Page:Amazing Stories Volume 17 Number 06.djvu/21

Rh Dr. Coffey drove his screwdriver through the glowing walls of four of the energy tanks hanging from the ceiling. White hot streams hissed and bubbled out of them. "That's enough," Dr. Coffey shouted. "In ten minutes that stuff will eat out bigger holes. It's like the inside of the sun! When enough air gets in, this whole mountain will start to go!"

Brent shuddered. The heat even now blistered his skin. The fight was long since over. Cars and trucks were started up outside, there by the loading platforms, engines racing. Dr. Coffey pressed a button on a panel. A siren wailed somewhere. Bells clanged in the corridors. People Brent had never seen before came running.

"Clancy, where's Nadine?"

Clancy was rubbing an eye. "That son of a dog got away with her before the fight got going."

Brent's skin crawled. He turned and started towards the corridor. Dr. Coffey grabbed his arm. "Wait! Only one way to go now—out!"

Brent twisted himself loose. "Nuts!" He raced towards Blackmer's office, turned the corner, and bumped into the Moron. Halfor was sent sprawling. Brent half jumped, half slid, through the Hawk's office door. The Hawk cringed. He was pulling out desk drawers, stuffing thick packages of currency into a valise. Nadine stood, her face bone-white, in a corner.

"Thanks, we can use that!" Brent grabbed the valise, delivered an uppercut to the jaw in the same breath, sent the Hawk reeling backward, clutching a letter-opener in his right hand. He recovered, started for Brent with the knife. Brent braced himself against the window-sill.

A shot rang out at the door. A look of surprise swept the Hawk's face. He flung his arms wide, and careened neatly out the window to the rocks a hundred feet below.

Brent whistled. He grabbed Nadine and the suitcase in the same motion, carrying both. He motioned to Halfor to follow. Halfor would make an excellent butler, or something.

He struggled back through the hissing heat in the smoky control room out to the loading platforms. Cars were swinging down the curving road. Someone called Brent's name. Clancy and the doctor, sitting in a yellow station wagon. They piled in, Nadine, Halfor, and Brent, and Clancy let her rip down the side of the mountain. Minutes later the sky itself boiled up and the top of the peak was a molten, glowing mass.

"That," said Brent, "was a close call." Modestly, he adjusted the tablecloth about him.

Dr. Coffey was staring at the white-hot mountain top. Tears rolled down his cheeks. He, unwittingly, caused all this, Brent thought.

"The Cultural Lag," Dr. Coffey whispered. "Science gives man the keys to Heaven Itself, and man uses them to unlock a flood of misery!"

Clancy coughed. "I guess we're too far behind science, eh, Doc?"

Everybody laughed. "I'm a little retarded myself," Brent said, "with something I've wanted to do for a long time!" He grinned at Nadine.

CCORDING to the British Air Ministry, George Reynolds piloted his Spitfire fighter to an altitude of almost 50,000 feet where he attacked a number of Junkers 86 and shot one down.

The attack took place above the battlefields of Africa where the temperature often goes past the 100° mark, yet the pilot said the temperature at 5 miles up was 67° below zero.

This example of heroism is only one of the many showing that Allied airmen will seek the enemy out wherever they may be.