Part 16 (1/2)

”Rocket's ready for vertical launching. Ten seconds, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one; rocket off!”

There was a whoosh outside. Clifford, at the radio, repeated: ”Rocket off!” Then it banged, high overhead. ”Did you see it? he asked.

”Didn't see a thing,” Feinberg told him.

”Hey, I know what they would see!” Tom Kivelson burst out. ”Say we go up and set the woods on fire?”

”Hey, that's an idea. Listen, Mahatma; we have a big forest of flowerpot trees up on a plateau above us. Say we set that on fire.

Think you could see it?”

”I don't see why not, even in this moonlight. Wait a minute, till I call the other s.h.i.+ps.”

Tom was getting into warm outer garments. Cesario got out the arc torch, and he and Tom and I raced out through the hut and outdoors.

We hastened up the path that had been tramped and dragged to the waterfall, got the lifters off the logs, and used them to help ourselves up over the rocks beside the waterfall.

We hadn't bothered doing anything with the slas.h.i.+ngs, except to get them out of our way, while we were working. Now we gathered them into piles among the trees, placing them to take advantage of what little wind was still blowing, and touched them off with the arc torch. Soon we had the branches of the trees burning, and then the soft outer wood of the trunks. It actually began to get uncomfortably hot, although the temperature was now down around minus 90 Fahrenheit.

Cesario was using the torch. After he got all the slas.h.i.+ngs on fire, he started setting fire to the trees themselves, going all around them and getting the soft outer wood burning. As soon as he had one tree lit, he would run on to another.

”This guy's a real pyromaniac,” Tom said to me, wiping his face on the sleeve of his father's parka which he was wearing over his own.

”Sure I am,” Cesario took time out to reply. ”You know who I was about fifty reincarnations ago? Nero, burning Rome.” Theosophists never hesitated to make fun of their religion, that way. The way they see it, a thing isn't much good if it can't stand being made fun of. ”And look at the job I did on Moscow, a little later.”

”Sure; I remember that. I was Napoleon then. What I'd have done to you if I'd caught you, too.”

”Yes, and I know what he was in another reincarnation,” Tom added.

”Mrs. O'Leary's cow!”

Whether or not Cesario really had had any past astral experience, he made a good job of firebugging on this forest. We waited around for a while, far enough back for the heat to be just comfortable and pleasant, until we were sure that it was burning well on both sides of the frozen stream. It even made the double moonlight dim, and it was sending up huge clouds of fire-reddened smoke, and where the fire didn't light the smoke, it was black in the moonlight. There wouldn't be any excuse for anybody not seeing that. Finally, we started back to camp.

As soon as we got within earshot, we could hear the excitement.

Everybody was jumping and yelling. ”They see it! They see it!”

The boat was full of voices, too, from the radio:

”_Pequod_ to _Dirty Gertie_, we see it, too, just off our port bow...

Yes, _Bulldog_, we see your running lights; we're right behind you...

_Slasher_ to _Pequod_: we can't see you at all. Fire a flare, please...”

I pushed in to the radio. ”This is Walter Boyd, _Times_ representative with the _Javelin_ castaways,” I said. ”Has anybody a portable audiovisual pickup that I can use to get some pictures in to my paper with?”

That started general laughter among the operators on the s.h.i.+ps that were coming in.

”We have one, Walt,” Oscar Fujisawa's voice told me. ”I'm coming in ahead in the _Pequod_ scout boat; I'll bring it with me.”

”Thanks, Oscar,” I said. Then I asked him: ”Did you see Bish Ware before you left port?”