THE CATERPILLARS QUESTION

The plane suddenly lifted as the solid and opaque Gaol craft on its back fell off.

He swung the radiator to point at the other plane. For the first time, he could sea the pilot's face clearly. Previously, it had been a blank or, rather, a generic human face. Now it came into focus, and he saw the features of an individual. A woman's face. Since she was unhelmeted, her reddish hair was visible. It was coiled into a bun on top of her head. A Psyche knot. Her delicate and rather pretty face was frozen. Her mind must have gone blank when she saw the wingtip flutter away and her colleague's plane roll off the back of Jack's machine.

The next moment, she had an even more puzzling and urgent matter to disturb her. Jack had pressed the radiator button. The tail of her plane got a quick divorce from the front part. It dropped, the shadow of the other part turning as it turned. And a shadow of the rear section projected from the still-flying part.

For a few seconds, the winged half-plane struggled onward, though losing altitude swiftly and begi

The propulsive-levitation engine must radiate from inside the wings, Jack thought. But the pilot could not steer her craft.

Then the shorn plane nose-dived.

Jack turned the plane to observe what would happen next to the Gaol machine. It sped straight downward. A half a minute later, the pilot dived out of the window. Something was strapped to her front. Presently, she managed to straighten out, and she flew at a steep angle toward the ground.

She had put on some kind of parachute or emergency one person mini-aircraft.

He looked in the space behind the seat. It held two cylinders about fourteen inches hi h and with a radius of six inches. Three levers were sticking out halfway down a yellow vertical stripe.

Attached to the cylinders were harnesses.

The pilot's hands had been on the cylinder. Evidently, she had been using the levers to guide her flight.

Jack turned back to the north. The compass needle indicated that he was headed toward the exact direction that Tappy had indicated. But, just to make sure, he asked her again if he was headed in the right direction. She nodded.

It was strange that he trusted her more as a compass than he did an electromechanical device. Or was it? She knew the true direction better than any man-made compass. But the panel device could be malfunctioning or affected by aberrant magnetic fields.

While he was going toward the black clouds, he looked at the instruments. One of those switches or buttons must be a cruise control. Another would put the plane on automatic navigation.

And what was that blank screen that looked so much like that on a TV set?

He decided that it was best not to monkey around with anything the exact function of which he did not know. So far, he was doing all right with his flying. But what about when he had to land?

What activated the machinery to lower the wheels?

Of course! Ask Tappy!

He should have thought of that automatically. But his mind was still not completely thawed out. It contained ice, the ice of anxiety.

No genuine hero, I, he thought.

He had not volunteered for this perilous voyage. No one in his or her right mind would do that.

Well, yes, he had entered the rock, and no one had forced him to do that. However, he just could not have allowed Tappy to pass through the gate, or whatever it was, alone. What he should have done, he should have kept her from going into it. Even if he had had to use force.

No. Somehow, she would have found her way back if he had dragged her away. life was her destiny, and it was her will to follow her destiny.

My destiny, too, he thought. If I had refused to go with her, I would have loathed myself until I died. And am I not really living, vibrating, keenly aware, alive in every atom of my mind and body? Wasn't I a sort of walking dead before I passed through the gate?

I didn't know it. I had to come here to find that out. All those people on Earth-well, most of them, anyway-are semizombies.

The clouds and the mountains ahead swelled. After a while, the black roiling mass, shot with lightning streaks, covered the mountains. It would be raining inside that mass. That reminded him that his mouth was still very dry. His bladder pained him again. During the dogfight, as he thought of it, he had forgotten about the urgency within him.

Where could he land to get much-needed relief.? There was forest below him as far as he could see. could this plane alight without a long runway? Come straight down like a helicopter? It certainly had used a short takeoff space. But there were very few open areas, and these looked as if they were small.

That reminded him that he had meant to ask Tappy about the panel instruments. Urged by him, she ran her fingers over the switches, buttons, and dials. When he told her to stop at a certain instrument, she did so. But she could not tell him what they were for unless he ran down a list of questions and she would nod if he was right. This took too much time and required too much patience for him to learn what every instrument did.

However, he did make a lucky guess about the screen. It showed the view from the rear of the plane if you pressed one of two buttons below it. He activated it. Then he said, "Just what I was hoping wouldn't happen!"

Three large black dots were in the sky, flying in formation.

They were at the same altitude as his plane.

"We're being followed," he said. "They've sent at least three pursuits after us."

He looked through the windows to each side and through the window in the ceiling. He could not see any other craft. Then it occurred to him that there could be Gaol machines below him.

But his eye-sweeps saw nothing.

The chasers seemed to be in faster aircraft than the two he had disposed of. The dots had grown larger. It was highly likely that the downed pilots had radioed their experiences to their HQ.

These newcomers would be much more cautious.

The radio blared, startling him and the girl.

Malva's voice filled the cockpit.

"You will turn back! You will turn back! Return to the place from which you took off! Return to the place from which you took off! You will be escorted back! You will be escorted back!"

Jack said, "For God's sake!"

Though his mind threatened to rupture from the strain of its resistance to the commands, it was making him turn the plane.

If his mind could have teeth, it would be gritting them so hard it would break them off.

"Tappy! Order me to disobey Malva!"

But how could she do that? She could not speak.

He was desperately trying to think of an idea. His mind was ru

But exactly where?

The plane was by now going in the direction from which it had come.

"Tappy!" he said loudly. "Can you write?"

She nodded.

He released the pressure on the wheel rim. Let the plane slow down. He was in no hurry to get back. A few seconds later, he handed her a pencil and the small notebook he car.-led in the leather holder in the i

"Write down your order to me to disobey anybody but you.

Then show it to me. I don't know if it'll work, but we've got to try everything!"

Why didn't I do that long ago? he thought.

Then, Well, things've been happening too fast. I can't think of everything.

Tappy, frowning in concentration, wrote on the topmost paper of the notebook. She held it in front of him.

He groaned.

The writing was in Gaol characters.

He was surprised that she knew that. She had fled this planet at the age of six, and how many that age could write? Though he could not read the characters, he could see that her penmanship was beautiful. She must have been precocious. Or, maybe, the Daws had continued her Gaol education. Which meant that they were not just your ordinary Earth citizens.