"I wasn't sleeping, sergeant," the pilot said automatically.
The moon Bellona was up by this time. In its light, never so bright as Old Earth's one moon, he saw the mass of the Atacama range rising to the north before him. The coastline was fainter, but still perceivable in the grainy, greenish glow of the goggles.
As soon as the autopilot sensed Montoya's hand on the stick it relinquished control. He nudged the stick back, and gave a little more gas to the engine to gain optimum altitude to enter the mountain wave of uplifting air.
Montoya glanced around in an attempt to find a lenticular, or lens shaped, cloud that would mark a particularly good updraft. Unsurprisingly, the goggles weren't quite up to seeing that, even though they were the best Haarlem-produced NVGs money could buy.
No matter, he thought. There are the mountains and I know the wind blows to the north. There will be a mountain wave to carry me up.
* * *
The engine had been killed to save fuel which would be needed later. Under the natural power of the mountain wave, Montoya corkscrewed upward at several kilometers an hour. His ears popped repeatedly as he twisted his head and worked his jaw to equalize pressure.
At about forty-five hundred meters above sea level another series of warning pings sounded to advise Montoya to don his oxygen mask. This was a pressure demand system, one that would provide overpressure of oxygen to allow the glider to ascend about ten thousand meters while still keeping the pilot conscious.
He'd drilled it more than a thousand times in his career as an aviator. Even using his left hand, the mask was on his face and affixed to his helmet in seconds. Oxygen flow started immediately and automatically thereafter, some of the gas being forced out of the tight-fitting mask by the overpressure.
* * *
The Global Locating System, or GLS, consisted of twenty-four satellites, some of them geosynchronous, in orbit above the planet. It was one of three such systems in orbit (or, arguably, four if one counted the ships of United Earth Peace Fleet which could do GLS duty at need), but was far and away the most complete and the best (again, excepting the UEPF).
In effect, the system worked by sending out signals from each satellite, which signals amounted to, "This is Satellite X. At the tone the time will be . . ." By comparing the times to the known positions of the satellites, a receiver could calculate position on the surface, height above the surface, and, if moving, direction to a very high degree of accuracy.
When Montoya's Condor reached fourteen thousand meters, his navigation system informed him: pingpingping. Pulling his stick over and forward, he ceased his corkscrew upward and began the roughly thousand kilometer long, slow, shallow dive that would take his craft east-northeast to where he expected to pick up another mountain wave to gain more altitude. Along the way, he would continue to receive uplift from air rising to pass over the Atacama range.
* * *
He'd packed his own rations for the trip, carefully setting aside anything with even a hint of beans or, worse still, peppers. He'd kept the small bottles of high test rum because, heated flight suit or not—
"God, it is fucking cold up here."
Tapping the Condor back into autopilot mode, Montoya removed his clumsy gloves and tore open a pouch of "mystery meat." It wasn't "mystery meat" because the cockpit was so dark he couldn't see the labeling on the pouch. It was "mystery meat" because no one really knew what its origin was.
The thing was about half frozen, frozen enough, in any event, that his spoon was useless. He squeezed the bottom of the pouch with his right hand to force the semi-solid chunk upwards. Then, pulling the oxygen mask away with his left hand, he bent his head and drove his teeth through the slab.
"Oh, yummy," Montoya sneered into his mask, while chewing. "Note to self: Word with the duque, first opportunity. Not good."
Once the meat chunk was but an unpleasant memory, Montoya reached down for another pouch. He could feel the texture of the next one through the foil wrapping.
"Tortilla, fried, chorley and corn, mixed," he recited from memory. "How grand."
Actually, the tortilla, a half-inch thick yellow patty, wasn't bad. It wasn't home cooking, no, but it wasn't bad.
After those two, Montoya's fingers did a little searching through the container under his legs. Soon they came to something he really did want, a small plastic bottle he knew from memory was labeled, "Rum, legionary, 50 ml, 160 proof, product of Distilleria Legionario, Arraijan, Balboa."
After that, he slept, dreaming of a girl who was considerably warmer than the frozen cockpit that was his reality.
* * *
The sun had risen, set, risen again, and was now setting, as Montoya heeled over to leave the Atacama behind. His altitude was just over fourteen thousand meters. That, alone, would be enough to reach the UEPF's island of Atlantis, but it would not be enough to reach it, overfly it, and return.
Montoya turned a hand crank to elevate the Condor's small propeller. Once it was in position, and the warning light shone "locked," he pressed the starter.
Nothing.
He pressed the starter again.
Still nothing.
"Fuck. This is going to cost a little time and fuel. Assuming, of course, that it works. Well . . . it usually works."
Taking his hand off the starter button, but leaving the throttle open, Montoya nosed his Condor over into a steeper dive. He felt the pressure on his posterior lessen. As the thing picked up speed, the propeller also began to turn more rapidly. It took several minutes, and several thousand feet, before Montoya felt the jolt of the small engine starting and then the mild, steady vibration of the motor turning on its own.
With the engine still running Montoya turned the glider back, wandering back toward the mountain range to regain some of the altitude he had lost.
* * *
The mind wanders sometimes. In the uneventful portions of his flight, Montoya's mind wandered, too.
Long flight . . . slow flight . . . nothing to see but my instruments and the clouds. Alone . . . as usual.
I can't say I've never had any luck with the women. I just never had any luck that lasted. Wonder if I'll ever meet the right girl.
Gisela was nice . . . but too hot tempered. Jocasta . . . well . . . who wants to share. Yelena Samsonova had beautiful eyes but when she turned, so did they. Besides, she was three inches taller than me; more in heels. We looked silly together. Still . . . those eyes . . .
I wish I could find a nice girl like Caridad, Cruz's wife. Sadly, she has no unmarried sisters. Or maybe a little jewel like Marqueli Mendoza. Ah, but such women are rare . . . rare.
I don't even remember how many women I've had. More than fifty? No, closer to one hundred. And the ones I wanted to keep didn't want me . . . and the ones who wanted me I didn't want to keep.
I think the fault must be in me somehow . . .
* * *
Fernandez, whose project this was, and the people who worked for him, including one section of Obras Zorilleras, had thought about the problem quite a lot: At what range is it even possible for the UEPF on Atlantis to pick up electrical signals from the glider's instrumentation, or the tiny amount of radio energy created by the sparkplugs in the motor? Ultimately, they'd had to admit, they had not a clue. Their best guess was worthless.
"But," had argued one of the OZ people, "we know the UE routinely lets aircraft and airships pass to within about two hundred and fifty kilometers. We also know that at two hundred and ten they engage without warning. Maybe that's the effective range of their weapons, true. But, just as likely, maybe that's the effective range of their sensors."