"What makes you think I'm not Eglund?"
She turned away from him. "Your body," she said, and to his surprise he saw that she was blushing. "It's… well, it's different."
Suddenly, without warning, he said, "Who did you send to kill me in the Lunar Vehicle?"
Her head snapped around. "What are you talking about?"
"Don't try to kid me," rasped N3. He pulled the snapshot out of his pocket and handed it to her. "I see you're doing your hair differently now."
She sat rigidly composed. Her eyes were very wide, very dark. Without moving a muscle, except for her mouth, she said, "Where did you get this?"
He turned, watching the sergeant approach with the coffee. "They're selling them on Forty-second Street," he said harshly.
The blast wave slammed against him. The floor of the aircraft tilted sharply. Nick saw the sergeant grabbing at a seat, trying to regain his balance. The coffee cups went flying.
As his eardrums were relieved from the sonic pressure of the explosion Nick heard a fantastic howl, almost a scream. He was sucked violently against the back of the seat in front of him. He heard the girl scream, saw her flung against it, too.
The sergeant lost his grip. His body seemed to elongate toward a howling white aperture. There was a crash as his head went through it and his shoulders hit the frame, then his whole body was gone — sucked with a terrible whistling noise through the aperture. The girl was still screaming, her fist pressed against her teeth, her eyes starting from her head at what she had just witnessed.
The aircraft tilted violently. Seats were being sucked through the opening now. From the corner of his eye, Nick saw cushions, luggage and pieces of equipment sailing out into the sky. The unoccupied seats in front of them folded in half and their stuffings exploded. Wires came down from the ceiling. The floor buckled up. The lights went out.
Then suddenly he was in the air, floating toward the ceiling. The girl shot past him. As her head hit the ceiling, he grabbed her foot and pulled her toward him, tugging her down by her dress, inch by inch, until her face was level with his. They were upside down now, lying on the ceiling. Her eyes were closed. Her face was pale, and blood made a dark wriggling line down the side of it.
The screaming sound tore at his eardrums. Something crashed into him. It was Gordon Nash. Something else bumped his foot. He looked down. It was a member of the medical team, his neck hanging at an odd angle. Nick looked past them. The bodies of the other passengers came floating through the fuselage from the front of the aircraft, bobbing against the ceiling like corks.
N3 knew what was happening. The jet was out of control, plunging through space at fantastic speed, creating a condition of weightlessness.
To his astonishment, he felt someone tug at his sleeve. He forced his head around. Gordon Nash's mouth was moving. It formed the words, Follow me. The astronaut pulled himself forward, moving hand over hand along the luggage rack. Nick followed. Nash, he remembered suddenly, had walked in space on two Gemini missions. Weightlessness was nothing new to him.
He saw what Nash was trying to reach and understood. The inflatable life raft. There was a problem, though. The hydraulic component of the access door had been sheared off. The heavy metal section, which was actually part of the fuselage skin, wouldn't budge. Nick signaled Nash to move aside and "swam" over to the mechanism. From his pocket he took the tiny two-pronged wire he sometimes used to start the motors of locked cars. With it he managed to fire the battery-powered emergency explosive cap. The access door swung open.
Nick seized an edge of the life raft before it was sucked out the gaping aperture. He found the inflating mechanism and triggered it. It expanded with a fierce swoosh to twice the size of the aperture. He and Nash worked it into position. It wouldn't last long, but while it did, it would allow someone to reach the cockpit.
A giant fist seemed to slam into his ribs. He found himself lying face down on the floor. There was a taste of blood in his mouth. An object hit him in the back. Gordon Nash's foot. Nick craned his head around, saw the rest of him wedged between two seats. The other passengers came peeling off the ceiling behind him. The high scream of the engines deepened. Gravity was reasserting itself. The crew must have succeeded in lifting the jet's nose above the horizon line.
He crawled toward the cockpit, pulling himself along from seat to seat, struggling against the terrific slipstream. He knew that if the life raft went, so would he. But he had to reach the crew, had to file a last report over their radio if it turned out they were doomed.
Five faces turned toward him as he swung the cockpit door open. "What happened?" the pilot shouted. "What's the situation back there?"
"Bomb," Nick shot back. "Looks bad. Hole ripped in the fuselage. We've got it plugged — but only temporarily."
Four red alarm lights started to flash on the flight engineer's console. "Pressure and quantity!" the F.E. barked at the pilot. "Pressure and quantity!"
There was a smell of fright-sweat and cigarette smoke in the cockpit. The pilot and co-pilot began to push and pull at switches as the navigator's monotonous drawl continued: "AFB Bobbie. This is Speedbird 410. C-ALGY calling B for Bobbie…"
There was a crunch of tearing metal and all eyes shifted to the right. "There goes No. 3," rasped the co-pilot as the inboard pod on the right wing tore away from the plane.
"What are our chances of making it down in one piece?" demanded Nick.
"At this point, Colonel, your guess is as good as mine. I'd say…"
The pilot was interrupted by a sharp voice on the overhead amplifier. "C-ALGY give your position. C-ALGY…"
The navigator gave their position and reported on the situation. "We've got a go-ahead," he said a moment later.
"We're going to try for Barksdale AFB at Shreveport, Louisiana," said the pilot. "They've got the longest runways around. But first we've got to use up our fuel. So we're going to be in the air for at least another two hours. I suggest you get everybody belted in back there, then just sit tight — and pray!"
Gouts of black smoke and orange flame poured from the three remaining jet nacelles. The huge aircraft shook violently as they banked their way through a tight turn over Barksdale Air Force Base.
The wind roared through the jet's interior, sucking violently at them. The safety straps cut into their midsections. There was a metallic, ripping sound, and more of the fuselage split open. Air rushed through the growing aperture with a shrill scream — like a can of hair spray with a hole punched in it.
Nick turned, glancing at Joy Sun. Her mouth was shaking. There were violet shadows under her eyes. Fear crawled over her, slimy and ugly. "Are we going to make it?" she gasped.
He watched her, eyes carefully blank. Fear would give him answers that even torture wouldn't. "It doesn't look good," he said.
So far two men had died — the Air Force sergeant and a member of the NASA medical team whose spinal cord had been snapped by the impact with which he'd struck the ceiling. Another man — a pad technician — was strapped into his seat but was critically injured. Nick didn't think he would survive. The astronauts were shaken up but none was seriously hurt. They were used to emergencies, hadn't panicked. Dr. Sun's injury, a scalp wound, was superficial — but her fear wasn't. N3 now took advantage of it. "I want answers to questions," he rasped. "You won't gain anything by not answering. Your pals have double-crossed you, so apparently you're expendable. Who planted the bomb?"
Hysteria was mounting in her eyes. "Bomb? What bomb?" she gasped. "You don't think I had anything to do with this, do you? How could I? Why would I be here?"
"Then what about that pornographic snapshot?" he demanded. "What about your connection with Pat Hammer? You were seen together at the Bali Hai. Don Lee said so."