tifying marks, except for a red star at the nose; or rather,
a red asterisk.
Martinson’s torch lingered over the star for a moment,
but the adjutant offered no comment. He went around the
nose, MeDonough trailing.
On the other side of the ship was the death wound; a
small, ragged tear in the metal, not far forward of the tail.
Some of the raw curls of metal were partially melted.
Martinson touched one.
“Flak,” he muttered. “Cut his fuel lines. Lucky he didn’t
blow up.”
“How do we get in?” MeDonough said nervously. “The
cabin didn’t even crack. And we can’t crawl through that
hole.”
Martinson thought about it. Then he bent to the lesion in
the ship’s skin, took a deep breath, and bellowed at the top
of his voice:
“Hey in there! Open up!”
It took a long time for the echoes to die away. MeDonough
was paralyzed with pure fright. Anyone of those distorted,
ominous rebounding voices could have been an answer. Fi-
nally, however, the silence came back.
“So he’s dead,” Martinson said practically. “I’ll bet even
his footbones are broken, every one of ’em. Mac, stick your
hair net in there and see if you can pick up anything.”
“N-not a chance. I can’t get anything unless the electrodes
are actually t-touching the skull.”
“Try it anyhow, and then we can get out of here and let
the experts take over. I’ve about made up my mind it’s a
missile, anyhow. With this little damage, it could still go off.”
MeDonough had been repressing that notion since his
first sight of the spindle. The attempt to save the fuselage
intact, the piloting skill involved, and the obvious cabin