Free The Veiled Lady by Lee Falk Page A

can't rule out the possibility."

    CHAPTER FOURTEEN
     
    The next tremor came at the moment they got the campfire going.

    The giant plants and flowers began to rattle and sway. Startled insects, each one as big as a baseball, went flurrying up through the fire-lit darkness. Great night birds cawed out in the blackness beyond the ruined helicopter.

    The ground seemed to bounce and resound, as though an angry giant were stalking them and advancing ever nearer. The metal walls of the downed plane groaned. Enormous seedpods, hanging up in the black of the night, popped and spouted seeds like buckshot.

    There was one final ripple of the ground underfoot, then the tremors ended.

    The bearded Karl, who had frozen when the quakes began, resumed the motion of what he'd been doing. He bent, dropping a fresh log on the large crackling fire they'd built in the space which had been cleared around the fallen ship.

    Jan, with a rueful smile, shook her head. "Looks like there'll he a slight delay on the coffee." The coffeepot lid had popped off during the series of earth shocks, spilling coffee and water on the ground around the fire.

    "We'veplenty of water," said the Phantom. Earlier in the evening, he'd located a brook of drinkable water nearby. He passed a canteen to the blonde girl.

    "And plenty of time to wait for it to perk," said Gabe. "We're serving an indeterminate sentence

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    here."

    "Don't be so pessimistic, Gabe," said Karl, dropping one more section of gigantic dry-weed stalk on the fire. "We've got the Phantom helping us now, remember?"

    "And you got me holding you back." The pilot was sitting near the fire, his injured leg straight out in front of him. "This is our second night down inside and we're right back where we crashed."

    "Your leg's looking much better," Jan reminded him while she put a new pot of coffee on the rock oven they'd constructed. "By tomorrow you should be in much better shape."

    Gabe turned to watch the Phantom, who was crouched near the now-upright copter. "You really think we got a chance to get out?"

    "Yes."

    "How?"

    "There are a couple of possibilities," said the Phantom. "I'll check those out tomorrow."

    Gabe next asked Jan, "You're really ready to leave without taking anything?"

    The girl watched the coffee begin to perk. "Well, I suppose I would like to bring a few of these darn giant insects back with me," she admitted. "But they're too bulky to pack. Hopefully, we'll be able to make another visit to and come a little better prepared to cope."

    "I don't mean insects." Gabe glanced again at the Phantom and did not continue.

    Karl was holding his palms toward the fire, not because the night was cold here in the steamy volcanic valley, but simply because this was what you did with a fire you'd helped construct. "Every now and then, Gabe," he said, "I get the idea you think Jan and I are down here for some entirely different reason than the one we have. Do you?"

    Gabe grinned, shaking his head. "I guess maybe I don't quite understand the scientific mind. Forget it."

    "Coffee's ready," said Jan. She fished four bright-colored plastic mugs out of a knapsack.
    "Everybody want some?"

    "None for me." The Phantom moved further away from the bright-orange glow of the fire. He stood almost in the shadowy night, straight and with arms folded.

    Sipping his hot coffee, Karl said, "What about these earthquakes, Jan? I wonder if what we've felt so far is just a warmup for the big one."

    Jan was kneeling on the moss, her steaming mug of coffee held in both hands. "No way of telling, Karl."

    "This must be what it's like living in California," suggested Karl, "along the San Andreas fault.
    Waiting for the next quake to hit."

    "After a while you grow indifferent," said Jan, "start thinking of other things, I'm sure." She stood, 42

    and rested her untouched cup of coffee near a wheel of the copter. "Other things such as dinner. I'll get busy with our tinned goods."

    While the girl walked to