The Quest for Zerzura

35

"I saved that guy's life in Tibet," Rick said, as Lebec spun the elevator wheel and the ship began to lift off. "You'd think he'd return the favor."

"Yes, but don't forget we've 'liberated' his aircraft, twice now," said Raleigh.

"Yeah, but we're leaving him two perfectly good trucks. He'll have no trouble making his way back to civilization. A fair trade, I'd say."

Wulf was directly below them, about thirty feet beneath the gondola, and slightly ahead of the front windows. As Rick stared down the muzzle of the Luger, held rock steady despite the motion of the vehicle, he was very aware of the five million cubic feet of hydrogen at their backs. If Wulf hit anything vital, they would be incinerated before they even heard the shot.

"We're dead ducks," he said. "With a target the size of the Empire State Building, he can't miss."

But the expected shot never came.

"It's the same explosive danger of the hydrogen that's keeping him from shooting," said Lebec. "At this close range, he'd go up like the Hindenburg himself."

"Our rate of climb is too slow. We'll never rise above range in time. Our only hope is to stay directly above him, so that if we're high enough for him to avoid the fireball, he'd still be hit by the flaming wreckage."

"Don't look now," said Raleigh, "but we've got another problem ahead of us as well."

Rick focused his eyes further ahead. The far end of the dry lake was obscured by a golden-brown cloud. "Sandstorm approaching."

Wulf meanwhile, had seen through their plan and had moved off to their port side, where he could get a clear shot at the gondola without risking hitting the gas-filled envelope. A shot rang out, shattering a window in the navigation room behind them. He corrected his aim and with a loud bang, a bullet grazed the lower left corner of the windshield, leaving an oblong hole and a spiderweb of cracks in front of Rick's face.

Rick instinctively ducked and dove for cover. When he dared peek again, moments later, Wulf's gun was aimed right at him. Even at this distance, Rick could tell he was done for.

A motion out of the corner of his eye drew his attention away from his impending doom. A bird, a falcon to be exact, flew past the windshield. In a steep dive, he swooped low, buzzing the German Kubelwagen, and spoiling the wolf's shot.

“Well, I’ll be,” said Rick. “Horus the Guardian indeed.”

But he quickly had other things to worry about.

The wind was picking up ahead of the rapidly approaching sandstorm and an updraft suddenly gave them an extra fifty feet of altitude, giving him a queasy feeling in his stomach.

"At least we'll get good lift out of this," Rick joked nervously.

"As you recall, conditions like this are what put us down in Tibet," said Raleigh.

"How could I forget? Our plane, Amelia, is still out there somewhere on the Tibetan Plateau. I doubt we'll ever get permission from the government for a recovery." He was also very much aware that violent wind conditions are what brought down the USS Akron, a Navy aircraft-carrier airship, off the New Jersey coast in 1933, with the loss of seventy-three souls.

Outside, the leading edge of the storm was lifted by the churning winds into an immense wave-form, threatening to engulf their airship like so much flotsam, adrift on a sea of liquid sand. In an instant, they were in the curl, shooting the tube, and hanging on for dear life.

And then they were full in it; the sandstorm was upon them. The world outside was reduced to a swirling mass of yellow brown as a living, breathing cloud of grit pummeled the fabric skin of the zeppelin with the roar of a freight train, even as Wulf fired off a last desperate salvo, before seeking shelter himself. Bullets pinged around the cabin, seemingly aimed at the control panels in an effort to hit anything vital without turning the airship into a suicidal inferno.

Rick kept the engines tilted downward, trying to gain as much altitude as he could, while spinning the rudder wheel frantically to counter the shifting winds, first one way, then the other. To his side, Lebec, with his injured arm, had enlisted Viktor's help in the exhausting job of working the elevators to keep them on an even keel. At almost eight hundred feet long, until they had gained at least a thousand feet, a steep, nose-up pitch could scrape their tail on the ground, spelling disaster. Raleigh and Schuler meanwhile, were minding the instruments and gauges, calling out altitude, airspeed, groundspeed and compass readings.

A sudden gust sent them on a slow-motion sideslip to the right. Rick countered with a quick rudder spin to the left as Lebec and Viktor struggled to regain the altitude they had lost. Rick could feel the reassuring pitch of at least ten degrees as he spun the wheel again and aimed for a spot in the sand cloud that seemed a bit lighter in color. At the moment, their actual heading wasn't as important as getting above the storm. But he remembered the ranges of hills and mountains that ringed the dry lake and hoped he'd see them before they ran into them.

He spied a patch of dusty blue through the clouds that had now lightened to the color of beach sand. Almost there.

And now they broke free, into clear air. Clear, but anything but calm. And clear enough to see the dark, ragged outline of the hill dead ahead. It was a hill Rick recognized.

"Give me a few more degrees of pitch!" he called out to Lebec.

Below, the unmistakable shape of the griffin sphinx, Guardian of Zerzura, loomed large in the broken windshield, close enough for Rick to see the taloned paw pointing the way back to the lost oasis.

A lucky updraft at just the right moment gave them the lift needed to clear the mountaintop. Their immense shadow on the rocky summit below was too close for comfort, as the stone griffin drifted out of view.

Rick heaved a sigh of relief as they moved up into calmer air. He rotated the engines to flight position and set them on a course for the British landing strip of Eight Bells.

"It's a few kilometers due south of the Gilf Kebir Plateau," Raleigh told him." You'll see a series of bell-shaped rock formations. Just past the last one, look for a big arrow and 'Eight Bells' spelled out in jerry cans. I'll call for a transport to meet us there and fly us back to Luxor," he added as he moved into the radio room.

With clear sailing ahead, Rick was finally able to engage the automatic pilot, holding their rudder and elevator positions steady, and to check on the rest of the passengers.

"Everybody okay back there?" he asked as he moved back to the observation room. "How's Ace?"

"I've got the wound properly treated and dressed," said Vera. "The bleeding has stopped and I treated it with sulfa powder." She hesitated for a moment. "I found some vials of cobra antivenom. I'm no doctor, but if it counteracts one poison, it might counteract another. I'm willing to give it a try. If it reacts badly after the first dose, I won't try another."

"Whatever it takes to save his life. Desperate times call for desperate measures."

There were several minutes of contemplative silence while the experiences of the last few weeks wound down in everyone's minds. They had done it. They had found Zerzura, learned the fate of Pandora, and had recovered the Shambhala Book of Light.

Vera finally turned to Schuler. "Professor Schuler, you have studied the Shambhalan language more than anyone. Can you tell us anything of what the book says?"