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Updated: June 20, 2025
He could not hear any answers that might reach the co-pilot as he talked to unseen persons who would relay his words to the jet fighters. One of them peeled off and sank into the cloud layer. The others came on. They set up in great circles about the transport, crossing before it, above it, around it, which gave the effect of flying around an object not in motion at all.
The jatos made ready for firing. They were the jet-assisted take-off rockets which on a short or rough field would double the motors' thrust for a matter of seconds. In straightaway flight they should make the plane leap ahead like a scared rabbit. But they wouldn't last long. "I don't like this," said the co-pilot in a flat voice. "I don't see what he could do " Then he stopped.
Three drops into the veins and the sleeper would awake. That is how they made the trip. Only a pilot, a co-pilot, a navigator, and a chief engineer were ever awake at one time. Their log-books were brief. But we of the Neeblings have them. I might as well have run him through, but he was our best and last hope. Wolden gave him a tiny cube, no larger than a ring-case.
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.
The small motor pop-popped valiantly, the plane rushed forward over hard-packed desert earth, and went swaying up into the air. The co-pilot pilot now shouted cheerfully above the din: "Hiya. You couldn't sleep either? Burns hurt?" Joe shook his head. "Bothered," he shouted in reply. Then he added, "Do I do something to help, or am I along just for the ride?"
Minutes later it faced the long runway, a tinny voice from the control tower spoke out of a loud-speaker under the instruments, and the plane roared down the field. In seconds it lifted and swept around in a great half-circle. "Okay," said the pilot. "Wheels up." The co-pilot obeyed. The telltale lights that showed the wheels retracted glowed briefly. The men relaxed.
It was not a type of signaling an unauthorized or uninformed passenger would expect. "Also," said the co-pilot, "we have a television camera in the instrument board yonder. We've turned it on now. The interior of the cabin is being watched from the ground. No more tricks like the phony colonel and the atom bomb that didn't 'explode." Joe sat quite still.
But there could be a strictly local hot war. The pilot said sharply: "Something down below!" The co-pilot fairly leaped into his right-hand seat, his safety belt buckled in half a heartbeat. "Check," he said in a new tone. "Where?" The pilot pointed. "I saw something dark," he said briefly, "where there was a deep dent in the cloud." The co-pilot threw a switch.
"Here's the third jet coming up." It was true. The jet that had dived into the clouds came up out of the cloud formation with somehow an air of impassive satisfaction. "Did they spot the guy?" "Yeah," said the co-pilot. "He must've picked up my report. He didn't dump his radar. He stayed in the cloud bank. When the jet came for him spotting him with its night-fighter stuff he tried to ram.
His lips were pinched and tight. He scrabbled at a metal plate in the flooring. He lifted it and looked down. A moment later he had a flashlight. Joe saw the edge of a mirror. There were two mirrors down there, in fact. One could look through both of them into the wheel well. The co-pilot made quite sure. He stood up, leaving the plate off the opening in the floor.
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