by Ben Bova
“I know,” Sarko agreed. “We’ll keep it strictly between the two of us for the time being. We’ll just tell the university people that we’re doing some routine tests.”
They drove out in Arnold’s car later that morning.
The laser was a thick glass tube, and so long that it ran the entire length of the big laboratory room. It was surrounded by electric power generators and other equipment.
If this is what they’re using against the Cobras, I can see why it takes a bomber to carry it, Sarko thought to himself.
“This is one of the most powerful lasers in the country,” the Professor told them as he guided them through his lab.
A half-dozen technicians in white lab coats stood at one end of the room, waiting to turn on their equipment.
The Professor was older than Sarko, and his hair was beginning to turn gray. He was small and thin; he looked almost frail, but the little cuts and scrapes on his slim hands showed that he did a lot of the lab work himself.
Sarko put his briefcase down on one of the tables that stood alongside the laser tube. He took out six small plates made of metal alloys.
The Professor looked at the plates, then at Sarko and Arnold. “I hope you don’t expect the laser to melt those. It isn’t powerful enough. No laser is.” Sarko said, “Do you remember the experiment done at M.I.T. a year or so ago, where they shattered solid rock with a laser beam?”
“Oh, yes!” The Professor’s face lit up. “And their laser was only half as powerful as this one.”
“I want to see what effect your laser will have on these metals,” Sarko said.
“Probably none . . . or very little. Metals won’t react the way rock does.”
“I’d like to see what happens.”
The Professor made them put on dark goggles and stand across the room from the laser tube. Two technicians placed one of Sarko’s metal plates in a holder a few feet from the end of the laser tube.
When everything was ready, the Professor and his technicians went to a desk full of control dials and buttons.
“How long a run would you like us to try?” the Professor called over to Sarko.
“Five seconds.”
“Very well.”
The room suddenly filled with the hum of electrical power. Then, as the Professor touched buttons on the control panel, the long tube began to glow with a dull pinkish color.
“It’s up to full power,” one of the technicians said, without taking his eyes from the dials he was reading.
“Put the beam on the target,” the Professor ordered.
Sarko looked at the metal plate as the technician called out, “One . . . two . . . three . . .”
Nothing much seemed to happen. The beam from the laser was infrared—invisible to human eyes. The metal itself seemed to be untouched, except for a slight warm-looking glow in the center of the plate.
“. . . four . . . five.”
The electrical hum stopped. The glow in the laser tube disappeared. The metal looked unchanged.
Sarko whipped off his goggles and rushed over to the metal plate. The Professor was right beside him.
“It looks exactly the same,” the Professor said. “Untouched. Undamaged.”
Sarko ran a hand over the metal. “It’s warm, though. Some of the energy from the beam got into it.”
“Really?” The Professor touched the plate. “You’re right.”
He turned back to one of the lab tables and found a magnifying glass. “Let’s take a closer look.”
The Professor peered carefully at the metal plate, then handed the glass to Sarko. Tiny cracks crisscrossed the center of the metal plate.
Sarko straightened up and looked around the lab. “Could you hand me that wrench, please?” he asked a technician.
The wrench was a heavy one. Sarko hefted it, moved Arnold and the Professor out of his way, and then smashed the wrench with all his might against the metal plate.
The plate shattered into a hundred pieces.
Chapter nine
“That’s how they did it,” Sarko said, as Martin Arnold drove them back to the base.
In his briefcase, Sarko had the shattered remains of his metal samples.
“They fired a laser like that one at the Cobras. Maybe they’ve even got a more powerful laser.” Arnold glanced at Sarko. “It still sounds crazy to me. The thought of a supersonic bomber carrying that giant laser around, just in the hope that it’ll meet one of our planes . . .”
“They knew we were flying Cobras over the Pole. They came looking for us.”
“But all the laser did was make some tiny cracks in the metals. That doesn’t explain how the planes fell apart. Don’t tell me they threw wrenches at the Cobras after shining the laser on them.”
Sarko laughed. “They didn’t have to. You know the force of the airflow blowing over a plane at Mach 3 speeds. That’s a lot worse than being hit with sledge hammers.”
He went on, “The laser beam weakened the metals, and the air pressure at Mach 3 tore the planes apart.”
“You really think that’s what happened?”
Sarko nodded.
“You’re going to have a tough time convincing General Hastings of that.”
“I know. It’s not the kind of idea that he’ll be able to swallow easily. But I’ve asked the Professor to set up his laser in the Mach 3 wind tunnel on the base.”
Frowning, Arnold said, “That’ll take a couple of weeks, at least.”
“Not if I know Frank Colt,” Sarko answered with a chuckle. “He’ll get a team of men over there tonight and have the job done in a day or two.”
Arnold slowed the car down. They were coming to the guard post at the base’s main gate. The guard looked at the sticker on the car’s windshield, then waved them on.
Putting on speed again, Arnold asked, “What do you want to do in the wind tunnel?”
“Show the General what happened,” Sarko answered. “I think if we put one of our old test models of the Cobra in the wind tunnel and shine the laser on it, he’ll see exactly what happened.”
“You mean those little models we used a couple of years ago?”
“Right.”
“Well,” Arnold said, pulling the car into the parking slot next to their office, “I really think that all you’ll be showing the General is what might have happened to the Cobras. If this laser scheme works, it still doesn’t mean that that’s what really happened.”
Sarko stared at his assistant. “You mean it might have been something else?”
“Sure. I still think this laser idea is farfetched. Whether it works or not. And if you’re barking up the wrong tree . . . we could end up with another crash.”
Sarko thought it over for a long moment.
“You could be right,” he said at last. “I got so excited about the laser idea that it never occurred to me that something else could be happening, too . . .”
“If I were you, I’d think things over pretty carefully before going to the General,” Arnold said.
“Maybe I ought to sleep on it,” Sarko agreed.
They went into the office.
“I’ll write up the report on our visit to the university,” Arnold said as he sat at his desk.
Sarko nodded and walked over to the window. Cobra Four was barreling down the runway, jets screaming.
“There he goes again,” Sarko said as the black plane fired off into the sky. “He’ll have his hundred hours by tomorrow, if all goes well.”
Soon it was noontime and Arnold left for lunch. Sarko stayed at his desk, leafing through the piles of reports about the crashes.
He phoned the photo lab, where the film from Cobra Three was kept in a locked safe. About ten minutes later, one of the clerks brought the tiny spool of film in its red, top SECRET-Stamped can.
Sarko signed a Security slip for the film, and the clerk left. Then Sarko closed the window blinds. He threaded the film into the movie projector behind his desk and turned the machine o
n.
The screen across the room showed him what the camera on Cobra Three had seen: the dazzling white of the still-frozen Arctic Ocean, and a bit of the plane’s own nose.
The plane was up so high that the sky was deep-blue, and he could see the slight curve of the horizon. Cobra Two was in the picture, flying ahead of and slightly higher than Cobra Three.
Then, a few thousand feet below them, the other plane appeared. Triangle-shaped wings. Four pods for engines. A bomber all right. No doubt about it. Cobra Two dipped down toward it, and the camera—on Cobra Three—followed.
The other plane grew bigger and bigger. It was coming toward them, off to one side a little. Cobra Two lined up head-on with it, though, and . . .
The film suddenly snapped. The projector ran wildly, the loose end of the film slap-slap-slapping around in its reel.
Grumbling, Sarko turned off the projector and flicked the lights on. He took one look at the broken film and called the photo lab again.
The same clerk came back, with a film-splicing kit under his arm. He looked a trifle angry.
“Sorry if I cut into your lunch hour,” Sarko said.
“We’re shorthanded today,” the clerk muttered as he took the film from the projector. “Bad enough I have to eat in the darkroom, but now I got to make house calls. . . Hey, this film’s been cut.”
“What?” Sarko stepped in close to see.
“Somebody’s been cutting frames out of this film. See? Where it broke? It was cut and a couple of frames taken out. Then it was spliced back together again . . . by an amateur. Lousy splicing job. No wonder it broke.”
“Forget the splicing,” Sarko snapped. “Get back to the photo lab and get the list of everybody who’s had this film. Everybody, do you hear!”
The clerk looked puzzled. “But why . . .”
“Never mind why. Just get moving! And call me as soon as you’ve got the list in your hand. Move!” The clerk hurried out. Sarko paced nervously across the office until his phone rang.
“Dr. Sarko? This is the photo lab.” The voice was the clerk’s. “I’ve got the list of names . . . everybody who’s run the film since it first came onto the base.”
“All right, good. This is Tuesday. Now, who’s had it since Sunday afternoon? I saw the film Sunday and it was perfectly all right then, no frames missing, I’m sure. Who’s had it since then?”
“Just you. You’re the only man who’s taken the film out of the photo lab.”
“No one else has even seen it?”
“Nope. Just Mr. Arnold. He ran it through a couple times this morning, but he didn’t take it out of the lab. Said he was in a hurry . . . said you and him was going to the university or something.” Marty Arnold. Sarko felt his insides grow cold. “Was he alone when he saw the film this morning?” he heard himself ask.
The clerk thought a minute. “Yeah, we set him up in one of the workrooms.”
One of the workrooms. Where he could snip a few frames out of the film and splice it back together again.
“Okay,” Sarko said. “Thanks. I’ll bring the film back in a few minutes.”
He hung up. Without thinking about it, he put the spool of film back into its can. His mind was racing, picturing Arnold cutting the film.
“Where are the missing frames?” Sarko whispered to himself.
With his mind’s eye, he pictured Marty Arnold quickly trying to splice the cut film together. Then he held the cut-out frames in his hand. What to do with them?
Sarko smiled grimly. He saw what Arnold had done.
Without wasting another second, he bolted for the door and headed straight for the photo lab.
Chapter ten
“In the trash can?” The clerk was slightly amazed.
Sarko was on his knees, half buried in scraps of film and paper from the photo lab’s workroom trash can.
“This is the one!” He held the tiny snip of film up to the ceiling lights. “I can see the plane . . .” He got up and showed the film to the clerk, who squinted at it.
“There’s only one good frame on it. The rest is fogged over . . . can’t see a thing.”
Laughing, Sarko said, “That’s what you think!” He headed for the door.
“Hey, wait! I got to get a receipt or something for those frames!”
“Later!” Sarko shouted over his shoulder.
He dashed all the way to the base’s laser laboratory, where he spent nearly an hour talking the men there into doing what he wanted. Finally, after more talking and a good deal of work, they got things set up the way Sarko wanted them.
The film was placed in a small holder in front of a laser. This laser was like the one at the university, but not as big or powerful. The room was darkened and the laser turned on.
Behind the film, in thin air, a tiny picture appeared. A three-dimensional, full-color picture, slightly larger than the image on the film itself.
Sarko leaned over into a half-crouch to see the little picture clearly. A technician squatted beside him.
“Very poor quality,” the technician said. “Our holograms are a lot better.”
“This one was taken by accident,” Sarko murmured, more to himself than to anyone in the room. “Just a lucky freak accident . . . the lenses and camera were set up in such a way that when the bomber fired its laser at the plane, it put a hologram picture on this film.”
Sarko had seen only a few hologram pictures before. They were the special type of pictures that lasers can make—usually without the need of a lens or camera at all. They were looking at the frames that the photo lab clerk had thought were fogged over and useless. They were fogged over, but fogged by the special light patterns that formed a laser-made hologram picture.
“Lucky,” he muttered. “But it’s about time we got some luck running our way.”
To the technician he said, “Let’s see the next frame.”
In the tiny picture—like a solid view hanging in mid-air, small but more real than any flat picture— Sarko saw Cobra Two, high above the gleaming white of the Arctic. He knew that the only reason he could see this picture was that Cobra Two had been exposed to a laser beam, and part of the laser’s light had reached the camera on Cobra Three. So these pictures proved that a laser had been used to destroy the Cobras!
“Next frame,” Sarko called out.
Cobra Two was starting to fall apart. Pieces were scattering everywhere. Sarko thought he saw shapes that looked like the plane’s pilot and crewmen. One edge of the picture was glaring brightly, as though a light was starting to shine straight into the camera.
“Next frame.”
Now the glare filled the picture. Nothing could be seen.
“The last frame,” another technician called out.
Sarko knew that the rest of the film—sitting back in the photo lab now—was hopelessly burned out by the laser’s brilliant light.
“Okay. Thanks.”
Somebody put on the lights and turned off the laser.
“Do you mind telling us what this is all about?” the tech beside him asked. “What are we looking at?”
Sarko pulled the film from its holder in front of the laser. “Sorry fellows, it’s a big, dark—I mean, a big, bright secret.”
After bringing the film safely back to the photo lab, though, Sarko didn’t feel very cheerful. He started back toward his office. It was late afternoon now, nearly quitting time.
Martin Arnold had cut out those few frames from the film. Cut them after Sarko had told him his idea about the laser.
That meant Arnold knew there was an accidentally made hologram picture on the film. He had gone to the photo lab and cut out the one piece of evidence that proved beyond doubt that a laser had been used on the three Cobras.
Chapter eleven
Arnold was sitting at his desk when Sarko burst into the office.
“Why, Marty? Why’d you do it?”
Arnold didn’t seem too surprised. “Do what?”
“Cut the film from
Cobra Three.”
“You found it?”
“You must have known I would.”
Sarko stood over his assistant, who looked up at him and said, “Paul . . . I . . . this is a hard place to talk. Somebody might come in, or the office might even be bugged with microphones. Can we go someplace else, where we can talk this whole thing through?”
“All right,” Sarko said. “We can take a drive in your car. That ought to be private enough.”
They went out to Arnold’s car and drove off the base.
“You tried to get rid of the only real evidence we have,” Sarko said, “and even tried to make me think the laser idea was wrong.”
“That’s right, Paul. And I felt pretty bad about it. Question is, what are you going to do now?”
Sarko looked at him. “I ought to turn you over to Frank Colt. Or the Air Police.”
“Without even knowing why I did what I did?”
“That’s why I’m here,” Sarko said. “To get your side of the story.”
“There’s not much to tell, really,” Arnold replied, with a faint smile. “It all boils down to one thing—money.”
“Money?”
“I owe money to everybody, Paul. This car isn’t even paid for yet. I’m not a brilliant guy, like you are. I’m just an ordinary engineer. I needed money, more than I make at the base . . .”
“And you’ve been selling information?”
Arnold glanced at Sarko, then snapped his eyes back to the road. “It started a few years ago, while you were still at the base full-time. A few people came to me . . . they said they were working for an aircraft company. They wanted to buy information about the metals we were working on.”
“But didn’t you think . . .”
“I didn’t care. I figured, whoever they are, they just wanted information so they could make Mach 3 planes, too. They’d get the information one way or another, so why shouldn’t I get paid for giving it to them?”
Sarko didn’t know whether to be angry or sorry for him.
“I never knew that they were going to use the information to shoot down the Cobras, Paul,” Arnold said, still looking straight ahead. “Honest I didn’t. They told me about it after the crashes, and told me to make sure you and Colt didn’t catch onto the laser business.”