“Arrogant, overconfident imbecile!” Dr. Wurmhausen stalked over to one of the equipment tables and snatched up a little steel box with vacuum tubes and dials running down its side. Two long wires dangled from its front end and a small vial of red liquid percolated on its back.

“Atlantean technology may only be utilized by someone with Atlantean ancestry,” he waved the box at them angrily. “The one and only member of the Thule Society with that heritage allowed me to draw a sample of his blood to allow the Reverse Bio-mimetic Key to operate, and I haven’t even tested it yet. And you tell me that Professor Scrumtumbler—that pompous fool—thinks he has invented something so simple it can be operated by you?”

“Listen, mister Worm-house—”

“That’s Dr. Wurmhausen, you mental midget,” The doctor spat.

“Sorry. Doctor Worm-house,” Reggie pressed on. “Here’s the thing: we don’t need to know whether Scrumtumbler is better than you. Let’s just destroy the camera. Go ahead and have your goons here fill it full of lead. Sure, we’ll spend the rest of our lives wondering who is the better scientist, but the important thing is that your gizmo will be the only one left.”

“Silence!” Wurmhausen slammed his bio-mimetic device down on the table. “Come over here. Immediately. Show me how your device is supposed to work.”

“Are you sure?” Reggie said. “I’m just a hired hand. I don’t even know what’s supposed to happen if that gate opens.”

“You will do as you are told,” Wurmhausen waved his luger dangerously. “And if you fail to open the gate, you will be shot. You will do your best and die knowing that Scrumtumbler’s failure is your doom.”

The color drained from Reggie’s cheeks, but he nodded and rose to re-position the camera. With shaking hands he unscrewed a side-plate and rewired the battery connections to the lighting attachment.

“You might have noticed that this camera has a special bulb attachment that looks like it’s for providing direct lighting. But Scrumtumbler said something about connecting the whoozi-whatsit to the thinger-majinger over here and then running a wire from the battery to this light bulb. The whole secret comes from this industrial-strength light array right here. See this?” He held it up with a flourish, as though he were a magician about to transform it into a pigeon.

Then he clamped his eyes tightly closed and jabbed the wire against the battery terminal. The sudden jolt of power overloaded the bulb, which emitted an intense, blinding flash.

“Arrogant, overconfident imbecile!” Dr. Wurmhausen stalked over to one of the equipment tables and snatched up a little steel box with vacuum tubes and dials running down its side. Two long wires dangled from its front end and a small vial of red liquid percolated on its back.

“Atlantean technology may only be utilized by someone with Atlantean ancestry,” he waved the box at them angrily. “The one and only member of the Thule Society with that heritage allowed me to draw a sample of his blood to allow the Reverse Bio-mimetic Key to operate, and I haven’t even tested it yet. And you tell me that Professor Scrumtumbler—that pompous fool—thinks he has invented something so simple it can be operated by you?”

“Listen, mister Worm-house—”

“That’s Dr. Wurmhausen, you mental midget,” The doctor spat.

“Sorry. Doctor Worm-house,” Reggie pressed on. “Here’s the thing: we don’t need to know whether Scrumtumbler is better than you. Let’s just destroy the camera. Go ahead and have your goons here fill it full of lead. Sure, we’ll spend the rest of our lives wondering who is the better scientist, but the important thing is that your gizmo will be the only one left.”

“Silence!” Wurmhausen slammed his bio-mimetic device down on the table. “Come over here. Immediately. Show me how your device is supposed to work.”

“Are you sure?” Reggie said. “I’m just a hired hand. I don’t even know what’s supposed to happen if that gate opens.”

“You will do as you are told,” Wurmhausen waved his luger dangerously. “And if you fail to open the gate, you will be shot. You will do your best and die knowing that Scrumtumbler’s failure is your doom.”

The color drained from Reggie’s cheeks, but he nodded and rose to re-position the camera. With shaking hands he unscrewed a side-plate and rewired the battery connections to the lighting attachment.

“You might have noticed that this camera has a special bulb attachment that looks like it’s for providing direct lighting. But Scrumtumbler said something about connecting the whoozi-whatsit to the thinger-majinger over here and then running a wire from the battery to this light bulb. The whole secret comes from this industrial-strength light array right here. See this?” He held it up with a flourish, as though he were a magician about to transform it into a pigeon.

Then he clamped his eyes tightly closed and jabbed the wire against the battery terminal. The sudden jolt of power overloaded the bulb, which emitted an intense, blinding flash.

Reggie had told the truth the first time, but it was obviously not an answer that would satisfy Wurmhausen. Blinking the stars out of his vision, his mind scrambled for what to say, but the blow to his head seemed to have knocked all his clever responses right out of him.

“Don’t tell him!” Clem shouted. “Scrumtumbler swore us to secrecy—” the soldier behind him slammed his machinegun butt into Clem’s back, cutting off his words.

Reggie stared in confusion at the engineer. Why had Clem brought up Scrumtumbler? He was trying to tell Reggie something, but the director couldn’t seem to work it out.

Dr. Wurmhausen’s eyes first widened in amazement and then narrowed in rage. “So, that pompous fool Scrumtumbler sent you. He sent you here to steal my portal to the Hollow Earth, didn’t he? Tell me what I want to know!”

Reggie bowed his head so that only Clem and Dr. Scott could see his wink.

“Okay,” Reggie said. “Okay, you win: Scrumtumbler sent us.”

“So, you are here for that insufferable Professor Scrumtumbler,” Dr. Wurmhausen emitted a laugh that was somehow triumphant and furious at the same time. “As I suspected. I suppose you were supposed to take footage of the key and the portal with this motion-picture camera of yours? I suppose you were going to film me using my Reverse Bio-mimetic Key so that Scrumtumbler could attempt to reverse engineer my technology and use it with another gate?”

Reggie gathered from Wurmhausen’s gestures that “the gate” was somehow related to the two Egyptian-looking pillars, but Reggie had no idea how a pair of old columns could be a gate, and he certainly had no idea what a Reverse Bio-mimetic Key was. Still, he was ready to roll with it.

“No, we weren’t sent to film you,” he said. “The truth is, that’s not really a camera.” Reggie gestured with his chin towards his Mitchell 35mm cinema camera, now set up on the floor next to them almost as if it, too, were considered a prisoner.

“This?” Wurmhausen eyed the camera suspiciously. “My guards checked it. It contains no weapons or explosives.”

“Oh, it’s not a weapon. We’re not here to blow up the gate… we’re here to use it.”

Dr. Wurmhausen’s head snapped around, those beady black eyes drilling into Reggie. “Impossible,” he concluded, but his voice lacked the edge of conviction.

“No, really. Scrumtumbler said he didn’t need your reverse-bio-kahoosit. He said he’d stake his reputation that his doohickey would work better than yours on the first try, even in the hands of an idiot like me. That’s what he said.”

The Nazis led them at gunpoint up a broad flight of stairs to a huge room with a vaulting ceiling. It may have originally been designed as a ballroom that had boasted elegant chandeliers and bright banners but now served as a warehouse of twisted mechanical experiments. Hundreds of eviscerated machines and mutilated engines lined metal tables throughout the room, and the distinct scents of grease and smoke pervaded the area. The far end of the room was an elevated platform that probably was once an orchestral stage but now housed two great, grimy pillars that looked as if they had been pulled out of some pharaoh’s tomb.

“So glad you could join me in my laboratory,” from behind one of the pillars stepped the owner of the voice, a shriveled man in a white lab coat. His liver-spotted skin was so pale that it bordered on translucent, but his hair, greased back to reveal a dagger-like widow’s peak, seemed impossibly black, as if he had been dying it with engine oil. Reggie realized with a sickening lurch that this had been the man who had peered down at them from a window while they were attempting to bluff their way inside.

The guards forced them to their knees before the old doctor approached.

Dr. Scott looked up at him and said “Dr. Wurmhausen.”

“So you recognize me,” the older man seemed pleased. “I recognized you, too, Dr. Mortimer Scott, from the moment you attempted your ridiculous ruse to enter our compound. You didn’t really think it would work, did you?”

“Only some of us thought so,” Dr. Scott shot an angry glance at Reggie.

“And you two,” Wurmhausen pointed a bony finger at Reggie and Clem. “Should I thank you for bringing Dr. Scott to me? After all the trouble of sending in my panzer-kampftruppen, I should have simply hired his so-called friends.”

“We only came to find out why you’re trying to kidnap all those scientists,” Reggie said.

Wurmhausen snapped his fingers and one of the guards seized Reggie roughly by the arms. As soon as he was secure, another guard slammed the butt of his submachine gun into his nose. There was a crunching sound, and then a line of blood spilled down over his mouth and dripped from his chin.

“Do you take me for a fool?” Wormhausen drew a luger and pointed it at his head. “Your next sentence will be your last unless you tell me why you have come here.”