THE CATERPILLARS QUESTION

Savagely, he turned the wheel to the left, pushing in on it at the same time.

The craft curved to the left and dropped swiftly.

Jack, glancing at Tappy, saw that her eyes were wide open, and she had paled.

"I'm trying to shake them!" he said. "Hang on! We may be in for a rough ride!"

He was thinking, Why in hell didn't I grab the radiator and try to shoot them with it?

He was doing better than he had thought he would in such a situation. So far, he had not done badly for one who considered himself to be an artist, not a man of action, ten thousand miles from being an Indiana Jones. But that had been on the ground.

He had frozen for a while when in the air, and he still was not completely thawed out.

The pilots of the Gaol machines had quick reflexes, though.

They had not been caught with their mouths open. Their planes had curved and dropped, too, following his course by a split second or so. Now they were above him again, diving at the same angle and velocity. They were also Jockeying so that each would be just above the end of one of the wings.

He turned the wheel and pulled it back until the plane was on an even keel. At least, he thought that it was. By now, he assumed that one of the instruments on the panel was an angle indicator. It looked like the ones he had seen in movies showing an airplane's cockpit. It was round and in its center was a horizontal line. The line swung up at one end and down at the other, or vice versa, as one wing dropped and the other rose.

At the moment, it was straight across, and the wings seemed to be level, too.

Give him enough time, and he might figure out most of the functions of the instruments.

But he was not Going to be given that time

The bottoms of the fuselages, twelve or so feet above the tips of his wings, began lowering. He noted with a part of his mind that the wheels had withdrawn into the shell. He supposed that the wheels of his craft had also withdrawn. But he had heard no sound of machinery moving.

Jack told Tappy about the situation. She lifted the radiator with both hands, holding it before her face.

"Yes, I know," he said. "But wait a minute. I want to try something."

By then, the fuselage bottoms were only six feet above the wingtips of Jack's machine. The gap between them constantly varied by a foot or so. The rough air bounced Jack's plane up and down and did the same to their pursuers. They would not be able to touch their bottoms against his wingtips. Otherwise, the wingtips might break. Or something else and worse might happen.

They were betting that he would not try to call their bluff.

"Let's see!" he said loudly.

He released much of his grip on the wheel rim. At the same time, he pulled back hard on the wheel. The nose of the craft lifted sharply, and the wingtips almost struck the other planes.

The pilots must have been startled, but they lifted their own planes quickly enough to avoid the collision. They did not slow down, however. They shot ahead of Jack,"s machine.

Jack took his hands off the wheel. The nose dropped, and the craft headed downward at an angle of perhaps forty-five degrees in relation to the horizon. He had expected it to stall and to fall like a stone. But it must have some sort of safety factor, a fool-compensator, in its program. In several seconds, it began to level out. The machines in front of him began climbing and turning at the same time. For certain, they would come back and attempt the same forcing-down.

He had gained some time and distance, however. And the sky, which had been clear, was suddenly dark on the horizon. He hoped that the clouds would be heavy with rain. A lightning and thunder storm would be welcome, too. He just might be able to lose the Gaol in a storm.

He said, "Tappy! Are we still going north? Headed directly toward whatever you want to get to?"

She turned her head slightly to the left and to the right. Then she pointed a few degrees to her right. Jack turned the machine until she nodded, and he straightened out the course. He had seen that one of the indicators on the panel had swung its pointer, too.

The needle tip now rested by a symbol which he supposed must indicate north.

Soon, too soon for him, the Gaol had returned. One of them rode on his left, making no attempt to get above his wingtip.

He stretched his neck to turn and look through the window in the top. At first, he saw only sky. Then abruptly and sinisterly, the nose of the second machine appeared. It was directly above Jack's machine and descending on a horizontal plane.

He understood at once what its new position meant. It was going to lower itself on the top of Jack's plane. Then it would land, in a ma

Its pilot must know what he was doing. He must be sure that Jack's machine could not sustain the added weight. And that it would be home, however slowly, to the ground.

A moment later, a grinding noise and a shudder ru

The window was blocked by the blue bottom of the fuselage.

Jack told Tappy what had happened. Her alarm and puzzlement vanished. She held the radiator out to him.

He took it and said, "I'd rather not shoot through the skywindow."

One of the panel dials had on its face a vertical tube like a thermometer. The "mercury" was a bright orange. Its top had gone down, passing symbols marking, he supposed, altitude. The machine was losing speed and height at a rate that upset him. Lint he was not going to panic. Not now, anyway.

His mouth was very dry, and a low-burning pressure in him told him that he must urinate. Soon. Or the pressure would be intense, and the burning would not be low.

"I want to open the window on the door in my side." he told Tappy. "There are two buttons. The forward one is orange. The one behind it is yellow with a blue stripe ru

She had shown him how to unlock the operational program.

Maybe she was familiar with the design of the cockpit.

Tappy smiled and groped along the door to her right unt she found the buttons. Then she rested a finger lightly on the yellow one.

"Thanks," he said. He pushed in on the button on his door. The window began to lower, and cool air screamed into the cockpit.

He reached out to take the radiator from her. At the same time.

he thought, Wait a minute! How did she learn so much about the design and operation of this airplane? She was six years old when she fled from here to Earth. How could she know all this?

How many kids on Earth or here would be familiar with this complex stuff.

The answers to this question, as to many, would have to wait.

He hoped he would live long enough to hear them.

The window was completely open now. He reached into his jacket, found one of the pencils in the leather holder in the inside pocket, and withdrew it. Then, leaning out of the window and twisted so that he could look back along the fuselage and upward, he extended the brace-the radiator-toward the wing of the Gaol craft. The air tore at him and caught the radiator, but he was gripping it hard. It was not easy to keep the weapon pointed at the wing while he pressed the pencil end against the orange button, the firing activator, the trigger.

There was no visible radiance expelled from the end of the brace. He knew there would be none, but he had momentarily expected one. He was too conditioned by -all the science-fiction movies he had seen and all the books he had read.

The wing, cut in half, was whisked away, tumbling over and over.

He should have expected the shadow. But he had not. He grunted when he saw the transparent but still visible plane attached to the sheared-off wing. Then the strange and unexplainable thing was out of his sight.