Another automatic door — this one made of half-inch-thick glass — blocked the exit, and as expected, it remained closed as she approached. She pushed on it and tried shouldering it open, but it didn’t budge. Desperate, she looked around for something — a chair or some other solid object — to smash through the glass, but Fallon had designed his building with robots in mind. There was no reception desk or visitor lobby, no creature comforts at all. Just the door and the hallway leading into the building.
A strident blast of sound ripped through the relative quiet, causing her to wince in real pain. She whirled around, wondering if this was some new sonic weapon being employed against them, and she saw a grinning Fallon with one hand on a small red fire alarm button mounted to the wall.
“Try it now!” he shouted.
Carter pushed on the glass, and the door swung open. Some kind of safety override feature, she thought. That would have been nice to know about a few minutes ago.
She headed through the door and waited for Fallon and Tanaka to catch up. There was no electric cart waiting to bear them to the antenna array. “How far away is it?”
“Not far,” Fallon said, taking the lead. “Half a mile.”
It would take seven or eight minutes to walk half a mile — four or five to run it — and that was assuming they didn’t run into any more security robots. How long did they have before the Black Knight finished deploying and started either scorching the Earth with prolonged solar radiation or ripping it apart with tidal forces?
Not far? It might as well have been in another country, but what choice was there?
Fallon took off at a jog, running deeper into the complex of buildings. Carter followed, looking for a large parabolic satellite dish, or something that resembled the pictures she had seen of the HAARP array in Alaska — which in pictures looked like two dozen old-fashioned TV antennas lined up in military formation — but Fallon’s destination turned out to be something else: a one-story windowless parking garage.
“We’re driving?” Carter asked, as they headed through the doorless opening leading into the structure.
Fallon glanced back. “You didn’t think we were going to walk?”
He stopped just inside and stared out at the arrayed vehicles. Carter was surprised to see how many of the parking spaces were filled. There were more than a dozen different vehicles. She wouldn’t have guessed there were so many human employees at Tomorrowland. Fallon was evidently a generous employer, too. There were no minivans or soccer-mobiles in the lot, just luxury sedans and sports cars.
“Which one’s yours?” she asked.
“They’re all mine. Just trying to decide which one.” He threw her a defensive look. “What? I like cars.”
She shook her head and muttered. “First world problems.”
Fallon angled toward the closest vehicle, a blue Tesla Model 3. He tried the door handle but it didn’t budge. “What the hell?”
“Don’t you have the key?”
“There are no keys. It’s biometric.” He held his fingertips against the handle for a few seconds before trying again, but the result was the same. “It’s not recognizing me.”
“There’s a lot of that going around. Somebody doesn’t want you shutting that antenna down.” Carter scanned the other cars. “You got anything low-tech in here?”
Her eyes roamed the line of sleek modern vehicles and settled on a classic 1960’s, silver sports car with elegant spoked wheels. It looked like something from an old James Bond movie. “What about that one?”
“Perfect,” Fallon flashed a mischievous grin, and ran to the vehicle, which was unlocked. Fallon went to the right side, which confused Carter for a moment—does he want me to drive? — until she realized that the car was configured for right-side driving. Without complaint or protest, she squeezed into the cramped back seat, allowing Tanaka to have the front passenger seat, while Fallon started the vehicle.
Driving the silver car seemed to energize Fallon. He slammed the gear-shift lever into reverse and the car jolted violently as he let out the clutch, backing out of the parking space with a screech of rubber. He shifted again, and the car shot forward, whining in protest as he maxed first gear before reaching the garage door.
Despite the cramped seating arrangement and Fallon’s over-excited driving, Carter was relieved to finally be moving in the right direction, and even more relieved when, after less than a minute of tearing down the paved road, Fallon brought the sport’s car to a skidding stop in front of a small cinder block structure at the end of the drive. Just visible behind it was an elaborate structure of wires and metal rods that looked a little like an electrical transformer hub.
“See?” Fallon said, throwing the door open. “Not far.”
“This is dangerous, Marcus,” Tanaka said, breaking his self-imposed silence. He waved his tablet, and Carter saw that it was still displaying the real time feed from the Space Tomorrow satellite trailing the Black Knight. Evidently, the hacker had only locked them out of control function, allowing Fallon to keep his eyes in the sky. “We don’t know what will happen if we interrupt the signal.”
Fallon waved a dismissive hand. “It’s not going to make things worse. Until we can get control of the transmitter back, this is the right thing to do.”
Carter withheld comment and followed the two men at a distance. Tanaka’s wariness concerned her—What if he’s right? — but she had no expertise to inform her opinion, and in any case, she was more inclined to agree with Fallon’s approach.
Fallon opened a utilitarian metal door — a regular door with a door knob and no fancy electronic gizmos — and went inside, with Tanaka close on his heels. Carter remained outside, but she could feel heat radiating from the interior, which was dominated by an enormous machine enclosed in a non-descript metal housing from which sprouted a pair of thick insulated cables. A loud electrical hum emanated from the device. Fallon opened a small access door on its side, revealing a nest of wires and processors, and then reached inside.
The loud hum stopped.
He reached in a little further and rooted around for almost a full minute before emerging. Something that looked like a scorched, crumpled piece of tightly woven window screen, about the size of a washcloth, protruded from his closed fist.
“That’s it?” Carter asked.
It looked too ordinary to be so dangerous.
Fallon cocked his head sideways and smirked. “Doesn’t look like much, but it’s probably the rarest material in the world.” He turned to Tanaka. “Any change?”
Tanaka looked down at the tablet for several seconds, then shook his head. “As I feared, it’s not responding. We should restore the transmitter. Maybe whoever did this knows how to shut it down.”
“No.” Fallon was emphatic. “I’m not going to take that chance. The transmitter stays offline until we can get control of our systems again. Speaking of which…” He nodded to the waiting car. “It’s time to take back Tomorrow—”
The declaration faltered and died as Fallon’s stare fixed on something in the distance beyond. Carter followed his gaze and saw why he had been rendered speechless.