The plane was now an incomplete, twisted skeleton, licked through by flames. The crash wagon roared to a stop beside them.
“Anybody hurt? Anybody left inside?”
Joe shook his head, unable to speak for despairing rage. The fog wagon roared up, already spouting mist from its nozzles. Its tanks contained water treated with detergent so that it broke into the finest of droplets when sprayed at four hundred pounds pressure. It drenched the burning wreck with that heavy mist, in which a man would drown. No fire could possibly sustain itself. In seconds, it seemed, there were only steam and white vapor and fumes of smoldering substances that gradually lessened.
But then there was a roaring of motorcycles racing across the field with a black car trailing them. The car pulled up beside the fog wagon, then sped swiftly to where Joe was coming out of wild rage and sinking into sick, black depression. He’d been responsible for the pilot gyros and their safe arrival. What had happened wasn’t his fault, but it was not his job merely to remain blameless. It was his job to get the gyros delivered and set up in the Space Platform. He had failed.
The black car braked to a stop. There was Major Holt. Joe had seen him six months before. He’d aged a good deal. He looked grimly at the two pilots.
“What happened?” he demanded. “You dumped your fuel! What burned like this?”
Joe said thickly: “Everything was dumped but the pilot gyros. They didn’t burn! They were packed at the plant!”
The co-pilot suddenly made an incoherent sound of rage. “I’ve got it!” he said hoarsely. “I know——”
“What?” snapped Major Holt.
“They—planted that grenade at the—major overhaul!” panted the co-pilot, too enraged even to swear. “They—fixed it so—any trouble would mean a wreck! And I—pulled the fire-extinguisher releases just as we hit! For all compartments! To flood everything with CO2! But it wasn’t CO2! That’s what burned!”