Threatening.
“Dane?”
He shook his head.
“Dane?”
He looked up at Polodka. “Yes, Svetlana?”
“There is a telephone call for you.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
Brande grabbed the receiver from the set on the workbench.
“Yeah?”
“Dane, this is Avery”
Glancing up at the logging monitor, Brande noted that the submersible was at 18,650 feet of depth. Forward speed ten knots. All systems green.
“Yeah, Avery, what’s up?”
“We’re pretty certain the Sea Lion has located the rocket.”
“What!”
“The CIS ships are currently clustered at twenty-six, nineteen, fifty-nine North, one-seventy-six, ten, thirty-three East.”
Brande spun around in his chair to look at Larry Emr/s monitor.
“That’s outside our search area.”
“Yes, just a trifle,” Hampstead said.
“Shit. We’re on our way.”
“Hold on. I need to talk to you a minute.”
“You hold on,” Brande told him. “Larry!”
Emry looked up from his keyboard.
Brande repeated the new coordinates to him. “Set up a secondary search zone. Pass the word to Rae and Mel, and change course.”
“Well head over there without bringing them up?”
“Right. It’s only what, three miles?”
“About that,” Emry said, grabbing a phone and hitting the intercom buttons for the bridge. “Okay, Chief, we’re executing now.”
Brande turned his attention back to Hampstead. “The Russians reported the find?”
“No. Washington has been interpreting the movement of ships.”
“Christ! Why can’t those people just talk to us?”
“Someday, Dane, we may figure that out. Right now, it looks like they’re onto something.”
“We’re going over there”
“Good,” Hampstead said.
“What about the Eastern Flower? Have you talked to her yet?”
“The Kane reports that her robots are still inoperative. They’re working on them. Cartwright’s en route to the new area, too.”
“Hell, we gave them the programs.”
“They’re having trouble adapting them. They’ve requested Otsuka again.”
Brande wondered if Otsuka had not altered the program a tad before transmitting it to the Japanese ship. Nah… “Anyway, Avery, you had something else to tell me?”
After a long pause, Haunpstead said, “I talked to my sister.” What the hell? “And?”
“She said I should be true to myself.”
“Nice sister.”
“I think so. I’m going to introduce her to Kaylene”
“Avery?”
“I’m probably breaking laws I never heard of, Dame. The reactor is hot.”
Brande put the phone down, but not on its cradle. He thought about Rae down there. And Okey and Bob.
He lifted the receiver and pressed it to his ear hard, as if it would help him hear something different when he asked, “You’re sure?”
Hampstead told him what he knew of the CIS modeling program.
“Between six o’clock last night and midnight tonight?”
“Yes, Dane. I’m sorry.”
“Who’s the sorry son of a bitch that made the decision to not tell us?”
“There’s a bunch of them”
“Who’s your contact? The Unruh guy?”
“Yes.”
“And where is he?”
“The Situation Room.”
“You happen to have a phone number, Avery?”
Hampstead gave it to him.
Cutting the connection, Brande reopened it and told Bucky Sanders, who was on duty in the radio shack, to get the Washington number and ask for Unruh.
“And Bucky, I want this piped into the ship’s PA system and over the acoustic phone.”
“Gotcha, Chief.”
The way Paco Sanchez and Larry Emry were staring at him, Brande realized that his voice had climbed a few octaves as he talked to Hampstead.
Others in the lab had gathered closer.
“Let me talk to Mayberry, Paco,” he said, taking the acoustic telephone.
“Bob, you there?”
“All bright and happy, Dane. Larry says we’ve got our target spotted.”
“Yeah, we do. In a minute, Bob, you’ll be hearing a heated conversation. Listen carefully, then well talk.”
“Okay,” Mayberry said, but his tone was dubious.
The phone rang.
Brande picked it up.
“Dr. Brande? Carl Unruh here”
“Are you there with all the people who make decisions, Unruh?”
“Uh, yeah. Something the matter?”
“Tell me about the state of the reactor,” Brande said.
“Well, you probably know as much…”
“What happens at 2400 hours tonight?”
The hesitation lasted six or seven heartbeats. “Ah, shit. Avery caved in?”
“In fact, Unruh, the damned thing could already be supercritical, right?”
“Uh, yeah, that’s right, but listen, Brande…”
“You’d better dig a hole wherever it is spooks dig holes because, when this is over, I’m coming looking…”
“Hey, Brande! Think about the goddamned world for…”
“Just like fucking ‘High Noon.’”
Brande slammed the phone down. His face felt hot, flushed with the heat of his anger.
He grabbed the desk mike and the acoustic telephone and used them both simultaneously.
“Everybody heard that?”
There was no answer. Despite the pounding of the rain and the whine of the diesel engines, the ship seemed unnaturally quiet.
“Rae, prepare for ascent.”
“Do we know for certain guaran-goddamn-teed that the thing has gone to meltdown?” Dokey asked.
Brande hesitated. “No. What we know is what the CIS modeling program said.”
“Which is? Tell me, Chief.”
“It could have happened as early as last night. On the back end, they’re saying midnight tonight.”
“The max is 2400 hours?” Emry asked from beside him. “Right.”
“Anybody want to take a vote now?” Thomas said over the phone.
“No damned vote this time,” Brande said. “We’re turning back”
“Because you’re pissed as some flaky bureaucrat?” she asked. “Or because you don’t think we can do it?”
Brande tried to calm down. Rae was right; he was mad as hell at Unruh and his ilk. One does not make decisions based on incomplete information, and he felt betrayed by those he had trusted to give him the right data.
“Come on, Chief,” she urged.
Brande took a slow, deep breath. “You’ve got the gavel, Rae.”
“I forgot,” she said. “All right, new deadline, 2300 hours tonight. All the yeas be quiet. If there’s a nay in the bunch, shout it out so I can hear you over the phone. One nay is all it takes to turn one-eighty.”
The silence of the ship continued to overwhelm.
Overwhelmed Brande, at any rate.
He grabbed the phone, “Bucky, get hold of the Olʼyantsev. I want to talk to whoever’s in charge.”
“You know who that is, Chief?”
“Some goddamned general. Just get him.”
Dmitri Oberstev was in the combat information center when the radio call came in.
“I don’t wish to talk to anyone just now,” he said, keeping his eyes on the plotting board.
“Oh, General,” Talebov said, “this man threatens to ram my ship if he doesn’t talk to you.”
Oberstev took off his glasses and polished them, studying Captain Talebov. He appeared too earnest.