And it was as Loftus said. He slewed onto the flat, dust-covered
plain like a ski jumper, falling but going forward at a hell of a
rate, probably using up the last of his fuel in a single, sustained,
straight-ahead blast.
And then there was a flurry of dust maybe ten miles long. And after
that, even with the 'scope, you couldn't see anything.
"Good try," I heard myself saying.
"Might've made it!" Loftus said, hope ragged in his voice. "He just
might've--"
"All alone, oxygen enough for almost two months if he cuts way down," I
heard Knight say softly.
But I was already calling Kolomar.
"Destroyed," I said. And I wished I could've been lying to his teeth.
* * * * *
From the time Kolomar got back to Earth it took just two days for
him, with maybe just a touch of help from his floor-leader brother,
to pry the government loose from a half-billion bucks. It took him
just twenty-four hours more to get the Pentagon to release plans for
a Moon-landing ship that had been mouldering in a vault for the last
fifteen years; plans that nobody'd known about since the day they were
drawn, I guess; plans just waiting for that half-billion.
He had his toughest time with our own scientists. It was sort of the
way McGinty had said. The thing would need weeks of study, months of
testing, years to perfect, they told him.
He told them it was only going to take them a month to get it built.
I said I hated him and I do, but you have to give a Liberal-Democrat
his due. As with every other job he tackled, when Kolomar wanted to
move he knew where to go and he could move fast. And he had long
practice at throwing his rank, and the rank that was always behind
that. Right now, his job was to retrieve the microstats in McGinty's
wrecked L-8--before the Comrades. And he was going to do that job if he
had to sandbag the President himself.
The project was farmed out to I don't know how many of our biggest
industries; all I ever heard was that it carried the highest
work-priority any job had ever carried.
And the industries took it, triple-shift, day and night.
It still took longer than a month.
It took nine weeks. And then our shuttles were hauling up the parts,
and extra crews were slamming them together as fast as they arrived in
the satellite's orbit. That was done in a matter of hours.
The Comrades bluffed around at doing the same thing, but all they could
do was go through the motions. Take incentive away from anybody and you
just can't deliver.
They couldn't. We did.
Funny thing too when you think it was due to the efforts of one of the
most disliked of our men. Irony, maybe, but that's the way things work
out sometimes.
It was just ten weeks to the day after he crashed that I was bringing
the first Moon-landing ship ever built down over the plain where
McGinty'd smashed up. Kolomar was co-piloting right next to me.
Yes, we found the wrecked L-8 without much trouble.
Split wide open, lunar dust spilled all over its insides, and what was
left of McGinty buried under a couple of feet of it. He hadn't even put
on a spacesuit.
Haliburton was with us this trip, and it was he who found the
plastisheen envelope. Not so important, now.
It was young Loftus who found the note. Kolomar read it over my
shoulder.
Dear Guys, Hope I didn't smash her up so bad you couldn't find
this. When I busted open the safe and left my half-buck for you
to find, I didn't expect to get what I got, but Colonel Kenton
always said General Kolomar would follow a thief anywhere in the
Universe, and that's how I had it figured, too. But anyhow, if
you're reading this, then you've made them build a real Ship that
can land up here O.K., and so you've got the edge. And the further
out you go, the more the edge you got. Try them Martian canals for
me sometime, will you? And tell that sergeant I'm sorry I had to
hit him so hard. Mc.
I looked up from the note, out through the twisted wreckage, and a
hundred yards away at the first Moon-landing ship ever built.
For the Comrades from now on, things were going to be a lot different.
I heard Kolomar's voice at my shoulder. There was a funny hesitation in
it that I'd never heard before.
"That's--some ship, isn't it?" was all he said.
"Yes, sir," I answered. "It is." I looked down at the pile of dust that
covered McGinty. "It's real first-rate."