Part 6

Smitty winced. Then he rubbed his chin, scowling. "If we have to, Bill, we can go east to Utah, then south through Arizona to Mexico, then east again--flying across the Border at night, without lights, won't be too much trouble; and once in Mexico we won't have to worry about radar. We can go out over the Gulf of Mexico, if we want to, and then turn north and fly up the Mississippi and Ohio valleys as far as Pennsylvania. There's a lot of brush country in the neighboring mountain areas--there'd be little danger of getting seen through there. So long as we don't have to land anywhere, we're safe!"

"In other words, it'd be a cross-country endurance flight," Morrow surmised.

"But suppose the ship fails on you?" Foster demanded tersely. "Suppose you're forced down?"

"We're visitors from outer space!" Smitty replied, grinning.

Foster wasn't amused. "Let's not be foolish about this," he argued. "We've got something here that we can't let loose! The world isn't ready for it--"

"But we've got to have it perfected when the world _is_ ready," Morrow said firmly. "Once the tension wears out and the world situation changes, we've got to act! If we aren't ready, the world will go right ahead and get mixed up in some other squabble. Then we'd have to wait again."

Smitty laid a hand on Foster's shoulder. "You can get a few days off from the plant, can't you?"

"What? Well, yes," Foster stammered. "Of course! But--"

* * * * *

They took off at noon on a cloudy winter day.

They spent the afternoon dividing their attention between the test-flight instruments and the surrounding sky. They hadn't the money to afford elaborate recording mechanisms to graph every moment of the flight onto neat tape-spools; they had to rely on the human eye, the questionably analytical human mind, and the servo-mechanism of a human hand wielding a pencil on a loose-leaf notebook. And they constantly expected to see a razor-winged jet fighter hurtling down from the stratosphere above them, its cannon sparkling the bright flame-color of death.

They didn't talk much that afternoon.

They took turns at the controls and eating until each had consumed his dinner, then gathered tensely in the control pit as the ship bored rumblingly into the black night. Ahead of them was the Mexican Border. Below them and around them, almost scraping the ship's belly, as low as they were, was the jumbled, boulder-strewn Arizona desert bathed in frosty white moonlight. Above were the cold, twinkling stars, the black heavens--and who could tell what radar-equipped night fighter poised above them, ready to peel off and plummet downward, guns blazing--

Then the Border was behind them. They took turns at the controls and instruments again, catching a few winks of sleep between turns. Morning dawned, and they approached the Gulf of Mexico.

Morrow checked their supplies--food and water for the trip, parts and materials stowed in the spacious cargo deck for repairs on the ship if necessary--and they took turns at breakfast. Then he and Foster sat down to an argument about the scientific implications of the gravitors. Foster was of the opinion that Einstein's theory no longer was valid, that Milne's work came closer to the truth but was still vague. Morrow thought differently, and they argued together amicably.

Noon passed, and they were over the green expanse of the Gulf. Smitty called their attention to the short-wave radio. The newscasts were quite interesting.

A professional hunter in Nevada, hired to exterminate a mountain lion which had been slaughtering a rancher's cattle, was surprised when a ship that looked "like a big, black whale" thundered over his head and plunged down behind a nearby ridge. The hunter rode hastily around the ridge, expecting to find the wreck, but the ship had vanished completely "as if the ground up and swallered it!"

A Greyhound bus proceeding across Arizona nearly swerved off the road when "a long, black torpedo at least a hundred feet long" came across the sky "so fast the air thunder-clapped behind it" and left "a trail of blue fire" behind it. Passengers on the bus verified the driver's story, with some minor variations.

Two farmers standing in a field in northern Nebraska saw a flight of six "fish-shaped" objects go over, each having a shadow "big as a barn" on the snow.

A noted banker in Chicago created an uproar when he reported seeing "a giant, black shape" rise from the waters of Lake Michigan as he was driving home in the afternoon.

An amateur astronomer in Alabama reported sighting a "strange ship" rising upward from the Earth's atmosphere "on a pillar of rocket fire." The ship had mysteriously disappeared "as soon as it left the atmosphere," the middle-aged hobbyist stated.

A Swedish Air Force jet-pilot claimed he had sighted, given chase, fired at, and seen his tracers bounce harmlessly off a "black, fish-like craft" flying at 40,000 feet above the Baltic Sea.

The news commentators added, in significant tones, that no airline pilots had yet reported seeing such craft. One added somewhat caustically that due to previous experiences the pilots probably wouldn't report anything to the authorities even if they did see anything, since the authorities persisted in treating such reports and the pilots who made them with painful ridicule; the commentator then launched into a condemnation of the current Administration.

"It would seem," Smitty observed from all this, "that we are quite famous!"

"'Notorious' is the word, I believe," Foster countered drily. "If this keeps up, some congressman is likely to introduce a bill providing that the government produce some Martians with black spaceships. The voters will demand it."

"It's good disguise for us, anyway," Morrow mused.

"Uh huh!" Foster grunted in reproof. "Unless we're found out, that is. If the public discovers that we've hoodwinked 'em and there aren't any Martian immigrants at all, they'll probably howl for our blood! I think this is going to develop into a scare-issue, Bill. I'm afraid people will want it, as an excuse to work off some of their nervous tension."

"Fine!" Smitty said grimly. "If anybody's trying to catch us, a general scare-issue will have 'em looking all over the place. We're already supposed to be in Nebraska, in Lake Michigan, in the Baltic Sea, and somewhere out in space!"

"Invisible, too!" Morrow laughed.

* * * * *

They passed over Louisiana in the early morning and proceeded northward up the Mississippi valley. Indicated air-speed was two hundred and thirty-eight miles per hour. Dawn was blanketed in a pouring rain. They turned off up the Ohio valley and reached the Allegheny Plateau in West Virginia, flying by instruments, topographical maps, and radio omni-range navigation.

And once they almost blundered straight into a big, six-engined commercial stratoliner. The stratoliner pulled up almost at the last minute.

By mid-afternoon, they were approaching Pennsylvania. The drizzling rain had changed to snow and sleet. Then they were forced down. The ship's air-speed fell off with an alarming suddenness. Then the entire tail structure took on a heavy load of ice.

They settled tail-down into a clearing on a densely wooded slope. The ship wallowed deep into the soft, slushy snow.

The three men got together over the table in the forward lounge. Foster kept running his hands through his hair, nervously. "We're stuck," he said. "We're stuck here for the winter unless we can rebuild the tail assembly. That jet chamber has to be changed."

It was obvious, after they had diagrammed the readings from their various flight-test instruments. The ship's hull had become completely polarized to the gravitors' field; the field influenced the air flowing over the hull, so much so that a simple air-scoop couldn't pick up air to blow through the propulsion unit and out the tail-jets. The air intake had to be designed to work on the disturbed air-flow.

"It's a little like those 'space-warps' in science-fiction yarns," Foster explained. "There's a warp of the gravitational and magnetic fields around the ship. The air-flow entering that warp bends and twists to follow it."

"We ought to redesign the entire hull to comply with that warped air-flow," Smitty suggested absently.

"The hull doesn't matter so much," Foster contradicted. "We could design it in any shape, though a sharp nose and thin guide-fins are still effective. You just happened to hit the right answer when you placed the control-surfaces forward on the nose of the ship."

"Talking isn't going to get us out of here," Morrow remarked grimly. "Let's get to work on that tail assembly."

"I got news for you!" Smitty muttered. "If we rebuild the tail with our power-tools, it'll use up the juice in our batteries. We won't have enough to get home."

"We must get our batteries recharged, then," Morrow said. "Will we have enough juice left to get out of here when we're finished?"

Smitty nodded. "And then we'll be up a creek. Where do we get our batteries recharged?"

"Couldn't one of us venture into a town around here and buy a few batteries?" Foster suggested. "Without wearing our Martian costumes, of course."

"Our Martian costumes as you call 'em are at least warm!" Smitty retorted. "It's a little cold to go wandering around out there in our coveralls."

"Wouldn't pay to risk it, anyway," Morrow said. "Suppose someone has seen our ship flying around here? Suppose they make a report that brings in the authorities and--"

"But who'd think a man in coveralls just stepped off a spaceship?" Foster persisted.

"Uh huh. You have a point, there. But if the authorities were investigating, they'd check railroad and truck shipments of any plastic or metal aircraft construction materials into this region, and where they were delivered. They'd check local machine shops, auto-parts shops, aviation parts dealers--and _they'd check garages_! If one of us walks up to a garage, buys a battery, and walks away carrying it on his shoulder, don't you think the garage mechanic is going to remember him, what he looked like, how tall he was, what he weighed? How often does anyone without a car buy an auto battery and carry it away on his shoulder?"

"We might 'borrow' somebody's car," Smitty mused, grinning.

"We might be caught ten minutes afterward, too," Foster objected. "The police are quite efficient at catching car thieves."

"Then we need a car," Morrow concluded. "Smitty, can we lift out of here once we've rebuilt our jets?"

"We could travel a few hundred miles," Smitty conceded. "Not that it would get us anywhere."

Morrow grinned crookedly. "Would it get us to Westerton, New Jersey?"

It would. And the next night, it did.

* * * * *

The three men crouching in the control pit of the sleek, black ship looked red-eyed and haggard from fatigue and lack of sleep. They had stripped off their shoes and socks to let them dry near the ship's heater, and their damp, mud-stained coveralls were drying on their bodies. Foster had developed a wracking cough and his nose was running.

The air-speed indicator registered three hundred and sixty-eight miles per hour. Smitty stared at it, glumly. "Let's just hope it doesn't fade out on us again," he muttered.

The test of the ship's performance had been the whole purpose of their long, cross-country trip, Morrow thought wordlessly. They had made every preparation they could think of for the trip. Each had a special suit with helmet and gravitor-tank--and one additional feature: a one-man propulsion unit. They'd developed that in the workshop when they ran one of the suit's gravitors until its field had completely polarized the suit; then, when the suit was suspended high over a small wood fire, the smoke from the fire had risen up into the suit's gravitor field and twisted and swirled around to conform to the warp of that field. Knowing those twists and swirls, Foster had designed a small jet unit with air intake slots and jet-pipes which utilized the air-flow through the gravitor field.

Of course, there was one fault in this jet unit: it was designed to use the air-flow around a gravitor standing still. With the gravitor in motion, that air-flow was altered somewhat. But when Smitty had floated up in his suit with that little jet unit built into its tank, he had managed to fly around the sawmill yard at a good fifteen miles per hour. The air drag against his legs, since the gravitor made him weightless, was considerable--it flattened him out in horizontal flight and, by swinging his legs from one side to the other, he was quite capable of controlling the direction of his flight. The lift or descent of the gravitor sufficed for climbing or diving maneuvers. He'd looked like a human fish swimming in the sky.

For the ships, of course, such a jet unit wouldn't do. The ships needed jets which would work while in motion, at speeds exceeding a hundred miles an hour. Thus, they'd had to fly the ship until its gravitors completely polarized its hull. Then they had to determine the air-flow over that hull at flying speeds with flow and pressure indicators mounted on the hull. Then they had to rebuild the tail-jets to conform with their findings.

A flight half-way across the continent and back to their workshop would have served for that. But then, they had to be sure that there was no further change in the air-flow or polarization or gravitor field. For that reason, they had decided on this trip all the way across the country. It would give them a complete, thorough test of the ship.

They had even gone so far as to arm themselves for defense, in case they were forced down anywhere and someone tried to get rough with them. In a strictly legal sense, the streamlined plastic pistols they carried were not lethal weapons.

Technically, those pistols were ray-guns. They fired a beam of light.

That light came from a standard photographer's flash-bulb. It was focused into a tight, narrow beam by the pistol's barrel reflector. It wouldn't penetrate the human skin; it wouldn't even raise a blister. It was almost physically harmless. But directed at a person's face at a distance of no more than twenty feet, it would leave them totally blind for about three minutes. A simple flash-bulb delivered a nice, bright flash.

A person suddenly struck blind wasn't likely to be in any condition or mood to cause trouble.

All other preparations for the trip had been as completely thorough, as carefully planned. Yet they had made one slight error. They had forgotten to include extra batteries for the ship. In all their careful and intricate preparations, that one, simple precaution had been overlooked.

And now, because of it, Morrow wondered if the whole purpose of their trip wasn't going to be changed. They were flying to Westerton where he would borrow a car from someone he knew.

The one person in Westerton he felt he could trust more readily than others was, of course, Gwyn Davidson. And Gwyn's father had a car.

But they couldn't land their ship anywhere near town, where he could go directly to Gwyn. They would have to land some distance from town, at a spot he knew quite well, and he'd have to proceed from there. He couldn't hitch-hike into town; people knew him, would recognize him and ask questions. He'd have to fly in on his suit gravitor.

And when Gwyn saw that, he'd have some explaining to do. He wondered what she would think....

He wondered, too, at the thrilling tingle of excitement which was washing through him in waves of--of ecstasy, almost! There was no other word for it! He felt like a kid with his first toy.

The ship glided down through the cold moonlight and grounded behind a thick screen of trees, hidden near the shore of a small lake. Across the glistening, ice-covered lake, the sprawling log structures of Lakeshore Lodge loomed blackly against the snow glare. The buildings were deserted, uninhabited during the winter.

Morrow remembered it during the summer season, alive with people in bathing suits, and small boats out on the lake, and this small clearing behind the trees where they landed, where he and Gwyn had sprawled on a blanket, sunning themselves. He remembered the spot quite well.

Westerton was twenty miles away.

* * * * *

He was numb with the shock of the cold air and the weird experience of his flight when he approached the town.

_It felt so damned strange!_ He was flying at about four hundred feet, sprawled flat with the wind blowing and buffeting over him. His head was protected by his helmet, of course, and he was only doing about fifteen miles an hour--but the weightless condition of his arms and legs made it feel as if he were battling a sixty-mile gale! And using his legs to guide his flight completed the impression: he _swam_ through the air!

The yellow lights of town began to outline the streets and intersections below him. Never having seen them from the air, they were at first strange to him, unrecognizable--then he got his bearings and flew onward. Or swam. His breath was coming in labored gasps. His whole body was tensed against the cold seeping into his suit.

He searched frantically for Gwyn's house. It was after two in the morning; she'd be home asleep now.

He spotted it, flew over it, and cut his tiny jets. Then, tuning down his gravitor, he drifted gently downward until his feet crunched in the snow in the small back yard. Looking up, he saw with a start that he'd just barely missed straddling a telephone wire on his way down.

Shivering, he strode toward the house. It was a two-story, white frame structure and Gwyn's room, he believed, was on the left side upstairs. He went around to the side of the house and looked up at the windows, puzzled. Which was hers?

It wouldn't do to try to scramble in a window, anyway. Gwyn would probably let out a scream that would awaken the whole neighborhood--or her father might take a shot at him!

Better to do it the conventional way. Knock on the front door. Ring the bell.

Should he take her father into his confidence, too? Morrow decided against it--no point in stretching his luck too far.

Then he had to get Gwyn out of the house. Alone.

Morrow shook his head, grinning wryly. This was getting more like a kid's game all the time! Then he shuddered. It was cold as blazes! He had to get inside and get warm!

He strode purposefully around front, went up on the porch, and rang the bell. A good, long ring. Then he jumped off the porch and ran back to the side of the house.

A light flashed on upstairs. A shapely, feminine silhouette passed across the curtains as Gwyn crossed the room, pulling on her housecoat.

Morrow stepped close to the wall, tuned up his gravitor, and rose easily up to the window. He grabbed the sill to stop himself and peered in. The room was empty. The window was raised slightly.

He pushed it up, scrambled in, and lowered it behind him. The room was small and neat, littered with feminine knick-knacks, and smelling more clean and polished than sweetly perfumed. He strode past the rumpled bed and sat down in the chair against the wall, out of sight from the doorway.

His gravitor tank kept him well-forward on the edge of the chair. His suit remained ice-cold and snug in the room's warmth, which he felt seeping in through the vents in his helmet collar. He shuddered violently, then sucked the wonderfully warm air into his lungs. He gazed around, noting that his helmet gave everything in the room a bluish tint, but he was so accustomed to that he didn't mind it. Then he saw himself in the dressing-table mirror, across the room, and almost doubled over with silent laughter.

What a strange creature he was, with a shimmering, bright skin and a huge, dark globe of a head!

Gwyn would scream her lungs out!

He reached up hastily, broke the clamps on his helmet and swung it back. Best to let her see his face, first, and recognize him--

A door opened out in the hallway.

"Who is it, Gwyn?" Old man Davidson's voice had the mellowness of a concrete mixer.

"Nobody, Dad!" Gwyn's voice came from downstairs, puzzled. Small feet stamped on the stairs. "It's awfully cold out for anyone to be playing pranks. When I opened the door, there was nobody out there!"

"Well, go back to sleep, honey."

"All right. 'Night, Dad."

The door closed in the hallway. The small footsteps trod disconsolately toward Gwyn's door.

Then she was swirling into the room, closing the door, and pulling the housecoat off over her blue, pink-flowered pajamas.

When she saw him, she froze and sucked in her breath.

"_Bill!_"

It wasn't a loud exclamation, but a faint, weak cry. Morrow had his finger over his lips, motioning her to silence.

Her face went blank; then she tugged her housecoat frantically back on and strode over to him. Her voice was a low, insistent murmur. "Bill, how did _you_ get in here? What _is_ this, anyway?" Her wide eyes were sweeping over him from head to foot, unbelievingly. "What on earth's _happened_?"

"Sit down," Morrow said gently. "Keep your voice low. Can't let anyone know I'm here, Gwyn--and I need your help!"

* * * * *

Gwyn looked at him steadily for a long moment. Then she said, with a kind of silent protest, "All right, Bill. I'll get Dad's car out and go with you. Now--how are you going to get out of here?"

"Same way I got in," he told her, quietly. "I'll meet you outside."

Then, before she could protest, he strode to the window, raised it, climbed out, and shoved free--using his gravitor, of course, as he did.

She stared at him from the window until he touched ground. Then he waved to her and went around the house to the garage.

She came out a few minutes later, dressed in a warm, woolen suit.

Morrow explained the project to her as they drove downtown. When they got out on the highway, approaching an all-night garage, she dropped him off. A half-hour later, she was back.

"Got the batteries?" he asked, piling into the front seat beside her.

"Yes, I got them," she said.

They drove on out to Lakeshore Lodge.

She was grimly silent all the way. No questions, no comments whatsoever. She kept her eyes straight ahead on the highway, her face expressionless and a little pale in the passing lights.

_She doesn't like it_, Morrow thought bitterly.

But if she didn't like it, why didn't she say so? Did she think this female silent treatment would work on him? Gwyn should know him well enough to realize that such typically feminine maneuvers always have the opposite effect of what they were supposed to have on him. Silent disapproval, huh? Then the devil with her!

But such obvious deceit wasn't like Gwyn, either, he realized. Maybe it was something else, then.

Maybe she had gotten the idea that he didn't want her opinion. Suppose she wasn't asking questions because she thought he didn't want her to ask anything!

Possible, he thought. Even probable. He might have overdone it when he tried to impress her with the need for absolute secrecy. Maybe she thought he'd merely come to her because he needed help, that she wasn't included in the project itself--

But _was_ she?

Morrow realized, then, that he wanted her to come back with him. Back to California, to the workshop--

What would the others say about that?

And did he want to expose Gwyn to the sort of risks they were taking?

They drove up to the Lodge and parked. "I'll have to take the batteries in one at a time, I guess," he said dourly.

"Where?" She seemed to rouse herself out of her own thoughts.

Morrow pointed across the lake. "The ship's over there, beyond the trees. Remember the place?"

"Oh!" she exclaimed softly. He couldn't see her face in the darkness.