"Oh, yes. They haven't advertised it much, though. And this must be the first test flight. I didn't know it was coming off today."
"You'd think we'd all have been invited to the takeoff. Big impressive show, faithful workers get afternoon off, and all that."
"Hell," said Don, "if they're keeping the purpose of the things from us, for no good reason that I can see, they might want to keep the test flight secret too."
"How can they keep it secret? It obviously had to take off in plain sight, and they couldn't shoo everyone indoors. No, I guess they just didn't give a damn about us. Underlings, unimportant servants, that's us," said Alan bitterly, with a flash prevision of the terrible idea that would soon be obsessing him.
They pulled up beside the wreckage of the disk. There was no danger of explosion, due to the peculiar properties of hornethylene. The giant platter, with its raised top like a hot-dish cover and its bubble of clear crystal beneath, lay crumpled and bent, one-third of its whole edge accordioned in upon itself. Even as they came up the crystal bubble inched open; not smoothly, as it should have done, but like a damp-swollen door creaks away from its frame under heavy pressure. The pilot thrust his legs out and dropped to the ground. Alan and a dozen others ran to him.
"Hi," said he. "Guess I pulped this job up right."
"Good Lord, man, are you okay?"
"Not a nick. I just had time to see the ground coming up at me and bingo, I was sitting there with my eyes popping. Anybody got a drink?" He was cut to the pattern of all airmen since the days of monoplanes: tall, narrow of hip and wide of shoulder, lean always-tanned face, a wry grin on the mouth and horizon-hunger in the eyes.
Somebody gave him a flask. "Were you alone?" asked Alan.
"Sure. They can't risk two guys in these things yet. We don't know what they'll do. This one'll take some going over with a microscope and tweezers; it's full of bugs. Someone jockey me to the main offices?"