Improvise, she thought. Now.
Tossing her shoulder-length black hair away from her face, she rapped her knuckles on the gold wall, felt the solid metal, then looked down the twisted circuit lines. Somewhere, in all that mess, one tiny pathway was broken. Shouldn't be hard to find it—if we have a million years or so.
“I'll go first.” Wilcox gave her a cocky grin. “Just like in one of your dad's movies. Remember Terrorist Tower?”
Her parents were martial-arts film star Nolan Brad-dock and Japanese Olympic ice skater Kira Satsuya, but Tomiko had never wanted anything to do with living in the public eye. “Garrett, you're so full of yourself, you should've brought an extra backpack to carry your leftover ego.”
“That's what you like about me, Tomiko—my self-confidence and my total assurance.” He raised his eyebrows.
“What I like about you is you're the only person available,” she said. “Not like I have much choice around here.”
“You bet. That's the drawback of working inside a secret mountain complex.” Wilcox sprang high and released a squirt from his compressed-gas jetpack. Within moments, he cleared the top of the barrier and landed on the upper surface. “King of the mountain!”
Over the suit radio, Dr. Pirov said, “Amusing, Captain Wilcox, but it does not help us complete our mission. The clock is running. Our miniaturization field is set to dissipate in fifty-three minutes.” His voice sounded paper-dry.
Tomiko removed several pieces of equipment from her belt. “Okay, let's move it. Taking a test reading.” She placed sonic inducers against the rippled gold wall and tucked a receiver pickup into her left ear. Concentrating, Tomiko sent a pulse into the metal. When it rang out like a gong, she studied the scrambled oscilloscope screen in front of her, noting acoustical wave patterns that showed the homogeneity of the circuit path. “No voids or impurities.”
“Then this is not the trouble spot,” Pirov said with an exhausted sigh. “We will have to check someplace else. Do you have suggestions, Ms. Braddock?”
Wilcox leaned over the abrupt edge and waved. “Hey, come on up!”
Tomiko stared up at the sheer gold wall like a mountain climber ready for a challenge. “Let's get a gnat's-eye view, Doctor P. Like Captain Wilcox suggests.”
She coiled her muscular legs and jumped. At this size, with virtually no body weight, gravity had only the tiniest hold. Using her jetpack, she skimmed along the endless cliff face until she reached the golden plateau.
Exhilarated, Tomiko swiveled around and added another spurt of gas to counteract her motion. Wilcox reached out to catch her, but she didn't need his help. She landed on all fours on the sprawling surface.
Wilcox scanned the electronic blueprint. “I'm making sure we're in the right place. The technicians set us down within a very small error tolerance… but I don't like that word 'error.' ”
On the hand-held screen, he displayed the complex ULSI circuit map. A blip showed their location. Unfortunately, the dot itself was larger than several blocks of circuit paths. Not much help there. He tried to align the blueprint with parallel lines and intersecting overpasses, connected metal pathways doped with impurities to create semiconductor switches and electron gates.
“This place looks like the L.A. freeway system, only designed by someone on hallucinogenic drugs.'
“Figure it out, Garrett. Just think of it as a video game.”
Tomiko knew the basic principles of large-scale integrated circuits. A thin metal film was deposited on a slice of semiconductor, usually germanium or silicon. Shining through a mask, short-wavelength x-ray lithography exposed the circuit pattern, which was then etched away, leaving only a dense lace of microscopic wires, finer than split hairs. The whole circuit, smaller than a thumbnail, contained millions of transistors and linking wires in a complete super-processing and memory unit.
The team was supposed to discover why the pattern didn't work, but it was just a practice exercise. Their real mission into the alien capsule would begin that afternoon. They had to prove themselves here first, one last time.
Wilcox finally pinpointed their position. He frowned. “Two paths from where we're supposed to be. We need to cross over to the right circuit line.”
“Okay, let's move it.” She gestured over the edge to the old medical specialist standing like an ant below. “Come on up, Doctor P, and drop down your guy wire. I might need to catch you.” She knew how tough it could be to maneuver against air currents and random molecular motion at their tiny size.
Far below, the elderly Russian man leaped into the air with a burst of compressed gas. As she'd feared, the doctor shot past the plateau edge, tumbling without slowing. “Come on, Garrett—grab him.” Tomiko reached out with acrobatic grace to snag the dangling rope and gave it a short, hard yank. The Newtonian counter-motion lifted her off the surface, but Wilcox caught her just as Pirov landed hard.
All three studied the maze looping across the silicon plain. Holding up his illuminated circuit map, Wilcox pointed out the lines and corners they'd need to follow. “There, and then there. Turn right and take that forty-five-degree cross-connector and we'll find ourselves in the right spot.”
“All right, Garrett, you've convinced me you're qualified to be a navigator.”
“And a pilot, among my many skills. Just wait until we get inside that alien body, and I'll dazzle you.”
Pirov squinted along the line Wilcox indicated. “I believe I see a dark discontinuity along the path.” From his belt, he removed a small pair of Soviet-made high-powered binoculars. “That flaw may be what we were sent to find.”
“Let's go have a look. We'll go faster using the jetpacks, and we need to learn how to maneuver with them anyway.” Wilcox looked over at Tomiko. “Want to race?”
Pirov looked at his watch, concerned. “Forty-four minutes remaining.”
“Plenty of time.” Tomiko fired her jets and sailed along, the barest fraction of a millimeter above the intricate surface. “Follow the yellow-brick road.”
Cruising along like remoras, the three of them approached the blemish Pirov had spotted. It looked like two twisted hairs as big as telephone poles embedded within the gold wall, pitch black and with an outer structure of layered scales, like fossilized trees.
“Whoa, what is that?” Wilcox asked.
At the age of eight, Tomiko had spent a week in Petrified Forest National Park, while her father filmed his classic Desert Ninjas. Between takes, Tomiko had climbed fossil tree trunks that were thousands of years old. These blackened stumps before her were less than a billionth the size of those ancient trees…
“Carbon fibers,” Tomiko said. “A dust speck contaminant left in the deposition process. Let's do a little excavating, see if that improves the conductivity.”
Tomiko uncoiled her ropes, kneeling at the edge of the soft metal cliff. With a few smacks from her geological specimen hammer, she pounded grappling hooks into the gold surface, one line for her, one for Wilcox.
Securing a laser cutter to his hip, the captain commandeered a rope and lowered himself over the edge, as light as a bit of fluff on the wind. “I'll take the big one.” Grinning, he swayed out over the chasm and let himself drop.
Wilcox had gotten himself a high-level security clearance on a whim. Tomiko suspected the young captain fantasized about covert operations and Black Program secrets. Being isolated inside a mountain lab was perhaps not the commando work Wilcox had been imagining, but being one of the world's first micro-explorers was certainly exciting enough.
Moving with meticulous slowness, Dr. Pirov busied himself with his own equipment, setting up leads and contacts. “I will check it from up here.”
Tomiko rappelled down the circuit cliff, holding her weight with just a finger touch on the guy wire. She swung across, widening her arc, until she could grab the second Sequoia-sized carbon fiber with her feet.
Ready to get to work, she unslung her laser and pulled a dust mask over her nose and small chin. Narrowing
her almond eyes, she pointed the cutter beam and melted gold around the embedded carbon fiber. Yellow metal flowed like butter, loosening its hold around the containment. Then, feeling like a lumberjack, she sliced into the crystalline charcoal.
When Pirov was ready to test, he sent another sonic boost rippling through the circuit path. Dislodged ebony flakes floated in the air. As the echoes and tremors died down, Wilcox's big chunk of carbon impurity broke free. He nearly lost his balance, but caught on to a rugged hunk of dust, then swung on his guy rope. Crumbling black diamonds fell away like black snow, leaving a scar in the gold. The tiny fiber tumbled ever so slowly toward the substrate far below.
“First one's clear.” He sounded as if he had been racing her. Tomiko kept working on the second protrusion.
Pirov's voice came over the suit radio. “My sonic trace picked up those inclusions, but they are too small to hinder current flow.”
“Great,” Tomiko said. “Now that we've already done the work.”
“Think of it as practice, Tomiko,” Wilcox said.
“Secure yourself and keep grounded, both of you,” Pirov warned. “Stay away from the metal. I am sending an electron pulse to map surrounding terrain.”
Wilcox swung out on his rope and straddled the blackened carbon trunk of the second impurity next to Tomiko. The carbon smeared his pant legs with soot, but the microscopic particles could not penetrate the miniaturization field and would vanish as soon as he regrew to proper size.
“Hey, Tomiko, I've seen you making eyes at Major Devlin whenever he isn't looking.” Wilcox leaned close with what he thought was his irresistible smile. Give the guy an inch… “Trying to make me jealous, I think.”
“Not a chance.”
He misunderstood her answer. “What's wrong with Devlin? He's Air Force, and so was his dad— he's okay.”
Tomiko marveled at how simple and straightforward the man's life must be. “Retired Air Force, and I wouldn't make a move on him. Not until he's ready.”
“Ready? How many years is he going to wait? His wife died… what, five years ago? I don't see him moping around and grieving for her all the time.”
Tomiko rolled her dark eyes. “You don't see much of anything, Garrett. Obviously, you've never had a genuine emotional attachment.”
“Thank you.”
“That's why I'm only passing time with you.” “Clear, please!” Pirov yelled from above, his voice raspy.
Tomiko held on to the carbon pillar. An electrical burst surged along the circuit line, glowing like heat lightning. After the shimmers flooded past, she crawled to the end of the impurity and went back to work extracting the black stump, though it wasn't the primary problem. She just hated to leave a job unfinished.
“I have additional readings now,” Pirov said over the suit radio. “There is some kind of discontinuity up ahead. A major defect. We must fix that in order to accomplish our objective.”
Tomiko used the laser's intense, microfine light on the carbon trunk until the second bundle broke away. The black cylinder rolled against the wall, bounced on random air currents, then slid to the substrate. “For aesthetic reasons,” she said to Wilcox.
The two scrambled up rappelling ropes to the top. The Russian doctor checked his mission chronometer. “Twenty-three minutes remaining.”
“Then let's not wait around.” Wilcox jetted off, and Tomiko shot after him. The three team members traveled toward a shimmering change of color and light reflectance in the distance.
When they crossed a boundary between different metal tracks laid down in opposing film layers, Tomiko saw the reason the prototype ULSI chip had failed.
She stared. “Now that's what I'd call a big problem.”
Chapter 4
Thursday, 10:06 a.m.
During the three-hour drive across California's flat Central Valley, Devlin kept his mysterious silence even in the face of Arnold Freeth's obsessive enthusiasm. Curiosity was eating the UFO expert alive.
“Where did this alien come from, Major Devlin? What condition is it in? What… exactly is my role in this?”
Devlin didn't want to let details slip about the Project. Not yet. “It's a sealed package, Mr. Freeth, straight from a crashed flying saucer. We don't even know if the alien's alive.”
Freeth looked alarmed. “You don't want me to perform an autopsy, do you? I—uh, just hosted that video, you know. How are we going to study the specimen?”
Devlin flashed a secretive smile. “No autopsies. We have a much more innovative technique for investigation.” He refused to say more.
Before leaving, while Devlin stood waiting on the sunny sidewalk, the UFO expert had bustled around in his “suite,” packing a smart-looking briefcase and a snappy garment bag. He had dressed in a stylish tweed sport jacket with suede patches on the elbows, cinched on a tie, added socks and soft black loafers.
“No need to dress up, Mr. Freeth. The project will provide you with an appropriate uniform.” Devlin thought of how much more comfortable it would be to get back into a Proteus jumpsuit again. This tie was strangling him.
“It's a question of image, Major Devlin.” Freeth slung his briefcase and garment bag into the back seat. “In my line of work, I always run the risk of being branded a kook, and I have faced the worst that hecklers can dish out. Thus, I make a concerted effort to look as respectable as possible.”
Across the street, the old man continued to water his oleanders. The housewife ushered her yapping dog into the garage. Everyone watched as Devlin and Freeth drove off.
Bursting with enthusiasm, Freeth was content to hold up both ends of a conversation as they left San Francisco behind. He launched into his beloved topic, as if intent on earning his consulting fee from the moment he stepped into the car.
“I assume you know about the exploded spacecraft over Siberia in 1908? Some people call it the Tunguska meteor, but evidence clearly shows it was an alien ship that suffered some sort of accident. Trees were flattened in a distinctive radial pattern for miles around, and no debris was ever found.”
Devlin watched the farmland flash by as he accelerated, driving with one hand on the steering wheel. “We don't have any debris either. Just some sort of protective pod.” He'd flown enough experimental aircraft that a simple highway jaunt like this generated no excitement. He drove ten miles over the speed limit, slipping past large trucks, some piled high with hay bales, others holding cattle or horses. “And our flying saucer came down near the Caspian Sea, not out in Siberia.”
“The Russians have all the luck,” Freeth said, then brightened. “Well, we have our opportunities on this side of the world, too. Everybody knows about the abduction of Barney and Betty Hill, and the mass sightings of UFOs over Mexico City and Salida, Colorado.”
“Oh, sure.” Devlin had never heard of either one. “Common cocktail party conversations across the country.” He pulled out to pass a slow red Ford pickup, but drifted back into his own lane when he couldn't see more than fifty feet in front of him.
Freeth continued, as if Devlin had encouraged him. “On July 19, 1952, Washington, D.C., radar picked up eight unidentified targets in restricted airspace over the White House. Significant, eh? Air traffic controllers at National Airport contacted Andrews Air Force Base, and airmen there watched an orange fireball circle in the sky, then zip away at impossible speed. But when questioned, the Combat Officer from Andrews said he had referred the matter to a 'higher authority' and was not concerned about it.”
As the road wound into the Sierra foothills, the traffic remained annoying. Devlin couldn't remember if this was a Friday or a holiday weekend; it had been too long since he'd paid attention to a calendar.
Freeth reveled in having a captive audience. “Nobody even bothered to report the White House incident to Captain Edward Ruppelt, the man assigned to run Project Blue Book, the official investigation into flying saucers. Ruppelt had to read about it in the newspapers, and by then it was too late. It's like the Air Force was tr
ying to cover up something important.”
Devlin accelerated in a short passing lane up a steep incline clogged with trucks. He didn't have time for a leisurely drive. “I'm an Air Force man myself, Mr. Freeth.”
“I knew you had to be military, even in a suit and tie. I could tell by your haircut.”
Without losing his calm, Devlin scooted around a dairy truck, dipped back to his own side of the road as the lane vanished again, then slipped over to the left to pass a gasoline tanker. He emerged ahead of the clog just as a sharp curve—and an oncoming Chevy pickup—blocked his view.
Kelli had always closed her eyes when he drove like this.
Freeth squawked as they came up fast on a dented guard rail.
Devlin accelerated around the corner, keeping two tires on the pavement and spitting only a little gravel from the shoulder. He avoided the drop-off by at least half a foot.
White-knuckled, Freeth gripped the armrest as if he were trying to strangle it. He squeezed his eyes shut and recited information, distracting himself. “The Air Force investigation was a joke. It started in 1947 with Project Sign, which concluded in a Top Secret memo that said, 'The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious.' That's a direct quote, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act.”
“You memorize that stuff?”
“Just the important parts. It's the only way to maintain credibility when you're up against a tough talk-show host.” Freeth opened his eyes again, relieved to see a straight stretch of road.
“Air Force Chief of Staff General Vandenberg rejected the Project Sign findings, ordered the whole report destroyed, then reformed the organization as Project Grudge—the name tells it all—with instructions that all reports were to be evaluated 'on the premise that UFOs couldn't exist.' ” Freeth shook his head. “Good old military objectivity.”
Devlin grunted, keeping his smile to himself. “Roger that. And they concluded that the sightings were meteors, temperature inversions, weather balloons, sundogs, lenticular clouds.” He had seen all of those phenomena himself in his flying days. “Up to and including the planet Venus, right?”
Fantastic Voyage : Microcosm Page 3