Erika's nanocannibals were coded red. The processed image from the first flyover showed bright red sweeping over the site like a tidal wave, consuming all the nanomachines it encountered. She expected the color coding of the rest of the area to be overwhelmingly red after ten hours.
The javelin soared over the lunar surface as Daedalus crater came into view. "Here we are," Chu said. "Images coming in now. We are processing them realtime."
The view in the holotank rotated and grew to take up the entire volume.
It took on the garish colors of the data-massaged infrared signal. But the colors did not look right. Not at all.
"Oh no," Erika said, at a loss for any other words.
The image glowed in sharp relief. A mosaic of colors glittered in the tank. Black areas covered the regolith, the construction, the entire crater floor, swallowing up most of the red -- the red that signified the nanoDestroyers. Bright blots of yellow and green -- Assemblers and Disassemblers -- had resurged, filling areas that the red had dominated only five hours before.
Jason moved next to Salito. "Is the contrast adjusted properly?"
"That's a real image we're getting back," she said, looking bewildered.
The diamond thread spires holding up the alien structure burned bright in the infrared from nanomachines swarming over the columns. Everywhere the alien complex stood out in vivid detail: the parabolic curves of the "petal"
segments, humplike structures that lay off to the side, bright cracks showing where immense tunnels branched away from the central pit.
Chu seemed to have forgotten he was transmitting. "What are all the black areas?"
Newellen said, "We color-encoded with black to signify an unknown morphology of nanocritter. We're seeing something new. Completely new."
Erika whispered, "This can't be true."
She sensed Jason moving close to her. The control center became too quiet. "What do you mean?" he asked. "What is all this about?"
"An unknown species of nanocritter." She looked at Jason, her eyes wide. Her words were probably being picked up by Agency Select and broadcast everywhere. "They can't replicate that fast. Those are my nanocannibals, I think. They've been reprogrammed. Or the other nanocritters have been.
Daedalus set up a classic immune-system response -- they sent out a new form of machines like white corpuscles."
She stared at the image of the Daedalus construction. "This is much more aggressive, and I don't think they'll tolerate any more attacks from us.
They're learning to protect themselves."
--------
CHAPTER 30
ALPHA BASE: WENDOVER AIR FORCE BASE, UTAH
"Got your bearings yet, General?"
"What?" Simon Pritchard cupped a hand to his ear and leaned close to the young black major sitting next to him. Wind whipped through the back seat of the helicopter, making it difficult to hear. Up front, the pilot didn't even try to speak, circling the restricted airspace.
Major Felowmate yelled out, "I said, do you know where we are, sir?"
"Not sure -- first time I've been to Alpha Base."
The major gestured over the seat in front of them. "We're heading west
-- Nevada state line is two miles in front of us. I-80 is twenty miles to the north, and Wendover is just behind us. We're sitting on top of Alpha Base right now."
"Sure got here fast!" Pritchard shouted. He looked down at the gaping crater called Alpha Base. He could see bunkers set into the ground and dotting the crater walls like shacks in a strip mine. "Why aren't we landing yet?"
"Getting final approval, sir. Priority one restricted airspace! We'd be shot down if we didn't have special electronic equipment on board to identify us as 'friendly.'"
Pritchard snorted and leaned back into his jump seat. As a scientific officer, he had never had to live in close quarters with operational military men.
Felowmate turned around in his seat as the pilot made a sudden motion in front of them and pointed out the cockpit. Felowmate gave the woman a thumbs up, then turned back to Pritchard. "Just been cleared to land."
Pritchard nodded and turned to look back at the ground. Desert stretched out on either side, broken only by the four barbed-wire fences that encircled Alpha Base. To the west lay the mountain ranges of Nevada; he could see Wendover AFB to their left, and the long runway where the Agency plane had landed him only twenty minutes before.
Built a good forty years before as a nuclear weapons storage site, Alpha Base held the majority of America's remaining warheads. Most had been dismantled, but a few of the "safest" devices remained here, watched over by an extensive International Verification Initiative team.
As the helicopter bumped to the ground, Major Felowmate ducked, jumped from the craft, and motioned for Pritchard to follow. The pilot remained in her seat, saluting Pritchard as he climbed out.
The hot, dry air hit him like a blast from a oven. He and the major scuttled away from the Blackhawk helicopter toward a caravan of waiting cars.
The helicopter's rotor blades whipped dust up in the air, making Pritchard's eyes sting.
As they approached the cars, uniformed guards on either side of the lead vehicle snapped to attention. Both carried automatic rifles. A woman in a white dress got out of the car. Her blond hair braided into a bun and her white stockings made her look like a bizarre hallucination in the bleak wasteland. She held one hand to her hair and the other shielded her eyes.
Pritchard heard the helicopter roar back into the air toward Wendover AFB. After a few seconds the thrumming noise had settled enough for him to hear and think clearly for the first time since he had landed in Utah.
Major Felowmate made the introductions as they walked up to the waiting group. "General, this is Francine Helschmidt. She's our International Verification Initiative liaison officer out of Salt Lake City."
"General." Her grip was firm and her eyes hard as volcanic rock. "Glad to be of help."
"Thank you." Pritchard looked around at the rest of the caravan. Now that the dust from the helicopter had dissipated, he could see that the four-wheel-drive vehicles were painted Air Force blue. Each held a military driver, several civilians, and what appeared to be an armed guard. Pritchard nodded toward the other people. "These are the IVI observers, I take it?" His voice rang in his ears, still vibrating from the helicopter ride.
"That's right, General." Francine Helschmidt handed him a list of names. "They've been cleared through appropriate channels. We have assured them that once the seals are broken on the storage bunkers, they will watch your every move. We need to make sure you get only the specific warheads to which you have been authorized."
Pritchard did not like Helschmidt's cool tone. He cocked an eyebrow at her. "You mean 'nuclear devices,' don't you? I'm not going to use them as warheads. We're not going to war. They are a protective measure against an extraterrestrial threat."
Helschmidt stood with her feet apart and her hands stiff at her side.
"We might as well call a spade a spade, General -- there was no reason to have produced these things other than for going to war."
"Really?" Pritchard drew his lips tight. He had met people like her before, and at times he found it amusing to push their all-too-obvious buttons. In this case, though, he had no time to play games.
"Yes, really, General," Helschmidt said. "But that appears to be a moot point, doesn't it? You have received your approval. Whether you call them warheads or not, we've been instructed to ensure that only six 'devices' are removed from the storage bunkers. I have already studied your security plan for transporting the weapons, and I believe it might be effective, provided you run into no unforeseen difficulties."
Pritchard refused to react to her comments. He had run the security plan through expert sabotage teams, challenging anyone to come up with an ambush scenario that would successfully divert the devices from their intended delivery point. Now he understood her -- Helschmidt didn't know what the hell she was talking about
, but wanted everyone to think she was important. He wondered how she had managed to reach her present position.
"Thanks for reminding me, Ms. Helschmidt. Now, if we could be about our business?" Pritchard turned to Major Felowmate, who gestured to the lead vehicle. Opening the front door for her, Pritchard nodded to Helschmidt.
"Please have a seat."
"I'll sit in the back, General."
"I insist."
Helschmidt stepped up into the vehicle. Pritchard slammed the door and moved to the rear seat, where Major Felowmate held open the door, then climbed in beside him.
The caravan of vehicles lurched into motion along the dirt road as soon as Pritchard had buckled his seat belt. The road was dusty and full of potholes and scrub brush.
Helschmidt turned in her seat. "Major Felowmate, I assume you have the secondary holo-key."
Felowmate patted his chest. "I've got it." To Pritchard, the major explained, "The storage bunkers need two holographic keys to produce the interference pattern necessary to open them. One key is kept by the IVI Institute while Alpha Base holds the other. Without both, it is impossible to open any bunker."
Pritchard had heard of such keys. Lasers could produce a nearly infinite number of interference patterns. Without the exact sequence of spatial frequencies, no one could break the code to open the bunker.
The vehicle bounced as the driver tried to find the smoothest part of the road. Pritchard watched the landscape for a few moments before he spoke again. "So, how long have you been with the IVI, Ms. Helschmidt?"
She brushed back her hair. "This is my second year. I was appointed by the Administration to this post after the election."
"So you've had experience in disarmament before, I take it?"
"Actually, no. I headed a small PR firm in Washington before this. I was part of the advance team for the President's campaign. I was on the road for most of a year and a half, visiting every small town on the map, getting people inspired for the President's visit."
Pritchard nodded, but forced himself not to speak. He had learned to put up with a lot during his fast-track Air Force career, where politics always made the job more difficult. Yet most of Pritchard's own assignments had grown out of being in the right place at the right time. He thought of Celeste McConnell and the positions she herself had held. Now that was definitely luck, he thought. Everything from escaping the Grissom destruction to her promotion at the Agency.
Major Felowmate leaned to the front of his seat and directed the driver around to the front of an array of white concrete bunkers. "Those are the ones."
Behind them, the caravan pulled into a semicircle. Three storage bunkers faced each other, 120 degrees apart. The bunkers stood twenty feet high, fifty feet across, and a hundred feet long, covered with a dirt berm. At least five hundred bunkers dotted the crater, each one with metal searchlights affixed to the top, each one displaying the three-bladed international radiation symbol painted in magenta and yellow.
Felowmate nodded toward the closest bunker. "Here we are, General."
Pritchard joined Francine Helschmidt out on the concrete apron in front of the nearest bunker. She smoothed her skirt, though wind continued to flick it around her knees. Pritchard noticed a half dozen modified-Sikorsky helicopters hovering at various points around Alpha Base. Watchdogs. He turned to Felowmate and pointed at the choppers. "Are they providing security for us?"
"And against you," Francine Helschmidt said. "Just in case anything goes wrong."
Felowmate answered Pritchard. "Three of them are, sir. The other three will land to take you and the devices back to Wendover, where you'll load them on the transport plane."
"Why three helicopters to carry only six devices? I requested tactical nukes, not something that needs a crane to lift."
The major nodded. "The other two copters are decoys, sir. We don't want anyone to know which one actually has possession until the last possible moment -- terrorists, you know."
Escorted by security policemen, three men walked up to them from the other vehicles. They were led by an overweight man who carried his jacket over one arm; dark semicircles of sweat seeped from his armpits as he wiped at his face with a handkerchief. Beside him, a small thin man also sweated, but he seemed determined not to make an effort to cool down; his suit looked two sizes too big for him. The third man wore a loose-fitting short-sleeved shirt.
Swarthy and with a medium build, the man looked comfortable in the desert. Of the three, only he grinned at Pritchard. He held out a hand and spoke with a British accent. "Major General Pritchard, pleased to meet you. Francine has briefed us on what to expect. I look forward to expediting matters."
"Thank you," said Pritchard. He turned to the other two men but they merely nodded.
Helschmidt said, "Well, General. This is the rest of the IVI on-site verification team. Are you ready?"
"Let's get moving."
Major Felowmate stepped to the bunker door, unbuttoning the top of his khaki shirt. He pulled on a chain around his neck to withdraw a squat rod that looked like a tiny flashlight with bumps dotting the base. "Ms. Helschmidt?"
She fumbled with a chain about her neck and withdrew an identical-looking rod.
The major motioned to the security policemen to stand aside. The guards stood around the bunker in a semicircle, facing outward with weapons ready.
Pritchard glanced around the empty desert, trying to find any evidence of a threat.
At first it seemed ludicrous to Pritchard that such precautions were being taken deep inside of Alpha Base, already past four barbed-wire fences and dozens of intruder-prevention measures. Perhaps the extra show of security was to impress either himself or the IVI team.
Major Felowmate escorted Francine Helschmidt and Pritchard around to the side of the bunker. A shoebox-sized panel protruded from the wall at shoulder height. Felowmate motioned for Pritchard to step back. "Stand outside of the red lines, sir. That's where the bunker doors will swing open."
Pritchard took a step back to be completely away from the semicircle only half-visible on the dirt-covered concrete slab.
Felowmate wiped dust from the top of the box and squinted at a number engraved on its surface. "SK-3452," he said. He checked a number written on a small card he withdrew from his pocket. "This is it. Doublechecked." Both he and Helschmidt made some sort of adjustment to their keys.
Pritchard fidgeted on his feet in the desert sun. He should have delegated the tedious retrieval task to someone else -- but he wanted to keep this under his own close supervision.
"Bunker number is keyed in," said Helschmidt.
"Have you done this before?" Felowmate asked her.
Helschmidt hesitated. "No." She seemed embarrassed, but Felowmate ignored it. "I'll go first. You'll have ten seconds to insert your key or every alarm on base will go off. Ready? Here goes."
Felowmate inserted the squat rod into the box. Beside him, Helschmidt added her holo-key to an adjacent receptacle. Inside the shielded box, lasers scanned the keys' interference patterns. A green light glowed at the bottom of the box.
"Please wait until the doors stop moving," Felowmate said as the two massive doors began to crawl open, like the gaping entrance to some ancient tomb.
Felowmate said, "Each one of these steel doors weighs somewhere around twenty tons. They're five inches thick and reinforced with rebar -- built to withstand a twenty-thousand-pound bomb going off right next to them."
When the doors stopped moving, they looked like the giant jaws of some behemoth, waiting to swallow anything that came too close. "General, Ms.
Helschmidt?" Felowmate motioned to them, then pointed toward the waiting security policemen. "Smitty -- you, Witz, and Dardanelle follow us in. You know the drill."
"Yes, sir," all three answered at once. They drew up their weapons.
Felowmate said, "They've got orders to shoot, General, if anyone tries anything."
Pritchard smiled to himself. "Don't worry, I won't."
>
"We are waiting, Major," said Helschmidt. She stood by the entrance with the other three members of the verification team.
When they stepped into the shadows, a hint of coolness along with a musty smell wafted from the bunker. The small man in the big suit pulled out a computerized notepad. He made notes with a stylus as they entered the bunker.
Stark screened-in lights cast shadows across the floor. Yellow lines were painted on the rough-surfaced concrete.
Felowmate pointed to a yellow band. "Follow the yellow brick road, please -- we need you to stay inside the path." He turned to Pritchard. "The devices are dispersed here inside the bunker. Can't risk having too many nukes too close together, otherwise the probability of spontaneous fission goes up.
Too many stray neutrons in the air."
As his eyes adjusted to the light, Pritchard could see corridors running off in different directions. After walking past two intersections, Felowmate stopped and pointed toward the right. "This is the chamber we want.
Ms. Helschmidt?"
They approached another steel vault door. A second shoebox-sized panel, identical to the one outside, was embedded in the wall. Felowmate extracted his holo-key. "Same procedure as before."
After inserting their keys, he and Francine Helschmidt stepped back and allowed the vault door to open. Felowmate said, "This is it, General. Here's your nukes."
If the alien artifact on the Moon turned ou;t to be an immediate threat, and if Pritchard had to jump through this many interlocks and doublechecks before they could use their defenses, they might just as well kiss Earth goodbye. He would have to speak with Celeste about streamlining the command and control process.
Pritchard waited for the major to enter the chamber first. When no one moved to accompany him, Pritchard stepped inside the vault himself. He saw ten white cans the size of oil drums, each inside a yellow barrier circle painted on the floor.
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