by Dean Ing
Kaplan had dismissed the risk with, “A leak in your boat, an arrow, or a hydrogen explosion; no frontier was ever safe. ”
So they took every precaution. An hour before noon, Kaplan passed static ground lines to Schultheis; slung the insulated “python,” their fuel feed line, from the C-2 crane arm; swung it so that it hung beside Highjump’s tiny cockpit for the necessary bottom-fill, venting inert gas above. “Go for helium purge, Glenn,” he called. It had been old Wolf who pointed out how Highjump’s tanks should be chilled before introducing liquid hydrogen into them, and the maglev had its own helium tank for its supercooled magnets. But only after Rogan had pushed the maglev to near-sonic speeds with its crucial canard controls were they sure they had a system that could work.
Schultheis maneuvered the feed line into place, encumbered in clothing that might save him if, despite all precautions, any of the stuff leaked. He tested the probe connections and heard Rogan announce completion of Ike purge. Frost began to cake the fittings as the fuel transfer began.
Kaplan vaulted to the C-2 cab and spoke with Allington, two miles off at the hangar. Yes, Allington said, he’d confirmed the laser feed from the lads at Arizona State, though they were one mystified bunch when they got the precise coordinates. Rogan could file his own flight plan from High-jump’s radio, at the last minute, just to make sure they didn’t spook NORAD’s radar people into a militant response. In three hours or so, it would be time for Allington to start the maglev’s remotely programmed race down that long incline, with no one inside the maglev and one risk-junkie riding above it, and then for Glenn Rogan’s one-oh-two-degree heading toward his rendezvous with a ravening beam of light, twenty-three miles above a wilderness in Arizona where chunks of sapphire already lay gleaming from the last trial.
* * * *
And as the noon hour approached, and the dusty black Cadillac limo cruised the parking lots of Peel Transit in Hayward, Ali Zahedi struggled into his six-pound vest while Golam Razmara drove. “The license plates on that Blazer are Peel’s,” Ali argued, “so we need only be nearby when he comes out for a noon meal he will never enjoy. And I am ready to embrace him.”
“You are the better driver,” Golam protested, then beseeched Nurbashi through the rearview mirror. “Honored mullah, it is my turn; my honor. You will need Ali to speed you away in this ponderous machine.”
Nurbashi bade them be silent, fingering the Uzi in his lap, filled with excitement now that he had seen their quarry’s vehicle and knew that, somewhere behind that high fencing, the Peel necessity was very near. Razmara was in line for it, to be sure; yet through him, Nurbashi had control of that girl, Zahra. Still, the girl had finally made a serious error and, even if she was not already in the hands of Great Satan, she would probably be traced when the van was found. The girl, therefore, was of no further use. And Golam Razmara, therefore, would get his most fervent wish. Besides, he was a rotten driver. “It is Allah’s wish that the eldest be most honored,” Nurbashi intoned.
Ali Zahedi sighed and began to remove his vest. “Stop this contraption so that I can drive,” he muttered to Golam, who quickly complied. From Zahra Aram’s copious notes, Golam knew that Peel’s habits were irregular. The man might issue from the building at any time.
* * * *
But Wes, proud of the plant cafeteria’s food, had already suggested that Weatherby try it. They were exiting from mahogany row toward the cafeteria when Vangie emerged into the hallway behind them, heels clicking like castanets. “It’s Sage, the Santa Fe man, from L.A.; and he says it’s urgent,” she called.
Wes grimaced, then pointed toward the outside tables and sunshades. “Go ahead, I’ll be along soon,” he said to Weatherby, and turned back.
Two minutes later he was doodling on a pad as he spoke with Patrick Sage. “Sure I’m recording; you’re a prime contractor,” Wes said, and waited. “Of course I okayed it. Just a few final tests on the canards. . . . Out where we made those acceptance tests, I guess, where else? . . . Well, I’m sure they’ve got a good reason to be up there, but damn’ if I know what it is,” he admitted, with a chuckle that did not sound very convincing even to himself. Then, ‘ ‘A what? . . . Come on, Pat! Your guy in the Beechcraft was seeing things.” And then, despite all logic, Wes’s imagination began to see some things. “No, don’t pull the plug on them. You know as well as I do, that could be dangerous and besides, I think somebody mistook a gleam on our canards for an aircraft. Tell you what: I can be there in two hours. ... In Delta One, that’s how! Just sit on this, Pat. You’re recording too? Okay, record this: I’ll take responsibility, and I’ll do it in person. How’s that?”
Before the earpiece was back in its recess, Wes was giving orders. Vangie tapped at her terminal without looking as Wes spoke, then waved her palm at her screen. “Is that it?”
He scanned it quickly. “That’s it. And divert the delta training crew to the simulator but don’t tell ’em why. I don’t want this whole got-damn’ plant buzzing with rumors.” “What about Weatherby?”
“Hell! He leaves tonight, but I can’t take him with me.” “Why not?”
“I . . . because Rogan may be up to something weird, and . . .” He threw his hands in the air; let them fall to his sides. “I don’t know why not. Weatherby expected a ride with the training crew anyhow. Lady, if this doesn’t show the bastard I’m up-front with him, nothing will! Okay, go for it. I want Chris windmilling those props when we get to Delta One.”
As he reached the door, Vangie called, while dialing, “Wes, is there any way we could reach Schultheis and Kaplan?” Face set, he paused in the doorway. “There’d better not be,” he said grimly, and hurried out.
* * * *
“You won’t miss a meal,” Wes promised as he ushered the puffing Weatherby onto Delta One’s cargo platform. O’Grady hopped onto it, not entirely trusting all this sudden flurry of haste, sweeping the cargo hold above him with a professional gaze.
As the platform scissored up into the vast ship, Weatherby shook his head in disbelief. “I never figured it was so big.” “They were bigger sixty years ago,” Wes assured him, and pointed forward. “We’ve got a freezer onboard, microwave, all the comforts. You’ll see.”
Wes pointed out the best seats, taking the copilot’s seat so that he could brief Jim Christopher, quietly, using their headsets, their exchange lost in the rushing drone of Delta One’s multiblade props. Christopher was nosing the big lifter above the plant as Wes finished with, “You have your heading?” Christopher nodded. “Already called a flight plan on Ms. Broussard’s say-so. We can’t go over the Sierra’s spine, and Uncle says we can’t fly over China Lake, but I’ve filed over Tehachapi Pass. I make it two and a half hours, maybe less with a tail wind.”
O’Grady, craning his neck at the plant buildings below, jerked around as Delta One turned toward the south. “Hey, Mr. W., who’s driving our limo?”
Weatherby, following O’Grady’s point, swept his gaze across the vehicles below, first with a frown, then a relieved head-shake. “You’ll be the death of me, Grover. Ours is parked over yonder,” he said, pointing. “That’s a stretch you’re lookin’ at.”
O’Grady “hmphed” and relaxed, waving at the head he saw leaning from the window of the dusty Cadillac.
There was no return wave, though Ali Zahedi saw the hand passing back and forth across one window of the behemoth as it climbed. Ali had more important things on his mind as he drove slowly through the pariring lot.
Joey Weatherby leaned back and enjoyed his microwaved Chicken Tetrazzini on the Bakersfield leg, content to watch the tandem rigs crawl down Interstate 5, almost content with Wes Peel’s assurances about the future of the NTC. He realized that this walloping brute of a dirigible was part of his own future, like it or not. He did not ask many questions about this aerial junket because it was obvious that Peel had a sure ’nough brushfire in his outfit that he plainly didn’t want to discuss yet. Well, you sure learned about a man’s management style
at times like this, if he didn’t mind you watching. Peel’s style was personal, idiosyncratic, hands-on. Like Joey’s own, come to think of it. Maybe they by-God could work together.
They picked up the tail wind as they banked eastward toward
Tehachapi Pass, with distant peaks of the Sierra and Coast ranges rising bn both sides of Delta One. Wes spied the Kern River canyon, wondering if Kaplan or Schultheis might glance up and see the delta cruising overhead, wondering just exactly where the hell those two really were. They had seemed more at ease with Rogan, the past month, and so had Allington, the whole got-damn’ bunch of them thick as thieves, and they’d made him swear he’d stay away from the maglev this week. Somehow, it’s all tied together, and looking at all these loose ends will drive me nuts if I don’t think about something else.
So he moved back to sit near Weatherby, pointing out Edwards Air Force Base to the south. “That’s where the shuttles land,” he said. “They’re big lifters too, but they need a lot of runway. ’ ’ He leaned nearer, pointing to the horizon. ‘ ‘Those low mountains ahead are the Clark Range. Not much for height, but that’s where we’re headed.”
“You wanta tell me why all the rush?”
“Not ’til I’m sure,” Wes admitted. “I got a wild-ass report that our maglev has some kind of a got-damn’ airplane perched on its back up there. And Glenn Rogan has the maglev, and, well, I don’t really know what to think. But I’m going to, in a few minutes.”
Weatherby squelched the smile that he felt, but said, “Weatherby’s umpteenth law: Never hire a man who’s too much like yourself.”
Wes studied the big man for a long moment. “I probably break that law a lot,” he replied at last.
“I just said it was a law. I didn’t say we never break it,” Weatherby said, letting the smile come.
Presently, Christopher banked the big craft to follow the power lines and the twin sets of maglev rail, and Wes went forward again. “I’ll take her,” he said, donning the headset, swinging the delta northward, watching his sink rate as Delta One slowed. The tip of Clark Mountain rose 7,900 feet, but the maglev track did not rise much above its flank. The bare sunburnt mountaintop was to starboard now, as high as the delta, and Wes watched Delta One’s shadow flit across the mountain as the gentle curve of rail came into view, and that long straight stretch he remembered . . .
“Good God Almighty,” he shouted, and pulled the stick into his gut, reversing his props with his free hand.
TWENTY-FOUR
Even from his foreshortened view in Delta One, looking down that arrow-straight slope off the mountain’s flank, Wes could see that the orange maglev was moving away from him at a speed all out of proportion to anything else on any railway, twin cyclones of desert dust unfurling in its wake and an extra set of canards protruding from something atop its cowl. Wes judged that the maglev must be nearing the speed of sound, and then saw that it was only the first stage of the system.
By the time Wes hauled the delta back to an even keel, two lances of flame had shot from the gleaming silvery thing that rode the maglev’s back, and an instant later the silver dart hurtled forward, climbing slowly at first, passing over Interstate 15 at a height of perhaps a thousand feet. Wes estimated its speed at Mach two, but instantly realized that it was accelerating hard even as it banked over a dry lake and straightened again, now climbing at a steeper angle, matching and then surpassing the velocity of an artillery shell, propelled on smokeless, blue-white tongues of flame almost as long as the tiny craft itself. The maglev slowed quickly, its dust-devils disappearing as if by magic.
As Wes cut his power, they all heard a muted thunder rolling in across the high desert, already fading as that tiny dart dwindled to a speck between two pinpoints of light in its long climb toward the southeast. No one spoke for moments, and then Wes looked across at Jim Christopher. “Did I really see that thing lift off of my maintenance unit? Did you see it too?” Christopher only nodded. Weatherby, who had rushed to a better vantage for viewing, said in a voice softened by awe, “Holy shit, how it does flee the scene. You mean that . . . that little shuttle thing isn’t yours?”
“Did look kind of like a space shuttle, didn’t it,” Wes mused. “Without all those boosters or external tanks - but it’s no shuttle, it was too got-damn’ small.” A two-beat pause while Wes leaped to a conclusion. Then, “Got-damn that got-damn’ Glenn Rogan, he’s test-hopping somebody else’s got-damn’ prototype fighter planes! I’ve got witnesses and that little hellion won’t have a license for a tricycle when I get through with him. And Boff Allington’s in on this, too,” he grated, palming Delta One’s throttles as he brought the great craft sliding down toward the maglev that was now moving backward.
Then, “What’s all that?” asked O’Grady, pointing slightly to portside. The ugly bluff shape of the C-2 wrecker, with a pair of huge spheres behind its crane on the flatbed, stood out clearly against the buff and pink of desert hills. The C-2 was parked beside a small hangar, and Wes could faintly make out the track of an access road leading up the slope to parallel the maglev rails.
Breathing heavily, Wes replied, “It’s got to be . . . shit, I don’t know: Boeing, Northrop, somebody. I can tell you one thing, it’s not mine! I’m gonna see whose it is right now,” he added, nosing Delta One lower, letting her weathercock into the breeze. “Take her, Chris. We’re going down there.” As Wes hurried down the passageway toward the cargo platform, Grover O’Grady saw a slight jerk of Weatherby’s head and interpreted it correctly. He followed Wes back into the airship’s bowels and stopped when Wes did. “Mr. Peel, ah ...” He passed a hand under his casual jacket near a kidney, and magicked out a charcoal-gray automatic. “Everybody needs a backup sometime, and you say you don’t know who those guys are.”
Wes paused an instant, then waved O’Grady onto the platform with him. “Good enough, but put it away. I notice you can haul it out fast enough.”
“Fast enough,” O’Grady agreed, putting the thing away, and Wes saw the same smile O’Grady had worn in Dallas. It was the ready smile of a readier man.
Wes stepped to the uneven desert hardpan a hundred yards from Highjump’s hangar, and the first man he saw through the open hangar doors was David Kaplan, who was already striding to meet him. Whatever Kaplan said, Wes did not hear, determined as he was to march into that hangar as Kaplan paced him. “Uh-huh! Ri-i-ight, fishing on the Kern, and where’s that other sportsman? Ah, there he is,” Wes went on, hardly noticing the spread of air navigation charts that covered three sides of the hangar like wallpaper. He was glaring at the back of a head he recognized from its shock of bronze hair, even with the headset clamped across Tom Schultheis’s skull. “And what the ever-present hell are you doing here?” He said it to Wolf Schultheis, who was similarly seated with a comm set, now turning to see the source of the commotion.
The old man simply shook his head as if at some insistent insect, turning back and murmuring into his mike, the stubby old fingers flying before a computer screen.
“Coming up on t’ree t’ree zero seconds, injection bum in ten seconds; mark,” said Wolf Schultheis.
Wes, breathing like a man who had held his breath for at least three hundred and thirty seconds, spun back to Kaplan, who had followed him in and was offering his hand to O’Grady. Though he was smiling, O’Grady seemed not terribly anxious to grasp that hand. “Where the got-damn’ hell is Glenn Rogan,” Wes raged. “Up there in that airplane?”
“He is near Globe, Arizona, about six hundred miles from here, due to take the Arizona laser feed right . . . now,” Kaplan said, listening to the countdown of Wolf Schultheis. “And I’ll tell you about it in a few minutes but not, for God’s sake, until he’s finished the jump!”
At this point, Boff Allington trotted into the hangar lugging a jury-rig device with three joysticks and a hefty battery pack. “Saw your runabout, Wesley,” he said with every evidence of good cheer, setting the pack down. “Congrats, your maglev’ s a smashing first-
stage booster and good as new. Or did you see it?”
Wes considered his reply, and the fact that Allington always acted this way when there was not one damned thing he could do about a situation. “I saw it. Have you ever seen the inside of a federal prison?”
“Not yet, but we all expect to.” Suddenly, behind them, a brief statement from Wolf Schultheis and a cheer from his son and David Kaplan. Allington spun around. “Injection?” “On the fucking money, ” Tom Schultheis said, choked with emotion, and suddenly Wes saw that die towering Kaplan was trying to speak while tears coursed down his cheeks.
Moving toward one of the wall maps, Kaplan said huskily, “Glenn Rogan is on his way to orbit, Wes. We put him there. You made it possible; you just didn’t know it.” And then he turned away, sighing heavily, wiping at his eyes as he tried to contain long-pent emotion, leaning with his forehead against that sectional chart. “Yisgadal v’yiskadash sh’may rabo,” he began, intoning the Kaddish, by tradition a mourner’s prayer. But it could also be employed to acknowledge that the issue was squarely in the hands of God, and this was David Kaplan’s employment of it, an invocation from man’s distant past in aid of his beleaguered future.
“Orbit.” Wes said it in absolute disbelief.
Allington, standing behind the elder Schultheis, leaned over to flick a switch, and then an overhead speaker cut in.
. . And from now on I’m mostly spam in a can,” said Glenn Rogan, tiny pieces of his words lost in the transmission. “Gee-meter showing just over five-point-five at cutoff. My integrator says we won’t get that orbit you predicted. Talk to me.”
Tom Schultheis, checking readouts fed back from High-jumps’s telemeters to the hangar’s integrating equipment, confirmed it: ‘ ‘We’re almost a thousand feet low on burnt velocity, Highjump. Now predict orbit of one-two-eight miles, plus or minus three. Don’t use those control jets any more than you have to. They’re all you’ve got left.”