Out of the Sun (1968)

by Ben Bova

  “Marty . . . you’ve helped them kill six men!” Arnold’s face turned slightly red. “If it wasn’t me, it would’ve been somebody else.”

  “And you want me to keep quiet about it?”

  “Just for a little while, Paul. Long enough to let me get out of here.”

  Sarko slumped back in his seat, thinking hard. “Just for a week or so,” Arnold said. “Let me get out quietly, and then you can tell them about the laser. I’ll be out of the country by then.”

  With a sudden shake of his head, Sarko said, “No, I can’t do it. Frank won’t wait another week.

  He knows there’s nothing wrong with the Cobra. In another few days he’ll fly Cobra Four out of here and go looking for trouble over the Arctic.”

  “Well . . . maybe you can stall him.”

  “Not Colt. He’ll take that bird out over the Arctic and they’ll kill him.”

  “Paul, give me a break!”

  Sarko answered, “I can’t, Marty. Not even if I wanted to.”

  Arnold slowed the car down and pulled it off to the side of the road. Sarko saw that they were at a crossroads. Another car was parked there, and Arnold stopped his car right behind it.

  Before Sarko could say anything, a man appeared at the window beside him. He was tall, with a thin, bony face and curly blond hair.

  “Well?” the man said to Arnold.

  “No use,” Arnold replied. “I tried to talk him out of it, but he won’t listen.”

  “What is this, Marty?” Sarko demanded.

  Arnold said, “I’m sorry, Paul. I tried to keep you out of this, but . . .”

  Chapter twelve

  The blond man said, “Outside, please.”

  Sarko glanced at Arnold, who shrugged unhappily and opened the door on his side of the car. Sarko grabbed the door handle beside him and pushed the door open.

  In silence they walked to the other car: the blond man in front, Sarko next, Arnold at the rear. Like guards walking a prisoner, Sarko thought.

  The blond sat wearily on the front seat of his car and reached into the open glove compartment.

  “I’m afraid, Dr. Sarko, that you’re going to have a fatal heart attack.” He took a hypo needle out of a black case.

  Sarko edged backward. “Now wait a minute . . .” He bumped into Arnold.

  “Hold him,” the blond said.

  Sarko felt Arnold’s hands squeeze his arms. He looked around. The roads were deserted. There wasn’t even a farmhouse in sight. A few birds were chirping in a clump of trees nearby and a plane or helicopter was droning lazily off in the distance.

  “I’m sorry, Paul,” Arnold was saying, almost babbling. “I didn’t want it like this. Honest, I didn’t think it would come to this . . .”

  Sarko spun around, flashed out a fist at Arnold’s face, and started running.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot!” he heard the blond shout.

  He ran all the harder . . . for the clump of trees. A pistol shot! He dove for the nearest clump of bushes. Nothing much, nothing that would stop a bullet. He could see them running toward him. The blond had a heavy black automatic in his hand.

  Doubled over, trying to keep the bushes between himself and the gun, Sarko dashed toward the trees.

  The gun cracked twice again, and Sarko saw wood splinter off the trees in front of him.

  “You’ll never make it, Sarko,” the blond called out. “Stop now. The next shot will cut you in half.”

  Sarko stopped running and straightened up. The two men rushed toward him.

  Suddenly the helicopter sound grew enormously louder. They all looked up and saw an Air Force ’copter skimming over the trees.

  Arnold broke and ran back for the cars. The blond lifted his arm to fire, but the rattle of a machine gun churned the ground around him with blasts of dust. The blond was slammed down as though an invisible hand had flattened him forever.

  The helicopter slid sideways over to the cars and landed in front of them. Arnold had his hands in the air as two Air Policemen jumped out with drawn guns.

  Sarko felt his knees wobbling. He didn’t move. He couldn’t.

  Another man in Air Force blue hopped out of the helicopter and started running for him. Sarko recognized the dark face and bright grin.

  “Just like the movies,” Major Colt said, puffing a little.

  “I’m not cut out to be a movie star, then,” Sarko said.

  “You okay?”

  “No, I’m not. I don’t think I’ll ever be all right again,” Sarko answered truthfully. “But I’m not hurt, if that’s what you mean.”

  Colt put an arm around the engineer and they started back toward the cars and ’copter.

  “They started playing rough,” the Major said.

  “Yeah.” Sarko suddenly realized something. “Hey, how’d you get here? How’d you know. . .”

  Colt laughed. “I told you we were worrying about a spy on the base. Then all of a sudden, this afternoon, you start hopping around like a flea at the dog pound. Photo lab, laser lab, back to the photo lab, and then out in Arnold’s car.”

  “You were following me!”

  “We were keeping an eye on everybody. But when you dashed off in Arnold’s car, instead of going back to your quarters like a good citizen, I started worrying.”

  “You figured that I’d be in trouble.” Sarko was slightly amazed at Colt’s foresight.

  The Major scratched his chin with his free hand. “Well . . . not exactly. I, um. . . I’m afraid that what worried me was the possibility that you were the spy we were looking for.”

  “Me?”

  “Well, you were acting mighty strange.”

  “And you thought I was a spy?” Sarko pulled away from the Major and stood—still wobbly—on his own feet.

  Colt was still grinning, but he looked a little sheepish. “I hated to think that you were the one. I was just starting to like you, really. But . . . well, put yourself in my place. If somebody started acting as nutty as you did this afternoon, what would you think?”

  Sarko tried to frown, but found himself grinning back at Major Colt instead.

  “Darned good thing you did follow me,” he admitted.

  Colt said, “I was starting to feel pretty rotten about this whole business when it looked like you were the guy we were after.”

  “Thanks.”

  They climbed into the helicopter together and sat behind the pilot. Arnold was in the rear seat, handcuffed and head down, with a grim-faced Air Policeman beside him. The other Air Policeman was checking out the cars and waiting for an ambulance to pick up the body of the blond man.

  “At least I won’t get any more warnings about going out with Rita,” Sarko said as the ’copter’s engines roared to full power for the liftoff.

  “Boy, you took a wrong turn on that one,” Colt’s grin was wider than ever. “I wasn’t warning you that she was a spy. I was trying to tip you off— without breaking Security rules—that Rita was the one who was watching you . . . for us. She’s on our side!”

  Sarko stared at the Major. “I guess that’s real funny,” he said lamely.

  But he didn’t laugh. He realized for the first time how much he had enjoyed being with Rita. Now that Arnold was caught, there was no reason for her to see him again.

  Chapter thirteen

  General Hastings peered into the thick glass port set into the side of the Mach 3 wind tunnel’s test section.

  Inside was a two-foot-long model of the Cobra. Further upstream, inside the wind tunnel also, was the big laser from the university.

  The General chewed an unlit cigar. Turning to Sarko and Colt, who were standing with him on the metal catwalk that ran alongside the giant wind tunnel, he demanded:

  “You really believe that a beam of light made those planes break up?”

  “A very special kind of light beam,” Sarko answered. “Together with the pressure of a Mach 3 airstream.”

  Silently, the General shook his head.

  T
hey clambered down the metal stairs to the main floor of the wind-tunnel building, then walked across to the control room. The wind tunnel loomed behind them like an immense steel pipe, studded with braces and bolts.

  Glancing back at it, Sarko thought it looked like the body of a giant robot lying on its back. The spider webs of stairs and platforms that ran alongside it showed how small human beings really were.

  The control room was humming with quiet efficiency. Computer tapes spun, lights blinked, men moved smoothly about their jobs.

  A TV screen showed the model of the Cobra. Sarko, Major Colt, and the General stood in front of the screen.

  “We’re ready, Sir,” the chief of the wind-tunnel crew said.

  The General nodded.

  From deep inside the building, the giant robot roared with the power of a thousand thunderstorms. The model in the TV screen looked unchanged, but now air was rushing over it at three times the speed of sound. The model was facing the same pressures and heat that the real Cobras did when they flew at their top speed.

  “Laser ready, Sir.”

  General Hastings nodded again.

  Sarko held his breath and counted to himself: One, two, three, four . . .

  The model burst apart, as though a bomb had gone off inside it.

  For a moment, no one moved. Even though Sarko had known what to expect, it was stunning. Finally the technicians began shutting down the tunnel. The roar died away. The lights on the control panels winked off.

  General Hastings turned to Sarko. “So that’s how they did it.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “I want to thank you, Dr. Sarko. You’ve uncovered a very vital piece of knowledge.”

  “Question now,” Major Colt said, “is how to defend Cobra Four against the laser.”

  “It shouldn’t be too tough,” Sarko said. “Actually, it’s not much of a weapon. It’s bulky, and has to be on you for four or five seconds before there’s any damage done. That’s a long time when you’re moving at Mach 3.”

  “The success of the weapon depends on surprise,” the General said.

  “That’s right,” Sarko agreed. “It shouldn’t be too hard to stay out of the laser’s beam. And we can put a bright coat of paint on the planes, instead of the black they wear now. Then almost all of the laser beam will be reflected, even if it does hit the plane.”

  The General nodded. Turning to Colt, he said, “Get Cobra Four ready as quickly as possible. I want it flying patrol over the Arctic right away. I want to show those people with the laser that we’re wise to their game.”

  Colt smiled grimly. “Yes, Sir”

  Sarko went back to his office. His real work was done. He had to write a report about it all, of course, but that was nothing.

  He leaned back in his desk chair and gazed out the window at the perfect blue sky.

  In his mind, he pictured Colt flying high over the Arctic, looking for the enemy plane. Colt was going to shoot it down. That would be his way to balance the score.

  Then Sarko thought about Rita. It was almost funny. She had been given the job of following him. A very pleasant job, as far as Sarko was concerned. But now the job was over, and he would probably never see her again.

  He sat up in his chair, not knowing which felt worse: feeling sorry for himself, or being angry at her.

  He picked up the phone and dialed her number.

  “Hello.” It was her voice.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d still be at the same desk,” he said, “now that your counterspy job is finished.”

  She laughed. “Hello, Paul. Frank told you about it, I see.”

  “Yes. Are you a full-time Intelligence operator, or do you just fill in during emergencies?”

  “I’m a secretary,” she said. “Frank noticed that we went out to lunch together a couple of times, so he asked me to keep an eye on you. For your own protection.”

  “You mean the first two times you went to lunch with me because . . .”

  “Because I was hungry, and you asked me politely.”

  Sarko thought for a moment.

  “It’s just about lunchtime now,” he said. “Are you hungry?”

  “Starved.”

  “And how about dinner tonight?”

  She said, “All right.”

  “And lunch tomorrow?”

  “What is this?” Rita asked. “What are you up to, Paul?”

  “I’m just trying to find out if you’re as willing to go out with me now as you were when we still had a spy to catch.”

  Her voice grew serious. “I wasn’t a very good counterspy, Paul. I was enjoying myself too much when I was with you.”

  Smiling, Sarko answered, “That makes two of us. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”

  Late that night, long after dinner, Rita and Sarko were walking down a tree-lined street in the town next to the air base.

  “Here’s my house again,” she said.

  It was the fourth time they had walked past it.

  “You’re starting to sound sleepy,” Sarko said. In the shadows cast by the trees, it was hard to see her face.

  “A little,” she admitted.

  “There’s something I’ve got to do,” Sarko said abruptly. “I just realized it, just now. Something important.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve got to go along with Frank when he flies Cobra Four to the Arctic.”

  “They won’t let you, Paul. And why should you risk . . .”

  “It’s part of the job,” he said firmly. “I can’t just stop now. I’ve got to see this job through to the very end. No matter what.”

  Chapter fourteen

  Climbing at a steep angle toward 80,000 feet was like leaving the Earth and going into another world.

  Sarko was sitting in a cockpit jammed with instruments. Dials and gauges and buttons and switches surrounded him. On his left sat Major Colt, in the pilot’s seat. A set of throttles and engine control knobs separated the two seats.

  Both men wore astronaut-type pressure suits and helmets. Hoses and wires connected them to the plane’s oxygen, heating, and radio systems.

  Colt eased up on the control wheel in front of him and Cobra Four leveled off. Sarko felt his back unglue itself from the back of his seat. There was almost no noise at all in the cockpit, except for some electrical humming and the whispering rush of air past the outer skin of the plane, just an inch over Sarko’s head.

  Cobra Four’s plastic windshield had been replaced by a metal screen, to protect against the laser beam’s effects. The screen had narrow slits to see through, but even these could be closed off, and special television cameras used to see the world outside.

  The plane had also been painted a gleaming white, to reflect the energy of the laser beam.

  “I really feel like a knight in shining armor,” Colt said with a grin.

  With his right hand, he nudged the main throttle forward slightly, and the Mach meters on both cockpit control panels crept toward Mach 3.

  “How do you like it?” the Major asked, turning to Sarko. The engineer heard his voice in his helmet earphones, over the Cobra’s intercom radio.

  “It’s like coasting on a cloud . . . smoothest flight I’ve ever had.”

  Smiling, Colt said, “You deserve a smooth flight; you fought hard enough to get here.”

  “General Hastings wouldn’t have let me come along if you hadn’t helped to twist his arm.”

  “Well, I don’t really need a radar man for this run,” Colt said. “We can use the ground radars to guide us, if we have to. Anyway, I have a feeling the other side will come looking for us. We won’t have to go searching for him.”

  “That’s why you’re only using this one plane?”

  Nodding, Colt answered, “Yeah. We don’t want to scare ’em off.”

  “And what do you do when you come up against the enemy plane?”

  “Swat the mosquito!” Colt snapped, fingering the trigger button on his control wheel.


  The sky was an almost violet-blue above them, and far below the ground was covered with brilliant white clouds. They were miles above any weather.

  Colt barely touched the controls. He kept the plane on the autopilot, and checked the radio now and then to make certain they were on the right course.

  Sarko watched the TV screen in front of him. He couldn’t see very much through the narrow slits in the metal windshield. By turning on different cameras, he could look ahead, to either side, behind the plane, above or below.

  After about an hour’s flying time, Sarko suddenly spotted another plane on the screen, far below them, outlined against the clouds.

  He shook Colt’s shoulder and pointed hurriedly.

  The Major laughed. “It’s our tanker. Good spotting.”

  They spiraled down as Colt identified himself on the radio to the waiting KC-135. The tanker let out its fuel line, and Colt deftly flew the Cobra’s needle-tipped fuel probe straight into the connector.

  The two planes linked, the connector locked, and fuel from the tanker began flowing into Cobra Four’s hungry innards.

  With all the fuel gauges reading full, Colt pulled Cobra Four free of the fuel line, wagged his wings in thanks, and pulled the control wheel back.

  Sarko felt himself pressed against his seat again, as the Cobra arrowed into the far sky.

  “Next plane we see,” Major Colt said quietly, “will be IT.”

  The clouds broke as they passed the northern edges of the Queen Elizabeth Islands and sailed out over the Arctic Ocean. Sarko could see ice floes among the deep swells of the ocean, but winter’s broad icecap was gone.

  “Might as well throw on your search radar.” Colt pointed out the right switch. Sarko thumbed it, and a round screen next to his TV picture lighted up. A bright ray of light swept around it, like the second hand of a clock.

  “I can keep an eye on it from here,” the Major said. “You’re supposed to be the missile-firing man on the team, as well as radio man, you know.”