‘Yes. It might be the smart thing to do—just in case.’
Again in air, Cloud found that the activity, while still very high, was not too high for his heaviest bomb, but that it was fluctuating too rapidly. He could not get even five seconds of trustworthy prediction, to say nothing of ten. So he waited, as close to the horrible center of disintegration as he dared.
The flitter hung poised in air, motionless, upon softly hissing under-jets. Cloud knew to a fraction his height above the ground. He knew to a fraction his distance from the vortex. He knew the density of the atmosphere and the velocity and direction of the wind. Hence, since he could also read, closely enough, the momentary variations in the cyclonic storms within the crater, he could compute very easily the course and velocity necessary to land the bomb in the exact center of the vortex at any given instant of time. The hard part—the thing that no one had as yet succeeded in doing—was to predict, for a time far enough ahead to be of any use, a usably close approximation to the vortex’s quantitative activity.
Therefore Cloud concentrated upon the dials and gauges in front of him; concentrated with every fiber of his being and with every cell of his brain.
Suddenly, almost imperceptably, the sigma curve gave signs of flattening out. Cloud’s mind pounced. Simultaneous differential equations; nine of them. A quadruple integration in four dimensions. No matter—Cloud did not solve problems laboriously, one operation at a time. Without knowing how he had arrived at it, he knew the answer; just as the Posenian or the Rigellian can perceive every separate component particle of an opaque, three dimensional solid, but without being able to explain to any Tellurian how his sense of perception works. It just is, that’s all.
By virtue of whatever sense or ability it is which makes a mathematical prodigy what he is, Cloud knew that in exactly seven and three-tenths seconds from that observed instant the activity of the vortex would match precisely the rating of his heaviest bomb. Another flick of his mental switch and he knew exactly the velocity he would require. His hand swent over the studs, his right foot tramped down hard upon the firing pedal; and, even as the quivering flitter rammed forward under five Tellurian gravities of acceleration, he knew to the thousandth of a second how long he would have to hold that acceleration to attain that velocity. While not really long—in seconds—it was much too long for comfort. It would take him much closer to the vortex than he wanted to be, in fact, it would take him almost to the crater’s rim.
But he stuck to the calculated course, and at the precisely correct instant he released his largest bomb and cut his dive. Then, in a continuation of the same motion, his hand slashed down through the beam of light whose cutting would activate the Bergenholm and make the vessel inertialess—safe from any form whatever of physical violence. For an instant nothing happened, and for that instant Cloud sat appalled. Neutralization of inertia took time! Not that he had ever been told that it was instantaneous—he had just assumed so. He had never noticed any time-lapse before, but now it seemed to be taking forever!
After that one instant of shocked inaction he went into ultra-speed action; kicking in the little vessel’s all-out eight-G drive and whirling her around as only a flitter or a speedster can whirl; only to see in his plate the vortex opening up like a bell-
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flower, or like a sun going nova.
Cloud’s forebodings were more than materialized then for it was not only the bomb that was going off. The staggeringly immense energy of the vortex was merging with that of the detonating duodec to form an utterly indescribable explosion.
In part the flood of incandescent lava in the pit was beaten downward by the sheer, stupendous force of the blow; in part it was hurled abroad in masses, gouts, and streamers. And the raging blast of the explosion’s front seized the fragments and tore and worried them to bits, hurling them still faster along their paths of violence. And air, so densely compressed as to act like a solid, smote the walls of the crater, Those walls crumbled, crushed outward through the hard-packed ground, broke up into jaggedly irregular blocks which hurtled screamingly in all directions.
The blast-wave or explosion front buffeted the flyer while she was still partially inert and while Cloud was almost blacked out and physically helpless from the frightful linear and angular accelerations. The impact broke his left arm and right leg; the only parts of his body not pressure-packed. Then, milliseconds later, the debris began to arrive.
Chunks of solid or semi-molten rock slammed against the hull, knocking off wings and control-surfaces. Gobs of viscous slag slapped it liquidly, freezing into and clogging up jets and orifices. The little ship was knocked hither and thither by forces she could no more resist than can a floating leaf resist a cataract; Cloud’s brain was addled as an egg by the vicious concussions which were hitting him so nearly simultaneously from so many different directions.
The concussions and the sluggings lightened … stopped … a vast peace descended, blanket-wise. The flitter was free—was riding effortlessly away on the outermost, most tenuous fringes of the storm!
Cloud wanted to faint, then, but he didn’t—quite. With one arm and leg and what few cells of his brain were still in working order, he was still in the fight. It did not even occur to him, until long afterwards, that he was not going to make any effort whatever to avoid death.
Foggily, he tried to look at the crater. Nine-tenths of his visiplates were dead, but he finally got a view. Good—it was out. He wasn’t surprised—he knew it would be.
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His next effort was to locate the secondary observatory, where he would have to land; and in that, too, he was successful. He had enough intelligence left to realize that, with practically all of his jets clogged and his wings and tail shot off, he couldn’t land his flitter inert. He’d have to land her free.
Neal Cloud was not the world’s best pilot. Nevertheless, by dint of light and somewhat unorthodox use of what few jets he had left, he did land her free. A very good landing, considering —he almost hit the observatory’s field, which was only one mile square—and having landed her, he inerted her.
But, as has been intimated, his brain wasn’t working quite so good; he had held his ship inertialess for quite a few seconds longer than he thought, and he did not even think of the terrific buffetings she had taken. As a result of these things, however, her intrinsic velocity did not match, anywhere nearly, that of the ground upon which she lay. Thus, when Cloud cut his Ber-genholm, restoring thereby to the flitter the absolute velocity and the inertia she had before going free, there resulted a distinctly anticlimactic crash.
There was a last terrific bump as the motionless vessel collided with the equally motionless ground; and ‘Storm’ Cloud, Vortex Blaster, went out like the proverbial light.
Help came, of course; on the double. Cloud was unconscious and the flitter’s port could not be opened from the outside, but those were not insuperable obstacles. A plate, already loose, was torn away; the pilot was undamped and rushed to Base Hospital in the ‘meat-crate’ standing by.
Later, in a private office of that hospital, the head of the Vortex Control Laboratory sat and waited—not patiently.
‘How is he, Lacy?’ he demanded, as the surgeon-marshal entered the room. ‘He’s going to live?’
‘Oh, yes, Phil—definitely yes,’ Lacy replied, briskly. ‘A very good skeleton; very good indeed. His screens stopped all the really bad radiation, so the damage will yield quite readily to treatment. He doesn’t really need the Phillips we gave him— for the replacement of damaged parts, you know—except for a few torn muscles and so on.’
‘But he was pretty badly smashed up—I helped take him out, you know—how about that arm and leg? He was a mess.’
‘Merely simple fractures—entirely negligible.’ Lacey waved aside with an airy gesture such minor ills as broken bones. ‘He’ll
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be out in a couple of weeks.’
‘How soon can I see him? Business can wait, but there’s a personal matter that can’t.’
‘I know what you mean.’ Lacy pursed his lips. ‘Ordinarily I wouldn’t allow it, but you see him now. Not too long, though, Phil; he’s weak. Ten minutes at most.’
‘QX. Thanks.’ A nurse led the visiting Lensman to Cloud’s bedside.
‘Hi, stupe!’ he boomed, cheerfully. ‘ “Stupe” being short for “stupendous”, this time.’
‘Ho, chief. Glad to see somebody. Sit down.’
‘You’re the most-wanted man in the galaxy, not excepting Kimball Kinnison. Here’s a spool of tape, which you can look at as soon as Lacy will let you have a scanner. It’s only the first one. As soon as any planet finds out that we’ve got a sure-enough-vortex-blower-outer who can really call his shots—and that news gets around mighty fast—it sends in a double-urgent, Class A Prime demand for you.’