Murray Leinster (Duke Classic SiFi) (5 page)

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 CO
2! But it
wasn't CO
2! 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."

Major Holt said uncompromisingly: "Those were orders. In a sense we've
gained something even by this disaster. The pilots are probably right
about the plane's having been booby-trapped after its last overhaul, and
the traps armed later. I'll have an inspection made immediately, and
we'll see if we can find how it was done.

"There's the man you think armed the trap on this plane. An order for
his arrest is on the way now. I told my secretary. And—hm.... That
CO2—"

"I didn't understand that," said Joe drearily.

"Planes have CO
2 bottles to put fires out," said the Major impatiently.
"A fire in flight lights a red warning light on the instrument panel,
telling where it is. The pilot pulls a handle, and CO
2 floods the
compartment, putting it out. And this ship was coming in for a crash
landing so the pilot—according to orders—flooded all compartments with
CO2. Only it wasn't."

Sally said in horror: "Oh, no!"

"The CO2 bottles were filled with an inflammable or an explosive gas,"
said her father, unbending. "Instead of making a fire impossible, they
made it certain. We'll have to watch out for that trick now, too."

Joe was too disheartened for any emotion except a bitter depression and
a much more bitter hatred of those who were ready to commit any
crime—and had committed most—in the attempt to destroy the Platform.

The Shed that housed it rose and rose against the skyline. It became
huge. It became monstrous. It became unbelievable. But Joe could have
wept when the car pulled up at an angular, three-story building built
out from the Shed's base. From the air, this substantial building had
looked like a mere chip. The car stopped. They got out. A sentry saluted
as Major Holt led the way inside. Joe and Sally followed.

The Major said curtly to a uniformed man at a desk: "Get some clothes
for this man. Get him a long-distance telephone connection to the
Kenmore Precision Tool Company. Let him talk. Then bring him to me
again."

He disappeared. Sally tried to smile at Joe. She was still quite pale.

"That's Dad, Joe. He means well, but he's not cordial. I was in his
office when the report of sabotage to your plane came through. We
started for Bootstrap. We were on the way when we saw the first
explosion. I—thought it was your ship." She winced a little at the
memory. "I knew you were on board. It was—not nice, Joe."

She'd been badly scared. Joe wanted to thump her encouragingly on the
back, but he suddenly realized that that would no longer be appropriate.
So he said gruffly: "I'm all right."

He followed the uniformed man. He began to get out of his scorched and
tattered garments. The sergeant brought him more clothes, and he put
them on. He was just changing his personal possessions to the new
pockets when the sergeant came back again.

"Kenmore plant on the line, sir."

Joe went to the phone. On the way he discovered that the banging around
he'd had when the plane landed had made a number of places on his body
hurt.

He talked to his father.

Afterward, he realized that it was a queer conversation. He felt guilty
because something had happened to a job that had taken eight months to
do and that he alone was escorting to its destination. He told his
father about that. But his father didn't seem concerned. Not nearly so
much concerned as he should have been. He asked urgent questions about
Joe himself. If he was hurt. How much? Where? Joe was astonished that
his father seemed to think such matters more important than the pilot
gyros. But he answered the questions and explained the exact situation
and also a certain desperate hope he was trying to cherish that the
gyros might still be repairable. His father gave him advice.