In the sky, high, high up—a stubby-winged drone circled above Albuquerque thrice. Then it streaked away from the city and headed toward Alamogordo. The pillar of fire was vicious and intolerably bright and it silhouetted the fleet drone—though no one could stand to watch the scene, regardless of the thickness of his eye-glasses.
To all intents and purposes the drone vanished.
But on the viewscreen in Harry Maddox’s laboratory the pillar of fire grew, expanded into the entire screen, covered it and made steering ambiguous until Maddox dropped the nose of the fleet little craft so that the field of view included the base of the atomic flame.
The drone arrowed on and on and then came to a machine-made landing a few thousand feet from the base of the flame. Maddox worked swiftly now, for th
