Awesome silvery zeppelins were anchored to mooring posts that rose high over the installation. A flat expanse of tarmac covered most of the valley floor. Runways extended in several directions toward the wooded mountains, offering options for takeoff and landing runs. Rows of war-rated aircraft were stationed on painted lines, ready for deployment in any emergency. A series of gargantuan hangars were spaced across the landscape, full of machinery, maintenance equipment, testing bays, and crew quarters.
Sky Captain felt a shiver of pride each time he came home. The location of the base wasn't common knowledge, for security reasons — but he felt that if the crazed megalomaniacs could just see what they were up against, half of them wouldn't even bother trying to take over the world. That would certainly make his job easier…
After a smooth landing, Sky Captain's Warhawk taxied down the airstrip, where he was met by his ground crew. Waving directions as they walked confidently backward, two crewmen guided his plane into one of the hangars. Inside the huge building, catwalks were strung like cobwebs from rafter to rafter. The maintenance team rushed forward to surround the Warhawk like a pit crew in a motorcar race.
Letting the engine idle loudly, Sky Captain slid open the plane's canopy. He had to yell over the noise. 'She needs refueling — and freshen up the ammo on the wing cannons.' He climbed out onto the wing spouting orders, as if his support people didn't know what they were doing.
'Right, Sky Captain.'
'And check all the hoses for nicks. Plug up any bullet holes on the fuselage. The usual.'
'Bullet holes? Did you get shot at, Cap? I thought you were up against giant robots — '
'I did the shooting, Jimmy. But with all that ammunition flying around, a few ricochets might've gotten me.'
'We'll make her good as new, Cap.'
'You always do.' With an easy jump, he dropped to the sealed concrete floor of the hangar. He drew a deep breath, comforted by the smells of airplane fuel, hot exhaust, and engine grease.
'I want to get a look at the film from the forward cameras as soon as it's ready — those robot monsters were something else! And get me a duty log. I want all the Legion's squad leaders assembled in one hour. I'll brief them myself, and then I want to hear what they encountered out there.' He wriggled out of his backpack. 'Where's Dex?'
The nearest mechanic grinned. 'Where else would he be, Cap?'
A colored comic panel torn from the Sunday edition of the New York Chronicle showed Buck Rogers in his futuristic outfit. While an alien villain held Wilma Deering hostage, Buck showed his stuff, intimidating the evil mastermind by pointing a ray gun at a steel wall. A text balloon read, 'My sonic atomizer can slice through metal like a knife through butter.'
The comic panel was taped to a drafting table with notes scribbled in the margin of the newsprint. Beside it, extensive blueprints showed detailed designs of a gadget that looked remarkably similar to Buck Rogers' sonic atomizer.
His brown eyes glittering with anticipation, Dex Dearborn — Sky Captain's right-hand man and technical genius — pointed his strange-looking pistol at the other side of the room. The ray gun had an aiming fin, colorful buttons, and a curved handle that looked like it was designed for an alien hand.
Dex wasn't sure if all the knobs and adjusting buttons were necessary, but he didn't want to second guess the revered comic artist. As soon as he proved that the sonic atomizer worked, he could probably add other functions to correspond with the ornamental controls.
With the pink tip of his tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth, he aimed the nozzle of the ray gun at a thick vertical slab of steel inside a cement bunker. The ray gun felt tingly in his hand, as if anxious to prove itself. Glancing over his shoulder, Dex called to his assistants, 'All clear!'
Lab workers scurried from the thick-walled bunker to duck behind sheltered barricades. Dex pulled a pair of tinted safety goggles over his eyes, aimed the nozzle toward the center of the target plate, and squeezed the firing button.
Concentric rings of light struck the metal slab. An impressive warbling crackle thrummed out of the gun. Pulse after pulse of light shimmered against the surface of the steel plate. In less than a second, the metal began to glow white-hot, vibrating as it melted.
Releasing the firing button, Dex lowered the ray gun, impressed. 'Excellent power output! And the gun mechanism isn't even hot.' He set the ray gun on the table and hurried up to the metal slab as his assistants crept from behind the barricades, wiping sweat from their foreheads. Dex admired the results of the test: a huge melted hole in the center of three-inch steel.
'That Buck Rogers knows his stuff!'
Behind him, the giant doors of the research hangar rattled open to flood the interior with sunlight. Dex turned from the melted target plate, listening to the bass rumble of a powerful truck engine outside. Two of his assistants yelped in alarm and stepped away from the yawning doors as a massive semitrailer backed up.
On the trailer bed rested a giant robot carcass, five stories tall. It was battered and scratched but intact. Its once-blazing eye plate was now dim; the cables and gears were frozen; the power generator stilled. Dex couldn't believe what he was seeing. His jaw dropped. 'Shazam!' He absently rested his hand on the hot metal of the target plate, then snatched it away and sucked on his fingers.
Silhouetted by the sunlight, Sky Captain strode into the hangar, his leather jacket halfway unzipped, his aviator goggles perched on his forehead. The semi driver shouted, sticking his head out the window and looking for directions as two Legion crewmen guided the flatbed backward. The prone robot was hauled slowly through the yawning doors. The iron monstrosity barely fit inside.
'Hello, Dex. See what I tripped up in Manhattan? I thought you might like to tinker a bit.'
Dex put his hands on his hips jokingly. 'I heard you describe it over the radio, Cap. I thought you said this thing was big?' But he couldn't maintain his nonchalance as he walked in a daze to the robot's giant welder-helmet head. He was dwarfed by the size of the mechanical behemoth. 'Can I have it?'
'You figure out where it came from, and I'll get you one for Christmas. Promise.' If anybody could dismantle and understand the enormous machine, Dex could. As always, Sky Captain had complete faith in him.
As a young and starry-eyed dreamer, Dex had worked in a malt shop often frequented by members of the Flying Legion. He'd done well in school, but spent most of his time reading comic strips and pulp magazines, watching movie serials, and listening to radio adventures. He loved to imagine the impossible while paying little attention to the practical. His parents had despaired of their Dexter ever making anything of himself.
But he'd loved to jabber to Sky Captain and the heroic members of the Flying Legion. The most important question of his life was: What if?
Captain Joe Sullivan had seen the genius behind the young man's enthusiasm. Dex truly believed in the possibilities and in himself — and so Sky Captain gave him a chance in the Flying Legion. He'd strutted into the malt shop one day, cocky and confident, and rested his elbows on the speckled counter. 'If I give you all the resources and support you need, and you give me all your imagination and your best work, then I guess we'll be unstoppable. Right, Dex?'
Dex drew most of his inspiration from the 'scientifiction' magazines he loved so much: Amazing Stories, Wonder Stories, Astounding Science Fiction, Marvel Science Stories, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Planet Stories, and so many others he could barely keep up with them all. His favorite authors gave him all the ideas he could possibly need: Jack Williamson, Edmund Hamilton, E. E. 'Doc' Smith, even Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. G. Wells.
Some of Dex's inventions had been rather spectacular failures, but more often than not an innovation of his had allowed the Flying Legion to save the world. The improvements he'd made to Sky Captain's P-40 Warhawk alone were tremendous. Overall, Dex was worth his weight in collectible pulp magazines.
'So, Dex, while the rest of the Legion's been off fighting mechanical monsters, what have you been doing here in your cozy research hangar? Any breakthroughs for me?' Sky Captain looked meaningfully at the new ray gun and the melted hole in the steel target plate.
Snapping out of his reverie, Dex gestured for him to follow. 'That was a good test. The sonic atomizer shows a lot of potential. But there's something else you need to see.'
He led the pilot around the workbench toward an oscilloscope, where he flipped a switch. He tapped the
