“I want it witnessed that I have made every attempt to reaffirm my warning to whoever ordered this,” Idorf said. “The only contacts that we have been able to make from up here all claim to know nothing. It seems that your attempts have fared no better. I am left with no choice.”
“Communications everywhere are in shambles,” Hayer said.
“Then it would behoove those responsible, all the more, to make their intentions plain,” Idorf replied. “Consider my position. Our delegation has been kidnapped, almost certainly to be used as hostages. So we already have evidence of designs in some quarters to seize this ship. In such circumstances I have no option but to treat these vessels as hostile. As captain, I must place the safety of the Osiris before all else.”
Hayer closed his eyes, and nodded. Several of those with him exchanged solemn looks but none spoke.
“The lead object is approaching the fire line,” one of the operators handling the radar data announced from his console. Attention turned to a holo display that was copying the situation report relayed from the Osiris. It showed part of a translucent red sphere centered on a white, three-way cross representing the Osiris, with the four vessels shown as blue dots moving in from outside. Idorf had stated that he would have no part in any verbal melodramatics. The weapon would detonate automatically if the boundary was breached. Since the Osiris did not carry an unlimited supply of them, it was set with lasing rods registering on all four targets.
“We are transmitting at them continuously on all of your recognized international bands. . . .” Idorf reminded everyone.
Keene watched with a strangely detached fascination, having to force himself to be mindful that these slowly moving patterns of light were not part of some simulation or one of Robin’s computer games, but a depiction of real events taking place some hundreds of miles above their heads at that very moment. Beside him, Colby Greene stared unblinkingly through his spectacles and licked his lips dryly.
“Lead object at the limit now,” the radar tech announced.
Moments later, a different voice reported, “Detonation has been detected.”
And after several more seconds: “Target echoes getting weaker, starting to break up.”
On the screen showing the Osiris’s Control Deck, Idorf turned and left without another word. And that was all there was to it. Impersonalized, soundless warfare, automated and sanitized modern style.
While the link was still open, one of the Kronian crew patched in the current views from high orbit. Fires were spreading across what looked like half the grasslands of southern Africa, with burning patches of oil lighting up the western Indian Ocean from Madagascar to Somalia. The world was turning into a ball of dirty smoke. A view away from Earth showed Athena like an immense, glowing octopus, its incandescent tentacles reaching ahead as it drew nearer.
Late in the afternoon, Keene managed to get a connection to Corpus Christi through a JPL hookup into Amspace’s spacecraft tracking net and talked to Harry Halloran, the technical vice president. Curtiss had gone ahead and put together an evacuation scheme since there was still no clear direction from the city and county authorities. The intention was to move inland to Lubbock, where the state was preparing reception centers, and which put them on the way to still higher country if a further move became necessary. There had been scattered meteorite falls all over southern Texas. Les Urkin’s bedroom and the family room beneath it were demolished five minutes after he went down to join his wife for breakfast. The family had packed their things and moved to Kingsville, where everyone was assembling. The downtown office was already closed. Harry couldn’t say if any of the girls from Protonix had arrived, and as far as he knew there was no sign yet of Wally Lomack back from Washington. The weather over the Gulf was doing strange things, and fears were rising of hurricane and tornado conditions developing. The sea out there was like black, moving mountains. Keene told him that the JPL scientists had talked about immense amounts of heat being dumped in the upper atmosphere. Nobody was sure what the effects of the resultant instabilities might be. Harry said that cattle inland were going crazy from corrosive air and thirst. Water supplies were already the big concern.
After Barbara and Gordon left in a JPL shuttle bus to catch an overnight military flight heading east out of March AFB, Keene and Colby Greene sat in one of the labs, wearily contemplating the updates still coming in via JPL’s various connections to the world. The full magnitude of what was happening was at last becoming plain, leaving them numbed to the degree that they didn’t want to hear any more. There was no point.
“So what’s it with you, Colby?” Keene asked. “Don’t you have anyone there to rush back to as well? Never got married, eh?”
Greene pulled a face and regarded the papers lying around the desk in front of him indifferently. “Oh, I thought about it once or twice. I looked at the way it usually seems to go, and figured I’d do it the easy way—you know, without wasting all that time that most guys seem to go through.”
“Oh? And what’s the easy way?” Keene asked.
“Just pick a woman you don’t like very much and buy her a house—then you can forget about it and get on with your life. But I never could find the right one, somehow. I always ended up liking them. . . . How about you?”
“Aw, did it once. Crashed and burned. You won’t believe who she was.”
“Try me.”
“Her name’s Fey. She’s Herbert Voler’s wife now.”
“I don’t believe it. What happened? . . . If it’s any of my business.”
Keene really wasn’t in a mood to go into explanations. “If I just say that she found her perfect match at last, would that tell you?” he offered.
Greene nodded. “Pretty much.” He rubbed his nose with a knuckle. “So will she be involved in this showdown at Andrews?”
Keene hadn’t really given it much thought. “Yes, I guess she will,” he said. So much for the social set and the mansion in Connecticut.
Keene’s disquiet over the situation in Washington was increasing. It would be late into the evening there now, yet the latest news was that Hixson and the other man with him were still at the motel. The FBI had reported only a note delivered by messenger telling them to sit tight. If communications were a problem, it would be all the more reason to move them out sooner. Something felt wrong.
The door opened, and Charlie Hu stuck his head in. “I just wanted to let you guys know: Don’t be surprised to see Guard patrols with guns in the area if you go out. There’s been some trouble with looting. All kinds are coming through from the city, and we’ve got some pricey real estate just west of here around La Canada.”
“As if that’s going to matter for much longer,” Keene snorted.
Hu shrugged. “I guess the same people will be giving the orders for a while yet. But anyhow, be warned. The police chief advises that if you possess weapons it would be a good idea to carry them.” Colby said nothing but opened his jacket to reveal the butt of an automatic sitting in a shoulder holster. “How about you?” Hu asked Keene.
“I went to Washington to attend a meeting with the President, remember?”
“I’ll see if we can get you fixed up.”
Cavan called a little over thirty minutes later. There had still been no move to collect Hixson and his companion from the motel.
“It’s too quiet, Leo,” Keene said. “Things should be happening by now. Either they’re onto us, or there’s more going on than we think.”
“Exactly the sentiments I’ve been having,” Cavan informed him. “So I thought I’d try using some of these official resources that I find I have access to now. It’s really quite amazing. It occurred to me that whatever Voler is really up to, his charming wife won’t be far behind. Perhaps we could get a pointer to his movements and possible plans if we knew something of hers.”
“Fey? We were just talking about her here. So did you get anywhere?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. After I’d drawn several bla
nks elsewhere, I tried checking the airline reservation computers. And there she was, booked to LA. The original flight has been canceled, but she got transferred to an emergency service that left Boston earlier this evening. That must have taken a fair amount of string-pulling on the part of somebody, somewhere.”
“To LA?” Keene could only stare bemusedly.
“Intriguing, isn’t it?” Cavan agreed. “And it gets more so. Who do you think is on the same flight also? Our friend Tyndam from Cambridge. I doubt very much if they’re eloping together. I doubt if he’d be her type. I can only assume that they’re joining the rest of the party.” Cavan waited, expressionless, for Keene to figure the rest out.
Fey and Tyndam were flying to California that night. And, interestingly, Beckerson was also flying to California, practically at the same time, nominally on official duties. Perhaps Cavan’s suspicion had been correct after all, and Beckerson was part of it! . . . But if that were so, then the whole business at Andrews had to be a diversion. Nothing was going to happen there.
“Hixson and this guy with him have been set up,” Keene murmured. “They’re not going to be collected at all. They’re sacrificial—to keep us busy watching.”
“You’re getting there, Landen,” Cavan said. “So the real action will be in California. The question is where. There’s only one place I can think of. And with Queal and his connections through Air Force Intelligence, it all fits.”
Keene stared back at the sparse frame and features watching patiently from the screen. The aim, surely, was still to get aboard and probably seize control of the Osiris. They already had the hostages to get them past the defenses. The only other thing needed was a vessel to get them up there. As Cavan had said, if they were on their way to southern California, there was only one answer.
“My God!” Keene breathed. “It’s got to be Vandenberg. While everyone’s waiting for something to happen at Andrews, they’ve been quietly getting a shuttle organized there. Queal would have the contacts to arrange it.”
“Full marks,” Cavan said.
“Have you talked to Hayer?”
“Yes, but he’s not sure how to deal with it. If somebody like Beckerson is involved, how do we know who can be trusted? If the commander there is in on it too and we tip him off so that he warns the others away, the Kronians will never leave at all because Idorf is on limited time. The only way we’ll get those people back is by letting the thing go through as if we know nothing and grabbing them when they appear. And there’s only one person anywhere close who can move soon enough without drawing the wrong kind of attention. And that’s you, Landen.”
32
Red sulfurous dust and blinding vapors, mixed into a choking haze with the exhausts from thousands of vehicles, swirled through the headlight beams of the traffic groping its way along Interstate 5 North out of Glendale. Sheila, the technician driving the JPL shuttle bus, craned forward in her seat to keep sight, through the arc smeared by the laboring windshield wiper, of the flashing red and blue lights of the police escort leading them on the inside lane that was supposed to be reserved for official use. Outside in the murk, police, military, and volunteers in hooded capes and chemical warfare garb yelled, cursed, and waved flashlamps to direct the lines, hauled breakdowns clear, and kept interlopers out of the official lane, while fifteen million people tried to squeeze through the four main routes inland from the Los Angeles basin.
Keene, clad like the others in a military combat jacket, woollen comforter cap, and hooded smock that some JPL high-up’s talking to the local National Guard commander had procured, and packing underneath it a hip-holstered .45 automatic, sat behind the Guard captain occupying the front passenger seat. Charlie, Colby Greene, and John were wedged in the other seats, along with an armed trooper, and two more troopers were at the back, inside the rear door. The bus itself looked as if it was equipped for a safari, with boxes of supplies, extra weapons, jerrycans of gasoline and water piled inside, and a layer of sandbags lashed to the roof as a protection against falling rocks. It had been decided earlier in the day to have all the Lab’s trucks and buses preequipped for evacuation at short notice. Keene, Charlie, and Colby would be flying on to Vandenberg, 160 miles north on the coast, with a hastily organized Marine Corps detachment that they were to meet. John had come along to keep Sheila company and would return to JPL with the bus and its Guard escort afterward.
The plan was as simple as it was audacious—and in the time available, about as much as could have been contemplated. The first point agreed was that with no way of knowing where anyone stood, no approach could be made to the Space Command hierarchy at Vandenberg, which was headed by a two-star general called Ullman, commander of the Fourteenth Air Force, who lived on the base. However, Charlie Hu had, in connection with missions staged over several years involving both the Air Force and JPL, dealt with others there that he was willing to guess would be reliable. Admittedly, that meant relying totally on Charlie’s personal experiences and gut feeling, but it was the best there was. The air-base section of the Vandenberg facility was commanded by a Colonel Lacey, who, everyone was agreed to gamble, would probably not be a part of Voler and Queal’s scheme. The plan, then, was to get a small group into the Vandenberg air base, recruit Colonel Lacey’s help in making contact with names in the space-launch facility that Charlie had vouched for, and figure the rest out from there. Communications problems and other pressures had defeated attempts to contact Lacey ahead of time, and they had decided they could wait no longer. Sloane in Washington was continuing to try, but failing that they would place their hope in being able to convince Lacey after they were in. That, of course, left the question of how to get an unauthorized group of people into a top-security military facility without advance clearance. Colby Greene had come up with the obvious way after they had debated several impractical alternatives: “It’s an Air Force base. The sky’s unloading and causing emergencies everywhere. You fly in posing as a plane in trouble that needs to get down. Then play it by ear.”
One of the JPL directors had talked with the area National Guard commander, who, after being satisfied that this was coming from the President’s office, had gone back through the local military chain to acquire the means. The outcome was that a Cessna Caravan with support squad was being rushed in from the Twentynine Palms Marine base and would meet them at Burbank. JPL had essentially ceased functioning as a national laboratory and was being adapted as a transit center and shelter for public-sector workers and their kin en route inland. The last Keene and the others had seen of it had been bulldozers working under floodlights in the fog to bank earth against the walls of suitable buildings, while crews sandbagged the roofs and lower floors. South of the Laboratory, the Army was taking over the Rose Bowl golf course as a transportation depot and supply dump.
Sheila muttered something and braked as the escort car in front slowed. Tail lights beyond showed vehicles ahead of it. The sound of the police cruiser’s siren floated back above the traffic noise, but the lane to the left was solid. Finally, risking unlit vehicles pulled over, the cruiser swung onto the shoulder and began overhauling the obstructions leapfrog fashion on the inside, with the shuttle bus clinging yards behind. Lights ahead as they pulled back into the regular lane showed a group of military vehicles parked on the shoulder. Two of them moved off and swung in behind the shuttle bus as it passed, and then dropped back to head off the encroachers. A smoky halo of light in front of a stopped car revealed a knot of windblown figures struggling to change a wheel on a jacked-up camper. More lights ahead marked the tail of a military convoy. The police escort and bus closed up and stayed with it to the Burbank exit, where the tailback from the exit ramp extended for at least a quarter mile along the shoulder. The escort led them past, and they were waved through by police in capes and motorcycle visors directing airport traffic at the top.
The airport approach was a confusion of cars parked haphazardly in the roadways and others jostling for whatever space became av
ailable. Checkpoints had been set up across the road leading into the departures drop-off area. The cruiser led the bus to a gate bearing the sign authorized access only and halted. A dust-covered shape, looking in the glare from the lamps like a yeti of the desert, materialized outside Sheila’s window. He had a hood with an enormous, fur-trimmed rim, in the shadows of which could vaguely be discerned a transparent visor and mask covering the lower face. Colby squeezed forward alongside Sheila, brandishing a plastic wallet showing his White House ID and a pass from the Pasadena regional military command.
“There’s supposed to be a Marine Corps flight coming in to collect us,” he shouted out the window. “It’s top priority—White House directive. What do we do?” The yeti gave the papers a perfunctory glance, as if acknowledging that they belonged to a world already passing. “Wait,” a voice instructed from somewhere inside the hood, and the figure disappeared inside the gatehouse. Keene was impressed by the amount of organization that was managing to persist. Power was flowing; planes were flying. People were still at their jobs. But as he had said himself the previous day, what else was there for anyone to do?
Lights appeared in the roadway behind the bus, and a horn began blaring.
“All we needed was an asshole,” Sheila sighed, resting her arms on the wheel and staring at her mirror dully. More figures came out of the shadows and went back to deal with it. The desert yeti reemerged. “I can’t get ahold of anyone who knows anything. Look, there’s a traffic information center set up somewhere off the Departure Hall. They’ve got a line through to the tower, so they’ll know about as much as anybody.”
“What’s the name of the room it’s in?” Greene yelled back out.
Worlds in Chaos Page 28
