We walked down the food line, selecting dishes. The choices would have made for a fine breakfast, lunch, or dinner. There was bacon, steak, biscuits, vegetables, fruits in sugar syrups, ham, hot cereal, and soup. The salad bar was closed, but the cooks had left out plates with chef and vegetable salads. With the sky bright all day long and men on alternating shifts, breakfast, lunch, and dinner all mixed into each other.
“Hunting dogs,” Freeman said as he loaded up his plate. “Does that make sense to you?”
“Sure it does,” I said. “We wouldn’t want those dogs to bite anyone.”
Freeman did not respond.
“It’s not about killing dogs,” I said. “Those men are too busy thinking about scoring a fifty-dollars bounty to worry about being stuck on a planet with an alien army. It’s a damn good morale booster.”
Freeman took five fried eggs, a T-bone steak, and a football-sized wad of green beans. He also took two glasses of milk and a glass of orange juice. I picked up a bacon cheeseburger, saw the way the heat lamps had shriveled the bun, and put it back in the bin. Instead, I chose a plate with dried-out fried chicken and petrified french fries.
We carried our trays to an empty corner of the mess and sat down. “When do you want to leave for the dig site?” I asked. “I can set up a chopper and a pilot.” I picked up a piece of chicken and took a bite of it. The skin was greasy, the meat was dry, but the flavor was fine.
“I’ll fly us,” Freeman said. Using his fork, he cut one of his eggs into three nearly equal triangles. The yolk had apparently solidified under the heat lamps and barely ran.
“You can fly a helicopter?” I asked.
“We’ll take a transport.” Military transports, the flying kind, were short-range birds used mostly for shuttling troops to and from ships. They were big, clunky, unarmed beasts with thick shields and no weapons. I knew Freeman could fly transports; I’d ridden with him before.
“I never thought of that,” I said. If we ran into the Avatari, a transport would have a better chance of surviving their light bolts than a helicopter. The bolts would pierce the shields and pass right through the fuselage, but it would take a lucky shot to bring a transport down.
“Will you need time to arrange the transport?” I asked. I drank my juice and water but only picked at the french fries. The grease from the chicken felt heavy in my stomach.
“I might need an hour or two,” Freeman said. He looked tired.
“Sounds good,” I said as I got up from the table. I picked up my tray and started for a busing station.
“And Harris, bring standard armor, not the white stuff,” Freeman said. He was right. If New Copenhagen was anything like Earth, the lower hemisphere would be warmer when the upper hemisphere was in winter. There would be no snow to blend in with, and we might very well go underground anyway. White armor would stand out; dark armor would blend in.
I went to my quarters to rest. Stripping down to my boxers, I climbed into bed and fell asleep quickly. That was part of life in the Marines, you slept when you could and stayed awake when you had to.
I dreamed of Hawaii. I dreamed of white sand beaches and Christina—the girl I left behind at Sad Sam’s Palace. I remembered her name. Her name mattered in my dream.
The chimes from my communications console woke me from a deep sleep. I thought maybe I had overslept and Freeman was calling to wake me up. I generally woke myself up with good accuracy.
“Hello?” I asked.
“You’re sleeping?” It was Moffat.
I groaned softly. “What time is it?”
“It’s 0300,” he said. Freeman and I had planned on leaving at 0400. As far as I was concerned, I still had forty-five minutes to sleep.
“The general’s staff says you’re out of action for the next few days,” Moffat said.
“I have an assignment,” I said.
“I don’t suppose you would care to share some details with your company commander,” Moffat said. He said this in jest. The fact was, Moffat didn’t bother me so much anymore. He had a high opinion of himself, but what officer didn’t? At least he’d led his men into battle when we went to meet the Avatari in the forest.
“I wish I could, sir,” I said.
“I hear you’ve been out to visit the University of Valhalla.” Moffat was fishing for clues and doing a good job of it.
“I’m taking an after-hours annex course,” I said. “It’s in advanced interpersonal relations.”
“Must be a big class,” Moffat said. “I understand General Glade is taking it, too.”
“You might ask General Glade about the class, he’s probably in a better position to share his opinions.”
“Nice, Harris. Very nice,” Moffat said. “So are you going in for an extended seminar today?”
“A field trip,” I said.
“What kinds of field trips do you take in a class on interpersonal relations?” Moffat asked.
“Social calls, mostly. We visit new friends, try to learn their likes and dislikes. It’s not a trip to the beach with Ava Gardner, but …”
“Oh, shit. I hope you’re not another of those guys who walks around fantasizing about Ava all day,” Moffat said.
“You don’t think she’s beautiful?” I asked. In truth, I didn’t waste much time thinking about Ava or any other woman …well, maybe Christina and Marianne, Freeman’s sister.
“I don’t waste time thinking about clones,” Moffat said. He considered his audience and retracted the statement. “Fantasizing about clones.”
Deciding that he had fished as much information as he was going to get, Moffat turned to business. “Will we see your ass back on the duty roster soon?” Now he sounded positively officious.
“This could take a couple of days,” I said.
“I expect you to report in for duty the moment you return to base,” Moffat said.
I could not actually do that—anything I found would be classified. When I got back, I would report to General Glade, who would hear what I had to say, then send me to the Science Lab, where I would repeat everything for Sweetwater and Breeze. After that meeting, I’d probably need a few hours’ rest.
“Aye, aye, sir,” I said with conviction, almost as if I meant it.
The rear end of the transport slid open slowly, the hydraulic rods pulling aside six-inch-thick doors that might well have weighed two thousand pounds each.
Walking up the grated ramp reminded me a lot of entering the Vista Street bunker. I saw metal in every direction. The walls were metal. The floor was metal. The lights in the kettle shone down from metal casings. Only the bench that ran around the perimeter of the cabin was wood, and it was painted the dull dark gray of metal. There were no windows, just a ladder at the far side of the cabin that led up to the cockpit.
I once spent six weeks trapped in one of these birds with no one to talk to except Ray Freeman. I had a Bible on that flight. Faced with deciding between trying to strike up conversations with Freeman and reading the Bible, I read through the Old Testament of the Bible four times. I started that trip a devout atheist and finished it having formed a religion of my own.
Over the last year, I had given up on religion; but now, walking up the ramp with Freeman, I could feel stirrings of devotion in my soul. Ray would pilot the flight. He flew these birds as well as any air jockey.
“You coming up?” Freeman paused at the base of the ladder.
“Give me a minute. I want to look through our equipment.”
Freeman nodded and climbed up to the cockpit two rungs at a time.
I was glad for an excuse to get away from Freeman; his intense silence wore me down. Something had caught my eye. Along with the particle-beam pistols, grenades, and the Jackal Freeman requisitioned for this trip, I saw a familiar sight—a case shaped like a tuba with the acronym S.C.O.O.T.E.R. running along its side.
The case was maybe three and a half feet tall. As I walked over for a closer look, the rear hatch of the kettle closed, its grinding metal yawn filling the cargo hold. I barely noticed. I had a ghost to deal with.
The acronym on the top of the case stood for Subautonomous Control Optical Observation Terrain Exploration Robot.
The walls of the transport rumbled as it lifted from the ground. The sheer tonnage of these ships was
