Rocket Science

Chapter Fourteen

As we spiraled back down, the ground below flowing smoothly past the view screens, Floyd finally spoke again. “Are we landing?” he asked timidly.

“Yes.” Despite my hard feelings towards him, I was starting to feel a little sorry for Floyd. Not much — he was still a nasty bastard as far as I was concerned. Literally. But he was shell shocked. Fighting his dad, the trouble his mama was in. Me. No wonder my buddy was in a swivet.

“May I please get out when we land?”

“I suggest that you let him go,” said Pegasus behind my ear.

On the main screen, Doc Milliken’s house rotated toward us in a ghostly shade of green, growing larger with each spin the image took. I stared with longing at the glowing dot that was Dad for a moment before it penetrated to me that Pegasus had asked me to release Floyd.

“No!” I roared. They could both take that for an answer.

“Vernon…” Floyd began.

“Shut up, you filthy little creep,” I growled. “You dumped your mama in an outhouse, I don’t owe you nothing.”

Floyd began to sob, something I hadn’t heard him do since before we started grade school together. “I didn’t want to do it,” he shouted over his heaving breath. “Daddy and Mr. Neville made me.”

Pegasus began to speak. “Vernon Dunham, I do not think—”

“You shut up too, Pegasus. You don’t understand what’s going on here. This human stuff, parents and children, blood relatives. You’re just a God-damned machine.”

I didn’t really want to hurt Floyd any more, but he still disgusted me. He still deserved some kind of punishment, some kind of suffering. Underneath all that blond, white-toothed charm, he had become something nasty. Maybe the war had done it, maybe living in a house of secrets all his life. But either way, I would be damned if I was just going to let him get out of Pegasus and walk away into the night. Floyd was the one bad guy that I had been able to actually get my hands on, and I wasn’t letting go.

“Vernon Dunham,” said Pegasus. “You cannot judge him any more than you can judge me. He lives his own life with his own consequences. Until you have the power to give life or restore freedom, do not be so quick to take either away.”

This, from a computational rocket who would not shoot back at people trying to kill it, however ineffective their attacks.

“As it may be,” I said, hating the cold, hard tone in my voice but unable to control it. “He’s not getting out of here.”

“Vernon…” Floyd said. “You went for my mama. Let me help you.”

“No.” Why had he offered?

We touched down on Doc Milliken’s lawn. I unbuckled my belt and hobbled over to Pegasus’ hatch. I hadn’t realized it lying down, but my hip was killing me. I must have hurt it real bad in the fall I took back in the barn. Just to make things worse, it was my left hip, my good leg, so I limped with both feet. It hurt to walk. “Crud,” I hissed quietly. “Let me out.”

Pegasus opened the hatch. “Be safe, Vernon Dunham,” it said.

“Whatever you do, don’t let that little creep go,” I warned, slowly stepping through the hatch.

“Be careful,” Floyd mouthed, so low I almost couldn’t hear him.

Pounding on Doc Milliken’s door, I realized I had no plan for dealing with the situation. Heck, he was getting old. I had thirty years on him. Even banged up as I was, I could just knock him down.

I heard sirens down on the Wichita Highway. Probably I had a couple of minutes’ grace before the Sheriff’s Department, the Police Department and the United States Army showed up in the front yard. Landing an airplane on a residential lawn was pretty much guaranteed to attract attention, especially in a town as tightly wound as Augusta must have become today.

Certainly no one would be surprised to find me at the heart of things yet again.

The lights came on in the Millikens’ front room. Ruthie Milliken pulled back the lace curtain on the glass of the front door. Her mouth made an ‘O’ of surprise as she saw me, then she threw open the door.

“Vernon, you look awful,” she exclaimed. “Come in you poor dear. Merriwether isn’t here, he’s out with—” She stopped as she looked over my shoulder at Pegasus parked on the lawn. “Oh my stars,” she said. Behind me, the sirens getting closer. “What is that?”

“Top secret experimental project from the Boeing plant,” I said. “I stole it,” I added with my best imitation of an evil grin. “Now, I’m here for Dad. He’s in the back, in Doc’s surgery.” Too bad the Doc wasn’t there, too, I thought, but that also meant one less hassle for me tonight.

“Vernon, you must have had a bad knock on the head. Merriwether sent your father into Wichita to the hospital, and he—”

I pushed past her and hobbled through the parlor towards Doc Milliken’s office door.

“Hey, young man,” she called behind me. “You can’t just go in there!”

I tried the door, but it was locked. I stepped back and threw my weight against it. The door popped open and I landed shoulder first on the floor of Doc Milliken’s office. His old pigeon-hole desk towered above me. I had narrowly missed the pedestal in my collapse. Desk or not, the impact with the floor hurt like the blazes, so much I could barely stand up again. Good thing that lately pain had become an old friend to me. And I had to find Dad.

Ruthie Milliken came up behind me, grabbing my elbow as I reached my feet. “Vernon, I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but I can try to help.”

“Shut up!” I was instantly sorry, for Ruthie Milliken had always treated me well, ever since I was a child. “Your husband’s a foreign agent, he tried to kill Dad, and I think he tried to have me killed.” I thought of old Mrs. Swenson and her boarding house on fire. “He’s holding Dad prisoner back in the surgery.”

Mrs. Milliken put her hands on her hips and glared at me. “Vernon Dunham, how could you say such things? You have lost your wits completely.”

I turned away from her and gingerly walked across the office to the door of the surgery. It was locked, too. My right shoulder was telling me it had done all the door breaking it was going to do, and my left shoulder was just about the only part of my body that remained uninjured. I was pretty sure I couldn’t break this one down. Outside, sirens shrieked and tires squealed as the cavalry arrived. Unfortunately, they weren’t here to rescue me. I’d gone over to the side of the Indians, and everyone knew how that always turned out.

“Do you have the key to this?” I asked.

She glared at me. “If you think I’m going to—”

I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Mrs. Bellamy’s dead because of your husband.” Not precisely true, but it would do in a pinch. Besides, maybe they got her out before the fire swept the house. The very thought made me sick all over again. “My dad’s dying in there, and those cops outside are definitely here to shoot me first and ask you questions later. I don’t have time to argue. Now open the God-damned door. If Dad’s not in there, I’ll just sit down quietly on the floor and you can turn me over to the police yourself.”

Mrs. Milliken opened a drawer in the instrument cabinet by the door and pulled out a key. “I can assure you, Vernon, that no one is in here,” she said, opening the lock.

I stepped into the room and turned on the lights. Mrs. Milliken crowded in behind me. Outside, I heard shouting. In front of me was an operating table, a countered area like a small kitchen. Along the sink and the refrigerator there was an autoclave instead of a stove. Everything was white, except for the dark gray, blood-stained lump of blankets under the operating table.

“See?” she demanded. “There’s no—” Mrs. Milliken stopped as she saw the rolled-up blankets. A pool of blood leaked from one end onto the floor around the blanket.

I’ll give her credit, Mrs. Milliken didn’t scream. She got straight to work, like a good doctor’s wife should, and reached Dad before I did. Together we rolled him over.

The blanket, soaked in blood where it had met the floor, fell off his face. His lips were puffy and blue, and he was far too pale, but by some miracle he was still breathing. Pegasus’ scan had not lied.

My heart surged as my deepest worry lifted away. Dad looked like heck, but he was alive. And I had the world’s fastest ambulance waiting out on the lawn.

“Oh, Vernon, I’m so sorry,” she said quietly. “I knew Merriwether was under a lot of pressure, but to allow this… in his own surgery.” Shaking her head, Mrs. Milliken touched Dad’s temples, then his forehead. “He’s… he’s in shock.”

She didn’t have to say he was dying. Even I could figure that out. But I knew what to do about it. “Help me get him outside,” I said, pulling Dad out from under the table by the corners of the blanket. “I’m going to fly him to Wichita in my airplane.”

He opened his eyes and peered at me. “Vernon? Boy? Is that you?”

My eyes filled with tears again. “Yes sir, Dad, it’s me.” He was alive and I was never going to let him die.

“Where’s your mother, boy?” Dad asked. “We’re going to be late for church.”

I couldn’t say anything to that. I started to choke, trying to keep from crying in front of Mrs. Milliken. She stroked Dad’s forehead again. “It’ll be okay, Grady,” she said gently. “Vernon’s going to get you to the hospital now, and everything will be okay.”

Dad sighed and closed his eyes. I staggered to my feet, grabbing the wrapped blanket with both hands. “I’ve got to get him out into the yard,” I sniffed.

“I’ll help,” said Mrs. Milliken. She grabbed his feet and we staggered into the examining room. Out in the yard, I heard gunshots. The Doc’s wife didn’t even flinch at the noise.

We made it to the front door, where I had to stop from sheer fatigue. Standing behind the wall to one side, I peered out through the open door. Pegasus sat in the front yard, open hatch facing me. I could see the inviting orange glow only a few steps away.

The moon was out again, and the view was distressingly clear. Out in the street there were Police and Sheriff’s cars, and an Army deuce-and-a-half troop transport. The MPs must have gotten a land convoy in sometime this evening after I’d heard from Ollie. A plane buzzed overhead, rattling the old glass windows of the Milliken house. It was so loud that it had to be a fighter or an interceptor. The Army was serious about this, sending in combat aircraft at night over a civilian area.

“I don’t think I can make it to my airplane,” I said to Mrs. Milliken. “I’m pretty sure they’re going to shoot me as soon as they can get a clear line on me.”

“What have you done, Vernon?”

“As little as possible, believe me.”

“I do believe you.” She was quiet for a moment, looking tired. “I’m sorry. Merriwether… he got in too far. That horrible Morgan…” Her voice trailed off. “Blackmail or not, I don’t know what Merriwether was thinking to leave an injured man unattended like that. But I do I know how we can get the two of you out of here,” Mrs. Milliken said. “They won’t shoot me. Let me go out first, and you keep between me and them as we go. Once we get to your, ah, airplane, you’ll be out of their sight, and I’ll go distract them until you take off. Can you leave from our yard?”

I laughed, shaking my head. “Mrs. Milliken, you have the mind of a bank robber. And I mean that as a sincere compliment.”

“You’d best come back. I will straighten out Merriwether and that dratted Kenneth Hauptmann with Chief Davis and those nice Army men. Not even our sheriff can pressure the Army into something it doesn’t want to do. I know you’re a good boy, Vernon. None of this was your doing.”

Well, almost none of it, I thought. I should have ratted out Floyd at the train depot in the first place. Too late for that now.

Mrs. Milliken took Dad’s feet again. “I’m going out first, Vernon,” she said. We circled around each other to get her headed out first. My back complained mightily about taking Dad’s weight in my arms, but we had to get him to Wichita. I staggered through the door after Mrs. Milliken, crouching low to keep her between me and the police.

I could hear yelling from the street as we came out the door. “Hold your fire, by God! It’s Mrs. Milliken,” called a voice. I was pretty sure that was Chief Davis.

Mrs. Milliken marched straight toward Pegasus like she was going down the aisle to take Holy Communion. There must have been thirty guns pointed at her from the street but she didn’t flinch. We got to where Pegasus’ hull was between us and the cops, then she trotted the last few paces to the open hatch.

“You’ll have to lift him in yourself, Vernon” she gasped. “I’m an old woman and I don’t know if I can do it.”

I didn’t know how I was going to do that either, so I just boosted Dad up to the lip of hatch. Damn Floyd for being a murdering fool, I thought, or I could ask him for help. Overhead, the plane buzzed us again.

Great. I was going to have to deal with that when we took off, in a computational rocket with a conscience that wouldn’t allow it to fight back. Not that I wanted to shoot down one of our boys anyway. The pain of Dad’s weight against me made me grunt. I could feel something snap in my bad shoulder. I pushed him through the hatch by main force of character as much as anything, then climbed in after him.

That done, breath heaving, I turned to look at Mrs. Milliken. I couldn’t tell, but it looked like she was crying in the moonlight. “Take care of him, Vernon,” she said.

There wasn’t anything else to say, so I simply said, “Thanks.” I remembered our takeoff from the Bellamys’ barn, so I added, “You might want to hit the dirt right about now.”

I stepped over to the pilot’s seat and laid my body down in it. I ached so much I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to get up again, but that didn’t matter. Behind me, I heard the hatch hiss shut. I glanced at Floyd, who was looking over his shoulder at Dad. Floyd turned to smile weakly at me.

“Old man’s still alive, huh?” he asked. It was almost like talking to the old Floyd, my Floyd.

“Yeah.” Grudging, I gave into his attempt at good will. I grabbed the flight control handles and looked at the main viewer. It showed the array of cops and soldiers out in the street. They seemed to be getting ready to fire a volley at Pegasus. “Time to go,” I said out loud. “Mind the air traffic overhead.”

“Takeoff in three seconds,” said Pegasus in my ear. I hoped Dad wouldn’t be buffeted too much, then remembered how smoothly we had lifted from the burning barn. The next thing I knew, Broadway Street was getting smaller and smaller in the main viewer. I was glad to see Mrs. Milliken getting to her feet as we pulled away. The cops swarmed over her as I glanced at the other view screens.

I followed the highway into Wichita. I wanted to tend to Dad, but there really wasn’t much I could do for him in his current state. Pegasus needed me to navigate. We flew about two hundred feet above the asphalt, heading toward the city.

As we passed over the outskirts of Augusta, I saw that there was a roadblock set up along the dike at the west edge of town, right where the Cadillac had seized up on me. They were serious about cutting off the town, I realized. We overflew the roadblock with an air speed of at least three hundred miles per hour.

“We will be over metropolitan Wichita in about three minutes,” said Pegasus, “but we are being pursued by two North American P-51 Mustangs. Model ‘D’ versions.”

“How the heck do you know that?” I asked.

“I can see them on multiple frequencies.”

“No, no.” I shook my head. Pegasus was very smart, smarter than I without a doubt, but it could miss the obvious. “How do you know they’re P-51Ds?”

“The Luftwaffe provided me with an extensive set of Axis and Allied aircraft recognition data. I can resolve mechanical details at a power of ten thousand to one, so it is not difficult for me to match aircraft types already known to me.”

“Fine, fine.” This was another capability I could understand well enough to make me profoundly jealous. Would that I could inspect the fasteners I bought for Boeing with that level of detail. We’d never have another parts failure again. But where had the Army gotten Mustangs in eastern Kansas anyway? As far as I knew there wasn’t a fighter wing at military section of Wichita Municipal. “Are they going to catch us?”

“Not in open flight,” said Pegasus, “but when we land to discharge your father they will have a distinct operational advantage.”

And we were going to blow past the Beech, Cessna and Boeing plants and Wichita Municipal before reaching the St. Francis Hospital. The fighter pilots behind us would get awfully nervous when Pegasus started buzzing industrial sites essential to the war effort, or whatever we called that now. “What can you do about them?”

“Nothing,” said Pegasus. “The aircraft are too primitive for their pilots to survive the craft being disabled. I will not destroy them.”

“What will fifty caliber bullets do to you?”

“They will cause very little damage to me in flight,” said Pegasus, “as I generate my own shielding with a combination of electromagnetic manipulation and the atmospheric pressure waves on my airfoils. But when we set down to discharge your father, we will be vulnerable.”

I doubted that the Mustangs would follow us down to street level in Wichita. The pilots would have orders not to endanger the civilian population. Plus no pilot in his right mind would perform a low-altitude, high-speed pass over a big city, not even a hot dog fighter jock with murder in his eye. Too many radio masts, water towers, power lines and so forth. So our biggest danger would probably be in lifting out again.

“All right,” I said. “We’re just going to have to go in and hope for the best.” I looked at the screen. The Beech plant was approaching on the right. We were in Wichita. The highway was now Kellogg Street, and I could see traffic. I could also see wrecks happening on the road as drivers became distracted by the passage of Pegasus overhead.

Great, I thought. Just what we needed. More death and destruction. I hoped the people in the street below would be safe.

We flew past Wichita’s airport, in the process violating every flight rule I knew of regarding traffic patterns and approach procedure. The hospital was coming up, just past the corner of Murdock and 9th. I glanced up at the array of smaller screens. Pegasus showed a tail view of two Mustangs chasing us. They were clearing Wichita city limits as I banked steeply to make it down to Murdock Street and the hospital.

“Pegasus, we need to be at the entrance of that large white building three blocks ahead,” I said, releasing the control handles. “Mind the power lines.”

“I am aware of them,” said Pegasus.

I could swear it was acquiring a dry wit.

We slowed to a crawl, moving just above the street. I had no idea how Pegasus was able to remain airborne with such a low groundspeed. That certainly wasn’t a function of the computational rocket’s airfoils. People ran into buildings and dove to the sidewalks as we cruised along. I felt a bump through Pegasus’ deck as we grazed the top of a bus.

The tail view of the Mustangs rocked and spun as we tracked them flying overhead. After a moment, I could see them in the main viewer. They were turning to make a pass back at us. I prayed they wouldn’t shoot. The fifty caliber guns on those fighters would chew up the street below us like a rat through cheese.

Pegasus pitched down suddenly and landed with a gentle bump. “I suggest you conduct your business quickly, Vernon Dunham.”

The hatch opened behind me as I unclipped my seat straps. I jumped up and tried to grab Dad by the feet, to drag him towards the exit. My entire body protested. My hip was feeling worse, and I suspected I was dislocating my shoulder.

“Vernon,” Floyd said again. “Please. Let me help.”

Damn it all, I thought. “Cut him loose,” I told Pegasus.

Floyd rolled up out of his chair and got his hands under Dad’s shoulders. I climbed painfully out of the hatch and down to the street. We were right in front of the St. Francis Hospital, a three-story brick building with a long history. Following the aerial pursuit, a crowd gathered, keeping its distance from Pegasus. I realized how I must look in my torn bathrobe, bandaged and bruised as I was. Heck, my undershorts were showing.

I didn’t care. I had to get Dad to a doctor I could trust.

“What’s going on, Mac?” somebody yelled from the crowd.

That was a question I should have anticipated. I’d been so concerned with getting here I hadn’t planned any further. I thought fast. “Top secret military experiment. I’ve got an injured man here.” I tugged on Dad’s legs, trying to get him out of Pegasus as Floyd worked him from the other side, keeping his head from banging on the deck.

A couple of men from the crowd edged out across the open space toward me, obviously wary. One of them said, “Looks like a dead body to me.”

“He will be a dead body if I don’t get him into the hospital,” I said, grunting with the strain of Dad’s weight.

The two men stepped forward and grabbed Dad’s hips, lowering him gently to the ground as Floyd climbed out, still supporting my father’s shoulders. One of my new helpers, a sandy-haired fellow in a business suit, peered inside Pegasus’ hatch. “Gee, that’s pretty crazy stuff in there,” he said in a low voice.

“You don’t know the half of it, buddy,” I said, frantically trying to divide my attention between Dad, Floyd, and wherever the Mustangs had gotten to. On the ground at my feet, Dad began to cough. I bent down. “Dad, I’ve got to go. It will be okay. There’s doctors here, doctors we can trust.”

“Vernon,” he whispered, grabbing the lapel of my borrowed bathrobe. “I think I’m going to die. There’s something you need to know.” He started coughing again.

“You’re not going to die, Dad. No more dying today,” I said, patting him. His blankets had fallen away. Dad looked real bad, pale and shuddering.

“Hey, buddy,” Floyd said quietly, touching my arm.

“One sec,” I told him. I turned to the two men who had helped me. Both of them were staring. “Get a doctor, damn it.” The one wearing a cook’s uniform ran toward the hospital. I could hear sirens approaching, and the Mustangs finally made another pass overhead. They were waiting for Pegasus to lift off again.

Dad wheezed and poked me in the side with a finger. “Floyd Bellamy… Floyd…”

“Right here, Mr. Dunham,” Floyd said, kneeling to take Dad’s hand.

“I know,” I said. “It’s all right.” I stroked the old man’s temple. His skin felt soft and doughy. It was already chilly.

“Floyd is your brother, Vernon. You’ve got to know that. Floyd’s mine.” Dad coughed again. “We didn’t think Alonzo was coming back… Alma and I… we…” Dad collapsed flat on the pavement.

“I think you guys had better wait for the cops.” It was the second Good Samaritan, the sandy-haired fellow, turning away from his long peek inside Pegasus.

I punched the stranger in the kidney. It was a sucker punch, unfair as hell, but there were doctors and cops coming and a whole crowd watching and I had to get out. The poor chump fell down groaning, doubled over. Behind me, the crowd roared. I could hear them starting to run toward me.

“Go!” I shouted to Floyd, who scrambled through the open hatch. I heaved myself up to follow as quick as I could. I was so very tired.

Someone grabbed my leg.

The fighters were buzzing overhead again, their big Packard-built Merlin engines snarling like a cloud of mechanical hornets. Behind me, people were cursing, and someone threw a rock through the hatch.

“Pegasus,” I screamed, “lift off!” My hand had a death grip on a stanchion just inside the hatch.

There was a great whooshing sound, like steam venting from a locomotive. Pegasus began to pitch and roll as it pulled up, flinging me back and forth against the outside of the hull. The hand on my leg let go, accompanied by a desperate wail. I craned my neck around in time to see the man I’d punched, the sandy-haired man who’d helped Dad, drop thirty or forty feet into the angry crowd. His hat tumbled free as he fell, whipping through the air like a little black kite. I flinched away from the man’s fall to see white-clad doctors and nuns crowding around Dad. At least my father wasn’t being trampled in the rush.

Floyd dragged me the rest of the way into Pegasus’ cabin by main force. Even if I got out of all this without being killed, I couldn’t see any way of talking myself out of the trouble I was in. In addition to all the destruction and disruption I had caused in Augusta, I had now started a street brawl in Wichita, and maybe killed at least one man in my escape. A man that had helped my father live, at that.

Behind me, as the hatch closed, I heard a sharp hammering.

“You re-entered the cabin in a timely manner,” Pegasus announced. “The Mustangs have just opened fire on us.”

The thought of what those bullets would have done to my legs blazed through my mind on wings of terror and panic. I crawled toward the pilot’s chair. “Back to the refinery,” I said as I collapsed into a resting position. I turned my head to look at Floyd, my newfound half-brother to whom I had not so long ago promised messy retribution.

There wasn’t much for me to go back to, given the swathe of destruction I had left behind me. What about him? My half-brother had darned near killed his mother, then left behind some very angry men with very long memories, not the least of which was the man who had raised him as a son.

“Thank you,” I told him.

There was nothing else to say.