With no power other than the Earth’s gravity, Bouncer Three was going down at terminal velocity. They had tipped over and the edge to both men’s right was leading the way down.
They were actually descending more slowly than they had gone up, Scheuler reflected, watching the digital display count down in front of him. He felt strangely detached, his years of pilot training keeping the fear at bay.
At least they weren’t tumbling.
Scheuler glanced over questioningly at Terrent. “Forty-five thousand.” Terrent tried the controls again. “Still nothing,” he reported.
“Thirty seconds to the border,” Quinn said. He confirmed the bad news the screen was displaying. The gap between the bogey and Bouncer Eight was increasing rather than decreasing, despite the crew of the disk pushing it to the limits of human endurance.
Gullick spit out the mangled remains of his cigar.
“Bouncer Eight, this is Cube Six. Break off. I say again, break off and return home. Aurora, continue pursuit. Over.”
“This is Bouncer Eight. Roger. Over.”
“This is Aurora. Roger. Over.”
On the screen Bouncer Eight rapidly decelerated and curved back into airspace above the United States. Aurora continued following the bogey.
“Alert the Abraham Lincoln to launch pursuit,” Gullick ordered Admiral Coakley. The general finally shifted his gaze to the upper part of the screen. The green dot representing Bouncer Three was still motionless. “Altitude?” he asked.
Quinn knew what he was referring to. “Thirty thousand. Still no power. Uncontrolled descent.”
“Nightscape recovery status?” Gullick asked.
“In the air toward projected impact area,” Quinn said.
“I’m going to initiate at twenty thousand,” Terrent said.
His right hand rested on a red lever. “Clear.”
Scheuler pushed aside the keyboard and display from his lap as Terrent did the same. “Clear.”
“Cable up,” Terrent ordered.
Scheuler hit a button on the side of his seat. Anchored to the ceiling above and behind the two of them, a cable tightened, its near anchor point sliding along a track bolted onto the floor until it stopped right between the two depressions the men were seated in.
“Hook up,” Terrent instructed.
Scheuler reached into the waist pocket of his flight suit and pulled out a locking carabiner and slipped it onto the steel cable, just above where Terrent put his. He made sure it was on and screwed tight the lock. He then traced the nylon webbing back from it to the harness strapped around his torso, making sure it was clear and not wrapped around anything.
“Hooked up,” he confirmed. He glanced over at his display. “Twenty-two thousand five hundred.”
Terrent grabbed the controls one last time and tried them. They moved freely. No response. He looked at Scheuler. “Ready, Kevin?”
“Ready.”
“Blowing hatch on three. One. Two. Three.” Terrent slammed down the red lever and the exploding bolts on the hatch at the other end of the cable blew. The hatch spun away and cold night air whistled in.
“Go!” Terrent screamed.
Captain Scheuler unbuckled his shoulder straps and pushed, sliding up the cable, slamming against the roof of the disk. He got oriented and looked down at Terrent, still in his seat. Then he let go and was sucked out of the hatch, the nylon strap reaching its end and deploying the parachute that he had been sitting on. The disk was already gone into the darkness below by the time the chute finished opening.
He watched but there was no other blossoming of white canopy below.
Major Terrent’s hands were on the releases for his shoulder straps when his pilot’s instincts took over one last time. He reached down and grabbed the controls. There was something — the slightest response. His focus came back inside the craft as he wrestled with the controls.
“Ten thousand feet,” Quinn said. He looked at his computer screen and hit a few keys. “We’re getting a slight change in downward velocity on Bouncer Three.”
“I thought you said the readout said the hatch was blown and they had initiated escape.” Gullick said.
“Yes, sir, the hatch is gone, but”—Quinn checked the data being sent in from the satellites and Bouncer Three itself—“but it’s slowing, sir!”
Gullick nodded, but turned his attention back toward the screen and the green dot of the bogey, now over the Pacific far west of Panama.
Without Scheuler, Terrent had no idea what his altitude was. He’d pushed aside his own heads-up display when he’d hooked up. The power was coming back, but very slowly.
“Five thousand feet, continuing to decelerate,” Quinn said.
“How come I don’t see the F-14’s from the Abraham Lincoln on the display?” General Gullick asked.
“I — uh—” Quinn’s fingers flew over the keyboard and a cluster of small plane silhouettes appeared on the screen.
They were heading toward an orange circle representing the spot where the previous foo fighter had gone into the ocean. The symbols for the bogey and Aurora were also heading there.
“I think I’ve got it!” Terrent yelled to himself. He had the altitude lever pulled up as high as it would go and could continue to feel power returning. “We’ll make it, we’ll—”
“She’s down,” Quinn said in a quiet voice. “Bouncer Three is down. All telemetry is cut.”
“Make sure Nightscape recovery has the exact position from the last readout,” Gullick ordered. “Time to bogey intercept for the Tomcats?”
Quinn looked at General Gullick for a few seconds, then turned back to his terminal. “Six minutes.”
“I don’t see what good intercept will do,” Admiral Coakley protested. “We’ve already tried twice. It’s over the ocean. Even if we down the bogey it won’t—”
“I am in charge here,” General Gullick hissed. “Don’t ever—”
“Bogey’s gone, sir,” Quinn said. “She’s gone under.”
CHAPTER 19
The data was complex and much of it was not in the historical record. It counted at least six different types of atmospheric craft, only two of which were listed. And it was not action of this type that had awoken it twice before. Nevertheless, this new event was a threat because it was tied in to the place where the mothership was.
Valuable energy was diverted, and the main processor was brought up to forty-percent capacity to ponder the bursts of input that had occurred in this past cycle of the planet around its star. There had been conflict, but that did not concern it. There were larger issues at stake here.
CHAPTER 20
There was something stuck in both his arms and on the inside of each thigh. Johnny Simmons also sensed tubes between his legs — a catheter, both fore and aft. There was also some sort of device hooked in the right side of his mouth, giving off a very light mist of moisture. Another tube ran into the left side of his mouth and that was how he was breathing. There was something over his face, covering it, pressing his eyes shut and blocking off his nose. Beyond that Simmons didn’t have a clue as to his condition. And those discoveries had been made only in those few breaks between periods of excruciating pain.
He assumed that at least one of whatever was stuck in him was a nutritional IV. He had no clue as to the passage of time, but it felt as if his entire existence had been spent in this darkness.