"I know," Morrow said. He sighed wearily. "We've got to do better than
this. Take her higher--ram-jets are supposed to work better at high
altitude."
"I don't want to go over twelve thousand without oxygen," Smitty
replied. "Can't let this wind blow us down over Yosemite National Park,
either--if we can help it."
"Take her up," Morrow said.
The ship continued to rise, steadily.
"Eleven thousand," Smitty chanted. "Eleven thousand five hundred,
twelve thousand, twelve thousand five--she's flattening out!"
Their ascent slowed, gradually. The ship steadied at thirteen thousand
feet above sea-level--7500 feet on the altimeter, which had been zeroed
to the altitude of their sawmill workshop.
"Down!" Morrow barked. "She's losing speed!"
The indicator needle was creeping back past thirty-five, then
thirty--their sideward shift to the south could be felt. Smitty shoved
forward his control wheel. The ship dived.
They glided easily back across the mountain slope toward their sawmill.
Judging their wind-drift accurately, Smitty set the ship down in the
yard before the black, yawning doors of the building. As the runners
scraped the ground, he switched off the gravitors and slumped back in
his seat, dejectedly.
"We've got to rebuild that jet chamber," he muttered. "There's
something wrong with it, Bill. All we've got is a big wind-blower, in
spite of her weightlessness--the drag of the hull wouldn't slow us down
_that_ much!"
Morrow unbuckled his seat-belt, rose, and strode back to the steps
without a word.
It took them a week to pull out the rear bulk-heads and completely
redesign and reconstruct the tail-jet assembly. When they finished,
they tried it again. They got an air-speed of seventy m.p.h. at low
level, but it dropped to twenty m.p.h. as they gained altitude. The
tail-jets didn't just make a whooming sound, this time--they made a
rumbling, burbling sound.
They landed and pulled the ship into the workshop, closing the big
doors after it. Morrow walked over to the workbench, pulled off his
gloves, and threw them down.
"It's no good!" he said harshly. "That jet chamber just isn't shaped
right--there's too much turbulence in it, breaks up the jet-blast."
"We'll rebuild it again," Smitty said, with a shrug in his voice.
Morrow wheeled and glared at him, red-eyed. "We aren't jet engineers,
Smitty. We're building by guesswork! We can redesign that jet chamber a
thousand times and never get the right shape!"
Smitty moved on to the stove and began stoking up the red coals,
stacking wood on them. "She does seventy per hour up to seven thousand
feet," he said dully. "If that's the best we can do, we'll just have to
be satisfied with it."
"It's not _good_ enough!" Morrow protested. "She _has_ to have more
speed, Smitty. She'll be at the mercy of every wind that comes along if
she hasn't, weightless as she is!" He smacked his fist into his palm,
decisively. "We've got to get help, chum."
"Help?" Smitty turned and looked at him, querulously. "Where can we get
help?"
"A jet engineer," Morrow snapped irritably. "That's the only one
who _can_ help us. We've got to find one--" He broke off, suddenly
thoughtful.
Smitty grinned without mirth, mistaking his silence for hopelessness.
"That's the trouble, Bill," he said. "There's no one who _would_ help
us!"
"I'm not so sure about that!" Morrow replied softly. "_I'm not so sure
at all--_"
* * * * *
It was late Friday afternoon when Morrow parked the battered,
mud-splattered truck on a side-street and climbed out to go for a quiet
stroll in suburban Sacramento.
The street address he was looking for turned up in the next block, near
the edge of town. It was an inconspicuous one of the long street-row
of small houses with a green lawn stretching down to the curb and
dotted with a few evergreen shrubs, a broad livingroom picture window
in front, a white front door with a small ornamental iron night-lamp
mounted above it, and a one-story, red-tiled roof in the flat, gently
sloping California style.
Morrow walked past the house and around the block to the alley. He
walked up the alley behind the house. Its rear was as inconspicuous as
its front: a wide yard, partly in lawn, partly in flower garden and
part gravelled with clothesline, enclosed by a low, whitewashed wood
fence. The only noticeable difference was a small sand-box in which a
small brother and sister were playing with toy cars. The little boy and
girl wore matching rompers and had straw-colored hair which, Morrow
concluded, they must have inherited from their mother. He'd never met
Mrs. Foster, but he remembered Bob Foster's dark, heavy hair.
He walked on down the alley, studying the back yards behind the other
houses. He noted how wide the alleyway was, how high surrounding
fences, garages, and other obstructions were, and the lack of telephone
poles or wires overhead. He nodded his satisfaction.
When he got back to the truck, he took a street-map from the glove
compartment and carefully marked the exact location of Foster's house.
Then he drove out of Sacramento, had dinner at a roadside restaurant,
and proceeded to Stockton. Smitty met him downtown and they went into a
lunchroom for coffee.
"Groceries and laundry's taken care of," Smitty reported wryly. "How
was Sacramento?"
"Fine," Morrow said. "If the weather forecasts for tomorrow night pan
out, we'll get in and out without any trouble."
Smitty frowned worriedly. "It's still a big risk to take, Bill. We'll
be flying into the Coastal Radar-Defense Zone, you know, and we can't
just file a flight-plan at an airport for an unauthorized, illegal
ship. I'd hate to look up and see an F-140 night-fighter with its
nose-cannon blazing at me!"
"That ground radar isn't effective below three thousand feet," Morrow
reminded him. "I think we can sneak in at treetop-level without being
detected."
"That's all right, unless we fly into a power-line in the dark," Smitty
grumbled. "It's still risky as hell--"
"We've got to have Foster," Morrow said firmly. "I can't say for sure
whether he'll join us or not, but we've got to try!"
"Okay!" Smitty signed resignedly. "We'll try."
The following night, Morrow left Smitty checking over their ship and
flight equipment and drove the truck down to a gas station on the
highway, thirty miles west of their sawmill-workshop. He parked beside
the gas pumps, told the attendant to fill the tank and check the oil,
and went inside to the pay-phone booth.
He called Sacramento Long Distance and gave them Foster's home
videophone number.
There was some fault in calling from a pay-phone, of course--and
a Long Distance call on a rural pay-phone at that. Neither Long
Distance calls nor pay-phones nor rural phones had the new videophone
accessories. Videophones, involving two-way television transmission via
a camera-screen installation, were still in the development stage.
Metropolitan and suburban phones had the video screens. Long Distance
coaxial transmission was still too costly to merit the installation of
the screens on rural phones--which also ruled out Long Distance video
calls. To install the screens in pay-phones would, as yet, triple the
cost of the calls.
Naturally, the Sacramento operator would inform Foster this was a Long
Distance call; Foster's screen would remain blank. The gas station's
pay-phone had no screen. This was a disadvantage to Morrow: not seeing
Foster's face, he wouldn't be absolutely certain he was speaking to
Foster. He'd have to rely on his memory of Foster's voice, and it had
been more than two years since he'd met Foster.
Positive identification could be important. Morrow kicked himself
mentally for not making a local call to Foster's home while he was in
Sacramento. Suppose Foster had moved in the past two years? Suppose
there was some sort of slip-up that aroused someone's suspicions just
enough to start the authorities on an investigation--
Even the _slightest_ mistake might finish them!
And the call had to be made. Their plan was set for tonight, Saturday
night, because Foster was most likely to be home from work--research
engineers often worked late hours on weekdays--and because he'd
probably have the next day off. They had to get Foster out for that
one day, and it had to be done right. But they had to be certain that
Foster was home when they went after him.
The receiver continued its rattling noise in his ear as Morrow waited,
fidgeting impatiently, and the seconds crawled past.
The rattling ended with a faint click.
"_Hello?_"
Morrow exhaled a shuddery sigh of relief. He recognized Foster's
characteristic deep, muffled tones almost at once. "Hi, Bob. This is
Bill Morrow--"
"_Morrow? Well, hi yourself! Where you calling from?_"
"I'm on the highway," Morrow said. "I'm on my way north and wondered if
I might drop in as I pass through Sacramento--I ought to be there in a
few hours. You going to be home?"
"_Ye-e-es. C'mon around, by all means! You still have my home address,
haven't you?_"
"Sure thing. How've you been?"
"_So-so, between drawing curves on flight-test characteristics and
pounding out stories. You written anything lately?_"
"I've been a little too busy to give it much thought," Morrow answered
truthfully.
"_Uh huh! Well--say, you going to be in 'Frisco for next year's
science-fiction convention?_"
Morrow grinned. "'Sa little too early to say, yet. I'll see you in a
few hours, then, huh?"
"_Right-o! We'll have the beer on ice!_"
* * * * *
Morrow drove back to the sawmill workshop and helped Smitty perform
a final inspection of the ship and equipment. Their plan was
worked out thoroughly. The ship would fly to and from their target
at low altitude, and at its maximum speed. The forecast weather
conditions would aid in hiding them, but it would also hinder their
flight--much of it would have to be done on instruments, and Smitty
spent considerable time studying topographical sector-maps and radio
omni-range vectors.
Their personal gear consisted of two special suits which would serve to
conceal their identity as well as aid them in an emergency. The suits,
patterned out of shimmering fabrilastex material, fit with skin-tight
snugness over their long winter underwear and socks. The foot-soles of
the suits were of springy foam-rubber, heat-welded to the fabrilastex
just as the seams in the material were heat-welded to a perfect fit.
A sturdy harness fitted into the inside of the suits to grip their
legs, thighs, and chests, suspending them in bail-outs from the sturdy
plastic tanks on the back of their suits. Each tank enclosed a gravitor
unit. A lightweight, transparent blue dome helmet fitted over their
heads and clamped onto fasteners on their shoulders. There were small
air-vents around the bottom of the helmets and in the fantastic-looking
knob attachments in their tops.
They pulled on their suits in the workshop and stared at each other,
grinning. "All you need," Smitty taunted, "is a flashlight ray-gun in
each hand!"
"You look pretty monstrous yourself, blue-face!" Morrow retorted.
"_You_ look _sexy_, old boy!"
"_Down_, Rover! Better climb on the ship's radio and check the weather
reports again--"
"Wilco!"
Morrow walked to the end of the workshop and swung open the big doors.
Then he went back and crawled into the ship, swinging the thick
"air-lock" door into its grooves behind him. As he climbed into the
control pit, Smitty reported that the weather was just as lousy as
they wanted it to be: clear, cold, and windy at high altitudes, with
some low cumulus and a five-hundred-foot thick blanket of fog hugging
the ground and creeping in and out of the valleys. There were several
scattered thunder-showers and by morning there would be solid rain in
the mountains.
Morrow switched on the gravitor units at the flight engineer's panel,
then moved up and strapped himself into the co-pilot's seat. "It's your
bus, Junior," he said. "Let me know when we reach my stop."
"Passengers move to the rear, please," Smitty retorted, and eased the
ship cautiously out of the workshop. They swung northward and set off,
flying just a few hundred feet above the mountain slopes. The moon was
a cold, white gash in the black heavens, and the dark mantle of the
treetops swept past below.
Unfastening his helmet, Morrow swung it back and relaxed, lighting a
cigarette....
* * * * *
They had to use every precaution in going after Foster. In the first
place, they had to consider that he might be violently opposed to their
project--that, in fact, he might go straight to the authorities with
it. The only safeguard against that was simply to prevent Foster from
knowing where their project was located. Without that information, he
would probably find it difficult to make the authorities believe him. A
mere story about mechanisms that control gravity, without any basis of
fact to support it, would sound rather far-fetched.
For that matter, it would have been difficult merely to visit Foster
and convince him they did have such mechanisms! The only quick answer
was to show him, to prove it to him. Then he would listen to them.
There was a good chance that he'd approve of their project and help
them with it--otherwise, Morrow wouldn't have thought of him. And
he was a man who could help them. Robert Foster was a jet engineer,
employed as a flight-test analyst at an aircraft corporation's
experimental plant near Sacramento. Morrow had met him, however,
because Foster had written many stories for the science-fiction
magazines, mostly on the galactic empire theme. They had met at a
private science-fiction club in New York and spent most of a long
night in a bar, along with several other writers and magazine
editors, discussing subjects of vast scope and consuming beverages in
vast quantity. Foster had proved himself a kindred soul of fertile
imagination, if not of superior intellect, and so into the wee, small
hours.
In short, Foster had impressed him as a man to be trusted when the
going got rough.
Whether or not that impression had been correct, Morrow didn't know.
Tonight would certainly put it to the test. They could only ask for his
help, and that was all. If he refused, he refused. They couldn't use
threats or coercion or any suggestion of violence--that would gain them
nothing.
Foster _had_ to agree! There was no one else! Without his help, they
were stymied....
The weather thickened as they turned west, coming down off the slopes
of the Sierras. Silvery masses of cloud drifted by in the moonlight
and a thin, gray haze obscured the ground. They cruised along, their
tail-jets rumbling, descending slowly to pass beneath a long row of
clouds ahead. Raindrops began streaking the transparent blister which
pinged at their impact; then it began a steady, ringing sound as
the downpour increased. The world was turned into a gray, trickling
wetness, faintly reflecting the green glow of the luminous instrument
dials. The lights of a town appeared off to the left, wavering sparks
in the wet gloom. Smitty swore under his breath.
They emerged from the shower to find themselves over an endless mass
of cottony white, completely hiding the ground. "Now we gotta go down
through that stuff!" Smitty muttered, and pushed the nose down.
The ground became dimly visible through the mist at a height of seventy
feet. "Airspeed's a hundred and ten; headwind was reported at twenty
miles." Smitty chanted glumly.
Morrow said nothing for a moment, knowing Smitty meant that if they
were flying any faster their dim, wavering view of the ground would
mean nothing. Then he started and looked up. "A hundred and ten? In a
twenty-mile wind? That's ninety miles an hour!"
Smitty stared at his instruments and nodded slowly. "We're doing better
than we did," he agreed. "Either that, or this wind has twisted its
tail. We'll check it again."
They flew onward through the swirling, dark mist. The dark blurs of
trees flashed past below, and houses, roads, and telephone lines. Dim,
shadowy objects, hardly recognizable. And there were moments when the
mist closed in completely, hiding everything. Morrow felt a cold sweat
forming on his face. The jets made a deep, mournful rumbling sound
in the ship's tail. A highway swept past below, with car headlights
revealed as moving blobs of yellow in the darkness.
"This is the block," Morrow said, finally. "Swing across it and come
down in that alleyway in its center. I'll tell you where to land then."
Below them were the familiar rooftops of the houses, rising darkly out
of a thin ground mist. Smitty brought the ship over them, cutting the
jets, and let it coast to a stop over the narrow, vague band of the
alleyway. Slowly, they drifted downward.
Morrow consulted the street-map on his lap again. "Up a little
further," he directed.
The jets gave a brief, rumbling sigh and they glided forward.
"Here--ground her!"
Gravel rasped against the ship's belly. They unfastened their belts and
scrambled down into the ship.
"What time is it?" Smitty whispered, as Morrow swung open the door.
Morrow glanced at his wrist-watch. "Three-ten a.m.," he said
half-humorously. He wondered if Foster was still waiting up for him.
"Fasten your helmet down, and let's go!"
They dropped down from the ship and went over to the low, white fence
behind Foster's house. Passing through the gate, they strode across
the yard. The mist-shine glimmered faintly off their bodies. Their
blue-tinted helmets were grotesque globes of darkness, like the heads
of nightmare creatures.
Light glowed from a window in the side of the house. "Somebody's up!"
Morrow observed softly.
"Do we go 'round and ring the front doorbell?" Smitty wondered. "Or do
we just walk in?"
Morrow shrugged. "It won't make much difference. Let's try the back
door--if it's locked, well go around."
They reached the door and he tested its knob, careful not to make any
noise. It yielded readily.
They entered.
The faint light filtering down the short hallway was enough to guide
them across the dark kitchen. Then they had to pass the dark doorways
of what were probably two bedrooms, on either side of the hall. They
reached the lighted doorway near the front, and stood looking into the
living room.
Robert Foster was seated in a comfortable chair next to the television
set. A single reading lamp was burning--the pipe clutched in Foster's
teeth was out--and he seemed deeply engrossed in a good book.
Morrow reached up and snapped the fasteners on his helmet.
Foster lifted his gaze with the utmost casualness and studied the two
figures in the doorway. He looked quite happy and contented, dressed
in an old pair of slacks and loafers and a turtle-neck sweater. His
dark, touselled hair showed evidence of his hand running through it--a
habitual gesture of his, Morrow remembered.
Slowly, a stunned expression crept across his face.
Morrow swung his helmet back onto his gravitor tank. "Hello, Bob," he
said.
Foster slipped a marker into his book, closed it, and laid it carefully
aside. "Morrow?" he said. "So you finally made it! I might've known
you'd be coming by way of Jupiter--but why the get-up, friend? And
who's your partner?" There was just the slightest quaver in his voice.
It was almost more than Morrow had hoped for. He could play it through,
now. "This is a Martian friend of mine," he said, hooking his thumb
toward Smitty. "I can't stay long. Somebody might see our spaceship and
get curious."
"Your--spaceship?" Foster queried falteringly.
"We landed it out in back."
The room was silent for a moment. Foster sat dumbfounded, staring at
them. A flicker of a gleam began to show itself in his eyes. "Am I to
understand," he said gently, "that you have landed a spaceship in my
back yard?"
"No," Morrow corrected. "In the alley."
"Hmmm--it'd better be in the alley. My wife would slaughter us both if
you'd trampled her gardenias." Foster fell back in his chair. He tried
to relax; he even grinned, somewhat shakily. "Now what's the idea,
Bill? Why'd you come tippy-toe in here like this? Out with it!"
"Take too long to explain," Morrow replied, shaking his head.
"Somebody's liable to see that spaceship any minute, now." He forced a
broad, innocent grin across his face. "You want to come have a look at
it?"
"Ye-e-es!" Foster agreed sarcastically, rising from his chair. "I
suppose I _should_ take a look at it--"
Morrow led him out the front door and around the house. "Don't want to
awaken your wife," he explained, clamping down his helmet.
"No-o-o-o!" Foster conceded. "I wouldn't advise that!" They proceeded
on across the back yard, through the clinging, wet fingers of the mist.
Then Foster saw the ship.
After that, it wasn't too hard to persuade him to enter it. Then it
was simple to switch on the gravitors and rise into the dark sky.
Morrow had him planted in the flight engineer's seat, enthusiastically
demanding explanations in full, as Smitty piloted them swiftly homeward.
Foster was sold!
* * * * *
They held a conference in the sawmill-workshop that lasted all the next
day and well into the next night. Then Foster went home to tell his
wife he'd had a hurry-up call from the aircraft plant and gone there to
work on some secret research; they drove him back to Sacramento in the
truck, and let him off near his house.
Then they returned to the workshop and went to work.
The following weekend, Foster drove up in his own car to see them. He
climbed out of his car wearing lace-boots and hunting clothes. Reaching
into the back seat, he brought out a shotgun and a stack of newspapers,
then Morrow came up to greet him and they strode into the workshop.
"You fellows have really been hitting the ball!" Foster exclaimed, as
he stopped and gazed at the small, needle-nosed ship sitting beside the
larger ship.
Morrow nodded. They had worked night and day to construct the second,
smaller ship--a little two-passenger job with sweptback fins and a
canopy-covered cockpit in its sharp nose. It rested neatly on its
long A-fins, poised to hurtle into the sky. Its color scheme--dark
blue-black on top, light gray on its belly--stood out in sharp contrast
to the solid, shimmering black of the giant ship behind it.
It had been Foster's idea. He'd pointed out to them that they needed a
smaller experimental model, easier to dismantle and rebuild, for the
development of their air-jet chamber.
"Have you given it a test-flight yet?" Foster asked.
"Ran it out last night," Smitty replied, coming around the two ships
to meet them. He set a plumber's blowtorch on the workbench and wiped
his hands on a rag. "It hit seventy miles an hour, then worked up to
seventy-four after a five-hour run."
Foster shook his head in puzzlement. "That's something I just can't
account for. A jet-pod ought to be just as efficient as its design,
and nothing should alter its basic performance other than a change in
atmospheric conditions."
"There was no atmospheric change," Morrow said. "Same altitude, same
barometric pressure, same thermal conditions. I'm beginning to think
the problem isn't only in the jet-pod design."
"That makes two of us!" Foster agreed. "The design I gave you should've
worked better than any seventy miles an hour, if your propulsion
unit develops that focus of 'false gravity' and squeezes the air out,
forming a low-pressure center, as you said it did."
"We've checked that, too," Morrow said, frowning thoughtfully. "I'm
beginning to think it's something to do with the gravitors' field of
influence. Come over here--I want to show you something!"
He led the jet engineer over to where he and Smitty had rigged a
gravitor mechanism and a sling-load of sandbags with rope attached,
just as they'd used in weight-testing the gravitors. He switched on the
gravitor, adjusted its setting, and let it lift the load of sandbags
into the air. Then he pointed to the rope dangling down beneath it.
"See that twist in the rope, just under the sandbags?" he said. "That
much of the rope is in the influence of the gravitor's field, which is
cancelling out the pull of the Earth's gravity. Now then, if it can
influence that three-foot length of rope, what influence might it have
on the air around it--and on the slipstream of air flowing over our
ships, which is supposed to enter the air-vents and be blasted out the
jets for propulsion of the ships?"
"It could be scrambling our intake flow," Foster acknowledged
pensively. "But would that condition alter in time?"
Morrow shook his head. "I don't think it does--or that it would unless
the gravitor's batteries were almost burned out. Then the field's
influence might lessen a bit. Otherwise, no."
"Then why is it that the jets' efficiency increases with time?" Foster
asked. "How'd you get seventy miles an hour on the big ship, then
ninety? And five hours' running built up the little ship's speed an
additional four miles per hour, didn't it?"
Smitty nodded. "It gets gradually better--but not much. If we knew
how it happened and what it was doing to the air-flow, maybe we could
design jet-pods with the right shape to use that air-flow and get good
performance."
Foster turned and peered sharply at Morrow. "Bill, doesn't that
gravitor's field work by conductivity of some sort through the
surrounding material?"
"Uh?" Morrow started. "Yes, it--wait! You mean the ship's plastic hull?"
"Right. And what about the polarization of that plastic?"
Morrow pursed his lips, contemplatively. "Like all materials on Earth,
it's polarized--if you want to use that word--to the gravitational and
magnetic fields of Earth. I see what you're driving at, though--the
gravitors establish a field in which the Earth's gravity and magnetism
are cancelled out, or bent back upon themselves. The mechanism of the
gravitors, the hull they support, everything within their field of
influence is placed on a basis of its own gravity, mass-attraction,
magnetism, what-have-you."
"And that's gradually changing the polarization of those materials,"
Foster concluded. "And the gravitors' field, working through the
material, is also affected. There's a gradual change in its influence
on other surrounding matter--and on the slipstream flowing over the
ship!"
"We'd need a wind-tunnel to test that, wouldn't we?" Smitty asked
dejectedly.
"Yep," Foster agreed. "And wind-tunnels cost money. The only other way
to test it would be to make a cross-country flight, and I wouldn't
advise that."
"What about a cross-country night flight?" Morrow wondered.
Foster gave him a strange look. "You two haven't been reading the
newspapers lately, have you?"
* * * * *
Morrow and Smitty exchanged glances of mingled surprise and guilt.
"We've been rather busy out here," Morrow protested lamely.
"I suspected you were," Foster said, a trace of grim humor in his
voice. He walked over to the drafting table in the corner, where he'd
left his shotgun and bundle of newspapers. "Pull that thing down and
come over here," he told them. "I've something to show _you_, now!"
Morrow cranked the gravitor-sling down on the hand winch and Smitty
shut it off; then they went over to where Foster was spreading
newspapers on the drafting table, checking and circling columns of
newsprint with a blue crayon pencil. Morrow stepped to his side and
stared down at the papers. The words fairly leaped up to strike him in
the eye.