"We'll be fine!" he shouted.
It was within the realm of possibility. But she needed strong encouragement.
So did he, Soon, embarrassment and discomfort would be added to the danger. He was going to wet his pants.
Maybe there was something to help him in the storage space behind the seats. Like a bottle. Anything. He did not dare to lessen the pressure on the wheel rim. Tappy would have to grope around in there for him.
He told her what he wanted her to do and why. She twisted around in the tight restraint of the belts and felt as far as she could reach. She smiled and then worked away at something. He twisted his neck far enough to see that she was unfastening a belt around a box. The belt came loose when she clicked something on the buckle. Then she managed to bring out with one hand a plastic cotaer.
It was heavy and fell out of her hand before she could grip it with both hands. But it was on the space between them. After feeling it, she found and pressed a button on the box. The I'd came open. Inside were stacks of small plastic square containers.
And plastic bottles.
The bottle she brought out held a transparent liquid. Water, he hoped. And it was. She unscrewed the cap and tasted it, smiled, then held it out to him. At that instant, the orange liquid inside the altitude indicator shot up. He was pressed against the seat.
An updraft was hurtling the airplane toward the top of the stonn.
He released his right hand from the wheel and took the bottle. It had slopped some water out of it, but there was more than enough for him despite his intense thirst.
. When he handed the half-empty bottle to her, he said, "Drink it all up' I'll use the bottle then"'
she hefted it to her lips and did not put it down until all the water was gone. She must have been as thirsty as he.
However, using the bottle for its second purpose was not easy.
The plane was still bouncing around while going up. There seemed to be up- and downdrafts within the big updraft. Desperate, he managed to relieve himself completely. Never m'nd what missed the bottle.
Meanwhile, Tappy had been holding down the box, which tended to rise during a vigorous downdraft. She screwed the cap back onto the bottle and placed it in the box. After relocking the box, she struggled to get it back into its place in the storage area.
Finally, she did it.
He had no time to thank her. Now a fierce downdraft plunged Machine toward ... what" He squeezed the wheel rim with all the muscle he could muster. And he pulled the wheel far back, though he wondered if pointing the nose of the craft too high would cause a stall. He hoped not. It seemed to him, however, that the propulsive-levitational power might, pun intended, forestall stalls.
At least, he felt better now. Otherwise, he would not be making a pun, especially such a lousy one.
He had no reason to be freed of some of his fear. At any moment, a downdraft could smash the plane into a peak or the plane might fly head-on into a very high mountain.
A minute later, he was again thoroughly scared. The dazzling white lightning bolts and their ear-ramming explosions increased.
They seemed to be in a nest of electrical entities hatching right and left. Tappy squeezed his thigh while the ravening energy transformed the black world into a white one.
Her fingers dug into his flesh when a gigantic round ball, its brightness brain-piercing, appeared in front of them. She could not see it, he supposed, but it must be making some impression on her nervous system.
As they hurtled through it, their flesh seemed to become as clear as spring water. Their bones were dark. Tappy was a moving skeleton beside him, and his hands and arms were Death's own body.
Then the ball was gone. They were again flesheo. But their hairs were standing on end. Her long tresses stood out like straight needles. She looked like the Bride of Frankenstein.
Somewhere behind them, the ball exploded, and the airplane shook. Their hair crackled and then fell back, free of the static electricity.
A moment later, Tappy shook his shoulder. He looked at her pale face. She was obviously distressed about something. He did not think that it had been caused by the ball.
"What is it?"
She was shaking her head and pointing at her forehead. Then she pointed straight ahead, held up her hands, and rotated them.
After which she made a circular motion close to her head with her right hand. She looked very puzzled.
"I don't get it," he said.
She reached out and ran her finger along the instrument panel until she located the compass. Holding the tip of her finger on it, she turned her head toward him. with the other hand, she made the circular movement.
He said, "Oh! You mean ... you don't know now where that place ... your goal ... destination is? Where we've been headed since we got here?"
She nodded vigorously and sat back. Now she looked distressed.
"I'm sorry," he said.
That did not help her. Or him. And it was a winner of an understatement.
"It must've been that white-hot ball, that St. Elmo's fire," he said. "That last explosion. It was a huge sphere of electricity discharging. Somehow, it glitched that homing sense, whatever it is that was leading you straight to your destination. I thought that was some sort of psychic power. But it could be electricalsemi-electrical, anyway."
Tears rolled down her cheeks.
"We still have the panel compass," he said. "And maybe your, uh, power, homing sense, will come back soon."
No use telling her that the compass was probably messed up, too. He intended to go by it until he knew that it was malfunctioning.
A half hour later, they shot out of the storm. The late afternoon sun shone unimpeded by clouds and revealed that they were only about two thousand feet above the ground. The mountains were behind them. Ahead was a plain that ran over the horizon. Isolated trees and groves of trees were scattered over it. A river made S-turns across the terrain. The vegetation was much thicker along its banks.
Many animals were heading toward or away from the water. The land reminded him of an African veldt except that the grass was a bright green and many of the beasts did not look like Earth fauna.
Not like present-day animals, anyway. Some of them looked like mammals that had roamed Earth many millions of years ago.
For instance, an elephantine creature with a long proboscis and four tusks, two turned upward and two downward. Its ears were rather small, though. That must mean that this area did not have a hot African-like climate.
Heading north by the panel compass, Jack flew for another thirty minutes. Meanwhile, he worried about Tappy. She was still weeping. And then there was the fuel supply. Which of the indicators showed how much was left? To take her mind off her loss-if it could be done-he asked her to locate the fuel indicator. She touched an instrument much like the altitude indicator except that the liquid in the tube was a bright green and the symbols alongside it were different.
"Looks as if it's half-full," he said with a cheeriness he did not feel. "We can still go a long way. How about that?"
Despair had been covering her face like a transparent mask. It did not change.
The plain eased into hills which soon arched their backs, like a meow of alarmed cats, to become mini-mountains. Colossal trees seemed to stride over these, trees the lowest branches of which curved downward into the ground, forming enormous Gothic arches.
After an estimated forty miles, the plane put the hills and the great trees behind it. Ahead was another vast plain. Five miles from the edge of the forest was a broad shallow valley. In its center was a very strange phenomenon.
"There's a dark and roughly circular cloud about a half mile across," he told the girl. "Every seven seconds, something in its center glows. Must be very bright to get through that cloud. Can't make its outlines out. Wait a minute! Let me count ... ah! The glow lasts seven seconds. And there's a camp, a big one, circling the cloud. Tents, huts. Lots of people scattered around. Vehicles parked past
the camp, some planes parked beyond them."
He swung the plane back and straightened it out parallel to the edge of the forest.
"We'll land along here someplace and then hide the plane, if we can. I don't want to get any closer. If they're C;aol ... hope they didn't see us."
As he turned the craft, he had seen men behind some big instruments aimed at the cloud. A small party was entering the cloud.
The flash silhouetted the men when they were first enveloped, but, a few seconds later, they were no longer visible.
Tappy's finger touched the side of his face. When he turned his head, he saw her smiling. The despair was gone. She leaned forward, traced a fingertip along the instrument panel, and stopped it at the compass. Her gestures after that, plus her evident joy, told him that they were close to their destination.
He was concentrating on landing, but he said, "Those people there. Are they Gaol?"
He glanced at her. She was drawing the edge of her right hand across her throat. Then she nodded.
"We have to get down and hide the plane," he said. "I hope the camp doesn't have radar equipment. If they do, they'll have spotted us by now. Everybody's attention seemed concentrated on the cloud."
He was also worried that their three pursuers might suddenly appear and see them.
He lowered the window, leaned out, and checked the wheel wells, what would be called fenders if this were a car. The wheels were still within the wells. Okay. If he had to land it on its belly, he would. He asked Tappy about the wheel-lowering control. She did not know where it was.
He took the craft down parallel to the edge of the forest. Except for some bushes here and there, the plain made an excellent landing field. It was not as smooth as a concrete strip, of course, but it would do. He flattened out the angle of descent about ten feet above the ground and slowly eased it down. Then he leaned out through the window again. The wheels fore and aft on the left side were halfway out of the wells. Must be some radar in the plane that automatically activated the wheel-lowering mechanism when it came within a certain distance of the ground.
The front wheels touched a second before the back wheels, which came down with a bang.
"How do I stop this plane?" he said. "Where are the brakes?"
He had released his grip on the inflatable wheel rim, but the vehicle was still going at about five miles an hour. He had to steer around several bushes blocking their path.
Tappy groped along the panel until she touched a slight protuberance, a purple panel glowing with a faint light. She pushed in on it. The panel lost its glow, and the plane slowed down, then stopped.
He pressed the panel again and turned the plane into the forest.
Somewhere on that panel or maybe on the wheel was a control that would permit him to lessen or increase the speed below five mph.
At the moment, he would have to do without it, improvise.
"Can the wings be folded?" he said.
She shrugged.
"Don't know, right?"
The plane taxied between the arches of two trees, its wingtips almost scraping the bark. Then he swung sharply right and went under an arch. When the craft was behind the trunk, unseeable from the forest edge, he pressed the purple panel. The plane rolled about ten more feet before stopping. It was still behind the tree, which had a trunk ten times thicker than that of a California sequoia.
The seat belts hardened and slid back into their recesses.
"Know how to back this thing up?"
Tappy shook her head.
As he got out of the plane, Jack realized how tight and tense he was. His body ached, and his neck muscles were as stiff as a hardcover book. After he got Tappy to knead his neck, he could bend his head without the neck vertebrae cracking. He did the same for her. Then they explored the area, though making sure not to go too far. It would be easy to get lost in this vast shadowy place where the longest line of sight ended at sixty feet.
They drank deeply from a brook, decided not to eat some big ,Juicy-looking red berries on a bush, listened to the screeching pandemonium of the numerous birds above them, and then returned to the plane. They ate from a jar in the storage compartment, a thick pudding colored chocolate brown and tasting like beef mixed with chestnuts.
Tappy then pulled on his arm with one hand as she gestured toward the north with the other.
"know you want to push on now," he said. "But we can't cross the plain in the daylight. Now ... you want to get into that cloud, right?"
She nodded vigorously.
"We'd better get some sleep first and fill our bellies, too, before we venture out."
First, though, he put some containers of food and water in a plastic sack he found in a box. He looked for and found a flashlight. He removed most of the stuff in the storage space so that she could curl up on its floor. He would try to rest on the seat she had occupied, his feet on the pilot's seat. But a minute after he had settled into the least uncomfortable position he could find, his eyes opened.
just thought of something he said the cabin lights they come on automatically when it gets dark. The light'll be a beacon for the Gaol. You know how to override the automatic turn-on for them?"
She did not. But, as he reviewed the flight, he remembered a panel light that had been illuminated when the cabin lights had come on as the plane entered the storm. He pressed the inset under the light, and the cabin lights sprang into photonic being. Another pressure, and the lights died.
"That's done," he said. "We can both sleep now."
But, a minute later, he sat up, eyes open.
"Does Malva ... the Gaol ... know where you were heading?
I mean, do they know the cloud, that flashing light, is where you want to go?"
She had her eyes closed. She sat up, too, aild spread out her hands and lifted her shoulders.
She was uncertain about what they knew.
He lay back down.
"Go to sleep, Tappy. I promise not to say anything more until we've had a good long snooze."
It was some time before he drifted off. He could not keep from worrying about Malva setting up a trap for them in the camp.
However, he and Tappy would not know about it until they went into the camp. So, let the Fates decide.
That was not a thought to ease his anxiety. Anxiety. A psychological jargon-word for fear.
Finally, he slept. And he dreamed that he was painting one of those gigantic figures that marched along the inner wall of the crater. When he awoke, his neck stiff again, his back aching, he remembered the dream. He thought, That's what I should be doing now. Painting. Not be running scared through a world I never made and never would make. But Earth was also a world I never made and would considerably alter if I'd had anything to do with the Creation.
Take things as they are-you can't do anything about changing its basic structure-and deal with them as best you can.
He got up without disturbing Tappy. As he crawled out, though, he heard her muttering in her sleep.
".Reality is a dream."
Sometimes it's a nightmare, he thought. Once more, he wondered why she could speak English while asleep yet could not do so while awake.
Tappy woke up four hours later. She looked refreshed, though the hard floor must have been uncomfortable. By then, clouds had covered the night sky, and thunder and lightning were playing rough games in the west. A wind had come down hard like a swatter against a fly. Even in the comparatively sheltered forest, it whistled and streamed Tappy's long hair out. All that cheered up Jack. The visibility on the plain would be limited, and the Gaol would be snug in their tents and huts. He hoped. If it would only rain, he and Tappy would not care if they were soaked. That would be one more thing to help them.
He did wish, however, that Tappy could tell him why they were going to that cloud and what awaited them.
They set out across the plain. He carried the radiator in one er walking two miles, leaning a little sideways 'nto the wind, they were in a savage down
pour. The cold water made them even more miserable, but it did make them step up their pace.
After what seemed a long while but was not, they were at the rim of the shallow valley. The light from the center of the cloud was still coming on every seven seconds. The cloud itself, otherwise invisible in this darkness, was outlined when the light flashed.
There were lights on in the shelters and strung along paths which led to huts that Jack assumed were latrines. Not a human being was in sight. That did not mean that no sentries were posted.
It could be that he just could not see them. But what did the Gaol have to fear? Besides, this camp looked to him more like a scientific expedition than a military base.
On the other hand, what did he know?
The lightning arrived at the camp at the same time he and Tappy got there. The white streaks helped illuminate the camp for them.
But it would also help any guards to see the intruders, He waited awhile, crouched on the rim, and surveyed the scene for sentinels.
If there were any, they were well hidden.
Finally, he said, "Let's go, Tappy."
They scrambled down the muddy and rock-strewn slope, slipping now and then. He held the radiator high to keep it from getting dirty. However, the rain cleaned their clothes in a short time. Shivering from more than the cold water and wind, they walked across a fairly even ground to the outer rim or the camp.
Crouching, they passed between two wind-flapped tents. He held the radiator ready, the pencil in the other hand. Loud voices came from the tents. Lights shone from the little windows. They left these behind, passing, after a quarter mile of sticky mud, several of the huge machines Jack had seen. These stood on towering tripods the ends of which were stuck in the ground. Cables also ran from them to big metal pegs driven at an angle into the earth.
Other cables led from them into the darkness toward the camp.
Jack assumed that these were power conductors. The machines on top of the tripods resembled giant cameras, but he doubted that they were for photographic purposes.
THE CATERPILLARS QUESTION Page 10
