Absolutely beautiful.

He dropped back and verified that the compound had not exploded. This was part of their orders. The machinery and stored planes were apparently intact.

With no atmosphere to breathe and no fuel to fly, with ninety percent of its personnel probably dead, the minesite in Cornwall was a write-off. That paid for a lot of crimes.

Dunneldeen fell in beside the transport. “What's a Tolnep?" asked Dunneldeen. Dwight didn't know either, but Dunneldeen supposed he did look strange in a Chinko air mask and U.S. Air Force stratosphere flying gear.

They had already agreed on a new and wonderful plan Dunneldeen had thought up. They had almost six hours of radio silence left. Orders complete and time on their hands.

Dunneldeen was related to the Chief of Clanfearghus, and besides there was a lass he had not seen for nearly a year.

They hoped the other fourteen minesite attack planes had done as well. Of course, perhaps not with the same style

They headed for Scotland.

Zzt had sunk into deep apathy.

The gas drone roared on, deafening, cold, and dark.

That silly dimwit Nup!

Zzt had thought at first that the engine sounds he heard were just some rattles in this old relic, but after a while his trained ear could pick the sound out separately from the din in here. He listened in different parts of the cheerless drone and then at the flapping door. It was the Mark 32! The

Mark 32, “Hit 'Em Low, Kill 'Em,” heavy armored, ground strafer. Nup was flying escort to the drone?

Zzt had puzzled and puzzled on it and in fact had done little else. At first Zzt was all hope. He thought Nup had followed him out of the hangar intending to lower a ladder to the open door and snatch him out of here. But Nup seemed to be utterly unaware of the fact that there was an open door and was flying on the opposite side of the drone from it.

True, Zzt had not briefed him at all. The busted lamp bulb had mostly been talking about Bolbods and rumors in Psychlo that they were the next target. What nonsense! Zzt went over it carefully. No, in the rush of trying to get out and at those attacking Tolneps with a ground strafer, he had simply raced around asking whether anyone had been checked out on a Mark 32 and had slammed Nup into the copilot seat and then had had to go attend to that drone.

He dimly remembered his last words to Nup. They were, “Come on!” And he had been surprised when Nup hadn't run after him to the drone.

Instead of mopping up the Tolneps, Nup was out there flying escort in a ground strafer. He might have been checked out but he certainly didn't know what it was for. Why, with that Mark 32 he could batter down a whole city! And nothing could penetrate its hide. It was a support plane, a support plane for ground troops. No ground fire could touch it. No interceptor ships could even scratch its hide. And what was Nup doing with it? Riding escort to a drone that needed none.

Zzt got bitter. Damn Terl and damn

Nup!

Then as the huge drone with its deafening engines rolled along to the devils-knew-what destination, Zzt began to realize that Nup didn't know he was aboard!

A bit later, when he looked at his watch, Zzt realized that that Mark 32 was going to run out of fuel. Wherever they were in this dark night, that

Mark 32 was a write-off. He hadn't put fuel in it for such a trip because he didn't have cartridges, and a Mark 32 had no great range anyway, being intended for local use.

Well, Zzt had plenty of breathe-gas. He had a gun, he had a wrench.

For a while he monkeyed around with the preset box armor, thinking he might be able to open it and change it. But without keys or the means to make them, not even a piece of blast artillery could open it. When they said “armored” they sure meant these damned old gas drones.

So he had finally slumped down on the cold plates in the forward end of the ship and in apathy decided to last it out. In a day or two or three this thing would land. There was nothing in it to cushion anyone from the rough landings these made, but Zzt imagined he would survive it.

Just sit and wait. That was all he could do.

Damn Terl! Damn Nup! Damn the company!

And all on half-pay and no bonuses.

Jonnie was searching for the drone. Every viewscreen was flashing.

Down below the cold Arctic spread out, visible in the screens, invisible to direct sight. He remembered it from his last trip across it. A forbidding array. Once down in it you were dead: if not from direct cold on an ice flow, then from immersion in those waters.

As nearly as he could judge, the gas drone was somewhere ahead only a few minutes now. Shortly he should have it on his screen.

He was a little bit disturbed about the girls and Thor. He had not seen them on his screens as he went by. Of course he was by then very high. The spot of light he saw might be their fire, but it also might be the planes still burning. He had wasted too much time already and help was on the way to them. He remembered their numb faces when they realized he was leaving them there. But they must be all right. Probably they were at the Academy or the compound by now. Maybe the parson had been driving very fast. A mine ground car could do over sixty on rough terrain.

He hoped the other planes had reached the minesites and done their jobs. There was still five hours of radio silence yet to go. He wished he could open up on this radio and yell to them, “Hey, anybody that's done in his minesite, get up here to such and such coordinates and help blast this confounded drone.” But he didn't dare. It might cost some of them their lives by alerting their targets. They all had extra fuel and then some. They all had spare ammunition. But if any had had to delay or were waiting for an optimal moment to pounce on a minesite and he opened up, it could throw their lives away. He wasn't about to kill any Scots to save his own hide. When radio silence opened and Robert didn't hear from him, Robert would converge them to handle the drone. Late, maybe, but a second chance. He hoped it wouldn't come to that for their friends in Scotland would be endangered.

Maybe he was searching for something that was wave cancelled. That escort ship was his hope. Maybe it had peeled off or gone somewhere else. It's blip should be visible!

Ah, now. What was that tiny spark of green on the viewscreen? Another iceberg? No, the height telltale read four thousand two hundred twenty-three feet. Speed? Speed?

Three hundred two miles per hour! He had the escort on the screen. His gloved hands danced on the console. He braked down from hypersonic, dropping abruptly to five thousand feet in a descent as fast as a firing rocket. He cushioned at the bottom, feeling a trifle squashed for a moment. Easy, take it easy. Size up this escort.

He got it bright and clear in infrared. There was the drone beside it. One thing at a time. This escort was first target.

What was that plane? He had never seen anything like it before. Lowslung, flat, minimum skids...it looked like it was mainly armor!

Suddenly he realized that his guns might not even dent it. He had seen a tank bazooka flash against its side without affecting it in the least. He had a sinking feeling. Not only was the drone renowned as impregnable, but here was an escort ship that-

His mind raced with possibilities. Robert the Fox sometimes said, “When you only have two inches of claymore use ten feet of guile.” What did that escort know about him?

He reached for the local command radio switch. The range was only about twenty miles.

A torrent of angry Psychlo words hit him: “It’s about time somebody showed up! I should have been relieved of this job hours ago! What kept you?” Angry. Very angry!