Jonnie said: “This flight will take several hours. We will go very high. It will be very cold and the air will be thin. Endure it somehow. If you feel lightheaded it will be from lack of air, so make an effort to breathe more often. Keep yourselves tightly strapped in. This plane can turn in all directions and even upside-down. I am now going to the forward cab to help fly this thing. Remember that one day soon many of you will also be able to fly machines, so observe things closely. Robert the Fox is in charge here. Questions?”
There wasn't one. He had made them more confident in their new environment. They seemed cheerful, not afraid.
“Take it up, MacTyler!" said Robert the Fox.
Jonnie waved at the crowd out of the side door and they roared back. He slammed and locked the door.
He settled himself in the copilot seat, wound the security belt around himself twice, put on his air mask, and got out the map. Terl was looking sourly at the crowd.
With vicious sudden gestures, Terl recompressed the cab with breathe-gas and ripped off his mask. And Jonnie saw his amber eyes were shot with green. Terl had been going heavy on the kerbango. There was an evil twist to his mouthbones.
He was rumbling something about “late” and “having no leverage on these blasted animals” and “teach a lesson.”
Jonnie stiffened in alarm.
The plane vaulted skyward at a speed enough to crush him into his seat. It was at three thousand feet in the wink of an eye. Jonnie's map and hands were pressed painfully downward into the copilot control panel.
Terl's talons snapped at some more buttons. The ship started over on its side.
“What are you doing?” shouted Jonnie.
"I’m going to set an example!” roared Terl. “We've got to show them what will happen if they disobey.”
The thick mob in the meadow was a small dot below them as the plane turned downward. Suddenly Jonnie knew that Terl was going to blast them.
The ground came screaming up, the crowd getting large.
No! screamed Jonnie.
Terl's talons were reaching out for the fire buttons.
Jonnie heaved the map.
Open, it pinned itself against Terl's face, cutting off his vision.
The ground was coming up with speed.
Jonnie hit his own controls with staccato fingers.
Two hundred feet up, the plane abruptly changed course to level. It s inertia sucked it down to only yards above the crowd's heads.
Like a javelin it shot forward. Ahead of them, the trees leaping larger, was the mountainside. Jonnie's fingers stabbed keys.
Branches hit the underbody. The plane rocketed up the mountainside only feet from the ground.
It shot into the clear as they passed the mountain crest. Jonnie leveled it and stabbed it at the distant beaches.
He reversed the tape that had taken them on the incoming voyage and fed it into the autopilot.
The sea sped by only yards below them. They were in the clear, undetectable by any minesite observation post, heading for home.
Jonnie, bathed in sweat, sat back.
He looked at Terl. The monster had gotten the map off his face. Flames were flickering in his green-shot eyes.
“You almost killed us,” said Terl.
“You would have spoiled everything,” said Jonnie.
"I’ve got no leverage on these animals,” snapped Terl. He looked over his shoulder to beyond the cab rear wall. “How,” he added with nasty sarcasm, “do you intend to keep them obedient? With little baby toys?”
“They've been obedient enough so far, haven't they?” said Jonnie.
“You ruined this whole trip for me,” said Terl. He relapsed into moody silence. At length, he rubbed at his aching head and fumbled around for his kerbango. He brought up an empty container and threw it down. Jonnie clipped it into a rack so it wouldn't go adrift. Terl found another one under the seat. He chewed off a slug of it and sat there gloomily.
“Why,” asked Terl, at length, “were they cheering yesterday?”
“I told them the end of the project would see them highly paid,” said Jonnie.
Terl thought that over. Then, “They were cheering because of pay?”
“More or less,” said Jonnie. Terl was suspicious. “You didn't promise any gold, did you?”
“No, they don't know anything about gold. Their currency is horses and such things.”
“High pay, eh?” said Terl. He was suddenly very jovial. The kerbango was taking effect. He had just had a wonderful thought. High pay. He knew exactly the pay they would get. Exactly. At the muzzle end of a blast gun. He cheered up enormously.
“You fly this thing pretty good, rat brain, when you're not trying to kill everybody.” This struck Terl as very, very funny and he laughed from time to time all the way home. But that was not what pleased him. How stupid these animals were! High pay, indeed. No wonder they'd lost the planet! He had his leverage. He'd never heard such enthusiasm!
Chapter 2
Forty-eight hours after their arrival at the “defense base,” Jonnie was very glad he had Robert the Fox along. He had to handle a threatened war.
Two of the young men, amid all the flurry of settling in, had yet found time to discover the remains of a weapons cargo. A truck, in the last days of man's civilization, had apparently run into a road cutbank and a cave-in had covered it. There it had remained for more than a thousand years until Scot hands uncovered it.
Jonnie had just come in to the base with a group driving wild cattle before them. He had been very busy settling the group in. He had lots of help. No one required much in the way of orders. They had swept out and apportioned off an old dormitory.
They had dug latrines. The parson had made the chapel useful. And the old women had found a place that could be protected from deer and cattle and, being near the water, was ideal for a vegetable garden; Jonnie had used a drilling machine to plow it up and the women assured him that now nobody would get scurvy– they had brought seeds, and radishes and lettuce and spring onions would be up in no time in this sunlight and deep soil. The schoolmaster had appropriated the ancient academic building and had a schoolroom set up.
The Scots had proven remarkably ingenious with machinery; they seemed to know what some of these pipes and wires were all about, having heard of them and read of them in their books.
Thus Jonnie was not too startled to find a youth– Angus MacTavish-holding out an ancient piece of metal to him and requesting permission to “make this and the rest of the lot serviceable.” Jonnie had not thought that among all this bustle anyone would have time to dig up an old wrecked man-truck and its contents.
“What is this thing?” said Jonnie.
The youth showed him some stamped letters. The object was covered with what must have been a very thick grease that, down the ages, had become rock-hard but had preserved the object. The letters, which the youth had cleaned off, said “Thompson submachine gun....” It had a company name and serial number.
“There's case on case of them,” said Angus. “A whole truckload. And airtight boxes of ammunition. When the grease comes off these, they might be fired. The truck must have run off the road and gotten buried in the cave-in. May I clean it up and test it, MacTyler?"
Jonnie absently nodded and went on with the cattle. He was thinking about getting over to the base and getting a horse. There were plenty of wild horses but they needed to be broken, and driving in cattle for food on foot was not the safest occupation he knew of. He was also speculating about using one of these small Psychlo trucks to do the job. Food shortage had been a problem for the Scots and there was no reason they could not be very well fed; it would make them even tougher and more able to stand the work ahead.