particular ship was big and boxy with a bulging hull that looked unworthy of flight. Even rolling toward the runway, it had a clumsy, overstuffed feel about it.
An electroshield door sealed behind the C-64. I could still see the craft through that first door, but it now had an unsteady appearance, as if I was watching it through heat waves. The ship lumbered on through two more electroshield doors, entering the low gravity area.
The tower gave Klyber’s ship immediate clearance—fleet admiral’s privilege, who could out rank him?—and it levitated from the deck on a cloud of steaming air. The ship hung above the deck for a few seconds as it rotated to face the aperture. I watched the ship and thought about receiving an honorable release from the Marines. I had to smile.
As I turned to leave, I saw something that did not make sense. At first I did not even realize what I was seeing. Five or six civilians stood on the far side of the security gate watching ships take off. Aware that something felt wrong, I headed toward them for a better look.
Then I realized what I saw. I knew one of the men, only he was not a civilian. Rear Admiral Tom Halverson, dressed in a suit and tie like an ordinary businessman, stood at the front of the group. I smiled thinking he must have missed the transport. “Miss your ride?” I called out as I walked toward the gate.
Halverson turned to look at me. He paused, stared at me for just a moment, then turned and bolted into the service halls behind the security station. “Grab that man!” I yelled at the men guarding the exit. They looked over at me so slowly they reminded me of cows grazing in a field.
“Stop him!” I screamed as I pulled my M27.
All five guards pulled their guns. Two ran off after Halverson, but the other three kept their M27s trained on me. Red warning lights flashed from the ceiling for the second time since I had landed on Golan. Soldiers with drawn weapons rushed out of the security booth and surrounded me. I placed my gun on the ground then laced my hands behind my head without being asked.
As the MPs closed in around me, I looked back at the launch area expecting to see Klyber’s ship explode. The C-64 had dragged itself to the airspace just in front of the aperture, and the transport seemed to dangle precariously as it approached that opening. But instead of exploding, it rose steadily higher.
“What is going on, Harris?”
I turned to see the colonel who had sprung me from the brig pushing his way toward me. He looked angry.
“Colonel, there’s a bomb on Klyber’s ship!”
The colonel did not hesitate. “Out of the way,” he yelled. He pulled a discrete communications stem from his collar. “Traffic control, hold Klyber’s ship! I repeat, this is urgent, hold Klyber’s transport!”
The MPs lowered their guns and cleared out of my way. I could not hear what was said, but traffic control apparently got the colonel’s message. “Yeah, that’s right …Yes, I’ve got a man out here who says that there is a bomb on board the admiral’s ship. Shit …no…. don’t bring it down. If we have a bomber around here, he might set it off. Yes. Yes! Look, we’re on our way over. Just have the pilot hang tight.”
And that was what happened. Klyber’s massive transport continued to hover in front of the aperture like a bee waiting to enter a flower. I paused to look at it for just a moment.
“Move it, Harris.” The colonel did not need to ask twice. We headed into the control tower, a tinted glass tower that reached to the ceiling of the landing area. The tower was seventeen stories tall. We entered the elevator and the colonel stabbed the button for the floor he wanted.
“You’d better be right about this, Harris.” He panted as he spoke.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“What did you see?”
“Rear Admiral Halverson,” I said. “He didn’t get on the flight.”
“You set off the alarms because you saw some guy standing around?” The colonel screamed so hard that streamers of spit flew from his lips.
“Rear Admiral Halverson is Klyber’s second-in-command,” I said.
“So he missed the specking flight!” The colonel shook his head. “Oh, I’m specked. I had to trust a goddamned clone.”
“Halverson ran when he saw me. He was …”
“You’re a damned Liberator!” the colonel shouted louder than ever. He did this just as the elevator doors opened. Everyone on the floor turned to look at us. “Damned specking right he ran when he saw you. You’re a goddamned Liberator clone. You’re a friggin’ disaster waiting to happen. Anyone in his right mind is going to run when he sees you. I should have run when I saw you. No, I should have had my men shoot you while I had the chance. Oh, I am specked.”
The floor of the control room was dim, lit only by the green and red phosphorous glow of several large radar screens. The air was moist from recirculation and carried a bad combination of scents—mildew and cigarette smoke. Entering this heavily air-conditioned floor felt like being sealed in an old refrigerator.
Around the room, men sat beside radar consoles in clusters of three. “How should we handle this?” one of the men at the nearest console called over. The colonel and I went over to join him.
“Traffic control, this is U.A. Transport five-Tango-Zulu. Do you read me?”
“We read you five-Tango-Zulu,” replied one of the controllers.
“What seems to be the hang-up down there?” the pilot asked. This was the same man who picked me up on Mars a few days earlier. I recognized his voice.
“Want me to bring them back?” the controller asked.
The colonel thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Not based on the evidence Lieutenant Harris just gave me.”
“Is there a problem, traffic control?” the pilot squawked over the radio.
Through the black tinted windows, I could see Klyber’s transport hanging just below the lip of the aperture. There was very little gravity on that part of the deck, but the C-64 still looked awkward. A long line of ships started to form below the transport.
“Colonel, we have to do something. My queue is cataclysmically specked.”
The colonel walked to the dark glass wall of the tower and stared out for several seconds. “Can you laser scan the transport in midair?” he asked.
“Sure,” the controller said.
“Five-Tango-Zulu, this is traffic control. Prepare for a scan. Do you copy?”
“Don’t you save scans for incoming?” the pilot asked.
I didn’t realize they had scanners by the outbound aperture, but they did. A silver-red beam locked on to the hull of the C-64. It moved up and down the Mercury-class transport.
“Find anything?” the colonel asked.
“Clean, sir,” the traffic controller said.
The colonel glared at me.
“You see any unidentified ships in the area?” I asked, desperation starting to sink in.
The controller ran his finger over the radar screen, tracing a line above the information the scan found. “All clear. Look for yourself.”
The markings on his radar monitors could have been written in Sanskrit as far as I could tell. The notations they used to identify the ships used symbols and numbers, not letters.
“What am I looking at?” I asked.
“Control, should I land this bird?” the pilot asked. Irritation showed in his voice.
“What do you think?” the head controller asked the colonel. Still staring into the monitor, the controller pointed at it, drawing invisible circles around different areas on the screen.
“What do the markings mean?” I asked.
“These red triangles are Air Force. They’re guarding our air space. These blue boxes are civilian ships. These green ones are government, strictly non-combat …surveyors, that kind of shit.”
The colonel took a long breath, gave me another angry glare, and said, “Send them on their way.”
“No problem,” said the controller. “Five-Tango-Zulu, this is traffic control. Sorry about the tie-up. We had a false alarm.”
“Are we cleared to leave?” the pilot asked.
