Rocket Science

Chapter Thirteen

Floyd and I sat inside the orange glow of Pegasus’ cabin, each of us alone with our thoughts, strapped into our seats by the most powerful pacifist on Earth. Pegasus had said someone was coming up the road to the farm. Last time I checked, the list of people who had it in for me included Nazis, Commies, the Kansas City Mob, the United States Army, the Augusta Police and the Butler County Sheriff’s Department. Not to mention Mr. Bellamy’s gang, Doc Milliken and Lois. I was sure I’d left someone off the list, but I figured they’d let me know in due time.

My life would have been a lot easier if I’d just refused to go down to the train depot with Floyd that day.

“Do you know who it is?” I asked Pegasus.

Instead of answering, the main cathode ray tube in front of me, which had been showing a view of inside of the barn, flashed to an aerial view of the Bellamys’ house. It was as if there were a camera that looked down the rutted track to their front gate leading on out toward Haverhill Road. The entire image was in ghostly shades of green and blue. Most amazing, it was stable, as if shot from a tower, or an aircraft somehow hovering in place.

Floyd’s voice was filled with awe as he broke his self-imposed silence. “How did you do that, Vernon?”

Pegasus’ voice echoed from the cabin walls, instead of whispering behind my ear. “False-color low-light imaging from massively redundant low-bandwidth atmospherically dispersed microspore telemetry units. You may think of that as smart dust.”

“Holy cow!” Floyd yelled. “Who said that?”

Well, I’d only understood about four words of it myself, at least on the first go-round. “That was the voice of this computational rocket. Who I’ve been talking to for the past few minutes while you were whistling ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’ over there. It has a personality, you know, and it’s not very happy about everything that’s been going on around here.”

“Floyd Bellamy, you may call me Pegasus.”

Floyd screwed his eyes shut. He looked as if he were either crying or praying. Either one would have been out of character for the Floyd I knew. That was before he’d come back from Europe doubled by the Nazis, before I’d seen how much he had been bent by his father.

“Oh God,” Floyd said. “This is so crazy. Please Vernon, let me out of this thing. I’ll just walk away. I’ll never say anything. Please let me out of here.” It was almost a chant, like he was praying.

To me.

“Shut up, Floyd.” Even in his panic and his fear, he hadn’t actually apologized.

Pegasus spoke in my ear again. “I regret this. I did not realize that I would disturb him so.”

“You’re pretty disturbing, my friend,” I said. “Even under the best of circumstances. For what it’s worth, I didn’t understand what you said either.”

“I did not intend to be comprehended. The truth is often better than a lie, if it can be made sufficiently obscure. Now, please watch the primary viewer.”

I looked at the screen. Three cars struggled up the muddy track toward the Bellamys’ house. I could see the man on the roof, prone with his rifle aimed to cover the approaching cars. I couldn’t see Random Garrett, but if he was still on top of the porch he wouldn’t be visible from this angle. He might even be inside, braced to fire from Floyd’s bedroom window. Mr. Neville and Mr. Bellamy were not in evidence either. I wasn’t sure who else might be in Bellamy’s old man gang, and I wasn’t about to ask Floyd about their numbers.

“Pegasus,” I said. “Can you tell how many people are around or in the house?”

The screen flickered, then showed the house as an outline, like an engineering plan. The image was glorious, load-bearing walls outlined, both chimneys, even the bricks of the foundation. There were five spots in and around the plan — on top of the house, in an upstairs room, two in the front room, and one in the root cellar. At least they’d gotten Mrs. Bellamy out of the cess pit. God bless her.

I was fascinated with the image Pegasus had given me. It was like having the eyes of God at my disposal. I sure could have used this on the B-29 line at the plant.

“How did you do that?” I asked in an awed voice.

“I scanned for calcium concentrations in the right configuration and volume for adult human skeletal structures.”

That almost made sense. Pegasus’ magic dust wasn’t just sending back television pictures that could see in the dark, it was doing some Pegasus-equivalent of chromatography. Remote control materials analysis. I almost groaned for the pity of it — such a profound technology could change the world overnight. Just sitting, distracted and in fear for my life, I could imagine a dozen beneficial and profitable applications. If this was the future, I definitely wanted to be a part of it.

“You can do that?” I asked. “From how far away?”

“From anywhere in my line of sight,” answered Pegasus. “Under the right conditions, all the way out to a range of about two hundred kilometers.”

Two hundred kilometers. That was about one hundred and twenty miles. And Pegasus could locate people hidden in cellars and behind walls. What the cops wouldn’t give for a system that just did what I was seeing.

Cops. Missing people. Something fearsome gripped my heart, a cold hand of mixed hope and dread.

“Can you find my dad?” I asked in a small voice.

“Unfortunately, I cannot sufficiently refine the scan to identify individuals.”

I missed the radio preacher voice. Talking to Pegasus had become something like reading a textbook, but that was a language I could understand, even if I didn’t normally speak that way. My college education was finally coming in useful. “Dad has a surgical steel plate in his skull. And I think he’s somewhere here in Butler County.” After a moment’s consideration, I added, “He’s probably dead, though.”

“These killers extinguished your father?”

“Yes,” I said miserably. I didn’t know which particular set of killers had done the deed. They were all starting to run together in my mind — bad guys everywhere, out to get me, out to get Pegasus. At this point, it didn’t really matter any more. They were all evil sons of bitches as far I was concerned, even the Army.

“When we are next airborne, I will execute a scan. Assuming human skeletons with implanted metal content are reasonably rare, your father can probably be located.”

Somehow, that made me feel worse rather than better. Even though I had asked for the help, in a way I didn’t really want to know. As long as Dad was missing, I could hope that he was still alive, even against all common sense.

I was pretty sure Pegasus would find Dad, and I was pretty sure he would be dead. Discomfort or not, for my own peace of mind, I needed to know what had happened to him. I didn’t matter whether Truefield had killed him, or if he really had been kidnapped like Hauptmann had told me. Maybe if we found Dad’s body, I could figure something out from his remains, where and how we found him. Clearly I wasn’t going to get any help from Pegasus in avenging my father, but then my limited taste for vengeance had already run dry in the stress of the last few hours.

The machine was rubbing off on me.

Besides, I’d brought a lot of this on myself. I’d signed myself up for trouble by going along with Floyd’s obviously criminal intent in the first place, seduced by the magic of Pegasus. If Mr. Bellamy’s story was true, and I figured it was, Dad had never been blameless. There were old sins and crimes going back to the First World War. The only real innocent was Mrs. Bellamy, regardless of whatever grudge Mr. Bellamy had carried in the twenty-five years since Floyd was born.

But I still needed to know about Dad. And Dad’s fate wasn’t going to be knowable until we got Pegasus out of Mr. Bellamy’s barn and away from the Kansas City Mob and the Bellamy Gang.

“What are the people in those cars doing now?” I asked Pegasus.

The image shrank to include more of the area around the farmhouse. I tried to imagine the lens that could do all that, somehow distributed among the specks of Pegasus’ magic dust. The three incoming automobiles slowed to a stop in front of the house, next to the old Ford coupe. On Pegasus’ scan the vehicles showed up as simplified schematics, like the house had, to the point where I couldn’t identify the make or model. There were four people in each car.

Floyd’s breath hissed. That meant he was worried. Twelve mobsters come to call on four old men. It didn’t look good for his father if negotiations got energetic. As I suspected they would.

“Can you see those license plates?” I asked Pegasus.

The image jumped and switched back to the greenish photographic-type view I had seen before. The three cars filled the screen in sharp focus. Now I could see that they were all Cadillacs, Series 75 limousines from about 1941. Even the mob couldn’t get new cars during the war. Cadillac had been building tanks for Uncle Sam, and Detroit was only just now retooling.

Pegasus blew up the view to center on the license plate of the lead car. It was a Missouri registration. This was definitely Roanoke Joe and Vinnie the Snake. Along with ten of their closest friends, no doubt heavily armed.

I had to figure a way out of here that didn’t leave those guys or Mr. Bellamy’s friends hanging on our tail. “Look Pegasus,” I said. “You say you won’t kill anyone. I guess I can understand that. I’m not eager to do it either.”

I meant that. I had been so frightened, so angry, for much of the past few days that I expected to be ready to kick butt and take names. Maybe Pegasus’ Quaker morals were infectious. But pacifism in the air or not, I had always tried to be a prudent man. Leaving these guys behind us wouldn’t be prudent.

“You’ve got a lot of capabilities,” I continued. “Can you disable those automobiles so that when we takeoff from here they won’t be able to use them to chase along after us?”

It wasn’t the easiest thing to do, but determined men on the ground could follow an aircraft. This part of Kansas was covered with straight-line roads that ran in gridded squares, all to bring produce and livestock to market.

Pegasus didn’t answer for a moment. I wondered if it was busy, whatever that might mean. “I can take care of the problem,” the computational rocket finally said. “Those vehicular electrical systems are unshielded and extremely vulnerable.”

To what the electrical systems were vulnerable was an open question, but Pegasus obviously commanded more physics than I would ever understand. I looked at the view screen. The image had pulled back to the original view, over the shoulder of the house. Half a dozen men in long coats stood in front of the three cars. More waited in the cars. Mr. Bellamy and Mr. Neville walked off the front porch to meet them.

“Pegasus,” I said, “I think that this would be a good time for us to leave.”

“Do you wish me to disable their personal weapons as well?” said Pegasus.

I laughed. “Of course. I didn’t know you could do that.”

A low hum filled the cabin, like the noise of a poorly maintained transformer. One of the smaller view screens lit up with a curve diagrammed against a grid. The curve kept rising in an asymptotic path. I assumed it related to energy output, but I could only imagine what that energy source would be. I figured the energy itself was electromagnetic. Obvious, really, in light of the comments Pegasus had made about the automobiles.

I looked back at the main screen. The detail was mediocre at the current magnification, but I could see at least two of the newcomers had started to twitch. The sniper on the roof was also having trouble with his weapon, taking first one hand off then the other to shake them out, as if ants were crawling on him.

Pegasus spoke in my ear. “Takeoff sequence commencing in twenty seconds.”

“Hang on, Floyd!” I called out. I could hear him crooning to himself. He was terrified — maybe the first time in my life I’d seen him so upset. Tough cookies, I thought. I’d given him fair warning, I didn’t have time for anything else from him. I was watching the view outside, waiting to see what miracle Pegasus would produce.

By now all of the men in front of the house, including Mr. Bellamy and Mr. Neville, were jumping around. It looked like they were yelling at each other, judging by some of their motions, including the shaken fists. Pegasus wasn’t providing any sound, but it was clear enough what was likely being said. Mr. Bellamy threw his shotgun onto the ground as the remaining occupants of the three Cadillacs came tumbling out of their cars. The sniper on the roof dropped his rifle. The weapon slid down the roof and pitched off the front, barely missing Mr. Neville as it fell to the ground.

“Ten seconds. I suggest your grab the control handles, Vernon Dunham.”

Out in the yard, they were stripping off their clothes now. Belts and suspenders were being thrown away, and all the men had thrown down their guns. Some of the Italians grabbed knives and other weapons from under their coats and down their pants and tossed them on the ground as well. One of the Cadillacs was vibrating noticeably.

“You’ve got a way to heat all the metal out there,” I said.

“Yes. Unfortunately, I am afraid that I might set fire to the house as well. I am destroying the barn in five seconds.”

I counted down. Four Mississippi, three Mississippi, two Mississippi, one Mississippi.

The inside of the barn had been visible on one of the smaller screens. The building blew away with a roar that I could feel in my bones while the television image shuddered, blacking out for a second or two. It flickered back to life to show shattered wood flying off in all directions as Pegasus rocked back and forth. The f-panzer rocked on its tracks, nearly toppling, as the straw blowing around it caught fire. I wondered about the cats and chickens.

Everyone I could see on the main screen was on the ground, taking cover from the blast. They probably thought I’d blown up the airplane. The view on the screens shook, whether from Pegasus’ movements or the violence outside I had no way of knowing. One of the Cadillacs exploded — the gas tank must have gone up. Shattered barn wood began to rain down all over the house and the yard.

Then the ground dropped away with dizzying suddenness, two or three hundred feet in one eye-grabbing blur judging by my perspective on the viewing screen. It looked like we had fallen straight up, in violation of Newton’s laws as well as the law of gravity. I felt no motion at all inside Pegasus’ cabin, which implied direct control over the inertia of mass. Another astounding technology that would change the world, I thought with a sigh. I also realized my worries about being chased from the ground were ludicrous — it shouldn’t be any surprise to me if Pegasus could magnificently outperform any airplane ever built.

One of the screens flickered, then refocused to show the barn and yard beneath us. All three Cadillacs were on fire, as was Mr. Bellamy’s Willys pickup truck. The barn was a flaming mess. Dad’s Mack stake bed had been obliterated, reduced to lumps of glowing metal and hot ash, while the f-panzer was burning up with the barn. None of these guys were going anywhere unless they walked.

It looked like a fistfight was taking place in the front yard. Knock down, drag out. I’d place even money on a bunch of cranky old shine runners against three carloads of Kansas City mob torpedoes deprived of their hardware.

As we pulled away and the view shrank even further, I could see that a corner of the front porch was on fire. The Bellamy house was an old frame building, likely to burn up like so much straw if the flames got fully established. I wondered if Mr. Bellamy would stop the fighting in time to save his house. Then I had a sick moment wondering if Mrs. Bellamy would be able to get out.

Those old bastards sure as heck weren’t going to stop and help her.

“We have to go back,” I said. I couldn’t believe myself, but I couldn’t leave her to die in that fire.

“What…?” Floyd was beside himself, somewhere between terror and anger.

“Look. Your mother’s in the root cellar again. And the house is burning. Pegasus, can you get down in the back yard?”

“Is this advisable?”

“She’s going to die.”

Though I felt no swaying, no tug of inertia, I knew we were moving. One of the smaller view screens showed the land tilting in perspective as we banked back toward the house.

“Mama,” Floyd said. “Oh, God, Vernon.”

“We’ll get her out,” I promised.

Except I couldn’t trust him free, inside Pegasus or out. And those damned old men… they were killers.

And then we were down in the back yard, between the outhouse and the kitchen. “Go now, Vernon Dunham,” Pegasus said in my ear.

I grabbed Floyd’s knife from where he still had it in his belt. “Hang on, old buddy,” I told him. “Pegasus here will watch over you.”

Outside it was dark enough, the sky cloudy. There was quite a racket from the front of the house. I hobbled fast as I could toward the kitchen, my body refusing to cooperate fully, protesting all the recent abuse, the falls and injuries I had sustained.

The door slammed open just before I got there. It was an old man I didn’t recognize — the sniper on the roof?

“You’re mine, boy,” he said, his eyes gleaming like angry stars. “You and that damned airplane.”

“Heck no!” I swung the carving knife at him, missed completely, but it threw the old killer off his stride and he stumbled down the steps. I kicked him with my good leg, promptly falling as my bad leg collapsed under my weight.

He was up and on me in an instant, one fist cocked wide, but from inside the house Mr. Neville was shouting, “MacLaren!”

And like that, he stopped. It was weird. The way a machine might have stopped, without any of heat of anger. “Later, boy,” he said, tapping my cheek before getting to his feet and turning away.

I was no threat at all to him. As he showed me his back, I made to throw the knife, then stopped.

I couldn’t do it. Not even now. Pegasus had gotten into me.

“She’s in the root cellar,” I called after MacLaren, as he slammed the kitchen door.

Then I pulled myself to my feet and tried to follow, but the door was locked. There was shouting around both sides of the house, and I could smell the smoke and hear the crackle of flames.

It was time to go, Mrs. Bellamy or no Mrs. Bellamy.

“Lord take it,” I hissed, limping back to Pegasus as quickly as I could. My eyes stung hot, but I climbed in the little hole which snicked shut behind me.

Back in the straps, quickly as I could, before their guns cooled off and the bad guys got down to some serious work.

“Where should we head, Vernon Dunham?” asked Pegasus, behind my ear where I felt like it belonged.

“Augusta.” That’s where the oil refinery was, where Pegasus could meet its refueling needs. That’s where I figured Dad’s body was, which was what I needed to find. Beside me, Floyd made a shuddering, gasping noise that sounded a lot like a panic reaction.

“I’m sorry, Floyd, I couldn’t get her.”

“Daddy won’t let her burn,” he said quietly, his voice shuddering.

For a moment we just sat there, as the images on the screen receded. Guilt gnawed at me. First I’d failed my dad, now Mrs. Bellamy.

“Perhaps you would like to fly,” Pegasus finally said. “Use the handles, see what you think.”

Something to do. Something I cared about. Something to take my mind off my mistakes. I took the handles that were built in to the oversized seat I occupied. I hoped that if mine were active, Floyd’s weren’t.

The system was simple. There were no rudder pedals, there was no throttle. The handles had grips and thumb buttons, and swiveled across all three axes. I just moved my hands where I wanted to go, and Pegasus obeyed.

Grasping the handles was odd, though. They were unnatural under my hands. I explored the bumps and the shallow dents for knuckles, and examined the layout of the buttons. These handles had been designed for someone with a thumb like mine but five short fingers instead of four long ones. Someone who wasn’t human.

That little detail more than anything else brought home to me emotionally, personally, that Pegasus was alien.

Flying Pegasus was like my dreams, only better. When I was a kid, sometimes I would dream that both of my legs were strong and whole, and I could outrun the wind. It was like that with Pegasus, only I knew that I never had to wake up from this and stumble out of bed, lame and miserable, aching in my calf with every step of the day. I was free, for a while. I didn’t care what happened to me next.

Floyd finally roused from his misery. “Where… where are you going, Vernon?”

“Augusta,” I said shortly. I’d failed him in failing his mother, at least I could do something constructive for my computational rocket. “We have business in town.”

In point of fact, Pegasus was flying so fast that we had already reached Augusta. I banked Pegasus around the lighted towers of the old White Eagle refinery complex, now Mobil.

“Pegasus,” I said, “There’s more petrochemicals down there than you’ll ever know what to do with. I promise you we’ll get what you need.”

“I have located sources of the appropriate grades to satisfy my requirements,” said Pegasus in its private voice. “How will we compensate the proprietors of this refinery?”

“What?” I was astounded.

“I will not willfully misappropriate private property.”

“You just blew up a barn, two trucks and three Cadillacs, and now you’re worried about a hundred gallons of oil?”

“Perhaps we should locate your father’s remains first, then discuss this when you are being less emotional.”

Wonderful. That was what I needed to hear. Maybe I could somehow make up for Mrs. Bellamy. Those old men had to get her out of the root cellar.

I pulled Pegasus into an upward spiral over the refinery complex. “Tell me when you’ve got enough altitude to search for Dad.”

“Climb for fifteen seconds, then level off and cruise in a widening spiral,” replied Pegasus. Obviously, it could have gone on its version of autopilot at any time, but I appreciated the courtesy, and thrill, of flying such a machine. I wished I knew more about the basic principles behind Pegasus’ construction and power sources.

At the same time, I was glad Pegasus didn’t have instrumentation that I could read. I rather suspected that our rate of climb would unnerve me. I counted Mississippis until I reached fifteen, then pulled Pegasus out of the climb into a smooth, widening spiral.

The main screen showed a green-tinged aerial view of downtown Augusta. And pretty much the rest of Augusta too, for that matter. It wasn’t a big place. There seemed to be no traffic at all.

“Floyd,” I called, “what time is it?”

Floyd didn’t answer. I glanced over at him. He had his eyes tightly shut, and his hands trembled as he clutched the arms of his chair in a death grip.

“Floyd!” I yelled. “You’ve got a watch. What time is it?”

Floyd opened his eyes and slowly looked down at his left wrist, twisting it against his restraining strap. “It’s ten after eight.”

“Thanks.” Ten after eight on a Sunday night. Where was the street traffic in Augusta? State Street should be quiet, and the refinery didn’t run night shifts on the weekend now that the war was over, but the highway should still be busy. I studied the aerial view. I couldn’t see any traffic. Had the MPs Ollie talked about shut down the whole town?

“Vernon Dunham,” said Pegasus.

“Yeah?”

“I believe that I have located your father.”

The view of Augusta on the main screen shifted to the simplified schematics I had seen back at the farm. It jumped through several levels of magnification until I was looking at a residential street. Houses lined both sides of the streets, and there were large numbers of bright spots clustered inside of them. One spot in the back of one of the houses flashed purple.

“The highlighted signature is a human-normal concentration of calcium with an unusual signature of moderately pure steel.”

Something about the street that looked familiar. “Where is that?” I asked.

“Three streets north and three streets east of the central intersection below us.”

“Broadway Street?” It was Doc Milliken’s house. That was why the street looked familiar. I was looking at Broadway Street, the street where I had lived until this morning. Dad was in the back of Doc Milliken’s house. And his spot was bright as anyone else’s.

He was alive! For now.

Had Milliken sold out his war buddy? The things these old men had hidden from us all. “Does that bright glow mean that Dad is still alive?” I whispered.

“I do not detect signatures of decay,” said Pegasus. “His signature is almost fully isomorphic to the normal individuals in the immediate area. I can estimate lowered interior temperature, which I believe is a sign of distressed or subnormal functionality.”

“Can we pick him up?”

“I have no medical facilities for humans,” said Pegasus.

“But we could fly him into Wichita and leave him at the hospital, right?” St. Francis, I figured. They knew all about the hole in Dad’s head. Some of the doctors even knew about the hole in Dad’s heart. Plus Wichita was in Sedgwick County, which meant that it would be harder for Sheriff Hauptmann to get at Dad.

“Where is Wichita?”

Pegasus seemed to know so much about Butler County that I was surprised it didn’t know where Wichita was. “A big city fifteen miles west of here,” I said.

“I am aware of it. Do you wish to land near the structure where your father is being held?”

“Yes!” I yelled. “As close as you can. Surprise will be important.”

Just like with Mrs. Bellamy, except Doc Milliken probably didn’t have two groups of killers duking it out by firelight.

“Let me take control. You do not have the necessary skills to land me in such a restricted approach environment.”

I was disappointed, but Pegasus was right. There was no way I could land it right smack in Doc Milliken’s yard. And I really wanted to see the look on the old bastard’s face when I showed up to claim Dad for good and all.