Alan smiled wanly. “Guess we had to throw your dinner in the trash. Aren’t you hungry?”
Eric thought. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“Me too,” said Alan. “Second shift is just finishing up in the mess. Let’s see what they have.”
They went to an elevator, Alan punched the button for level two, and the doors closed.
“You’re taking good care of me, Alan,” said Eric.
“Thanks. Just doing my job.”
“You forgot your clipboard.”
Alan smiled. “Yeah. Didn’t need it this time.”
“Oh, I thought taking notes was your job.”
The elevator stopped, and the doors opened.
“I do whatever needs to be done, sir. Let’s eat.”
They turned left out of the elevator and walked a few yards to the mess hall. A few men in fatigues were sitting at long tables, talking after their meal, and mess was still open. Alan had his tray filled with meat, potatoes and veggies. Eric followed suit, and added a sliver of apple pie. They both got coffee at the end of the line, and sat down at a table away from the other men.
They ate quickly, and it was Eric who finally broke the silence.
“There are several questions I’m not asking, Alan, because I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to know the answers. After tomorrow’s test I might be a bit more demanding.”
“I understand, sir. This has been a rough day for you. If you feel overwhelmed by it and can’t sleep tonight I hope you’ll tell us. You have to be on top of things early in the morning. The flight can be postponed if you’re not ready.”
“I’m paid to be ready, Alan,” said Eric, “and eventually I will get the answers to my questions.”
“Yes sir, I’m sure you will.” Alan met Eric’s steady gaze, held it, and Eric knew he was not talking to a soldier who made his living writing notes on a clipboard.
“You ever been in a firefight, sergeant?”
Now Alan smiled. “I think you know the answer to that one, sir.”
“Well keep me alive until the flight test, and maybe your job will get easier.”
They finished eating, and bussed their dishes. Alan took him back to the elevators, and they went up three levels. There was a long hallway with closed, numbered doors. Alan went to number ten, unlocked the door, and handed the key to Eric. “Someone will come for you at oh-three-hundred, sir. There’s a beer and some snacks in the fridge.”
“Thanks. See you in the morning?”
“I expect to be there, sir. Wouldn’t want to miss it.”
Alan turned, and walked away.
The room was simple, but not Spartan. There was a TV and a CD player, a selection of music from rock to classical, a few magazines, including Sedona Monthly. He opened the lone beer in the fridge, but left the cold meats and cheese he found there. Music, or sound of any kind, didn’t appeal to him at the moment. He sat down on a sofa, sipped his beer and read the Sedona magazine. There was an ad in there for Nataly’s shop. He suddenly wanted to call her, but there was no telephone. He wanted to tell her about Leon. He wanted to tell her how lousy he felt, how much he missed her, how much he loved her, and—
Whoa!
The thought remained. My God, I’m in love with her. I have to tell her before she pushes me away.
He resolved to call her right after the flight test.
Eric finished his beer and went to bed near twenty-one-hundred. There was absolute quiet in the room. Eric could hear the rush of blood with each pulse of his heart. He tried not to think about Leon, and failed. He imagined himself sitting with Nataly, her head on his shoulder. He kissed the top of her head, smelled pine, and she looked up at him with eyes a man could drown in.
He slept. Twice he came awake enough to know he was in a dark room. He’d been talking to Nataly, and John Coulter was there too, laughing about something that made Nataly angry with him. The Golden Man had appeared. Eric had asked him a question, but the man just smiled and didn’t answer. Eric felt uneasy about that, an uncomfortable pit-of-the-stomach reaction that could have been fear. Nataly appeared again, and kissed him, and then he said how much he loved her. She frowned and didn’t answer him, and then he felt something worse than fear.
He felt despair.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
FLIGHT
The alarm made a terrible screech that shocked Eric awake. He’d only slept around five hours, but he didn’t feel groggy. He splashed cold water on his face, and used soap to shave with a razor he found in a cupboard. He dressed, and nibbled on some cheese, and at exactly oh-three-hundred there was knocking on his door.
Two military policemen escorted him to the elevators and down to Sparrow’s bay in the bowels of the base. When he first entered the bay, a cold blast of air shocked him. The bay was dark except at the center of the floor, where Sparrow and a crowd of men were illuminated with deep red light. Eric smelled JP-4, looked up and saw stars twinkling where the ceiling had been rolled to one side.
Two techs came up to him and he was hustled away from Sparrow to a side room where he spent over an hour being fitted with pressure suit and helmet. The last time he’d had one on was in the back seat of a Blackbird on route to a special killing for Uncle Sam.
The techs took him back to Sparrow, and fussed with his suit on the way. Techs were swarming over Sparrow, and Dillon was waiting for Eric by one wing, all suited up.
“Good morning,” said Dillon.
“A bit early for that,” said Eric.
“If this was Area 51 I’d be in the air by now.”
Eric smiled. “Ah, hah. Suspicions confirmed.”
There were no preliminaries. Eric stepped up onto Sparrow’s wing behind Dillon, but climbed into the cockpit first. The pressure suit seemed to mold his body comfortably to the shape of the seat, and a tech leaned in to buckle his chest harness. Eric put on his helmet, but left the faceplate up. It was already uncomfortably warm in the suit.
There was a voice inside the helmet. “Radio check, Eric,” it said. It was Rob Hendricks, soon to be their link to home.
“Roger, Wilco and out,” said Eric.
“Cute. Well at least you’re awake.”
Eric wondered if Dillon and the others here for the test had heard about Leon and the firefight at Eric’s house. Nobody had said anything about it yet, and Alan hadn’t been in the bay when Eric arrived.
Dillon climbed in, and got settled while a tech fussed with him. For a moment, Dillon ignored Eric and studied a few lines of notes on a scrap of paper.
Eric pointed at it. “Nothing about our startup boards, I hope.”
Dillon shook his head. “Nope, this is manual stuff, some notes on VTOL sequence. It’s like flying a helicopter until we’ve cleared the bay.”
The techs finished their fussing, saluted sharply and left. Dillon hit two controls with the flat of his hand and there was the rising pitch of a turbine whine as the canopy closed around them, and they were bathed in deep red light.
Eric’s heart thumped harder than normal for several beats, and he breathed deeply to calm it. This was no static ground test, but flight in a strange aircraft that might or might not have awesome capabilities and be a deathtrap for its occupants in either case. The fact that Dillon had flown the thing to Mach 1 was little comfort at the moment.
Dillon looked at him. “Your eyes are getting big. I promise not to kill us until you start throwing all those switches, so if we blow up I can tell everyone it was your fault.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Face plates down. Let’s do it.”
Eric pulled his faceplate down, felt it snap into place as Sparrow rocked beneath him and there was a sudden sinking feeling in his stomach. The darkened cockpit above his eye level suddenly lit up in a holographic display of their outside surroundings in wide angle. Dillon’s hand moved slightly on one of several touch plates on the control panel, and they were lifting straight up. The cockpit vibrated softly, and beyond it was the faint whine of conventional turbines.