by Dale Brown
also represented the proper pitch and bank to follow; as long as
he kept the little fighter model on the road he would be following
the computer's recommended flight path. The road's curbs rep-
resented the allowable lateral flight corridor to follow, and tiny
signposts represented planned tum-points and recommended
altitude-changeover points.
As long as the "road" was straight and flat, the ride went
well. But after a few moments the road began to make small left
and, right turns, and the going got much tougher. The tiny fighter
icon penetrated through the road several times, porpoising up
and down through the recommended altitude block, and Patrick
had to apply harder and faster corrections to keep the plane
steady.
"Stabilize, Patrick," he heard from JC. Powell.
"I'm trying." The fighter icon slid through the right wall of
the road, skidded sideways, then entered an uncontrolled spin.
"Let the computer recover the plane," Powell said. "Don't
try to fight it."
114 DALE BROWN
Patrick forced himself to go along. He concentrated on the
surface of the computer-generated road without thinking about
the aircraft control. Suddenly he knew that ANTARES had
placed both mission-adaptive wings in high-lift modes and de-
ployed both dorsal and ventral sets of rudders to maximize di-
rectional control. The fighter icon dove through the right side of
the flight path depiction, but by rapid lift, power and drag
changes under precise computerized control, the fighter was soon
out of its uncontrolled spin and stabilized in a steep dive. A few
moments later the fighter slowly leveled out and returned to its
desired flight path once again.
"Good recovery," Carmichael said. "ANTARES will always
try to save the air-craft whenever possible, but you still have to
tell her where you want to go, even in an uncontrolled situa-
tion. "
After a few minutes of straight-and-level flight to get his
confidence back, Patrick accomplished a few turns, with bank
angles and altitude changes mixed in. "I think I've got the hang
of it again," Patrick said.
"Still have those headaches?"
"Now that you mention it, yes, but they seem to become less
noticeable when I'm concentrating on something else."
"Good. How about some formation flying? We can put up
another fighter and let you fly off his wing for a while.
"No, bring up a hostile."
"Getting cocky now, aren't we, sir?" Powell cut in. "Five
minutes ago you couldn't make a ten-degree turn without going
out of control. Now you want to do some dogfighting."
"That's what the damned simulators are for, Bring up a
high-performance model, too."
"You got it."
There was no change in the simulation after several long mo-
ments. He was going to ask if they had put up a hostile when
he remembered-none of his fighter's offensive or defensive Sys-
tems had been activated-
But that realization was enough. Immediately a computer syn
thesized voice announced, "Attack radar activated . . . elec-
tronic countermeasures activated . . . tail warning systems
activated.
And there it was, a laser-projected image of a fighter in the
upper right comer of the screen. Patrick immediately corn-
manded the simulator's laser-trucking system to lock onto the
hostile aircraft, and deactivated the attack-radar as soon as the
laser had illuminated the target. But it wasn't fast enough. Flight
data on the hostile aircraft showed that it had altered course and
was on a head-on intercept course. The hostile had detected Pat-
rick's brief radar emission and had turned to start the fight.
As the two aircraft merged into a nose-to-nose flight path,
Patrick was suddenly flooded with information. His laser-
projection screen was filled with electronic depictions of dozens
of options, only a few of which included a full head-on pass.
There were so many options that he lost count. His headache
had come back full-force now. Beads of sweat obscured his vi-
sion, blood pounded in his ears. He was conscious, his mind
still sharp, but the pain, intermingled with hundreds of bits of
data predicting the outcome of dozens of maneuvers by both
aircraft soon overwhelmed him.
The ANTARES simulator suddenly went inverted and pulled
a heart-stopping eight-G descent. The simulator had activated
the all-aspect radar as it descended, and Patrick could easily
"see" his pursuer descend with him. But that was what AN-
TARES had been expecting. The simulator continued its in-
verted loop, using its high-lift canards to pull the nose up through
the horizon. The throttle went to max afterburner as he went
through the vertical-and Patrick had no doubt that he would
have been squashed like a grape if he had been in a real jet
aircraft.
As the nose dove through the horizon once again he found
that the pursuer had become the pursued. Whatever kind of air-
craft they had put up against him, it couldn't keep up with AN-
TARES. Patrick found himself directly behind his adversary,
and ANTARES had already an-ned four laser-guided missiles
and was waiting for orders to fire. Patrick issued those orders a
split second later. Meanwhile, ANTARES had switched to the
internal twenty-millimeter multibarrel cannon and was waiting
for orders to fire as the simulator closed in on the hostile, but
there was no need to open fire-all laser-guided hypervelocity
missiles had hit their target.
"Ground position freeze," Dr. Carmichael ordered. Patrick
heard footsteps on the catwalk around the simulator's cockpit as
the cockpit indicators and the deluge of information in his head
116 DALE BROWN
abruptly ceased. "Patrick, this is Alan Carmichael. Can you
hear me?"
He found himself frozen in his seat, unable to move a muscle
and barely able to move his lips . . . "Yes."
"We're going to disconnect ANTARES. Hold on."
Even though the simulator had stopped, the pain inside Pat-
rick's head was steadily increasing. He could feel the fighter
doing some lazy rolls and spins but didn't have the strength to
. sue the orders to maintain straight and level flight.
IS - 1 . . . I'm losing it . . ."
"Let it go, Patrick," Carmichael said. "You're off the sim-
ulation. Relax. Don't worry about the controls."
It was like telling a man hanging from a cliff to cut his lifeline.
Slowly, using every last ounce of strength he had, Patrick fought
the urge to counteract the spinning aircraft. But the more he let
go, the more he was drawn to what was happening. As the air-
craft's altitude began to decrease, he received the aircraft alti-
tude, "heard" ANTARES' reports on terrain, engine
performance, structural loads. The closer the fighter got to earth,
the faster the reports came. When the fighter shot through five
thousand feet above the ground, ANTARES re
commended it
take over. Patrick did not respond. At three thousand feet above
ground, ANTARES issued the order to eject. Again, Patrick
ignored it.
He just sat, transfixed, as he listened to ANTARES' neural
'screams." The computer was literally begging its human oc-
cupant to do something, anything, to save it. The more the com-
puter blasted McLanahan with pleas to issue an order to recover
the aircraft, the more the pain increased and the more Patrick
was unable to do anything. Carmichael was reaching to discon-
nect the superconducting helmet from Patrick's clavicle rin
when the simulator slammed into the ground at nearly two
thousand miles per hour.
When the helmet was finally lifted from McLanahan's shoul-
ders and Carmichael saw his face, even he was shocked. Mc-
Lanahan's face was a mask of pain, as in a man tortured to the
very brink of tolerable agony.
"Patrick, snap out of it, it's over!" Carmichael was yelling
at him. Technicians had jumped up on the catwalk beside Car-
michael, and others were unfastening the shoulder harness and
loosening the heavy connectors and relays on the metallic flight
suit. Carmichael looped an oxygen mask over Patrick's face.
"It's over. Wake up, dammit."
No response. Technicians were still trying to remove the heavy
metallic gloves from Patrick's hands and undo the suit's fasten-
ers, so Carmichael bent lower over Patrick and put his ear to his
mouth.
"He's stopped breathing, cut the suit off-- An assistant hes-
itated, looking first at Patrick, then Carmichael. "I said cut it
off. Now." Carmichael put'his face up to Patrick's. "Patrick,
wake up, dammit! " He grabbed a pair of steel cutters from one
of the technicians as the medical team removed the oxygen mask
and inserted a breathing tube down Patrick's throat, then grabbed
a wire-laced seam of the suit and made a twelve-inch cut across
Patrick's chest with the ultrasonic cutting tool, exposing the thin
cotton undergarments soaked with sweat. "Get a heart monitor
over here!" He ripped open the underwear to expose Mc-
Lanahan's chest. He studied Patrick's face as the airway was
opened and the respirator started. The eyes were fluttering and
his facial muscles were contorting as if he was locked in some
nightmare.
Then JC. Powell stepped up on the catwalk opposite Car-
michael. As the electrocardiogram leads were taped to Mc-
Lanahan's chest, Powell took Patrick's head in his hands and
bent down to his left ear:
"Wake up, boss," he said in a firm, quiet voice. "Show's
over, Colonel. Wake up."
Carmichael studied the EKG readouts. "No pulse. Straight
line. Charge the defibrillator units. Powell, get out of the way. "
ignored him. "Patrick, this is I know you can hear
me-"
"He can't hear a damn thing, " Carmichael said. "Now stand
clear-"
"He can hear me, he knows what's happening. He can feel
everything. He just needs a direction-"
"What the hell are you talking about?"
did not answer. Instead, he placed both of Patrick's hands
on his shoulders, moved as close as he could and said, "Patrick,
you can hear me. Listen to me. ANTARES isn't in charge now.
You are in control. Wake up.
"He's been unconscious too long, Powell," Carmichael said.
118 DALE BROWN
A medical technician handed him two electrode paddles from
the heart defibrillator. "He'll die if we don't revive him."
"And you'll kill him if you shock him with that. " Powell
grabbed Patrick by his flight suit and hauled him up as far out
of the ejection seat as he could. "Patrick!" he yelled. " Dammit,
I said wake up!"
Suddenly McLanahan's eyes popped open. He grabbed 's
shoulder in a crushing grip that made Powell wince. He gagged
on the resuscitator tube in his throat and pulled it out, his chest
heaving. Powell eased him back into his seat.
"Sinus rhythm," one of the paramedics reported. "Blood
pressure high but strong. Heart rate, respiration okay."
"Are you'all right?"
"I . . . I think so."
Carmichael started to put the oxygen mask on his face again
but Patrick pulled it away, choosing instead to take occasional
deep breaths from it.
"It was so weird," McLanahan said, trying hard to control
his breathing. He seemed to be reviewing, reliving, the scene in
his mind. "I was watching the intercept and the kill like a spec-
tator. ANTARES was doing it all. It was like I wasn't there.
But I felt the pain building and building, and ANTARES getting
stronger and stronger, along with the pain. But then I couldn't
do anything. I knew I still had to fly the aircraft on ground-
position freeze but I couldn't give any commands. I felt like . . .
like a million hornets were buzzing all around me.'I knew those
hornets carried information, important data I need to know, and
I knew something was wrong. But with the pain, I couldn't do
a thing . . . Suddenly everything was dark and empty. I didn't
have a body, just a brain. I was searching for a way out of a
room but didn't know how I was going to make it even if I
found an exit. That's when I heard 's voice. The more I
heard, the more . . . alive I felt. I followed his voice . . .
I . . ." His voice began to fade, and he appeared to be drifting
off to sleep.
"Get him out of here," Carmichael ordered.
He woke up later to find Wendy Tork asleep in a chair beside
his bed, a magazine across her lap. "Wendy?"
She came upright. "Patrick? You're awake! How do you
feel?"
"Tired. Thirsty. " She poured him a glass of water from a
plastic pitcher, then rang for the nurse. "I feel like I've just
paddled a kayak across the Pacific. " He found he had the
strength to sit up and take the cup in his hands. "What time is
it? "
"Nine P."
"I've been asleep for twelve hours?"
"Patrick, it's nine P. on Saturday. You've been asleep for
forty-eight hours. "
The water glass began to tremble in his hands, and he quickly
set it on the bedside table. "Was I in a coma?"
"No-well, technically, yes," Wendy said, moving close to
him and taking his hands in hers. "They called it extreme ex-
haustion and depletion. You lost seven pounds while you were
in that simulator. You could have hurt yourself even without the
strain that . . . that thing put on you. Are you sure you're okay?"
He sat up and took a few sips of water. Nothing was said until
he asked, "How long have you been here?"
"I never left. I . . . I wanted to talk some more about the
other night. I know how it is for you-"
"Works both ways, kid." He let out a tired sigh and his head
dropped back to the pillow. He managed a short laugh. "I think
I know why Doctor Jekyll drank his own potions. You want
something to be so successful that you'll try anything, even mak-
ing yourself in
to your own guinea pig. I never should have
strapped myself into that simulator. I wasn't ready for it."
"It must have been terrible."
"It was . . . different," he said uneasily. "I have to give guys
like James and Powell all the credit in the world for flying the
real thing, never mind the simulator. It's an awesome contrap-
tion if you can keep yourself from going crazy."
"Talk about going crazy," a voice said behind them. They
turned to see General Elliott and Hal Briggs enter the hospital
room. Hal went over to Patrick and clasped hands with him.
"You had the'whole place going crazy, brother."
McLanahan thought that Elliott looked drawn, tired, as if he
hadn't slept in days. His blue blouse was sweat-stained and rum-
pled, and he seemed to favor his artificial leg more than usual.
"How do you feel, Patrick?"
"Fine, sir." A damn lie.
120 DALE BROWN
Takin' a nap for a day and a half, you should be fine," Hal
put in.
"We can do that SPO conference tomorrow after I get out of
here," Patrick said to Elliott.
"I think we've all had enough for the weekend, Colonel,"
Elliott said. "I've scheduled a meeting with the senior project
officers and the engineering staff for Monday morning. You're
on sick leave until then. Clear?"
But something else hung in the air-Elliott was showing more
than just concern for him. Elliott turned to Wendy. "Can I have
him for a few minutes?"
"Visiting hours are over." She went to Patrick and kissed
him. "I'll come by at nine to bail you out." Wendy nodded to
Elliott and left. Briggs took a big glass of Patrick's ice water
and moved unobtrusively in front of the door, casually but ef-
fectively blocking it.
"You gave us a scare, Patrick," Elliott said. Patrick sat up
and watched as Elliott began to pace the small room. This, Pat-
rick thought, was not an ordinary get-well visit. "I hope you'll
forgive me for suggesting that you train in the ANTARES sim-
ulator for this project-"
"On the contrary, General, I wanted to do it. It was a part of