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 b.u.mped. 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. b.u.mps, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 hoa.r.s.ely. "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 n.o.body 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. n.o.body 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed it. Once they met a convoy of empty vehicles on the way back to Bootstrap. They pa.s.sed 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 b.o.o.by-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 CO_2----"
"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 CO_2. Only it wasn"t."
Sally said in horror: "Oh, no!"
"The CO_2 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."