Sergeant MacDaniel shrugged. "Yes, sir. Give me a moment to get the keys."

Inspector Glen Bailey drove the Green Police car through Mojave and east on Highway 58, keeping his eyes on Thunder Ridge more than on the road. Any moment now, he thought. Any moment.

As he drove he sang softly to himself.

"And the Earth is clean as a springtime dream,

No factory smokes appear,

For they've left the land to the gardener's hand,

And they all are orbiting here…"

Bob Needleton looked at his watch. "Stop," he said. Sandy pulled over to the edge of the road. Needleton got out and leaned on the car. He looked south, to Thunder Ridge, and waited. It was just before dawn, a few stars left in the west, none in the east, but it was still dark on the ground. Not quite dawn, Needleton thought. Not by Mohammed's definition, can't tell a black thread from a white one--

There was a flash on Thunder Ridge. Then another, even brighter.

Jheri Moorkith could see the big hangar through the fence. The base area of Thunder Ridge was deserted, but there were lights everywhere, and the roof of the big building two hundred yards away had been swung open. The Air Police car stopped, and Airman Joey Murasaki got out. "Gate's locked," he shouted. "No keys."

The hangar was just ahead, but there was no way through the locked gate. Jheri Moorkith was tempted to scream, but managed to be calm. "Shoot the lock off," he ordered.

Sergeant Malcolm Lincoln sniffed. "Sir, that works better in movies than the real world. Maybe I should get a hammer out of the trunk and open it with that?"

"I don't care how you do it, open that gate!"

Two blows of the hammer smashed the lock, but the gate still wouldn't open. "It's wired shut," Sergeant Lincoln said. "Joey, get me the bolt cutters out of the trunk."

There was a bright flash from the hangar. The corrugated aluminum walls shook, and there was thunder.

"Hurry!" Moorkith screamed.

The hangar walls fell outward. Phoenix began to rise, slowly, majestically. Moorkith turned to face the Air Policemen, who were staring at the slowly rising rocket. "Shoot it!" Moorkith ordered.

"Shoot it?" Sergeant Lincoln asked.

"Yes! Shoot! Shoot! Damn you, I order you, shoot it!"

"Sir--"

"Give me that damn gun!"

Malcolm Lincoln never took his eyes off the ship as he unslung the submachine gun. Then, exactly as he'd been taught, he slipped the clip loose and opened the bolt. He handed the empty weapon to Moorkith.

Jheri Moorkith fumbled with the cartridge clip. He saw nothing as Phoenix rose.

Sergeant Malcolm Lincoln watched with a faraway look as Phoenix flew upward, faster now. Thunder washed across him, and his ears hurt but Lincoln was grinning like a thief. As the rocket climbed she caught the growing light of dawn, but the jets were brighter than the dawn as Phoenix rode a fire into the sky.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Cruisecon

The big sailing ship had been designed for cargo, a high tech windjammer with four tall masts and sails that looked like airplane wings standing on end. They shifted constantly as Gullwhale raced at 18 knots through the Caribbean toward the Windward Islands. She could make 20 knots in decent winds.

Chuck had his videocamera bolted to the deck. The view tilted with the ship, heeled over by fifteen degrees. "February 31st, 23,309. This is Gullwhale Crossing, a videofanzine published by Chuck Umber. Rick Foss, what are we doing here?"

Foss was a lean, bearded man with a mad smile and an absurd hat. "We are here to hold Cruisecon, the first World Science Fiction Convention ever to be held at sea."

"And how did this come about?"

"Nice timing. I notice we're coming about. Well, Gullwhale was a Green research project, expensive even by NASA standards, but clean as clean can be. What she couldn't do," Rick Foss said, "was make money. Between the U.S. environmental regulations and the unsteadiness of the wind, nobody wanted to risk sending cargo that way."

"So we got her cheap," Chuck said.

Rick grinned. "I got her damn near free. This is her shakedown as a passenger resort cruise ship."

"Hotel bill and food all in the convention registration fee. Quite a coup Rick."

"I didn't tell them it was a science fiction convention, of course. I just guaranteed to fill the ship up with people who don't mind being a week late so long as it doesn't cost them any more. But we're not in U.S. waters now--"

From the rail Poul Dickson shouted, "Ach, ja, now ve can sing ze old songs!"

A heavy-set black man stuck his head out of a doorway. "Land ho!"

Chuck swung the camera around to catch him. "Ken, shouldn't you be up in a crow's nest?"

Ken patted his ample bulk. "It'd never hold me. We've got Grenada on radar. We're still two hours away, but you should think about wrapping it up."

Rick grinned mysteriously. "I may have another surprise for you, Chuck."

"I'm talking to Bruce Hyde and Mike Glider. Bruce, you left the rescue party to spring any traps at Sherrine's apartment. I take it that was for misdirection?"

Bruce said, "Sure. At best we'd get the law looking in the wrong direction. At worst, we had the owner's written permission to be there, and a key. We went in through a window anyway, picked up a few of Sherrine's things--still nothing--walked out the front door and boarded Mike's van and drove north."

"Nobody stopped you?"

"No, but they were following us. I guess we could have stopped, but--"

"I wanted to cross the glacier again," Glider said. He held newsprint from the National Enquirer under his chin, for the camera, under a wide toothy smile. The headline said:

ICE NUDES ORGY ON GLACIER!

Bruce said, "We took the same track as before, with the Angels' death beam toned down a little--"

"How many of you?"

"--So we could--Huh?" Bruce laughed. "No, no, just me and Mike, fully dressed. We crossed to Fargo and went straight to the local TV station--"

"Hide in plain sight," Mike said.

"--and told them about joining the mating rituals of a tribe of naked semi-humans with pale blue skin. Don't look so disappointed, Chuck."

"We all got away clean after the launch. Maybe everyone got an extra day or two because of Moorkith," Glen Bailey said. "You remember how it looked when Phoenix went up?"

Harry Czescu nodded briskly. "I kept thinking, 'Ours always blow up. Ours always blow up.' But it was going smooth as silk--"

"Remember the vapor trail, sprawled all over the sky? They used to call that 'frozen lightning,' the Germans did, I mean. It's in Willy Ley's books," Bailey said. "In the thirties they thought their rockets were going wild--"

"It's just stratospheric winds blowing the vapor trail around," Mike Glider said, sticking his head into camera view. Umber scowled.

"Yeah, but it looks like something spun by a spider on LSD. The Green bigshot cop, Moorkith, he saw the frozen lightning and thought the Phoenix must have crashed. He was searching the desert for Phoenix while the whole gang drove away."

"I missed it all," Ann Hudson said. "I was in New York. I tried to follow it on the news, but how much could I trust? Gary didn't try to call me till he was already in orbit."

"But you're going up this time."