by Victor Koman
Captain Richard Anger handled the vehicle with supreme ease and quiet efficiency. He gave as much concentration to it as he did to flying an aircraft or piloting a ship. It was his nature to use his abilities to their utmost in any endeavor, even when events split his attentions three ways and more.
The act of driving calmed him. The constant forward motion, the awareness of heading somewhere, of adventure laying ahead of him, brought him peace.
Jonathan Madsen wondered how such a man could exist in the world of today. All he had ever seen in the few years of his life had been men and women of compromise: school teachers more interested in silence than in curiosity; store employees who viewed every teenager as a potential shoplifter; celebrities and even presidents whose confused personal lives tabloid magazines exposed with morbid glee.
Here he sat next to a hero whose name he had never heard before. A man who could follow him out a second-story window and land on his feet. A man who could crack a safe yet asked a kid’s permission to take its contents. A man with friends as quietly competent as he, who apparently traveled the world yet who-without hesitation-interrupted their personal and professional lives to give aid to strangers, to battle enormous evil without so much as a thought of the risk. A man and companions who thrived on danger, who sought it out where others would flee.
The only hero Jonathan had known in his life had been his grandfather. Julie also hearkened to another age, an earlier time when a man could still live a life heroically without bowing to the pressures all around him.
In the driver’s seat, though, sat a man one-third Gramps’s age who embodied all things heroic from ages long past. He was the last of the heroes, Jonathan marveled. Or perhaps, he thought with hope, the first of their return!
Chapter Twelve
The Gathering
Two sleek black jets soared over the ocean’s shore and shredded inland at a dizzying speed. Jonathan Madsen stared out of the cockpit at the blur of golden sands and green-brown sea cliffs that raced by below. The sun, squat on the horizon and red as a ruby, gave up the last of its light to the haze of Los Angeles. That city, off to the right, began to glow as lights inside skyscrapers winked on.
Below their jets, though, spread mountainous and rugged terrain. Only a few wealthy mansions dotted the landscape here and there, and at two thousand feet altitude, the small and superbly crafted jet engines barely whispered to anyone on the ground.
The jets slowed and descended gently to a small runway. Though the sophisticated electronics on the aircraft would have permitted a landing in total darkness, the strip adjacent to the Anger Institute sparkled with green and white landing lights and the cool blue glow of taxi lights. Cap and Leila followed these to the hanger where they disembarked to leave the jets in the able hands of Jack, the mechanic. Jonathan Madsen followed Captain Anger, Rock, and Leila to a chamber in one of the hangers.
The chamber housed a smooth, stainless-steel cylinder about the length and width of a mid-sized automobile. Cap ushered them inside and sealed the hatch. An invisible hand shoved Jonathan back in his seat as forcefully as the acceleration of the jet had.
Floating on a field of magnetic levitation, the vehicle raced underground through its tunnel, speeding beneath the airfield at over two hundred miles per hour. The trip to the nearby Anger Institute took less than a minute.
•
Captain Anger stood before one of the wide, large windows of his office. Taking up the entire fifth floor of the Anger Institute’s administration building, it constituted the tallest point on the sprawling campus. It served as more than an office, housing Cap’s own computer and communications center, living quarters, exercise studio, and meditation retreat.
At the moment, it served as a meeting room for five of the most remarkable people in the world.
Of them all, Captain Anger was the most impressive, standing in front of the darkened window gazing out at the softly illuminated complex of laboratories and offices comprising the Anger Institute for Advanced Science. His tall figure, dressed now in a fresh, clean duplicate of his black flight suit, stood silhouetted against the night sky, silent and pensive. If he wanted to, he could have melted into the night without a trace. For now, though, he stood quietly while his aides assembled.
Leila and Rock had arrived at the office before him. Leila- clad in a crème-white, business-style jacket and skirt that accentuated her pale skin and jet-black hair sat in a deep, burgundy-hued leather chair. Rock, wearing a crisp white lab coat over blue slacks and a khaki shirt, paced around the room. Jonathan Madsen had showered and received expert treatment for all his wounds. Clean, bandaged and wearing hospital greens, he sat on another of the plush leather chairs and watched in curious amazement as three newcomers arrived.
Phil “The Flash” Hoile arrived. Slender, dark-haired, and youngish, he looked only a few years older than Jonathan-in his early twenties at best. He carried with him a small black box, which he placed on the expansive walnut desk at the far end of the room.
The second man to enter was an opposite of Flash in nearly every way. Physically huge at six-foot-five, he strode through the doors with the muscular grace of a circus strongman. The dark brown skin and long black ponytail that announced his African and American Indian heritage contrasted starkly with the dark blue three-piece suit, maroon and navy rep tie, and light blue shirt he wore. Where someone of his build ought to have looked uncomfortable and out of place in such clothes, he seemed perfectly natural and at ease. His massive hands looked like battering rams, as dangerous in a fight as gallon barrels of lead shot. His smooth, clean-shaven face supported eyebrows perpetually knotted in a meditative frown, as if he thought he could be off doing something even more important.
His name was Jefferson Sun Ra Paine, and in his profession he only used his fists to pound on the defense table in passionate pleading for his clients. Paine, quite possibly the finest attorney in the world, practiced criminal, corporate, patent, and tax law. He only defended the unjustly accused and he made his fortune from counter-suits brought against the false accusers.
In his leisure time, he sought to right the monumental wrongs that the law handled either reluctantly or not at all. That was why he enjoyed the company of Captain Anger and his compatriots. They embraced that philosophy to the hilt.
He set his briefcase down beside a chair and sat. In a deep but pleasantly mellow voice, he said, “Skipper, I’ve got to be back in court by Tuesday. I read everything in the computer on the flight out here. What do you need from me?”
Captain Anger said nothing for a moment, then turned to speak. As he was about to say something, the oak double doors of the office swung wide with a jarring crash.
“Hellfire, boy!” shouted an unmistakably Texan voice. “Ya drag me out here promising four skull jobs and they tell me I’ve got another hour to wait!”
The man who shouted stood at average height and medium build. The two-inch heels of his grey ostrich-skin cowboy boots, though, coupled with his overbearing attitude, made him appear nearly as tall as the lawyer Paine. Clad in black jeans held up by a silver concho belt and a black cavalry shirt trimmed with silver, he clompped in and made a show of removing his jacket- a full-length grey duster as formidable as that worn by any gunslinger in the Old West. He wore no gun, though. He reached up to remove the black ten-gallon hat trimmed with a hat band of silver Indian beadwork. From beneath the sweatband exploded a riot of salt-and-pepper grey hair. The man-easily the oldest of the six people present-displayed a little mad scientist’s gleam in his southerner’s eyes. He flung the Stetson so that it frisbeed across the office, landing squarely on a bronze bust of Benjamin Franklin. That was when Jonathan noticed the man’s hands.
The hands of the latest arrival were thin and long, almost half again as long as normal for a man his size. And though the fingers looked slender and the hands and wrists narrow, they grasped, held, and tossed aside hat and jacket with a grace and strength that belied their delicate appearance.
For the hands of Dr. Uriah West served as his most powerful tools, instruments of life with a healing ability of incomparable proportions.
Captain Anger nodded at the newcomer. “Tex, Sun Ra-I’d like you to meet Jonathan Madsen, grandson of Dr. Julius Madsen. Jonathan-”
“Call me Johnny, if you’d like, Mr. Anger.”
“All right.” Captain Anger smiled. “And you can call me Cap.” He looked back at Sun Ra and Tex. “Johnny, meet Jefferson Paine, Esquire, and Dr. Uriah West.”
“Call me Sun Ra,” rumbled the attorney’s pleasant, deep voice.
“And my handle’s Tex,” the doctor said with a wide grin, “as if ya couldn’t guess.”
Jonathan nodded at them, a little subdued by the strange assemblage of talent. He had seem some interesting types at his grandfather’s lab, but no one nearly as wild as this crew.
Cap said, “The patients are on a chartered commercial jet out of San Jose. I suspect they have implants controlling their gross motor functions. Your operating room’s ready and your surgical team awaits.” He turned to the other arrival. “Sun Ra, thanks for handling those weapons charges with the Los Gatos police. Where’s Glenn?”
Flash spoke up. “Glennis is in Antarctica with the greenhouse project. There’s no way she could have made it here by midnight.”
Cap shook his head. “World’s still too big,” he muttered. Looking down at the device Flash laid on his desk, Cap pulled the tiny disc out of his pocket. “Let’s see if you can get something out of this.” He tossed the disc to Flash, who peeled off the adhesive tape and cleaned it with alcohol.
Hunched over the compact disc reader, the blond man adjusted the laser tracking so that it would move closer to the center to read everything close to the tiny spindle hole of the diminutive platter. Connecting it up to the computer inside Cap’s deceptively antique desk, Flash switched on the reader.
The flat screen built into the desk glowed as text appeared. It said:
Project Lilliput Titan
Drexler College of Nanotechnology
Julius Madsen, Ph.D.
William Arthur Dandridge, Ph.D.
I. Goals and Objectives
II. Flowcharts, Circuit Diagrams, Photo-Masking
III. A History of Microbotics
IV. The Future of Microbotics
V. Specific Military Applications
VI. Prototypes and Testing
VII. References
Which?__
Cap tapped in the Roman numeral V and watched the information pop up on the screen. The muscles in his jaw tightened as he read of the military uses imagined by Madsen and Dandridge for their invention. Whether smuggled in over land or dropped down by aircraft or missile, the microbots could lay waste to entire cities, reducing buildings and people to their constituent molecules.
Cap’s aides clustered around the desk screen, joined by Jonathan who stared in a disbelief at what he read.
“My grandfather wouldn’t suggest such things,” he said. “He’d never think up ways to kill people.”
Rock spoke as gently as his Slavic tones allowed. “Sometimes people have to say or print things they don’t believe in order to get funding. Sometimes scientists don’t realize what they consider interesting theories somebody else considers real and useable weapons. My own father built missiles for Soviet Union. He dreamt of travelling into space, but missiles he built military just used for atom bombs. He kept doing it, though. He had family to think of. Now rockets used for space travel, but my father is dead.” Rock shrugged. “Very little justice in world.”
Cap nodded. “Well, we’re going to provide a little in the case of Dr. Dandridge.” He keyed in the section concerning prototypes and testing. After scanning the pages scrolling past, he said, “Johnny, do you know what Pacific Test Site Three is?”
“It could be a pair of islands off Baja California called the Escollos Alijos. Dandridge has a research lab there.”
“Then we’ll go as soon as Tex removes those implants from the zombies. We may need to know what makes them tick.” Captain Anger stood and gazed at his five fellow adventurers. “We can’t stop the spread of technology just because it is sometimes misused. But we can stop those who seek to pervert science toward evil ends.”
He switched off the disk reader and called up a map of the Baja California coastline. In the Pacific Ocean roughly 250 miles west of the town of Santo Domingo lay Escollos Alijos.
He looked up at Flash. “Call Long Beach,” he said, “and have the Seamaster prepped for takeoff. Fully prepped.”
“What about me? Am I going?” Jonathan asked.
Captain Anger took a moment to address the eager young man. “My friends and I are used to danger-we choose it freely, even enjoy it a bit. I have no right to endanger you, though. Stay here with Flash. You’ll be in radio contact with us every step of the way.”
Jonathan’s expression faded to disappointment. “All right. Say-is there anyplace to eat around here?”
Cap smiled. “Second floor cafeteria. Help yourself.”
After the boy departed, Captain Anger gazed thoughtfully at his five companions. Rock, Leila, Flash, Sun Ra, and Tex quietly watched him with anticipation.
“Friends,” he said, “when my father founded the Anger Institute, he sought to bring together the finest minds to engage in creation and invention for the betterment of mankind. He crossed national lines to do so, ignored the power-plays of governments, and invested his entire fortune in this venture. He thought that science alone could save humanity. What he did not understand was the human capacity to choose evil over good.
“My small contribution to this effort was to seek out the sort of thinkers and creators who were also people of action. Men and women who understand that science has no morality-only people can choose how any tool is used. A hammer can just as easily be wielded to smash a skull as build a house.
“Our common goal is to stop the skull-smashers before they can swing those hammers.”
Captain Anger paused a moment, then said, “We’ve united before in such efforts. We were successful then. And with your help, I trust we will be again.”
“If we don’t get killed,” Rock muttered to himself.
Chapter Thirteen
Flight of the Seamaster
The jet engines of the Martin P6M Seamaster roared into life. Floating in the channel to the east of the domed shrine to its predecessor, the Hughes Hercules H-1 Spruce Goose, the flying boat lay low in the grey pre-dawn waters. The last of its kind, it had been rescued from an aircraft graveyard and completely rebuilt and restored by Captain Anger. In an age of utilitarian passenger airliners and specialized military aircraft, the Seamaster was a lovely anomaly: a large jet aircraft designed to take off and land on water. Graceful and sleek in design, its engines lay atop the wings, artfully hidden inside wide, thin air intakes. The tips of the high-mounted wings curved downward to touch the water and provide three-point stability between them and the streamlined hull.
The entire aircraft above the water line was painted a deep grey-a color that blended well with the sea and sky and clouds. The bottom of the buoyant hull had been painted a medium blue, with a smooth wave design at the waterline that served as camouflage while on the high seas.
Even though the design of the seagoing jet appeared archaic, the materials Cap used to restore the aircraft made it one of the most technologically advanced planes in the world. Instead of steel and aluminum, the plane’s fame and skin utilized plasma-hardened titanium-light, strong, and uncorrodible. And though the instrument panel and controls came from the original aircraft, much had been added in the way of avionics and electronic equipment. Instead of push-rods and cables, the controls consisted of fly-by-wire (more accurately, fly-by-optical fiber) connected to the sophisticated onboard computer (which in turn uplinked to Cyclops).
Racing across the harbor waters, the sun not yet risen in the blood-red morning sky behind them, Captain Anger piloted the Seamaster with a skill
seen nowhere else in the world, except perhaps among his allies. Leila sat to his right in the co-pilot’s seat, arguably the next-best pilot of the bunch. And Rock frequently argued the point in defense of his own flying skills.
The sea thumped against the hull of the flying boat. Water sprayed noisily about outside the cockpit, drenching the windshields to create a blurred view of a world consisting of grey water, white foam, and coral sky. Cap stared straight ahead, left hand on the wheel, right hand on the throttles. Occasionally he glanced at the airspeed indicator.
Suddenly, the roughness smoothed as the jet lifted to a higher position on the water.
“On the top,” Leila said with excitement. Breaking free from earthly bonds thrilled her with its primal delight.
Cap fed full power to the engines. With a deceptively quiet roar they accelerated to liftoff speed. After an instant when the hiss of rushing water against the hull threatened to drown out all else, just as suddenly the noise disappeared, left behind and below as the jet climbed out over Los Angeles Harbor. Beneath them drifted the man-made islands named for three American astronauts who had died in the race for the Moon-Island Grissom, Island Chaffee, Island White. Cap banked the plane when it passed through 1000 feet and headed south along a flight path that skirted the California coastline.
Cap flew more by instinct than by instruments. It was that instinct, that feel for how an airplane flies that led him to consult the instruments.
“Knock the elevator trim up a notch,” he said to his co-pilot. “We’re dragging our tail.”
“It matches our weight-and-balance sheet,” she said, a little mystified.
“Shto tebye!” the Russian shouted. “Hey, Cap-smotri! Kid is stowaway!”
Rock climbed forward with an indignant but unstruggling body tucked under his arm. He set the boy down behind the pilot’s seat.
Jonathan Madsen thumbed his stray blond hair behind his ears and stared defiantly at Cap.