There were more than a dozen news stories about it--not front-page,
black-headlines stories, but two-column stories beginning on page two
or three and continued in the newspaper center-section. None of it was
spectacular enough to merit big headlines.
However, it had obviously been given a thorough coverage by the press.
A railroad worker walking to work the Saturday morning of their trip
to Sacramento had seen "a black, torpedo-shaped ship flying through
the mist at low altitude, making a deep, rumbling noise." A police
patrol car on the highway had seen it "flying low through the clouds,
as if it were having mechanical difficulty of some sort." Two cars had
left the highway and skidded into a ditch as both drivers saw "a black
ship without wings swoop directly over" with a sound "like one long,
continuous A-bomb explosion!"
Some said the ship was just a solid black shape, without lights or any
noticeable features except the absence of any wings; some said "a long,
blue flame" came from the tail of the ship. Some said "bright red,
green, and blue lights were swarming around it" and some claimed there
were "big windows in the sides, with something moving around inside."
Officials of the Air Force, both in California and in Washington,
professed to have no knowledge about the ship. But one fact was added:
both official groups said they were deeply interested in the reports
for "reasons of security," that a thorough investigation would be made,
and that radar surveillance along the West Coast would be intensified.
And one, final news story was headed: SEARCH FOR DOWNED 'SPACESHIP'
FAILS. There had been strong belief, it said, that the mysterious black
ship had been in trouble and was making a forced landing when it was
sighted.
"There it is," Foster said with a tone of finality. "These are all the
stories in the local papers. It's been played up from coast-to-coast,
however--both in the newspapers and news telecasts. And the defense
forces along the Coast are just waiting for you to pop out again so
they can pounce on you."
"Along the Coast," Smitty echoed pensively. "It's significant that they
haven't turned their attention to the interior--back as far as the
Sierras, here--"
"Probably think it's some sort of new Russian reconnaissance aircraft,"
Morrow interjected. "They undoubtedly have a nice, little reception
committee waiting out over the ocean."
Smitty nodded. "Any cross-country we plan to do had best be plotted
due east, across the desert."
"There's the atomic project area, that way," Foster protested. "They
certainly must have increased their air defenses around that."
"At low altitude, we can get around it," Smitty said.
Foster's features went slack. "Look here! You're not seriously thinking
of--"
"If we had a wind-tunnel, no!" Smitty retorted wryly. "We could stick
the little ship in it, let it run for a few days, watch the hull
polarize itself to the gravitors' field, and note how the air-flow
around the ship was affected. Then we could rip out the jet chamber and
design a new one that'd work in the affected air-flow."
"_If_ we had a wind-tunnel," Morrow emphasized.
"Right!" Smitty turned back toward the ships. "So," he concluded, "we
take the big ship! We head out over the desert and keep going, watching
how the ship performs and what the air-flow does to her. We'll have to
install a few barometric pressure-point indicators around her hull--"
"But we'd have to fly several days steady to get that hull completely
polarized," Morrow said. "We can't just restrict ourselves to night
flying."
Smitty winced. Then he rubbed his chin, scowling. "If we have to,
Bill, we can go east to Utah, then south through Arizona to Mexico,
then east again--flying across the Border at night, without lights,
won't be too much trouble; and once in Mexico we won't have to worry
about radar. We can go out over the Gulf of Mexico, if we want to, and
then turn north and fly up the Mississippi and Ohio valleys as far
as Pennsylvania. There's a lot of brush country in the neighboring
mountain areas--there'd be little danger of getting seen through there.
So long as we don't have to land anywhere, we're safe!"
"In other words, it'd be a cross-country endurance flight," Morrow
surmised.
"But suppose the ship fails on you?" Foster demanded tersely. "Suppose
you're forced down?"
"We're visitors from outer space!" Smitty replied, grinning.
Foster wasn't amused. "Let's not be foolish about this," he argued.
"We've got something here that we can't let loose! The world isn't
ready for it--"
"But we've got to have it perfected when the world _is_ ready," Morrow
said firmly. "Once the tension wears out and the world situation
changes, we've got to act! If we aren't ready, the world will go right
ahead and get mixed up in some other squabble. Then we'd have to wait
again."
Smitty laid a hand on Foster's shoulder. "You can get a few days off
from the plant, can't you?"
"What? Well, yes," Foster stammered. "Of course! But--"
* * * * *
They took off at noon on a cloudy winter day.
They spent the afternoon dividing their attention between the
test-flight instruments and the surrounding sky. They hadn't the money
to afford elaborate recording mechanisms to graph every moment of the
flight onto neat tape-spools; they had to rely on the human eye, the
questionably analytical human mind, and the servo-mechanism of a human
hand wielding a pencil on a loose-leaf notebook. And they constantly
expected to see a razor-winged jet fighter hurtling down from the
stratosphere above them, its cannon sparkling the bright flame-color of
death.
They didn't talk much that afternoon.
They took turns at the controls and eating until each had consumed his
dinner, then gathered tensely in the control pit as the ship bored
rumblingly into the black night. Ahead of them was the Mexican Border.
Below them and around them, almost scraping the ship's belly, as low
as they were, was the jumbled, boulder-strewn Arizona desert bathed in
frosty white moonlight. Above were the cold, twinkling stars, the black
heavens--and who could tell what radar-equipped night fighter poised
above them, ready to peel off and plummet downward, guns blazing--
Then the Border was behind them. They took turns at the controls and
instruments again, catching a few winks of sleep between turns. Morning
dawned, and they approached the Gulf of Mexico.
Morrow checked their supplies--food and water for the trip, parts and
materials stowed in the spacious cargo deck for repairs on the ship if
necessary--and they took turns at breakfast. Then he and Foster sat
down to an argument about the scientific implications of the gravitors.
Foster was of the opinion that Einstein's theory no longer was valid,
that Milne's work came closer to the truth but was still vague. Morrow
thought differently, and they argued together amicably.
Noon passed, and they were over the green expanse of the Gulf. Smitty
called their attention to the short-wave radio. The newscasts were
quite interesting.
A professional hunter in Nevada, hired to exterminate a mountain lion
which had been slaughtering a rancher's cattle, was surprised when a
ship that looked "like a big, black whale" thundered over his head and
plunged down behind a nearby ridge. The hunter rode hastily around
the ridge, expecting to find the wreck, but the ship had vanished
completely "as if the ground up and swallered it!"
A Greyhound bus proceeding across Arizona nearly swerved off the road
when "a long, black torpedo at least a hundred feet long" came across
the sky "so fast the air thunder-clapped behind it" and left "a trail
of blue fire" behind it. Passengers on the bus verified the driver's
story, with some minor variations.
Two farmers standing in a field in northern Nebraska saw a flight of
six "fish-shaped" objects go over, each having a shadow "big as a barn"
on the snow.
A noted banker in Chicago created an uproar when he reported seeing "a
giant, black shape" rise from the waters of Lake Michigan as he was
driving home in the afternoon.
An amateur astronomer in Alabama reported sighting a "strange ship"
rising upward from the Earth's atmosphere "on a pillar of rocket
fire." The ship had mysteriously disappeared "as soon as it left the
atmosphere," the middle-aged hobbyist stated.
A Swedish Air Force jet-pilot claimed he had sighted, given chase,
fired at, and seen his tracers bounce harmlessly off a "black,
fish-like craft" flying at 40,000 feet above the Baltic Sea.
The news commentators added, in significant tones, that no airline
pilots had yet reported seeing such craft. One added somewhat
caustically that due to previous experiences the pilots probably
wouldn't report anything to the authorities even if they did see
anything, since the authorities persisted in treating such reports and
the pilots who made them with painful ridicule; the commentator then
launched into a condemnation of the current Administration.
"It would seem," Smitty observed from all this, "that we are quite
famous!"
"'Notorious' is the word, I believe," Foster countered drily. "If this
keeps up, some congressman is likely to introduce a bill providing that
the government produce some Martians with black spaceships. The voters
will demand it."
"It's good disguise for us, anyway," Morrow mused.
"Uh huh!" Foster grunted in reproof. "Unless we're found out, that is.
If the public discovers that we've hoodwinked 'em and there aren't any
Martian immigrants at all, they'll probably howl for our blood! I think
this is going to develop into a scare-issue, Bill. I'm afraid people
will want it, as an excuse to work off some of their nervous tension."
"Fine!" Smitty said grimly. "If anybody's trying to catch us, a general
scare-issue will have 'em looking all over the place. We're already
supposed to be in Nebraska, in Lake Michigan, in the Baltic Sea, and
somewhere out in space!"
"Invisible, too!" Morrow laughed.
* * * * *
They passed over Louisiana in the early morning and proceeded northward
up the Mississippi valley. Indicated air-speed was two hundred and
thirty-eight miles per hour. Dawn was blanketed in a pouring rain.
They turned off up the Ohio valley and reached the Allegheny Plateau
in West Virginia, flying by instruments, topographical maps, and radio
omni-range navigation.
And once they almost blundered straight into a big, six-engined
commercial stratoliner. The stratoliner pulled up almost at the last
minute.
By mid-afternoon, they were approaching Pennsylvania. The drizzling
rain had changed to snow and sleet. Then they were forced down. The
ship's air-speed fell off with an alarming suddenness. Then the entire
tail structure took on a heavy load of ice.
They settled tail-down into a clearing on a densely wooded slope. The
ship wallowed deep into the soft, slushy snow.
The three men got together over the table in the forward lounge. Foster
kept running his hands through his hair, nervously. "We're stuck," he
said. "We're stuck here for the winter unless we can rebuild the tail
assembly. That jet chamber has to be changed."
It was obvious, after they had diagrammed the readings from their
various flight-test instruments. The ship's hull had become completely
polarized to the gravitors' field; the field influenced the air flowing
over the hull, so much so that a simple air-scoop couldn't pick up air
to blow through the propulsion unit and out the tail-jets. The air
intake had to be designed to work on the disturbed air-flow.
"It's a little like those 'space-warps' in science-fiction yarns,"
Foster explained. "There's a warp of the gravitational and magnetic
fields around the ship. The air-flow entering that warp bends and
twists to follow it."
"We ought to redesign the entire hull to comply with that warped
air-flow," Smitty suggested absently.
"The hull doesn't matter so much," Foster contradicted. "We could
design it in any shape, though a sharp nose and thin guide-fins are
still effective. You just happened to hit the right answer when you
placed the control-surfaces forward on the nose of the ship."
"Talking isn't going to get us out of here," Morrow remarked grimly.
"Let's get to work on that tail assembly."
"I got news for you!" Smitty muttered. "If we rebuild the tail with our
power-tools, it'll use up the juice in our batteries. We won't have
enough to get home."
"We must get our batteries recharged, then," Morrow said. "Will we have
enough juice left to get out of here when we're finished?"
Smitty nodded. "And then we'll be up a creek. Where do we get our
batteries recharged?"
"Couldn't one of us venture into a town around here and buy a few
batteries?" Foster suggested. "Without wearing our Martian costumes, of
course."
"Our Martian costumes as you call 'em are at least warm!" Smitty
retorted. "It's a little cold to go wandering around out there in our
coveralls."
"Wouldn't pay to risk it, anyway," Morrow said. "Suppose someone has
seen our ship flying around here? Suppose they make a report that
brings in the authorities and--"
"But who'd think a man in coveralls just stepped off a spaceship?"
Foster persisted.
"Uh huh. You have a point, there. But if the authorities were
investigating, they'd check railroad and truck shipments of any plastic
or metal aircraft construction materials into this region, and where
they were delivered. They'd check local machine shops, auto-parts
shops, aviation parts dealers--and _they'd check garages_! If one of
us walks up to a garage, buys a battery, and walks away carrying it on
his shoulder, don't you think the garage mechanic is going to remember
him, what he looked like, how tall he was, what he weighed? How often
does anyone without a car buy an auto battery and carry it away on his
shoulder?"
"We might 'borrow' somebody's car," Smitty mused, grinning.
"We might be caught ten minutes afterward, too," Foster objected. "The
police are quite efficient at catching car thieves."
"Then we need a car," Morrow concluded. "Smitty, can we lift out of
here once we've rebuilt our jets?"
"We could travel a few hundred miles," Smitty conceded. "Not that it
would get us anywhere."