She swung a pointed finger at the ship. "Naturally," she interrupted,
"the nose will float downward in the canal, hoisting the hot tubes out
of the liquid at the end of the glide-ins. But you've got pilot, power
plant, and wings frontside. How can you affect glide-ins at surface air
density without nosing in?"
The major decided she must have been reading the latest confidential
files. High-viscosity liquid landing canals constituted a subject recent
enough to be Security and important enough not to be bandied about
outside engineering and Base Mojave.
"Well, you see," Grant cleared his throat, "there're the fuel tanks
along the back of the blast chamber, partly lead--"
"The tanks usually are nearly empty for glide-ins," she reminded.
Grant frowned. "Yes, usually empty, but still a weight factor. Then
there's the automatic wing stabilizer that adjusts to the air speed and
density and acts to pull up the nose--"
"O.K.," she interrupted. "Now, would you lift me through the canopy,
please? I'd like to sit inside a minute."
"That's out," he said. "Only pilots and technicians."
"All right, if you won't, I'll get up myself." She marched over to the
hangar wall and pulled over boarding steps, which were braced on three
pivotal tires.
"Bridget, Security says pilots and mechanics."
"And you're forgetting why I'm here, and besides that you're supposed to
coördinate. Right now you're uncoördinating."
* * * * *
Before Grant's eyes flashed the memory of her orders with the signatures
at the bottom. She was already climbing the steps.
"Just don't touch anything, that's all," he conciliated, following her
up. Her seams were straight, he noted.
Bridget thudded into the narrow pilot's seat and wiggled herself into a
comfortable position.
"Awful crowded," she smiled up at Grant.
"I hope you tore your nylons," he groused.
"Now, if you'll just explain these gadgets," she said, moving her hand
over the panel embedded with digit-rimmed dials.
"Hands off, please."
"By your reaction, I would say you don't know what some of them are,"
she counter-fired, and tossed her protruding bunch of curls.
Grant took the bait. He leaned into the canopy and with an
over-stiffened index finger pointed forcefully at each gauge. For more
than a quarter-hour this went on, with Bridget pitching questions--most
of which he juggled.
She seemed to show more interest in the radar screen, the navigational
equipment, and the communications system. About these, she milked
Grant's available knowledge until he felt like reaching down and
throwing open the reactor valve and fuel switch.
"Lieutenant, if you don't mind, my back is paralyzed. Let's go back to
the club and I'll answer anything you want."
"Just one more," she coaxed. "This crosshair sight with the little black
circle in the middle. How does that work again?"
Grant straightened up and carefully massaged the small of his back.
"It's for precise manual navigation if you need it. You sit up straight
and sight through it."
"And what do you sight at?"
"A star, of course."
"Put it in the little black circle?"
"An A for you. Then you snap in Automatic Navigational and you're in
business. Or you can navigate manually by using Gyroscopic Navigational
if you want."
"I'm ready to get out now." Bridget lifted her hands where Grant stood
on the platform of the boarding device.
Back or no back, Grant couldn't resist the opportunity. He pulled her by
the hands to where she was leaning out the opened canopy, then he
stooped and grabbed her under the arms and swung her up. For a moment
her soft hair brushed his ear, and a light scent from her neck suggested
he keep her pliant form close to him a little longer than necessary.
[Illustration]
He planted her next to the steps, and she muttered an uninspired thank
you. But halfway down, she halted and turned.
"It's much easier asking me out dancing, Grant," she smiled impishly,
and clacked across the hangar floor toward the jeep.
* * * * *
By the next morning arrangements for a small staff and office space had
swiftly gone through. Working through lunch, Bridget had the office set
up and the staff briefed and researching when Grant returned from dining
with the general.
"You're just in time," she said, looking up from an already cluttered
desk. "I'm ready now to scan through any G-2 you have on atomjet
operation in your Mojave files."
Grant bristled. "These files are under the general's nose, and I don't
think he'd appreciate--" He broke off when he observed Bridget tapping
her pencil and frowning at him impatiently.
With a degree of diplomacy he had to admire, Grant lifted the
non-technical files from the general's office and furtively smuggled
them out in his brief case.
"Don't take all day," he warned, handing them to Bridget. "Part of my
job is keeping the general neutral about you, and not against."
Bridget jumped up and drew another chair up to her desk. "How about
scanning with me? That'll get the files back faster. Here, take these on
pilot training."
The files repulsed him less than Bridget attracted him, and he sat down
promptly. "And what do I look for, psychologically significant portions,
is that it?"
"Even psychologically insignificant portions, major, if you please."
Grant began to read. As he scanned the copies of directives, reports,
operations logs, and procedures the process became automatic, and part
of his consciousness turned contemplative.
Three months ago he would have considered the situation in which he now
found himself a future development out of the question. Mojave had
brimmed with optimism and pride and accomplishment and eagerness. Base
Mojave loomed vital in national defense, constituted a main element of
national scientific pride.
From the dusty desert stretches the sprawling, efficient base had taken
shape while United Nuclear had yet to assemble an atomjet. The schedules
came out perfectly, and the first single-manned fusion-propulsed
rocketplane thundered off the corporation proving grounds and glided
into Base Mojave as planned. Designed for patrol of the mesosphere, the
ships were to have gained for the West control of near-Earth space,
besides affording superior observation posts for Eastern developments
and activity of a space nature.
Training of the pilots had lasted thirty weeks and went by without a
casualty or serious damage. Testing and re-testing of the electronics
brought out no flaws. Stress and thermal analyses held up under all
conditions imposed.
The losses began after the third week of patrol. UNR-6 failed to return
to base--with no hint of the cause, with no communication from the
pilot. That one was hushed up by the base PR officer, but news of the
second reached the press. During the fifth week, UNR-2 never returned
for its glide-in, and, of course, the first loss came out at that time,
too.
General Morrison worked with the pilots and engineers steadily on the
problem with apparent good results--for a month. Then UNR-9 vanished.
Lately the orders had been for patrol over the States, and it was
presumed UNR-9 would have made an appearance somewhere had it been in
trouble. That's why the Dakota farmer's report had been investigated so
swiftly.
As of now, the situation had become one patrol a day with reluctant
pilots, Congress sending a committee to the base, a taxpayers'
injunction against the Air Force rocketplane operation, and United
Nuclear men experimenting hourly with robot-piloted atomjets at all
altitudes below four hundred miles.
Plus the syk research, naturally.
Bridget's ash tray spilled over with right-angled cigarette butts,
half-burned. Grant studied her as she read through the files intently
although her eyes rolled his way briefly on occasion. She faced him with
an unexpected snap of the head.
"Well?"
"Just looking," Grant explained.
"Then just look for a pilot's manual. It's been mentioned and I haven't
seen one around. Would you mind?"
Grant opened his mouth to inform her a pilot's manual for the atomjet
was classified secret, but caught himself before he could verbalize the
protest. He shrugged and planned more strategy for invading the
general's files.
The only things he could be grateful for so far were Bridget's beauty
and the fact the staff had not realized he was her adjutant.
* * * * *
The Mayo psychiatrist and the Yale psychologist had been in conference
with Bridget for almost an hour. She had been giving them preliminary
findings and the results of tests and interviews with the base pilots.
When they finally broke up, Bridget approached Grant with a
there's-something-I-want-from-you look. Grant nearly had a chance to
offer lunch before she suggested it.
What she wanted from him came out over their aerated sherbet pie. By the
time she finished, Grant's dessert was beginning to taste like
vitaminized space rations.
"Impossible," he said, dabbing at sherbet spots on his trousers. "The
general would react faster than to a red alert."
"Your concern may be the general's reactions, but mine's not," Bridget
snapped. "I just want an objective engineering answer, yes or no."
Grant threw up his hands. "O.K., O.K. With a live pilot, yes, you can
get a TV transmitter in an atomjet with some doing. You'd have to jerk
out the extra oxygen space and--"
"Wonderful! When can you have it for me?"
"Bridget, what I'm getting at, the general will take this as a slap at
him and his pilots. We've had TV transmission from robotized atomjets
dozens of times--"
"With no results."
"With no results," Grant admitted, "but that doesn't mean that with a
pilot you'll necessarily get any, either."
"No, but why hasn't someone tried?" Bridget waited for him to answer a
decent two seconds and then added, "The general, naturally."
They left the base lunchroom in silence, Bridget pouting a lip-edge more
than Grant. Before entering the office, Grant brought up a rebuttal.
"Another thing, no pilot is going to push up under those conditions,
with you down there hoping something will happen."
Bridget had her hand on the door, but instead of opening it, paused.
"The pilot would have to trust me." Her eyes darkened, widened, split
Grant emotionally down the middle. He could understand, for an instant
when he let himself, how a man could be inveigled to do anything for a
woman.
"Yeah," he said. "A pilot like that might be hard to find. I'll see what
I can do."
As he walked toward the hangars, he heard the office door close softly
behind him.
* * * * *
At the engineering conference after supper Grant had never seen General
Morrison looking quite that old. The man was sustaining an overload of
responsibility, and probably self-imposed guilt on top of it.
The mechanical engineers made their report, followed by the electronic
engineers, followed by the physicist--all negative. But each group had a
suspicion that another had overlooked something. Before it regressed to
a high-school debate, the general bellowed the conference to order.
Grant was surprised at the twinge of emotion he experienced when he
realized the general was not going to ask for a report from syk. Why
should Grant care, anyway? The position meant nothing to him, Syk
Coördinator.
It meant something to Bridget, though.
That General Morrison had not even checked for syk findings annoyed
Grant, perhaps. Under the circumstances he was justified: nothing had
yet come out, nothing that Bridget had told Grant, anyway. The general
could not be aware of this. He assumed it. Maybe that's what upset
Grant.
"Then there's this De-Meteor," the general was saying. "I've always been
suspicious of that gadget."
An electronics man spoke up. "A Clary man checked them all, even used
instrument flight to be certain. I was with him and counter-checked the
radar high-speed scanners, the computers, and the course-alteration
mechanism. I was convinced myself it would steer the ship out of any
situation involving the approach of one or two penetrating meteors."
* * * * *
General Morrison turned to the spatialogist. "What about the incidence
of penetrating meteors in the mesosphere?"
"In average fall," the man replied, "fairly low."
"And the probability of encountering three at once along a given atomjet
trajectory?"
"From what limited experiments we have made, the odds would be
astronomical, I'd say."
The general snorted. "Too great to account for three ships, anyway, is
that it?" He soothed his forehead with his big hand. "All right, let's
make another check starting tomorrow morning. More robot-flight tests.
Let's have ships outside the mesosphere operation range. And I want
reports on anything that looks like anything, understand?"
The group emitted a low groan. This was the fourth comprehensive
check--grueling, close, meticulous, nerve-racking work.
From the rear came the voice of a courageous civilian mechanical
engineer, "What about a check on the pilots?"
The sudden silence was like an electrical field. The base commander
continued to shuffle up his notes and papers, but his neck crimsoned.
He's not going to hear it, Grant thought.
"Conference dismissed!" the general ordered.
* * * * *
Three-four-five rings, and Bridget answered. The first word was a yawned
"Lieutenant" and the next was an exhaled "Ashley."
"Sorry to get you up, Bridget. This is Grant. Can you come down to
Hangar Four?"
"What time is it?" she asked thickly.
"Three-fifteen. Will you come down here?"
"Unchaperoned?"
"That's not the point. A surprise. What we talked about the other day."
Bridget's interest picked up. "What we talked about? But I'll have to
dress and fix my face--"
"Put on a robe and slippers. It's a warm morning. I've got it fixed with
the O.D. Now, will you come on down?"