Эрл Гарднер - The Human Zero. The Science Fiction Stories of Erle Stanley Gardner

Certainly there was nothing about Arthur Forbes to suggest mental unbalance. He had talked too much at dinner, to be sure, but he had explained that. In the light of his explanation, his conduct seemed highly rational.

He was tall, spare, big-boned. His joints were large, made his hands and wrists awkward. His cheek bones were high and prominent; his eyes gray, framed in a network of wrinkles. A small mustache set off the square chin, the prominent nose. Tropical living had left him untouched by that flabby softness which so frequently comes to the white man.

Phil Nickers reached a sudden decision.

“Let’s start after that plane.”

Forbes shook his head.

“Not now. Get all the sleep you can today. The monkey will go back tonight, after the moon gets up.”

And so it was settled.

The late moon slipped over the eastern hills. Like a piece of pitted orange peel it glowed redly, giving a certain hazy, indefinite light.

Arthur Forbes stood concealed in the long shadow of a hedge. Night glasses were glued to his eyes.

“There he goes,” he said.

Through the still air sounded the throb of an engine, swelling in volume until it became a muffled roar. A silvery shadow glided smoothly along the field, quivered, hung poised, then zoomed upward.

Forbes snapped the glasses back into a case, looked at Nickers. Nickers was already stepping toward the pilot’s seat of the powerful plane.

“Not much of a place for a field, but we got in, and we can get out,” he said.

The motor throbbed to life. With blocks under the wheels, Nickers opened and closed the throttle, warming up the engine. He tested his gauges, manipulated the controls, glanced at Forbes, and nodded.

The motor slowed as Forbes jerked out the blocks, climbed into the inclosed cabin, adjusted safety belt, and once more adjusted the night glasses. His finger pointed northeast. Nickers nodded, opened the throttle. The plane glided swiftly. Jolts ran up from the landing wheels, jolts that became momentarily shorter, sharper. A hedge loomed ahead as an indistinct blotch of regular shadow. Phil pulled back the stick, gave her all she had.

Like a startled teal, the plane shot up into the air, banked, circled, and stretched out to the northeast. Phil throttled her down to moderate flying speed. The inclosed cabin shut out enough of the motor noise to make loud conversation audible.

Below them the ground, broken and hilly, slipped swiftly by. Roads showed in the moonlight, winding and twisting, following the contours of hills that were almost invisible from the plane. Houses on hilltops, native settlements, fields, the glint of water. The moon rose higher. The shadows shortened. The sky seemed a dreamy, silver haze.

Forbes kept his glasses at his eyes, gave Phil flying directions. But the plane ahead winged steadily to the northeast as a homing pigeon in flight. Once or twice when they seemed to be getting too close, Phil swung his plane in a circle rather than take elevation. They wanted to keep their quarry above them, so he would be outlined against the glow of the sky.

And then, after nearly an hour, Arthur Forbes tapped Phil on the knee.

“He’s changing his course. Perhaps he’s arrived,” he said.

But Phil frowned and banked. There had been no need for the observer’s remark. The plane ahead was plainly visible, and there was something in the way that course had been changed which suggested a return rather than one banking for a spiral to the landing field.

Phil dropped, seeking to make himself invisible against the ground below. They were now flying over an elevated plateau, cut with shadowed canons, timbered with a thick growth of trees. Ahead loomed a massive mountain wall.

Too late Phil realized the real significance of the maneuver of the other plane. By dropping close to the ground he had hoped to make himself invisible. But the moon was high enough to throw a shadow, and he came close enough to send a black shadow from his plane scudding over the tree tops. The air above him screamed into life. A twisting, diving apparition roared from the heavens; and, above the roar, punctuating it at intervals with steady regularity, sounded a rat-a-tat-tat-tat.

“A machine gun!” yelled Forbes. “He installed a machine gun on the job and trapped us.”

And so it seemed. They were flying low over a wilderness, far from the treaty lines. Below was only a forest, canons, tumbling streams. There was no place where a plane could land without crashing. And Murasingh was above them, mercilessly holding to their tail, raining machine gun bullets.

But Phil had superior speed. He jerked the throttle open, zoomed, banked, twisted, seemed to be sideslipping into the jagged tops of moonlit trees, swung, scudded along over the tree tops like a frightened fowl, then zoomed again.

Murasingh was outmaneuvered, left behind by the superior power and speed of the faster plane. The machine gun spat a spiteful farewell, and then Phil found himself holding his course without pursuit.

Forbes pointed to several holes in the fabric of the plane, a spattered series of zigzag cracks in the shatterproof glass of the cabin.

Nickers grinned, nodded, and held the course of the plane, climbing steadily, gaining altitude. Forbes swept the ground below with his night glasses, finally picked out the other plane, saw that it was turning back. Had they, then, been led on a wild-goose chase? Or was Murasingh seeking to cut off their escape, getting ready to swoop down upon them for a final burst of gunfire. It was a miracle they had not been shot down. But the giant plane continued to purr through the night.

Higher and higher they went. The moon slid up into the heavens, and a faint tinge of brassy light glittered over the eastern rim of the universe. But the ground below remained unchanged, a high plateau, covered with trees, interspersed with canons, rimmed by steep, rocky mountains that finally swept up into a sky-piercing tumble of jagged pinnacles.

It grew lighter rapidly. Phil knew that his only salvation lay in guarding against a surprise attack, and he chose to gain such an altitude the other could not hope to sit in the sky above him, waiting to make up for the deficient speed in a power dive.

It grew colder and lighter as they climbed. At eighteen thousand feet the ground below was but a blur of tumbled terrain. The tree tops blended together to give the impression of a level meadow.

Phil glanced at the gasoline gauge of the starboard tank, saw that the black half circle had swung so that it almost covered the top of the gauge. He pointed to it, shouted to Forbes.

“About half the gasoline supply is gone!”

Forbes nodded, sweeping the country below with his glasses. The sun came up, gilding them with cold radiance, but not, as yet, touching the country below, which still slumbered in the gray light of early dawn.

Phil sighed, swung the plane back. With half of their gasoline supply exhausted, prudence demanded that they swing back. To be caught in this country without gas would be fatal. He swung the cock to the port gasoline tank and settled back for a long period of steady flying. To his surprise, the motor coughed, missed, sputtered.

His frantic eyes swept the gauge on the port side, and then his fingers leaped to the cock, switching back to the depleted tank on the starboard side.

Neither man spoke. They had no need. Their eyes met in a single swift glance, then abruptly looked away. The port tank, carefully filled before their departure, showed an ominous black circle in the gauge. One of the bullets from the machine gun had punctured it.

Now, at an altitude of nearly nineteen thousand feet, the plane had enough gasoline left for only a few minutes of flight. Behind them the ground was known. It offered no opportunity for a forced landing. Ahead lay their only chance. The motor would work more efficiently at a lower elevation, but their height gave them a greater gliding radius.