Lieberman stared down, saw the little piles of rock rushing beneath them, felt giddy trying to work out these different sensations of height. The rock escarpment could have been no more than fifty feet from the glass of the windshield. The long, dramatic descent behind, down to the deep blue waters of the sea, seemed to stretch forever, so far it would take years to fall into those crystal, limpid depths if this fragile mechanical apparatus dissolved around them.
'Hold tight,' Davis said, the words jerking them back from the window. Ahead was a flat rock face. It seemed impassable, and the helicopter was headed directly for it.
'Bob…' Lieberman said quietly.
'Shush,' the pilot answered, and ran the engine up several notches. They were moving forward quickly now, rising on a steady incline. And Lieberman knew, with everything that had stood for certainty in his life, they weren't going to make it. 'Bob!' he yelled, and wondered what you did when you found yourself in the air with a madman. You couldn't grab for the wheel in this flimsy hunk of metal. He hadn't the faintest idea how it came to stay in the air, let alone guide itself.
The craft was now less than thirty feet from the bare rock slope, and the distance was closing fast. Lieberman looked in the back and saw Mo and Annie silent there, eyes wide open, waiting, and tried to smile. Thinking to himself all the time: These Gaia people probably don't mind dying, not at all, and maybe don't mind taking someone with them.
Ten feet.
He looked at the pilot. No expression there. The ridge was coming up, and as they approached, above and to its right, he saw something new, something man-made, golden, and circular, emerging like an artificial planet cutting through the horizon.
Five.
You get too scared in these situations, Lieberman repeated inwardly. The dust was blowing up from the ground, billowing around them like a sandy cloud that stained the lower windows of the helicopter until, to his horror, it was impossible to see the rock below at all.
'Bob,' he said quietly, no other words alive in his head. Then, with all of them, he thought, rising in their seats to help the thing along the way, they were over. The helicopter cleared the ridge — how much to spare? He didn't even want to think — and he breathed deeply. Then, for the first time, he truly thought he was going to throw up.
The helicopter had almost come to a halt. They dangled over a sudden, blood-chilling drop of a good thousand feet down into a jumble of misshapen rock. To the right, towering above them, was the dome, like a giant honeyed golf ball attached to the landward side of the sierra peak.
'Almost there, folks,' Davis said quietly, and dropped the craft forward, tucked into the rock face, following the curving line of the bare cliff down toward a bluff that sat six hundred feet or so beneath the dome, large enough to accommodate what looked like a prefabricated white single-storey building and a small helipad. A scattering of tiny dark figures watched their approach, rifles in their hands.
'Welcome to Puig Roig,' the pilot said calmly. 'That's Mallorquin for the "red mountain". Now, we have some queer currents at this point, so just hold on, and don't be surprised if this isn't exactly the smoothest ride you've ever had in your life.'
With that, he twisted the helicopter around sideways and edged in a descending arc toward the helipad, curving it around at the last moment to land square in the centre of a big painted H. The dust was swirling around them as high as the doors. 'One minute. For the rotors,' he said. And stared at Lieberman, then at the pair in the back.
'Apologies,' he said. 'It's normally a touch more enjoyable than that. But they said to keep this as short as possible. So I came the way I normally use on my own.'
John Capstick was walking toward them, beaming. The pilot turned away, started to examine the landscape. Lieberman found it hard to look at anything but the dome, perched on the peak several hundred feet above them. By comparison the low, white command centre seemed puny.
'Beautiful day, beautiful day,' Capstick said, watching them get out of the helicopter. 'You'll be giving us a return time on that detail, of course.'
'We need two hours and forty-five minutes,' Lieberman replied.
'That's very precise.'
'Call me superstitious,' Lieberman replied, 'but I know when that big yellow thing in the sky is starting to get angry today, and I'd rather be on the ground down there when it does.'
'Good idea,' Capstick said. 'Noted. So what are you people here to do? And who the hell's looking after the kid?'
Annie glowered at him.
'She's with me,' Mo Sinclair said, not smiling. 'Check with Irwin if you like.'
'I will, I will.' Capstick smiled. 'Now, the pilot guy I know is staying with us until you folks want out again. So that leaves you.'
Lieberman couldn't take his eyes off the complex. 'Just the standard tour, a good look at the satellite mock-up and whatever it takes to get up to the dome. Plus I think we're supposed to have some video conference with a couple of spacemen. An economy lunchbox and a bottle of San Miguel will do.'
'No alcohol on site. I'll find someone from the admin team. This is all Greek to me.'
The pilot was smiling at Capstick with a knowing, impertinent expression.
'Can I help?' Capstick asked.
'You're happy with this, then?' the pilot said.
'You mean the security status?'
'Yeah.'
'I'm content. Yes.'
The pilot just looked at him. 'What's that on the hill over there? Those ruins?'
Capstick followed his line of sight. 'Old shepherd dwellings or something. Don't worry. We've checked them. We've checked every pile of stones you can see. They're all dead. No money in agriculture, huh?'
'I thought that. Until I took a closer look.'
'Really.'
'We're above the grass line here. What are the sheep supposed to eat? Rock?'
Capstick paused, thinking. 'They're old. Maybe they predate the climate change.'
Lieberman took an appreciative look at the pilot and said, 'Climate change doesn't happen that fast. How high are we?'
'Four and a half thousand feet.'
'You should think again,' Lieberman said.
'So. You two are the smart guys.' Capstick looked thoroughly pissed.
Lieberman shrugged.
'Maybe shepherds used to use machinery too,' the pilot said.
'What?'
'Take a look. There's rusted iron. And workings. At least I think that's what they are.'
'Workings?' Capstick nodded. 'I knew that.'
'Mines. The rock formation underneath the dome. If you want my opinion, someone's mined tin or something around here a long time ago. Probably mined this whole area. This ridge included.'
Capstick looked impassively at them. 'Interesting thought,' he said flatly.
CHAPTER 29
Canaveral
'You mind me saying something?'
Bill Ruffin, the commander of the Space Shuttle Arcadia, had a broad, friendly, intelligent face, short, spiky red hair, and a wry, seen-it-all grin that seemed to fill the entire screen.
'Nope,' Lieberman mumbled.
'Can we cut the awe stuff out, please? I expect it when we do the school visits and that. But not now.'
'Right.' Lieberman detected something close to a ripple of laughter from Mo next to him in the big control room on the mountain. 'It's just that — '
'Yeah, yeah,' Ruffin said amicably, waving a giant hand that bobbed up and down on the wall monitor. 'You always wanted to be an astronaut. Join the queue. Next you'll be asking me how we get to do a dump up there.'
'Commander…'
'Professor…'
'Look. I get airsick in elevators. Nothing would get me where you're going. But do you really know what you're in for?'