except Doc, who looked at him as if he were an idiot and said nothing, and Yuriko Koroshi, who blushed like a schoolgirl and then gave him a look that made his blood run cold. Some people, he decided, just don’t know how to let their hair down, relax and enjoy life.
Unlike Shibumi Koroshi, Doc Hazzard had a name with which to conjure immediate accommodation and had no trouble getting the base Commandant on the horn. “The U.S.S. Nautilus is an experimental craft filled with Top Secret technology that must be kept tightly under wraps and guarded at all costs. In need to arrange transport of both of these vessels to New York City as quickly and quietly as possible. Please contact Brigadier General Leslie Richard Groves, Jr. at the Manhattan Engineer District project office at 270 Broadway in New York City and notify him of my arrival here. Yes, that’s the same Colonel Leslie Groves who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon building next to the Arlington National Cemetery. Also, I have a Japanese Imperial Navy officer and seven submarine crewmen to turn over to your local G-2 people. They acted as spies in the New York City area, so you’ll need to contact both the Army Counter-Intelligence Group and the FBI branch office in Alaska to determine their final disposition.”
As soon as the submarines were docked at a secured facility in Chichagof, Doc arranged immediate transport for Cat and Yuriko back to New York, flying “Space Available” on military transport planes as temporary deputies of Special Deputy U.S. Marshal 4153, their deputation terminating immediately upon arrival and only valid for the duration of trip. Doc had no doubt that Cat would milk it for all it was worth and try to finagle whatever special favors she could along the way, but it was the simplest and most expeditious to get them both safely out of the way and beyond the reach of any difficult and inconvenient questions about their involvement in the case or, for that matter, who exactly they were. Doc’s official report referred them only as “Civilian” A and B.
During the undersea voyage from Hinotori to the west coast of Attu, the two women had become united in their common antipathy toward the male of the species in general and Doc Hazzard in particular. Their previous hostility and rivalry forgotten, they had become inseparable and greeted every other member of the party with a glare that just as well have been accompanied by a chorus of trumpeting angels singing “All Men are Pigs!” Their newfound camaraderie didn’t extend to Ming-Toy, Wu-Hanshu’s double-agent among the Japanese, probably because she had no beef with menfolk in general and remained slavishly devoted to her Master. Shorty took to calling the two women “Stheno & Euryale”—Medusa’s two surviving Gorgon Sisters, a reference that no one but Doc and Wu-Hanshu understood—while Sham called them “Fire & Ice” and Trog “the Gruesome Twosome”. Doc, when he gave any further thought to them at all, thought of them both as his Troublesome Tag-along Little Sisters.
He was more relieved than not to send them off together on the first leg of their trip back to Manhattan. Both women had availed themselves of the creature comforts in the base’s nurses’ quarters and now look as bright as new pennies and fresh as daisies. Cat was dressed in a smart white outfit that was essentially a Red Cross nurse’s uniform stripped of all medical insignia. Yuriko wore one of Ming-Toy’s plain gray shipboard cheongsam, the distaff version of what Wu-Hanshu had worn, with a Kuo-Min-Tang badge like the one that “Lin-Fong” had worn on the wide lapel of the zoot suit. She now had perfectly genuine travel documents, issued by the base’s Pass & Identification Office at Doc’s behest, identifying her as Lily Lei-Ying Lao—the alias that she’d used to hide out in Chinatown—and describing her as a Nationalist Chinese refugee seeking asylum in America.
In her darker moments, Yuriko would ironically reflect that this was actually more-or-less true, to the extent that she was now indeed a fugitive in America seeking asylum from her country’s wartime government.
Doc’s Associates departed the next day aboard a Consolidated PBY-5 Catalina flying boat normally used as a maritime patrol bomber, which had a range of over 2,500 miles and could easily accommodate three passengers in addition to the 8-man crew. This would ferry them to Seattle, where they would consult with Kenny Kenworth, Doc’s resident engineering expert, currently working as a subcontractor on the new XB-29 Superfortress bomber, about how to do deal with the technical challenges posed by the Nautilus going forward. From there, they could charter commercial transportation and arrive in Manhattan well before Cat and Yuriko could possibly do so with their “Space A” aerial hitchhiking. Doc didn’t bother seeing them off and they hardly noticed. All four men had too much on their minds than to worry about the social niceties. Besides, they were figuratively back in the trenches now and somewhat reveling in it. This was a close to serving in the Army again as they were ever likely to get.
Doc administered the counter-agent to the drug that kept the Japanese POWs comatose and turned them over to the Military Police escort that arrived few hours later. That left only the Manchurian contingent, whose disposition involved the utmost delicacy.
The first order of business had had to be resolved immediately after the conjoined vessels had docked for the last time, before anyone else could be allowed aboard: securing the atomic pile. This process essentially the diametric opposite of the forcible ejection of the control rods: the rods were inserted to their fullest extent and then locked down immovably. This shut down the atomic fission chain-reaction that generated the blast-furnace heat, which powered the steam turbines that, in turn, produced electrical power, but it didn’t stop the radioactive decay of the fissionable material itself. It stopped producing the controlled chain-reaction that generated the furnace-like heat, but it would always producing some sort of continuous atomic reaction and generally remain “hot” in the sense of being radioactive as well as in the sense of being able to boil water. While it wasn't a strong enough reaction to generate additional heat, it was enough to keep the pile from cooling down much, if at all. Damping the fission reaction to minimal levels was just the start.
Fortunately, they were in a part of the world where heat was generally regarded as a rarity, with no shortage of ice and freezing cold air. It only remained to introduce these elements into pile’s coolant system and bring the core temperature down to something approximating room temperature before Engineering could be considered fully safe.
Can such energetic and self-sustaining and potentially exponential reactions ever truly considered “safe”? Doc wondered. Probably not. As with those who lived on the slopes of an active volcano, anyone who played with atomic fire must always remain vigilant and aware of the incredible natural forces seething below their feet, kept in check at a mere fraction of its potential energy, which could be horrific if ever fully unleashed. Such power must always be kept firmly under control and never, ever taken for granted.
On the other hand, all of that could also rightly be said of Doc Hazzard himself…
It wasn’t until Doc had taken care of securing the atomic pile and the travel arrangements for his Associates and two most troublesome women currently involved in his life that Doc could turn his thoughts toward what to do about Doctor Wu-Hanshu and, by extension, the rest of the Gra-Fan. He had no doubt that their activities would come to his attention again, but until then he had agreed to what amounted to a grown-up version of Hide-and-Go-Seek without the seeking. Doc had dropped them off on the east coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula on the way to Attu, allowing them all the rations and cold-weather gear that they’d need to sustain themselves until they could be picked up by one of the Gra-Fan smuggling vessels within range of their FM transceivers that Doc had agreed to allow them take with them. It would have been a show of bad faith to keep any of them, as doing so would have given Doc the means to track them down in violation of their terms of their temporary truce.
Wu-Hanshu and his minions were free to go and do as they pleased until such time as they became involved in criminals activities that came to Doc’s attention. Until then, he was bound to ignore their existence and to forgo pursuing them in any way. Until such time as they did something that warranted renewed pursuit, they all started with a clean slate and where free to fend for themselves, separately or together, with no interference from him. What might happen when any of their paths crossed his thereafter would depend entirely on what they’d done in the meantime, unless their now “forgiven” but never to be forgotten pasts somehow caught up with them in ways that Doc couldn’t ignore in the interim. Doc didn’t like giving known malefactors a free pass of any kind, but this was war and the circumstances were hardly normal for any time and place.
Doc cast his mind back to his final conversation with Doctor Wu-Hanshu just before he took his leave and went ashore on the bleak coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula, almost exactly midway between Paramushiru and Attu. Dressed again in his sable-collared greatcoat and Karakul astrakhan hat, he looked nothing like the Mandarin empire-builder who’d greeted Cat Hazzard aboard the S.S. Hai-Lung just a few weeks earlier. His marmoset Pek-ho perched in its accustomed place on his shoulder, wearing a doll-sized hotel bellhop’s uniform tunic and pillbox cap. “Samson Stonebender” stood protectively by his side, his massive bulk wrapped in his U.S. Army-issue trench coat, from which all the military insignia had now been removed, with a deckhand’s navy-blue wool watch cap in place of his Army service hat.
“You have kept true to your word in implementing the amnesty and safe passage for me and mine,” hissed the Chinese doctor, “but I must still protest your confiscation of the Shao-Hei-Lung, especially considering all the trouble I’ve had getting her back from the accursed Japanese!”
“Spoils of war, Granduncle.” Doc replied mildly. “In any case, Nautilus is legitimate salvage under maritime law.” He sobered. “We need your advanced atomic pile and the science behind it. Our own work in that area has bogged down and, with the War raging on two fronts, it’s vital that we get it first. The Nazis have their own atomic weapon project at Haigerloch and now control the Norsk Hydro ASA heavy-water production facility at Vemork Hydroelectric outside Rjukan in Tinn, Norway. We’ve heard credible reports of secret development of an explosive-laden unmanned ‘drone’ aircraft at Peenemünde on the Baltic Sea that could be flown directly into targets up to 200 miles away—effectively, anywhere in Europe and most of the British Isles. After what the Nazis did to London, Sheffield, Coventry, Cardiff, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Belfast with conventional chemical explosives during the ‘Blitz’ last year, can anyone doubt what they’d do if they ever get atomic explosives?”
Wu-Hanshu shook his head sadly. “You would do better to concern yourself more with what the Japanese might be doing with the biological research that I was forced to leave behind in my Manchurian laboratory. The encephalatron or ‘Brainstorm’ as you call it was but one of many pieces of experimental equipment still in enemy hands!” He made a peremptory gesture toward Shao-Shan. “Give him the documents, Number Three!”
Shao-Shan reached into his trench coat and produced a thick Manila envelope, stuffed to bursting and wrapped in reinforced cellophane tape. “Here are all of the Japanese documents related to their American operation, including a complete list of all Shang-Jih Import Company personnel. We’ll have withdrawn all of our people by the time you can act on this.” Doc accepted the bulky package as if it were physically as well potentially explosive. He knew that they wouldn’t be giving it to him at all if it weren’t. “It also contains all of the documents relating to the Japanese Imperial Army’s covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit in Kwan-Dong Province: Unit 731.”
Doc raised his eyebrows at that. Explosive, indeed! “I take it that this ‘Unit 731’ is the group that occupied your Manchurian stronghold and made off with your encephalatron device?”
“Just so!” Shao-Shan nodded. “Originally known as the ‘Army Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory’ and now called the ‘Epidemic Prevention & Water Purification Department of the Kantougun’ or Kwan-Tung Army, it’s actually researching ways to create and disperse chemicals and germs as weapons against both military and civilian population centers. It was initially set up in 1935 by the Kempeitai military police, but was integrated into the Kantougun by Imperial decree in 1936.” Both Shao-Shan and Wu-Hanshu looked grim. “Their research methods appear to have been influenced by a Doctor of Anthropology—not a physician—named Josef Rudolf Mengele, best known for his work in genetics at the Institute for Hereditary Biology & Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt in 1937. He earned a medical degree in 1938 and promptly joined the SS, serving in the medical service of the Waffen-SS from 1940 until January 1942, when he was invalided out and posted to the SS Race & Resettlement Office in Berlin.”
Shao-Shan paused, long enough that Wu-Hanshu spoke up, making the most important point. “Doctor Mengele advocates human experimentation to determine the causes and effects of morbid pathology. Unit 731 has taken his policies and procedures to heart with a vengeance.” This from the notorious “Devil Doctor” widely known for using toxins and living organisms as weapons. “Men, women and even children are routinely used as targets for weapons effectiveness testing of not only bullets but also grenades, flame throwers, germ-releasing bombs, chemicals and explosives. They subject political prisoners and those merely suspected of political crimes to vivisection without anesthesia. They’ve performed human tests with plague, cholera, smallpox, botulism and other diseases. Using results from the experiments, they’ve infected agriculture, reservoirs, wells and other communal areas with anthrax, plague-carrier fleas, typhoid, dysentery, cholera and other deadly pathogens. They … are … monsters!”
It takes one to know one, thought Doc wryly. He wisely made no comment.
“My campaign to retake my Manchuria stronghold,” continued Wu-Hanshu, “and, eventually, to liberate Manchuria from the Japanese occupation, is not entirely driven by self-interest. These people have already used one of my experimental medical research devices as a weapon. It’s only a matter of time before they do so again.” He tilted his head to one side, appraisingly. “I’d hoped to convince you to join me in righting the great wrong, but I understand that you have similar concerns of your own on the other side of the world. I shall continue my quest without you for the time being, in the sincere hope that you will eventually join me later. With or without you, I shall endeavor to take what was once mine and China’s back from the Japanese. Failing that, I will make certain to destroy my Manchurian stronghold and everything in it. One way or another, I shall stop them from further perverting my discoveries and using them to expand their upstart Japanese Empire at the expense of the vastly-superior Chinese!”
“It would appear that you and my Master have more in common than you would like to admit, Doctor Hazzard.” Shao-Shan beamed with barely contained pride. “One thing still puzzles me, though. How did you learn of Shawn Twilight’s true identity as Wu-Hanshu’s son? Certainly Twilight himself never knew of your true relationship to him!”
“You’re wrong there,” Doc corrected. “Shawn Twilight learned of our relationship when he saw a copy of my full family genealogy among the documents stored in my Refuge of Seclusion. He was probably as surprised by it as I was when I later learned of it, well after the fact—I suppose that my father was going to tell me about the rest of our family after he told me about my Mesoamerican relations, but he was killed before getting around to it. In any case, Twilight was so shocked that, on our second encounter, he tried to win me over to his side instead of killing me outright. He must have felt that, sharing his bloodline and some of his ideals, that it might be enough to convince me of the validity of his way of thinking.” He cocked an eyebrow at Wu-Hanshu as if daring him to comment. He wasn’t disappointed.
“The belief that Reason will ultimately prevail runs in our family,” observed Wu-Hanshu airily. “In the light of new discoveries and revelations, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that any or all of us might eventually change our minds and fundamental beliefs about how best to solve the world’s problems.”
“My own revelation of Twilight’s origin came a year or so after the affair of the Tick-Tock Man,” Doc continued. “Once I knew about Wu-Hanshu’s involvement in his, ah, reconstruction, I did some in-depth consultation with the British Foreign Office and Scotland Yard to find out what was actually known about the Order of the Gra-Fan, its Council of Nine and its President to find out why they might take such an interest—and invest such resources—in someone who had already failed twice. I also contacted the GPU for background on Twilight before his arrest and deportation to Siberia. That’s when I discovered he’d been born in Manchuria and raised in Tibet. Once the connection became clear, it explained why Wu-Hanshu had such a consuming interest in Twilight, enough to rebuild him as the Tick-Tock Man.”
“Ah! It all seems so simple in retrospect!” Shao-Shan bowed respectfully in the Manchurian fashion, then shook Doc’s hand in the America fashion. “Until we meet again, Doctor Hazzard.”
“We shall meet again, Doctor Hazzard,” Wu-Hanshu stated with certainty, dipping briefly in the bow of equals. “And when we do, it will be at a time and place of my choosing!” He seated himself with ponderous dignity at the bow of the inflatable dinghy that would take them ashore, waving peremptorily to signal Shao-Shan to cast off, his cat-green eyes firmly fixed on his destination, without so much as backward glance.
“Perhaps we will, Granduncle,” mused Doc as the descended back into the sub and dogged the hatch. “But I rather expect we’ll both be too busy with other things for quite some time to come!”
As Doc contemplated the possible consequences of this precarious “alliance” of antithetical enemies against a common foe, so eerily reminiscent of the one that Roosevelt and Churchill had made with Stalin, he had no doubt that the President of the Council of Nine of the Order of the Gra-Fan and his minions were already aboard one their clandestine vessels, possibly even another Gra-Fan submarine, and on their way to some secret base that had somehow remained hidden throughout the War despite the best efforts of the Japanese, Chinese and Soviet naval and air forces. By now, they might even have assumed entirely new identities, with appropriate travel documents that would allow them to go anywhere they pleased. It was not an idea that Doc found easy to contemplate, much less accept, but that was only to be expected from having entered into a literal and figurative bargain with the Devil.
Despite his distinctive appearance and that of his closest companions, both human and animal, the insidious Doctor Wu-Hanshu hadn’t eluded Scotland Yard and Interpol for over half a century by allowing himself to be recognized. How it was possible for someone so distinctive and striking to disappear without a trace, travel halfway around the world, reappear so flamboyantly and then disappear again, over and over, with the most astute detectives and persistent investigators none the wiser?
Or perhaps it was because his well-publicized appearance was so distinctive that he could travel so freely. If everyone was looking for Cyrano’s nose and flamboyant style, would they look twice at a nondescript nobody with a pug nose?
Like Shiro Koroshi and Doc Hazzard, Wu-Hanshu was practiced in the art of deception and knew full well how to hide in plain sight.
Cat grabbed Yuriko from behind in a stranglehold, planted her knee in the small of the other woman’s back and drew back with neck-breaking force. The little Japanese-American rolled back and to one side, reaped out with her leg to sweep Cat behind the knees and jackknifed forward. The women performed a somersault that ended up with Cat sprawled on the floor with Yuriko on top trying to force Cat’s right foot into her left ear.
Cat slapped the mat with her free hand. “Give!” she squawked. Then, as Yuriko loosened her grip, added “Watashi wa gobuku, Yuri-sempai!” Yuriko released her and she straightened up painfully. “You darn near tied me in a knot that time!”
“It serves you right, Neko-kouhai,” giggled the world’s only American kunoichi, which Cat had recently learned was the correct Japanese term for a female Shinobi, “for trying to go the strangle way you did. There are quicker, more effective and less violent ways to stealthily subdue an opponent.”
“You don’t have to make your lessons so pointedly,” Cat complained, but her rueful smile belied her grousing words. For the past three months, Yuriko had been working for Cat as a private tutor in Shinobi combat techniques. As soon as the War was over and the anti-Japanese sentiment had died down, she would go to work as Cat’s Meow’s official chief instructor in the recently-trademarked Doc Hazzard Method™ of Self-Defense. Under the same “Lily Lei-Ying Lao” alias that she’d used to hide out in Chinatown and return to America, Yuriko was already working half-days for Cat as a physical therapist and traditional Chinese Anmo (actually traditional Japanese Anma or Shiatsu) “acupressure” masseuse and using the money to pay for her continuing education at Columbia, NYU and Weill Cornell. The physical therapy aspect fit in well with her plans to finish medical school, providing as it did practical hands-on experience and the opportunity to develop a good bedside manner.
For all of the aforementioned anti-Japanese sentiment, judo and jiu-jutsu were more popular now than before the war began. Cat suspected that some Americans feared that Japanese martial arts might be more effective than good old Yankee fisticuffs, while others just liked the idea of learning how to beat the Japanese at their own game. In any case, the gym was the only place where traditional Japanese dress could be worn openly in America nowadays. Yuriko had designed some distinctive workout clothing for Cat’s Meow based on that of Miko or “Shrine Maiden” warrior-priestesses. It consisted of a white thigh-length kimono-like jacket, called an uwagi, and a red seven-pleated divided skirt resembling a wide pair of trousers, called a umanori hakama, bound at the waist with a matching red sash or obi. White high-topped split-toed stockings called tabi, a red headband called a hachimaki, and thonged straw sandals called zori completed the outfit.
“Let’s take a breather, Neko-kouhai.” Yuriko reached for the fluffy absorbent terrycloth gym towels and tossed one to Cat, literally throwing in the towel. “Trog, Sham and Shorty will be coming over in a few minutes for that dinner we promised them to celebrate the arrival of the Devilfish and Nautilus at the Yucatán Trading Company this morning.”
The separation and transport of the hastily-conjoined submarines had been quite a project, providing some adventure that Cat had for once been quite happy to have missed. Covered with tarps and submerged to periscope depth, they were towed underwater by two Gato-class submarines, SS-216 Grunion and SS-215 Growler, from Chichagof Harbor on Attu to Puget Sound in Washington state, where the tarp-shrouded Devilfish was loaded onto a Union Pacific Railroad car normally used to transport Giant Sequoia redwood tree trunks with Nautilus on a car used to move prefabricated modular houses.
Drawn by the military-commandeered City of Portland all-aluminum Union Pacific M-10002 1,200-horsepower diesel-electric streamliner locomotive, which had been in storage waiting to be scrapped to recover its aluminum for the war effort, it made the transcontinental rail transit from Seattle to New York City in under 60 hours. In honor of this sterling performance, the condemned M-10002 locomotive had been reactivated for a full year to operate the City of Portland Portland-to-Seattle passenger connection, after which it would then continue to serve its country as aluminum and steel components of the forthcoming B-29 Superfortress strategic bomber.
“Sure took it long enough to get here,” Cat replied with a grin, knowing that the under-three-day transit must’ve set some kind of transcontinental railroad speed record. Despite being called the “1st Annual Brainstorm Veteran’s Dinner”, the rationale for the dinner had nothing to do with the official end of the Brainstorm business. Cat had come up with that rationale simply to justify using the abbreviation “BVD” for the event. The true purpose of the dinner was to celebrate Doc Hazzard having been caught literally with his pants down … and with his shirt off. In any case, the belated discovery of her final 28th birthday present when she arrived back in Manhattan had resulted in her sudden forgiveness of all of the menfolk in her life—even Doc, who had now received suitable comeuppance in her book—so all was now forgiven. The BVD was her treat to the boys for her shabby treatment of them while she was still steamed with Doc. Yuriko had wholeheartedly agreed that they both owed all of Doc’s Associates apologies.
They shed their workout clothing and stepped through a contrast shower into a relaxing 100° Japanese furo bath while Cat’s staff set up the dining room. The bath, dining room and gym were all adjuncts to the health food bar and cafeteria built into the ground floor of the Cat’s Meow health spa and beauty salon on Park Avenue. There was also a 185° sauna, mineral bath, Jacuzzi “whirlpool” jet bath, Turkish bath and even credible recreations of a Roman sudatorium and a Temazcal sweat lodge, but Cat reckoned that the furo was the most appropriate post-workout hydrotherapy, even though Yuriko had grown up California and seldom if ever actually used one before. Cat couldn’t resist mentally comparing her own physique to that of the petite Japanese-American, noting how soft the other woman looked when not exerting her incredible strength, compared to Cat’s more athletic-looking build. Yuriko was built like dancer Bebe Daniels, while Cat was built more like track star Babe Didrikson Zaharias.
Cat also couldn’t resist comparing their respective skin colors. The Yuri part of Yuriko’s name was Japanese for “Lily”—with the seemingly almost obligatory homophonic pun on the Japanese word for “Reason”—and, although Yuriko’s complexion was a lovely pale honey-gold that was characterized as “olive” in her official description, she looked almost as white as a lily compared to Cat’s deep and literally “trademark” tan. Yet Cat, despite her distinctive bronze coloration, was considered “White” while Yuriko, who was obviously the physically whiter of the two, never would be. Clearly, the Powers That Be who ran this sorry old world really needed to have their eyes—or perhaps their heads—examined.
She’s silk and I’m whipcord, thought Cat. She’s softer and more feminine than I’ll ever be and tougher, stronger, faster and even sneakier than I am. It really isn’t fair! She sighed, but not the sigh of contentment that Yuriko was giving. Get over it! Nothing in life is fair. You’re never going to beat Doc and Yuriko at their own game. You’re just going to win as best you can with the cards that Life has dealt you. Cat gave a genuine grin at this. And, if all else fails, you can do something that neither of those two Goody Two-Shoes would ever even consider: cheat!
For her part, Yuriko was totally oblivious to everything but the sybaritic delight of soaking buoyantly in blood-warm water fragrant with the tartly bittersweet scent of orange blossom. She floated in languorous contentment with her head pillowed on the rim of the traditional box-shaped Hinoki Japanese cypress wooden tub, softly humming a Victor Herbert tune sung by Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy in the 1935 MGM musical Naughty Marietta.
Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life, at last I’ve found thee
Ah! I know at last the Secret of it All
All the longing, striving, seeking, waiting, yearning
The burning hopes, the joys and idle tears that fall!
For ’tis Love, and Love alone, the world is seeking
And ’tis Love, and Love alone, that can repay
’Tis the answer, ’tis the end and all of Living
For it is Love alone that rules for aye!
I’m starting to wonder about that girl, though Cat, then remembered that Yuriko would only have been 12 or 13 when that film came out. Cat herself had just turned 21 that year, about the same age that Yuriko was now. Where does the time go? In just two more years, she’d be 30. Not that mere chronological age mattered. Look at Doc, over 40 and still going just as strong, maybe even stronger, than when he started out over a decade ago. Whatever else you might think about the man, he certainly set an inspirational, albeit sometimes daunting, example!
Bundled up in big fluffy terrycloth bathrobes with their hair bound up in matching terrycloth turbans, Cat and Yuriko crossed the central atrium to the elevator up to Cat’s private penthouse apartments. Above the entrance to the atrium was a sign that could be read from a block away:
Cat couldn’t help but smile delightedly as she walked past the birthday present that Trog and Sham had built for her so many months ago and whose unveiling, as with so many other things, had been delayed by the Brainstorm incident. It was a display case built like a three-sided mirror with life-sized full-color glossy photographs in place of mirror glass. The pictures were seven feet high and three feet wide and each depicted the same subject: Doc Hazzard.
All three pictures showed Doc in swimming trunks, performing his daily two-hour exercise routine. The one on the right showed him clasping his hands over his head, biceps bulging like footballs. The middle one showed him pressing his palms together in front of his face, massive chest and abdominal muscles over-tensed and bunching, the latissimus dorsi muscles along his back clearly visible from the front, standing out like the hood of a cobra. The one on the left showed him with his hands behind his head, trying to push his head forward while his neck muscles cabled in resistance, his abdominals crunching up like a washboard. Light glistened on a sheen of perspiration, highlighting the contours of his straining musculature like a thin layer of oil, making him resemble an idealized bronze sculpture by Jean de Roncourt.
Each of these three candid images of Doc Hazzard in action far surpassed any depiction of a classical god or hero that Cat had ever seen. They drew the eye from across the room, which made them all the more effective for the use to which she now put them. But the kicker was the metallic bronze foil-lettered sign across the top of the display that exhorted:
Trog and Sham had taken the pictures secretly with the palm-sized cameras that Doc himself had given them, blown the pictures up in Trog’s darkroom and mounted them in one of Sham’s own gold-framed dressing mirrors. Sham had done the legal legwork to obtain the Doc Hazzard Method™ trademark and a license to use Doc’s name and image, for which Hazzard & Associates got a hefty 10% royalty interest of the net profit from whatever income derived from it. He had also drafted the legal disclaimers noting that neither Hazzard & Associates corporately nor Doc Hazzard personally endorse either Cat’s Meow or its application or use of his Self-Development Method, which had been designed by him specifically and exclusively for himself and might therefore not be similarly effective for anyone else.
Cat had laughed for hours the first time she’d seen it and she’d made enough money from teaching Doc’s routine to morbidly obese businessmen in the last week to pay Yuriko’s tuition for an entire semester. She’d since had three glamorous tastefully semi-nude “pin-up” portraits of herself as an Arabian Veil Dancer, a Jungle Girl and an Indian Maiden, all glistening with her own sheen of baby oil—a delectable Delilah to Doc’s sinewy Samson, cheesecake to match and balance the beefcake—mounted back-to-back with the Doc Hazzard Method™ triptych, facing in the opposite direction, under a bronze-foil sign that proudly proclaimed:
Not surprisingly, Cat’s business revenue had doubled yet again, without sharing any of the profit with Doc.
And I bloody well earned every red cent of it! Cat thought with more than a little satisfaction. They weren’t just glamour photos, any more than the snaps of Doc had been static artistic poses. She’d actually been belly-dancing for all she was worth in the first shot, which showed off and highlighted her abdominal and thigh muscles. For the Jungle Girl shot, she’d hung one-handed from a vine-covered hawser rope, steadied by one foot that did little or nothing to support her weight, which stretched her one arm and leg and the torso in between taut while allowing the other arm and leg to show their feminine softness in stark contrast. The recurve bow that she held at full extension was no studio prop, but a laminated yew heartwood and sapwood hunting bow with a 45-pound draw, the effort of which had thrown her back and shoulder muscles into sharp relief, highlighted to best effect by the oil sheen and dramatic lighting. Hard and soft, light and dark, both artfully displayed side-by-side. Nice!
She was rightfully proud of the result, which was every bit as impressive as the candid shots of Doc, but with an entirely different appeal to both men and women. Observers could both admire and aspire to be like those in these images, which were less the result of camera trickery than they were the hard work and dedication of the models. Cat could point to them and rightfully say that she and Cat’s Meow practiced what they preached when it came to developing strong and beautiful bodies for those who were willing to put in the time and effort to achieve such dramatic results. Not that she was averse to selling glamour. Five years ago, she had modeled for pin-up and glamour artist Earl Moran, resulting in a life-size classical nude entitled “Golden Goddess” that had been licensed by the Globe Brewing Company of Baltimore for their Arrow Beer series of ten nude pin-up posters published by advertising calendar producer Brown & Bigelow of St. Paul. The piece had been renamed “Matchless Body” to tie in with the Arrow Beer product theme, but that title worked just as well for Cat’s Meow. The original oil painting, framed in gold, now held a place of honor on the far wall of the atrium, where it hung between elegant midnight-blue velvet curtains that made the fulvous female figure seem to blaze with golden glory.
It was not vanity or base appeal to prurient interest that had had led Cat to sit for the nude portrait and display in the atrium of Cat’s Meow. The plain fact of the matter was that, apart from her being related to Doc Hazzard, Cat’s own face and figure were her best advertising for the services he offered at such exorbitant rates. Her ill-considered initial trading on Doc’s name had only made him more determined than ever to exclude her from his adventures, now she now had a way to exact some measure of revenge and profit from it immensely. The candid photographs of Doc performing his daily exercise routine were also creating a sensation for another and entirely unexpected reason.
A single detail in those three candid snaps completely changed the perception of Doc in the minds of everyone who saw them. Everyone’s mental image had hitherto been shaped by the illustrations on the covers of the Doc Hazzard Magazine rather by actual photographs of him, which were admittedly few and far between and generally taken from a considerable distance. Although he had often be shown with his shirt off or torn to shreds, these images always showed a chest devoid of hair, like those of the Olympic swimmers turned Saturday matinée movie stars Johnny Weissmuller ands Larry “Buster” Crabbe. These photos showed that Doc had, in fact, a he-manly chest full of hair with the same spun-copper hue as Cat’s own crowning glory. Cat had heard more than a few nervous titters from the womenfolk and seen more than few knowing nods from women and men alike to convince her that their amazed reaction to this cognitively dissonant but obvious-in-retrospect revelation was typical. It made Doc seem all that more of a human being and less of an adolescent fantasy come to life.
Looking at the triptychs, and the hungry looks of some of the people who were also looking at them—and, in some cases, at her—reminded Cat that it was close to dinner time and that she too was suddenly getting hungry! This dinner had been a long time coming and promised to be well worth the wait! Despite the wartime meat rationing, Cat had been able to put together the makings of a sumptuous “surf-and-turf” Angus prime rib and Maine lobster dinner, thanks in part to the fact that she’d inherited her father’s cattle holdings in British Columbia’s Okanagan region, while seafood was exempt from rationing here on the Atlantic seaboard. Cat and Yuriko played dress-up while Cat’s resident Le Cordon Bleu Grand Diplôme Chef de Cuisine Henri-Paul Pellaprat, who’d taken refuge in Manhattan following the Nazi occupation of Paris two years earlier and was now fully accredited as a Registered Dietitian and nutritionist, supervised the actual dinner preparations.
Cat wore a floor-length silver lamé evening gown with matching elbow-length gloves and shoes designed by Howard Greer for Rita Hayworth and her hair done up in a stylish modern rolled Pompadour. The bodice of the gown left her neck and shoulders bare, making an elegant backdrop for the stunning ancient Mayan necklace. Yuriko wore the gold-brocaded red Cheongsam dress that she’d bought at Macy’s Herald Square to disguise herself as a Chinese nightclub hostess or cocktail waitress, with gold silk opera gloves and gold high heels borrowed from Cat’s wardrobe. Her long straight black hair was now upswept in the Japanese traditional Taka Shimada style, a high chignon secured by two chopstick-like gold-plated brass kogai kanzashi hairpins, one topped with a gold filigree Koroshi mon or family crest and the other with the Kenobi mon, which had been a wedding present to her mother. She’d never had any suitable occasion to wear them before, but now seemed as good a time as any.
While Cat and Yuriko had been content to dress themselves and one another, they let Cat’s expensive salon staff do their hair, apply their makeup and do their nails while they chatted about this morning’s rally in Times Square marking Adolf Hitler’s 53rd birthday with a sale of War Bonds, Britain’s recent ban on the manufacture of lace on women’s underwear beginning June 1st in an effort to minimize textile-industry labor and literally eliminate unnecessary frills, Byron Nelson’s victory over Ben Hogan at the Augusta Masters’ Golf Tournament that afternoon and just about anything else that they knew wouldn’t be of interest to The Boys. There would be plenty of time to talk about the recent Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, which was boosting morale all across the country, and the fall of Bataan and Corregidor in the Philippines, which had previously crushed it, over dinner. Those were topics that the lads would certainly want to discuss and, of course, weigh in on while enjoying a fine feast with lovely ladies.
The custom makeup and hair styling were one of the current selling points at Cat’s Meow, which famously eschewed the more commonly used harsh chemical treatments in favor of organic “natural” applications. Most of the industrial chemicals used in modern cosmetics, especially the peroxides, had military applications and were now considered strategic war matériel, making them just about impossible to get for the Duration. Cat’s less industrial approach not only allowed her to keep her salon supplies fully stocked in wartime but also saved her a pretty penny, since most of the ingredients were produced at her own Northwest Canadian farms and cattle ranch. While other spas and beauty establishments were cutting back or shutting down completely, Cat had been able to double her clientele and hire more staff, many of them her former competitors. She invested half her Cat’s Meow profits in War Bonds, though, so not even her most jealous rival could get away with calling her a profiteer.
Trog, Sham and Shorty arrived right on schedule, with Trog and Shorty in ill-fitting but appropriate evening clothes—Trog was the original “Mr. Five-by-Five” and Shorty was two men tall and half-a-man wide, making them hard to fit by even the best of tailors—while Sham was resplendent in top hat and tails with an opera cape whose burgundy silk lining matched his sash, scarf, pocket handkerchief and Crimson Glory rose boutonnière. Topping it all off was his new swordstick of polished Yucatán cocobolo of the same type used in custom high-end cue sticks. The handle was a single solid piece of drop-forged vanadium tool steel plated with 10-karat gold and wrapped in burgundy Cordovan leather. The new handle was not only even more durable that the blade mounted to it, it also turned Sham’s swordstick into the world’s most effective (and expensive) knobkerrie.
“Looky here, Cat!” Trog waved a hairy hand at Sham. “We brung a nationally-syndicated comic-strip celebrity: Mandrake the Magician! You should ask him to pull a rabbit out of that topper! ‘Nothing up my sleeve … Presto!’” He mimed the described actions with an exaggerated theatrical air and a grin as big as The Ritz.
“So says Alley Oop from the Kingdom of Moo!” sneered Sham. “I wish I were Mandrake—then I could gesture hypnotically and make everyone think that you were actually a human being, instead of a Neanderthal in a monkey suit!” He doffed his hat and cape with a flourish and added, “Of course, that wouldn’t do anything for that Bronx Zoo Monkey House smell … Is that your cologne, Jimber-Jaw, or have you been picking through the garbage in The Bowery again?”
The dining room, like most of the community areas of Cat’s Meow, was equipped with a twenty-four-disc Wurlitzer Model 750 jukebox, which played the recently-developed “V-Disc” 78-RPM twelve-inch vinyl recordings of Billboard “Hit Parade” music, including: Cole Porter’s “Ace in the Hole” performed by Mary Jane Walsh; “Amapola”, “Blue Champagne” and “Tangerine” by the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra; “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” by The Andrew Sisters; “Chattanooga Choo Choo”, “In the Mood”, “PEnnsylvania 6-5000” and “This Time the Dream’s on Me” by Glenn Miller & His Orchestra; “Cherokee Maiden” by Bob Wills & The Texas Playboys, “I-Yi-Yi-Yi-Yi (I Like You Very Much)” by Carmen Miranda; “Take the ‘A’ Train” and “Just A-Sittin’ & A-Rockin’” by Duke Ellington; “The Night We Called It a Day” by The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and “Jersey Bounce” and “Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)” by Benny Goodman & His Orchestra. All of the music was chosen to be physically and emotionally stirring without being distracting or intrusive.
Dinner was a great success, with the conversation covering a wide variety of subjects as it always did. Finally, the topic of conversation drifted around to the recent Brainstorm business. “I hear that the Secretary of the Army’s appointed John Bellman to Warrant Officer,” Cat remarked cheerfully, taking a long draw from her twenty-inch chrome-tipped stainless steel Art Deco quellazaire and let it out through both nostrils with a satisfied sigh. She didn’t smoke, of course, and in fact didn’t allow smoking on the premises. Instead of a cigarette, she’d inserted a Vicks Vapor Inhaler. It provided all the joys of menthol—plus camphor, eucalyptol and lavender oil—without any of the nasty smoke and messy ash residue of an actual cigarette. “He’s currently in training at Fort William Henry Harrison in Montana en route to an assignment with the 1st Special Service Force, a joint American-Canadian commando unit gathering in the Aleutians.”
“Good for him … and them, too!” Sham raised his glass in toast, then nodded regretfully toward Yuriko. “I’m afraid I haven’t been able to make much progress on contesting the Internment orders in court. The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the various laws, although that may change if we can make the case that singling out Japanese-Americans while ignoring German- and Italian-Americans is a denial of equal protection under the law, as set forth under the Fourteenth Amendment.” He sighed. “That’s a double-edged sword, though—it could result in the unjust imprisonment of even more loyal Americans, rather than freeing those already in detention.”
He took a sip from his glass and concluded, “It’s complicated by the fact that Tetsuhito and his bunch were operating within the continental United States the whole time, giving the alarmists and bigots support for their claim of a ‘clear and present danger’ as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in the unanimous opinion for the 1919 case of Schenck v. United States, which upheld government regulation otherwise free speech against the Draft.” He shook his head sadly. As a senior partner of the prestigious Times Square law firm Connors, Cruiks, Lagowitz, Schuster, Upton & Weir—which names Trog always gave in reverse order, pronouncing the names “We’re Uptown Shysters, Lackwits, Crooks & Conners”—he took any perceived failure of the legal system personally. “I’m afraid that Lily will have to continue laying low for some time to come.”
“There ain’t no justice!” Trog piped. Despite Sham’s many vehement denunciations of Trog’s appearance and fashion sense, his table manners were flawless. “It looks like this Tetsuhito bird was the one big fish that got away,” he continued gloomily. “He was picked up by some Japanese coastal patrol, taken back to base and ferried home to the Tokkou-Kempeitai HQ in Tokyo. They apparently decided that the Brainstorm venture, although a disastrous failure that cost them their entire East Coast spy network, could be chalked up to the fortunes of war.” He snorted. “Some people just can’t admit that they’re human. Our own FBI is covering up the whole Shang-Jih bust, turning all the spies they’ve caught quietly over to Army CIC, because J. Edgar Hoover was already on record as saying that the Internment is unnecessary because his FBI had already concluded that Japanese-Americans posed no security threat.” He laughed. “I guess that their Shigeta Koroshi and our Old Man John are cut from the same cloth!”
“The Brainstorm, for all of his horrific potential, was never a viable weapon,” Sham opined. “It was a longshot, a desperate gamble to create another demoralizing Pearl Harbor type incident to break our will to fight, a ‘chancy scheme’ based solely around the use of a stolen experimental Chinese weapon!” He took another sip. “So Tetsuhito got a pass and went back to business as usual.”
“So my disgraced cousin Tetsuhito wasn’t required to commit seppuku, then?” asked Yuriko. In order to spare Yuriko’s feeling, everyone who knew the truth had agreed to perpetuate Doc’s deliberate dissimulation and keep Shibumi’s name and true identity secret, identifying the man behind the Gojira mask as Tetsuhito Koroshi, a son of Tokkou-Kempeitai mastermind Shigeta. It was bad enough that Yuriko had to live with the knowledge that her father had been killed by a family member now identified as her cousin. It would be even harder for her to learn that it had been patricide by her own elder half-brother.
“They gave that up quite a while ago,” Sham noted dryly. “Only the fanatics insist on keeping that kind of tradition. Of course, Tetsuhito was a Shinobi, which is also an outmoded lifestyle, so he just might’ve done it.”
“An anachronistic antecedent authoritarian atavism,” agreed Shorty, raising his own glass in toast. “To the Bad Old Days!” the others chorused.
“Tetsuhito didn’t get off scot free, though,” gloated Trog. “While he’s still a high-ranking officer in the Tokkou-Kempeitai, they gave him an insignificant desk job at a military base on an island in the Seto Inland Sea—wherever that is. Believe or not, he’s quartered and has an office in a danged Sixteenth Century wooden castle! What really gripes me is that he’s snug as a bug in a rug there, so he’ll be safe as houses for the Duration. It’s getting so there ain’t no justice in this world!”
“That’s all news to me,” drawled Sham. “The Inland Sea is the body of water in the south of Japan enclosed by three of the four main islands—Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu—and connects the Pacific with the Sea of Japan. It’s also the main transport link between Osaka and Kobe. That makes it a pretty strategic location, so this island must be about as centrally located as you get militarily in Japan these days. His new job may not be as insignificant as you think! Did you get the actual name of this place?”
“Some place I never heard of before.” replied Trog. “Say, Shorty, have you ever heard of a place called … Hiroshima?”
Timeframe: Saturday, 28 March 1942 to Monday, 20 April 1942
Word Count: ~96,000 words
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Last Update: 25 August 2018