It was not, however, the of doom. When Joe out the window by the of his cot, he saw gray-red over the landing field. There were low, against the sunrise. As the light brighter, Joe that the were hangars. Improbable above them. One was in motion, something he not make out, but the noise that had him was less, now. It to circle overhead, and it had an angry, droning, quality that was not natural in any he had before.
Joe shivered, at the window. It was cold and in the light at this altitude, but he wanted to know what that had been. A by the down, slowly, and then as if of a great weight. The light was slowly brighter. Joe saw something on the ground. Rather, it was not on the ground. It rested on something on the ground.
Suddenly that again. Something moved. It ran out from the dark of the hangars. It up speed. It a velocity—forty or fifty miles an hour. As it over the field, it a like all the in the world and all the in trying to each other’s noise out—and all of them being very successful.
It was a pushpot. Joe it with incredulity. It was one of those that were around one of the of the Shed. In shape, its upper part was like the top of a of bread. In motion, here, it rested on some of vehicle, and it was up like an caterpillar, and a blue-white out of its tail, with and from to side.
The from the vehicle on which it rode, and the vehicle put on speed and got away from under it with agility. The vehicle to one side, and Joe with at the pushpot, some twenty aloft. It had a underside, and a that still looked to him like the top of a of baker’s bread. It in the air at an of about forty-five degrees, and it like a panic-stricken dragon—Joe was his mixed by this time—and it and and slowly altitude, and then it to the of what it was to do. It started to circle around, and then it to climb skyward. Until it to climb it looked and and unimpressive. But when it climbed, it moved!
Joe his out the window, up to look at it. Its took on the quality of an beehive. But it climbed! It up without but with speed. And it was huge, but it in the red-flecked sky while Joe still gaped.
Joe on his clothes. He out the door through empty corridors, for somebody to tell him something. He into a hall. There were many tables, but the chairs around them were pushed as if used and then left by people in a to be else. There were two people still visible over in a corner.
Another like the of a with a toothache. It began, and moved, and through the series of that ended in a climbing, hum. Another. Another. The of for their was well under way.
Joe in the nearly empty hall. Then he the two seated figures. They were the pilot and co-pilot, respectively, of the plane that had him to Bootstrap.
He over to their table. The pilot matter-of-factly. The co-pilot grinned. Both still on their hands, which would account for their here.
“Fancy you!” said the co-pilot cheerfully. “Welcome to the Hotel de Gink! But don’t tell me you’re going to a pushpot!”
“I hadn’t on it,” Joe. “Are you?”
“Perish forbid,” said the co-pilot amiably. “I it once, for the of it. Those with the of a lady elephant on ice skates! Did you, by any chance, notice that they haven’t got any wings? And did you notice where their were?”
Joe his head. He saw the of and eggs and coffee. He was hungry.
There was the to be of a basso-profundo in pain. Another was taking off.
“How do I breakfast?” he asked.
The co-pilot pointed to a chair. He on a glass. A door opened, he pointed at Joe, and the door closed.
“Breakfast up,” said the co-pilot. “Look! I know you’re Joe Kenmore. I’m Brick Talley and this is Captain—no less than Captain!—Thomas J. Walton. Impressed?”
“Very much,” said Joe. He sat down. “What about the on pushpots?”
“They’re in the blast!” said the co-pilot, now as Brick Talley. “Like the V Two when the Germans ’em. Vanes in the blast, no kidding! Landing, and in on their like they do, they haven’t speed to give a on the air, if they had to put on. Those are to have about!”
Again, a door opened and a man in with an in came in with a tray. There was juice and and eggs and coffee. He Joe and out again.
“That’s Hotel de Gink service,” said Talley. “No motion, no civilities. He was about to eat that himself, he gave it to you, and now he’ll cook himself a of everything. What are you doing here, anyhow?”
Joe shrugged. It to him that it would neither be wise to say that he’d been sent here to up a at which might shoot.
“I I’m for rations,” he observed. “There’ll be orders along about me presently, I suppose. Then I’ll know what it’s all about.”
He to on his breakfast. The of the taking off the quiver. Joe said mouthfuls: “Funny way for anything to take off, on—it looked like a truck.”
“It is a truck,” said Talley. “A high-speed truck. Fifty of them to as so can practice. The are only to work once, you know.”
Joe nodded.
“They aren’t to take off,” Talley explained. “Not in theory. They on to the Platform and heave. They go up with it, pushing. When they it as high as they can, they’ll shoot their jatos, let go, and come home. So they have to home and landing. For it doesn’t how they aloft. When they down, a big on them up—they land in the places, sometimes!—and ’em back. Then a them up on a high-speed and they do it all over again.”
Joe while he ate. It sense. The of the was to as the stage of a multiple-stage rocket. Together, they would the Platform off the ground and it as high as their would take it traveling east at the speed they manage. Then they’d fire their simultaneously, and in doing that they’d be acting as the second stage of a multiple-stage rocket. Then their work would be done, and their only purpose would be to their to the ground alive, while the Platform on its own third stage out to space.
“So,” said Talley, “since their need to landings, the trucks them off the ground. They go up to fifty thousand feet, just to give their a to out on them; then they around up there a while. The shoot off a at top speed. It’s to them up to the speed they’ll give the Platform. And then if they come out of that and to ground safely, they their fingers. A life those lead! When a man’s ten complete he retires. One a week to keep in only, until the big day for the Platform’s take-off. Those sweat!”
“Is it that bad?”
The pilot grunted. The co-pilot—Talley—spread out his hands.
“It is that bad! Every so often one of them comes untidily. There’s something the with the motors. They’ve got a little too much power, maybe. Sometimes—occasionally—they explode.”
“Jet motors?” asked Joe. “Explode? That’s news!”
“A special feature,” said Talley drily. “Exclusive with for the Platform. They ’em and ’em and ’em, on test. Nothing happens. But occasionally one up in flight. Once it up. That was a mess! The field’s been two a week. Lately more.”
“It doesn’t reasonable,” said Joe slowly. He put a last in his mouth.
“It’s also inconvenient,” said Talley, “for the pilots.”
The pilot—Walton—opened his mouth.
“It’d be sabotage,” he said curtly, “if there was any way to do it. Four killed this week.”
He into again.
Joe considered. He frowned.
A pushpot, the building, its way across the and its noise and it was aloft. It up and up. Joe his coffee.
There were thin outside. A screaming, noise! A crash! Something and died. Then silence.
Talley, the co-pilot, looked sick. Then he said: “Correction. It’s been five and five killed this week. It’s a little serious.” He looked at Joe. “Better drink your coffee you go look. You won’t want to, afterward.”
He was right.
Joe saw the an hour later. He that his to the for the of was taken at value there. A him to the spot where the had landed, only ten from a wall. The impact had parts of the five into the soil, and the had in the wall-footing. There’d been a fire, which had been put out.
The thing was and torn. Entrails of were revealed. The plastic was shattered. There were only where the pilot had been.
The had exploded. The motor. And do not explode. But this one had. It had from within, and the of the were revealed, where the of the was away. The of the tear to the of the explosion.
Joe looked wise and ill. The very looked away as Joe’s how he felt. But of there were the orders that said he was a expert. And Joe that he was under false colors. He didn’t know anything about sabotage. He that he was the least of that security had to look into methods of destruction.
Yet, in a sense, that very was an advantage. A man may be set to work to methods of sabotage. Another man may be to him. The of the second man is a study of how the man’s mind works. Then it can be what this will think and do. But such a security man will often be if he comes upon the methods of a second man—an different who thinks in a new fashion. The security man may be in with the second man’s just he too much about the of the first.
Joe off and at a wall, while the waited nearby.
He was in a false position. But he see that there was something odd here. There was a of pattern in the way the other had been planned. It was hard to out, but it was there. Joe of the of booby-trapping a plane its major overhaul, and then the at a later date.... A private plane had been to deliver in mid-air when the transport ship past. There was the of the parcel which was to and stationery. And the attempt to the entire Platform by an bomb into a plane and having a shoot the and then deliver the bomb at the Shed in an officially aircraft....
The common in all those was actually clear enough, but Joe wasn’t used to in such terms. He did know, though, that there was a pattern in those which did not in the up of from inside.
He and scowled, his brains, while the respectfully, waiting for Joe to have an inspiration. Had Joe it, the was by his attempt at on the problem it had not been Major Holt’s for Joe to consider. When Joe gave up, the him over the whole and all its workings.
In mid-morning another from the skies. That six and six for this week—two today. The had no wings. They had no angle. Pointed up, they climb unbelievably. While their functioned, they be after a fashion. But they were not in any ordinary meaning of the word. They were with fuel and in their blast. When their failed, they were so much out of the sky.
Joe to see the second crash, and he didn’t go to at all. He hadn’t any appetite. Instead, he let himself be packed full of by the who that since Joe had been sent by security to look into sabotage, he must be every possible opportunity to evaluate—that would be the word the would use—the situation.
But all the time that Joe him about, his mind with a hunch. The idea was that there was a pattern of in sabotage, and if you solve it, you the saboteur. But the trouble was to out the he in—say—a private plane and and on planes—and come to think of it, there was Braun....
Braun was the key! Braun had been an man, with an to the United States which had him refuge. But he had been into a of death to be in the Shed. Radioactive did not in the Shed. That was the key to the pattern of sabotage. Braun was not to use any natural thing that in the Shed. He was to be only the means by which something and was to have been introduced.
That was it! Somebody was to well-known into places where they did not belong, but where they would be effective. Rockets. Bombs. Even dust. All were perfectly well-known means of destruction. The minds that planned those said, in effect: “These will destroy. How can we them to where they will something?” It was a pattern.
But the sabotage—and Joe was sure it was nothing else—was not that of thing. Making explode.... Motors don’t explode. One couldn’t put in them. There wasn’t room. The Joe had looked as if they’d in the fire basket—technically the area—behind the and the drive vanes. A whirled. Its air, and a in the air, which and out past other that took power from it to drive the compressor. The of blast out in a blue-white flame, the ship.
But one couldn’t put a bomb in a fire basket. The temperature would melt anything but the of which a has to be built. A bomb there would the a was started. It couldn’t until the took off. It couldn’t....
This was a different of sabotage. There was a different mind at work.
In the Joe the landings, while the him about. A landing was the landing of any other air-borne thing. It came with clumsiness, making an out of all to its landing speed. Pushpots came in with their ends low, and in their handling. They had no or fins. They had to be by their blasts. They had to be the same way. When a out there was no control. The fell.
He one landing now. It came low, and in toward the field, and to its to on the earth, and the of its the field, and it hesitated, pointing up at an angle—and it touched and its nose forward—and up as the more loudly, and then touched again....
The was for to touch ground with the whole weight of the supported by the of the jet, and while it was moving at the possible of speed. When that was achieved, they flat, a on their metal bellies, and still. Some hard and to into the earth with their noses. Joe saw one touch with no speed at all. It to try to settle vertically, as a takes off. That one over and with its plates in the air it rolled over on its and there.
The last of a touched and flopped, and the memory of the had been by these other and Joe think of his next without aversion. When it was evening-mess time he to the hall. There was a of in his mind. He something he didn’t know he knew. There was something in his memory that he couldn’t recall.
Talley and Walton were again at mess. Joe to their table. Talley looked at him inquiringly.
“Yes, I saw crashes,” said Joe gloomily, “and I didn’t want any lunch. It was sabotage, though. Only it was different in kind—it was different in principle—from the other tricks. But I can’t out what it is!”
“Mmmmmm,” said Talley, amiably. “You’d learn something if you talk to the Resistance and in Europe. The Poles were at it! They had one who at the that took from the to the Nazi airfields. He used to some chemical compound—just a bit—into each of gas. It looked all right, all right, and all right. But at odd moments Hitler’s would crash. The would and the engine’d out.”
Joe at him. And it was just as as that. He saw.
“The Nazis a of that way,” said Talley. “Those that didn’t crash from in flight—they had to have their reground. Lost time. Wonderful! And when the Nazis did the trick, they had to re-refine every of they had!”
Joe said: “That’s it!”
“That’s it? And it is what?”
Then Joe said disgustedly: “Surely! It’s the of CO2 bottles with gas, too! Excuse me!”
He got up from the table and out. He a phone and got the Shed, and then the security office, and at long last Major Holt. The Major’s was curt.
“Yes?... Joe?... The three men from the of the were this morning. When they were they to fight. I am we’ll no from them, if that’s what you wanted to know.”
The Major’s manner to of Joe as curiosity. His meant, of course, that the three would-be had been shot.
Joe said carefully: “That wasn’t what I called about, sir. I think I’ve out something about the pushpots. How they’re to crash. But my needs to be checked.”
The Major said briefly: “Tell me.”
Joe said: “All the but one, that were used on the plane I came on, were the same of trick. They were all for regular items—bombs or or whatever—where they and things. The were adding to of things. But there was one that was different.”
“Yes?” said the Major, on the telephone.
“Putting in the CO2 bottles,” said Joe painstakingly, “wasn’t adding a new to a situation. It was something that was already there. The took something that in a plane and it. They did not put something new into a plane—or a situation—that didn’t there. It was a special of thinking. You see, sir?”
The Major, to do him justice, had the gift of listening. He waited.
“The pushpots,” said Joe, very carefully, “naturally have their fuel in different in different places, as do. The on one or another just like plane pilots. In the and pits, where all the fuel for the is in bulk, there are different too. Naturally! At the fuel pump, the can on any of those he chooses.”
The Major said curtly: “Obviously! What of it?”
“The explode,” said Joe. “And they shouldn’t. No bomb be into them without going off the they started, and they don’t that way. I make a guess, sir, that one of the tanks—just one—contains fuel. I’m that as in a are up, one by one, one is from a particular that fuel. The will have normal fuel. And the is going to crash when that tank, and only that tank, is used!”
Major Holt was very silent.
“You see, sir?” said Joe uneasily. “The be a hundred times over with perfectly good fuel, and then one in one of them would when on. There’d be no pattern in the explosions....”
Major Holt said coldly: “Of I see! It would need only one of fuel to be delivered to the airfield, and it need not be used for weeks. And there would be no in the wreckage, after the fire! You are telling me there is one in which the fuel is explosive. It is plausible. I will have it immediately.”
He up, and Joe to his meal. He uneasy. There couldn’t be any way to make a unless you it fuel. Then there couldn’t be any way to stop it. And then—after the had burned—there couldn’t be any way to prove it was sabotage. But the of having reported only a was not too satisfying. Joe ate gloomily. He didn’t pay much attention to Talley. He had that dogged, a man has when he he doesn’t as an expert, but that he’s on something the have missed.
Half an hour after the mess—near sunset—a security officer a up Joe at the airfield.
“Major Holt sent me over to you to the Shed,” he said politely.
“If you don’t mind,” said Joe with equal politeness, “I’ll check that.”
He to the phone in the barracks. He got Major Holt on the wire. And Major Holt hadn’t sent to him.
So Joe in the telephone booth—on orders—while the Major did some fast telephoning. It was to know he had a pistol in his pocket, and it was not to be allowed to try to the security officer himself. The idea of Joe had not been up, and he’d have liked to take part personally in protecting himself. But it was much more for the security man to be than for Joe to have the of attempting it himself.
As a of fact, the officer started his the Joe to check on his orders. The officer they’d be faked. It had not been practical for him to shoot Joe where he was. There were too many people around for this to have a at a getaway.
But he didn’t away, at that. Twenty minutes later, while Joe still waited in the phone booth, the phone and Major Holt was again on the wire. And this time Joe was to come to the Shed. He had exact orders to come with, and they had orders which them to Joe.
Some eight miles from the airfield—it was just dusk—Joe came upon a car with security on it. They stopped Joe’s escort. Joe’s phone call had set off an alarm. A plane had this car away from the airfield, and were in by the plane. When it wouldn’t stop—when the Security officer in it to shoot his way clear—the plane him. So he was and his car was a wreck, and the men were trying to some useful from his and the car.
Joe to the Major’s house in the officers’-quarters area. The Major looked more than before, but he at Joe. Sally was there too, and she Joe with a look which was a good than her father’s.
“You did very well,” said the Major detachedly. “I don’t have too high an opinion of the of your age, Joe. When you are my age, you won’t either. But you have or luck, you are out to be very useful.”
Joe said: “I’m security conscious, sir. I want to alive.”
The Major him with irony.
“I was of the that when you out the of the fuel, you did not try to be a hero and prove it yourself. You it to me. That was the proper procedure. You have been killed, investigating—it’s clear that the would be pleased to have a good to you—and your might have me. They were correct, by the way. One was half-full of fuel. Rather more important, another was full, not yet on.”
The Major on, without cordiality: “It that if this particular had not been detected—it likely that on the Platform’s take-off, all or most of the would have been to at some time after the Platform was aloft, and it possibly out to space.”
Joe queer. The Major was telling him, in effect, that he might have the Platform from on take-off. It was a good but sensation. It was still more to Joe that the Platform out to space than that he be with saving it. And it was not to that it might have been wrecked.
“Your reasoning,” added the Major coldly, “was based. It that there is not one authority all the against the Platform. There are organizations, all acting and each other, but all the Platform more.”
Joe blinked. He hadn’t of that. It was disheartening.
“It will be bad,” said the Major, “if they co-operate!”
“Yes, sir,” said Joe.
“But I called you from the airfield,” the Major told him without warmth, “to say that you have done a good job. I have talked to Washington. Naturally, you a reward.”
“I’m doing all right, sir,” said Joe awkwardly. “I want to see the Platform go up and up!”
The Major impatiently.
“Naturally! But—ah—one of the men and for the of the Platform has been—ah—taken ill. In confidence, of it has been to close in the Platform and it at the possible instant, if its are incomplete. So—ah—in view of your usefulness, I said to Washington that I the you be offered was—ah—to be as an member, to take this man’s place if he not in time.”
The room to around Joe. Then he and said: “Yes, sir! I mean—that’s right. I mean, I’d have that, than all the money in the world!”
“Very well.” The Major to the room. “You’ll here, be a good more closely than before, and take instructions. But you that you are still only an for a member! The are definitely against your going!”
“That’s—that’s all right, sir,” said Joe unsteadily. “That’s all right!”
The Major out. Joe still, trying to what all this might to him. Then Sally stirred.
“You might say thanks, Joe.”
Her were shining, but she looked proud, too.
“I put it in Dad’s that that was what you’d like than anything else,” she told him. “If I can’t go up in the Platform myself—and I can’t—I wanted you to. Because I you wanted to.”
She at him as he to talk. With a patience, she him out on the of her father’s house and sat there and to him. It was a long time he that she was him. Then he stopped and looked at her suspiciously. He that in his he had been with her hand as well as his own.
“I I’m crazy,” he said ruefully. “Shooting off my mouth about myself up there in space.... You’re to me the way I am, Sally.”
He paused. Then he said humbly: “I’m plain lucky. But you and—having you like me much is lucky too!”
She looked at him noncommittally.
He added painfully: “And not only you spoke to your father and told him just the right thing, either. You’re—sort of swell, Sally!”
She let out her breath. Then she at him.
“That’s the us, Joe,” she told him. “To me, what you just said is the most thing anybody’s said tonight.”