The Rocketeer (13 page)

Shoving their way through the crowd toward the grandstand, Cliff and Peevy shouted at each other. “Is he crazy?!” demanded Cliff. “He hasn’t flown in years!”

“If he drifts into the race lanes, he’ll kill somebody!” Peevy shouted back.

On the observation platform, Bigelow was watching the proceedings. His initial pleasure—not to mention sense of satisfaction at watching hotshot Secord make a fool of himself—had quickly turned to annoyance and even a vague sort of fear. “That’s not the routine! What the hell is Secord trying to pull?”

He turned, about to demand answers from someone, and immediately got one when Cliff and Peevy stepped up onto the deck. His big jaw worked for a moment, uncomprehending, and then he sputtered out, “Who’s in the—”

“It’s Malcolm!” said Cliff urgently. At first he’d been prepared to deck Bigelow, assuming that the circus owner had been so fixated on getting the clown act up there—it sold tickets, after all—that he’d given Malcolm the chance that the old pilot had been begging for. Given it to him even though he knew what could—and probably would—happen. But the distinct shade of white that Bigelow’s face had turned upon seeing Cliff made the young flier realize that Bigelow was as shocked as anyone.

“Holy . . .” stammered Bigelow, and then he shouted to the flag man, “Signal that Standard down!
Now!”

It wasn’t necessary. Malcolm was already endeavoring to get down. But a landing was a tricky thing, even to a practiced pilot in top-of-the-line equipment. Malcolm, who had seen the inside of a cockpit only in his dreams for the last decade or two, was attempting to pilot a flying pine box.

The Standard drifted into the path of three oncoming racers. The two lead pilots barrel-rolled away in two different directions. The third plane climbed hard as Malcolm yelled with panic and jammed his stick forward and to the side. The Standard heeled over and angled directly at the flag man, who was flapping his flags as if he had some hope of getting airborne. The flag man hit the deck, as did everybody else, and the Standard clipped a banner from the observation tower.

The crowd had at first been cheering enthusiastically at the antics, but when they saw the consternation of the ground crew, their voices began to rise in a confused babbling as they realized Fearless Freep was in a Freep of trouble.

The Standard climbed, engine sputtering, and then smoke began to billow out.

“That piston just gave out!” shouted Peevy.

Cliff made a quick calculation of Malcolm’s chances of being connected with the ground in any way besides winding up six feet under it, and came up with somewhere between none and none. He grabbed Peevy’s arm and said in a low, intense voice, “Peevy . . . where’d you stash it?”

Peevy, his eyes still on the struggling plane, said distractedly, “Stash
what?”

“You know!” said Cliff.

The rocket pack. That had to be it. Why was Cliff suddenly interested in that now? “In the tool chest,” said Peevy, working on how he was going to explain to Patsy just why Malcolm wouldn’t be around to fix her plane wheels anymore. “Why—?”

He turned but Cliff was gone, dashing toward the hangar.

And that was when Peevy understood.

Malcolm was not immediately forgotten by Peevy, but he certainly dropped to second place in the immediate scheme of things as Peevy dashed after the receding form of Cliff. The aviator had already vanished within the hangar and, by the time a huffing and puffing Peevy had finally made it there, Cliff was struggling with the rocket’s harness. He had already put on his leather flight jacket and his gloves.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing!” demanded Peevy.

“What’s it look like? Give me a hand with this thing.”

Even as he tried to talk Cliff out of it, Peevy was readjusting the harness. He knew perfectly well he wasn’t going to be able to dissuade Cliff, but he was going to be damned if Cliff fell out of it. Still, he had to say something. “But we ain’t had a chance to test her right!”

“Cut it out!” shot back Cliff. “I’m scared enough as it is.”

Peevy was thunderstruck. He’d never, not once, heard Cliff talk about being scared. Hell . . . for the first time, Cliff was obviously contemplating the idea that he might not be coming back. It was enough to make Peevy immediately use the few moments they had for coaching rather than remonstrations. “Okay, listen, I reworked the throttle!” he said, snapping shut the buckles. “Just give her pressure like a gas pedal. You wanna shut her down, punch the button and let go.”

“Anything else?” asked Cliff, reaching for the helmet.

Peevy yanked the wad of gum out of Cliff’s mouth and said grimly, “Yeah. A little luck.” He slapped the gum on the top of the rocket’s injector housing.

Cliff put the helmet on his head and buckled the final strap. He stepped back and presented himself for inspection. His voice sounded tinny from inside the helmet as he said, “How do I look?”

It was a dramatic moment. It was as if someone from the future had stepped back through time to present himself to the past of aviation as a preview of the future.

“Like a hood ornament,” said Peevy succinctly.

Cliff stepped out of the hangar into the sunlight. The amber lenses did a nice job of protecting him against the glare of the sun, but he could hear his breath resonating inside the helmet. He took a deep breath then, angling his gleaming helmet toward the sun.

His fingers hesitated momentarily over the buttons, and he thought,
This is either going to be a quick ticket to hell . . . or the wildest ride of my life.

He tapped the buttons, and there was a roar from all around him, and the acrid smell of something burning. He hoped it wasn’t him.

Then he felt as if his body were elongating. He felt the power thundering through his torso, lifting him skyward, and the lower half of his body was left behind. Then, as if it were an afterthought, the rest of him came along for the ride.

Cliff rocketed into the sky, leaving behind a concussive blast that knocked Peevy off his feet, sending him tumbling ass over teakettle.

In the grandstand, the crowd was now in a full-throated cacophony of babbling, having come to the conclusion that something had definitely gone wrong. And then there was a sound like a thunderclap that snapped around heads everywhere.

The first thought that leapt to many minds was that a man had just been shot out of a cannon and was coming directly at them. People screamed, clambering over one another to get out of the way as the human cannonball hurtled toward them.

And then suddenly his angle changed, something that should have been flat-out impossible. He whistled over their heads like a torpedo, having corrected his course so that he missed them by inches rather than plowing into them. And a split instant later, he arced upward, and there was the briefest glimpse of something on his back, propelling him with the speed of a bullet. Bigelow almost swallowed his cigar as the flying man barreled upward, on a direct intercept course with the Standard and the helpless Malcolm.

Eddie Valentine caught barely a glimpse of the speeding man, but he saw enough—enough to make him react in total amazement. No less stunned were the press, but the news cameramen had the presence of mind to follow the flight of the jet-propelled man.

“Tell me you’re getting this!” shouted one reporter.

“I’m gettin’ it,” shot back the cameraman, “whatever it is!”

The reaction of the crowd went from fright to shrieks of amazement to cheers of pure unadulterated wonder. There was now sweeping through the people a conviction that this had indeed all been a setup, all part of the show. And what a show! And Bigelow took it all in, his eyes wide, his brain working, adding up potential gate receipts if he could only . . .

And while Bigelow contemplated how he could make it all serve for his personal gain, Cliff zipped past a racing plane as if it were standing still and went after the smoking Standard, which was a couple of hundred feet above him.

But the concept of moving at two hundred miles per hour with a rocket on your back was, understandably, a new one for Cliff. As a result, the distance had been covered in barely an eye blink and Cliff was unable to stop in time. He smashed headfirst into the underside of
Miss Mabel,
and if it hadn’t been for the strength of the helmet, Cliff Secord’s career as the world’s first flying man would have been as short as Malcolm’s odds of landing the plane solo.

As it was, Cliff’s head remained intact, even if the Standard didn’t. His helmeted head erupted through the floorboards right at Malcolm’s feet.

Malcolm looked down in horror and screamed. This was too much. In hysterics, he kicked at the helmet before Cliff could catch his breath to get a word out, and the intrepid flier’s head was suddenly ringing, his brain sloshing around in his head—if he had a brain, that is, as he kept telling himself. Malcolm, in the meantime, acting out of sheer, gut-wrenching panic, reflexively yanked on the control stick with everything he had.

The stick, mounted in the floorboard that had been shattered by Cliff, was barely attached as it was, and then it wasn’t attached at all. It came out with a rending of wood, and Malcolm smashed himself square between the eyes with it. The world became hazy and dark, and Malcolm’s thoughts drifted back to the Red Baron. And that was where they stayed as Malcolm lapsed into unconsciousness.

Cliff, for his part, didn’t realize that Malcolm had passed out. All he had was a good view of Malcolm’s feet. He’d cut the rocket thrust, not wanting to be plowed straight through the entire plane, and now was struggling like mad to disengage himself. Slowly he managed to pry his helmeted head out of the hole and dropped free. The landing gear broke his fall, however, and he threw his arms around it, holding on for dear life in the pull of the slipstream.

The air roared around him and Cliff fought down his urge to rush. Instead, he made sure he had a firm grip before he reached out and snagged the lower wing. He took a deep breath and then climbed up onto it. The airplane was shimmying beneath his feet, but Cliff was anchoring himself on, clutching on to the wing struts. Slowly, agonizingly, he dragged himself forward until he was only inches away from Malcolm. His plan was to try to calm the old flier down, maybe actually talk him through a landing. It was then he realized that the clown was out cold.

He shifted his weight to try to shove Malcolm’s shoulder, hoping to jostle him awake. But the shift caused the Standard’s wing to dip sharply. Cliff fell backward, slid on his ass down the length of the wing, and tumbled out into empty space.

For the briefest of moments, flailing about in midair without a plane or even a parachute, he panicked. And then he remembered how he had gotten up there in the first place and felt a little sheepish even as he punched the ignition buttons. He angled around and zoomed back toward the plane, now knowing his problem was going to be tougher than he thought.

This time he didn’t overshoot the plane but snagged the fuselage. His hands, however, were flat against the plane’s surface, and he wasn’t able to touch the control button to shut off the rocket. As a result, the rocket’s thrust, which had only moments before been his salvation, now were proving to be his damnation. It began to push him, slowly but inexorably, headfirst toward the scything propeller of the plane.

Suddenly Cliff realized he was in a real jam. If he lifted a hand so that he could shut down the rocket, he’d lose his grip and go flying straight into the propeller, shoved into it by his friend, Mr. Rocket Pack. But he couldn’t resist the thrust of the pack much longer.

Desperately, he reached out with the toe of his boot and just barely managed to hook the open cockpit, halting his progress perhaps an inch from the whirring blade. His full length stretched along the fuselage, Cliff held his breath as the fin on his helmet sparked as the edge of the propeller struck it. He lifted a hand and shut the rocket down, and then sighed in relief. His problems were over.

The plane abruptly lurched toward the heavens, practically standing on its tail. Screaming, Cliff slid down the length of the Standard, smashing through the rudder and ripping half of it clean off.

He plummeted off, dazed and barely conscious, spiraling down in freefall toward the swirling clouds below, becoming smaller and smaller and then vanishing into them as the Standard flew higher. Seconds later there was the roar of the rocket engine and Cliff soared upward once more. Beneath his helmet his jaw was set and determined.

He sensed that he might be running out of both time and luck. He had already screwed up twice, and both rimes he had gotten off lucky. Who knew how fast the thing consumed fuel? How could he be sure, every time he clicked the ignition buttons, that they would start again? It wasn’t like a plane where, if it ran out of power, you still had a chance to glide it down to a safe landing. With this thing, it either didn’t work or it did, and either he didn’t die or he did.

But he wasn’t going to die. Not today, dammit.

Cliff reached the Standard and this time didn’t overshoot it, and he didn’t botch up turning off the rocket with the proper timing and didn’t, well, screw up either. He snagged the cockpit, cut the engine, poised on the wing, and started to reach toward Malcolm . . .

. . . and just to make things interesting, the Standard—stalling at the apex of its climb—began to drop back to earth. The engine noise departed in a manner that, to Cliff’s practiced ear, indicated that it had had more than enough for this lifetime, thank you very much.

Riding the spiraling Standard to its doom, he struggled frantically to unfasten Malcolm’s seat belt. As he did so, he shouted, “Malcolm!
Wake up! Wake up!”

Malcolm did the worst thing he could possibly have done in the situation as the Standard plummeted faster and faster: he woke up.

He saw the creature staring at him through buglike amber eyes. Some sort of alien or creature or whatever the hell it was, and Malcolm screamed and started to pound at it. He didn’t know what was happening—perhaps it was the middle of some hideous dream—but he was going to teach this creature from the pits of hell that Malcolm Willis still had a few good punches left in him, that was for sure.