Joe jerked his head around. The co-pilot had his hand on the wheel
release. His face was tense.
"It don't feel right," he said very, very quietly. "Maybe I'm crazy, but
there was that sandy-haired guy who put his hand up in the wheel well
back at that last field. And this don't feel right!"
The plane swept on. The airfield passed below it. The co-pilot very
cautiously let go of the wheel release, which when pulled should let the
wheels fall down from their wells to lock themselves in landing
position. He moved from his seat. His lips were pinched and tight. He
scrabbled at a metal plate in the flooring. He lifted it and looked
down. A moment later he had a flashlight. Joe saw the edge of a mirror.
There were two mirrors down there, in fact. One could look through both
of them into the wheel well.
The co-pilot made quite sure. He stood up, leaving the plate off the
opening in the floor.
"There's something down in the wheel well," he said in a brittle tone.
"It looks to me like a grenade. There's a string tied to it. At a guess,
that sandy-haired guy set it up like that saboteur sergeant down in
Brazil. Only--it rolled a little. And this one goes off when the wheels
go down. I think, too, if we belly-land----Better go around again, huh?"
The pilot nodded. "First," he said evenly, "we get word down to the
ground about the sandy-haired guy, so they'll get him regardless."
He picked up the microphone hanging above and behind him and began to
speak coldly into it. The transport plane started to swing in wide,
sweeping circles over the desert beyond the airport while the pilot
explained that there was a grenade in the nose wheel well, set to
explode if the wheel were let down or, undoubtedly, if the ship came in
to a belly landing.
Joe found himself astonishingly unafraid. But he was filled with a
pounding rage. He hated the people who wanted to smash the pilot gyros
because they were essential to the Space Platform. He hated them more
completely than he had known he could hate anybody. He was so filled
with fury that it did not occur to him that in any crash or explosive
landing that would ruin the gyros, he would automatically be killed.
3
The pilot made an examination down the floor-plate hole, with a
flashlight to see by and two mirrors to show him the contents of a spot
he could not possibly reach with any instrument. Joe heard his report,
made to the ground by radio.
"It's a grenade," he said coldly. "It took time to fix it the way it is.
At a guess, the ship was booby-trapped at the time of its last overhaul.
But it was arranged that the booby trap had to be set, the trigger
cocked, by somebody doing something very simple at a different place and
later on. We've been flying with that grenade in the wheel well for two
weeks. But it was out of sight. Today, back at the airfield, a
sandy-haired man reached up and pulled a string he knew how to find.
That loosened a slipknot. The grenade rolled down to a new position. Now
when the wheel goes down the pin is pulled. You can figure things out
from that."
It was an excellent sabotage device. If a ship blew up two weeks after
overhaul, it would not be guessed that the bomb had been placed so long
before. Every search would be made for a recent opportunity for the
bomb's placing. A man who merely reached in and pulled a string that
armed the bomb and made it ready for firing would never be suspected.
There might be dozens of planes, now carrying their own destruction
about with them.
The pilot said into the microphone: "Probably...." He listened. "Very
well, sir."
He turned away and nodded to the co-pilot, now savagely keeping the ship
in wide, sweeping circles, the rims of which barely touched the
farthermost corner of the airport on the ground below.
"We've authority to jump," he said briefly. "You know where the chutes
are. But there _is_ a chance I can belly-land without that grenade
blowing. I'm going to try that."
The co-pilot said angrily: "I'll get him a chute." He indicated Joe, and
said furiously, "They've been known to try two or three tricks, just to
make sure. Ask if we should dump cargo before we crash-land!"
The pilot held up the microphone again. He spoke. He listened.
"Okay to dump stuff to lighten ship."
"You won't dump my crates," snapped Joe. "And I'm staying to see you
don't! If you can ride this ship down, so can I!"
The co-pilot got up and scowled at him.
"Anything I can move out, goes. Will you help?"
Joe followed him through the door into the cargo compartment.
The space there was very considerable, and bitterly cold. The crates
from the Kenmore plant were the heaviest items of cargo. Other objects
were smaller. The co-pilot made his way to the rear and pulled a lever.
Great, curved doors opened at the back of the plane. Instantly there was
such a bellowing of motors that all speech was impossible. The co-pilot
pulled out a clip of colored-paper slips and checked one with the
nearest movable parcel. He painstakingly made a check mark and began to
push the box toward the doors.
It was not a conspicuously sane operation. So near the ground, the plane
tended to waver. The air was distinctly bumpy. To push a massive box out
a doorway, so it would tumble down a thousand feet to desert sands, was
not so safe a matter as would let it become tedious. But Joe helped.
They got the box to the door and shoved it out. It went spinning down.
The co-pilot hung onto the doorframe and watched it land. He chose
another box. He checked it. And another. Joe helped. They got them out
of the door and dropping dizzily through emptiness. The plane soared on
in circles. The desert, as seen through the opened clamshell doors,
reeled away astern, and then seemed to tilt, and reeled away again. Joe
and the co-pilot labored furiously. But the co-pilot checked each item
before he jettisoned it.
It was a singularly deliberate way to dump cargo to destruction. A
metal-bound box. Over the edge of the cargo space floor. A piece of
machinery, visible through its crate. A box marked _Instruments_.
_Fragile_. Each one checked off. Each one dumped to drop a thousand feet
or more. A small crated dynamo. This item and that. A crate marked
_Stationery_. It would be printed forms for the timekeepers, perhaps.
But it wasn't.
It dropped out. The plane bellowed on. And suddenly there was a burst of
blue-white flame on the desert below. The box that should have contained
timecards had contained something very much more explosive. As the plane
roared on--rocking from the shock wave of the explosion--Joe saw a
crater and a boiling cloud of smoke and flying sand.
The co-pilot spoke explosively and furiously, in the blasting uproar of
the motors. He vengefully marked the waybill of the parcel that had
exploded. But then they went back to the job of dumping cargo. They
worked well as a team now. In no more than minutes everything was out
except the four crates that were the gyros. The co-pilot regarded them
dourly, and Joe clenched his fists. The co-pilot closed the clamshell
doors, and it became possible to hear oneself think again.
"Ship's lighter, anyhow," reported the co-pilot, back in the cabin.
"Tell 'em this is what exploded."
The pilot took the slip. He plucked down the microphone--exactly like
somebody picking up an interoffice telephone--and reported the waybill
number and description of the case that had been an extra bomb. The ship
carrying the pilot gyros had been booby-trapped--probably with a number
of other ships--and a bomb had been shipped on it, and a special
saboteur with a private plane had shot at it with rockets. The pilot
gyros were critical devices. They had to be on board the Platform when
it took off, and they took months to make and balance. There had been
extra pains taken to prevent their arrival!
"I'm dumping gas now," said the pilot into the microphone, "and then
coming in for a belly landing."
The ship flew straightaway. It flew more lightly, and it bounced a
little. When gas is dumped one has to slow to not more than one hundred
and seventy-five knots and fly level. Then one is supposed to fly five
minutes after dumping with the chutes in the drain position--and even
then there is forty-five minutes of flying fuel still in the tanks.
The ship swept around and headed back for the now far-distant field. It
went slowly lower and lower and lower until it seemed barely to skim the
minor irregularities in the ground. And low like this, the effect of
speed was terrific.
The co-pilot thought of something. Quickly he went back into the cargo
space. He returned with an armful of blankets. He dumped them on the
floor.
"If that grenade does go!" he said sourly.
Joe helped. In the few minutes before Bootstrap loomed near, they filled
the bottom of the cabin with blankets. Especially around the pilots'
chairs. And there was a mound of blanketing above the actual place where
the grenade might be. It made sense. Soft stuff like blankets would
absorb an explosion better than anything else. But the pilot thought the
grenade might not blow.
"Hold fast!" snapped the pilot.
The wing flaps were down. That slowed the ship a little. It had been
lightened. That helped. They went in over the edge of the field less
than man-height high. Joe found his hands closing convulsively on a
handgrip. He saw a crash wagon starting out from the side of the runway.
A fire truck started for the line the plane followed.
Four feet above the rushing sand. Three. The pilot eased back the stick.
His face was craggy and very grim and very hard. The ship's tail went
down and dragged. It bumped. Then the plane careened and slid and
half-whirled crazily, and then the world seemed to come to an end.
Crashes. Bangs. Shrieks of torn metal. Bumps, thumps and grindings. Then
a roaring.
Joe pulled himself loose from where he had been flung--it seemed to him
that he peeled himself loose--and found the pilot struggling up, and he
grabbed him to help, and the co-pilot hauled at them both, and abruptly
all three of them were in the open air and running at full speed away
from the ship.
The roar abruptly became a bellowing. There was an explosion. Flames
sprouted everywhere. The three men ran stumblingly. But even as they
ran, the co-pilot swore.
"We left something!" he panted.
Joe heard a crescendo of booming, crackling noises behind. Something
else exploded dully. But he should be far enough away by now.
He turned to look, and he saw blackening wreckage immersed in roaring
flames. The flames were monstrous. They rose sky-high, it seemed--more
flames than forty-five minutes of gasoline should have produced. As he
looked, something blew up shatteringly, and fire raged even more
furiously. Of course in such heat the delicately adjusted gyros would be
warped and ruined even if the crash hadn't wrecked them beforehand. Joe
made thick, incoherent sounds of rage.
The plane was now an incomplete, twisted skeleton, licked through by
flames. The crash wagon roared to a stop beside them.
"Anybody hurt? Anybody left inside?"
Joe shook his head, unable to speak for despairing rage. The fog wagon
roared up, already spouting mist from its nozzles. Its tanks contained
water treated with detergent so that it broke into the finest of
droplets when sprayed at four hundred pounds pressure. It drenched the
burning wreck with that heavy mist, in which a man would drown. No fire
could possibly sustain itself. In seconds, it seemed, there were only
steam and white vapor and fumes of smoldering substances that gradually
lessened.
But then there was a roaring of motorcycles racing across the field with
a black car trailing them. The car pulled up beside the fog wagon, then
sped swiftly to where Joe was coming out of wild rage and sinking into
sick, black depression. He'd been responsible for the pilot gyros and
their safe arrival. What had happened wasn't his fault, but it was not
his job merely to remain blameless. It was his job to get the gyros
delivered and set up in the Space Platform. He had failed.
The black car braked to a stop. There was Major Holt. Joe had seen him
six months before. He'd aged a good deal. He looked grimly at the two
pilots.
"What happened?" he demanded. "You dumped your fuel! What burned like
this?"
Joe said thickly: "Everything was dumped but the pilot gyros. They
didn't burn! They were packed at the plant!"
The co-pilot suddenly made an incoherent sound of rage. "I've got it!"
he said hoarsely. "I know----"
"What?" snapped Major Holt.
"They--planted that grenade at the--major overhaul!" panted the
co-pilot, too enraged even to swear. "They--fixed it so--any trouble
would mean a wreck! And I--pulled the fire-extinguisher releases just as
we hit! For all compartments! To flood everything with CO_2! But it
wasn't CO_2! That's what burned!"
Major Holt stared sharply at him. He held up his hand. Somebody
materialized beside him. He said harshly: "Get the extinguisher bottles
sealed and take them to the laboratory."
"Yes, sir!"
A man went running toward the wreck. Major Holt said coldly: "That's a
new one. We should have thought of it. You men get yourselves attended
to and report to Security at the Shed."
The pilot and co-pilot turned away. Joe turned to go with them. Then he
heard Sally's voice, a little bit wobbly: "Joe! Come with us, please!"
Joe hadn't seen her, but she was in the car. She was pale. Her eyes were
wide and frightened.
Joe said stiffly: "I'll be all right. I want to look at those
crates----"
Major Holt said curtly: "They're already under guard. There'll have to
be photographs made before anything can be touched. And I want a report
from you, anyhow. Come along!"
Joe looked. The motorcycles were abandoned, and there were already armed
guards around the still-steaming wreck, grimly watching the men of the
fog wagon as they hunted for remaining sparks or flame. It was
noticeable that now nobody moved toward the wreck. There were figures
walking back toward the edge of the field. What civilians were about,
even to the mechanics on duty, had started out to look at the debris at
close range. But the guards were on the job. Nobody could approach. The
onlookers went back to their proper places.
"Please, Joe!" said Sally shakily.
Joe got drearily into the car. The instant he seated himself, it was in
motion again. It went plunging back across the field and out the
entrance. Its horn blared and it went streaking toward the town and
abruptly turned to the left. In seconds it was on a broad white highway
that left the town behind and led toward the emptiness of the desert.
But not quite emptiness. Far, far away there was a great half-globe
rising against the horizon. The car hummed toward it, tires singing. And
Joe looked at it and felt ashamed, because this was the home of the
Space Platform, and he hadn't brought to it the part for which he alone
was responsible.
Sally moistened her lips. She brought out a small box. She opened it.
There were bandages and bottles.
"I've a first-aid kit, Joe," she said shakily. "You're burned. Let me
fix the worst ones, anyhow!"
Joe looked at himself. One coat sleeve was burned to charcoal. His hair
was singed on one side. A trouser leg was burned off around the ankle.
When he noticed, his burns hurt.
Major Holt watched her spread a salve on scorched skin. He showed no
emotion whatever.
"Tell me what happened," he commanded. "All of it!"
Somehow, there seemed very little to tell, but Joe told it baldly as the
car sped on. The great half-ball of metal loomed larger and larger but
did not appear to grow nearer as Sally practiced first aid. They came to
a convoy of trucks, and the horn blared, and they turned out and passed
it. Once they met a convoy of empty vehicles on the way back to
Bootstrap. They passed a bus. They went on.
Joe finished drearily: "The pilots did everything anybody could. Even
checked off the packages as they were dumped. We reported the one that
blew up."
Major Holt said uncompromisingly: "Those were orders. In a sense we've
gained something even by this disaster. The pilots are probably right
about the plane's having been booby-trapped after its last overhaul, and
the traps armed later. I'll have an inspection made immediately, and
we'll see if we can find how it was done.
"There's the man you think armed the trap on this plane. An order for
his arrest is on the way now. I told my secretary. And--hm.... That
CO_2----"
"I didn't understand that," said Joe drearily.
"Planes have CO_2 bottles to put fires out," said the Major impatiently.
"A fire in flight lights a red warning light on the instrument panel,
telling where it is. The pilot pulls a handle, and CO_2 floods the
compartment, putting it out. And this ship was coming in for a crash
landing so the pilot--according to orders--flooded all compartments with
CO_2. Only it wasn't."