'Our problem, Professor,' Ruffin said flatly. 'If worse comes to worst, we just burn some gas and move on over to the dark side. Nothing can touch us there.'
'Maybe that would be a good idea anyway, after you're done,' Schulz said.
'Yeah,' Ruffin agreed, and glanced at his watch. 'As soon as those guys have finished with their sewing, I want to be on our way. We've got a rough sector estimate for where that thing is up there, but it could take us a little while to find it, and when we do we have to come at it from the top, just so it doesn't get too grouchy. We need all the time we can get.'
'Good luck,' Lieberman said, and suddenly felt foolish.
'Hell, Professor.' Ruffin grinned. 'What's luck got to do with it?'
CHAPTER 30
In the Pentagon
The war room was up and running, and to Helen Wagner it felt deeply strange. This was a military location. They had senior representatives of the forces on tap, waiting silent and a little resentful in the wings. Tim Clarke was calling meetings when he felt like it, forcing the pace all along, taking a decisive control of the response. But the way the situation was shaping, it was the intelligence services and the team assembling around the Shuttle that seemed to be making the running.
Clarke, she guessed, knew this would happen, and picked the Pentagon bunker because it was neutral ground. There could be no range wars here. Your troops were too distant, sitting down the end of a video-conferencing line, to give you any comfort. There were safe areas, in Langley and at the Bureau, he could have chosen. But the Pentagon evened things out, and one of the side effects was that no one felt at home. Dave Barnside and Ben Levine sat side by side, looking gloomy. Dan Fogerty was opposite with a couple of Bureau people she didn't know. Lieberman was live from the peak, Schulz was on-line from La Finca. She sat next to Barnside, trying to feel part of that particular team.
Clarke looked at the faces around the table, nodded at her, and said, 'Situation report, Miss Wagner. Where are we with the Shuttle?'
'It looks optimistic, sir. We have a way to neutralize the satellite. Arcadia is in prelaunch sequence right now.'
Lieberman raised a finger on the screen and began speaking. 'Basically-'
'Spare me the details,' Clarke interrupted. 'I really don't have the time. How hot is it getting out there?'
'We're doing okay, Mr President,' Lieberman said. The latest hourly projection sat on the giant screen on the wall opposite the conference table. 'I think the levels are pretty steady right now and they'll stay like that for three hours or so.'
'Good. What's happening on the ground?' Clarke asked.
'Minor telecommunications disruption,' Graeme Burnley said. 'Nothing we can't handle. We're getting some criticism for overreacting, to be honest, Mr President.'
'Let them moan,' the President said. 'I'd rather overreact than underreact.'
'And this hiatus is temporary, right, Michael?' Helen asked the image on the wall.
He nodded. 'You bet. After this quiet period, my guess is that the spots will start to grow and join again and the effects of the storm will be correspondingly greater.'
'Bigger than anything we've had before?' Burnley asked.
'I'm an astronomer, not a fortune-teller. There's no way of knowing that. It's obvious that the radiation level is linked to the state of the sunspot activity, but it's not a straight-line relationship.'
'Guess, mister,' Clarke said. 'This isn't an academic exercise.'
Lieberman hesitated and took his eyes off the screen. Tim Clarke had a habit of staring at you until he got what he wanted. At least a video link gave you a break from the heat in his eyes. 'My guess, for what it's worth, is that it will be big, and continue to grow right up to the peak, which is a little over twenty-four hours away. By the zenith, this will be larger, more serious than anything ever recorded. Even without the toy Charley stole, we could be in trouble. This isn't just some passing heat wave. It has all manner of poisonous
crap inside it. Add Charley into the equation and I just don't know. It could be radiation. It could be direct heat. We're dealing with a cocktail of solar particles that could turn up in any form they damn well feel like. The death ray from hell or just a very bad day on the beach. None of us knows, not even Charley. That's why we abandoned Sundog in the first place, remember. It was so damn unpredictable.'
'A straight answer,' Clarke said. 'I appreciate that.'
'So what do I tell these business guys who keep phoning me?' Graeme Burnley asked. They all stared at him.
'Tell them to stay at home and watch TV,' Lieberman answered from the wall. 'For as long as it lasts. We're in the phony war stage now. It won't go on for long.'
Clarke nodded. 'Let's hope the Shuttle idea works out, but it doesn't mean we let up on any other options. What about tracking down the Children?'
Dan Fogerty cleared his throat and read from a piece of paper. 'It's slow, to be honest, Mr President. We've drawn a blank trying to trace any equipment-purchasing pattern that would match up with someone trying to set up their own transmission facility. Maybe they sourced this abroad. It's a possibility. But we do think they bought the wherewithal for a dome. We found a company outside San Diego specializing in geodesic structures. They say a bunch of people came to them two months ago with plans and specifications for the component parts for a unit that pretty nearly matches up with the Sundog model. Placed the order, paid cash, and collected a week later. The billing address is a phony, of course, and we're getting nowhere with an ID on the people at all. But the specs are too close to the Sundog model to be a coincidence. This is Gaia, all right.'
'You're pouring men on that, I trust, Dan,' Clarke said. 'You're going to find where they went with that thing.'
'Sure,' Fogerty said. 'It's happening. But there are a couple of points to remember. This is a kit. These people turned up with their own pair of trucks and took it away with them.
They could transport it pretty much anywhere in the country and erect it on site.'
'Not the sort of thing you'd miss,' Barnside said quietly, looking across the table. 'A forty-eight-foot dome.'
'Not if it was in a built-up area, Dave,' Fogerty agreed. 'But think about it. They could site that almost anywhere the entire length of the Rockies, and who would know the difference? Remember that Aio that went missing a couple of years back? That took us two weeks to recover when it went down in the mountains, and it was one big pile of metal.'
'So how do we track them down?' Clarke asked. 'They've got to be using this thing. What about the transmissions?'
'We're flying AWACs over the less densely populated areas, sir,' Helen replied. 'But that's one big job, and I imagine they're being very careful about when they use the dome to transmit right now. Does that make sense, Irwin?'
'Sure. If they've replicated the dome and the gear inside it, they don't need to stay on the line long. You could repro-gram the entire instruction set in under thirty seconds, and then switch off. I hate to tell you this, but unless we get real lucky, those AWACs are burning fuel for no good reason.'
'Keep them there,' Clarke said. 'What about the dome we still own? You're sure that's secure?'
'As sure as we can be, Mr President,' Barnside said firmly. 'We know what we're up against now. If she can break through this, she really can work miracles. We've put the men and resources in there, picked the place clean. And from what I understand, she doesn't have anything to throw at us from the sky.'
'Not yet,' Lieberman interjected. 'I don't think you people quite get it yet. We don't know what this is going to be like when the spot activity gets hyper. We don't have the books to tell us. She could just turn that beam on us here and there'd be hell to pay one way or another.'