A Fine Fix Part 3

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

Grant bristled. "These files are under the general's nose, and I don't think he'd appreciate--" He broke off when he observed Bridget tapping her pencil and frowning at him impatiently.

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

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

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

The files repulsed him less than Bridget attracted him, and he sat down promptly. "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 part of his consciousness turned contemplative.

Three months ago he would have considered the situation in which he now found himself a future development out of the question. Mojave had brimmed with optimism and pride and accomplishment and eagerness. Base Mojave loomed vital in national defense, const.i.tuted a main element of national scientific pride.

From the dusty desert stretches the sprawling, efficient base had taken shape while United Nuclear had yet to a.s.semble an atomjet. The schedules came out perfectly, and the first single-manned fusion-propulsed rocketplane thundered off the corporation proving grounds and glided into Base Mojave as planned. Designed for patrol of the mesosphere, the ships were to have gained for the West control of near-Earth s.p.a.ce, besides affording superior observation posts for Eastern developments and activity of a s.p.a.ce nature.

Training of the pilots had lasted thirty weeks and went by without a casualty or serious damage. Testing and re-testing of the electronics brought out no flaws. Stress and thermal a.n.a.lyses held up under all conditions imposed.

The losses began after the third week of patrol. UNR-6 failed to return to base--with no hint of the cause, with no communication from the pilot. That one was hushed up by the base PR officer, but news of the second reached the press. During the fifth week, UNR-2 never returned for 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 the problem with apparent good results--for a month. Then UNR-9 vanished.

Lately the orders had been for patrol over the States, and it was presumed UNR-9 would have made an appearance somewhere had it been in trouble. That's why the Dakota farmer's report had been investigated so swiftly.

As of now, the situation had become one patrol a day with reluctant pilots, Congress sending a committee to the base, a taxpayers'

injunction against the Air Force rocketplane operation, and United Nuclear men experimenting hourly with robot-piloted atomjets at all alt.i.tudes below four hundred miles.

Plus the syk research, naturally.

Bridget's ash tray spilled over with right-angled cigarette b.u.t.ts, half-burned. Grant studied her as she read through the files intently although her eyes rolled his way briefly on occasion. She faced him with an 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't seen one around. Would you mind?"

Grant opened his mouth to inform her a pilot's manual for the atomjet was cla.s.sified secret, but caught himself before he could verbalize the protest. He shrugged and planned more strategy for invading the general's files.

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

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

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

What she wanted from him came out over their aerated sherbet pie. By the time she finished, Grant's dessert was beginning to taste like vitaminized s.p.a.ce rations.

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

"Your concern may be the general's reactions, but mine's not," Bridget snapped. "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 can get a TV transmitter in an atomjet with some doing. You'd have to jerk out the extra oxygen s.p.a.ce and--"

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

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

"With no results."

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

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

They left the base lunchroom in silence, Bridget pouting a lip-edge more than Grant. Before entering the office, Grant brought up a reb.u.t.tal.

"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, split Grant emotionally down the middle. He could understand, for an instant when he let himself, how a man could be inveigled to do anything for a woman.

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

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

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

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

Grant was surprised at the twinge of emotion he experienced when he realized the general was not going to ask for a report from syk. Why should Grant care, anyway? The position meant nothing to him, Syk Coordinator.

It meant something to Bridget, though.

That General Morrison had not even checked for syk findings annoyed Grant, perhaps. Under the circ.u.mstances he was justified: nothing had yet come out, nothing that Bridget had told Grant, anyway. The general could not be aware of this. He a.s.sumed it. Maybe that's what upset Grant.

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

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

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