Jeff Sutton Read Free

through
space followed by her drones, all in his tender care. He was planning the step-by-step procedure
of take-off when sleep came.
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER 2
     
    Crag woke with a start, sensing he was not alone. The
sound came again—a key being fitted into a lock. He started from bed as the
door swung open.
    "Easy.
It's me—Gotch." Crag relaxed. A square solid figure took form.
    "Don't turn on the
light."
    "Okay. What
gives?"
    "One moment." Gotch turned back toward the door and
beckoned. Another figure glided into the room—a shadow in the dim light Crag
caught the glint of a uniform. Air Force officer, he thought
    Gotch said crisply;
"Out of bed."
    He
climbed out, standing alongside the bed in his shorts, wondering at the
Colonel's cloak-and-dagger approach.
    "Okay, Major, it's
your turn," Gotch said.
    The
newcomer—Crag saw he was a major—methodically stripped down to' his shorts and
got into bed without a word. Crag grinned, wondering how the Major liked his
part in Step One. It was scarcely a lead role.
    Gotch
cut into his thoughts. "Get dressed." He indicated the Major's
uniform. Crag donned the garments silendy. When he had finished the Colonel
walked around him in the dark, studying him from all angles.
    "Seems
to fit very well," he said finally. "All right, let's go"
    Crag
followed him from the room wondering what the unknown Major must be thinking.
He wanted to ask about his double but refrained. Long ago he had learned there was a time to talk, and a time to keep quiet. This was the
quiet time. At the outer door four soldiers sprang from the darkness and boxed
them in. A chauffeur jumped from a waiting car and opened the rear door. At the
last moment Crag stepped aside and made a mock bow.
    "After
you, Colonel." His voice held a touch of sarcasm.
    Gotch
grunted and climbed into the rear seat and he followed. The chauffeur blinked
his lights' twice before starting the engine. Somewhere ahead a car pulled
away from the curb. They followed, leaving the four soldiers behind. Crag
twisted his body and looked curiously out the rear window. Another car dogged, their wake. Precautions, always precautions-, he
thought. Gotch had entered with an Air Force officer and had ostensibly left
with one; ergo, it must be the same officer. He chuckled, thujking he had more
doubles than a movie star.
    They
sped through the night with the escorts fore and aft. Cotch was a silent
hulking form on the seat, beside him. It's his zero hour, too, Crag thought.
The Colonel had tossed the dice. Now he was waiting for their fall, with his
career in the pot. After a while Cotch said conversationally:
    "You'll
report in at Albrook, Major. I imagine you'll be getting in a bit of flying
from here on out."
    Talking
for the chauffeur's benefit, Crag thought. Good Lord, did every move have to be
cloak and dagger? Aloud he said:
    "Be good to get back in the air again. Perhaps anti-sub patrol, eh?" "Very
likely."
    They
fell silent again. The car slammed west on Highway 80, leaving the silver
rocket farther behind with every mile. Where to and what next? He gave up
trying to figure the Colonel's strategy. One thing he was sure of. The
hard-faced man next to him knew exactly what he was doing. If it was secret
agent stuff, then that's the way it had to be played.
    He
leaned back and thought of the task ahead—the rocket he had lived with for over
a year. Now the marriage would be consummated. Every detail of the Aztec was
vivid in his mind. Like the three great motors tucked triangularly between her
tail fins, each a tank equipped with a flaring nozzle to feed in hot gases
under pressure. He pictured the fuel tanks just forward of the engines; the way
the fuels were mixed, vaporized, forced into the fireports where they would
ignite and react explosively, generating the enormous volumes of flaming hot
gas to drive out through the jet tubes and provide the tremendous thrust needed
to boost her into the skies. Between the engines and fuel