The Lotus Eaters

* * *

The sun was just down. None of the moons had yet risen. In the darkness, with a headwind of eleven knots, and the carrier doing another eighteen, take off wasn't a question of speed to become airborne. It was a question of the deck crew removing the lashings that held the Condor to its cradle on the flight deck and jumping back. Montoya's Condor, with its fifty feet of wingspan, instantly lifted above the flight deck.

It was then that he gave a little gas to the engine, just enough to stay well above the flight deck as it moved out from underneath him. This was a little tricky as the sheer bulk of the Dos Lindas, moving underneath, displaced enough air to tug at the broad-winged glider, pulling it downward.

Despite the turbulence, Montoya kept well above the flight deck until the carrier was safely away. Although he kept his aircraft aloft easily enough, the pilot's spirits sank as the carrier left him to his mission. Indeed, seeing through his night vision goggles as the stern of the ship rapidly moved away gave Montoya one of the loneliest feelings he'd ever had in a life that had had its share of loneliness.

'Nothing for it, though,' he said to himself, pulling his stick back and to the left to turn toward the southern coast of the western triangle of Colombia del Norte. It was there that he would find the updrafts from breezes blowing across the Mar Furioso and up the great chain of mountains they called the Atacamas. Those, if taken both ways, would extend his fuel to the UEPF lodgment on Atlantis Island and, 'God willing, back again.'

It was over a hundred and fifty miles before the Condor would cross the coast.

Two hours, near enough, Montoya thought. And, if I learned nothing else during Cazador School it was, 'don't sleep when you're tired; sleep when you can.'

Montoya's fingers played over his control panel, setting a wakeup call for an hour and a half and confirming his preprogrammed flight plan. The autopilot then took over, throttling down the engine to a speed of seventy knots and settling in to a flight altitude of one hundred meters over the sea. The pilot released the stick as soon as he felt the autopilot take control. Tossing his head to move the night vision goggles, or NVGs, up on their frame, he then settled back, crossing his arms over his chest.

Gonna be a looong flight, was Montoya's last thought before sleep took him for, at least, a short time.

* * *

Before the third wake-up ping, Montoya's hand was reaching for his stick even as he tossed his head down to reposition his NVGs. His left hand sought out and found the on switch for the goggles, twisting a quarter turn clockwise to turn them on.

'I wasn't sleeping, sergeant,' the pilot said automatically.

The moon Bellona was up by this time. In its light, never so bright as Old Earth's one moon, he saw the mass of the Atacama range rising to the north before him. The coastline was fainter, but still perceivable in the grainy, greenish glow of the goggles.

As soon as the autopilot sensed Montoya's hand on the stick it relinquished control. He nudged the stick back, and gave a little more gas to the engine to gain optimum altitude to enter the mountain wave of uplifting air.

Montoya glanced around in an attempt to find a lenticular, or lens shaped, cloud that would mark a particularly good updraft. Unsurprisingly, the goggles weren't quite up to seeing that, even though they were the best Haarlem-produced NVGs money could buy.

No matter, he thought. There are the mountains and I know the wind blows to the north. There will be a mountain wave to carry me up.

* * *

The engine had been killed to save fuel which would be needed later. Under the natural power of the mountain wave, Montoya corkscrewed upward at several kilometers an hour. His ears popped repeatedly as he twisted his head and worked his jaw to equalize pressure.

At about forty-five hundred meters above sea level another series of warning pings sounded to advise Montoya to don his oxygen mask. This was a pressure demand system, one that would provide overpressure of oxygen to allow the glider to ascend about ten thousand meters while still keeping the pilot conscious.

He'd drilled it more than a thousand times in his career as an aviator. Even using his left hand, the mask was on his face and affixed to his helmet in seconds. Oxygen flow started immediately and automatically thereafter, some of the gas being forced out of the tight-fitting mask by the overpressure.

* * *

The Global Locating System, or GLS, consisted of twenty-four satellites, some of them geosynchronous, in orbit above the planet. It was one of three such systems in orbit (or, arguably, four if one counted the ships of United Earth Peace Fleet which could do GLS duty at need), but was far and away the most complete and the best (again, excepting the UEPF).

In effect, the system worked by sending out signals from each satellite, which signals amounted to, 'This is Satellite X. At the tone the time will be . . .' By comparing the times to the known positions of the satellites, a receiver could calculate position on the surface, height above the surface, and, if moving, direction to a very high degree of accuracy.

When Montoya's Condor reached fourteen thousand meters, his navigation system informed him: pingpingping. Pulling his stick over and forward, he ceased his corkscrew upward and began the roughly thousand kilometer long, slow, shallow dive that would take his craft east-northeast to where he expected to pick up another mountain wave to gain more altitude. Along the way, he would continue to receive uplift from air rising to pass over the Atacama range.

* * *

He'd packed his own rations for the trip, carefully setting aside anything with even a hint of beans or, worse still, peppers. He'd kept the small bottles of high test rum because, heated flight suit or not—

'God, it is fucking cold up here.'