'We're tired,' Mo said.
'Me too. But doesn't something bug you about all of this?'
'Such as what?' Bennett asked.
'How, ever since it started, we never really got around to doing any thinking for ourselves, because someone else was always feeding a chunk of information that shaped what we did anyway. Like this Vegas thing. Like taking out the domes. And there's a curious thing too.'
'What?' Schulz asked.
'How come everyone else in this loop — Spooksville in Langley, most every European capital we can think of, Tokyo, Vegas, San Francisco, they're all looking up at the sky and see all manner of crap coming down on them. And we just sit here watching most everything work? Do you ever think about that? Aside from the explosion of the dome, we haven't had a single serious outage. It's all happened elsewhere.'
'No reason for it to happen here,' Schulz said. 'We're way away from any major financial centres. Why should she target us when she's blown up the dome anyway?'
'Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought we were supposed to be in charge of the whole thing.'
' "Were",' Schulz said.
'Point taken. Still…'
'Still what, Michael?'
He rolled the dregs of his orange juice around in the glass and watched Annie playing by the thick green water of the pond. She had a little paper yacht folded from a used sheet out of the laser printer. He could still see the text on it: numbers, formulas, graphs, all the mechanical things you used to describe what happened in this wonderful place called science. 'Still, I think we're being dumb, somehow.'
Bennett, who looked dead to the world, said, very slowly, 'I don't think any of us would argue with that.'
'No. So Sundog. Remind me, Irwin. You took my design and added all that ugly Star Wars stuff on the bottom.'
Schulz sounded offended. 'Michael, how can you call it ugly? You only saw it on the damn model'
'Okay, I know, I know. Ugly is as ugly does. And my name's Forrest — '
'Michael!' It was Mo this time, and she looked close to annoyed.
'Sorry. I babble creatively. Einstein did it too but no one snitched.' He watched Annie pushing the little boat across the pond. Sundog was something like this, only with the extra dimension of space added in. This was science too. Somewhere there was a bunch of numbers that could add up the satellite's present position. Somewhere a little line of buzzing electrons ran back from Sundog right to Charley, directly to her lair, talking in some two-way conversation only they understood. It irked him no end that a chunk of equipment he'd initially designed was being used in this way. And something else too.
'You're wrong, Irwin,' he muttered.
'About anything in particular?'
'About all that ugly stuff you tacked onto the butt of my beautiful machine. I didn't just see it on the model.' The image was still there in his head and he knew why it had stayed hidden. There was just too much pain in those last moments of the Shuttle crew. He'd liked Bill Ruffin, felt touched by the dogged, dutiful enthusiasm of the crew.
'Maybe you weren't watching, but after your nice machine killed those people, that floatcam of theirs got jerked around by something itself — I'd rather not guess at just what. It moved around from the dark side of Sundog out into the light. The business end, I guess you'd call it.'
Schulz took a big gulp of his drink. 'I guess I wasn't looking right then.'
'No. I don't blame you. But I don't think I was hallucinating. It made it there, for a few seconds anyway. And then the line went dead.'
'The satellite would have fried the thing, Michael,' Schulz explained. 'That's what it's supposed to do.'
'I guess so.' He did see it, he was sure of that. A bristling array of dishes, antennae, and assorted chunks of military metal. He was right. It was ugly. 'We still got that video on the system, Irwin?'
'It's on the system.'
'How do I find it?'
'I can do that for you,' Mo said, looking interested. 'Any particular reason?'
'No.' He wished he could think of one. 'I guess I'm just feeling restless.' He looked at his watch. It was nine-fifteen local. If Helen and her people got lucky in Nevada, the satellite might be back under their wing within two hours. That gave them a little under an hour before zenith to take the thing down.
He got up, and Mo Sinclair followed him. They went back into the control room, and he didn't know why but there was some low buzz of interior excitement hanging around his head, like a cloud of flies. 'You find me that video, Mo. I got a call to make.'
He watched her bring the PC alive and dialled Helen's number. 'I'm waiting,' he said to the screen on the desk. But there was nothing there except blackness.
Then he turned back to the video. It was there, as he remembered it. The antenna on the satellite did move, like a dog cocking its ear to the call of its master, and he couldn't, for the life of him, work out why this bugged him.
'Is that important?' Mo asked, watching the brief flicker of the film before the floatcam was blown to pieces.
'I don't know,' he muttered. 'Or rather, yes. But I don't understand how.'
CHAPTER 52
Through the Night
'Hi. Jeff Green.'
The FBI agent stuck out his hand and grinned. In the bright, artificial light of the Nellis pad he looked small and insignificant. No more than twenty-five, Helen thought. Short cropped hair, a friendly, open face.
'Green,' Barnside said, and took his hand. The contrast between the two men could hardly have been greater: Barn-side big, older, darker. And Green just starting out, bright-eyed and optimistic. Larry Wolfit, by Helen's side, just coughed. This wasn't some nice, cool detached wildlife project in the Rockies. He really didn't like getting this close to the action.
'Mr Wolfit, one of our science guys,' Barnside explained. 'A touch shy. Most of them are. But not all. You're here to look after us?'
Green laughed. 'No, sir. You're capable of doing that for yourselves. But they said I should stick with you all the same. Like the man said, it's important you stay out of their way when they're going in. They're playing with some neat stuff out there.' He took a small metal canister out of his night combat suit. 'These flash grenades, for example. They make our job a lot easier. But you get one of those in the face without goggles on and you'll know it.'
'That's understood,' Helen said. 'The key thing for us is to get in as quickly as possible once you've secured the area.'
'Agreed. There's five of you in all?'
'Yes. The other two are already on their way with their gear. I heard what Collins said about clearing the farm first. I still want them in place as close to the dome as possible so we can get in there when it's free.'
'Sure. And you three guys?'
'I'm just going to amble on up front with the support people,' Barnside said. 'I could spend my whole life watching other people work. I guess the science people hang around talking formulas or something. That right?'
Helen did her best to smile graciously. 'We can wait our turn. Can we go now?'
'In our slot,' Green said. 'The other four machines go ahead of us. In formation. We make up a lone rear. That's the way it is, not my decision. We get down a minute or so after they land. They got half a mile to walk before they can enter. We can just follow along slow. We all got maps?'
They stared at the charts in their hands. Green was starting to take on the manner of a tour guide. 'Good. If you look at our landing position, you can see there's a track leads sideways from the site. That takes you to the foot of the ridge. Mr Barnside, you'll be able to follow in the footsteps of our guys who go ahead. I suggest we wait at the ridge itself. If you want fast access to the dome, once we can allow that, I suggest the rest of your people start to make their way there pronto. If everything goes according to plan, we'll be inside that place in a matter of minutes.'