Выбрать главу

Pierre looked at the puffs of white in the ship's light. Yes, a cloud! He fingered the image of a crucified

Christ that hung about his neck; he felt he was too young to be a martyr. But there was a solution. He snatched the jet backpack from the compartment behind the seat and hastily shrugged into it. Monsieur Tyler quite probably was able to walk on clouds but that didn't include Madame Solens' son Pierre.

It took a lot of courage to open the door but he did so. He closed his eyes tightly and sprang out, hand on the backpack firing trigger. It was about eight feet down from a seat of such a plane to the ground. But Pierre had been nerved up to fall twelve thousand. When he hit the ground, despite snow, he almost broke his legs. Pierre fell backward in total confusion and lay propped on his elbows in the snow. He could not understand why he had not fallen through the cloud.

Jonnie, intent on his project, was oblivious of all this confusion. He had taken a mine crowbar from the plane's tool kit and was prospecting through the snow for the corpses. They certainly were covered up.

The tip of the iron bar found one. He knelt and brushed away some snow, the particles flying away in the wind. He uncovered the tip of a breathe-gas mask and then the ornament of a cap. Yep, an executive!

He felt around under the monstrous shoulders to see where he had to insert the flat end of the crowbar to pry the monster loose from the adhesions of ice. One of these Psychlos weighed about a thousand pounds, more in all this snow and ice.

Jonnie inserted the crowbar deeper and heaved down on it. The monster was so stuck that the top end of the bar slipped and tore open his high-altitude jacket fastenings.

He tried again, this time giving it all the strength he had. With a creaking, low-pitched sound, the monster moved upward.

But the sound must have been close to that of clearing one's throat. The bank's singing button in his pocket gave out a ballad line with a baritone voice:

Ghost riders in the sky...

Pierre, already badly shaken, beheld a demon rising from out of the cloud. And not only that, it was singing in a sepulchral voice.

It was a lot too much. With a low moan, he fainted dead away.

Chapter 5

Jonnie loosened a workman's corpse with the bar and then went to the forklift and knocked the ice out of its cogs and ratchets. He was about to start it up when he noticed the absence of Pierre. He had expected him to open the loading doors of the plane at least.

He spotted the man, lying in a shadow made by a balance motor. The snow was already blowing over him. A bit anxiously he checked to see if he was injured, puzzled by the presence of the jet backpack, wondering why he was lying there unconscious. Well, this was no place for even first aid.

Jonnie got the forklift moving and scooped up Pierre. He ran the machine down the length of the ship to the doors and, standing on the seat, got them open.

But the wind, coming from the tail of the plane, was trying to bang the door closed. Jonnie jumped up to the fuselage flooring in hopes of finding something to block the door and stopped in his tracks.

Pattie! She was still in the plane. They must have overlooked her in their scramble to get through the rain. She made so little sound and motion these days she easily went unnoticed.

She must be freezing. Jonnie opened an equipment locker and dragged out a blanket and threw it around her. She hardly even looked up.

All he could find to block the door open was the stick from a map roller and he tried to make it do by butting it against a floor equipment ring and pushing it against a hinge.

He got down and operated the forklift to boost the inert body of Pierre into the plane. He had almost made it when a powerful gust of wind banged the door shut. Once more he climbed into the plane to try to make the stick prop the door. But this time the frail wood splintered.

A soft voice sounded behind him. “I will hold it open for you.”

Pattie, gripping the blanket to her with one hand, put the other on the door and braced it open.

This was the first time he had seen her volunteer anything for months.

Jonnie jumped down onto the forklift and raised Pierre up and dumped him on the floor plates. He got into the plane once more and began tugging the man over to the side out of the way and was a bit amazed to see Pattie pulling on the body to help.

So, with Pattie to hold the door open, Jonnie was able to fork the two monstrous bodies out of the snow and dump them into the plane. Pattie was watching him and what he was doing intently.

Shortly he parked the forklift, closed up the plane, and got into the cab out of the cutting wind. He phoned the compound to have a flatbed and forklift waiting and then, checking to see if Pattie was strapped in, shot the plane up into the sky.

He had been prepared to feel his way down through the overcast with half-blind screens and was very happy to see that the worst of the storm and all of its electrical interference had passed by.

It was no longer raining at the compound and they had every pole spotlight on. Quite a crowd had gathered around the waiting vehicles to see the plane come in. The last time Jonnie had seen some of these ex-marines and ex-spacemen had been through gunsights, and it was a trifle strange beholding Jambitchows and Hawvins and such standing around, but they seemed inoffensive enough. Three Chatovarian engineers in bright orange work suits that had “Desperation Defense” written on their chests were in the crowd, probably there doing preparatory surveys to convert this minesite protection over to the new system.

A new plane was there with nobody around it and Jonnie realized that MacKendrick must have arrived. He called Pattie forward and with her under one arm jumped down from the plane.

Ker was sitting on a forklift. “The copilot is in there. He is breathing but he must be injured or something,” said Jonnie. “Get him and the two Psychlos down to the hospital.”

Jonnie, still carrying Pattie, rushed into the compound to find MacKendrick.

Ker promptly got busy with the forklift and, with an expertise only Ker could achieve with a machine, scooped all three bodies off the floor of the marine attack plane and swooshed them over to the flatbed.

The driver, a newly trained Jambitchow, looked on in wide-eyed shock as he saw two huge Psychlo bodies plump down on the truck with a small human body dropping on top of them.

The first impulse of the crowd, seeing Psychlos, was to retreat, and fast! All the snow and ice had melted off them and to all appearances they might be alive.

The driver was about to get off the truck and put distance between himself and anything that had to do with Psychlos that might suddenly come to life.

Ker withdrew the forks and realized he was in the middle of a commotion and was about to have no driver. “No, no,” he shouted. “They're dead!”

Timidly the Jambitchow got back on the flatbed seat. Cautiously the crowd crept forward to get a closer look. Eyes went questioningly to Ker.

“Didn't you hear what Jonnie told me?” said Ker.

No, they hadn't. Too far away.

“Those Psychlos," said Ker, “have been hiding out in the jungle. They rushed out of cover and started to claw the copilot to bits. And it made Jonnie so mad he charged them. He grabbed the throats of both of them at the same time and just plain strangled them to death!”

Mouths were open and eyes were popped. The evidence was right there before them.

After a moment a Hawvin ex-officer said, “No wonder we lost this war.”

“Yes,” said Ker. “When you get to know Jonnie better, you'll realize that when he gets mad, he gets mad!”

He signaled the flatbed to follow and drove off in the forklift. He just couldn't resist doing what he'd done. But the hardest part was to keep from guffawing in their faces.