'Where are the planes that we're gonna be flying?' Arnold asked.
'That's a good question,' Dehnland replied. 'I was just getting to that. Let's take a walk.'
He led them into the first of the line of hangars that flanked the Cactus Flat taxiway. The door was secured by combination lock that made it look like a bank vault.
Inside were several aircraft of types they had never seen before.
'In most cases, these are one-of-a-kind, although occasionally they build two for operational testing,' Dehnland said.
Closest to the door was a strange, lozenge-shaped airplane with acutely angled wings that Troy recognized as being similar to Boeing's top secret 'Bird of Prey' stealth demonstrator that flew back in the 1990s.
From here, they stepped through another door and entered the main part of the hangar, a vast room containing a huge structure that was not immediately identifiable as an airplane. On second glance, they noticed a dozen propellers and realized that this immense object was a long, straight wing.
'This puppy is based on the aircraft that were developed for the NASA Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology program a few years back,' Dehnland said proudly. 'You may remember the Pathfinder and the Pathfinder Plus…'
'I also remember the Helios that fell into the Pacific back in 2003,' Troy interjected, referring to the follow-on development of the two aircraft that Dehnland had mentioned. Like others in the family, Helios had been a solar- powered, unmanned aircraft.
'They ran into unexpected heavy turbulence and the Helios wing deformed into a persistent, high dihedral configuration,' Dehnland explained, describing an airplane whose flexible wings were bent almost straight upward. 'This obviously made it unstable and hard to control. It also put so much stress on the outer wing panels that the whole thing broke apart.'
'I'm sure glad I wasn't the pilot,' Arnold said, looking up at one end of the huge wing.
'Helios was an unmanned aerial vehicle,' Dehnland reminded him.
'I know, I was talking about the guy sitting in the trailer running the thing,' Arnold said. 'I bet he caught all kinds of hell for losing that airplane.'
'Not to mention the guy who decided they had to fly a fragile-looking thing like that in bad weather,' Troy added.
'We learned a lot from that crash,' Dehnland said, nodding toward the aircraft. 'Shakuru here has benefited a lot from the loss of Helios.'
'Shakuru?' Troy asked.
'Helios was the sun god of ancient Greek mythology,' Dehnland said. 'Shakuru is the solar deity of the Pawnee Indians.'
'I take it that Shakuru is also solar powered,' Troy surmised.
'Clever deduction,' Dehnland said cynically. 'But unlike Helios, it carries a crew, and I bet you can deduce who they are.'
'I bet we can,' Arnold said, knowing that it was he and Loensch.
Chapter 36
Troy Loensch awoke early on his first day in the desert. His mind seized on Jenna. Was she a missed opportunity, or had her interest in him been merely the same hot, but transitory attention that characterized his ongoing relationship with Yolanda Rodriguez?
Sleep would not return to embrace him, so Troy decided to take a run. Sunrise was still an hour away, but in the east the cloudless sky had already turned a pale salmon. Most of the stars had winked out, but some of the brightest ones still burned faintly. As he ran, Troy fixed his gaze on the horizon, where tiny Mercury, the planet that people call a morning 'star,' still glowed bravely.
The sun was just topping the eastern horizon as Troy was making his way back to his quarters. He passed the hangar that Mike Dehnland had shown him yesterday, and another that was surrounded by razor wire and a guard tower. How odd, he thought, to have a hangar protected in this way in the center of one of the most secure bases in the world.
The Cactus Flat tarmac was nearly deserted, except for a woman in glasses and a baggy college sweatshirt who looked as though she too had been out for a run. Troy was about to greet her when she spoke first.
'Up early to avoid the rattlesnakes and tarantulas?' She smiled.
'Whoa, I hadn't thought of that,' Troy replied. 'Cold-blooded invertebrates,' she said. 'In this climate, they're dormant until the sun warms them up.' 'Where I've spent most of the past year,' Troy said, 'the bugs and snakes are up all night long.'
'Where's that?'
'Tropics… mainly Southeast Asia, but I did short tours in Central America… and Zambia.'
'You must be one of the Firehawk pilots who came in yesterday.'
'I sure am, my name's Troy Loensch.'
'My name is Elisa Meyers,' she said, taking the hand he offered. 'I work for Aeroworks, on the Shakuru Project.'
She was a small woman, only about five foot five or so, with a warm, engaging presence. There were strands of gray in her dark hair, which she had tied back carelessly. Troy guessed her to be around forty.
'How long have you been out here dodging rattlesnakes and tarantulas?' Troy asked.
'Here? Only a couple of months, but I've been with Aeroworks for eighteen years, most of them spent at bases out in the desert… Yucca West… Groom Lake…. and other places that officially don't have names.'
'How do you like it out here?'
'I hated this place when I first came.' She laughed. 'But it grows on you… especially jogging in the desert before the sun comes up. There was a great writer once who said that the desert at dawn, in some mysterious way of its own, speaks of things eternal, a message whispered through the changing colors of sand and shadows of rocks, and through the air, at once fresh and seductively cool.'
'That's poetic,' Troy said. 'I spent a few months in Sudan a while back. Can't think of any poetry that makes that place seem appealing.'
'The desert's like the moon would look if it were brown instead of gray.' Elisa Meyers smiled. 'But remember what Buzz Aldrin, the Apollo Eleven Lunar Module pilot who was the second. Human to walk on the moon, said of the lunar landscape after that walk; he called it desolation, magnificent desolation.'
Troy showered, got a plate of links and eggs at the mess hall, and arrived in Mike Dehnland's office with his coffee in a to-go cup.
'Today, you go to work,' Dehnland said, looking first at Troy, then glancing at Aron Arnold, who also carried a to-go cup. 'I'm going to turn you over to the Shakuru people. They'll bring you up to speed. We'll go over and I'll introduce you to Dr. Meyers; she designed the Shakuru and has been running the program.'
'Dr. Meyers? Would that be Elisa Meyers?' Troy asked.
'Yeah, that's her,' Dehnland confirmed. 'Do you know her?'
'Just met her this morning when I was coming back from my run.'
'What was she doing?'
'Coming back from a run.'
'Do you know who she is?'
'She didn't say she was a doctor. Said she was with Aeroworks, on the Shakuru Project.'
'Yeah, she was one of the great aviation industry whiz kids about a dozen or so years ago… brilliant aerodynamicist, earned her master's degree in aeronautical engineering from Caltech. Worked for NASA, got a doctorate at MIT. She was the one who first came up with the theory of a three-hundred-sixty-degree-symmetrical airframe.'
'I remember,' Aron Arnold said. 'That was the YF-27.'
