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. Finally, 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 windshield all argued against it; but even the bare possibility was somehow twice as terrifying, here under a mountain, as it would have been in the open. With so enormous a mass of rock pressing down on him, and the ravening energies of a sun perhaps waiting to break loose by his side No, no; it was a fighter, and the pilot might somehow still be alive. He almost ran to get the electrode net off the truck.