“You’ll have to do whatever you can, major. This is important. Do your utmost to utilize Gunderson’s friendship to get you admitted to the school for a personal inspection. We’ve been able to find exactly nothing so far. It appears, on the surface, to be one of the most cleverly designed sabotage schemes ever encountered. It seems to have an unshakable hold on the minds of those attracted to it — and they are minds essential to the nation’s military preparedness.”
“Consider those your orders,” Colonel Dodge said. “We’ll have another man ready to move into Firestone when you leave. And I want a daily telephone report of your progress.”
Colonel Dodge heard the distant click of Montgomery’s phone, but not of Spindem’s. He breathed heavily in resignation. “Why couldn’t it have been anybody else besides that blockhead, Montgomery? We’ve been waiting six months to put a man there — and he turns out to be the first possibility.”
“It’s not very hopeful,” Dr. Spindem agreed. “But it may turn out better than you think. In the meantime, we’d better keep our eyes open for another chance.”
II.
Montgomery replaced the phone and folded his hands on the desk. His eyes stared ahead, seeing nothing for a moment. This new assignment was nothing to cheer about, but he was glad he had been able to remain at Firestone throughout the construction of the Ninety-one. His contribution was not exactly visible, yet it was substantial. He knew he’d done a good job of expediting the flow of information back and forth between the Air Force and the engineers.
One thing he appreciated in the change, however, was the chance he might have to help Soren Gunderson if the engineer were going to be sucked into some foolish program that would injure himself and the nation’s production. But he wondered if he actually had any chance at all of getting inside this school. It didn’t seem likely that operators of the kind they appeared to be would give the Air Force a chance to come in and snoop around.
He left the office and went back to the testing area. Gunderson was busy in conference with the group of XB-91 engineers, analyzing the data of the morning’s flight. So Montgomery spent an hour roaming through the ship, drinking in again the sense of power and greatness of the giant plane. He had been aboard during some of the earlier check flights, but he had never had a chance to take the controls himself. Now he went up to the pilots’ compartment and sat down, wondering if he ever would get a chance to handle it. That was the one thing he still deeply desired.
The XB-91 was representative of the new concept of bombing planes, the invincible, self-contained fortress of the air. It flew alone, high, and twice as fast as sound. The approach of any object during flight, interceptor plane or guided missile, triggered the Ninety-one’s defenses. Automatically, at such approach, the bomber spit out its own target-seeking missile to destroy any attacking device at a safe range. It wasn’t vulnerable, as Gunderson said, Montgomery thought. It was the most completely invincible machine ever devised.
But something of what Gunderson had said that morning continued to nag at Montgomery as he moved along the catwalk, inspecting the empty nests that would hold the target-seeking missiles. It was true there was a kind of vulnerability built right into the ship — the vulnerability of its nightmare complexity. It would be nice to have simpler answers to complex problems, but where were they going to be found? If men like Gunderson couldn’t devise them, who could?