“Yes. Yes. Yes!” cried the foreman.
“We-”
At that moment a higher-pitched voice bit into the row of the hangar. "Yoohoo!" It was Chirk. Zzt stared in daggers of hostility. The cheap twit!
But she was holding a single huge key. “I found this in his desk,” she caroled.
“Where are the other keys to this thing?” shouted Zzt. “The preset box keys.”
“That's the only one there was in the desk,” lilted Chirk.
It gave Zzt an instant's pause. He didn't want this damned old relic firing itself off in the hangar with no way to get out. But he had to move it. This was the door key they were passing up to him.
He glared at the key. Three toggles. Pitted. The shaft almost in two. Terl could at least have made a new key! But oh no, it was paws off.
He shoved the key, all twenty pounds of it, at the lock hole. He twisted it with a curse. Damn Terl!
The rusty, magnetic clenchers gave. The key fell apart.
Zzt flung it to the platform below, narrowly missing Chirk. At least the door was open.
He struggled to swing it back. Even the hinges were decayed and stiff. It opened to reveal the enormous interior.
Zzt got a torch. There were no lights in this thing. It was never meant to have a pilot in it. It was just tons and tons and tons of gas canisters, engines, and armor.
He thought belatedly he might have robbed some fuel from it. Too late now.
He lumbered forward to the control compartment. He had better throw them off. But no! They were armor-locked solid. They couldn't be unset without a key. And this metal wouldn't surrender to anything. It was armored! Damn Terl!
He darted his light around. There was the magnetic grip release, the only interior control, put there so hangar and firing people could lock and unlock it when moving it about with tractors.
Zzt reached for the release brake. Before he could touch it, it moved!
He froze, looking at it in horror. Yes, there was a click in the preset box. He dove for the door.
The forward jerk of the motors threw him off his feet. He scrambled for the exit.
Too late!
The hangar door was fleeing by. It was already yards down to the ground. He didn't dare jump.
The drone took off, its rusty side door flapping in the wind.
Zzt led out a shuddering groan. Damn
Terl!
Well, at least they could get the battle planes out and end the Tolnep attack.
And all this on half-pay and no bonuses.
Probably that was Terl's doing, too.
Chapter 8
Jonnie, twenty miles away, saw the drone launch. It was a huge thing. The gas drone? He went ice cold.
The flash of an explosion bloomed on the side of it. He knew it would be a bazooka firing. There was a team there to prevent the launching of planes. A second flash against the hull as the boom of the first one drifted faintly to them. Neither had the slightest effect upon the drone. It rose in stately massiveness to two thousand feet as it turned. Still climbing, it headed northwest.
It went by them to the east, looming in the sky, so big it looked close even though two miles away. It was ragged and patched and dented, evidences of former combat on its discolored hide. A tense Jonnie clocked it at about three hundred miles an hour. A battle plane had fired just behind it. Bazooka missiles hit the plane, exploded in two flares of light. It continued sedately on its way, following the drone. As it passed over them he saw it was a different type of battle plane. The Psychlo numbers “32” were on its side and then the smoke logos of the Psychlos. An escort?
The heavy roars beat at the earth.
When they had gone, Terl said, “Why not admit it, animal? You're licked.
When the Psychlos counterattack from home planet, you'll already be gone. So why not toss that gun over here and we can make a deal?”
Jonnie ignored him. He was carefully tracking the compass course of the drone relating it to the afternoon sun. He watched it as long as he could as it droned away to the northeast. It was not turning further. Be calm, he told himself. Don't panic.
"Where's it going first?” he said to Terl. A battle plane could do two thousand miles an hour. You can catch it. Be calm.
“Throw the gun over and I’ll tell you all about it,” said Terl.
Terl's motions alarmed Pattie. “Don't believe anything he says,” she pleaded. "He promised us food and didn't bring it. He even made out to us two or three times that you were dead!”
“You'll tell me about it,” said Jonnie, “or I’ll start shooting off your feet.” He aimed his gun.
“Do it!” said Pattie. “He's a nasty old brute! A devil!”
Jonnie was glancing in the direction Chrissie had gone. She was taking an awful long time coming back. He couldn't leave the girls out here alone and certainly not with Terl alive. Be calm, he told himself. You can catch up with it.
“All right,” said Terl as though resigned. "I’ll give you the places it's going.”
"In proper order,” said Jonnie, raising the gun suggestively.
“You'd get a kick out of shooting me up, wouldn't you?” said Terl.
“I don't get any enjoyment out of hurting things the way-'
“That's because you're a rat brain,” laughed Terl.
All this Psychlo talk between Jonnie and Terl was making Pattie very nervous. “Don't listen to him, Jonnie, just shoot him,” she demanded, grabbing Jonnie's gun arm.
“All right,” said Terl. “It’s first target is the bottom of Africa. The next is China. The next is Russia. Then it is preset to fly to Italy and then right here.”
Good, thought Jonnie. He didn't mention Scotland. It 's heading over the Arctic on that course. Scotland. That's its first target. And it would be because the Psychlos couldn't get up there, or thought they couldn't. Thank you, Terl.
“Good,” he said aloud. “For information received, you live a while longer.” It would take it seventeen hours to get to Scotland. Look calm. You can catch it.
Chrissie was coming down. They had been hidden by a dip in the plains. The horse was at a walk. And he saw why as she came near.
It was Thor. She was holding him upright in front of her on the horse.
She had removed her buckskin jacket and used it for bandages. Thor's antiradiation suit was stained with blood around the left shoulder. She had torn it away there and used buckskin and grass to staunch the blood flow. Thor's left arm was broken, bound in rough sticks for splints. It was he who had been shot out of the sky when he was using the jet pack.
With Chrissie's help Thor slid off the horse. He was gray from blood loss and stood unsteadily. He looked at Jonnie ruefully. "I’m sorry, Jonnie."
“It was my fault, not yours,” said Jonnie. “Ease him down on that rock, Chrissie."
Thor looked at Terl. He had seen the monster close up only a couple of times. Thor was wearing a .457 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver from the old base arsenal loaded with radiation bullets. He suddenly recognized Terl and grabbed for his gun to shoot him.
“No, no,” said Jonnie. “Keep the gun drawn and train it on him and shoot him the moment he looks like he's going to move, particularly his hands. Can you sit there okay?”
Thor was about fifty feet from Terl. He eased down further and got the gun trained on Terl.
“Now, Terl," said Jonnie, “that gun he is holding can put a hole in you a horse could dive through. It has special explosive bullets, worse than your own blast gun. Got it?” Be calm in front of these people. You can catch up with it.
He turned to Pattie. He gave her the huge blast pistol to hold. He showed her where the trigger was and she determinedly walked back of a rock so she could support the gun with it.