But he didn't get away, at that. Twenty minutes later, while Joe still waited fretfully in the phone booth, the phone bell rang and Major Holt was again on the wire. And this time Joe was instructed to come back to the Shed. He had exact orders whom to come with, and they had orders which identified them to Joe.
Some eight miles from the airfield--it was just dusk--Joe came upon a wrecked car with motorcycle security guards working on it. They stopped Joe's escort. Joe's phone call had set off an alarm. A plane had spotted this car tearing away from the airfield, and motorcyclists were guided in pursuit by the plane. When it wouldn't stop--when the fake Security officer in it tried to shoot his way clear--the plane strafed him. So he was dead and his car was a wreck, and the motorcycle men were trying to get some useful information from his body and the car.
Joe went to the Major's house in the officers'-quarters area. The Major looked even more tired than before, but he nodded approvingly at Joe. Sally was there too, and she regarded Joe with a look which was a good deal warmer than her father's.
"You did very well," said the Major detachedly. "I don't have too high an opinion of the brains of anybody your age, Joe. When you are my age, you won't either. But whether you have brains or simply luck, you are turning out to be very useful."
Joe said: "I'm getting security conscious, sir. I want to stay alive."
"I was thinking of the fact that when you worked out the matter of the doctored pushpot fuel, you did not try to be a hero and prove it yourself. You referred it to me. That was the proper procedure. You could have been killed, investigating--it's clear that the saboteurs would be pleased to have a good chance to murder you--and your suspicions might never have reached me. They were correct, by the way. One storage tank underground was half-full of doctored fuel. Rather more important, another _was_ full, not yet drawn on."
The Major went on, without apparent cordiality: "It seems probable that if this particular sabotage trick had not been detected--it seems likely that on the Platform's take-off, all or most of the pushpots would have been fueled to explode at some time after the Platform was aloft, and before it could possibly get out to space."