"Pop," I said--almost whined, to be truthful, "why'd the bugger ever have to land here in the first place? He was rushing stuff they needed bad at Atla-Hi--why'd he have to break his trip?" "That's easy," Pop said. "He was being a bad boy. At least that's my theory. He was supposed to go straight to Atla-Hi, but there was somebody he wanted to check up on first. He stopped here to see his girlfriend. Yep, his girlfriend. She tried to warn him off--that's my explanation of the juice that flared out of the cracking plant and interfered with his landing, though I'm sure she didn't intend the last. By the way, whatever she turned on to give him the warning must still be turned on. But Grayl came on down in spite of it." * * * * * Before I could assimilate that, the seven deformed gas tanks materialized in the haze. We got the freeway in our sights and steadied and slowed and kept slowing. The plane didn't graze the cracking plant this time, though I'd have sworn it was going to hit it head on. When I saw we _weren't_ going to hit it, I wanted to shut my eyes, but I couldn't. The stain was black now and the Pilot's body was thicker than I remembered--bloated. But that wouldn't last long. Three or four vultures were working on it. CHAPTER 7 _Here now in his triumph where all things falter, Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread, As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, Death lies dead._ --A Forsaken Garden, _by Charles Swinburne_ Pop was first down. Between us we helped Alice. Before joining them I took a last look at the control panel. The cracking plant button was up again and there was a blue nimbus on another button. For Los Alamos, I supposed. I was tempted to push it and get away solo, but then I thought, _nope, there's nothing for me at the other end and the loneliness will be worse than what I got to face here_. I climbed out. I didn't look at the body, although we were practically on top of it. I saw a little patch of silver off to one side and remembered the gun that had melted. The vultures had waddled off but only a few yards. "We could kill them," Alice said to Pop. "Why?" he responded. "Didn't some Hindus use them to take care of dead bodies? Not a bad idea, either." "Parsees," Alice amplified. "Yep, Parsees, that's what I meant. Give you a nice clean skeleton in a matter of days." Pop was leading us past the body toward the cracking plant. I heard the flies buzzing loudly. I felt terrible. I wanted to be dead myself. Just walking along after Pop was an awful effort.