Read Johnny Graphic and the Etheric Bomb for Free Online

the captain and co-pilot, and pressed the shutter release. The bulb made an audible pooosh sound as it went off, blasting the cabin with light.
    After a few more shots, the captain told him to go back to his seat. But Johnny argued that having another pair of ghost-seeing eyes up on the flight deck could only help. Again, Danny Kailolu took his side and the captain yielded.
    “Now get ahold of Jonesville,” she ordered the radioman. “Have them telegraph Babbitt Tower. We should be getting back on toward dawn. Tell ’em we have two engines out. Nothing about ghosts and cavalrymen and bows and arrows. No details!”
    Captain Merrick gently turned the steering yoke toward starboard and began the Goose’s long, slow about-face. The deck tilted, the stars shifted lazily in the sky, and the moon disappeared for a time, reappearing on the other side when the aeroboat arrived at its new course and altitude.
    Mel and Johnny leaned over the pilots’ shoulders, scanning the night sky. The troopers of the First Zenith Brigade held position all around the giant flying boat, shimmering eerily in the moonlight as they galloped along. Johnny wished the captain and Danny could see them. It was an amazing sight.
    With absolutely no warning, a rain of silvery arrows plummeted out of the heavens—making a dreadful drumbeat on the aluminum skin of the aircraft.
    “Here they come again!” Johnny screamed.
    He saw the attacking Steppe Warriors do everything they could do to bring down the giant flying boat. And the First Zenith Brigade did everything possible to keep them away.
    The two opposing troops of ghost soldiers circled, shifted, soared, and dived through the moonlit sky.
    Bows snapping. Arrows flying. Revolvers banging. Sabers slashing.
    Somehow, the dead combatants managed to keep up with the flying boat, which was cruising along at about two hundred miles per hour. They were easy for Johnny and Mel to see because—like all ghosts—they glowed green in the dark. Of course, the captain and the co-pilot couldn’t see a thing.
    Before long, only the colonel and one of the Steppe Warriors were pounding along in front of the aeroboat. The rest of the battling specters seemed to have fallen behind.
    The two remaining ghost soldiers slashed and cut at each other. Again and again. Thrusting, chopping, parrying. It scared Johnny, thinking what could happen to the colonel.
    Finally, with a spot of luck, the colonel won the advantage, hacking his saber deeply into the Steppe Warrior’s neck. In a flash, the colonel’s opponent tumbled off his mount and vanished from view.
    Johnny blinked, and the colonel disappeared, as well. Johnny was amazed that so much could happen in just a matter of minutes. The sky had been raging with battling ghosts, but now it was calm and empty in the moonlight. A beautiful night to be airborne.
    Johnny glanced at Mel—still, alas, solidly mustachioed—and said, “I don’t see them anymore, do you?”
    Mel shook her head. “They’re all gone.”
    “Gone?” the captain asked in her loud voice. “The ghosts are all gone?”
    “Well, for now,” Mel said, scanning the sky. “They went at it pretty hard at first, then fell away. I bet by now they’ve gotten scattered all over the place.”
    “You think we’re safe then?” the radioman bellowed from his panel of controls.
    Mel shook her head. “Not by a long shot.”
    “Who was winning?” the captain asked.
    “Since we haven’t crashed,” Johnny said, “I’d wager that the colonel and his troopers put up a pretty good fight.”
    That’s when engine number one on the starboard wing let out a resonant BOOM, like a giant firecracker under a garbage can.
    “Blast it!” Captain Merrick swore. She leapt up out of her seat, glaring at the flame and smoke billowing from behind the slowing propeller.
    “Starboard one,” Danny Kailolu shouted, glancing out of his side window. “Shut her down!”
    The captain pulled back one of the throttles