Death of a Messenger

by Robert McCaw

  “Who’s left on the summit?” Koa asked.

  “Gaylord and Soo Lin were the only Alice people on the summit. We tried to get them off the summit at the same time the astronomers and technicians from all the other observatories evacuated, but we couldn’t get through and then the communication lines failed,” Gunter responded. “I don’t know, but I think they’re still up on the summit.”

  “What about Masters?”

  Gunter gave Koa a puzzled look. “He wasn’t on the mountain today.”

  “You’re wrong about that,” Koa said grimly. “When was your last contact with Soo Lin?”

  “About an hour ago, then we lost contact. The storm must’ve knocked out the communication system.”

  “Any way to evaluate conditions up there?”

  “We still have a data link. Instruments report sustained winds of fifty miles per hour with frequent gusts in excess of seventy-five miles per hour. Temperature in the low twenties and falling, heavy precipitation—ice and graupel, intermingled with snow. Video surveillance shows near-zero visibility. The National Weather Service predicts deteriorating conditions for the next several hours. It’s as bad as I’ve ever seen it, Detective.”

  “Goddamnit!”

  “One other thing …”

  “What else?”

  “We got a sensor signal showing an open shutter on Alice I. That building is in trouble.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The dome was designed to withstand these conditions, but not with the shutter open. At speeds of eighty to a hundred miles per hour, the wind could rip the dome off and destroy the telescope.”

  “Shit!” Koa exploded. Things were getting worse by the moment.

  As Basa nursed the Explorer up the slippery incline, the rear wheels hit an icy patch and spun freely. Thwackkkk! Thwack! Thwack! The strap chains tore free from the tires, slapping hard against the wheel housings. Basa fought to control the heavy vehicle, but it turned sideways, and a wheel dropped off the road before the SUV stopped. They were stuck with no option but to wait for the Bradley. Worse, the stalled Explorer blocked the access road.

  Minutes later, they heard the sound of a tracked vehicle clambering up the steep road. An olive drab hulk emerged from the swirling snowstorm, and an M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle lurched to a stop behind the disabled Explorer. It looked like a small tank, twenty-one feet long and ten feet wide, carrying a turret with a 25mm Hughes chain gun. Huge sprockets at the front corners of the track housings delivered power to the heavy metal tracks, which rode on a series of smaller spring-tensioned bogie wheels.

  With the churn of the hydraulic pumps, the rear hatch cracked open and dropped slowly to the ground. Five men dressed in thick white pants and hooded white parkas emerged from the vehicle. Koa recognized three of his officers, noting that they now wore military combat boots in addition to arctic gear. Koa silently thanked Lieutenant Zeigler.

  “I’m Sergeant Pete Lomi, the vehicle commander.” The white-clad figure stood nearly six feet tall. “I suggest you climb in the back and get into some winter gear. You’re gonna freeze your butts off out here dressed like that.”

  Koa and Basa were only too happy to comply. Even Gunter, who already had a parka, put on arctic pants.

  Four police officers, straining with all their might on the slippery road, couldn’t budge the Explorer. Finally, Koa asked, “Sergeant Lomi, can the Bradley push it out of the way?”

  “Sure can, Detective, but the Bradley weighs thirty tons, and the controls ain’t that precise. It’ll likely rip the shit out of that piece of tin.”

  “We’ll take that chance. We’ve got to get to the summit.”

  Under Sergeant Lomi’s direction, the driver edged the front of the Bradley forward. Sergeant Lomi held up his hands so that the driver could judge the distance, but when he applied his foot to the gas, the 506-horsepower Crimmins four-stroke diesel engine roared and transferred power to the tracks. The armor-clad fighting vehicle hit the back of the Explorer with a crunch that crumpled the rear bumper, shattered glass, and ripped a gash across the back of the Explorer. The SUV came loose, flipped on its side, crashed off the edge of the road, and rolled down the embankment. “Jesus,” Koa said as he stared down at the wreck.

  Having cleared the obstruction, the driver backed off, picked up Koa and Sergeant Lomi, and headed up the access road. The engine screamed and the tracks clanked. The vehicle shook violently on the rough washboard of the unpaved mountain road. Inside, the noise was deafening, and the jerking and twisting triggered blinding pain in Koa’s neck, shoulder, and arm. He gritted his teeth, just hoping they would make it to the summit in time.

  Sergeant Loma kept the vehicle out of the ditches and away from the edges, where the ground often dropped a harrowing five hundred feet. Under his skilled direction, the Bradley maintained a remarkably fast pace up the steep slopes and around hairpin turns.

  As the vehicle lumbered up the mountain, Koa had to scream to make himself heard. “Okay, here’s the situation. Masters has Soo Lin and Gaylord captive in Alice I. He’s going to destroy the building.”

  Gunter opened his mouth in astonishment, but he remained silent.

  “We have to see what’s happening inside without detection, if possible. Gunter, you know the buildings. How can we get a look inside?”

  “The main entry door and an overhead service door lead into the dome, but either way, anyone inside would see you,” Gunter responded.

  “Any other way?”

  “You could enter Alice II, go down into the interferometry tunnel, and get under the Alice I telescope. You’d have the best chance of being undetected if you went in through the tunnel.”

  “You’d come out in the Alice I dome?” Koa couldn’t visualize it.

  “No, you’d be under the Alice I dome with the ability to see what’s happening inside. There’s an ocular, an opening under the center of the telescope. We could use a mirror, like a periscope, to see what’s happening inside the dome.”

  “Okay, we’ll try it,” Koa screamed over the roar of the bouncing vehicle.

  They finally crested the last ridge and moved into position near the observatories. As they prepared to dismount, Sergeant Lomi handed each man a headset attached to a cigarette pack–sized transceiver. “If you put these on, we’ll be able to maintain communications.”

  Koa took over from the Army sergeant. “Sergeant Lomi, you stay with the Bradley. Sergeant Basa, take two men and stand by just inside Alice I. Gunter and I will go through the tunnel and reconnoiter Alice I. Let’s go.”

  When Sergeant Lomi lowered the hatch, the wind blasted them with astonishing fury. Bent double, the men could barely stagger toward the entrance to Alice II. The thin air and cold quickly sapped Koa’s strength, so he had to force himself to plod forward. They were only halfway there when Koa heard Gunter exclaim, “Verdamnt.” Looking to his side, he saw the German astronomer pointing upward. Following Gunter’s upraised arm, he saw the Alice I shutter standing open. Hurricane-force winds had shredded material from inside the dome. Even as he watched, Koa could see the dome bulge with the gusting wind. Time was running out.

  “Keep moving,” Koa ordered.

  When they reached the door, Gunter fumbled with the lock before they raced into the main corridor. Partway down the hall, Gunter flung open a door. The overpowering smell of diesel fuel and gasoline hit them. “Verdamnt! Something awful is happening.” The smell grew stronger as the men ran down a flight of stairs into a long tunnel filled with workbenches, mirrors, and sensors. Gunter led the way past the work areas toward the opposite end of the tunnel. He stopped and raised a hand just before they reached the far end of the space. “We’re under Alice I,” he whispered through his communicator.

  Looking up, Koa saw light from inside the Alice I dome coming through a hole in the ceiling. He watched as Gunter quickly clamped two mirrors to a long rod. After adjusting the mirrors, he mounted the assembly into a vise on the benc
h and slowly extended the rod upward until the top mirror, angled at forty-five degrees, passed through the hole into the dome above. As he did so, Gunter pointed to the mirror near the bottom of the rod.

  In the bottom mirror, Koa saw the inside of the dome. For an instant, he had trouble making sense of the forest of pipes and brackets, but then his mind took in the picture. The mirrors enabled him to look outward from a spot near the floor in the center of the dome. He saw the base of the telescope, the railing separating the telescope from the open space around it, and then the inside wall of the dome. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary.

  As Gunter slowly rotated the rod, Koa saw oil drums tipped on their sides, surrounded by a massive slick of diesel fuel and gasoline with propane tanks scattered around. Koa’s breath caught in his throat as Gaylord’s prostrate form came into view. The man appeared to be dead. His heart sank as he realized they were too late to save Soo Lin. The mirror turned. More overturned fuel drums. The place would explode in an inferno, hot enough to melt the steel frame of the telescope.

  The picture changed. Koa almost missed the significance of the canister-like shape behind one of the overturned oil drums. “Cepheid,” he muttered, “Masters’ robot.” The mirror turned farther, revealing the rest of Cepheid, and Koa gasped. “Holy Mother of God.” The robot held an acetylene torch aloft in his left pincer. The tip of the torch glowed with a small flame, fed by a rubber hose attached to a tank. If the robot dropped the torch into the diesel and gasoline slick, the entire observatory building would go up in flames.

  Cepheid was the trigger, like the detonator of a bomb. With a single command to the robot, the observatory was doomed. But Cepheid was a remote trigger, and Koa instantly recognized its significance. Masters had fled. He was going to destroy the observatory electronically from a remote distance.

  “Faster. Turn the mirror faster. We’re running out of time.”

  Gunter rotated the mirror until Koa commanded, “Stop.”

  Soo Lin came into view. She was alive, bound to a telescope support and surrounded by a pool of fuel, still struggling to free herself.

  “Swing around again. Stop.” Koa studied Cepheid standing still with his mechanical arm outstretched and his pincers holding a flaming torch. His mind flashed back to his first encounter with the robot outside Masters’ office. The robot had moved with lightning speed when it had pretended to beat him to the draw.

  How could they disable the robot? They couldn’t risk shooting it. The chances of knocking it over or causing the torch to fall were too great. How was it commanded? He remembered the curly antenna atop its head. Danny had controlled it using some sort of remote radio. He recalled the huge glass eye, some sort of camera. He wondered if the robot had seen the mirror. God, he hoped not.

  They had to disable the robot. But how? Koa again flashed back to his encounter with Danny. How had the boy responded? “Cepheid arrests Keneke’s murderer. That would make a nice headline.”

  Danny Masters might hold the key. Koa wondered if he could get in touch with the boy.

  He hurried back down the tunnel. “Sergeant Lomi, do you read me?”

  “Yes, sir, loud and clear,” his voice crackled over the radio.

  “Get hold of Lieutenant Zeigler. Get him to patch a telephone hookup to this radio net. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Koa waited. The seconds seemed like an eternity before he heard Zeigler’s voice.

  “Lieutenant Zeigler here. What do you need, Koa?”

  “Two things, Jerry. First, I need to jam the transmissions from a controller to a mechanical robot.”

  “What kind of transmissions?”

  “It’s radio controlled.”

  “What’s the frequency?”

  “No idea. Can you jam all frequencies?”

  “We don’t have a frequency jammer on the Bradley. I’d have to transmit a jamming signal to the Bradley and have it retransmit. I’d be lucky to get enough power to jam a narrow frequency band.”

  “Okay, let me try to get the frequency. There’s a kid, Director Masters’ son, Danny Masters. He should be at Punahou School on O‘ahu. Get him on the phone. Soo Lin’s life may depend on it.”

  While he waited, Koa briefed the others on the team. He divided the team into two groups. He ordered one team to assemble quickly and quietly in the service bay outside the Alice I dome and the other team to stand by in the corridor near the other entrance to the dome. Gunter told them where to find firefighting equipment. “Be damned careful. The object is to rescue Soo Lin, if possible, but that place is going to go up like a lava fountain. I don’t want any of you hurt.”

  “Hello,” said the voice of a young man.

  “Danny … Danny Masters?” Koa asked.

  “Yes. Who is this? Why did you get me up in the middle of the night?”

  Koa could hear the sleepiness in his young voice. The kid had been rousted out of bed.

  “Danny, this is Detective Kāne. We met at the observatory headquarters. Do you remember?”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “I need your help. It’s about Cepheid.” Koa had the boy’s undivided attention. “We need to stop Cepheid from doing something wrong. Is that possible?”

  “Why?”

  Koa hesitated before deciding to go with the truth. “Cepheid’s being used to commit a crime. If we don’t stop him, a young astronomer will die.”

  “Who’s using Cepheid? It’s my father—he’s using Cepheid, isn’t he?”

  Koa hesitated. The boy was his best hope, and he was slipping away. “Yes,” Koa answered slowly. “We believe that your father is controlling Cepheid, and we need your help to save a young astronomer. Please, Danny. Please help us.” He should have expected the boy to be torn.

  “Should I help you or my father?”

  “That’s the most difficult decision you’ll ever have to make, Danny. All I can say is that your father is going to use Cepheid to kill a young woman, and I need your help to save her.”

  “Are you going to hurt my father?”

  “No, Danny, not if I can help it. Listen, we need the frequency used to control Cepheid.”

  “I guess it’s okay to help you,” the boy said slowly.

  “You’re going to try to jam the frequency?”

  “Yes. Will it work?”

  “Maybe. Cepheid operates on channel 89 at the top of the 75-megahertz band. The frequency is 75.970 megahertz.”

  Koa had his answer. “Thank you, Danny. You may have saved a woman’s life.”

  “There’s one more thing, Detective Kāne. You remember that Keneke worked on Cepheid’s software?”

  “Yes.”

  “Keneke created an artificial intelligence program designed to prevent Cepheid from hurting either a human or the robot himself. If you can trigger that program, at least theoretically Cepheid won’t harm anyone. Keneke and I tested the program, but never in a real-life situation.” Koa listened for another thirty seconds as Danny explained how to activate the program he and Keneke had designed into the robot’s electronic brain.

  Lieutenant Zeigler, who’d been listening, spoke up. “We’ll try jamming that frequency, but I’m not sure we’ll have enough power to block any command signals, especially if the command transmitter is close by.”

  “It has to be close by. Masters can’t have gone too far in this weather.”

  “I’ll do the best I can, but I’m warning you, you better have a plan B.”

  Koa, Gunter, a patrolman, and Private First Class Caulder gathered at the main entrance to the Alice I observatory with heavy fire extinguishers. The extinguishers had wide black nozzles capable of laying down a blanket of foam. Sergeant Basa and two more police officers also equipped with fire extinguishers went to the service bay entrance to the dome.

  Koa spoke softly over the radio net. “On my command, everybody goes. Sergeant Lomi, you start jamming. Firefighters, lay down foam on the gasoline slick. Concentrate on the area a
round Soo Lin. Sergeant Basa, you go for Soo Lin. Cut her loose and get her out of there. I’m going to try to neutralize the robot. Got it?”

  “Ready to start jamming,” came the reply from Sergeant Lomi.

  “Soo Lin, your time has come.”

  The deep, cultured voice from inside the dome surprised Koa. He had been sure that Masters had fled. Where had he been hiding? He must have been on the platform above Koa’s line of vision.

  Now he would have to contend with both Masters and Cepheid. Plus, Masters would be armed. Jesus, the operation, already difficult, had become impossibly dangerous.

  “Please wait,” Soo Lin pleaded. “Please, I need to know why.”

  “Why? To achieve immortality … to be remembered for a thousand generations … to be a modern Hubble.” Masters’ deep voice boomed through the dome.

  In that instant Koa realized his mistake. The voice was too unnaturally loud. Masters wasn’t inside the dome. He was speaking through Cepheid.

  “Now! Launch now!” Koa commanded.

  He sprang through the door, followed by the others. He scanned the interior. God, the dome was huge, much larger than he’d remembered. He spotted Cepheid behind several overturned oil drums. The robot remained stationary. The jamming must be working. Yet when he started toward Cepheid, the robot’s arm jerked. Some commands must be getting through. The acetylene torch flared, sending a narrow tower of flame upward.

  Christ, the jamming had failed, Koa groaned. He was too far away to stop Cepheid. The robot’s arm jerked again, starting downward.

  “EVIL. Danny says you’re doing an EVIL thing.” Koa used the commands he’d learned from Danny Masters. Although yelling, Koa forced himself to space the words. “You cannot take a human life. You cannot do EVIL. You must NOT take a human life.”

  The robot turned its head, focusing its huge glass eye on Koa. Cepheid’s arm stopped moving. The flame roared upward at a 30-degree angle.