Part 78 (1/2)

The group in the hangar door still stood there, looking at the place where the s.h.i.+p had vanished into the cloud-boiling sky. Their Jonnie was on his way to America fast. They didn't like it. Not any part of it.

Chapter 6.

It was dark when they landed at the old Academy. They had flown close to the North Pole, rolling back the sun and arriving before dawn.

There were few lights. No one had lighted the field for it was not the operational field of the area, and they had slipped in on instruments and viewscreens.

The cadet duty officer was sound asleep and they woke him to get themselves logged in: ”Stormalong Stam Stavenger, pilot, and Darf McNulty, copilot, returning from Europe, student battle plane 862905679 18. No troubles, no comments.” The cadet duty officer wrote it down. He didn't bother to get them to sign it.

Jonnie didn't know where Stormalong and Darf had been berthed. He had not remembered to find out. Stormalong probably in senior faculty berthing. Darf...? He thought fast. ”Darf” was still carrying the overgenerous, heavy food bag and a tool kit. After all, Stormalong was their ace here.

Abruptly Jonnie grabbed the food bag and tool kit and shoved them at the cadet. ”Please carry these up to my room for me.” The cadet looked at him oddly. Even Stormalong did his own fetching and carrying in this place. ”We've been flying for days with no sleep,” said Jonnie, faking a reeling motion.

The cadet shrugged and took the bundles. Jonnie waited for him to lead off and he did.

They arrived at a separate bedroom and went in. Stormalong's, all right. It had a Norwegian woven picture on one wall. Stormalong had made himself comfortable.

The cadet dropped the food bag and kit on the table and would have left. But although Angus was the one who had put this base together originally and knew it inside out, he wouldn't have known where Darf was berthed. Hastily Jonnie grabbed half the food and the kit and put them back into the cadet's arms. ”Help Darf get to his room.”

The cadet looked like he was going to protest. ”He hurt his arm playing skittles,” said Jonnie.

”Looks like you hurt your face, too, sir,” said the cadet. He was quite sullen at losing his sleep but they went off.

Fine beginning, thought Jonnie. About now Sir Robert definitely would be talking about planning raids right. You plan a raid, he would be saying. One as dangerous as this one might be certainly hadn't wasted any planning time.

The cadet and Angus didn't come back and he had to suppose it had been successful. He stripped off his clothes and rolled into Stormalong's bunk. He forced himself to go to sleep. He would need it.

It seemed like only seconds later that he was alarmed awake with a shake of the shoulder. He sat up suddenly, hand going under the blanket to his blast gun. A face mask. A breathe-mask.

The ”hand” was a paw.

”Did you deliver my letter?” whispered Ker.

It was broad daylight. A late-morning sun was streaming in through the discolored gla.s.s of the window.

Ker stepped back, looking at him oddly. Then the midget Psychlo catfooted over to the door to be sure it was closed, looked around the room for bugs or other surveillance devices, and came back to the bed where Jonnie had swung his legs down.

Ker guffawed!

”Is it that plain?” said Jonnie, a little cross and smoothing his hair out of his eyes.

”Not to an un.o.bservant idiot,” said Ker. ”But to one who had sweated on as many driver's seats and in as many shafts with you as me, I know you, Jonnie!”

He swatted his paw into Jonnie's palm. ”Welcome to the deep pit, Jonnie...l mean Jonnie logged in as Stormalong! May the ore fly and the carts roll!”

Jonnie had to grin at him. Ker was always such a clown. And in a way he was fond of him. Ker stepped very close. He whispered, ”You know you could get yourself squash killed around here. The word trickles out through the cracks in the bunkroom doors- top, high-level bunkrooms. You and me, too, if they trip the latch on us. Caution is the word. You ever have a criminal background? No? Well, you will have when they get through with you. Good thing you're in the hands of a real criminal, me! Who came with you? Who's Darf now?”

”Angus MacTavish,” said Jonnie.

”Oho! That's the best news of the day next to your being here. Angus has a way with the nuts and bolts. I keep track of things. What's first?”

”First,” said Jonnie, ”I get dressed and eat some breakfast. I'm not showing my face in that dining room. Stormalong trained most of these flying cadets.”

”That he did, while I trained the machine operators. You know I've been doing a great job on that, Jonnie.” Jonnie was dressing but Ker the chatterbox rattled on.

”This Academy is the most fun I ever had, Jonnie. These cadets...l tell them stories about teaching you and things you did- mostly lies of course and made up to make them do better-and they love it. They know they're lies. n.o.body could blade-sc.r.a.pe thirty nine tons of ore an hour. But you understand. You know me. I love this job. You know, it's the first time I've been really glad I'm a midget. I'm not much taller than they are and I got them- Jonnie, this will kill you unless somebody else does it first- I got them believing I'm half-human.” He had taken a seat on the bed, which sagged under his seven hundred pounds, and now it almost collapsed as he rolled around in laughter. ”Ain't that rich, Jonnie? Half-human, get it?

I tell them my mother was a female Psychlo that raped a Swede!”

Jonnie, in spite of the seriousness of their mission, had to smile. He was getting into Stormalong's clothes.

Ker had stopped laughing now. He was just sitting there, looking pensive. ”You know, Jonnie,” and he sighed so that his breathe-mask valve fluttered and popped, ”I think this is the first time in my life I ever had friends.”

Eating a few bites of breakfast and chasing it down with some water, Jonnie said, ”First thing you do is go down to the Academy Commandant and tell him you want Stormalong and Darf a.s.signed at once to your special project. I'm sure they gave you authority from upstairs.”

”Oh, I got authority,” said Ker. ”I got authority running out of my furry ears. And upstairs is all over me to finish that breathe-gas circulator. But I told them I needed help and parts from the Cornwall minesite.”

”Good,” said Jonnie. ”Tell them Dunneldeen will be over in a couple of days to replace Stormalong in the training schedule. Say you arranged that, too, to keep the school from disruption. Then you get a closed ground car out in front of this building, get 'Darf' in it, and come back here and knock on my door and we're away.”

”Got it, got it, got it,” said Ker as he went rumbling off.

Jonnie checked his blast gun and put it inside his coat. He would know within an hour or two whether Ker was playing this straight. Until then...?

Chapter 7.

They got to the car without incident beyond a couple of sly cracks from pa.s.sing cadets such as, ”Had a crash, Stormy?” in reference to the bandage, and ”Wipe one out, Stormalong? Or was it that la.s.s in Inverness? Or her daddy?”

There was a big package in the car, making seating tight even in Psychlo seats. Ker swept the car out across the rolling plain with the effortless skill of one with years and tens of thousands of hours on a console behind him. Jonnie had not remembered how well Ker drove. Better than Terl on ground cars and machinery. ”I told them,” he said, ”that it was you two that had gone to fetch the housing needed from Cornwall. I was even seen to unload it from your plane.”

Nothing like having an experienced criminal along, Jonnie commented. It tickled Ker and he cranked up the ground car to a hundred fifty. On this rough plain? Angus had shut his eyes tight as the shrubs and rocks whooshed by.

”And there's two air masks and bottles I brought,” said Ker. ”We'll claim breathe-gas is leaking in the pipes, not enough for me, too much for you. Put them on.”

They deferred it, however, until they were near the compound. c.h.i.n.ko air masks, cut down to fit a human, were a mite uncomfortable at any time.

Jonnie didn't care about the speed. He took an instant to glory in the beautiful day. The plains were a bit brown and the snow a trifle less on the peaks at this season. But it was his country. He was tired of rain and humid heat. It was sort of good to be home.

He snapped out of it suddenly as they screeched to a slow in billowing dust on the plateau near the cage. Ker didn't care where he went in a vehicle. Ker leaned out the window and yelled at the cage, ”It came. I don't think it's the right housing but we'll see!”

Terl! There he was, paws on the bars. They had the electricity off.

”Well, speed it up!” roared Terl. ”I'm tired of being roasted in this sun. How many days yet, you c.r.a.p brain?”