“I’m sure you have a good explanation for me, Degan. It was a simple mission. How could it have been such a failure?”
Degan swallowed hard. The sight of such a smile on Dario Watt’s face could mean death to the receiver. Only honesty and humility could save his life.
“I have no explanation, Sire. They were ready for us, and cloaked when we came through the tunnel. Three of my people did not return, and another was slashed badly. We didn’t even get to the first floor of the house. They either knew we were coming, or were there on permanent guard. Only a handful of us knew about the operation at the last moment, Sire. There couldn’t have been time for a warning.”
Watt nodded. “They’re using him. Something else must have been going on, and we were unfortunate to arrive at the same time. Back off for now, but be ready to move at an hour’s notice. Has your team returned?”
“For medical treatment. I’ll have them early tomorrow. We have a little house in Cottonwood.”
“That’s close enough, but I want one of your people, cloaked if necessary, to be with me at all times.”
“I understand, Sire.”
“No, you don’t. I’ve raised the suspicions of the Council, and they are also capable of murder.”
“Yes, Sire.”
“Things are not going well, Degan. I’m considering action that could require as many as twenty men. I’ll leave the recruitment to you, but it must be done within a week. The loyalty of these people must be beyond question. The future of our government, perhaps even our civilization is at stake.”
“It will be done, Sire. See you on the other side.” Degan left, and went down the stairs to the transmission area.
A few minutes later, Dario Watt also descended the stairs to the narrow room below the control console. One wall glowed orange, then yellow as Watt walked up to it. He stood for a moment until the surface of the wall turned brilliant white with ripples of blue, and then he stepped into it and was gone.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE PORTAL
When Eric got to Sparrow’s bay a cluster of men awaited him. Nutt was there with his clipboard. Flight Operations Chief Rob Hendricks was accompanied by two techs Eric hadn’t met, and there was a new man with a buzz cut. He wore fatigues, sleeves rolled up, captain’s bars on his collar. Hendricks introduced him to Eric.
“Eric, this is Captain Ted Dillon, our chief test pilot. He’s the one person who’s been able to get this bird off the ground. I’ve told him all about you.”
“Not everything, I hope. Captain, I have a few hundred questions for you.” Eric managed a friendly smile, and shook hands with the man.
“Sir. Colonel Davis said you might want to risk your neck in this thing.” Dillon patted Sparrow’s fuselage as he said it.
“Yes, I’d like a ride. I’m not a pilot, Captain. I just want to see what you can do with her.”
“Not much so far. Sparrow is VTOL and handles like a helicopter with too much load aft. The tricky part is getting her out of this bay.” Dillon pointed up at the ceiling. “After that it’s like flying a Harrier, nice and smooth, but I haven’t been able to push her past Mach 1. I have an opinion about this aircraft, sir, if you’d like to hear it.”
“I would,” said Eric.
“I think it’s a piece of junk, sir. Looks like stealth, but has a normal radar signature. It doesn’t seem to be equipped for fly-by-wire, but should be, especially for takeoff and landing. Flies like a bumblebee at low velocity. Weird design. Even the controls look like they’ve been cobbled together by a five-year-old, and most of them don’t do anything.”
“Eric found a use for some of those switches,” said Hendricks.
“Yeah, I heard,” said Dillon. “You were lucky, sir. In my business, randomly throwing a bunch of switches like that in a strange aircraft can get you killed before you leave the ground.”
“I agree with that, Captain. That’s why I want you there in the seat next to me when I try out a few ideas in flight. Do you know what we found inside Sparrow?”
“I told him what we have so far,” said Hendricks.
“He says you think this bird has two power plants,” said Dillon.
“One conventional, and one for space.”
“Space? No way, sir, not with that engine. Sluggish as hell, especially near Mach 1. I had to keep pushing the nose down.”
“Like there was too much mass aft?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“I’d like to see it first-hand, and run some tests. When can we do it?”
“Colonel Davis says it’s your call, but he wants a detailed briefing on any tests you want to make in flight. I’d like that too, sir.”
“I’ll have it tomorrow. Will you take me up?”
“It’s part of my job, sir. Another part is being cautious enough to bring us back alive. I’m in charge up there.”
“Understood, Captain, as long as you’re willing to take some risks.”
Dillon chuckled. “Just being in that thing is a risk, sir.”
Eric slapped the man’s shoulder, then, “let’s take a look at that cockpit, and I’ll show you what I found.”
The two of them climbed up onto the stubby wing of Sparrow and squeezed together into the cockpit. Dillon was a small man compared to Eric, but their shoulders were pressed tightly against each other. Dillon smiled at him. “They put guys like you in bombers.”
“Not if I can help it. I prefer my feet on the ground. Brief me on the controls you use. I want to make a diagram.”
Dillon showed him what he’d used in powered flight: startup sequence, VTOL, landing gear, transition, pitch, yaw and trim, all of it without computer. All controls occupied the left half of the cockpit. Eric went through the overhead switch sequence, opened up Sparrow behind them, and closed it again. He wrote everything down, showed it to Dillon.
“Not much,” said Eric. “Two-thirds of these controls are for other things, and the manual tells us nothing about them. This one, for example.”
Eric flipped a switch by his left knee. There was a thud, and five rows of red lights flared right in front of him.
“Jesus,” said Dillon.
“Oops,” said Eric. “Well, we’re still here.”
“Don’t do that again, sir. Better turn the switch off again.”
“Wait a minute. Only this one panel lit up.” Eric drew a quick picture in his notes. “Everything here must work together. There are glyphs by each switch.” Eric wrote each of them down, unfamiliar markings like ancient runes. As he did it, his mind seemed to wander for an instant, his hand moving as if by habit, without the slightest hesitation or sense of caution. He threw the first switch in each of four rows, and all lights on the panel went from red to green. Sparrow shuddered for one instant, and there was a high-pitched whine, either low in intensity or at the edge of the range of human hearing.
“Hey, what are you guys doing in there? The whole aircraft just shook!” called Hendricks from outside.
“Found something new,” said Eric. “Keep your eyes open.”
“Are you nuts?” growled Dillon.”
“Not with a green board in front of me.”
One switch on the panel remained unlit, and Eric threw it. There was a metallic creak from behind them, and a single light glowed green on another panel by Eric’s right knee. He wrote something else down while Dillon watched him, ashen-faced.
“Something’s happening out here,” cried Hendricks. “You’d better take a look at it.”
“Just tell us,” said Dillon. “We’re busy in here.”
“The plane is heating up! There’s heat radiating from the aft section of the fuselage, and the metal is getting hotter by the second!”
Dillon looked angrily at Eric. “Well, what now?”
Again no hesitation, some kind of strange instinct guiding him when Eric said, “This is as far as we can go on the ground. We’ll have to do the rest in flight.” He reached out and began throwing the s
ame switches again, in reverse order. The lights went from green to red, then off.
“And you really expect me to fly with you when you do crazy shit like this? Sir!”
“You’re the test pilot, Captain. Are you telling me you don’t want to see what’ll happen when we go through the rest of this?”
“Okay, it’s cooling down out here!” yelled Hendricks.
Dillon let out a breath of air through pursed lips. “Not if it kills me. But this isn’t luck, is it. I watched you close, and you’ve been told what to do, I’m sure of it. You didn’t even flinch.”
“Maybe,” said Eric, and remembered what Brown had said to him. It had all seemed natural, rehearsed, a task repeated a thousand times, and he knew why. It was a startup sequence to power Sparrow into space, the initiation of a power plant only hinted at in the bowels of the craft. He’d been right to shut down when he did; to go further would have unleashed a terrible power in the closed bay. The sequence to follow was in his head, a panel of switches by his right knee, a handle at the top, a quarter turn, and then—what? It ended there, for the moment, but he knew it would have to be done in flight, and high in the atmosphere.
“I have to trust you. You’re the only person who has flown this thing. The question is whether or not you can trust me. If you follow my directions we can take Sparrow into space, and there won’t be any Mission Control to help us. You’ll be the pilot of this thing, not me. I’ll be relying completely on your flying experience to get us down alive.”
Dillon’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve flown in space, and back again. It wouldn’t be a first for me.”
The man was a military pilot, not an astronaut. “Aurora?” asked Eric.
Dillon blinked slowly. “So when do we take this bird up all the way?”
“Just as soon as I can get Colonel Davis to clear the test. There’s nothing about this in the flight manual. I’ll have to convince him I know what to do. I can’t write it down for a permanent record. Look at these notes, and memorize the sequence. I’m destroying the notes after we climb out of here, and I don’t worry about forgetting what’s in them. Don’t ask why.”
Dillon took the notes from him, studied them a minute, handed them back. “Okay, Got it. Now what?”
“We get out of the plane, act like we had a nice chat, and make up a story about how we got that panel to go green. I’ll do the talking. I’m probably a much better liar than you. It’s part of my training.”
“I’ll bet it is,” said Dillon.
“Let’s start with a diversion,” said Eric. He flipped some switches; Sparrow shuddered, the aft fuselage opening again. “Get a probe in there, and look for residual radiation!” he called out.
Eric followed Dillon out of the cockpit and off the wing to the ground. Two techs were already leaning inside the open maw of Sparrow’s belly to place instruments there.
“So, what was all that heat about?” asked Hendricks.
“Just throwing switches again, and suddenly an entire panel went green. That’s when you started yelling about heat.”
Hendricks looked at Dillon, but the man just shrugged as if it was all a mystery to him. In the meantime, Eric wadded up two small pieces of paper in his hand and shoved them in his pocket. Sergeant Nutt was watching, saw him do it, and raised an eyebrow.
“I need to see Colonel Davis right away,” Eric said to Nutt.
“Sir,” said Nutt, and pulled out his field phone.
Hendricks tapped Eric on the shoulder to get his attention again. “I’m not buying the good luck act, Doctor. Where are you getting your information?”
Eric thought fast, and decided a partial confession would be better than a lie. “I’m not at liberty to say. Sorry, that’s the best I can do. I will tell you that tests from now on will have to be done in flight. Captain Dillon and I were just talking about it. We’re taking Sparrow up as soon as we get approval from Davis.”
“So why you? Why have the rest of us been kept in the dark?”
Eric shook his head. “Wish I knew. Politics, personalities, who knows? The decision came down from the people who brought Sparrow to us. I don’t know what they’re thinking.”
It worked. Eric could see it in Hendricks’ eyes. For the moment, the explanation had logic to it, though questions were sure to come later.
“Then maybe they should make an effort to know us better,” said Hendricks. “There aren’t any politicians here.”
“Doctor Price!” called Nutt. “Colonel Davis wants to see you right away.”
Eric nodded, as a tech came back from inspecting Sparrow. “No radiation, outside of IR, but the metal’s still warm in there, around one-ten.”
Eric answered the tech before Hendricks could open his mouth to reply. “In space, there won’t be any T increase. Decay time is nanoseconds once the field is powered down in vacuum. At full power and one atmosphere we could melt the airframe in a hurry. That’s why we can’t go further with testing unless we get Sparrow above the atmosphere.”
The tech stared at him, and Hendricks scowled. Nutt came up, put a hand on his arm. “Got to go, sir.”
“And when you come back, maybe you can let us in on more of your secrets,” said Hendricks.
“I will. I know this isn’t fair to you guys, but I didn’t ask for it. It’s just the way it is.”
Hendricks glared at him, and turned away. The two techs looked nervously in other directions. Nutt took Eric by one elbow and hurried him away.
“Shit!” said Eric. “I can’t blame them for being pissed.”
“Nothing new,” said Nutt. “It was the same with Johnson. He was getting information the rest weren’t. It’s the only reason we got Sparrow off the ground.”
“Davis never said anything about that.”
“You didn’t hear it from me, sir. Oh, I didn’t have a chance to tell the Colonel what you just did with Sparrow. He wanted to know if I was with you, and said he had to see you right away.”
“So I’ll surprise him,” said Eric. “This base seems to be full of surprises.”
They left Sparrow’s bay, took the elevator up and Nutt knocked on Davis’ door. There was no answer for a moment, so Nutt knocked again. “Come!” came a reply, and Nutt opened the door. “Doctor Price is here, sir.”
“Send him in.”
Eric entered the office, immediately smelled a vaguely familiar, musky odor, as if incense were burning nearby, but saw nothing like that. Davis was sitting behind his desk, chin resting on cupped hands. “Have a seat, Doctor. I think you’re going to like this.”
Eric sat. “What is it?” The sweet odor was even stronger where he was sitting. He noticed the door to the adjoining office was ajar. Was the smell coming from there?
“You wanted more access to the base, and you just got it. Our foreign friends seem to think you’re the man to nail our saboteurs, and need to know counts for everything around here. I suppose you’ve wondered how we got Sparrow into that bay in the first place.”
“Yes, but I know the ceiling opens up. A cargo helicopter could drop a load through there.”
“True,” said Davis, “but that’s not the way it happens. We have a special port in a neighboring bay. Everything comes through there, and I’ve been instructed to show it to you. Mister Brown was very insistent. You must have made quite an impression on him.”
“If I did, it wasn’t obvious to me, but I just had another breakthrough with Sparrow, and I need your approval for some flight tests.”
It was as if Davis hadn’t heard him. “Do you want to see the delivery port, or don’t you? It’s Brown’s idea, not mine. If it were up to me, I’d keep you out of there. Too many people already know about it.”
“Of course I want to see it. Right away. But if you let me make some flight tests, I think we can have Sparrow in space this week. Captain Dillon was with me today, and we found out how to activate most of the controls. The rest we’ll have to do in flight.”
“I thought the manual
was still missing what you needed.”
“It was—is, I mean. But we figured it out.”
“Figured what out?”
Eric told him, making it sound like he and Dillon had done it together in a systematic way until they had a green board and heat was boiling from the fuselage.
“Jesus,” said Davis.
“We had to shut down. Whatever field is in that thing, we’ll have to be in near vacuum to bring it up to full power. I need your authorization to make the necessary flight test. Dillon is with me on this.”
“You want to fly it with Dillon.”
“Yes.”
“You’re not a pilot.”
“Dillon can fly. I’ll conduct the power up procedure.”
“More magic insights, is that it, Price?”
“Brown didn’t seem to think so. Maybe I actually know what I’m doing.”
It was like a slap in his face. Davis flinched, and glared back at Eric. “Well, you did impress the right person. He made that clear to me, and my orders are to keep him happy.”
Orders from where? thought Eric, “I can have a briefing ready for you by the end of the day. All I want to do is a run up to full power, and then pull back. No maneuvers, no performance evaluation, nothing like that.”
“Keep it short. I’ll consider it. Are you done, now? Can we do what I just brought you here for? I thought it was what you wanted so badly.”
“The port, you mean. Yes! Right now, if you have the time.”
“I’m making the time. Only a handful of us are allowed in that bay. The rest are foreign personnel.”
“Foreigners in a top-secret U.S. military base? That has to be a first.”
“It isn’t,” said Davis. “There are a lot of perks for bringing over valuable technology, and a lot of trust. We get the technology. We don’t ask how they bring it over, and they don’t tell us. You’ll have to see this thing to understand what I mean.”
“When?”
Davis stood up. “Follow me.”
They left the office. Davis ordered Sergeant Nutt to return to Sparrow’s bay. At the elevator, he turned to Eric and softly said, “Where we’re going is near Sparrow’s location, but we’re taking another route. I’ll show you the connecting passage on the way back.”
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