“What did they say?” demanded Dunneldeen.

“I got it all on a disc,” said Dwight. He started the disc. It said "Nup, you crap brain, wake up!”

Dwight said he had at once sent the boy to tell Dunneldeen to scramble and then he himself had gone straight up. Yes, the sudden roar of Dwight’s own engines was there on the disc.

The disc played on.

“Drone?” said Dunneldeen. "Zzt? There was a transport chief named

Zzt.”

“Well, he was out there some place in a drone!” said Dwight. He had gone up as high as he could go. About two hundred thousand feet. As fast as he could go. “Almost tore my heart and lungs out with gravity,” said Dwight.

Then he heard complete instructions in Psychlo about remanding on top of a drone in front of a door so Zzt could get out of the drone.

“There is no drone that big,” said Dunneldeen. “Not that I know of.”

Dwight had turned on every search instrument he had. The transmission had been coming from the northwest. He had sped in that direction. He had gotten it on his scope. It was traveling three hundred two miles per hour, a very positive blip. It was clear weather where the thing had been; this cloud cover and rain was ahead of it.

He played some more transmission. Somebody named "Snit" was still in the drone but no explanation why.

This was mad because drones didn't have pilots. But how could anybody fly anybody out of a drone? And then somebody was taking fuel out of the drone in an ore basket and the other Psychlo said he was leaving the drone.

“Then why are you here?” demanded Dunneldeen, turning toward the passenger plane. “Why didn't you attack it?”

“It blew up,” said Dwight. “I saw it visual, eyeball! It looked like thirty lightning storms! It curved down. It probably went into the sea. I scanned the whole area. There was a little blip left; probably when it sank it had some debris. And then that was gone. It just isn't out there anymore on any scope. So I came back here.”

Dunneldeen played the disc through again. Dunneldeen pulled out the instrument recorders. They told the same story. Heat and then gone.

Dunneldeen looked at the sky. “You better go back up there and patrol in that direction.”

“There won't be any blip,” said Dwight. “And this overcast is high. The thing was flying at about five thousand feet and you won't be able to see a thing visually. The overcast goes up to at least ten. There's no blip,” finished Dwight.

Dunneldeen turned and looked at the castle ruin, gaunt and very old in the morning rain and mist. Two miles away and it was drifting in and out of visibility.

What was that all about? Had the battle of the compound been lost? What drone? And why had it blown up? The clan Chiefs would be assembling and he had a lot of things to do today.

Jonnie drifted up out of a pit of black pain. He tried to orient himself. The drone motors were like shouting anger in his ears. His arms were hanging down into a gap in the floor plating. Blood had run along the sleeves and dried.

With a start of alarm he thought of Zzt and reached for the revolver. It was gone, the lanyard snapped in the blast. The blast! Zzt was also gone and so was the Mark 32. And so was anything that would let this ancient monster be located on a screen.

He lifted himself up with considerable effort. He was still tied with the safety line. He found it very hard to think connectedly, and he wondered for a bit why he was tied to the line. His back hurt, one more pain in a confused welter of it. He realized the safety line had pulled him back inside.

It was awfully hard to think, and he recognized that he was getting worse, not better. He was nauseated. Hunger. It must be that he was nauseated from hunger.

He got to his knees. The drone was no longer rolling. That was a relief. He turned and then stared.

Through the door, bright tendrils of mist and fog were curling in. It was a storm. He was flying through a storm.

Wait. It was light out there. Daylight. Well-advanced daylight.

How long had he been out? It must be hours.

He spun on his knees, thinking to see the gas canisters dropping gas. He had no way to tell that. Were they already past Scotland? Had the drone already done part of its work?

He got to the door and tried to spot a brighter area in the storm that might tell him where the sun was. It was too thick. He wasn't thinking well; he realized he had reverted to being a mountain man. There were compasses in the plane. He opened the door and saw the havoc Zzt had made with the radio smashup. It distracted him. Then he realized he had opened the door to look at the compasses and did so. When he leaned over it felt like somebody was hitting his skull with a sledge hammer. He felt for the compress on his head. It was still there. No, the compasses. Look at the compasses.

He was heading southeast. The course to Scotland would have curved over like that. He couldn't be sure. He went back to the door and tried to look down. He nearly fell. He couldn't see anything down there. All rain and mist.

Then he remembered the ship had gas ports in the bottom. He crawled painfully to the floor plate he had removed and looked past the motor housings. No daylight was coming up.

His air mask seemed to be suffocating him. He recalled it had been askew when he woke.

Of course! The drone had dropped no gas yet. He'd be dead.

Well, he wasn't dead. Pretty well on the way to it with this head, but he wasn't dead. Therefore the drone had not yet dropped gas.

Not until then had Jonnie thought about what was going to happen to himself. He had a feeling that it didn't really matter. He knew his head was staved in. He had lost an awful lot of blood. But he ought to make a gesture, some rudimentary effort, just to say he had. Say to whom? He was out of radio contact. The drone was wave-neutralized to any screen. There was not the slightest chance of the drone being seen visually in this storm. Down under him would be sea or an even less friendly mountainside if the blast disabled his plane. Battle planes were pretty well armored, but firing his own guns in an enclosed space, plus the mines, plus the fuel of the drone, was going to make a pretty big bang.

His jet backpacks were gone. He rummaged about in the back of the plane. Must remember not to lean forward. That's what blacked him out. A brief moment of hope. A life raft. He pulled it out. The automatic inflation cartridges were long since duds. It had a little manual pump. He started to pump it up. Orange colored. Some tinsel on it. Then he realized he was being stupid. If he inflated it he couldn't get it back in the plane. He knew the plane would sink. He wouldn't be able to get it out. The wind was tugging at the half-inflated raft. A wave of blackness came over him and the door draft casually flicked it out of his hands. It went away into the storm. Gone. It had all been a waste of time.

He got into the plane. He had some blankets. He had been hurt in the earlier crash; the map case had not been enough. So he padded his knees and the windscreen with blankets.

He realized he had not checked for loose objects. They were deadly. He took the blankets away and looked in the rear of the plane behind him. Littered! A backward jolt of the plane would have made them into projectiles.

Wearily he got out and began to chuck things out through the door. Clip after clip of assault rifle ammunition. A shovel, whatever that was doing here. A sample pick. Odds and ends. He snugged down the cable ladder and ore net equipment of the plane. He put the food bag and his own pouch under the seat.

More nauseated than ever, he got back in the seat and restored the blanket cushions. He wrapped the oversized security belts around him twice and up so they would keep his head from snapping forward.