George Martin - Deuces Down

He wiggled out of sight and closed the hatch behind him. We heard several clicks as the latches fired, and we were sealed in.

“One minute,” Dearborn said. “Hold on, people. You’re going to take the ride of your lives!”

Eva-Lynne reached back to take my hand. I felt no fear: I was too convinced of Dearborn ’s luck to think I could be killed in his presence. But I felt trapped in the pressure suit, my movements hampered.

Spang! Something struck Quicksilver! “What was that?” Eva-Lynn said.

“I think the SOBs are shooting at us,” Dearborn said. “Hang on, we’re go.” And go we were-

For perhaps a hundred yards down the runway. Even with my limited visibility, I could see the flashes of bullets striking the pavement in front of us. Then one of them struck home, making the cockpit ring. Then I heard hissing.

Red warning lights erupted on Dearborn ’s console. A bell sounded. “Goddammit,” he snapped. With inhuman-or joker-calm, he tried to stop our rollout. The whole vehicle shook as we skidded off the runway. Only then did I realize just how fast we’d been going.

Quicksilver slewed to the left and slammed into something immobile. Eva-Lynne and I were thrown to the left; I hit the bulk-head, though my harness and suit protected me from injury. Eva-Lynne seemed to be fine.

Not so Dearborn. Perhaps his harness had been loose. In any case, he had hit the instrument panel. He was breathing hard, waving weakly at the two of his with a free hand, “Get out!”

I obeyed, hitting the emergency egress switch on the canopy. It flew off with a muffled thump! The next few moments were chaotic as I unstrapped, helped Eva-Lynne, and got both of us out of Quicksilver.

Lights blinded us. Shadowy figures boiled out of the darkness, swarming over Quicksilver and Dearborn like insects.

Eva-Lynne and I were hustled to our feet, and half-dragged to the hangar building. I still had my helmet on, so sounds were muffled and vision was impaired. I saw some of the Quicksilver team members lined up against the wall, hands (or, in the case of Kafka, pincers) in the air, as beefy nats and jokers in the black leathers of Hell’s Angels held them at gunpoint.

I saw Sobel lying face-down on the ground just outside the hangar, a trail of blood marking the path of his death crawl.

We were shoved into the same equipment room where poor Sobel had helped us into our suits not an hour earlier. We barely had time to catch our breath when Mr. Skalko entered, accompanied by several of his thugs. “You,” he said, pointing to me. “Out.”

I was hauled to my feet and essentially stripped of my suit. Then, wearing nothing but a T-shirt and shorts, I was marched out of the hangar. Dearborn and Eva-Lynne remained behind.

“You cut it a little close,” Mr. Skalko said.

“Tominbang moved up the launch.” I’m sure I sounded angry, because I was. I had assumed that Skalko would take action once he knew the Quicksilver launch was imminent. I hadn’t expected that action to be a mob shootout.

“I know that now. Good thing for you.” I’m sure Skalko knew all about Tominbang’s plans. For one thing, he had surely interrogated the poor man. For another, I doubt I was his only spy inside the program. “Kind of a shame,” he said. He actually sighed. “I was still thinking about it when you called.”

“Why did you stop it? The money?”

Mr. Skalko looked at me with amusement. “You mean, what he stole?”

“Yes.”

“I deal with stuff like that all the time. No, I had to kill this whole idea. Going to the Moon.”

Now I was as intrigued as I was angry. “Why would you care?”

“One flight means nothing. It’s what happens after the flight.” He looked at me as if weighing my worthiness. Apparently I was found worthy. “Once you’ve proven you can do this, other people will follow. They’ll build a little outpost up there. Then a bigger one. Then a whole damn city.

“And to service that city, they will have a regular system of transportation that I can’t control .” He stood there, in the darkness of a desert night, looking at the stars. “Things will come into this country that I can’t stop. That would be bad for my business.”

I saw the point. Not that I cared. “What’s going to happen to them?” I said, meaning Dearborn and Eva-Lynne.

“I don’t know yet.” He saw that I was ready to go back into the hangar. “I want you to go home.”

He tossed me my car keys. I don’t know if he found them with my clothes, or whether he had his own set, which would have been a typical Skalko touch. “Oh, by the way,” he said, “we’re ending our association.”

In spite of the fact that I wanted our association to end-better yet, to have ended some time prior to this-I started to protest. Mr. Skalko held up his hand. “You’ve done good work. You’ve been paid well. But I know people, and this one is going to haunt you. Keep your mouth shut and you don’t need to see me again.”

I had just stepped out of the shower, having taken inventory of a new set of bruises, when I heard wheels crunching on the gravel drive. By the time I was dressed, there was a knock at my door.

Dearborn and Eva-Lynne. He was limping, and Eva-Lynne was supporting him.

Skalko’s men had let them go. After all, the purpose of the attack had been to stop the flight to the Moon. Tominbang had already been punished.

I wanted both to spend the night, but Dearborn shook his head. “Co-pilot, we’re not out of the game yet. We need your car.”

The drive to Los Angeles took two hours, perhaps because it was Friday night, with the holidays approaching. South from my place in Lancaster, through the Antelope Valley into the San Fernando Valley. Then down the new freeway into western Los Angeles. I asked Dearborn several times where I was heading, but he just smiled (or grimaced; he was clearly in pain). All he would tell me was my next turn.

Eva-Lynne dozed in the back seat.

Eventually we arrived at Douglas Field, a small airport in Santa Monica bordering the plant where so many aircraft had been built over the decades. The Douglas Company had moved its manufacturing elsewhere, leaving behind a number of huge, empty buildings. I was directed to drive up to one of them.

Eva-Lynne woke as the car stopped. “What are we doing here?” she said.

Dearborn postponed his answer until he had unlocked a side door.

We walked into a hangar much like the one at Tehachapi-Kern. Even more strangely, a Quicksilver vehicle sat in this middle of this one, too. And my old friend, Kafka, was busy in the cockpit!

“ Here is where we’re going to launch the first flight to the Moon,” Dearborn said, looking pale but satisfied. As Eva-Lynne and I stared in wonder-and began to recognize other members of the team from Tehachapi-Kern-he explained that Tominbang had always felt that Mr. Skalko would eventually learn of his plans, and strike at him. So he had paid for modifications to a second Quicksilver vehicle, the “ground spare” originally ticketed for the museum!

That was astounding enough. But then Eva-Lynne asked another question: “You’ve got another vehicle. Great. But you can’t possibly fly it.”

“I know,” Dearborn said. “Mike!” he called.