Hamilton and I actually did catch a decent nap. But Charles was wound up like an old clock spring, so about seven, Hjelmgaard took him to a movie.
Our preliminary overflight showed the lodge occupied. A sky limo was on the ground beside it, while a skyvan was parked at the guard barracks. Apparently some bigwig was there, though why I couldn't guess. At that elevation, the ground was still snow-covered. A thought struck me: Wouldn't it be something if Christman was back in residence there, hail and strong. I asked the pilot if there was an aurora in the weather forecast.
She turned to me with a quizzical expression. 'In the forecast?' she said, and pointed. 'Look out the window.'
And there it was, not a major display—as a kid I'd often seen better over Lake Superior—but there it was, some cold shimmering curtains, and sheaves of icy-looking bundles of lightspears, shifting and pulsing. I'd been looking down, ignoring up.
We flew over just fast enough not to look like snoopers, in case we were being monitored from the ground. The skyvan's computer recorded everything our scanners picked up, of course, so we could examine it more closely on the flight back to town. Among other things, it showed a small security patrol—seemingly three men and a dog— near the forest road along the property's lower edge, where there was more chance of trespass. As on our earlier trip, there was no evidence of radar or other electronic activity on the ridge, and no people on it or on the trail that climbed it. The observatory was glass-roofed and glass-walled, surrounded by a wooden walkway and railing. The telescope inside was aligned with an oblong panel that presumably could be opened. Apparently the whole building could be rotated. It was mounted on a circular metal base. Now though, it was dark and cold.
There was no question. We'd go for it as planned, making another preliminary overflight just before landing there, to be sure no threat had developed.
Back at the airport, Hamilton stayed with our pilot. I took a cab to the motel, in case Hjelmgaard needed help. He didn't really, though he'd had trouble getting Charles awake enough to get dressed. I helped Charles stumble out to the cab, where he fell asleep immediately. I began to wonder if he'd be functional, but kept it to myself. If there was a problem, it would be Hjelmgaard's to handle. Charles became more alert at the airport, and walked to the skyvan on his own, still not talking, but looking around. After we took off, I told him again what I thought might have happened on the ridge, and what I hoped he'd provide us with. He nodded without speaking, but now his eyes were bright.
It was 2:16 when we made our preliminary overflight. There was no sign of anyone outdoors now, just a pair of sentry dogs in the run outside the kennel. The sky limo was still there, and an IR reading showed that the lodge was heated to a comfortable temperature. We made our landing approach from the northeast, keeping the ridge between us and the lodge, the dark and brooding evergreen forest barely beneath us. Our pilot set us down carefully about 150 feet from the observatory. Charles still wasn't talking, but his eyes were wide and alive.
The observatory was on a rock hump, a sort of ridgetop prominence without trees, though there'd been some cut down, both outside and inside the fence. Their stumps had prevented landing closer. As we got out, I realized the sentry dogs had sensed us. They were barking in their run, maybe a quarter mile away and 400 feet lower. I wondered if the security people would let them loose. Even with the distance and the protection of the boundary fence, we walked somewhat hurriedly across the hard, crusty, frost-rimed snow till we were within 40 feet of the observatory. It had been a mild spring night in Eugene; on the ridge it was cold.
I pointed. 'That's it,' I told Charles, then stepped back with my repeating Polaroid. Hjelmgaard stood beside me with his own. Charles turned, faced the observatory, and stood quiet for a long minute. My shivering was only partly from the cold. Then he shifted his gaze down the path that led to it, closed his eyes and grimaced. After a long moment he gritted out: 'Now!' I pressed the shutter release. 'Now!' he repeated, and again, my finger keeping time. Then he turned, facing almost toward the skyvan. 'Now!' I exposed a fourth frame. 'Now! Now!' Two more.
His eyes gleamed as he turned back to Hjelmgaard. 'That's all, Clarence,' he said. He didn't sound retarded at all; at his game we were retarded.
'Thank you, Charles,' Hjelmgaard answered, smiling, then looked at Hamilton and me. 'Well, gentlemen.' We crunched our way back to the van, where the pilot eyed us curiously as we climbed in.
Off the ground and flying back to Eugene, I turned on the cabin lights and we removed the prints from the cameras. Hjelmgaard was blase about what we found, but Hamilton and I stared. Charles had unbelted, and crowding close, laughed delightedly, a strange sound in the chilly skyvan cruising otherwise silently above nightbound mountains. The prints looked as if they'd been shot with Ultracept 1000, instead of Polaroid, the details of faces and figures equal to film exposed in, say, overcast daylight with a proper exposure setting. Yet the background was dark with night.
The first shot showed Christman walking beside a young woman, both of them wearing down parkas with the hoods back. His arm was around her waist. Behind them to one side, you could make out a man wearing black trousers and jersey, his face and hands blackened. He was half crouched, as if just getting to his feet. The rest formed a sequence, two men grappling with Christman, Christman being injected, Christman being supported to a skyvan while the young woman was carried to it dead or unconscious. And two men pushing and pulling Christman through the door. He seemed semiconscious; his head wasn't lolling.
The final shot appeared as if taken from the rear of the skyvan's cabin. The woman was trussed up on the floor, apparently unconscious instead of dead, while Christman lay on a side seat, handcuffed and seemingly also unconscious. Three men sat across from him, looking toward him, and each face was clear. In the previous shot we'd seen four men. The fourth was either the pilot, or was with the pilot in the pilot's compartment.
'Do you know any of them?' I asked Hamilton.
He shook his head. 'Only Christman.'
At the airport I called a taxivan, and had it take us to an all-night restaurant off the freeway. We were too wound up to go to bed, especially Charles. He chattered about the food, and a place in Minneapolis where Hjelmgaard and his wife occasionally took him for supper, and about other pictures he'd made that he was particularly proud of. I had bacon and fried eggs, buttered sourdough toast, and tomato slices, and listened to him partly because I owed it to him, but also because he was interesting. Charles had strawberry waffles, and respectable table manners in spite of talking so much.
I looked forward to a few more hours of sleep. But more than anything else, I looked forward to getting back to L.A. and finding a way to identify the men in the pictures. The pictures weren't legal evidence of anything, but they could be a powerful wedge for breaking the case.
24
LUNCH BREAK
The effect of the Veritas had begun to fade; it showed on the aura analyzer. Now the young woman spoke, breaking Martti's groove. 'This is a good place to stop for lunch, and the injection is wearing off.'
