第28节

I've seen mist this thick but never at this time of year. On the other

hand ' '- we've never been this far north before,' said Baxter, the

F.O.O.

'Local variation, perhaps?" suggested Hartmarm.

You weren't supposed to shrug in response to questions from the wagon

master but Kazan let one .slip. 'It's just possible that it could be

some kind of off-beat temperature inversion. But ' 'Weather is

weather, right?" said Hartmann.

'Right,' agreed the F.O.O. He knew what Hartmarm was getting at.

Three hundred years of meteorological data had been fed into COLUMBUS

since overground operations began. The computer's vast memory bank

also contained a pre-Holocaust model of global weather patterns. By

observation of the terrain and the prevailing atmospheric conditions it

should always be possible by reference to the stored data to come up

with a reasonably accurate forecast.

Experience told them that heavy morning ground mists at this time of

the year usually burned off as the sun's heat built up.

'We'll give it an hour,' grunted Hartmarm. He told the First Engineer

to hold the turbines at tick-over, ordered a half-watch and put the

rest of the crew on make-and-mend.

Steve, and the other new wingmen, all of whom had been unable to sleep

properly because of the excitement, fretted at the delay. Gus White's

face now sported an ugly bruise where McDonnell's back-hander had

caught him. The old hands in Kazan's section quietly checked their

survival equipment. The ground crew tested the operation of the racks

fitted to either side of the cockpit that would each carry three

canisters of napalm.

An hour later, The Lady was still enveloped in thick mist.

Steve and Gus went up onto the flight deck with Jodi Kazan.

The air was cold and damp on their faces. There was no sign of the

sun. The wagon train was enveloped in a leaden grey nothingness; the

camouflaged metal hull was coated with a thin beaded film of moisture

which ran in dark rivulets down the steeply sloping sides.

Kazan put on her visored crash helmet and adjusted the mask inside the

chin guard so that it fitted comfortably.

Wingmen's 'bone-domes' resembled the helmets worn by pre-Holocaust

racing drivers and motor-cyclists. All that had been added were

earphones, two small mikes inside the chin guard and an anti-radiation

air filter. Like the others, she was dressed in black, brown and red

camouflaged flight fatigues and lightweight combat boots.

On the forward section of the deck, her Skyhawk stood hitched on one of

the two steam catapults with its engine running. A three-barrelled

high-velocity .25 calibre air rifle that could be switched from triple

volley to full auto, hung from the flexible mounting above the

cockpit.

A ground-crewman checked the two racks inside the cockpit filled with

180-round magazines, that Kazan had loaded herself. It was a tradition

among wingmen. That way, if you got a jammed round at a vital moment,

you had nobody to blame but yourself.

Kazan fastened the neck strap of her helmet. 'I'm just going to check

how thick this crap is. If it's half-way fl.vable, we'll put up a

forward patrol." She jabbed a finger at Gus.

'Tell Booker and Yates to stand by."

Gus snapped to attention. 'Yess-SUR!" He saluted then leapt off the

deck into one of the duck-holes - the balconies built into the sides of

the flight car around the access hatches.

Booker and Yates were two of the five wingmen already serving aboard

The Lady when Steve and the other 'wet-feet' had joined it at

Nixon-Fort Worth.

Kazan caught Steve's questioning look as she turned towards the

Skyhawk. 'What's bugging you now, Brickman?"

'How will you fred your way back?"

Kazan pointed fore and aft. As if in response to her gesture, a

pencil-slim shaft of red light shot vertically upwards from the roof of

the lead command car; a similar beam of green light appeared from the

roof of the tail car.

'Soft lasers,' she explained. 'They go up to twenty-five thousand

feet. All you have to do in bad weather is head owards 'em and spiral

down around till you hit the deck."

'Got it,' said Steve.

Half an hour later, Kazan hooked on to The Lady and reported to

Hartmann. The blanket