by Ben Bova
Sarko opened the hallway door and they started for the cafeteria.
Chapter six
It took several days for Major Colt to get everything ready for Cobra Four’s new series of test flights.
The first flight was set for that Thursday afternoon, but a chilly rainstorm swept the base with a blinding downpour. The next morning was still gray and damp, with big puddles along the runways and taxi ramps.
Paul Sarko found Major Colt in the pilot’s locker room. He was surrounded by medical officers and technicians who were helping him into his high-altitude suit.
Sarko stood at the edge of the team of busy, muttering men. Colt, sitting on a stool, saw him and smiled.
“How’s this for having a fuss made over you?” he asked.
Sarko nodded. “Not bad. But are you going to be able to take off with those clouds still covering the base? I thought you wanted to run the tests only in good weather.”
As they stood him up to zip the sleeves and legs of the rubber-like pressure suit, Colt said, “Weather people claim the clouds’ll lift off by noontime. It’ll take us at least that long to get the plane and me both checked out. We’ll fly in clear skies, I think. At least, that’s the plan.”
Sarko watched them put on the bright, metallic outer suit, then lace up the Major’s boots. After they zipped on his gloves, Colt grabbed his plastic helmet and checked the oxygen line in its collar.
Finally the others stood back and the Major started toward the door.
“Let’s go, Coach,” he joked to Sarko. “I’m all set for the kickoff.”
Laughing, Sarko said, “You look more like an astronaut than a football player.”
“Except that the astronauts have air-conditioned buses to carry ’em to the rocket pad. All I’ve got is two size tens.” Colt pointed to his boots.
They went down a hallway, through a door, and outside to the concrete ramp that connected the building with a row of hangars. The techs and medics followed behind them.
A little yellow tractor was towing Cobra Four out of its hangar. The plane reminded Sarko of a black panther, all coiled up and ready to spring.
“She looks eager to fly,” Major Colt said as they walked up to the Cobra.
Sarko reached up and patted the plane’s nose. “She was made to fly. She belongs in the air, not down here.”
“You act as though you like this plane.”
“I do.”
“Even though she’s designed to kill people?”
Sarko looked at the Major’s face. He seemed curious, not mocking.
Turning back to admire the graceful sweep of the Cobra’s lines, Sarko said, “She’s built to fly higher and faster than anything with wings. The job you’ve put her to may be killing, but she’s still the most beautiful plane in the world.”
Colt shook his head. “Here I thought I was the only nut on the base who was in love with an airplane.”
“You, too?”
The Major shrugged inside his glistening metal suit. “Sure. Why do you think I talked the General into letting me fly her? She’s too good to sit in a hangar. She deserves to be up where she belongs.”
“But if . . .”
“If there’s anything wrong, we’ll find out in another twenty hours of test time. It’ll take about a week, if we stick to the schedule we’ve set up. About three hours a day of flying at Mach 3.”
Sarko asked, “And then what?”
“I was talking to the Old Man about it this morning,” Colt said, lowering his voice. “He thinks that if the test flights show that the metals are okay, then only two possible things could’ve happened to the other three Cobras.”
“What are they?”
A B-52 roared overhead, hidden in the gray clouds. Colt waited, and thirty seconds later a KC-135 tanker added its thunder to the noise.
As the planes droned off into the distance, Colt said, “The General figures that either the other side has a weapon that we’ve never even thought of . . . or somebody’s tinkering with the Cobras here on the ground.”
“Tinkering?” Sarko’s brows bunched into a puzzled frown.
“That’s right. There could be a spy here on the base. Or more than one. In fact, I’d be surprised if there wasn’t.”
“You sound like somebody in the movies . . .” Colt tapped the engineer’s chest with a gloved finger. “Oh yeah? What about that cute redhead who’s suddenly popped into your life?”
“Rita? But she’s . . .”
“Do you really think that you’re so great that a girl like that is going to be waiting for you whenever you feel lonesome?”
Sarko could feel his face getting hot. “Now wait a minute. I’ve only seen her a couple of times. There’s nothing unusual about that!”
“She’s had lunch with you three times this week, and Wednesday you took her to dinner and a movie.”
“You’ve had me followed!”
Shaking his head, Colt answered, “It’s a small town, and the base isn’t that big, either. We don’t have to follow you to know what’s going on.”
Really angry now, Sarko had a hard time keeping his voice down. “You think that just because she’s gone to lunch with me a couple times she’s a spy? That’s . . . that’s . . . it’s the lousiest thing I’ve ever heard!”
“Cool it,” Colt whispered. “I don’t think anything. But anything’s possible. Anything is possible. You could be a spy yourself.”
“Or you could be,” Sarko snapped.
The Major shrugged. “Okay, I could be. Does that make you happy?”
“You guys are really going off your rockers,”
Sarko fumed. “Spies! Next thing you know you’ll be powdering the Cobra here for fingerprints.”
“Just watch yourself, that’s all,” Colt said. “We’re playing in the big leagues, and it’s a rough game. I’m not the only one who could get hurt.”
“That’s for sure! A secretary can get run practically into jail just because she eats lunch with the same guy twice in one week.”
“Three times,” Colt said. Then he ducked under the Cobra’s nose and walked back toward the cockpit. Sarko didn’t follow him. He walked angrily away from the plane, back toward his office.
But when Cobra Four finally started rolling down the runway that afternoon, Sarko was standing at his office window, watching.
The skies had cleared, and the sunshine glinted off her black wings as she raced down the runway. Sarko felt his insides tighten as the plane lifted its nose off the ground. It ran a little way just on the two sets of main wheels and then seemed to hurl itself right off the runway.
Climbing at an impossible angle, Cobra Four rose cleanly and swiftly until Sarko could no longer see her, no matter how he stretched his neck at the window. He stood there, staring into the empty sky, waiting. Then it came. A sharp, sudden blast: the sonic boom. She was flying faster than sound now. Soon she would be at Mach 3.
There was not even the thin white line of a contrail to show where Cobra Four was; she was flying much too high for that.
Finally, with a last look at the blue sky, Sarko turned back to his desk. Back to the problem that had no answer.
Not yet.
But there were only three possible answers. Either the metals failed, or the planes were shot down by a new type of weapon, or there was a spy on the base.
Chapter seven
Sarko worked right through the weekend. But it wasn’t the kind of work he liked to do. It got him nowhere. It threw no new light on the problem.
He simply sat at his desk and read all the reports that had been written about the crashes. And reread them. And reread them, over and again.
He listened to the tape recording of the final few words from the Cobra Three crewman:
“She’s hit . . . she’s falling apart! Flash . . .” Then the screaming fall, until the tape suddenly went dead.
He watched the movie film salvaged from Cobra Three. It showed Cobra Two flying on ahead. Then the e
nemy plane came into view. Then the film went foggy and abruptly blanked out.
He walked over to the hangar where the wreckage of the planes had carefully been laid out, like the delicate bones of long-dead dinosaurs.
And he thought.
Read, listen, watch, walk, look, think. Read, listen, watch, walk, look, think.
And through it all, Sarko could hear the roar of Cobra Four’s engines as Major Colt gunned her down the runway and into the air. Sonic booms rattled his office Saturday and Sunday afternoon.
All day Monday, Sarko read the medical report of the crewman whose body had been found. Marty Arnold sat in gloomy silence at his desk as Sarko thumbed carefully through the thick report, with a medical dictionary at his elbow.
There was very little that was unusual in the medical report. The exact cause of death was uncertain, as it is in many aircraft accidents. But it appeared as though the man had been violently hurled out of an airplane that was falling apart.
He had suffered many broken bones, cuts, and bruises. His parachute had opened automatically, but he was probably dead when he left the airplane. He seemed to be flash-blinded, although he was not burned anywhere. The medical report explained that he had probably looked directly into an exploding fuel tank.
Sarko raised his head and looked at Arnold.
“What is it?” the assistant asked.
“Did any of the reports you went through mention a fire on any of the planes?”
Arnold thought a moment. “No, nothing about a fire.”
“Could a fuel tank explode without showing any traces of fire in the wreckage?”
“I don’t see how,” Arnold said. “But remember, we don’t have all of the wreckage. Most of it’s at the bottom of the Arctic.”
Sarko felt himself sag a little. “That’s right. I forgot. So there could’ve been a fire after all.”
Still, there was something here that wouldn’t let go of him. Sarko stayed at his desk long after Arnold had quit for the day. He sat until the late spring afternoon had faded into twilight.
The ring of his phone snapped him out of his thoughts.
He picked up the receiver. “Hello.”
“Paul?” It was Rita’s voice. “I’m getting tired of waiting for you to show up before I can eat!”
Sarko suddenly remembered that he was supposed to take her to dinner. Quickly, he glanced at his wristwatch. He was nearly an hour late already. “I don’t blame you for being upset! I’m sorry,
Rita; I just lost track of the time. Where are you now?”
“I’m at the Officers’ Club.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
He actually made it to the club in eight minutes. He spent most of the time during dinner soothing Rita’s hurt feelings.
The band began playing and Rita wanted to dance. After two numbers, though, Sarko was soaked to the skin.
“This isn’t the thing for a man who’s had a hard day,” he gasped, while the band got ready for the next tune.
“A hard day? Sitting at a desk?” Rita laughed. “Thinking can be tough work,” Sarko said, leading her back through the crowd to their table.
Halfway there, he saw Major Colt and his wife coming toward them.
“Still following me?” Sarko asked. He smiled as he spoke, but he really didn’t feel happy about it.
“I told you it’s a pretty small world around here,” answered Colt. “There’s only one Officers’ Club.” Sarko introduced Rita, who said, “Why don’t you sit with us?”
“As long as the men promise not to talk business,” Mrs. Colt said.
The Major laughed. “We’ll behave. Honest.”
As they sat at the table, listening to the music, Rita said to Sarko, “I hear you’re a pretty good man with a banjo.”
Grinning, Sarko admitted, “I used to be.”
“How’d you hear about Paul’s musical talents?” Major Colt asked.
Sarko stiffened in his chair.
Before he could answer, Rita replied with a smile, “As you said earlier, Frank, it’s a small world here on the base. The word gets around. Some of the men I work for remembered Paul’s sessions on the bandstand, before he left the Air Force.”
Mrs. Colt said, “This is about the right time of night to get up there and join the band.”
“Not tonight,” Sarko said bluntly. “I’m afraid I’m not in the right mood.”
There was a long moment of uncomfortable silence. At last, Rita said, “I’ve got to get home and take care of some laundry, or else I’ll have to wear a blanket to work tomorrow.”
They got up and walked slowly toward the door. The club had emptied now. The people who were still there were sitting up close to the bandstand, listening to the make-it-up-as-you-go-along music.
“How are the flights going?” Sarko asked the Major, his voice down nearly to a whisper.
“Fine,” Colt whispered back. “She’s behaving beautifully . . . sweet and pretty. Couple more days and we’ll be over the top.”
“And then what?”
“Then we find out what really caused the crashes. And when we do . . .” Colt slowly squeezed his hand into a hard fist.
They went out to the parking lot together. The Colts drove off in their Volkswagen. Sarko let Rita drive him back toward his quarters in her car.
She said from behind the wheel as they drove through the darkness, “It seemed to me that you and the Major were . . . well, like a couple of girls who showed up wearing the same dress.”
Sarko didn’t know what to answer.
Rita smiled. “Okay. I’ll shut up.”
They drove past the flight line, where rows of bombers, tankers, and transports were lined up. The big silvery planes looked ghostly in the darkness. A slight fog was creeping in, Sarko noticed, and it was cloudy overhead.
As Rita swung around a corner of the airfield, Sarko saw a pencil-thin beam of bright red light lancing up to the clouds.
“What’s that?” he asked.
Rita glanced at it, then turned her eyes back to the road. “Some sort of new system for measuring the height of the clouds. They use it to help the control tower tell if the clouds are too low to allow planes to try landing, I think.”
“It’s a laser!”
“Yes,” Rita agreed. “One of the control tower operators showed it to me when they first put it in. It’s just a little thing, not much bigger than a flashlight. You wouldn’t think it could throw such a bright beam.”
“Stop the car,” Sarko ordered.
He turned to Rita. “I’ve got to go to the city . . . can I borrow your car? I’ll drop you off at your place.”
“You’re going right now?”
“Yes!” he said, excited. “I think I’ve got the answer I’ve been looking for! But I’ve got to check out a few points.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Never mind. Just let me have the car. I’ll leave it in front of your place when I’m finished with it.”
“Oh no you won’t,” Rita said. “I’m going with you, wherever it is.”
She opened the door on her side of the car. Slide over, Paul. You can do the driving.”
Sarko pushed himself across the seat. As Rita walked in front of the headlights, he slid the seat back to a comfortable distance from the wheel and snapped on the seat belt. As soon as Rita was belted into the right-hand seat, Sarko gunned the motor and raced off toward the city, some fifty miles away. “Where are we going, anyway?” Rita asked.
Sarko said, “To the nearest newspaper office.”
Chapter eight
“A laser?” Martin Arnold looked shocked. “That’s crazy.”
Sarko leaned back in his chair and watched his assistant.
“What’s crazy about it?” he asked.
Arnold had just come in to work. He took off his jacket and hung it on the hook behind the office door.
“Lasers aren’t powerful enough to damage a plane. You might just as well
shine a flashlight on the Cobra . . . that would do about as much damage as firing a laser at it. That ‘death ray’ stuff that people have talked about is just a lot of baloney.”
“I know,” Sarko said. “But look at this.”
He took a newspaper clipping from his desk and held it out to Arnold.
“I got it last night,” he said before his assistant could ask.
Arnold crossed the room and took the clipping. As he read it, Sarko kept talking excitedly:
“I had forgotten all about that story. Of course, we’re not in the laser business, so there’s no reason for us to be especially interested in it. But those people at M.I.T. shattered rocks with a laser beam. Cracked them up so that when you tried to touch them, they crumbled into powder.”
Arnold looked up from the clipping. His hand was shaking a little. “But . . . you don’t think a laser beam would have the same effect on the Cobra’s metals, do you? I mean, those metals are a lot different from rock . . .”
“It’s the best clue we have,” Sarko answered. “In fact, it’s the only real clue I’ve seen so far. And it ties in with the other points!”
Arnold went back to his desk and sat down. “What do you mean?” he asked softly.
“That medical report about the crewman being flash-blinded. And the tape recording. . . the last clear word on the tape is ‘Flash.’ Remember?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“And the movie film that blanked out. A laser beam could’ve caused that, too. It all fits.”
Arnold shook his head. “It’s crazy . . . wild . . .”
“Maybe so. But we’re going to follow up on this idea. Fast.”
“How?”
“There’s no laser on the base that’s as powerful as the one the M.I.T. people used. But over at the state university they have one. We’re taking a batch of samples of the Cobra’s metals over there. This morning.”
With a shrug, Arnold said, “Okay, you’re the boss. But if I were you, I wouldn’t go around telling everybody about this idea. It’s pretty wild . . . and if it doesn’t turn out to be right . . .”