A Fine Fix, Page 3

He pulled her bythe hands to where she was leaning out the opened canopy, then hestooped and grabbed her under the arms and swung her up. For a momenther soft hair brushed his ear, and a light scent from her neck suggestedhe keep her pliant form close to him a little longer than necessary.

  He planted her next to the steps, and she muttered an uninspired thankyou. But halfway down, she halted and turned.

  "It's much easier asking me out dancing, Grant," she smiled impishly,and clacked across the hangar floor toward the jeep.

  * * * * *

  By the next morning arrangements for a small staff and office space hadswiftly gone through. Working through lunch, Bridget had the office setup and the staff briefed and researching when Grant returned from diningwith the general.

  "You're just in time," she said, looking up from an already cluttereddesk. "I'm ready now to scan through any G-2 you have on atomjetoperation in your Mojave files."

  Grant bristled. "These files are under the general's nose, and I don'tthink he'd appreciate--" He broke off when he observed Bridget tappingher pencil and frowning at him impatiently.

  With a degree of diplomacy he had to admire, Grant lifted thenon-technical files from the general's office and furtively smuggledthem out in his brief case.

  "Don't take all day," he warned, handing them to Bridget. "Part of myjob is keeping the general neutral about you, and not against."

  Bridget jumped up and drew another chair up to her desk. "How aboutscanning with me? That'll get the files back faster. Here, take these onpilot training."

  The files repulsed him less than Bridget attracted him, and he sat downpromptly. "And what do I look for, psychologically significant portions,is that it?"

  "Even psychologically insignificant portions, major, if you please."

  Grant began to read. As he scanned the copies of directives, reports,operations logs, and procedures the process became automatic, and partof his consciousness turned contemplative.

  Three months ago he would have considered the situation in which he nowfound himself a future development out of the question. Mojave hadbrimmed with optimism and pride and accomplishment and eagerness. BaseMojave loomed vital in national defense, constituted a main element ofnational scientific pride.

  From the dusty desert stretches the sprawling, efficient base had takenshape while United Nuclear had yet to assemble an atomjet. The schedulescame out perfectly, and the first single-manned fusion-propulsedrocketplane thundered off the corporation proving grounds and glidedinto Base Mojave as planned. Designed for patrol of the mesosphere, theships were to have gained for the West control of near-Earth space,besides affording superior observation posts for Eastern developmentsand activity of a space nature.

  Training of the pilots had lasted thirty weeks and went by without acasualty or serious damage. Testing and re-testing of the electronicsbrought out no flaws. Stress and thermal analyses held up under allconditions imposed.

  The losses began after the third week of patrol. UNR-6 failed to returnto base--with no hint of the cause, with no communication from thepilot. That one was hushed up by the base PR officer, but news of thesecond reached the press. During the fifth week, UNR-2 never returnedfor its glide-in, and, of course, the first loss came out at that time,too.

  General Morrison worked with the pilots and engineers steadily on theproblem with apparent good results--for a month. Then UNR-9 vanished.

  Lately the orders had been for patrol over the States, and it waspresumed UNR-9 would have made an appearance somewhere had it been introuble. That's why the Dakota farmer's report had been investigated soswiftly.

  As of now, the situation had become one patrol a day with reluctantpilots, Congress sending a committee to the base, a taxpayers'injunction against the Air Force rocketplane operation, and UnitedNuclear men experimenting hourly with robot-piloted atomjets at allaltitudes below four hundred miles.

  Plus the syk research, naturally.

  Bridget's ash tray spilled over with right-angled cigarette butts,half-burned. Grant studied her as she read through the files intentlyalthough her eyes rolled his way briefly on occasion. She faced him withan unexpected snap of the head.

  "Well?"

  "Just looking," Grant explained.

  "Then just look for a pilot's manual. It's been mentioned and I haven'tseen one around. Would you mind?"

  Grant opened his mouth to inform her a pilot's manual for the atomjetwas classified secret, but caught himself before he could verbalize theprotest. He shrugged and planned more strategy for invading thegeneral's files.

  The only things he could be grateful for so far were Bridget's beautyand the fact the staff had not realized he was her adjutant.

  * * * * *

  The Mayo psychiatrist and the Yale psychologist had been in conferencewith Bridget for almost an hour. She had been giving them preliminaryfindings and the results of tests and interviews with the base pilots.

  When they finally broke up, Bridget approached Grant with athere's-something-I-want-from-you look. Grant nearly had a chance tooffer lunch before she suggested it.

  What she wanted from him came out over their aerated sherbet pie. By thetime she finished, Grant's dessert was beginning to taste likevitaminized space rations.

  "Impossible," he said, dabbing at sherbet spots on his trousers. "Thegeneral would react faster than to a red alert."

  "Your concern may be the general's reactions, but mine's not," Bridgetsnapped. "I just want an objective engineering answer, yes or no."

  Grant threw up his hands. "O.K., O.K. With a live pilot, yes, you canget a TV transmitter in an atomjet with some doing. You'd have to jerkout the extra oxygen space and--"

  "Wonderful! When can you have it for me?"

  "Bridget, what I'm getting at, the general will take this as a slap athim and his pilots. We've had TV transmission from robotized atomjetsdozens of times--"

  "With no results."

  "With no results," Grant admitted, "but that doesn't mean that with apilot you'll necessarily get any, either."

  "No, but why hasn't someone tried?" Bridget waited for him to answer adecent two seconds and then added, "The general, naturally."

  They left the base lunchroom in silence, Bridget pouting a lip-edge morethan Grant. Before entering the office, Grant brought up a rebuttal.

  "Another thing, no pilot is going to push up under those conditions,with you down there hoping something will happen."

  Bridget had her hand on the door, but instead of opening it, paused."The pilot would have to trust me." Her eyes darkened, widened, splitGrant emotionally down the middle. He could understand, for an instantwhen he let himself, how a man could be inveigled to do anything for awoman.

  "Yeah," he said. "A pilot like that might be hard to find. I'll see whatI can do."

  As he walked toward the hangars, he heard the office door close softlybehind him.

  * * * * *

  At the engineering conference after supper Grant had never seen GeneralMorrison looking quite that old. The man was sustaining an overload ofresponsibility, and probably self-imposed guilt on top of it.

  The mechanical engineers made their report, followed by the electronicengineers, followed by the physicist--all negative. But each group had asuspicion that another had overlooked something. Before it regressed toa high-school debate, the general bellowed the conference to order.

  Grant was surprised at the twinge of emotion he experienced when herealized the general was not going to ask for a report from syk. Whyshould Grant care, anyway? The position meant nothing to him, SykCooerdinator.

  It meant something to Bridget, though.

  That General Morrison had not even checked for syk findings annoyedGrant, perhaps. Under the circumstances he was justified: nothing hadyet come out, nothing that Bridget had told Grant, anyway. The generalcould not be aware of this. He assumed it. Maybe that's what upsetGrant.

 
"Then there's this De-Meteor," the general was saying. "I've always beensuspicious of that gadget."

  An electronics man spoke up. "A Clary man checked them all, even usedinstrument flight to be certain. I was with him and counter-checked theradar high-speed scanners, the computers, and the course-alterationmechanism. I was convinced myself it would steer the ship out of anysituation involving the approach of one or two penetrating meteors."

  * * * * *

  General Morrison turned to the spatialogist. "What about the incidenceof penetrating meteors in the mesosphere?"

  "In average fall," the man replied, "fairly low."

  "And the probability of encountering three at once along a