Rocket Science (24 page)

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.”