“It must work on proximity,” said Mel. “The closer you get, the more intense its effect.”
“I’m guessing those effects are felt all the way to Alice Springs,” Luckman added, “because no-one in town wants to go anywhere near Pine Gap.”
“That’s true,” Pat admitted.
It seemed certain a frontal assault on the defence base would be impossible.
As they approached the turn-off to the airport Luckman tapped Bell on the shoulder. “Take us to the plane.”
“What now?” Pat inquired.
“You and I both saw that gateway – it’s out there in the desert a few clicks west of the base. If we can fly around their psychic defences maybe we can approach it from the other direction.”
Pat was about to object, then remembered the strength of Luckman’s character under fire. He smiled. Luckman tapped him on the back. “I need you to stay here. If we’re not back by tonight someone will need to tell the police and get a search party happening. I nearly died once today, I’d very much like to avoid a repeat performance.”
“Yeah, righto.”
“Mel, you did bring that video camera, didn’t you?” Luckman asked.
She picked up a bag from the footwell of the rear seat and pulled out the camera to check it. “Looks like it’s still intact.”
“Good. Then let’s go.”
The desert heat haze turned the end of the runway into a misty swirl. It reminded Luckman of what awaited them at their destination.
On Luckman’s instructions, Bell tracked toward Brisbane on their initial ascent. The air space around Pine Gap was restricted and he didn’t want them to be in the tower’s line of sight when they changed course.
“All right mate, take her down.”
The pilot nosed the plane toward the desert and levelled off at 500 metres then began a slow arc that would bring them into position about 100 clicks west of Pine Gap. They were well below the regulated cruising altitude and they risked unexpected pockets of turbulence, but he wanted Bell to take them much lower.
“The compass is no good,” the pilot complained. “The magnetic field’s all over the place.”
“Can’t you use the heading indicator?”
“Not sure I trust that either, to be honest. Tell me again what we’re doing?” he inquired nervously.
“We’re looking for a better line of approach through the desert,” said Luckman.
They levelled out with the sun left of centre in the cockpit windscreen. Bell made some subtle course corrections but kept the aircraft pointed a long way south of the sun’s position above the desert.
“Shouldn’t we fly directly at sun to go due east?” Luckman inquired.
“Fine navigator you are.”
“I’m just asking.”
“Alice Springs is 23 degrees south in latitude, right?”
“Whatever you say.”
“It’s late February, which is close to the autumn equinox. Meaning the sun rises just south of due east. But it arcs across the sky at an angle of 23 degrees in accordance with our latitude. It’s now just after midday, so the sun is pretty much at its zenith. By my estimate, due east is 20 degrees south of the sun’s current position above the horizon.”
Luckman chuckled. “OK, now I’m impressed.”
It was a hypothetical question. Pine Gap had just appeared in front of them on the horizon. Luckman had merely been aiming to keep Bell’s mind on the task at hand.
His hopes began to lift by the time they were about 20 kilometres out. Two long, straight roads were visible heading due west from the base perimeter.
“What are the chances of us landing on one of those long tracks in the sand?”
Bell initially thought he was joking. “There’s not a lot of room to move. And we’d suck up loads of dust into the engines with the reverse thrust.”
“Fair point.”
“We’ve still got a long flight home. I thought you said this was reconnaissance?”
There wasn’t actually a word for what Luckman had in mind. He just gave the pilot the thumbs up as he unbuckled his seatbelt and thrust open the cockpit door. “Mel,” he called, “it’s time. I need you up here.”
Luckman returned to his seat and immediately spotted the teardrop road loop he had witnessed from the viewing chair – the point where US Army trucks had disappeared into the world of the Others. It was at the end of a long dirt track that wound its way along the foot of the ranges that ran north of the Pine Gap perimeter.
He pointed at the road loop. “There. Fly me right there. As slow and low as you can get us.” He turned around again as he heard Mel in the cockpit doorway. “Start filming as soon as you can please. Try to focus on what’s happening outside.”
Bell allowed their air speed to drop to 130 knots as he took the jet down to 100 metres above the desert. It felt close enough to touch.
She nodded when she was rolling. Luckman turned to face the camera. “We are a few kilometres west of what I believe to be a dimensional doorway. We are about to attempt to fly through that doorway. Take us down lower, mate.”
“I thought you said you didn’t want to die,” Bell replied as he nosed the plane closer to the deck.
“That teardrop in the road ahead. Aim to take us wheels down on that spot.”
“You want me to crash land the plane?”
“I do.”
Bell nosed them lower still, but they were a good 20 metres in the air as the plane passed above the gateway. They hit a storm of turbulence. For a fraction of a second everything went dark, like the world blinked. In that instant the view outside the cockpit changed completely. Pine Gap was no longer on the horizon. The sun had vanished from the windscreen. The desert still stretched to infinity ahead of them, but the ranges had gone. The plane had gained altitude and was flying on a completely different heading. Furthermore, its position above the landscape had somehow shifted.
“What just happened?” asked Bell.
Luckman reserved judgment. He had no way of knowing what the world would look like on the other side of the gateway.
Mel stepped inside the cockpit and began to pan the camera across the skies.
If the heading indicator was to be trusted, they were travelling due south. Seconds ago they had been heading east.
Mel was still filming. “That was one helluva manoeuvre. Mind telling me how you did that?”
“That’s a very good question,” Bell admitted.
“I can still see Pine Gap,” she said. “It’s behind us now – we’re flying away from it.”
Luckman sighed. “Then it didn’t work.”
“What was supposed to happen if it did work?” Bell wanted to know.
Pat was waiting for them at the perimeter gate half an hour later as they taxied to a halt.
Apparently none of them had anywhere else to go.
Luckman threw open the cabin door, descended to the tarmac and began searching the fuselage for the luggage compartment. It didn’t take long to find. He pulled out two heavy kit bags and lugged them to Pat’s car.
“That what I think it is?” the Aboriginal man inquired.
Luckman grinned. “Firecrackers.”
Forty-Three
Detective Senior Sergeant Curtis Pollock worked hard at keeping his distemper to a simmer as Captain Luckman spelt out the extent of his deception. Luckman seemed to be choosing his words carefully, apparently eager not to offend. But it was hard for Pollock not to take it personally, which was partly to do with his embarrassment at being hoodwinked and partly because of the lie itself.
Pollock wasn’t what anyone would call a broad-minded man. He had never been in the least sympathetic to a younger generation of police recruits who demonstrated an appetite for emotional honesty and self-improvement through the open admission of error. Pollock regarded such self-analysis as a display of weakness. He was old school; he knew what he knew and if you didn’t like it you could go to hell. Being of this nature, he was not normally one to probe the defences he had painstakingly built around his own view of the world. When something or someone came along to challenge that view, Pollock’s conditioned response was to build the wall a little higher and lock them out. Luckman was pounding on the barricades with a battering ram. If he had been someone more prone to self-analysis, Pollock might have admitted his internal defences were showing disturbing signs of imminent collapse.