Indiana Jones and the Hollow Earth Page 2

  "Not the storm," Baldwin said. "It is the Schutzstaffel, and they have followed me here. Do you own a gun?"

  "Of course," Indy said. He glanced at the suitcase, where his .38-caliber Webley, revolver and a box of cartridges were nestled amid the socks and underwear. "But who are these people and why would we need to defend ourselves?"

  "You know them better as the SS," Baldwin said.

  "Nazis," Indy said. "Stormtroopers."

  "This is a special squad," Baldwin said. "Agents of the Luminous Lodge of the Vril, also known as the Thule Society, the seed from which the German National Socialist party grew. This group of fanatics has been trailing me for months. Finally, earlier tonight, on the streets of Washington, they ran me down with a motorcar in an attempt to kill me and take my secrets. I escaped only because an alert cabbie saw me go down and stopped to help.... Get your gun."

  "You're delirious," Indy said as he took his winter coat from the hook next to the door. "You rest here quietly. I'm going to bring a doctor back with me."

  "No," Baldwin said. "There is no time."

  "You're right," Indy said as he buttoned the coat and patted down his pockets for the keys to his Ford coupe. "We've got to get you to a hospital. Come on, I'll help you to the car."

  "No." The old explorer grasped Indy's sleeve. "I beg you," he said. "Listen to me."

  Indy paused.

  "Grant me five minutes, then I will go."

  Indy hesitated, then nodded.

  "All right, Captain," he said. "Five minutes. Then we're off to the hospital."

  "Agreed." Baldwin nodded. "Do you remember, so long ago in Chicago, the one question in particular you asked which took me aback, one that nobody had ever asked me before. Do you remember it?"

  "Yes," Indy said. "It was a silly, graduate-student sort of question—I asked if any artifacts from an advanced, ancient civilization had ever been found in the high Arctic. Of course, you said no."

  "I lied," Baldwin said.

  He shoved the box into Indy's hands.

  "There is no one else I can trust," Baldwin wheezed. "The Nazis have finally killed me, but they do not have the prize they seek. Protect the contents of this box at all costs.... There are some things that mankind is not yet ready to know."

  "You're not going to die," Indy said forcefully.

  "Everybody dies," Baldwin said. He rested his head against the back of the chair. "And I have lived more than my allotted time on the earth—I am beginning to feel positively biblical. Time to make room for somebody else, wouldn't you say?"

  "No," Indy replied, "I would not."

  "Dr. Jones," Baldwin said. "Have you ever pondered what is beneath our feet?"

  "As an archaeologist, that's about all I ponder."

  "No," Baldwin said. "I don't mean a few feet. I mean miles beneath our feet—hundreds of miles, in fact."

  "Past the crust."

  "There are nearly two hundred million square miles on the surface of the earth," Baldwin said, "and less than one third of that is land. But beneath the surface, there are two hundred and sixty-eight billion cubic miles, and nearly all of it is unexplored."

  "Are you trying to say the earth is hollow?" Indy asked. "If so, I've heard these arguments before, and they have failed to convince me."

  "Not hollow, not like an empty sphere or some type of geode spinning in space," Baldwin said. "More like a nearly solid body that is shot through with veins and fissures. If only one tenth of one percent of the earth's volume is in these habitable spaces—and that is a conservative estimate, given what we know of how spinning solids form—then it would mean that the greatest voyages of exploration lie within the earth, and not on it."

  "Habitable spaces," Indy repeated. "Don't you mean traversable spaces?"

  "No, Dr. Jones, I do not," Baldwin said.

  "You can't be suggesting that there are places within the earth that are peopled," Indy said. "One of the surest tenets of modern science is that the energy for all living things comes ultimately from our sun. Nothing can survive in the depths of the earth, shut away from the sun's warmth and light, not even simple organisms—to say nothing of the complexity that is mankind."

  Baldwin smiled.

  "I said habitable. I didn't say human."

  "You are ill," Indy said. "I don't mean to be unkind, but—"

  Baldwin held up a frail hand.

  "I have seen things that others have spied only in their reveries—or nightmares," he said. "A fantastic world, beyond the comprehension of our infant sciences. It has been called by many names, but there is truth in the old, old stories. You are familiar with the legend of the Kingdom of Agartha?"

  "The ancient Buddhist myth about the race of supermen at the center of the earth."

  Baldwin nodded.

  "But what are the Nazis after?" Indy asked.

  "Vril!" Baldwin gasped. "The vital element of this underground world. Matter itself yields to it. With it, one becomes godlike. All but immortal. Pass through solid rock, heal wounds, build cities in a single day—or destroy them. To possess Vril is to be invincible."

  Indy was silent.

  "I did not think that you would believe me," Baldwin said. "But the sum of my experience is contained in that box you hold, and it is testament enough. I have been terrified of the implications of unleashing this material upon the world, so I have shared it with no one. You must swear to protect these secrets, Dr. Jones. And if the loss of the contents of the box appears imminent, you must promise to destroy them."

  "But—"

  "Don't argue. Swear, damn you."

  "Captain—"

  "Swear!"

  "I promise," Indy said finally.

  "Good," Baldwin said weakly. "I know that you are a man of your word."

  "Captain..." Indy placed the box aside and frantically grasped his hand. "Stay with me now. We're going to get you some help."

  "It is too late, Dr. Jones," Baldwin said. "Nothing can be done. And I am no longer the captain of anything, including this old wreck of a body...."

  Baldwin's voice trailed off. Then his eyes became cloudy and his head slumped to one side. The hand in Indy's grasp went limp.

  "Captain!" Indy shouted.

  Outside, the wind reached a crescendo. There was the earsplitting sound of a tree limb breaking free, and then the buzz and crackle of power lines separating.

  The lights flickered and then went out.

  By the glow of the fireplace, he pulled the old man from the chair and slung him over one shoulder. He remembered, however, to take the box with him.

  2

  The Thule Stone

  Indy watched in silence as the plain wooden coffin containing the body of Evelyn Briggs Baldwin was loaded onto the Penn Railway baggage car. His hands were thrust deep into the pockets of his leather jacket, his fedora was pushed back on the crown of his head, and his suitcase was at his feet. The mysterious box from the night before was tucked safely in the satchel that was slung, beneath his coat, over one shoulder.

  The railway agent stood beside Indy with a clipboard, stamping his feet in a vain attempt to keep warm.

  "Relative?" the agent asked.

  "Only in spirit," Indy said.

  The handlers placed the casket on the floor of the car with a thump that made Indy wince. Because the rest of the baggage and freight had already been loaded, they slid the door of the car shut. The outside latch fell into place with a sharp metallic clang.

  "You'll have to change trains twice, but don't worry about the casket," the agent said as he snapped the tickets from the clipboard and handed them to Indy. "It will be switched automatically, and we've never lost one yet."

  "That's good to know," Indy acknowledged. "And thanks for helping with the last-minute change in the intinerary."

  "No trouble, Dr. Jones," the agent said. "Actually, I was expecting your call, since someone had inquired about your schedule just a few minutes before you called."

  "Oh?"

  "
Yes," the agent said. "A gentleman from the university phoned and asked if you had changed your schedule yet. I told him no. I thought it was rather odd—that is, until you did ring me up and explain."

  "Did you tell this gentleman anything else?"

  "No," the agent answered. "Well, he asked if you were still bound for Chicago tomorrow. I corrected him and said that you were on your way to New Mexico today."

  "Did this gentleman give his name?"

  "No," the agent said. "But he spoke with an accent—German, I believe—and he seemed to know you quite well. Does that ring any bells?"

  "Yes," Indy said. "Thanks."

  Then he heard someone call his name, and when he turned he saw Marcus Brody waving and attempting to thread his way through the crowd jamming the Princeton Station platform. Indy said good-bye to the agent, picked up the suitcase, and met Brody halfway.

  "Indiana," Brody began, "where have you been? I waited for nearly an hour. It is so unlike you to miss an appointment that I decided to come looking.... You look rather raw. Haven't you slept?"

  "No," Indy said. "There was no time, considering the circumstances. I'm sorry that I missed our breakfast at the university club, but I've had some pressing business to take care of."

  "Are you all right?" Brody asked. From the expression and the tone of his voice, his concern was evident.

  "I'm fine," Indy said reassuringly as they made their way to a half-empty bench. "But I'm afraid I can't say the same for the visitor I had last night. Have you read that newspaper you have tucked in your overcoat pocket? Is there anything on Evelyn Briggs Baldwin?"

  As they sat down a tall blond man in a black trench coat near the platform's news kiosk lowered the Saturday Evening Post magazine he was pretending to read just enough to watch as Indy slid the suitcase beneath the bench, where it would be out of the way of the passing crowd As soon as Indy's hand had left the suitcase, the man in the trench coat abandoned his spot near the newsstand and began to serpentine his way through the crowd toward the back of the bench where Indy and Brody sat.

  "Baldwin?" Brody took his reading glasses from his pocket and unfolded the morning's copy of The New York Times. After thumbing through several pages, Brody found a six-inch story on the back of the first section, sandwiched between an article about two thousand Italian marriages performed simultaneously to inaugurate the twelfth year of fascism and a wireless item from La Paz about new fighting over the Chaco region.

  E. B. BALDWIN DIES IN HIT-AND-RUN

  71-Year-Old Explorer Is Struck on Icy Street

  Special to The New York Times

  PRINCETON, N.J.—Evelyn Briggs Baldwin, polar explorer, died here early today of a fractured skull after having been struck by an automobile on an ice-covered thoroughfare.

  He was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital, where he was brought by private car.

  Mr. Baldwin accompanied Robert E. Peary on his north Greenland expedition in 1893-94 as a meteorologist. In 1898-99 he was second in command of Walter Wellman's polar expedition of Franz Josef Land. He built and named Fort McKinley, discovered and explored Graham Bell Land, and organized and commanded the Baldwin-Ziegler polar expedition in 1901-02, which ended in near disaster. His life's ambition was thwarted in 1909 when Peary discovered the Pole.

  "Were you involved?" Brody asked as he removed his glasses.

  "I didn't run him down with my car, if that's what you mean," Indy said, rubbing his hands together to keep them warm. "Marcus, he came to my house after the accident. He claimed that the Nazis were behind it, and that they had been tracking him for months to steal some kind of polar secret from him."

  "What kind of secret?" Brody asked.

  "Something called Vril."

  "Never heard of it," Brody said. "Did you know this Baldwin well?"

  "I knew him not at all," Indy said. "We met once, years ago when I was a graduate student and he was on the lecture circuit showing some of the motion pictures he had taken in the Arctic. But our paths never crossed again, at least not until last night. When the police inspected his belongings at the hospital morgue, they found funeral instructions neatly typed out and folded into his wallet. A plot and a stone awaits him in his hometown in Kansas."

  "Remarkable," Brody marveled. "What a gentleman."

  "He may also have been a crackpot," Indy said. "Or he may have been delusional as a result of his injuries. In either event, he said some pretty fantastic things last night. He said his secrets were contained in this little wooden box he gave me to protect. He made me swear."

  Indy withdrew the little treasure-chest-shaped box from the satchel.

  Brody took it, turned it over while examining it with an experienced eye, then ran his finger along the gold script. "Burroughs Wellcome," he read. "Indy, this is the kind of medicine chest that explorers carried at the turn of the century. Stanley, as I remember, had one of these things in Africa. It would make sense for Baldwin to have carried it to the Arctic."

  He tugged at the string.

  "Don't," Indy warned.

  "Why not?" Brody asked. "Is there something dangerous inside?"

  "That's the thing, Marcus," Indy said. "I don't know. Baldwin made me swear to protect whatever is inside, but he died before he could tell me whether he actually wanted me to open it or not."

  "Something of a conundrum," Brody muttered as he returned the box.

  "That's a good word for it," Indy said as he stowed the box back in the satchel. "I don't know what I'm going to do. I am bound to respect Baldwin's wishes—if only I knew what they were. But then, my curiosity has been piqued."

  "I'll say," Brody said. "If it were me, I'm afraid I would have already had the contents cataloged. But you operate differently, Indy. I'm sure that given some time, you will discover the right thing to do."

  The man in the black trench coat, who was now standing behind their bench with the magazine again covering his face, hooked his foot around a corner of Indy's suitcase and was slowly easing it away. The sound of the suitcase scraping against the ground was hidden by the din of the crowd.

  Indy lowered his voice.

  "Marcus, it would be a great help to me if you could ring some of your pals in Washington. See what they know about an organization called the Thule Society," he said. "It could merely be the ravings of a tired old man, but my instinct tells me there is something more to it."

  "Such feelings would be understandable," Marcus acknowledged, "considering the circumstances. It is not every day that one has a guest die on them."

  "Maybe," Indy said. "But I could almost swear that I have been followed since leaving the hospital early this morning."

  "I will make some inquiries," Brody promised.

  The suitcase was now clear of the bench and resting beside the man in the trench coat's right foot. With practiced nonchalance he closed the Post, picked up the suitcase, and disappeared into the crowd.

  "You had better take this before I forget," Brody said as he reached into his jacket pocket. He drew out a small, flat package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. "After all, it is the reason I agreed to meet you this morning."

  "Ah," Indy said. "You found it."

  "It wasn't easy," Brody admitted. "Despite the scanty information you gave me, I managed to locate this in a collection at Mexico City. Apparently it is the document you read about in Coronadas Children. The parchment which was first discovered in the basement of the palace at Sante Fe. It tells of a Capitan de Gavilan, who discovered a rich gold deposit in the Guadalupes. The document survived the Pueblo uprising of 1680, but de Gavilan—and every other Spaniard who did not flee New Mexico—did not. When you have a chance to examine it, you will note that a crude map has been drawn on the back."

  "Marcus, I could kiss you."

  "I'd consider it a personal favor if you wouldn't," Brody said. "And do be careful with it, since the parchment is in rather bad shape. I promised the curator we would have it back to him within the month. We will, won't w
e?"

  "Of course," Indy said as he placed the two-hundred-fifty-year-old document into his satchel. Then, when he saw the worried look on Brody's face, he placed a hand on his friend's shoulder and asked, "Have you ever known me to lose anything?"

  Brody smiled wanly.

  "It's not that, Indy."

  "Then, what?"

  "It's the sudden taste you have developed for gold," Brody said. "It is unlike you to go after a treasure trove simply for the sake of wealth. I could understand it better if you were seeking an important piece for the museum, that just incidentally was worth a fortune."

  "Believe me," Indy said, "I have my reasons."

  "This has something to do with the Crystal Skull, doesn't it?"

  Indy was silent, but his jaw muscles quivered.

  "Tell me," Brody urged. "Perhaps I can help."

  "It's better if you remain out of this." Indy said. "It could get ugly, and I don't want you or the museum mixed up in it more than you already are."

  Brody looked hurt.

  Indy placed a hand on his shoulder.

  "But thank you, Marcus. Your offer is truly appreciated."

  "I hope you know what you're doing," Brody said.

  At that moment the conductor called, "All aboard."

  "Well, I had better go," Indy said. "Thanks for your help. I'll contact you when I get a chance."

  Brody was the curator of special collections at the American Museum of Natural Histoiy in New York. Indy had acquired many outstanding pieces for the museum through the years, and Brody had learned never to question him too closely about the methods he employed. Although the older man knew that Indy would invariably make the right decision when faced with an ethical choice—even when he had to go with the more difficult option—some of the means that he applied toward that end were likely to make a curator's head swim.

  "You'd better hurry," Brody said. "Or you'll miss your train."

  They shook hands, then Indy reached beneath the bench for his luggage. "Marcus," he said with a puzzled look, "where's my suitcase?"