* * * * *
The marine lieutenant concluded his story by relating how the Australian Flying Doctor Service shuttled him from Cooktown to Canberra, where he was met by a medical officer and two yeoman nurses from the American embassy's marine guard contingent. Two days later, a Bell Sioux whirlybird flew him to Sydney.* There, he boarded the "Tomcod" (just arrived from American Samoa) for a rendezvous with the "Java Sea."
The aircraft carrier from which the ill-fated Chickasaws had initially launched.
Subsequently, Major Phillips made a scrambled radiophone call to Philadelphia, relating all of this to his father. Ash Phillips, however, was more intrigued by the culprit's physical description than anything else.
"Ropen?!" he exclaimed: "How very interesting! That's the term used by the Papuans of Umboi Island for what's basically their local equivalent of the Amerindian thunderbird. Yet, the lieutenant's description sounds more like a female avatar of Hatuibwari! The draconic creator god of Solomon Islands mythology. Foreign sailors' tales must have gotten the two concepts mixed up in the minds of Torres Strait islanders."
"Save the speculation for your next academic conference, Dad," snapped his son: "Is that she-creature why you chose Mount Kalkajaka as the dagger-axe's new hiding place?"
There was a bit of an awkward pause before Ash Phillips finally answered.
"Yes."
Major Phillips' response was immediate and unequivocal.
"Are you insane?! How could you do such a thing? That weapon is one of the few things, in this whole world, that can deal a permanent death blow to the Melissae and their misbegotten progeny! You had no right..."
"As President of the Philadelphia Lodge, I had every right!!" his father rebutted in: "The Hsia Jie-ji has brought nothing but misfortune to every individual who's owned it, and whatever country he/she has resided in. As to permanently killing the Melissae? Why use the dagger-axe, when we can use Christian-blessed weapons like Alika Herrera's Bowie knife? You weren't at Kapu Hiva, Bob. I was. I saw how close Taranga came to being slain, once and for all, with that blade!"
"But, the Heikegani-ryu don't want a Bowie knife in exchange for Stalin's death," his son persisted: "They want the dagger-axe."
"Then, find some other way to kill that moustached maniac! Uncle Sam shouldn't be doing business with FDR's killers, anyway."
That pronouncement was followed by the abrupt hanging up of the telephone in Philadelphia.
"I take it he still refuses?" Capt. Ross asked, semi-rhetorically (the call having been made from the "Tomcod").
Major Phillips nodded...adding:
"But, I can be stubborn as all get-out, too. Can your radioman patch me through to this phone number?"
The army intelligence officer wrote something down on a slip of blank white paper, before handing it to the submarine captain.
"I don't see why not," replied the latter: "Who's at the other end?"
Major Phillips grimly smiled: "The President of the Detroit Lodge."
* * * * *
HOLLAND, MICHIGAN, USA
(TWO DAYS LATER)
Ronald Van Helsing took the receiver of the telephone from his wife's hands.
"Hello?"
"Ron? My name is John Scrivener. Head of the Knights of Melion in Detroit. And, I have a job for you. One related to your family's...traditional...line of work."
tbc
Giantess World
Author's Chapter Notes:
SEA OF JAPAN,
(OCT. 26, 1952)
(OCT. 26, 1952)
Chapter End Notes:
*Bell Sioux whirlybird: better known to most as "the M*A*S*H helicopter."
Amerindian: obsolete anthropological term for Native Americans.
Amerindian: obsolete anthropological term for Native Americans.