'Great! So here we go!'
The Pleasantville Eagle turned ponderously about and started back down the ice in the very tracks it had made on landing, crushing and incinerating the surviving Titanians as it went. Faster and faster until it was yearning to leap from the ground. Then, throttles full back, it hurled itself into the air, free of the jagged crags below, and pointed its nose towards mighty Saturn.
'What a moment!' Chuck enthused.
'Yes,' Jerry said, and the smile was suddenly erased from his face. 'Everything is fine – except for poor Sally.' At these words Chuck's smile went the way of the other's, and only John still smiled across the cabin.
'I told you not to worry,' he said, and instantly four worried eyes, two burning black, two icy blue, were fixed upon him.
'What do you mean?' Jerry choked out for them both.
'Here is what we are going to do.'
6
LOATHSOME GARNISHEE AND A MINDLESS HUSK
'Before I realized I was an American, you will remember that I was a secret Soviet agent. Some strange things happened then, let me tell you, but that is another story altogether. But I did a lot of training in Siberia, and on one secret mission there I took an advanced degree in brain surgery, which had to do with something else, but while I was working at the underground hospital in Novaya Zemlya, I got to chatting with the other doctors, you know, sort of talking shop, and they showed me some things they were working on. One thing I remember was deep freezing, always a kind of problem in Siberia, as you can imagine, and they had worked out a secret technique for reviving people who were caught out in blizzards and things and were frozen solid just like Sally back there in the john.'
'And you know. . . ?' Jerry choked over the words.
'Sure, I took it all in and could do it standing on my head. All we need is the services of a well-equipped hospital with hypothermia equipment and a few odds and ends. Just turn me loose, and in a couple of hours you'll have your Sally again just as good as new.'
'Yippee!' Jerry shouted and pulled the plane up in an immense curve toward Saturn. 'Pleasantville General Hospital and Rest Home here we come!'
Upward they climbed and on course, and the altimeter needle slowly unwound. Chuck was at the controls of the cheddite projector and testing the circuits when he called out, 'Jerry – we're getting unwanted resonance in the beta kappa circuit.'
'Must be instability in the woofer. I'll take care of it.' He waved John toward the pilot's seat. 'Take over and keep her on course. Align the nose with Polaris, the wingtip with Saturn's rings and sing out when the needle on the sensitive radar altimeter touches thirty thousand feet.'
'Roger,' John said firmly and took the controls. Higher and higher the great wings of the Pleasantville Eagle soared with John resolutely at the controls, Jerry and Chuck laboring over the vital circuitry of the cheddite projector.
'Coming up on point zero,' John called back. 'How are you doing there?'
'In the green – ready whenever you are.'
'Okay, watch it now. Ship aligned perfectly, altimeter unwinding. Ready. . . five . . . four. . . three . . . two . . . one. . . HACK!'
And a firm thumb was thrust home on the activator button.
Once again that strange sensation plucked at the very fiber of their beings as the kappa radiation hurled them headlong into the lambda dimension to emerge once again in normal space. And the engines stopped.
'I think we're a leetle high,' Jerry laughed, looked at the green globe of the planet far below them. 'But gravity will bring us down quick enough.' Chuck was squinting out of the window, a quizzical expression pulling at his features. 'Funny,' he muttered,
'but I don't see the Moon.'
'Not only that,' John answered, a look of concentration marked on his face, 'but the constellations just aren't right.'
They nodded silent agreement, and when Jerry spoke, he spoke for them all.
'I hate to say it, guys, but I'm afraid that isn't Earth down there. Not only that, but I'm afraid it isn't even any planet in our solar system. Perhaps something has gone wrong with the cheddite projector. I'll check it out.'
'No,' John said huskily. He was staring at the sensitive radar altimeter like a bird petrified by a snake, sweat suddenly bursting out on his brow. 'I'm afraid I goofed. All those years behind the iron curtain didn't really do me any good. Jerry, you told me to sound off when the altlmeter hit thirty thousand feet, right?'
'Bang on.'
'Well, and I hate to say this gang, all the planes I have ever flown have always had altlmeters that read in meters, so I converted feet to meters and let you know when we hit that spot.'
'Approximately one-third of our needed altitude,' Jerry intoned in a hollow voice. 'Still inside the deep atmosphere which interferes with the kappa radiation.' John was no longer smiling as he uneasily eyed the great, cocked fist of Chuck that was slowly being drawn back into firing position. Jerry came between them and calmed them down.
'Easy does it. Anyone can make a mistake – and we've gotten out of worse pinches before. Remember that old king of the Titanians and what happened to him!' They all laughed at that memory, and the tension was eased. John lowered his head, chagrined.
'Gee, I'm sorry. Something must have snapped inside my head for me to goof up like that. We'll get out of this. Land on that planet, align the cheddite projector, then take off, and home we go!'
'And we can put some more ice in the head with Sally. She'll keep OK.'
After that it was just waiting as they fell. The cabin heaters were on, and fresh Titanian oxygen was being pumped into the air, and soon they could peel off the extra layers of clothing. Chuck found some cans of cola, and they thawed and drank them, pretending not to notice when John poured seven miniatures of bourbon into his. They knew he felt bad about the mistake, and they were good enough sports not to rub it in. More frozen oxygen was packed in with Sally, still exhibiting a look of frozen horror, and they took turns grabbing a little shut-eye, not knowing what would befall them on the planet ever growing larger below. When the first wisps of atmosphere began to whistle against the skin of the ship, Chuck took the controls and waggled them.
'Almost there. Better strap in because this might be a bit rough. I think we picked up some velocity in the fall.' They certainly had. Air tore at the wings until the edges began to glow and the deicer boots burned away. Chuck stayed rock-firm at the wheel and sent them bouncing in a great arc out into space again only to fall back once more into the atmosphere. Again and again he did this until their great speed was slowed to under a thousand miles per hour, and only then did he let the ship sink deeper into the atmosphere.
'Oceans, continents,' Jerry said. 'Almost like Earth. Makes you kind of homesick.'
'That big continent, the one there,' John said, pointing.
'I think that one looks the most like North America.'
'Sure enough,' Chuck agreed. 'And that's the way we are going to head.'
Heavy cloud layers covered the continent in question as they swooped in low over what could have been one on Earth – how far away now! A great storm center seemed to be active here and Jerry pulled up to go over the top of it. Apparently thunderstorms were worse on this planet than on Earth, for lightning glared and exploded continually within the clouds and the rumble of thunder could be heard even through the insulated cabin walls. They went on seeking clear weather on the far side of the immense storm.
'Good news, guys,' Jerry chortled. 'I've turned off the oxygen flow since this atmosphere seems to have more than enough to run the engines on.'
'You know,' Chuck mused, 'there is something kind of funny about that thunder and lightning. If the idea wasn't so downright dim and stupid I would almost say that-' The great 747 bucked suddenly, and there was a solid thud felt through the metal fabric and a hole more than a yard in diameter appeared in the port wing.
