"It seems I am now a man without a country."

"But not a man without a purpose," Lysander offered. "Do you have any immediate family who we can a.s.sist? The Gestapo has been known to-"

"No. I am an only child. My parents are dead. I suspect that is another reason Commodore Canaris recruited me," Deitel said.

"Papers and other evidence we found on the body of the German agent Rucker shot indicate that, er, they came in by way of New York, which means they've been on your trail for a while," Lysander said.

"Papers?" Rucker asked. "Wait, that doesn't sound like SD. They know better; they always come in clean. Sounds more like Union agents. One of Eliot Ness's men." He was referring to the head of the Union's infamous Federal Security Bureau, counterpart to the Union's Federal Bureau of Investigation.

All the more reason Rucker was officially done with this job. Now it involved no less than two foreign powers. He couldn't put Dr. Deitel in his rearview fast enough.

"We thought that, too, at first, but the team were German," Lysander said. "Which means, good news, they want us backtracking them to New York."

"A trap," Rucker said.

Lysander nodded. "Fox, we're going to need you for this, too. New York will be first on your agenda."

"Whoa. This isn't a society client having problems with a trade venture. This is all governmenty. You know I don't cotton to that kind of deal."

"Double Far Ranger Air's usual fee," Lysander offered.

Dammit, Rucker thought. Lysander knew he couldn't refuse. Chuy wouldn't let him. The company was just barely keeping their birds in the air. They had a lot more to lose than just his distaste for getting involved in national conflicts and state level espionage.

He didn't answer, though.

Deitel raised his hand. "But you said New York is a trap."

"Oh my yes," Lysander said. "The perfect opportunity to learn who is pulling the strings, and what they know."

Deitel's face held zero expression. "From inside the trap?"

"Yes," Lysander said. "No. I mean, what?"

Rucker shook his head. In for a penny . . .

"Let me get my head around what you're asking, and what's the actual situation," he said, and began ticking the points off on his fingers. "An army of darkness. The world in the balance. Mad n.a.z.i scientists meddling in the occult. And monster men."

"Yes," Lysander said.

"And the odds are long and we're outnumbered?"

"Naturalisch," Deitel said.

Rucker pulled out a cigar and chewed it. Then he grinned. It was the grin of a predator.

"Fine, but it will cost you triple."

"Two and a half," Lysander countered.

Rucker mulled it over.

"Deal."

Rucker and the old man shook. It was more binding than any contract. "Payable to Far Ranger Air."

Lysander just smiled.

Deitel whispered to Rucker, "I wish I could feel as confident as you. This is overwhelming; it's all so new to me."

"Eh, we deal with this kind of thing all the time, Doc," Rucker said. "No problem."

While Lysander gathered his files, Rucker poured another drink. Then he saw the old man's expression.

" 'Lysander? What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

Lysander cleared his throat.

"Um, there is one other small thing, Fox. The New York connection may be more than coincidence, but it's fortuitous. We need you to, er, ex-filtrate our 'man' in New York to a.s.sist in this endeavor. Now, this is one of the top field agents in Prometheus, and an expert in European archeology and artifacts, particularly early Christian relics. This agent is on an undercover a.s.signment right now at the Morgan Museum of Natural History in New York City. You'll need this kind of expertise."

Rucker's eyes widened. He was muttering, "Oh, no."

"You'll have to get into the city, and get her out."

Her? Deitel thought.

Rucker grew louder. "No."

"Yes, Fox, it's her."

"No. No. No. No. No."

"Here's your briefing packet. I need you two in the Big Apple by just after sunrise. But first you need to visit Nikola. He's working up something that may be of use if you run into any of the Black Sun's shambling monsters. I spoke to him about two hours ago. He'll meet you at his lab on the campus."

Lysander turned to go.

Rucker just shook his head as the waitress poured coffee.

"You're doing this on purpose," he yelled at Lysander's back.

"If anyone can help us get the spear before the Germans, it's her," came the reply.

Rucker started off in a huff.

"Allons-y, Deitel. We have a plane to catch. Dammit."

Deitel, as usual, was lost.

Rucker was muttering, "G.o.d I hate New York."

"What is the matter?"

"Monster men and n.a.z.is? Reasonable. Unstoppable cannibal creatures? Okay, I'm still on board. But now we're up against something well and truly horrific."

Deitel waited. Finally he could wait no more.

"What?" the doctor asked.

"My ex."

CHAPTER SIX.

Austin University Austin Texas Freehold In just eleven hours on the ground in Austin, Deitel had met a cast of odd characters, but none was as queer a duck as the scientist Lysander had insisted they visit before taking off to New York. The man's name was Nikola Tesla.

Ensconced in an open floor lab facility on the ma.s.sive 350-acre campus of Austin University, the science hero referred to as Nikola-not Dr. Tesla-had a magnificent view from the third story of what Rucker called the "Bat Bridge." It was so named, he told Deitel, because more than a million Mexican long-tailed bats roosted beneath it. The bats helped keep the summer mosquito population down. Nikola said he found their flying formations mesmerizing and meditative, and credited them with inspiring one of his theories of fluid dynamics.

Nikola's lab looked like it contained every machine ever built by man, and many never seen outside of some Republic matinee serial about Martian invaders. Deitel took Nikola's accent to be Austrian, with a trace of Serbian dialect. The scientist was an elderly but spry man with a gaunt face, a full head of white hair, and a bushy white mustache. He wore goggles on his forehead and a bow tie. If Lysander had awoken the old man in this, the early hours of the morning, the scientist didn't show it. He buzzed about like hummingbird.

On the wall was a picture of Nikola from decades before, standing alongside the writer Mark Twain, who he once counted among his best friends. Nikola, Rucker had informed Deitel, had lived in Paris in his early twenties, finally immigrating to the Union States in the 1880s. After being manipulated and intellectually waylaid by his employer and then compet.i.tor, Thomas Edison, Nikola had retreated to Texas, where Edison couldn't use paid-for legislators to crush compet.i.tion.

Now professor emeritus of electromechanical engineering here at Austin University, the work Nikola did in this very room-Lab 333-had changed the course of science. He was also more than a bit mad, which Rucker said only made it fair-the n.a.z.is had mad scientists, so they fight them with their own mad scientist.

Nikola had to dig through several steamer trunks to find what he was looking for. It looked like a stylized pistol made of brushed steel with odd, finlike protrusions and a blue gla.s.s ball on the back. Under the watchful eye of his cat and with Vivaldi playing on a phonograph in the background, he explained the bizarre weapon he held proudly in his hand..

"This is a teleforce weapon," Nikola said. "It produces manifestations of energy in free air instead of a high vacuum, which generates a tremendous nondispersive electrical, or rather electrostatic, repelling and disruption force. It's powered by a narrow stream of atomic cl.u.s.ters formed in a matrix of mercury and tungsten accelerated via a magnifying, reverse wave transformer."

He said this as casually as one might explain how to put petrol in a motorcar, and like it should be that obvious.

"This is actually the initial test prototype," he said. "I got the idea when thinking of ways to deal with the chupacabras in the Chihuahua Outback. The second prototype is in storage. It's large enough that it takes two men to carry it. It has one hundred times the power. The final version I'm working on will be so large it will have to be mounted on a steel crawler-panzer, as they call it in Deitel's country, or tank as they say in England. Of course, the final version is years away, but it will have enough firepower to disable a battleship at a range of fifty miles."

"Why would you want to make such devastating weapons?" Deitel asked, in equal measure with admiration for the genius and horror at the prospect of such power.

"I want to make war obsolete," Nikola said, as if the answer couldn't be more obvious.

Deitel feared the man vastly overestimated the intelligence of his fellow men. And underestimated it-man would find a way to turn his purely defensive weapons into offensive ones no matter how task specific Tesla tried to make them.

Rucker hefted the strange pistol, which looked a lot like a child's toy. "It's a ray gun, like in the Buck Rogers comic strip?"

"No, no, no. It is a teleforce electrostatic projector," Nikola said.

There was a moment of silence. He didn't realize more needed be said.

Rucker gestured for more.

"Oh, of course. It produces a stream of atomic cl.u.s.ters, yes?" Nikola said, wondering if that was enough.

Another pause. Nikola rolled his eyes.

"It's a ray gun," he said.

"Will it kill those things the n.a.z.is are making?" Rucker asked.

"Lysander explained to me the creatures. Marvelous sounding. I would love for you to bring me back a specimen. But no matter-whatever manner of living creature the n.a.z.is have created, its nervous system will be like all other animal life-powered by electrical impulses. At the base setting, this could stun an elephant. At a high enough setting, it will permanently disrupt the nervous system."

Rucker looked as uncomfortable handling Nikola's ray gun as Deitel had been handling Rucker's sidearm.

"Is there any danger to the shooter when the tele . . . um, electromag . . . um. when I shoot it?"

"Oh no. No no no. No. Safe as houses," Nikola said. "Well, It may be prudent to shield your eyes and hands just in case. Well, there is some static discharge if the matrix builds up an excess cl.u.s.ter in the transformer. Well, I wouldn't fire it more than three times every two minutes. Well, five minutes. And don't let it get too hot. Or too cold. Or wet."

Nikola gave Rucker a small case full of other gadgets he said the pilot might find useful. Walking back to the car they'd borrowed, they heard a voice yelling to them from a third floor window.

"For heaven's sake, don't drop it!"

"Are we bringing that on the plane with us?" Deitel asked. "What if it teleforces the engines? What if-"

"Oh, knock it off. You'd worry the horns off a billy goat," Rucker said. He looked again at the case holding Nikola's death ray pistol. He pushed it toward Deitel.

"Here, hold this," he said.

"Nein!"

"Swell," Rucker said. "One deadly experiment to deal with another deadly experiment. Why can't we let the mad scientists fight it out?"

Deitel considered.

"Ja. Everybody knows what good fighters doctors and scientists are."

Somewhere over Tennessee, CSA En route to New York City When Lysander Benjamin told Deitel and Rucker he needed them in New York City by early morning, Deitel a.s.sumed that he meant in two days. It was past midnight and New York City was almost 1,600 miles northeast. Even in this modern world of 1928, that put the destination almost ten hours away. But now they were one-third of the way to the capital of the Union States; flight time so far just over one and a half hours.

Austin to New York in a hair more than five hours.

This marvel of speed was thanks to one of the Prometheus Society's regents he'd met that evening-the amazing oil drill magnate and movie producer who was also an aviator and aircraft designer. He was the Freehold's version of a Renaissance man-Howard Hughes.

Born in the coastal city of Lamar, Hughes inherited a small fortune from his father's manufacturing company, which owned the patent on a special drill bit design. He turned it into a large fortune by building Hughes Aircraft, headquartered in Austin, and a movie production company located in the Cabo Madera motion picture dream factory in Cabo San Lucas, Texas.

It was Hughes's own plane that was speeding Rucker and Deitel to New York.

Hughes was piloting a twin-engine aircraft of his own design, the H-3 Hermes Racer, at a speed in excess of 320 miles per hour. It was almost half again as fast as the fastest military fighter in the world, and eighty miles per hour faster than the young heir's first racer, the H-1.

Rucker had carried on and on about the H-3's groundbreaking design, saying it was one of the cleanest and most elegant aircraft designs ever conceived. He spoke in respectful tones about the way rivets were countersunk flush and the way the propeller had a cone-shaped housing, both of which reduced drag exponentially.

The twin 28-cylinder Cyclone engines provided almost 2,000 horsepower each, making possible the incredible speeds the craft could achieve at high alt.i.tude. The craft could cruise at 40,000 feet without the pilot or pa.s.sengers needing oxygen masks, thanks to Hughes's other revolutionary innovation, the pressurized c.o.c.kpit and cabin.