of the hatch and twisted it. After a moment's resistance, the lever started to yield.
"Jon, wait!"
Smith yanked his hand away from the handle as if it had gone red hot. "What?"
Smith heard a background muttering in his earphones. "Oh, Gregori was just saying that it's very unlikely there would be booby traps on the hatches or anything."
"Thank you both for sharing that with me, Val." Smith leaned on the lever again until it gave. The hatch swung inward, and he probed with the flashlight.
"Crew's quarters, all right. There's a set of fold-out bunks on either side and there's even a john-no relation-up in one corner. The cabin appears to have been stripped. There are no mattresses or bedding in the bunks, and I can see a number of empty, open lockers."
"That's understandable." Valentina sounded thoughtful, obviously cogitating on something. "The next space should be the radar-observer compartment. Let's see what you find there."
Working his way forward, Smith ducked through a low nonpressure hatch. Here there was dim outside light. Plexiglas bubbles, sheathed in ice and hazed with decades of wind spalling, were set into the port and starboard bulkheads and into the overhead. Skeletal chairs faced the two side domes, and a third seat on an elevated pedestal was positioned under the astrodome in the top of the fuselage. In a bomber mounting its full defensive armament, Smith imagined that these would have been the gunners' targeting stations for the remotely controlled gun turrets. Valentina verified the supposition as he described the space.
"This compartment has been emptied out, too," Smith reported. "A lot of empty lockers, and even the padding has been stripped out of the seats."
"All of the survival gear will have been taken, along with anything that could serve as insulation. There should also be a large electronics console against the forward bulkhead."
"There is," he concurred. "The chassis has been completely gutted."
"That's the radar operator's station. They'd have wanted the components," Valentina finished cryptically.
"There are also two circular doors or passages in the forward bulkhead, one above the other. The larger lower passage has a pressure hatch on it. The upper one has a short aluminum stepladder leading up to it."
"The lower hatch opens into the aft bomb bay. There won't be anything in there but fuel tanks. The upper passage is the one you want. It's the crew crawlway that runs over the bomb bays into the bow compartment."
Smith crossed the compartment and peered down the aluminum-walled tunnel. It had been designed large enough for a man in bulky winter flight gear to negotiate, so he shouldn't have a problem with his MOPP suit.
"Going on." He put his boot toe in a ladder step and heaved himself into the tunnel, hitching and shouldering his way awkwardly toward the circle of pale light at its far end.
The forty-foot crawl down the frost-slickened tube seemed to take forever, dislodged ice crystals raining around him with each inch gained. Smith was startled when he finally thrust his head into the comparatively open space of the forward compartment.
The last of the outside light trickled in dully through the navigator's astrodome and the hemispheric glazed nose of the old bomber, and again the state of preservation was astounding. The plane was frozen in time as well as in temperature. Ice diamonds sheathed controls that hadn't moved for five decades, and glittered over the ranked instrument gauges frozen on their last readings.
"I'm in the cockpit," he reported into his lip mike, panting a little with the exertion.
"Very good. Is there much crash damage?"
"It's not bad, Val. Not bad at all. Some of the windows in the lower curve of the bow were caved in. Some snow and ice has packed in around the bombardier's station. A drift seems to have built up around the nose. Beyond that, everything's in pretty fair shape, although some inconvenient SOB unshipped the tunnel ladder. Just a second; let me get down from here."
Smith rolled onto his back and used the grab rail mounted above the entry to draw himself out of the crawlway. "Okay, on the deck."
"Excellent, Jon. Before you examine the bomb bay could you check a couple of things for me?"
"Sure, as long as it won't take too long."
"It shouldn't. First, I want you to examine the flight engineer's station. That will be the aft-facing seat and console behind the copilot's position."
"Okay." Smith snapped on his flashlight once more. "It's a lot roomier in here than I figured."