Black Sunday Read Free Page B

cameraman and his assistant had secured their equipment and were eating sandwiches. Lander had worked with them often.
    The lowering sun laid a streak of red-gold fire across Biscayne Bay as the blimp hung over the water. Then Lander turned northward and cruised 50 yards off Miami Beach, while the TV crew and the flight engineer fixed their binoculars on the girls in their bikinis. Some of the bathers waved.
    "Hey, Mike, does Aldrich make rubbers?" Pearson the cameraman was yelling around a mouthful of sandwich.
    "Yeah," Lander said over his shoulder. "Rubbers, tires, de-icers, windshield wiper blades, bathtub toys, children's balloons, and body bags."
    "You get free rubbers with this job?"
    "You bet. I've got one on now."
    "What's a body bag?"
    "It's a big rubber bag. One size fits all," Lander said.
    "They're dark inside. Uncle Sam uses them for rubbers. You see some of them, you know he's been fooling around." It would not be hard to push the button on Pearson; it would not be hard to push the button on any of them.
    The blimp did not fly often in the winter. Its winter quarters were near Miami, the great hangar dwarfing the rest of the buildings beside the airfield. Each spring it worked northward at 35 to 60 knots, depending on the wind, dropping in at state fairs and baseball games. The Aldrich company provided Lander with an apartment near the Miami airfield in winter, but on this day, as soon as the great airship was secured, he caught the National flight to Newark and went to his home near the blimp's northern base at Lakehurst, New Jersey.
    When Lander's wife deserted him, she left him the house. Tonight the lights burned late in the garage-workshop, as Lander worked and waited for Dahlia. He was stirring a can of epoxy resin on his workbench, its strong odor filling the garage. On the floor behind him was a curious object 18 feet long. It was a plug mold that Lander had made from the hull of a small sailboat. He had inverted the hull and split it along the keel. The halves were 18 inches apart and were joined by a broad common bow. Viewed from above, the mold looked like a great streamlined horseshoe. Building the mold had taken weeks of off-duty time. Now it was slick with grease and ready.
    Lander, whistling quietly, applied layers of fiberglass cloth and resin to the mold, feathering the edges precisely. When the fiberglass shell cured and he popped it off the mold, he would have a light, sleek nacelle that would fit neatly under the gondola of the Aldrich blimp. The opening in the center would accommodate the blimp's single landing wheel and its transponder antenna. The load-bearing frame that would be enclosed by the nacelle was hanging from a nail on the garage wall. It was very light and very strong, with twin keels of Reynolds 5130 chromemoly tubing and ribs of the same material.
    Lander had converted the double garage into a workshop while he was married, and he had built much of his furniture there in the years before he went to Vietnam. The things his wife had not wanted to take were still stored above the rafters---a highchair, a folding camp table, wicker yard furniture. The fluorescent light was harsh, and Lander wore a baseball cap as he worked around the mold, whistling softly.
    He paused once, thinking, thinking. Then he went on smoothing the surface, raising his feet carefully as he walked to avoid tearing the newspapers spread on the floor.
    Shortly after 4 A.M. the telephone rang. Lander picked up the garage extension.
    "Michael?" The British clip in her speech always surprised him, and he imagined the telephone buried in her dark hair.
    "Who else?"
    "Grandma is fine. I'm at the airport and I'll be along later. Don't wait up."
    "What---"
    "Michael, I can't wait to see you." The line went dead.
    It was almost sunrise when Dahlia turned into the driveway at Lander's house. The windows were dark. She was apprehensive, but not so much as before their first meeting---then she had felt that she was in