Living-world news reports regularly told of weapons disappearing. “Military mismanagement,” the reports would say, because the rational world demanded rational explanations. The one time an unlucky marine dared to tell the truth of what he saw (a hand that reached in through a hole in space, waved to him, then disappeared with an AK-47 rifle), nobody believed it. The man was sent for psychological evaluation, and then promptly discharged from military service.

The Ripper did not know or care about such consequences. All that mattered was the collection, which filled two thirds of the cargo hold … until the day Nick opened the cargo hold doors.

To Johnnie-O, it began as a loud mechanical grinding, echoing in the massive hold around him. He had come down on the piles of weapons, but, still reeling from his brief empty-headed ordeal, he hadn’t yet realized the nature of the Ripper’s “collection.” The cargo hold door opened like a parting curtain, revealing a million-dollar view of the Atlantic Ocean. Then the pile beneath him began to shift, and that’s when he realized he was sitting atop a nasty rats’ nest of guns and explosives.

In the flight deck, Nick had, for one crazy instant, thought the cargo door motor was the boosters igniting, and that by hitting the button, he had just blasted them all off into orbit.

“Now you done it!” said the Ripper, hitting the button again and again, but the opening sequence couldn’t stop once it started. “Those doors’ll swing open wide—and it’s all your stupid fault!” He peeked down into the hold, groaning, then ran for the entry hatch. Nick followed. They scurried down the unwieldy scaffold as the craft’s huge cargo doors slowly, slowly opened. Once they reached the bottom, and Nick had a view of the cargo hold, he could see that it held a tottering haystack in shades of khaki and gunmetal gray. Gun muzzles and rifle butts stuck out every which way, but far worse than those were the rounded tips and tail fins randomly poking out of the weapon pile.

“Are those … bombs?”

“Mortar shells, surface-to-air missiles, smart bombs,” the Ripper said, with a hint of pride. “You know—the good stuff.”

The pile shifted as the doors continued to swing open. Several rifles fell out and toppled to the earth hundreds of feet below. Kudzu jumped out of the way, barking madly. And on top of the pile of weapons sat Johnnie-O, looking a little bit worried.

“Don’t move!” screamed Nick.

“Kudzu!” screamed the Ripper. “C’mere, boy!” The dog came running to the Ripper, its chain clanking on the deadspot tarmac. The Ripper knelt down and tried to unhook the dog from his chain, while up above, the pile swayed precariously in the wide-open cargo bay of the mystically suspended spacecraft.

“It’s okay,” Johnnie-O shouted down to Nick. “It’s okay, it’s not gonna fall.”