It would. And the next night, it did.
* * * * *
The three men crouching in the control pit of the sleek, black ship
looked red-eyed and haggard from fatigue and lack of sleep. They had
stripped off their shoes and socks to let them dry near the ship's
heater, and their damp, mud-stained coveralls were drying on their
bodies. Foster had developed a wracking cough and his nose was running.
The air-speed indicator registered three hundred and sixty-eight miles
per hour. Smitty stared at it, glumly. "Let's just hope it doesn't fade
out on us again," he muttered.
The test of the ship's performance had been the whole purpose of their
long, cross-country trip, Morrow thought wordlessly. They had made
every preparation they could think of for the trip. Each had a special
suit with helmet and gravitor-tank--and one additional feature: a
one-man propulsion unit. They'd developed that in the workshop when
they ran one of the suit's gravitors until its field had completely
polarized the suit; then, when the suit was suspended high over a
small wood fire, the smoke from the fire had risen up into the suit's
gravitor field and twisted and swirled around to conform to the warp
of that field. Knowing those twists and swirls, Foster had designed a
small jet unit with air intake slots and jet-pipes which utilized the
air-flow through the gravitor field.
Of course, there was one fault in this jet unit: it was designed to
use the air-flow around a gravitor standing still. With the gravitor
in motion, that air-flow was altered somewhat. But when Smitty had
floated up in his suit with that little jet unit built into its tank,
he had managed to fly around the sawmill yard at a good fifteen miles
per hour. The air drag against his legs, since the gravitor made him
weightless, was considerable--it flattened him out in horizontal flight
and, by swinging his legs from one side to the other, he was quite
capable of controlling the direction of his flight. The lift or descent
of the gravitor sufficed for climbing or diving maneuvers. He'd looked
like a human fish swimming in the sky.
For the ships, of course, such a jet unit wouldn't do. The ships needed
jets which would work while in motion, at speeds exceeding a hundred
miles an hour. Thus, they'd had to fly the ship until its gravitors
completely polarized its hull. Then they had to determine the air-flow
over that hull at flying speeds with flow and pressure indicators
mounted on the hull. Then they had to rebuild the tail-jets to conform
with their findings.
A flight half-way across the continent and back to their workshop would
have served for that. But then, they had to be sure that there was
no further change in the air-flow or polarization or gravitor field.
For that reason, they had decided on this trip all the way across the
country. It would give them a complete, thorough test of the ship.
They had even gone so far as to arm themselves for defense, in case
they were forced down anywhere and someone tried to get rough with
them. In a strictly legal sense, the streamlined plastic pistols they
carried were not lethal weapons.
Technically, those pistols were ray-guns. They fired a beam of light.
That light came from a standard photographer's flash-bulb. It was
focused into a tight, narrow beam by the pistol's barrel reflector. It
wouldn't penetrate the human skin; it wouldn't even raise a blister. It
was almost physically harmless. But directed at a person's face at a
distance of no more than twenty feet, it would leave them totally blind
for about three minutes. A simple flash-bulb delivered a nice, bright
flash.
A person suddenly struck blind wasn't likely to be in any condition or
mood to cause trouble.
All other preparations for the trip had been as completely thorough,
as carefully planned. Yet they had made one slight error. They had
forgotten to include extra batteries for the ship. In all their careful
and intricate preparations, that one, simple precaution had been
overlooked.
And now, because of it, Morrow wondered if the whole purpose of their
trip wasn't going to be changed. They were flying to Westerton where he
would borrow a car from someone he knew.
The one person in Westerton he felt he could trust more readily than
others was, of course, Gwyn Davidson. And Gwyn's father had a car.
But they couldn't land their ship anywhere near town, where he could
go directly to Gwyn. They would have to land some distance from town,
at a spot he knew quite well, and he'd have to proceed from there. He
couldn't hitch-hike into town; people knew him, would recognize him and
ask questions. He'd have to fly in on his suit gravitor.
And when Gwyn saw that, he'd have some explaining to do. He wondered
what she would think....
He wondered, too, at the thrilling tingle of excitement which was
washing through him in waves of--of ecstasy, almost! There was no other
word for it! He felt like a kid with his first toy.
The ship glided down through the cold moonlight and grounded behind a
thick screen of trees, hidden near the shore of a small lake. Across
the glistening, ice-covered lake, the sprawling log structures of
Lakeshore Lodge loomed blackly against the snow glare. The buildings
were deserted, uninhabited during the winter.
Morrow remembered it during the summer season, alive with people in
bathing suits, and small boats out on the lake, and this small clearing
behind the trees where they landed, where he and Gwyn had sprawled on a
blanket, sunning themselves. He remembered the spot quite well.
Westerton was twenty miles away.
* * * * *
He was numb with the shock of the cold air and the weird experience of
his flight when he approached the town.
_It felt so damned strange!_ He was flying at about four hundred feet,
sprawled flat with the wind blowing and buffeting over him. His head
was protected by his helmet, of course, and he was only doing about
fifteen miles an hour--but the weightless condition of his arms and
legs made it feel as if he were battling a sixty-mile gale! And using
his legs to guide his flight completed the impression: he _swam_
through the air!
The yellow lights of town began to outline the streets and
intersections below him. Never having seen them from the air, they were
at first strange to him, unrecognizable--then he got his bearings and
flew onward. Or swam. His breath was coming in labored gasps. His whole
body was tensed against the cold seeping into his suit.
He searched frantically for Gwyn's house. It was after two in the
morning; she'd be home asleep now.
He spotted it, flew over it, and cut his tiny jets. Then, tuning down
his gravitor, he drifted gently downward until his feet crunched in the
snow in the small back yard. Looking up, he saw with a start that he'd
just barely missed straddling a telephone wire on his way down.
Shivering, he strode toward the house. It was a two-story, white frame
structure and Gwyn's room, he believed, was on the left side upstairs.
He went around to the side of the house and looked up at the windows,
puzzled. Which was hers?
It wouldn't do to try to scramble in a window, anyway. Gwyn would
probably let out a scream that would awaken the whole neighborhood--or
her father might take a shot at him!
Better to do it the conventional way. Knock on the front door. Ring the
bell.
Should he take her father into his confidence, too? Morrow decided
against it--no point in stretching his luck too far.
Then he had to get Gwyn out of the house. Alone.
Morrow shook his head, grinning wryly. This was getting more like a
kid's game all the time! Then he shuddered. It was cold as blazes! He
had to get inside and get warm!
He strode purposefully around front, went up on the porch, and rang the
bell. A good, long ring. Then he jumped off the porch and ran back to
the side of the house.
A light flashed on upstairs. A shapely, feminine silhouette passed
across the curtains as Gwyn crossed the room, pulling on her housecoat.
Morrow stepped close to the wall, tuned up his gravitor, and rose
easily up to the window. He grabbed the sill to stop himself and peered
in. The room was empty. The window was raised slightly.
He pushed it up, scrambled in, and lowered it behind him. The room was
small and neat, littered with feminine knick-knacks, and smelling more
clean and polished than sweetly perfumed. He strode past the rumpled
bed and sat down in the chair against the wall, out of sight from the
doorway.
His gravitor tank kept him well-forward on the edge of the chair.
His suit remained ice-cold and snug in the room's warmth, which he
felt seeping in through the vents in his helmet collar. He shuddered
violently, then sucked the wonderfully warm air into his lungs. He
gazed around, noting that his helmet gave everything in the room a
bluish tint, but he was so accustomed to that he didn't mind it. Then
he saw himself in the dressing-table mirror, across the room, and
almost doubled over with silent laughter.
What a strange creature he was, with a shimmering, bright skin and a
huge, dark globe of a head!
Gwyn would scream her lungs out!
He reached up hastily, broke the clamps on his helmet and swung it
back. Best to let her see his face, first, and recognize him--
A door opened out in the hallway.
"Who is it, Gwyn?" Old man Davidson's voice had the mellowness of a
concrete mixer.
"Nobody, Dad!" Gwyn's voice came from downstairs, puzzled. Small feet
stamped on the stairs. "It's awfully cold out for anyone to be playing
pranks. When I opened the door, there was nobody out there!"
"Well, go back to sleep, honey."
"All right. 'Night, Dad."
The door closed in the hallway. The small footsteps trod disconsolately
toward Gwyn's door.
Then she was swirling into the room, closing the door, and pulling the
housecoat off over her blue, pink-flowered pajamas.
When she saw him, she froze and sucked in her breath.
"_Bill!_"
It wasn't a loud exclamation, but a faint, weak cry. Morrow had his
finger over his lips, motioning her to silence.
Her face went blank; then she tugged her housecoat frantically back on
and strode over to him. Her voice was a low, insistent murmur. "Bill,
how did _you_ get in here? What _is_ this, anyway?" Her wide eyes were
sweeping over him from head to foot, unbelievingly. "What on earth's
_happened_?"
"Sit down," Morrow said gently. "Keep your voice low. Can't let anyone
know I'm here, Gwyn--and I need your help!"
* * * * *
Gwyn looked at him steadily for a long moment. Then she said, with a
kind of silent protest, "All right, Bill. I'll get Dad's car out and go
with you. Now--how are you going to get out of here?"
"Same way I got in," he told her, quietly. "I'll meet you outside."
Then, before she could protest, he strode to the window, raised it,
climbed out, and shoved free--using his gravitor, of course, as he did.
She stared at him from the window until he touched ground. Then he
waved to her and went around the house to the garage.
She came out a few minutes later, dressed in a warm, woolen suit.
Morrow explained the project to her as they drove downtown. When they
got out on the highway, approaching an all-night garage, she dropped
him off. A half-hour later, she was back.
"Got the batteries?" he asked, piling into the front seat beside her.
"Yes, I got them," she said.
They drove on out to Lakeshore Lodge.
She was grimly silent all the way. No questions, no comments
whatsoever. She kept her eyes straight ahead on the highway, her face
expressionless and a little pale in the passing lights.
_She doesn't like it_, Morrow thought bitterly.
But if she didn't like it, why didn't she say so? Did she think this
female silent treatment would work on him? Gwyn should know him well
enough to realize that such typically feminine maneuvers always have
the opposite effect of what they were supposed to have on him. Silent
disapproval, huh? Then the devil with her!
But such obvious deceit wasn't like Gwyn, either, he realized. Maybe it
was something else, then.
Maybe she had gotten the idea that he didn't want her opinion. Suppose
she wasn't asking questions because she thought he didn't want her to
ask anything!
Possible, he thought. Even probable. He might have overdone it when
he tried to impress her with the need for absolute secrecy. Maybe she
thought he'd merely come to her because he needed help, that she wasn't
included in the project itself--
But _was_ she?
Morrow realized, then, that he wanted her to come back with him. Back
to California, to the workshop--
What would the others say about that?
And did he want to expose Gwyn to the sort of risks they were taking?
They drove up to the Lodge and parked. "I'll have to take the batteries
in one at a time, I guess," he said dourly.
"Where?" She seemed to rouse herself out of her own thoughts.
Morrow pointed across the lake. "The ship's over there, beyond the
trees. Remember the place?"
"Oh!" she exclaimed softly. He couldn't see her face in the darkness.
"I'd better call them," he said, opening the car door. He stepped out
into the snow, straightened up beside the car, and swung his helmet
over his head. There was a tiny, pocket-sized walkie-talkie built into
the helmet collar under his chin; he flipped its switch and waited for
the set to warm up.
Then he began calling quietly. "Angel One to Cloud Two. Angel One to
Cloud Two--do you hear me? Come in. Over."
"_Cloud Two to Angel One_," Smitty's voice was a tiny, metallic sound
inside the helmet. "_Hear you faint but clear. Give your position,
over._"
"I'm at the Lodge," Morrow replied. Gwyn was watching him, wide-eyed.
"The girl is with me. We've got the stuff. I'll have to bring it one at
a time to you, over!"
"_Angel One, are you observed? Repeat, are you observed? Over._"
Morrow scowled in puzzlement. "Nobody here but us chickens," he quipped
back. "What're you driving at, over?"
"_Do not attempt to bring stuff here_," Smitty's voice taunted him.
"_You might drop something. Remain at your position--we'll come there!_"