DEATH COMES TO CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT

“Joyce Ryan?”

“Yes?”

“I was a friend of Jimmy Albright. He would have wanted you to have this.”

“I don't understand.”

“It was a manuscript he was working on. He spoke of you often.”

“I really didn't know him very well at all—and then this happens. You really think he wanted me to have this?”

“He dedicated it to you.”

She hefted the thick leather envelope. “It must be over a thousand pages.

“Well thank you, Mister—?” There was no answer, and when Joyce Ryan looked up, she was alone in the hospital corridor.

[Final pages of Jimmy Albright's manuscript—handed to Joyce Ryan in New York Hospital. February 2^nd, 2025]

Getting harder and harder to wake up. Ever since that bird showed up in Hanger 5. Vertigo. Loss of balance. Silver Dart's too good a ship to crash. Can't get behind the controls till I get myself under control.

All these souvenirs of past missions. This one poster's got me in my leather flight suit. Headgear. Goggles strapped on my forehead. Got that smart clock emblem, with the wings, and the hands set to Midnight. Got back from a particularly dangerous mission at exactly Twelve Midnight. Guess I should thank the General that coined that name for me—Captain Midnight.

I'm saluting someone off frame. There's one of our P-38s in the background. Secret Squadron had 'em ten years before the Air Corps trotted them out.

Was that The Flying Ruby, or The Phantom Rustler?

Got my flight leathers on, even if I don't dare take up a crate. Got to talk to Chuck, or Ikky. Unless I get a handle on what's been putting me through the wringer, there's no way I can keep on leading the Squadron. Blacking out when I'm piloting the Douglas 558-2 Skyrocket is not going to do Captain Midnight's reputation any good.

Hanger 5—we could almost moor the Hindenburg in here. Instead, we're baby-sitting the Black Eagle. That's what we call the mystery ship. Showed up five nights ago. How? Wingspan measures two hundred feet. The doors aren't any wider than seventy-five. Length's a hundred feet. They would have had to build the hanger around it. They would have had to tear it down again to get the ship out. Never seen anything like this. Jet black, streamlined. Like something out of Buck Rogers, or Flash Gordon.

The closest thing it resembles is the YB-35 Flying Wing but the Eagle's a hell of a lot bigger. Almost as big as the Soviet, Maxim Gorky and that's the biggest thing that's ever flown.

Ikky comes up to me, looking real exasperated. “Captain, there's no way into that behemoth.”

“What I figured. You've broken up your spanner wrench.”

“At my wits end. Figured using main strength couldn't hurt.”

“Did it?”

“Just Jenny,” he indicated his wrench, which had a big chunk broken off the head. “and my pride. Jenny and me go way back. Real shame. That thing's locked up tighter than a nun's drawers. It's got to be related to the other goodies. They showed up around the same time.”

“Yeah, the electro-mechanical computer. The mercury vortex engine. The coherent light amplifier.”

“Death Ray at two-thousand feet! But it's the computer that gets me. Anything we could build like that would take a house full of vacuum tubes and a library of punch cards. This thing is the size of a dictionary—and a mighty thin one at that!

“Tell you what I think! All of this junk, up to and including the bird, is like something out one of Gernsback's magazines.”

“Amazing Stories? Wonder Stories?”

“Yeah. Real Buck Rogers scientifiction. But I'll bet if there ever is a future, it'd be lot like that—and if we could figure out how it all works we could take down Ivan Shark, or von Karp—get both their gangs! Imagine scrapping the Junkers and Focke-Wulfs and replace them with mercury engines. Silver Dart can do Mach 2—with that engine inside, you could do Mach 10!

“And think of what that Death Ray would do to the Barracuda's Tiger Tong!”

“I am thinking about it! Shark and von Karp are bad—but there's something not quite human about Barracuda and his Chinese gang—especially after what they did to Joyce.”

That Joyce Ryan was able to join us in the hanger without my being aware of her, I attributed to still being a bit out of it. Joyce had been with us since 1930, an outstanding member of the Squadron, despite being initially plagued with memory loss.

“Granted the Tiger Tong are bad, Jim, but I know the Chinese people, and believe me—the members of Barracuda's Tong are the exceptions, not the rule. A lot of good Chinese folk helped me after I blocked out those memories of what the Tong did to me.”

“The sooner we crack how these things work, we can pay the Tong back in spades. How long do you think it'll take you, Ikky?” Joyce shook her head.

“Jim—the memories are starting to come back—and they're about something a lot worse than the Tong. One night the Eagle was just there. That's when I started remembering. And I'm scared to death!”

“Why didn't you tell me about this before?”

“I Didn't want to worry you—not after all that trouble you had springing me from the Barracuda's lair in the first place.”

“Funny, 'cause that's the time I started getting real disoriented, myself.”

“Jim, why'nt you tell us?”

“Same reason as you. No need to get everybody all riled up.”

“Jim—you're always totally focused. You lose it with all the armament you're flying? You could take out a major city! You owe us complete disclosure. Wait—that's the reason you've been shying away from any kind of flight.”

“Guess I was hoping it would clear up by itself and nobody needing to be the wiser.”

“Well don't do that again. We all need to be completely open with one another.”

“Noted. Ikky—you been having any trouble?”

“Only thing's driving me up the wall is not getting into that Buck Rogers ship.”

“Jim. Ikky. Come here. I want to know if either of you can see what I've been seeing, 'cause if I'm the only one, then I'm going out of my mind and I'm not fit to fly a plane.”

Our headquarters are secreted on a mountaintop. From here, it's easy to see the City which is only a mile or two away.

“Do you see anything out of the ordinary down there?”

“Looks just about the same as always.”

“Keep watching.” Joyce looked through the window intently.

Then it started. By slow, gradual stages the color bleached out and everything became a harsh, sickening shade of gray that made me queasy just to look at.

The City was gone. In it's place were meandering canyons and a maze of chasms. Even the dim light looked gray. The people of the City had been replaced by gray, lifeless figures that shuffled about aimlessly.

Some of the figures were dragging, or pulling themselves along. They were missing limbs. I saw some with great gaping wounds. Out of some of them intestines hung. Some of the figures walked with heads that had been smashed in.

“This is worse than the Somme in '16. At least they knew enough to lie down and stay dead when they got killed. No one could move with the kind of injuries they've got!”

“Only one kind of creature could, Jim—remember that army of zombies we fought in Transylvania?”

“The Vulture Plague. I remember. But those weren't really dead. Dr Wu Fang used some kind electronic ray to take over people's minds. They didn't feel pain and couldn't be hurt—that's not what we're dealing with here. Look—some of them don't even have heads. That one over there's carrying it...under his arm? What in God's name are we looking at!”

“Some of them are trying to find their heads. Even when they trip over them they can't find them.”

“Don't look at them, Joyce.”

“Jim—I'm not a hot house flower. I've seen bad things before—maybe not this bad, but they were bad.”

Ikky looked at us, confusedly. “What are you guys talking about? I don't see nothin'. City looks the same as it's always looked.”

There was a sudden hiss forty feet above. The Eagle's cockpit opened. A tall figure stepped out, made his way down the side of the Flying Wing and came to a halt before us.

He wore a skin tight flight suit of polished black leather and ebon chain mail. He removed his helmet and shook his hair free. Never seen hair that long on a guy before—nor any that was that white. Albino? No. The eyes were nearly silver colored and piercing like those of an eagle. Something about them made me feel the same disorientation I'd been feeling for the last five days. He saluted me.

“Captain James Albright—better known as Captain Midnight. I am Commander Nergal of the Order of the Black Eagles—2240 A.D.”

“So they really were Buck Rogers artifacts you sent us.”

“We needed to get your attention in the quickest way possible. Your level of disorientation's been increasing exponentially—you can't trust yourself to fly the Silver Dart. Your perception of the world around you is being negatively affected—that's why you and Joyce Ryan, both, have seen Irkalla.

“Is that what that thing is out there?” asked Joyce.

“What's this Irkalla?” said Ikky, “City's the way it's always been. But if the Captain and Miss Ryan are hallucinatin'...”

“And what is the name of this City, that's the same as it's always been?” asked Commander Nergal. Ikky seemed flustered for a moment.

“It's just...the City. I never thought about it before.” He looked more and more confused. A city ought to have a name. Why couldn't he think of it?

“There's not a one of you who knows the name of that City—not you, Ichabod Mudd, nor Miss Ryan, nor Captain Midnight.”

He was right. I'd been to the City numerous times. But I couldn't have told you its name.

“The General who coined your name on your first mission—what was his name?”

I couldn't remember. I drew a blank.”

“He never had a name, because you never gave him one. Same for the City and the Mountain. It never occurred to you to give them names—because the radio never gave them names.”

“What the hell are you talking about? The radio?”

“It's time you see things the way they really are—starting with your friends.”

Joyce was looking at her upturned hands. She looked...insubstantial, as if you could look right through her. I jumped toward her, grabbing at her in hopes of preventing her vanishing.

“Joyce! No!” I'd almost lost her once—I couldn't do so again!

“What did you do with her? Bring her back!” I would have thrown myself at Nergal but something kept me back.

“Look at your friend.”

“Ikky!” Ichabod Mudd—best damn mechanic in the Secret Squadron, partner in dozens of missions and the best friend a guy could have—was starting to fade away! He looked down and I knew he could see right through himself. Then he was gone.

“What the hell did you do to them!”

“Mudd never existed. You generated him out of your memories of a fictional character of that name. But you need to see Miss Ryan as she really is.”

It was like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. It was Joyce, all right. But she was sitting at the side of a hospital bed. There were all kinds of futuristic equipment I had no names for. She was leaning over someone in the bed that I couldn't see. There were tears in her eyes.

“All those machines are monitoring vital functions. State of the art for 2025.”

“What are you trying to pull? This is 1935.”

“James MacDonald Albright. Born in New York Hospital, September 7^th, 1998. You had a very demanding father. He had no use for a son he thought of as nothing but a dreamer—not the future military man he wanted you to be.

“At eleven years old you discovered a cache of Captain Midnight memorabilia in a used book store. He had the same name as you—Jimmy Albright. You had that collection only three days before your father found it and destroyed it.

“But in those three days, you created your own version of Captain Midnight, based upon what you gleaned from your reading. You still wanted to please your father—despite the fact that he constantly undermined your self-esteem. You tried with all your heart to live up to his standards.

“When you met Joyce Ryan in real life, you were struck that she had the same name as her fictional counterpart. You loved her—but the fictional Captain and his fellow Secret Squadron member had never been linked romantically. They were comrades, only. Plus, browbeaten by your father, you could never think of yourself as worthy of winning her. You stayed within your character perimeter. She had no idea what you really felt—until the day you put your life on the line to save hers.

“With all your heart you had striven to be as like Captain Midnight as you could. With that one act you finally broke through the programming your father had subjected you to all your life. With that one act, you changed your destiny. What the two of you saw in Irkalla—need never be your destiny.”

“ Why didn't Ikky see the same thing we saw?”

“Your identification with Captain Midnight was so strong that you synthesized an entire world based on everything you loved about the character. That included friends like Chuck Ramsey and Ichabod Mudd—and even villains like Ivan Shark, and his daughter, Fury.”

“But what was that other city, the one you called Irkalla? I don't remember anything like that from the stories.”

“Irkalla is the City of the Dead. It is the destiny of all who die. But your solitary act of courage changed that destiny. But one thing remains.” He held up a ring of bronze or gold. On its head, an eagle gripped a shield in its talons. Inlaid in this was a four-bladed propeller.

“That looks like...a Captain Midnight Decoder Ring. Wait—there were no Decoder Rings—just Decoder Badges.”

“We're engaged in a great war in the Twenty-third Century. You have the heart of a hero—and we need heroes. We need the heart that beat in that child, the heart that was beaten down but never broken. We are fighting for the future—for all futures.

“Those who created Captain Midnight caught only the shattered fragments of our struggle. They did not believe. But you took those fragments and you forged something new. Something that had never existed before.

“Take the Ring—only with it on your hand can you escape from Irkalla. It will give you command the Black Eagle. It will take you to the heroes who await you.”

“No. I fought to save Joyce. It's better I stay here, in case she needs me again.”

“Your body was destroyed. You saved the woman you love. Greater love has no man than he gives his life for his friends.”

When I saw Joyce by the hospital bed, I'd caught a glimpse of myself, as well. Commander Nergal spoke the truth.

“Can't I even say good bye to her, finally tell her how I feel? At least give me that.”

“She will know. Some deaths are quick. Some linger long. Not many get to say farewell.

I took a deep breath and nodded. Nergal was right. No matter how much I wanted to stay, there really isn't any chance of healing from this.

“She will know.” He had smiled when he said that. It was hope—and sometimes that is all we get. I take a final look at Joyce. I took the Ring from the Commander and put it on my hand.

Joyce Ryan finished reading the manuscript. It had taken her the five days she'd been at the hospital. She had never suspected what Jimmy was capable of. First he had saved her life—and now this? He'd hand-written this wonderful manuscript over a year ago, each page dated.

An amazing combination of material gleaned from the radio, from pulp, and from film serials. Jimmy had taken all those things and given them far greater depth and substance; he had made them all over into his own image and produced an amazing piece of work. He had thrown himself completely into his work—it read as if he had actually been there. This wasn't some paperback pot-boiler. This was literature. And she had never known.

But the references to the accident? His saving of her life? The entire manuscript was Jimmy's handwriting. The last page was written a year ago. How could Jimmy have known to put in such details—even hinting at his own death—almost a year before? How could he have known?

She wiped her eyes. She reached for Jimmy's hand. The bandages were so thick. Suddenly the hand gripped hers, so tightly it almost hurt. She couldn't free her hand. A steady, B, B flat pitch echoed over the room's machinery.

“No! Jimmy—don't go!” she screamed. Nurses and a doctor rushed into the room. The last thing Joyce saw before she was escorted out was the smile that curved on Jimmy Albright's lips.