Time for more Rocket Man!
...and Jeff returns to the realm of the senses just in time to get up off the floor and dodge outside, just before the chemist's shack goes up in a ball of flame, causing more harmacy than your usual pharmacy.
Back at the Science associates Administration building, Jeff and Burt Winslow discuss how the crooks gained entry - Jeff pointing out that they definitely had an inside man who gave them access. Burt concurs, saying that "If Dr Millard were still alive" (which we, dear watchers, of course know that he is) he would say the same thing, as he was convinced that Dr Vulcan was a member of the board. As they mull over which of professors Conway, Bryant, Graffner or Von Strum are the most likely candidate, the devious Dr Vulcan is listening in by hacking the radio in the boardroom. I don't think even Hardison from Leverage could manage that level of techno-botch.
Via the power of flashback, Jeff recalls catching a glimpse of the hand of the inside operator and that he was wearing a distinctive signet ring. Figuring that a criminal mastermind is unable to perform the fairly simple task of removing an item of jewellery from his person, he puts all his eggs in the basket case of using the ring to identify the culprit. At the next day's S.A. general meeting, King asks his fellows to place their hands on the table so that he can inspect them - a somewhat strange request with which they comply. Spotting the ring on the hand of Professor Conway, Jeff fingers him as the traitor; an accusation to which Conway responds by producing a pistol from under his hat (said titfer is resting on the table, so sadly it's not as ludicrous a scene as that may sound) and yells that Jeff is determined to pin Vulcan's misdeeds on anybody and that he isn't about to be made the scapegoat.
Conway flees in his car, and King dons the Rocket Man suit to soar into the big blue in search of the errant academic only to lose track of him - as flyboy scans the rocky roads (not to be confused with pornographic performer Rocki Roads, nee Mary Ann Bradley, whom I have visually scanned a few times) the prof eludes him via the fairly simple method of parking 'neath a tree. When the rocket recon proves a bust and he flies, off Conway heads to the nearest phone box and calls the shadowy Vulcan for help, being directed to the Hotel Mesa. Here he meets with the man he was told will help him: Durken, who forces him at gunpoint to write and sign a confession taking the blame for all of Dr Vulcan's crimes. When Rocket Man arrives through the tenth storey window and disarms Durken, Conway begins to spill the beans - telling him that the ring he wears is a marker of a scientific fraternity and that one other member of S.A. has one. Just as he is about to confess Vulcan's secret identity, Durken knifes him in the back and knocks King out the window, sending him spiralling towards the pavement far below...
Chapter Five: Fatal Dive
...but his death dive past the rear projection screen is swiftly halted by igniting the rocket pack to re-orient himself and fly off as Durken has already fled from the scene of his crime. Back at the Rocket Cave (i'm going to keep calling it that. I am determined to make it A Thing), he consults with Millard and they come to the conclusion that the late patsy Conway (doesn't that sound like a dead Country and Western singer? "The late Patsy Conway") was persuaded by the real Dr Vulcan to wear the ring to the meeting in order to take the fall. Jeff realises that the only person at Science Associates with whom he's shared any of his intel is Burt Winslow, and begins to grow suspicious of the genial PR man.
Meanwhile, Burt and Glenda are listening to a radio bulletin which informs all that the police have accepted the confession found in the same apartment as Conway's corpse as genuine and are closing the books on the matter with the dead man painted as an agent in the employ of an unfriendly power. Maybe he worked for Huawei or something (TOPICAL REFERENCE ALERT). Glenda is adamant that Conway was the fall guy - and now I have that theme tune stuck in my head: "I'm the unknown stuntman..." - and reckons that Jeff King is the most likely suspect to be the genuine article, much to Burt's disbelief.
Back at S.A. HQ, Jeff locates the concealed transceiver in the boardroom's wireless and stages a phone call for the benefit of the listening-in villain to the effect that he is going to illicitly sell one of his own inventions - an experimental firing tube - at the old Barnes ranch at 4 PM that afternoon. Also overhearing are Glenda and Burt, who have headed to the lab in order to ascertain Jeff's guilt or innocence and now think him at the very least a traitor in a misunderstanding of sitcom proportions. Following him to the ranch with the intention of foiling King's un-American activity of selling his own property, the confused twosome wreck the plan to hand Durken a package containing not a firing tube but a homing device that would have made Jeff able to trace Vulcan's secret lair. As the misguided Burt engages our hero in a dust-up in the barn, Glenda jumps into Durken's getaway plane with him as he takes off. When Vulcan announces that he's detecting radio transmissions from the aircraft, Durken ditches the parcel out of the plane and attempts to make Glenda follow suit. As Jeff, having finally managed to get a word in edgeways and persuade the punch happy Burt that he's a good guy, rockets to her aid, Durken grabs a parachute and bails out leaving the roving reporter and the airborne adventurer in a plane hurtling towards the rocks...
Chapter Six: Mystery of the Rocket Man
...but the quick-thinking hero manages to get Glenda strapped into the spare parachute and bundles her out of the aircraft before jetting towards Terra Firma himself, leaving the empty plane to sunder on the terrain below.
After ensuring our plucky gal reporter's safe landing and making sure he can make her way back to town, he returns to the Rocket Cave and commiserates with Millard that were it not for Burt's well-meaning but bullish interference they would know the identity of the dastardly Dr Vulcan by now. Millard's pining to see the outside world including the sun and the moon, once again is tempered when King points out that until Vulcan is stopped knowledge of Millard's survival and of his work on the sonic decimator (now there's a coo, name for a sonic device - put that in your screwdriver and smoke it, Doctor!) must remain secret.
Durken's next communique to Dr Vulcan opens with the rueful henchman vowing revenge on Jeff King, to which the wily Vulcan replies by determining that King and the Rocket Man are one and the same (SPOILER: so are Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde), and that they can deal with two birds with one stone. Meanwhile, the board at S.A. are discussing the fact that the boardroom had been bugged by a confederate of Vulcan, causing the members to stir uneasily (heh) since an experimental drone is due to be transported from their Eastern laboratory - a drone that would be valuable to any foreign power. Citing King's good record thus far as Head of Security, Jeff is put in charge of oversight of the weapon's conveyance.
Waylaid by kidnappers outside his apartment building, Jeff struggles valiantly against them but even n appearance by Burt (who had arranged to meet Jeff to discuss the transportation), who is as per usual more than willing to wade into a punch-up, proves futile as Winslow is knocked to the pavement and King is bundled at gunpoint into his own waiting vehicle to be whisked off. Struggling to his feet and cradling his jaw, Burt heads for his car and attempts to give chase only to be shaken off when the kidnap car jumps a railroad crossing in front of an oncoming express train which cuts Winslow off until they're out of sight. Prisoner in his own car, King offers his captor a cigarette as a pretext to activating the modified car lighter - now a secret radio transmitter which relays their conversation back to Dr Millard. Overhearing the information that the new weapon is about to fall into the hands of Vulcan, Millard dons the rocket suit himself and jets in the direction of the Eastern Electronics warehouse where Jeff is being forced to sign over the truck containing the drone to Durken. Surprised and undelighted at seeing the arriving Rocket Man and Jeff King in the same place, Durken and his goons begin a gunfight inside the warehouse culminating in King commandeering the truck only to be shot through the windscreen by one of the goons and the lorry crashing out of the building and into the river below...
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