“You are clear for takeoff.” The controller looked back at me and smiled. I heard nerdy enthusiasm in his voice as he said, “Klyber’s transport is self-broadcasting. You don’t see self-broadcasters often. Now comes the cool part.”
The controller pointed at a blue square with symbols that meant absolutely nothing to me. “See that? That’s Five-Tango-Zulu. That’s the Admiral’s transport. He’ll fly a few minutes out, and then poof. The ship vanishes off the screen so quickly that the computers don’t know what to do about it. The screen goes blank because the system resets. If you ever wanted to see a computer wet itself, watch this. Weirdest damn thing you ever saw.”
“Hurting for entertainment,” I muttered to myself as I turned to gaze out the window. The colonel still stood in front of the window. Now that he cleared the transport to leave, he wanted to make sure he made the right call. Once the big transport departed safely, he would deal with me.
I took another look at the radar screen and tried to make sense of the rainbow of symbols. The low glow of the screen seemed to dissolve into the overall darkness of the room. I walked over to the window in time to see the tail of Klyber’s C-64 escaping into the black void beyond the aperture. Strobe lights along the wing and tail of the transport flashed white, then yellow, then red.
“Huang or no Huang, Harris, you’re up shit creek this time,” the colonel said in a soft voice. “You know that, don’t you?”
I did not answer.
He turned to look at me. “We’ll just wait until your friend Klyber’s transport is away, then you and I can settle up.”
For a moment I wished they had found a bomb on the transport, then I remembered Rear Admiral Halverson. Surely they would catch the admiral …but what would that prove? “Shit creek,” the colonel repeated under his breath. Watching Klyber’s ship grow smaller and smaller as it drifted into space, I realized just how far up that creek I had traveled.
“That’s it,” the colonel said. “They’re gone. Now let’s you and me go over to the brig and have a discussion. How does that sound?”
It did not sound good. The colonel started toward the elevator and I turned to follow.
“Wait,” the controller said as the colonel walked past the radar console. “You’re going to miss the show.”
The colonel paused to see what he was talking about.
The controller pointed into the radar screen to show us Klyber’s ship. Blocking the low glow of the screen, his hand looked like a swollen shadow. “See, he’s already ten miles out. He’s going to want to get at least one thousand miles away before he broadcasts. That will put him here,” the controller said pointing to a ring about four inches away from the circle that represented the Dry Docks.
“Now you see these?” the controller went on. “These are the local broadcast discs.” He pointed at two orange rectangles. “The transport has to be at least one thousand miles away from them. Self-broadcasting too close to the network really mucks with the discs, see, so the transport has to go in the other direction.”
The colonel nodded impatiently. It didn’t interest me, either. I found that I wanted to get to security and get on with whatever the colonel had planned. Without saying a word, the colonel turned and started to leave.
By this time, a crowd had formed around us. At least thirty traffic control workers had drifted to the station to watch “the show.” Men in white shirts carrying coffee cups stared into the big computer screen as if it were a work of art. Some pointed, others whispered to each other and nodded as if noticing significant secrets.
“What is going on here?” the colonel snapped angrily as he tried to push through the gawkers.
“I told you, this is the show. We don’t get many self-broadcasting ships out here. They want to watch it speck with my computer.” We stood about ten feet from the controller by this time. He had to raise his voice for us to hear him.
The colonel watched out of courtesy. He placed his arms across his chest, folding his hands over his biceps, and stood stiff as a pillar. His lips pressed into a single line and his eyes were hard as stone.
“Any second now …” the controller said. A few seconds passed, but nothing happened. “What the hell!” the controller said, sweeping clutter away from his console. Coffee cups, ashtrays, and papers fell to the floor. He flipped a switch. “U.A. Transport five-Tango-Zulu. Come in five-Tango-Zulu. Come in.”
There was no response, not even static.
“Come in, five-Tango-Zulu.”
Silence.
“What’s going on?” the colonel asked the exact same question, starting to sound nervous.
The traffic controller ignored him. He flipped switches, tried to hail the C-64 again, and flipped more switches. He moved quickly, like a man trying to stave off a catastrophe.
“Mark, get to your station. Get me a reading,” the controller called, and one of the controllers who had been gawking at the radar sprinted across the floor. It seemed like silent communication passed from the floor leader to the other controllers. The rest of the onlookers scattered.
“What is going on?” the colonel repeated.
“I can’t reach the transport,” the controller said without looking back. He pressed a button and spoke into his microphone. “Emergency station, we have a possible stiff!”
“I read you, control,” a voice on the intercom said.
The controller stood up and looked out toward the aperture, then gazed back into his console. “Make that a definite stiff. Look on your radar for five-Tango-Zulu. It’s a few miles off deck in Sector A-twelve.”
“A-twelve?” the voice asked.
“Hold on,” the controller said. “I’ll try raising visual contact with the pilot.”
Under normal circumstances, only the people in the cockpit initiated visual communications; but for security reasons, the Dry Docks’ computers had special protocols that enabled the traffic controllers to override ship systems. A little screen the size of a playing card winked to life on the console next to the radar readout.
Centered in that screen was Klyber’s pilot. He sat strapped in his chair, his head hanging slack. At first I thought he was reading something. Then I noticed the tell-tale details—white skin with a slight blue tint, the blood blister color of the lips, the frozen eyes—and realized that only his harness held him strapped in his seat. “He’s dead,” I said.
“Shit!” the controller gasped. “Shit! Shit! Shit!
“Oh my God! Emergency station, Mary, mother of God, it’s a ghost ship. Repeat, emergency station, five- Tango-Zulu is a ghost ship. The pilot is dead!” he said. “Holy shit! Mary, mother of God. Repeat, the pilot is dead.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
A network of emergency lights flashed red, then green, then white, then yellow around the launch pad. I walked over to the window and watched twelve floors below as emergency teams moved into position around the enormous hangar. Rescue workers piled on to carts and trucks and rode to the outer edge of the locks. Five ambulances arrived and medics set up emergency stations. Watching from the cool, stale environment of the control tower, I saw everything and heard just a shade of the chaos below.
Soft-shells climbed out of rigs and set up emergency equipment.
Watching them now, I noted their color-coding. Medtechs wore white. Firemen wore yellow. The bomb squad wore black.
“They’ll do what they can,” the colonel said as he took a place beside me to look out the window. He spoke in a near whisper. “We get a lot of crashes when we test prototypes. These guys know how to scramble.”
“The Triple Es are ready,” the traffic controller called from behind us.
“Triple Es?” I asked.
“Emergency evaluation engineers,” the colonel said. “They’ll inspect the ship and board her if possible. Their
