ly until the one mechanic went back to the side
lines. The mechanic was not cordial. He and all the others regarded the
ship and Joe and the co-pilot with disfavor. They worked on jets, and to
suggest that men who worked on fighter jets were not worthy of complete
confidence did not set well with them. The co-pilot noticed it.

"They think I'm a suspicious heel," he said sourly to Joe, "but I have
to be. The best spies and saboteurs in the world have been hired to mess
up the Platform. When better saboteurs are made, they'll be sent over
here to get busy!"

The pilot came back from the control tower.

"Special flight orders," he told his companion. "We top off with fuel
and get going."

Mechanics got out the fuel hose, dragging it from the pit. One man
climbed up on the wing. Other men handed up the hose. Joe was moved to
comment, but the co-pilot was reading the new flight instructions. It
was one of those moments of inconsistency to which anybody and everybody
is liable. The two men of the ship's crew had it in mind to be
infinitely suspicious of anybody examining their ship. But fueling it
was so completely standard an operation that they merely stood by
absently while it went on. They had the orders to read and memorize,
anyhow.

One wing tank was full. A big, grinning man with sandy hair dragged the
hose under the nose of the plane to take it to the other wing tank.
Close by the nose wheel he slipped and steadied himself by the shaft
which reaches down to the wheel's hub. His position for a moment was
absurdly ungraceful. When he straightened up, his arm slid into the
wheel well. But he dragged the hose the rest of the way and passed it on
up. Then that tank was full and capped. The refueling crew got down to
the ground and fed the hose back to the pit which devoured it. That was
all. But somehow Joe remembered the sandy-haired man and his arm going
up inside the wheel well for a fraction of a second.

The pilot read one part of the flight orders again and tore them
carefully across. One part he touched his pocket lighter to. It burned.
He nodded yet again to the co-pilot, and they swung up and in the
pilots' doorway. Joe followed.

They settled in their places in the cabin. The pilot threw a switch and
pressed a knob. One motor turned over stiffly, and caught. The second.
Third. Fourth. The pilot listened, was satisfied, and pulled back on the
multiple throttle. The plane trundled away. Minutes later it fa