automatically, all was suddenly peaceful. Laura reached up and swept her hair back over her forehead. Gray had twisted around to look at her.
'Buckle up,' was all he said before resuming some conversation into the boom microphone extended in front of his mouth.
'Keep them there, then. I'll be back in a little while.' After a pause, Gray chuckled. 'You're good at the niceties of diplomatic protocol, Mr. Hoblenz. Just offer them tea and crumpets and amuse them with your wit.'
He turned and reached over his seat to tug on Laura's harness. Her seatbelt was secure. Straps over both shoulders buckled at her waist.
'Ready?' Gray asked. Laura opened her mouth to ask him… The words sunk into her stomach as the helicopter shot straight into the air. Her stomach, in turn, was left on the pavement in front of Gray's house.
After several seconds of blood-draining ascent, there was blue ocean and blue sky all around. Laura didn't see the lush green island until Gray rolled the tiny helicopter onto its side. They then began another terrifying experiment in Newtonian physics, plummeting down the steep slope of the mountainside toward the empty quarter of the island.
Laura feared suddenly she might become sick.
'Joseph,' she groaned, 'could you take it easy?' Her head swam and ears popped.
He leveled the helicopter out. 'Sorry. I'm in a bit of a hurry. There's a delegation from the UN waiting for me in the Village. Hoblenz is playing host, and I'm afraid he'll get hungry and shoot them for food.'
The scrubby land slid by underneath the clear, Plexiglas floor. They were surrounded by glass, and the view was spectacular. The joystick on her armrest tilted slightly to the left in time with the helicopter's shallow bank in the same direction. 'I didn't know you could fly,' she said.
Gray dipped the nose to begin a descent, but this one was gentle. He looked back over his shoulder with a grin. 'It's one of life's little pleasures. You should try it. I bet I could have you soloing in ten hours.' The ground was rushing up at the windshield behind Joseph's turned head. 'This helicopter has some amazingly good exhaust baffles, and the ceramic insulation around the turbine deadens the engine noise. Plus it uses jet exhaust to compensate for torque instead of a noisy aft rotor.'
She spun her finger in the air with a worried look on her face, and he returned his attention to his flying. He pulled up on the stick and raised the nose of the helicopter, an invisible hand crushing Laura into her seat. After long seconds of multiple Gs, she felt a slight jolt through the thick foam cushions. The nose fell, and the dark blue ocean replaced the light blue sky. Gray busily flipped switches, and there descended now upon the cabin a quiet so complete that every move he made sounded like the pop of a recording flaw on a digital disc.
Gray removed his headset and turned to her again. 'It also has a sound system that counteracts background noise by generating an equal but opposite acoustic wave.' He turned to flick one more switch. The silence was replaced with a much more natural though less complete absence of sound. The two doors on the left both rose with a hiss.
Laura heaved a deep sigh, inhaling the thick sea air. The ocean crashed onto the beach just outside. She unbuckled herself, but she had difficulty at first getting out of the tightly conformed seat. Its cushions had molded around her, and she had to twist her body to extract herself from the cavity. She felt pain throb from her various bruises.
Laura smiled to hide the grimace. 'So, what are we doing here, if I'm allowed to ask?'
'A security patrol found something Hoblenz thought I should see.'
'More footprints? Model Eights?' she asked as Gray got a small shovel out of a compartment.
'No, although they're all over this part of the island.' She followed him toward the beach. He climbed down the rocks to the black sand, and Laura trailed just behind.
'What are we looking at, then?' she asked, standing atop the last rock as Gray went on.
The beach formed a small U-shaped cove and was notable mainly for a large bulge in the sand. The mound was approximately the size of a human grave. Gray stepped on the shovel, and the blade sank easily into the black pile.
Laura felt sudden shock and disgust.
Gray stood up, pulling a thick black bag from the sand. Laura looked away with a shudder when she heard the loud ripping sound of a zipper.
When she forced herself to turn back, she saw Gray holding a long black rifle in the air.
Laura hopped down off the rock and walked out onto the beach. He laid the rifle back in the bag and extracted a rocket launcher.
'What's this stuff?' Laura asked.
'It's equipment used by navy SEAL commandos. Hoblenz said they're experts at 'clandestine seaborne infiltration,' or something like that.' He lifted another rocket launcher out, then another looking at them like a curious boy. He even read the bright yellow instructions and warning labels printed on the sides of the tubes.
'How'd they get here?' she asked. 'The SEALs, I mean?'
'Submarine, probably. They swim to the beach and plant their equipment so they can bring another load when they come in for real.' Gray closed the bag and pushed it back into the hole with his foot. 'Hoblenz says they bury it the night before their mission.' He began to shovel sand onto the bag.
'What are you doing?' Laura asked.
'Putting it back.'
'But… why?'
He finished covering the weapons and looked up at her. 'It's theirs.' He passed her on the way back to the helicopter.
She grabbed him by the arm, and he turned to face her. 'Why, Joseph? Why are you leaving that for those commandos?'
His eyes drifted out to the sea. He spoke slowly. 'If they land here tonight — in the empty quarter, in the dark — they'll need everything they packed in that bag.'
The small helicopter lifted into the sky, and the green earth began to streak by just underneath.
'They should've finished laying the cable to the annex by now,' Gray said, but Laura just marveled at the view. From the sky, the exterior wall of the old volcano was lush and green. It was almost impossible to see the roads for all the foliage. Only Gray's house stood out in all its splendor.
The mountain rose up at their feet through the transparent floor, then fell away completely in a dizzying rush. They flew over the crater wall to the inside, and the sights far below amazed Laura.
She was transfixed by the tiny Village nestled quaintly in its bed of trees. The massive, flat roof of the computer center. The huge assembly building, which sprang from the grassy fields of the restricted area. A second assembly building was under construction near the coast. Not far from it was a structure she'd never seen before. 'What's that concrete building?' Laura asked.
She should've known better. Gray rolled the helicopter onto its side and plunged through the air like a dive- bomber. Laura held on, the whine of the air growing ever louder, despite the sound-deadening system. The ground rose up toward their windshield.
Laura's eyes were pinched almost shut by a grimace, but she looked at Gray from behind. His cheeks were spread wide by a broad grin.
'A simple answer would've sufficed,' she said just before grunting under the crush of gravity as Gray pulled up on the stick.
'It's the annex,' Gray said, ending the radical maneuver in a placid hover just over the trees. The massive slab of concrete spread out before them. The cockpit was again soundless, but the jungle canopy thrashed this way and that under their rotors. The lighter underside of the leaves tippled outward in a tidal wave of disturbed air. The jungle clung to the walls of the building.
'Where are the roads?' Laura asked.
'There aren't any. There's no human access to the annex. It's fully automated.'
'You mean there aren't even any doors? None of the observation windows you seem to love so much?'
'Nope. No humans allowed. It's much easier that way. No dust problems. No amenities like plumbing, heating, lights. It's going to be the same with the new assembly building.'
The idea of large-scale operations under the complete control of computers disturbed Laura in some
