Force Base for almost a minute, however, before it faded below the threshold of hearing.
As the roar diminished, people began removing their fingers from their ears. Amanda exclaimed, 'I'm going to be a saucer pilot someday, just like Charley Pine!'
The president was a thoughtful man. If Lalouette succeeded in shooting down Pine, there was nothing to stop him from refueling and returning to the moon to rescue Pierre Artois, nor from carrying technicians and parts aloft to repair the antigravity beam generator. As the excited voices around him became a hubbub, he turned to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and whispered, 'Scramble every fighter on the East Coast. Shoot down that big saucer.'
'There's no way for fighter pilots to tell those saucers apart,' the chairman protested. 'How will they know which is which?'
'Shoot 'em both down,' the president ordered after a glance at Amanda, to ensure she wasn't listening. 'The stakes are too high. We can't take a chance.'
Flying straight and level at full power in a clear autumn sky, Charley Pine rapidly considered her alternatives as her velocity increased dramatically. She could zoom up into inner space, where the air was thin or nonexistent, turn at the top of her climb and take a head-on shot at Lalouette as she dove. Or she could turn hard and convert her airspeed advantage into an angular one, which if she played it right would eventually give her a shot at her opponent. Or she could combine the two tactics, climb and turn at the same time.
She was torn, unsure of how to play this, when she saw clouds ahead. Aha! A front; a line of cumulus with bases at several thousand feet, tops at perhaps ten.
At her speed, now approaching Mach 7, she was in the clouds in seconds. Off the throttle, she turned hard to kill some speed — a turn that covered seventy miles of New Jersey in seconds. She asked the computer for the radar presentation, and got it. Numerous returns appeared on the display; after all, this airspace over New Jersey was full of airplanes. Lalouette would be easy to spot because his saucer would be the quickest blip on the scope — if she managed to get him into her forward quadrant, and if the radar could pick him up.
Her speed dissipated rapidly with the G she had on. Just as she was beginning to suspect that her tightening turn might have worked, the saucer shot through a relatively clear area and she got a glimpse of an airliner, a twin-engine commuter turboprop. She cleared it by a few feet; at the speed she was traveling the encounter looked close enough to trade paint. The airliner was gone so quickly that when she realized what it was, she was already well past it.
That was good. If she hit an airplane at these speeds in these skies, the accident would be over before she even knew it was going to happen.
She wondered whether Lalouette was using his radar. If he wasn't, he had lost her in this wilderness of gauzy, puffy towers.
There he was! On the display. She had slowed seconds before he had, so could turn tighter than he could. He was trying to turn, which was a mistake. Although he had an energy advantage, hers was now angular, and it would be enough to give her the victory if he continued to play her game for a few more seconds.
Turning hard, flashing in and out of the clouds, she closed on her opponent, who was merely a blip on the three-dimensional holographic display on the panel in front of her. She was on his altitude, turning inside him with the range closing nicely. She centered the symbol on the reticle and glanced down in time to see the target sinking toward the bottom of the display, which was her saucer.
Lalouette had lost Pine. When she entered the cloud he had lost sight of her exhaust plume. Now she was somewhere in this soup thrashing around, no doubt maneuvering to kill him. He had the radar going and was busy trying to figure it out, which was difficult since he was flying and fighting the pain in his arm and the general malaise that came with blood poisoning.
He had entered a left turn in order to scan with the radar and backed off on the power. All this he accomplished merely by thinking about it, since he was wearing the headband. Without the band he couldn't have flown the saucer one-handed.
These clouds… He eased higher. He wanted to get above them, so he could see right, left and behind.
He had just topped the clouds when the first antimatter particle detonated in the saucer behind him. He automatically looked left, inside his turn, and aft. There she was, coming out of the clouds and closing, only a couple hundred yards away, a river of sparks and smoke vomiting from the front of her saucer, straight at him.
Triphammer thuds behind him. Then a horrible pain in his right calf!
The Gs shoved him into the seat and the hammering stopped. He was out of the particle stream, accelerating quickly.
His leg! Blood. He felt it with his good arm. A cavity, a horrible wound, bleeding badly.
He didn't have much time left.
The separation between the two ships was increasing, so he made a gentle turn to the right. He wasn't thinking clearly, but he remembered the buildings of New York. He could hide in the concrete canyons.
Behind him a trickle of water flowed from the saucer's damaged main tank.
The two saucers raced toward New York City at full power. Lalouette dove back into the clouds, but he didn't maneuver, just ran flat out, and Charley couldn't close the distance. She tried a few squirts of antimatter particles when she got a firing solution on the holographic display. The particles had no apparent effect on the saucer ahead. Perhaps the distance was too great, perhaps the moisture in the clouds soaked up some of the particles, whatever.
She knew New York was in the direction that Lalouette was going, with her hot on his tail. There was nothing she could do about it; wherever he went, she intended to follow. If she let him escape now he would hunt her down and appear, probably, when she least expected it. She intended to follow him to the limit of her fuel unless she killed him sooner, which she was trying mightily to do. She and Rip would be at the bottom of a smoking hole at Andrews if Rip hadn't spotted the other saucer just seconds before Lalouette could open fire. A couple of seconds… the difference between life and death.
Other targets appeared on the display — airplanes. They were so slow they appeared nearly stationary. There were so many! Then she realized that Lalouette was embedded in the planes queuing up to land at Newark. And he was slowing.
The distance closed rapidly. Yet she dared not shoot; there were too many airplanes nearby.
She backed off on the throttle, felt the G ease up. She lowered the nose, feeling for the bottom of the clouds as she weaved to avoid the airliners.
She came out of the clouds at about fifteen hundred feet above the ground, still making at least Mach 2. Rip was right beside her, pointing out planes. She merely glanced, then resumed her concentration on the display on the panel.
Lalouette had to be the fast mover on the display. Now he was turning right, headed straight for Manhattan.
She tried to cut across his turn, shorten the distance. Yes. Closing… almost in range.
But beyond the saucer were buildings. People. If the particles were scattered by impact with the saucer's skin, or went all the way through it, they would hit those buildings and people. And if she succeeded in shooting down the saucer, it would crash into New York!
She held her fire and stayed high, just under the base of the clouds, which covered about half the sky. Visibility was excellent underneath.
Lalouette descended sharply, heading right for the Ver-razano Narrows Bridge at the entrance to the bay.
'He's going to hit it!' Rip exclaimed with horror in his voice.
Seconds later Charley replied, 'No, I think he wants to go under it.'
And he did. The shock wave off the now subsonic saucer rocked the bridge. As it swayed traffic stopped and people bailed from their vehicles.
The saucer continued up the bay, streaking past ships and ferries, only a few feet above the water. A roostertail of water rose behind it. From their perch Charley and Rip had a ringside seat — which was perfect. If Lalouette turned and climbed, they would have a shot, if they had to defend themselves. If he didn't, they could attack him after he left the city behind.
Lalouette headed for the East River, which was spanned by several bridges.
