He went to the cabinets and opened a false bottom.
Chapter 3
Since his return to the African minesite, Jonnie had had trouble getting to sleep at night. He would roll and toss on the oversized Psychlo bed in the underground room he now used, uncomfortable in the overly hot and humid dark, going over and over again the steps and planning of recent past events, spotting where he had gone wrong in this and where he should have done something else in that. The life of a boy seemed far too much to pay for the information they had to have.
Sir Robert was not here. He remained in Scotland organizing a perimeter antiaircraft defense for Edinburgh. MacKendrick was not here. He had taken a trip home to see to the movement of his underground hospital to more suitable quarters now available and to check up on how his assistant there was getting along.
Colonel Ivan was in Russia.
Stormalong had been detained here, for they were afraid some revenge might be taken upon him for lending his clothes and identity to the recent enterprise. Finding himself at loose ends, the Norwegian had kept himself busy inventorying the “flying hardware”– a name he had gotten from somewhere or invented for planes.
Through Stormalong's efforts Jonnie had begun to divine the true character of his African base. Because it shipped very little bulk ore– they had roasted the tungsten down on the site– it had had none of the bulk ore carriers, a fact which made it necessary to truck out fuel and breathe-gas from the branch minesite in the Ituri Forest. But this African central did have a great many other types of planes which had led Stormalong to conclude that the base had also had a defense function. From some old Psychlo manuals they had found, it seemed that in event of attack upon the minesite near Denver, this African base had the function of launching a counterattack to take an enemy by surprise. And this is exactly what these Psychlos had been engaged upon when annihilated.
It greatly intrigued Stormalong to find several types of flying hardware he had never seen before and which weren't listed in current Psychlo manuals. They were not battlecraft as such, however. They were dual-purpose machines brought in to perform a specific task, and then, that task done– rather typical of company policy– they had simply been dollied to the back of the hangar and forgotten. Too costly or too much trouble to return them to Psychlo.
According to flight logs still with them they had been used to “mine out” an enormous amount of material which was found in orbit around this planet, a circumstance unusual in Psychlo experience. Some of the metals in these objects were priceless, being very scarce elsewhere, and the company had taken the unusual step of sending in some machines.
If properly gasketed in its doors, due to its teleportation motors which had no dependence upon air for lift, any common battle plane could fly to the moon and back without too much trouble. But they were not equipped to mine in space. You couldn't take objects in and out of a battle plane while flying in a vacuum. So some factory on Psychlo or on a planet controlled by the Psychlos had converted some very heavy duty, armored, marine attack planes. With atmosphere locks and remote control grapplers, they could fly alongside some object in space, seize on to it, and put it in the hold. Some scraps of such recovered objects were still in the holds of these things, bits which had broken off, like nameplates. One said “NASA” and Stormalong tried to look it up in planetary lists and couldn't find it. Therefore he had to conclude it had once been a local something.
Jonnie had looked at the old relics with some indifference. The gaskets on the doors were deteriorated– you can't expect a gasket to last for eleven hundred years and still be airtight, he pointed out. Every hinge and ball joint in their cranes and doors was too stiff to operate properly. There were even some spider nests in them and the spiders had dined, for countless generations, on another breed of insect that had dined upon the upholstery. The things were a mess. Jonnie had been more interested in another craft which mounted a blast cannon.
But Stormalong, having some idle and recently trained mechanics and three spare pilots on his hands and full shops available, had put these relics in operating condition. He had even painted a burning torch on either side of its nose which he said was a symbol of freedom. Stormalong had a lot of artistic style in him, Jonnie had to admit. But he privately hoped the symbol didn't forecast the thing going down in flames.
Not detecting the expected amount of enthusiasm, Stormalong had smugly pointed out, “Do you have anything else that could go up and visit those things orbiting four hundred miles up there?”
For some days now there had been four bright objects in orbit. First there had been one, then two, and now four.
“Visit them!” Jonnie had said, aghast. “This thing doesn't even have guns anymore!”
“We put them back,” said Stormalong. “And every screen and instrument in it works now. There were spares.”
“You better test fly it,” said Jonnie, “with a jet backpack close to hand!”
“I did,” said Stormalong. “Yesterday. The console buttons are a bit old-fashioned but it flies great.”
“Well, don't go flying up to those objects!” said Jonnie.
“Oh, I didn't,” said Stormalong. “I just took pictures of them.”
He had them. One was a big craft with a diamond-shaped bridge and a lot of blast-gun snouts. One was a cylinder with a control deck in the front, flat end. One was a thing which looked like a five-pointed star with a sort of gun on each star point. And the fourth was a sphere with a ring around it.
“Hey,” said Jonnie, “that answers the description, the last one, of the small gray man's ship, the one you did, but didn't, crash into.”
“Precisely,” said Stormalong. “We're under surveillance.”
Jonnie had known they were under surveillance. No enemy had a monopoly on that. They had shifted their own drone pattern and control to Cornwall and there were repeaters here. Twelve drones, flying slow around the globe, were passing the American minesite every few hours. They were also recording the objects in orbit, though not so well for drones were basically down-looking. No, a potential enemy had no monopoly. And ground defenses were also alert. But it was minimal defense and Jonnie knew it.
Tonight he couldn't sleep at all. Dunneldeen was overdue with the first recordings of Terl’s activities, and Jonnie didn't even know yet whether they would get recordings. Radio chatter about their project was forbidden. He was in the dark.
He got up restlessly at last and paced about. Then he went outside the compound. Hot, muggy. A lion was roaring down by the lake. The sky was overcast. Suddenly he was overcome with the desire for some cool air and a look at stars.
There were a couple of battle planes on standby, ready for a scramble if needed, but they were defense items. The ancient relic Stormalong had repaired was near at hand, a dull green in the glow of compound lights. On impulse, wanting only to do something besides brood, he went in to the duty officer and told him where he was going and got a mask and flight suit.
True enough the controls were a bit old-fashioned. The lift-balance buttons were bigger and in a different place. The gun trips had been moved to make way for the crane controls. But so what? He put on a jet backpack, strapped himself in, closed all the windows tight, and vaulted the old wreck skyward.
He burst through the overcast and there were the stars. Jonnie could always get a thrill from flying. Since that first enchanting day he had been aloft, he had never lost it. The black sky and bright stars, half a moon, some snow-capped peaks close by shoving their crowns up through the overcast and into the night sky. Jonnie felt some of his tension ease away.