“I have to trust you. You’re the only person who has flown this thing. The question is whether or not you can trust me. If you follow my directions we can take Sparrow into space, and there won’t be any Mission Control to help us. You’ll be the pilot of this thing, not me. I’ll be relying completely on your flying experience to get us down alive.”
Dillon’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve flown in space, and back again. It wouldn’t be a first for me.”
The man was a military pilot, not an astronaut. “Aurora?” asked Eric.
Dillon blinked slowly. “So when do we take this bird up all the way?”
“Just as soon as I can get Colonel Davis to clear the test. There’s nothing about this in the flight manual. I’ll have to convince him I know what to do. I can’t write it down for a permanent record. Look at these notes, and memorize the sequence. I’m destroying the notes after we climb out of here, and I don’t worry about forgetting what’s in them. Don’t ask why.”
Dillon took the notes from him, studied them a minute, handed them back. “Okay, Got it. Now what?”
“We get out of the plane, act like we had a nice chat, and make up a story about how we got that panel to go green. I’ll do the talking. I’m probably a much better liar than you. It’s part of my training.”
“I’ll bet it is,” said Dillon.
“Let’s start with a diversion,” said Eric. He flipped some switches; Sparrow shuddered, the aft fuselage opening again. “Get a probe in there, and look for residual radiation!” he called out.
Eric followed Dillon out of the cockpit and off the wing to the ground. Two techs were already leaning inside the open maw of Sparrow’s belly to place instruments there.
“So, what was all that heat about?” asked Hendricks.
“Just throwing switches again, and suddenly an entire panel went green. That’s when you started yelling about heat.”
Hendricks looked at Dillon, but the man just shrugged as if it was all a mystery to him. In the meantime, Eric wadded up two small pieces of paper in his hand and shoved them in his pocket. Sergeant Nutt was watching, saw him do it, and raised an eyebrow.
“I need to see Colonel Davis right away,” Eric said to Nutt.
“Sir,” said Nutt, and pulled out his field phone.
Hendricks tapped Eric on the shoulder to get his attention again. “I’m not buying the good luck act, Doctor. Where are you getting your information?”
Eric thought fast, and decided a partial confession would be better than a lie. “I’m not at liberty to say. Sorry, that’s the best I can do. I will tell you that tests from now on will have to be done in flight. Captain Dillon and I were just talking about it. We’re taking Sparrow up as soon as we get approval from Davis.”
“So why you? Why have the rest of us been kept in the dark?”
Eric shook his head. “Wish I knew. Politics, personalities, who knows? The decision came down from the people who brought Sparrow to us. I don’t know what they’re thinking.”
It worked. Eric could see it in Hendricks’ eyes. For the moment, the explanation had logic to it, though questions were sure to come later.
“Then maybe they should make an effort to know us better,” said Hendricks. “There aren’t any politicians here.”
“Doctor Price!” called Nutt. “Colonel Davis wants to see you right away.”
Eric nodded, as a tech came back from inspecting Sparrow. “No radiation, outside of IR, but the metal’s still warm in there, around one-ten.”
Eric answered the tech before Hendricks could open his mouth to reply. “In space, there won’t be any T increase. Decay time is nanoseconds once the field is powered down in vacuum. At full power and one atmosphere we could melt the airframe in a hurry. That’s why we can’t go further with testing unless we get Sparrow above the atmosphere.”
The tech stared at him, and Hendricks scowled. Nutt came up, put a hand on his arm. “Got to go, sir.”
“And when you come back, maybe you can let us in on more of your secrets,” said Hendricks.
“I will. I know this isn’t fair to you guys, but I didn’t ask for it. It’s just the way it is.”
Hendricks glared at him, and turned away. The two techs looked nervously in other directions. Nutt took Eric by one elbow and hurried him away.
“Shit!” said Eric. “I can’t blame them for being pissed.”
“Nothing new,” said Nutt. “It was the same with Johnson. He was getting information the rest weren’t. It’s the only reason we got Sparrow off the ground.”
“Davis never said anything about that.”
“You didn’t hear it from me, sir. Oh, I didn’t have a chance to tell the Colonel what you just did with Sparrow. He wanted to know if I was with you, and said he had to see you right away.”
“So I’ll surprise him,” said Eric. “This base seems to be full of surprises.”
They left Sparrow’s bay, took the elevator up and Nutt knocked on Davis’ door. There was no answer for a moment, so Nutt knocked again. “Come!” came a reply, and Nutt opened the door. “Doctor Price is here, sir.”
“Send him in.”
Eric entered the office, immediately smelled a vaguely familiar, musky odor, as if incense were burning nearby, but saw nothing like that. Davis was sitting behind his desk, chin resting on cupped hands. “Have a seat, Doctor. I think you’re going to like this.”
Eric sat. “What is it?” The sweet odor was even stronger where he was sitting. He noticed the door to the adjoining office was ajar. Was the smell coming from there?
“You wanted more access to the base, and you just got it. Our foreign friends seem to think you’re the man to nail our saboteurs, and need to know counts for everything around here. I suppose you’ve wondered how we got Sparrow into that bay in the first place.”
“Yes, but I know the ceiling opens up. A cargo helicopter could drop a load through there.”
“True,” said Davis, “but that’s not the way it happens. We have a special port in a neighboring bay. Everything comes through there, and I’ve been instructed to show it to you. Mister Brown was very insistent. You must have made quite an impression on him.”
“If I did, it wasn’t obvious to me, but I just had another breakthrough with Sparrow, and I need your approval for some flight tests.”
It was as if Davis hadn’t heard him. “Do you want to see the delivery port, or don’t you? It’s Brown’s idea, not mine. If it were up to me, I’d keep you out of there. Too many people already know about it.”
“Of course I want to see it. Right away. But if you let me make some flight tests, I think we can have Sparrow in space this week. Captain Dillon was with me today, and we found out how to activate most of the controls. The rest we’ll have to do in flight.”
“I thought the manual was still missing what you needed.”
“It was—is, I mean. But we figured it out.”
“Figured what out?”
Eric told him, making it sound like he and Dillon had done it together in a systematic way until they had a green board and heat was boiling from the fuselage.
“Jesus,” said Davis.
“We had to shut down. Whatever field is in that thing, we’ll have to be in near vacuum to bring it up to full power. I need your authorization to make the necessary flight test. Dillon is with me on this.”
“You want to fly it with Dillon.”
“Yes.”
“You’re not a pilot.”
“Dillon can fly. I’ll conduct the power up procedure.”
“More magic insights, is that it, Price?”