“You’d tell me no,” she said into the night, speaking to the departed Corbett. “But you’ve done it yourself. Even though you got pushed into some of it. And then you pushed me,” she said, laughing at him, and at herself.
An hour later she was sitting at the ladder with one leg through a steel rung, nibbling a Hi Ho and enjoying the breeze, when she saw headlights swing in her direction a mile away. She moved back and hunkered down. A night watchman? Please, God, let him keep going! But the old pickup truck stopped near the ladder. A moment later she heard scrapings and soft echoes in the tank, and realized that someone was climbing the ladder.
Heart beating wildly, she made her decision and swung onto the ladder. “Don’t shoot, I’m coming down,” she called.
“What the hell for?” he called back. Corbett!
She scrambled back up and did not wait for him to reach the top. “My God, I thought you were a watchman or something,” she said, laughing, placing a hand over her hammering heart.
He swung over the top, puffing with exertion. “Then why give yourself away, dummy?”
With some heat she said, “So he wouldn’t come up here and see the hellbug, dummy.”
Starlight was a poor guide, but he must have seen her fairly well because, after he laughed, he kissed her. It was a frustrating moment for Petra because she had no time to gear herself for a really promising response. “Don’t worry,” he said with a kind of manic elation, throwing an arm over her shoulder, “I kiss all my copilots. Well, I finally had something go right; a guy was pulling an overhaul at Rooke Field. He offered to loan me his pickup when he heard my sad story. You know, I’m dusting crops and run out of fuel but I land okay, and I’m gonna get fired if I don’t get this leased AgriCat back, and I’d rather not have to show my ID to this guy or tell him where I put the duster down if that’s okay with him.
“And he’s your typical small-town Texan who’ll give you the bandanna off his neck if you don’t sneer at him, or talk about the size of Alaska.” Petra wondered if he had been drinking, because this expansive yarn-spinner was not the Kyle Corbett she knew. He was a Corbett flushed with quick success; and she found that she liked him even better this way as he continued, “Only there’s no spare tank around, and it’s against the law to put avgas into a car, so the guy keeps filling my plastic tank, helping all he can without actually breaking a law, and I go around the edge of the hangar and pour it into the pickup’s tank, which was nearly empty but I promised to bring it back full of unleaded because he wouldn’t take the pair of twenties I tried to give him. And here I am,” he said.
During this spiel he had led her to the looming bulk of Black Stealth One, and now he crawled in. “C’mon, I’m gonna take it down below and do the siphon routine,” he said, patting the copilot’s seat.
She started to comply and then stopped. “I’ll go down the ladder,” she told him.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing; but I’ve never actually seen this airplane fly when I wasn’t in it. It’s not something I want to miss.”
He flicked switches, and began to spool the big impeller over. “You won’t see much tonight either, honey.”
Her heart leaped. Honey! But that’s just high spirits talking, she thought. “I’ll cope. You go on.” She gave him plenty of room, squinting as dust teased her eyes, and watched him levitate the craft, seeing him faintly limned by reflection from instruments as he lifted like a creature of fantasy. It’s a UFO, she realized with a thrill of gooseflesh, a real one to everybody but us, probably the only one in this corner of our galaxy. How long before I can help build newer ones?
She watched its progress as much by its occlusion of stars as by direct light, and was ravished again by the graceful sweep of its wings. Presently she moved to the ladder, refusing to think about the distance. She counted over eighty rungs before she reached the ground and realized only when she brushed his shoulder with her rump that Corbett was patiently waiting there, perhaps to break her fall if she had slipped.
She found other purchases in the pickup’s bed: the plastic bag was full of ordinary gasoline, and the same Exxon station had boasted the kind of cheap tasseled blankets only a tourist, desperate for mementoes, would crave. Wrapped in each of the two thin blankets were cans of Classic Coke. After he backed the pickup into place, they made the fuel transfer directly using the siphon and pressure bulb. He pumped the pickup dry, topped off the tank of Black Stealth One with ordinary fuel, then poured one of the two remaining two gallons of ordinary gasoline into the pickup.
“You’re really going to drive the guy’s pickup back?” she asked.
“A deal’s a deal. Besides, I don’t want him calling the cops,” Corbett replied. “One thing about a cover story, Petra: you can’t just give it, you’ve got to live it.”
He stowed the almost empty plastic bladder into the hellbug and, with Petra beside him, had soon settled the craft in its aerie atop the huge oil tank. “You can make our pallets,” he said, heading for the ladder by starlight. “Mosquitoes shouldn’t be bad up here.”
“I wish I could go with you,” she said wistfully as he swung onto the ladder.
“So do I. Don’t wait dinner, this’ll take a while,” he said, and left her. She watched the pickup’s lights until they faded from sight.
THIRTY-FOUR
After Corbett returned afoot, complaining of sore feet, they had feasted under starlight, belching Coca Cola fumes tinged with cheese. Now they lay on the pallets she had placed together under a wing of Black Stealth One, feeling residual warmth of the dome on their backs through the thin blankets. “You know,” she said dreamily, “even if I told the truth about this experience, my family would absolutely not believe it. My uncle, maybe; probably not even him.”
Corbett yawned and put his hands under his head, feeling her arm against his, comfortable with it. “Why not?” You’re just putting off what you have to tell her. But you’re assuming she wants to keep going and she just might have had an attack of good sense after today…
“They wouldn’t be able to reconcile it with what they think I am.”
He asked it in all seriousness: “And what are you?”
“OhI want it all. Pleasure without consequences, I guess. And don’t think you can’t, if you’re little and cute, and never forget anything or admit anything.”
“Sounds like a real sandbagging little shit. I hope I never meet you,” he chuckled.
“You already have,” she said darkly, “but I’ll turn your question back to you. What are you, Kyle? All I know about you are the most important things.”
He sighed and shifted position. “I won’t give you that crap about there not being much to tell. Let’s see: I grew up in Manhattan Beach, California; surfed a lot, got into things that fly because my dad was an engineer with North AmericanRockwell, to you. He helped me make boomerangs, kites, gliders, all that stuff. I got through high school without cracking a book but nobody told me how bone lazy I was until I damned near washed out of cadet training.”
“Gee, I always enjoyed studying,” she said, turning over, her face so near that he could feel the warmth of her breath.
“Yeah, but you’re a natural nerd.”
“You know what a nerd is,” she said, “a nerd is the guy you make fun of all the way through college, and he owns your whole town when he’s thirty-five.”