Chapter 3

The pilot made an examination down the floor-plate hole, with a flashlight to see by and two mirrors to show him the contents of a spot he could not possibly reach with any instrument. Joe heard his report, made to the ground by radio.

“It’s a grenade,” he said coldly. “It took time to fix it the way it is. At a guess, the ship was booby-trapped at the time of its last overhaul. But it was arranged that the booby trap had to be set, the trigger cocked, by somebody doing something very simple at a different place and later on. We’ve been flying with that grenade in the wheel well for two weeks. But it was out of sight. Today, back at the airfield, a sandy-haired man reached up and pulled a string he knew how to find. That loosened a slipknot. The grenade rolled down to a new position. Now when the wheel goes down the pin is pulled. You can figure things out from that.”

It was an excellent sabotage device. If a ship blew up two weeks after overhaul, it would not be guessed that the bomb had been placed so long before. Every search would be made for a recent opportunity for the bomb’s placing. A man who merely reached in and pulled a string that armed the bomb and made it ready for firing would never be suspected. There might be dozens of planes, now carrying their own destruction about with them.

The pilot said into the microphone: “Probably...” He listened. “Very well, sir.”

He turned away and nodded to the co-pilot, now savagely keeping the ship in wide, sweeping circles, the rims of which barely touched the farthermost corner of the airport on the ground below.

“We’ve authority to jump,” he said briefly. “You know where the chutes are. But there is a chance I can belly-land without that grenade blowing. I’m going to try that.”

The co-pilot said angrily: “I’ll get him a chute.” He indicated Joe, and said furiously, “They’ve been known to try two or three tricks, just to make sure. Ask if we should dump cargo before we crash-land!”

The pilot held up the microphone again. He spoke. He listened.

“Okay to dump stuff to lighten ship.”

“You won’t dump my crates,” snapped Joe. “And I’m staying to see you don’t! If you can ride this ship down, so can I!”

The co-pilot got up and scowled at him.

“Anything I can move out, goes. Will you help?”

Joe followed him through the door into the cargo compartment.

The space there was very considerable, and bitterly cold. The crates from the Kenmore plant were the heaviest items of cargo. Other objects were smaller. The co-pilot made his way to the rear and pulled a lever. Great, curved doors opened at the back of the plane. Instantly there was such a bellowing of motors that all speech was impossible. The co-pilot pulled out a clip of colored-paper slips and checked one with the nearest movable parcel. He painstakingly made a check mark and began to push the box toward the doors.

It was not a conspicuously sane operation. So near the ground, the plane tended to waver. The air was distinctly bumpy. To push a massive box out a doorway, so it would tumble down a thousand feet to desert sands, was not so safe a matter as would let it become tedious. But Joe helped. They got the box to the door and shoved it out. It went spinning down. The co-pilot hung onto the doorframe and watched it land. He chose another box. He checked it. And another. Joe helped. They got them out of the door and dropping dizzily through emptiness. The plane soared on in circles. The desert, as seen through the opened clamshell doors, reeled away astern, and then seemed to tilt, and reeled away again. Joe and the co-pilot labored furiously. But the co-pilot checked each item before he jettisoned it.

It was a singularly deliberate way to dump cargo to destruction. A metal-bound box. Over the edge of the cargo space floor. A piece of machinery, visible through its crate. A box marked Instruments. Fragile. Each one checked off. Each one dumped to drop a thousand feet or more. A small crated dynamo. This item and that. A crate marked Stationery. It would be printed forms for the timekeepers, perhaps. But it wasn’t.

It dropped out. The plane bellowed on. And suddenly there was a burst of blue-white flame on the desert below. The box that should have contained timecards had contained something very much more explosive. As the plane roared on--rocking from the shock wave of the explosion--Joe saw a crater and a boiling cloud of smoke and flying sand.

The co-pilot spoke explosively and furiously, in the blasting uproar of the motors. He vengefully marked the waybill of the parcel that had exploded. But then they went back to the job of dumping cargo. They worked well as a team now. In no more than minutes everything was out except the four crates that were the gyros. The co-pilot regarded them dourly, and Joe clenched his fists. The co-pilot closed the clamshell doors, and it became possible to hear oneself think again.

“Ship’s lighter, anyhow,” reported the co-pilot, back in the cabin. “Tell ‘em this is what exploded.”

The pilot took the slip. He plucked down the microphone--exactly like somebody picking up an interoffice telephone--and reported the waybill number and description of the case that had been an extra bomb. The ship carrying the pilot gyros had been booby-trapped--probably with a number of other ships--and a bomb had been shipped on it, and a special saboteur with a private plane had shot at it with rockets. The pilot gyros were critical devices. They had to be on board the Platform when it took off, and they took months to make and balance. There had been extra pains taken to prevent their arrival!

“I’m dumping gas now,” said the pilot into the microphone, “and then coming in for a belly landing.”

The ship flew straightaway. It flew more lightly, and it bounced a little. When gas is dumped one has to slow to not more than one hundred and seventy-five knots and fly level. Then one is supposed to fly five minutes after dumping with the chutes in the drain position--and even then there is forty-five minutes of flying fuel still in the tanks.

The ship swept around and headed back for the now far-distant field. It went slowly lower and lower and lower until it seemed barely to skim the minor irregularities in the ground. And low like this, the effect of speed was terrific.

The co-pilot thought of something. Quickly he went back into the cargo space. He returned with an armful of blankets. He dumped them on the floor.

“If that grenade does go!” he said sourly.

Joe helped. In the few minutes before Bootstrap loomed near, they filled the bottom of the cabin with blankets. Especially around the pilots’ chairs. And there was a mound of blanketing above the actual place where the grenade might be. It made sense. Soft stuff like blankets would absorb an explosion better than anything else. But the pilot thought the grenade might not blow.

“Hold fast!” snapped the pilot.

The wing flaps were down. That slowed the ship a little. It had been lightened. That helped. They went in over the edge of the field less than man-height high. Joe found his hands closing convulsively on a handgrip. He saw a crash wagon starting out from the side of the runway. A fire truck started for the line the plane followed.

Four feet above the rushing sand. Three. The pilot eased back the stick. His face was craggy and very grim and very hard. The ship’s tail went down and dragged. It bumped. Then the plane careened and slid and half-whirled crazily, and then the world seemed to come to an end. Crashes. Bangs. Shrieks of torn metal. Bumps, thumps and grindings. Then a roaring.

Joe pulled himself loose from where he had been flung--it seemed to him that he peeled himself loose--and found the pilot struggling up, and he grabbed him to help, and the co-pilot hauled at them both, and abruptly all three of them were in the open air and running at full speed away from the ship.

The roar abruptly became a bellowing. There was an explosion. Flames sprouted everywhere. The three men ran stumblingly. But even as they ran, the co-pilot swore.

“We left something!” he panted.

Joe heard a crescendo of booming, crackling noises behind. Something else exploded dully. But he should be far enough away by now.

He turned to look, and he saw blackening wreckage immersed in roaring flames. The flames were monstrous. They rose sky-high, it seemed--more flames than forty-five minutes of gasoline should have produced. As he looked, something blew up shatteringly, and fire raged even more furiously. Of course in such heat the delicately adjusted gyros would be warped and ruined even if the crash hadn’t wrecked them beforehand. Joe made thick, incoherent sounds of rage.

The plane was now an incomplete, twisted skeleton, licked through by flames. The crash wagon roared to a stop beside them.

“Anybody hurt? Anybody left inside?”

Joe shook his head, unable to speak for despairing rage. The fog wagon roared up, already spouting mist from its nozzles. Its tanks contained water treated with detergent so that it broke into the finest of droplets when sprayed at four hundred pounds pressure. It drenched the burning wreck with that heavy mist, in which a man would drown. No fire could possibly sustain itself. In seconds, it seemed, there were only steam and white vapor and fumes of smoldering substances that gradually lessened.

But then there was a roaring of motorcycles racing across the field with a black car trailing them. The car pulled up beside the fog wagon, then sped swiftly to where Joe was coming out of wild rage and sinking into sick, black depression. He’d been responsible for the pilot gyros and their safe arrival. What had happened wasn’t his fault, but it was not his job merely to remain blameless. It was his job to get the gyros delivered and set up in the Space Platform. He had failed.

The black car braked to a stop. There was Major Holt. Joe had seen him six months before. He’d aged a good deal. He looked grimly at the two pilots.

“What happened?” he demanded. “You dumped your fuel! What burned like this?”

Joe said thickly: “Everything was dumped but the pilot gyros. They didn’t burn! They were packed at the plant!”

The co-pilot suddenly made an incoherent sound of rage. “I’ve got it!” he said hoarsely. “I know--”

“What?” snapped Major Holt.

“They--planted that grenade at the--major overhaul!” panted the co-pilot, too enraged even to swear. “They--fixed it so--any trouble would mean a wreck! And I--pulled the fire-extinguisher releases just as we hit! For all compartments! To flood everything with CO2! But it wasn’t CO2! That’s what burned!”

Major Holt stared sharply at him. He held up his hand. Somebody materialized beside him. He said harshly: “Get the extinguisher bottles sealed and take them to the laboratory.”

“Yes, sir!”

A man went running toward the wreck. Major Holt said coldly: “That’s a new one. We should have thought of it. You men get yourselves attended to and report to Security at the Shed.”

The pilot and co-pilot turned away. Joe turned to go with them. Then he heard Sally’s voice, a little bit wobbly: “Joe! Come with us, please!”

Joe hadn’t seen her, but she was in the car. She was pale. Her eyes were wide and frightened.

Joe said stiffly: “I’ll be all right. I want to look at those crates--”

Major Holt said curtly: “They’re already under guard. There’ll have to be photographs made before anything can be touched. And I want a report from you, anyhow. Come along!”

Joe looked. The motorcycles were abandoned, and there were already armed guards around the still-steaming wreck, grimly watching the men of the fog wagon as they hunted for remaining sparks or flame. It was noticeable that now nobody moved toward the wreck. There were figures walking back toward the edge of the field. What civilians were about, even to the mechanics on duty, had started out to look at the debris at close range. But the guards were on the job. Nobody could approach. The onlookers went back to their proper places.

“Please, Joe!” said Sally shakily.

Joe got drearily into the car. The instant he seated himself, it was in motion again. It went plunging back across the field and out the entrance. Its horn blared and it went streaking toward the town and abruptly turned to the left. In seconds it was on a broad white highway that left the town behind and led toward the emptiness of the desert.

But not quite emptiness. Far, far away there was a great half-globe rising against the horizon. The car hummed toward it, tires singing. And Joe looked at it and felt ashamed, because this was the home of the Space Platform, and he hadn’t brought to it the part for which he alone was responsible.

Sally moistened her lips. She brought out a small box. She opened it. There were bandages and bottles.

“I’ve a first-aid kit, Joe,” she said shakily. “You’re burned. Let me fix the worst ones, anyhow!”

Joe looked at himself. One coat sleeve was burned to charcoal. His hair was singed on one side. A trouser leg was burned off around the ankle. When he noticed, his burns hurt.

Major Holt watched her spread a salve on scorched skin. He showed no emotion whatever.

“Tell me what happened,” he commanded. “All of it!”

Somehow, there seemed very little to tell, but Joe told it baldly as the car sped on. The great half-ball of metal loomed larger and larger but did not appear to grow nearer as Sally practiced first aid. They came to a convoy of trucks, and the horn blared, and they turned out and passed it. Once they met a convoy of empty vehicles on the way back to Bootstrap. They passed a bus. They went on.

Joe finished drearily: “The pilots did everything anybody could. Even checked off the packages as they were dumped. We reported the one that blew up.”