Cal slowly began to understand what Mick was saying. “We’re not going down the mountain, are we?”
“Mick, that’s… that’s insane. That’s Looney Tunes.” Sam was shaking her head so vigorously it seemed as if it might tumble off her neck. “Doctor, doesn’t that sound Looney Tunes to you?”
“I’m not sure. What is—?”
“Never mind. Mick… we can’t do this on our own. We have to wait for someone who can handle—”
“You know what waiting around gets you?” he said coldly as he continued to check his ammo. “It gives the enemy time to find you, and target you,” he looked bleakly at her, “and blow your goddamn legs off.”
A deathly silence fell upon them, broken only by the soft click-clack of Mick chambering rounds in every gun to make certain he was ready to shoot anything that moved and wasn’t born on Earth.
“Okay, so… what do we do first?” said Sam.
Minutes later they had driven the Jeep as near to the site of the initial attack as they dared. Then Sam pulled it over toward a small cluster of trees. They climbed out and proceeded to cover the Jeep with whatever branches and brush they could locate.
Sam was breathing heavily, scratching at bug bites and scrapes she’d gotten from the branches. The branches also kept snagging her hair, and finally she pulled it back into a tight ponytail and wrapped a rubber band around it that she’d had in her pocket. She stepped back and studied the camouflage. It looked to be a pretty good job.
“I need to call Hopper,” said Sam abruptly.
Cal appeared confused, as if he was being presented information he should have but didn’t. “Who’s Hopper?”
“My fiancé.”
“Semi-fiancé,” Mick volunteered, laying some more branches over the Jeep for good measure.
She fired him an annoyed look. “He’s my fiancé,” she said firmly.
“Oh good. You need to call your semi-fiancé,” said Cal, sounding decidedly snide. “I want to call my mother.”
Sam was starting to feel as if Zapata was more in need of a good slap in the face than anyone she’d met in a long time. Mick, however, put a calming hand on her arm as he said to Cal, “He’s also a weapons officer on a guided missile destroyer that has the resources to take a whole installation out.”
“Oh.” Cal suddenly seemed to realize how he had come across when he’d spoken so disdainfully. Sounding vaguely apologetic, he said, “That makes sense.”
Sam decided it would do little good to berate Cal for the way he’d replied to her. Yes, it was dumb, but she hadn’t exactly covered herself with glory every minute of the last hour or so. Better to just let it go and move on. “You work with all that high-tech gear. Can you get us in touch with the ship?”
Cal gave it some thought. “They’re using an electromagnetic field to block our signals. An alien version of a Faraday shield.”
“A what?” said Mick.
“A Faraday shield. Invented by Michael Faraday back in the early part of the 19th century. You use a conducting material to form an enclosure to block out static and non-static electrical fields. Think of it as a sort of ideal hollow conductor.”
“Okay, I’ll do that.” Mick glanced at Sam. She shrugged.
“But in any electrical field,” Cal went on, oblivious to their confusion, “no matter how powerful, there’s no such thing as a solid or an absolute. And perhaps they’re using some momentarily unencrypted frequency among themselves, unless, of course, they use ESP or some other advanced, non-oral form of communica—”
Sam’s head was starting to spin. “What is he saying? He’s speaking English, right?”
“Could be,” said Mick. “I’m a little rusty on my science.”
“Sorry,” said Cal, looking embarrassed that he had left them behind. He thought a moment, trying to come up with a simpler way to pose it. “What they’re blocking frequencies with is like… a pulse. Not a brick wall. This means there are gaps. So if I can get to my spectrum analyzer, I can, theoretically, discover a frequency we can broadcast on for—I don’t know—thirty, forty-five seconds, before it rotates and gets jammed again.”
“You didn’t answer the question,” said Sam. “Can you get us in touch with the ship?”
“Your semi-fia—I mean, your fiancé’s ship?” he said, quickly correcting himself when he saw Sam’s expression. “If they flicker…” He nodded and then added, “I need to get to my lab.”
“Then that’s where we’ll get you,” said Sam. “If they’re left unchecked, how long before they can make their call?”
Cal glanced at his watch. “Five hours and fifteen minutes. That’s when our deepest satellite orbits into range. It only does it once a day. They’ll use it to slingshot the transmission to wherever it is they’re from…”
“Then we’ve gotta hurry,” said Mick.
Rifles slung over their shoulders, they set out to save the world.
THE HIMALAYAS
Doctor Nogrady had fantasized about moments like this. The notion of being face-to-face with high-ranking officials, and their hanging on his every word. Being accorded the importance that he felt a scientist of his status and achievement was due.
Never had he dreamed, even in his wildest imaginings, the circumstances that would lead him to this “achievement.” His mind flew back to the conversation he’d had with Cal Zapata about being wary over what you wish for, since you might well get it.
Zapata. Zapata, with whom they’d lost contact, along with the entire Honolulu base. Have they taken it over already? Have they destroyed it? And are we next?
He returned his attention to the image of the Secretary of Defense on the viewscreen in front of him. “And what,” the Secretary was saying, “is the update of the fragment that crashed in China?”
“Scientists have been scouring the debris field,” Nogrady said, consulting the latest updates. “And the pieces they’re recovering suggest they were designed for multi-spectrum data transmission across every electromagnetic wavelength from visible to x-ray.”
The Secretary nodded. Apparently he understood. Nogrady was impressed.
“What does that mean?” asked the Secretary.
Nogrady was less impressed.
Normally Chinese scientists weren’t quite so forthcoming with information they gathered, particularly with findings on their own shores. The Chinese government was relentlessly territorial with such things. But the Beacon Project was an international endeavor and all the scientists involved were sharing up everything they learned, whether the governments liked it or not. “It is the strong belief of the Chinese,” Nogrady said, “that what crashed down in Hong Kong was some sort of communications ship.”
“You’re saying a flying telephone cratered and took out two hundred and fifty people?”
“Like most death tolls, I’m sure that number will increase exponentially as they find bodies. My point is, what I’m saying is that our visitors appear extraordinarily concerned with establishing a line of communication home.”
“But if they lost their ship, how can they do that?”
“The same way we did. Our communication station on Hawaii has the ability to send a message to deep space through our LANDSAT 7 satellite. I believe it’s for that asset that they’ve domed the islands.”
“So if we can’t get into Hawaii, why don’t we just take out the satellite?” The question wasn’t being directed to Nogrady. There was doubtless some general or other army officer sitting just out of sight in whatever secured bunker they were communicating from. Maybe the Situation Room, maybe the Pentagon. It wasn’t Nogrady’s business to know; just provide information.