"Anderson, K.J. - Sky Captin and the World of Tomorrow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Kevin J)

Though surprised, he recognized her instantly. At first he reacted with pleasure, but then his expression darkened. Old wounds started to surface.
"How you been, Joe? Miss me?"


8

A Blueprint from Totenkopf
A Warehouse of Sinister Prototypes
More Clues About Unit Eleven

"Who let you in here?" Sky Captain was unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "Get out. Fat lot of good it does to have a hidden base if everybody, including annoying newspaper reporters, can just waltz in here."
"Nice to see you, too, Joe." She demurely sat on the corner of his desk. "Dex said you might be in a mood."
"Dex..." Gritting his teeth, he grabbed the black telephone receiver from his desk and dialed so roughly that he almost tore off the front of the phone. "Dex! Get in here!"
Polly shook her head, nonplused. Her wavy golden hair was perfect. "It's been three years, Joe. Don't tell me you're still mad at me. I can't even remember what we were fighting about."
Moving as if he was imagining a stranglehold, Sky Captain set the phone back in its cradle. He turned to Polly with a slow burn, speaking so distinctly he bit each word as it came out of his mouth. "You. Sabotaged. My. Plane!"
"Right..." Polly said, her tone clearly saying the opposite. "Still suffering from delusions, I see."
"I spent six months in a Manchurian slave camp because of you." He looked away as the harsh memories flooded back. "They were going to cut off my fingers -"
Polly rolled her eyes; she'd heard this a million times before. "Joe, for the last time, I didn't sabotage your damn airplane."
"And it was all so you could get a picture of Tojo Hideki in his bathrobe! Of all the ridiculous reasons -"
She swung one leg over the other, relaxed. "You know, I'm starting to think you made up this whole 'sabotage' nonsense to cover up the fact you were cheating on me with your little mystery girl the whole time we were in Nanjing."
"Never happened. All in your imagination."
"Who was she, Joe? What was her name?"
Still angry, he said, "All right, her name started with an F. Figment. Figment O'Your Imagination. Now who's having delusions?"
Polly moved seductively toward Sky Captain at his desk, but he pulled back, raising his pistol again. "That's far enough."
"What are you going to do? Shoot me?" Polly batted her eyelashes.
The door swung open, and Dex hurried into the office. When he saw Sky Captain holding the gun on Polly, he grinned. "Great! You two made up. I knew you would."
Sky Captain stood from his desk chair, leaving the shot glass of milk of magnesia untouched. "This was a pleasure, Polly. Let's do it again in ten years. Dex, escort Miss Perkins off the base. If she resists, shoot her. And don't forget to clean up your mess afterward."
Dex looked at her shyly. "Hi, Polly."
"Hi, Dex."
The younger man's face flushed with embarrassment. "I... uh, I gotta..."
"I know, hon. It's okay." Lifting her chin and showing no loss of dignity at all, Polly let Dex escort her out of the office. Sky Captain followed them to the exit and prepared to give the door a satisfying slam.
Polly sniffed, then spoke loudly to Dex. "Just as well. I guess you wouldn't have been interested in this anyway." She dangled the strange schematic that Dr. Jennings had left in the theater.
Even with just a glance, Sky Captain could see that the blueprint showed the detailed workings of the giant robots that had menaced Manhattan. He released his death grip on the door handle, seething. "Where did you get that?"
Polly turned with a smug smile on her face. He reached for the blueprint, but she withdrew it. "Oh, there's more where this came from. A lot more."
"I want that blueprint, Polly. Uh... Dex needs it."
The younger man brightened. "Yeah, it would be useful."
"You want the blueprint, and I want this story, Joe. And you're going to help me get it."
Sky Captain took a deep breath. He would rather have been fighting any number of evil geniuses bent on exterminating humanity. Dex stood next to Polly, still grinning. "Hey, maybe we should show her, Cap. Maybe she can help."
A quick look from Sky Captain shut him up, but Polly saw it.
"Show me what?" She calmly folded the blueprint and stuffed it back in her bag, refusing to move farther from the office. "Show me what?"

Out in the bright sunlight, Dex, Polly, and Sky Captain stood at the entrance of one of the Legion's warehouses. After fumbling in his pocket, Dex produced a ring heavy with jingling keys. Though he had dozens to choose from, the younger man selected the proper key without pause, opened a padlock securing the warehouse, and slid open the tall corrugated door.
"Here we are, Polly. Wait till you see this." Dex flipped a switch, and the room lights shone down upon row after row of incredible scientific artifacts. "I always told Cap we should open a museum or something."
The warehouse held a bizarre collection of mechanical oddities: giant burrowing machines with tractor treads and jagged conical prows, clunkier models similar to the robot giants that had just attacked New York City, coffin-sized glass cylinders holding electrical creatures that swirled about like lighting in a bottle, flying contraptions that defied description.
Polly's jaw dropped. "My God, what is this? Where did they all come from? Dex, did you -"
The younger man blushed. "Oh, no, Polly. Even I don't have enough imagination to create designs like these."
She'd been following the exploits of Sky Captain and the Flying Legion for years now, and she knew most of the enemies they had fought. She remembered their battles with the Fossil: a man who, after injecting himself with Tyrannosaurus blood extracted from amber, was converted into an atavistic creature determined to bring back dinosaur rule. The Flying Legion had been severely damaged by the Fossil's pteranodon-style flying war vehicles.
And then there was the Lensmaster, who had used meteorite glass in a viewing scope that let him see into another, sidewise universe. The Lensmaster could step around the fabric of space, past the tightest security, to assassinate world leaders. When Sky Captain had finally cornered him, the Lensmaster fled through his scope and stumbled into an impossible dimension where he remained lost to this day...
None of the contraptions, though, looked familiar to Polly.
"They started appearing three years ago - an invasion of innovative robotic designs, all of them obviously created by the same design team," Dex said. "We've managed to keep it secret until now."