“Don't you think we have bigger problems right now,” Ingram gently suggested, looking back where Carpenter was watching the golden beam infiltrate more of Argus's hardware, “than figuring out who the spy is?”
Ariana didn't say anything in reply, which was her only acknowledgment that he was right. She would deal with the spy issue once they were out of here.
“Do you have any clue what that could be?” she asked Ingram, pointing back at Argus.
He sighed. “Based on what I can see it seems to be pure energy in the form of an atomic laser.”
“Atomic laser?” Ariana asked.
“An optical laser operates by emitting photons, which have no mass and move at the speed of light,” Ingram explained. “An atomic lasers emits atoms, which not only have mass, but also have a wavelike nature. I know that there are some people who have been experimenting with such things as part of a super-computing system, but nothing I've heard of is beyond the theory stage.”
“That's no theory back there,” Ariana said.
Ingram rubbed his forehead. “The problem with developing an atomic laser has always been that you have to super-cool the atoms so they will act in a coherent manner by entering a collective quantum state.”
“How can someone here in the middle of Cambodia be able to super-cool atoms?” Ariana asked.
“I don’t know,” Ingram said. “There’s only two labs in the States that have the equipment to do it. And it’s not exactly transportable.”
“What advantage does the atomic laser have over an optical one?” Ariana asked.
Ingram shrugged. “I don't know exactly. The possibilities are limitless; from super-computing like I said, to who knows what.”
“You think it's hooked in to Argus for a purpose?”
“I'm sure it is,” Ingram said. “The way that beam is spreading through the computer's hardware is not random.”
“Why?”
“That's the key question along with who,” Ingram agreed.
“Why would someone who had an atomic laser be wasting their time with Argus?” Ariana asked out loud. “For our data? But as you said we didn't even have a chance to gather much before we went down.”
“Same problem our spy has,” Ingram noted. He ran a hand through his thinning hair. “I'm not too sure that this is about our survey. I think it's something else entirely.”
“Like what?”
“I-”
“Don’t know,” Ariana finished for him. “Go through what we do have and try to get me some ideas.”
“All right.”
Ariana went forward to Hudson's commo area. “Anything?”
Hudson looked tired. Between the stress and his injuries, he was wearing down. “Remember we picked up a transmission just before we crashed?”
Ariana nodded.
Hudson flipped a switch. “Here it is:”
There was loud hiss of static, a voice coming in brokenly. “This… Romeo… Verify… Not. Kansas… more… Prairie.. Repeat… Fire.”
“It was low on the FM band,” Hudson said. “That part of the spectrum is usually reserved for the military.”
“Any idea what it means?”
“None. It's too broken to make much sense of.”
“Anything else?” Ariana asked.
“I've got my computer scanning the FM waveband. I think the radio is working, but we're not picking up anything. You'd think if there were search teams in the air they'd have zeroed in on our last reported location and they'd be broadcasting. We've been down over twenty hours now.”
Hudson had raised a point that was weighing heavily on her mind. A chopper out of Phnom Penh could have reached their position in a couple of hours. She was sure her father knew the plane was down. The lack of any indication of a search party could mean any of several things, none of which were good.
“All right. Keep monitoring,” Ariana said, then went back to the others in the main console area.
“Any indication what caused us to crash?” she asked Ingram upon reentering the console area.
He had some papers in his hand. “As far as I can tell from the data, we experienced a cascade of systems failures just before we went down. I can give you the exact order that things failed, but basically all equipment that operated in the electromagnetic spectrum failed in rapid succession. Why, I have no clue, except that there must have been some sort of massive interference.” He walked over to a table holding a chart. “I do have our last plotted position before the GPR went down.”
Ariana walked over, along with the others, and stared at the map sheet pinned to the table. Ingram placed his finger on the map. “This is the last plot point. The main computer went off-line five seconds after that plot. I estimate, as best as I can from memory, that we crashed less than thirty seconds after that. The back-up computer also gave me our last heading.” He picked up a pencil and drew a short line. “I think this is where we are. Somewhere in here.”
“Damn,” Mansor exclaimed. “Look at that terrain! There's no way the plane could have come down intact in those hills and jungle.”
“Maybe the pilots found a landing strip?” Daley suggested.
“Where?” Mansor asked. He ran his hand across the chart. “There isn't even a town within a hundred kilometers of this location, never mind a landing strip. We should be scattered across the country-side in tiny little pieces.”
“But we did get down relatively intact,” Ariana noted. “How?”
“I'd have to go outside and take a look,” Mansor said.
“No way!” Herrin exclaimed. “There's something out there.” The old man looked around at the other with wild eyes. “Can't you feel it? Something is out there waiting for us. Something that's into Argus now. It's finding out information about us. If you go out there it will get you like it got Craight!”
“We’re blind in here,” Mansor argued. “I want to know what is going on outside.”
“I think the time has come to at least-” Ariana began, but Hudson's voice suddenly came over the intercom.
“We're getting something on FM!”
The other six on board all rushed forward toward Hudson's position. The commo man had pulled on a set of headphones as he worked the controls on one of his radio sets. “It's Morse,” he said in a hushed tone as he strained to listen, his right hand writing out dashes and dots with a pencil, as the others crowded into the small area.
His left hand was fumbling through a cabinet drawer underneath his console. He pulled out a strange device, which he snapped down high on his thigh, above his wound. His rested his left hand on top and began tapping out a reply.
They waited for almost a minute before Hudson took off the headphones and the knee key. “It's gone now.”
“What did they say?” Ariana asked. “Who was it?”
“I don't know yet,” Hudson said. “I've got to decipher the Morse. I haven't done that in a long time.”
“What did you send in return then if you didn't what the message was or who was sending it?” Ariana asked.
“I sent an international SOS. But I don't think it was acknowledged. The message I was picking up just kept recycling then cut out.”
Ariana pointed at the pad. “What does it say?”
Hudson had been printing in large block letters. He checked the message once, then held up the pad of paper:
L-E-A-V-E-O-R-D-I-E-T-W-E-L–V-E-H-O-U-R-S-L-E-A-V-E-O-R-D-I-E-T-W-E-L–V-E-H-O-U-R-S
“That's the entire message. It kept repeating those letters,” Hudson said.
“Leave or die, twelve hours,” Ariana read, unconsciously checking her watch, which wasn't working.
“Doesn't sound very friendly,” Ingram offered.