pitched very high, like a woman's, and it sounded as if his teeth were chattering.

"Mitch," Johnny pleaded softly. "Mitch, baby. Dump it, boy, come on home, now. Dump it."

There was no more from the speaker. A confused babble broke out in the bomb-bay. The Sergeant fiddled with his dials frantically, spinning across wavelengths, trying to find a word. The confusion ceased when the speaker rattled again, seeming hours later.

"Uh, hello, Control, this is Red Three, do you read me?" One of the fighter flight.

"Rog, Red Three, go ahead," came Control's voice from below.

"Uh, Control, I have a flash and smoke cloud on a bearing of three-seven degrees."

"Red Three, what altitude? What altitude?"

"None," said the fighter pilot. "On the deck."

After a moment, Johnny climbed unsteadily to his feet in the midst of a booming silence. He made his way back along the catwalk to the head, where he retched violently until the tears came to his eyes.

Three weeks later, Johnny sat in Doctor Lambert's office. He watched the lean, graying psychologist turn off the tape recorder, watched him methodically tamp tobacco in his pipe.

"That's all she wrote, Johnny," said Lambert, finally. "That recording of Mitch's voice is just about all we have. The Ship was under full power when it hit. There wasn't much left."

Johnny looked absently out the window at the gleaming needle of Ship II beside the flimsy-looking gantry. Full power was a lot of power.

The psychologist followed Johnny's eyes. "Beautiful," he said, and the word brought to Johnny's mind the wide-eyed pale face of Mitch's wife, staring at him.

"That Ship is the best we can make her," Lambert said. "Engineering is as certain as they can be that there was no structural failure on Ship I."

"So?" Johnny said, still staring at the Ship. Even at this distance, he could almost believe he could see his own lean face reflected in the shining metal.

"So we look somewhere else for the cause of failure," said Lambert.

"Where?" said Johnny. He turned back, saw that the psychologist was putting a new reel on the tape recorder.

"The weak link in the control system," Lambert said.

"There weren't any."

"One."

"What?"

"Mitch Campbell."

Johnny stood, angry. "Mitch was good. Damn good."

The psychologist looked up, and his eyes were tired. "I know it," he said calmly. "Listen to this." He started the machine playing the new tape.

Johnny listened to it through. The voice that came out was high and wavering. It shook, it chattered, words were indistinguishable. It was thin with tension, and it rang in Johnny's ears with unwanted familiarity.

"What's it sound like to you?" Lambert asked when it had finished.

"Like Mitch's voice," Johnny admitted reluctantly.

"It did to me, too. What do you think it is?"

"Don't know," said Johnny shortly. "Might be a pilot whose plane is shaking apart."

"No."

"I don't know."

Lambert sat back down behind his desk and sucked on his pipestem. He regarded Johnny impassively, seeming to consider some problem remote from the room.

Abruptly, he stood again and went to the window, watching the ant-like activity around the base of Ship II.

"That was a madman's voice," he said. "I made the recording while I was interning at a state institution."

"So?"

"Mad with fear," Lambert said. "Pure. Simple. Unadulterated. That was the sound of terror you heard, Johnny. Terror such as few humans have ever known. That man knew such fear he could not remain sane and live with it."

I had a true wife but I left her ... oh, oh, oh.

"You think Mitch—"

"You said yourself the voices were alike." Lambert pointed out.

"I don't believe it."

"Don't have to," said Lambert, turning from the window. "But I'll tell you something, Johnny. That Ship—" he hooked his thumb out the