"Break off, you damn fools," he muttered at the dot on the scope. But the point of green light kept coming straight for the smear of the mountain range and the base beyond.
One of the problems with running the most highly secret military base in the United States was the tourists. Groom Lake was so secret it was regularly written up in national magazines. So naturally it drew military buffs, peace protesters, flying saucer fanatics and assorted religious cranks, crazies and general-issue looney-toons like a magnet draws iron filings.
That in fact was one of Groom Lake’s functions. While there was some very secret work done here, the focus of developing the next-generation aircraft had shifted elsewhere. General Manley knew that the next generation was really being developed in an industrial park in Los Angeles by a weird mix of civilian engineers, "retired" military officers and science fiction fans, most of whom thought they were working for a private foundation running on a shoestring. There was also the "agricultural experiment station" up in northern Idaho where the really secret work was done. That was so highly classified the general could hardly bear to think about it. While the work went on there, all the flak came to Groom Lake, and it was part of General Manley’s job to catch it. The most dangerous of the groups were the military buffs who prided themselves on collecting every scrap of information about programs they were supposed to know nothing about. By combining everything from chance sightings to seismic records of sonic booms they had pieced together remarkably detailed pictures of several of the craft that actually existed at Area 51, as well as equally detailed pictures of several that had never existed, including one that had started out as a practical joke in the Nellis AFB officer’s club.
Those people the general could almost sympathize with. The most irritating ones, and the most persistent, were the space nuts who kept insisting that the government had a flying saucer hidden in one of the hangars. Their latest tactic had been to file a lawsuit claiming the saucer’s force fields were making people sick for miles around. Lawyers for the saucerians had been combing the sparsely populated desert around the base seeking people with illnesses, real or imaginary, that they could blame on the presence of the alien spaceship. The next step would be a class action suit against the government with all kinds of discovery motions.
Was this more saucer folk, General Manley wondered, or was it another camera crew from a tabloid TV show? Using a Russian airplane would appeal to those bozos.
Whoever it was was in for a big disappointment even if they lived to get here. The truth was there was nothing to see. The plane was so slow the base had plenty of time to get anything sensitive under cover-a well-practiced maneuver because of Russian spy satellites. Besides, nothing interesting happened outdoors in the daytime.
Off in the background a phone rang. The general gritted his teeth and wished he hadn’t quit smoking.
If he thought that plane represented a threat to his command he would have ordered it shot out of the air without hesitation. But unless there was a nuclear weapon on board there wasn’t a damn thing it could be carrying that would seriously hurt this base. He knew it, everyone in the command center knew it and the one also knew the standing orders. The fact was he’d need a damn good reason not to shoot that plane down.
"General," the lieutenant holding the phone said hesitantly. She was young, fresh-faced and buxom even through her flight suit. She reminded the general of his daughter, who was also a lieutenant training at fighter school at Luke Air Force Base.
"Sir, it’s the XO."
General Manley glared. "Sir, he says it’s urgent," the lieutenant offered. The general sighed and extended a hand for the phone. "Sir," the XO said, "I’ve got a lawyer on the phone. And I’ve got the Pentagon on the other line telling us to cooperate with him ’to the maximum extent feasible.’"
Oh Jesus, the general thought, what now?
Wiz was still wondering about it when the scenery changed again. This section of tunnel was neatly floored and walled with blocks of worked stone. Columns stood along the walls supporting groined vaulting overhead. After all the different kinds of tunnels they had seen, Wiz wasn’t particularly surprised, but he was reminded of pictures of the crypts under a Gothic cathedral.
Just to be sure he motioned to Danny. The younger programmer swept his magic detector back and forth across their path and then shook his head. No magic before them.
Wiz took three steps before Malkin grabbed his arm.
"Freeze," she commanded
"What’s wrong?"
"Your trusting nature, for a start," the tall thief said.
"But there’s no magic here."
Malkin looked amused. "Do you think that’s the only danger we face? Look at this place. Why do you think it’s built like this?"
To hold the roof up?"
"Perhaps. But why here and nowhere else we have seen? Give me more light, if you can." With that she picked her way ahead, studying the floor before her intently and occasionally poking and prodding with her rapier.
She got perhaps a dozen steps beyond Wiz before she stopped dead and looked around. Finally she reached into her pack and pulled out a rock the size of her fist. She tossed it underhand at a perfectly unremarkable section of stone floor a couple of steps ahead of her.
As soon as the rock struck there was a creak and a section of the floor swung downward, leaving a gaping blackness beneath. Far below Wiz thought he heard the sound of rushing water, but he heard no splash from the stone. Then there was another creak and the stones swung back into place, leaving the floor looking as perfect as before. Malkin looked smug.
"How did you know that was there?"
The stonework was too regular," she told him, leaving Wiz to try to determine why that section of the paving was any more regular than any other.
"Now listen," she said. "I’m going to go ahead to find the traps. I’ll mark the safe path and then you come through one at a time. No more. We want as little weight on this floor as we can."
As Wiz and the others watched, Malkin picked her way over the stone floor. Twice more she marked hidden traps with a bit of charcoal stuck on the point of her rapier, and once she skipped neatly out of the way as a blade swung down from the ceiling on a long rod.
"All right," she called back as the blade slowed. "The place is so big we’ll have to do this in stages. The first one of you follow my path to here. The next one come to that white stone just in front of the second trap." Wiz picked his way forward and Danny followed. By the time he had reached the now-still blade, Malkin was up ahead, dodging in and out of the forest of columns.
They watched intently as she spotted another trap, then she stepped behind a pillar and they couldn’t see her anymore.
"Hey!" they heard her yell. "What:"