I.
The instrument house at the edge of the runway was crowded with the high brass and top-drawer engineering staff of Firestone Aviation Corporation. They peered over one another’s shoulders and jockeyed politely for better views of the three-foot television screen at one end of the room. It showed the interior of the pilots’ compartment of the XB-91 now flying somewhere above them at an altitude of fifty thousand feet.
In the front row of observers Major Eugene Montgomery watched with a feeling of elation inside him. The Ninety-one seemed almost as much a personal triumph for him as it was for the engineers who built it. He had witnessed its building from scratch and some part of him was up there flying with it.
The Ninety-one was the first genuine battleship of the air. It was a city-smasher, capable of going to any spot on the globe and doing its work. Its armament assured a better than ninety per cent chance of destroying all opposition and returning safely.
The instrument panel occupied most of the picture. Now and then there was a glimpse of the side of test pilot Parker’s face. Out of sight, on the other side, was co-pilot Marble.
Parker’s voice came over the speaker. “Turning now to retrace course. Altitude fifty-two thousand, air speed eighteen seventy-five, temperature minus forty-eight point seven —” He spoke in a professional monotone that failed, however, to hide his enthusiasm for the ship, too.
A score of small sounds filled the room. The whir of cameras recording the picture and voice from the plane, the background whine of the ship’s jets, the click of telemetering relays. Abruptly, Montgomery turned to find his close friend and the man most responsible for the success of the Ninety-one. He spotted Soren Gunderson at the very back of the group.
The chief engineer of Firestone Aviation wasn’t even looking at the screen. He couldn’t, Montgomery saw as he came up. There were too many heads in front of him.
Gunderson sat on the edge of a desk drawing hard on a pipe cupped in his right hand.