Nataly suddenly turned around. At the foot of her bed, two shimmering columns of air were now changing colors to blend with the shadows. A third had just entered from the balcony, and was still a dark gray. All three flashed darkly when Nataly stood and stomped a foot hard on the floor.
“All of you, get out of this room right now! One more violation of protocol, and I’ll go to the Council, and you’ll be left to explain the repercussions to your masters. Now, get out of here!”
The shadows fled the room.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
PROGRESS
Eric awoke fuzzyheaded, and his mouth was dry. Two cups of coffee cleared his head, but he pushed away a bowl of cold cereal half-eaten and settled for a piece of toast spread with peanut butter.
The van arrived at six, the driver a sergeant who said nothing beyond “good morning”, and played a horrible, country western CD all the way to the base. By the end of the trip, Eric had a dull headache from it, and vowed not to allow a repeat of the experience.
Sergeant Alan Nutt was waiting for him at the elevator, clipboard in hand, took one look at him and said, “Rough night, sir?”
“Didn’t sleep worth a damn,” said Eric, as the elevator arrived. They got in, and descended.
“Looks like you’ll be filling in for Doctor Johnson, at least until Davis names a replacement,” said Alan. “Too bad about Johnson. Sure was sudden.”
“I heard it was a heart attack. You never know, with these type A personalities,” said Eric.
“Yeah,” said Alan, and then there was a pause.
“I don’t think it was a heart attack, sir. Do you?”
Eric looked steadily into the man’s eyes. “What makes you think it wasn’t, Alan?”
Alan met his gaze, and held it. “I just don’t, sir. Johnson is the third Tech Supervisor since I’ve been here. The first left with ulcers, the second just left without explanation, and now this. Seems to be a hazardous job, and now it looks like you’ll be doing it. I guess what I’m saying is you should watch your ass, sir.”
Eric suddenly had a good feeling about the man. “I will, sergeant, and you watch yours, too. Anything else I should know?”
“If I hear it, you’ll know it, sir. The word is there’s trouble with the Pregnant Sparrow project: not much progress, and a lot of frustration.”
“That’s what I hear, too, Alan.”
“You here to fix it?”
“I’ll do whatever they let me do, but the documentation I have to work with is pretty poor.”
“Oh, then you’re in for a good surprise, sir. The manual everyone has been waiting for came in last night. Colonel Davis brought it down himself. I’m taking you right to it in Sparrow’s Bay.”
The elevator door opened, and they walked. Overhead a small bird flew desperately in circles, looking for a way out. Eric looked up at it.
“Overhead was open a while early this morning. They get in here sometimes, and we let’em out at night, before they crap all over the place,” said Alan.
Pregnant Sparrow sat in gloom. Beside it a crooked-neck lamp illuminated a small table, and three men were standing there, looking down at something.
“Good morning,” said Eric, and the men stepped aside from the table.
“Are you Price?” asked one of them.
“I am. This is Sergeant Nutt. He’s here to make sure I don’t say anything that’ll get me in trouble.”
Alan shook his head, and smiled.
“Colonel Davis says we report to you until further notice. I’m Frank Harris, Systems Analysis.”
Eric shook his hand.
“Elton Steward, Materials Testing,” said another man, and held out his hand.
“Rob Hendricks, Flight Operations,” said another. “We’ve been working with Doctor Johnson on this bird for the past six months without any documentation. Today we got it, only to discover we can’t read it.”
Eric looked down at an open loose-leaf notebook on the table, and turned a page. “Ah,” he said, a suspicion now confirmed, “that’s because it’s in Russian.” He turned another page, scanning quickly.
“Shouldn’t be hard to find a translator on the base,” said Rob.
“Don’t bother. I can read it.” Eric riffled pages, looking at section headings. “Looks like a flight manuaclass="underline" pre-flight check list, start-up sequence, instrument panel. Pretty brief. I’ll need a day to get through it and make a rough translation. I don’t see anything about the aft section I’m most interested in.”
“The empty section?” said Elton.
“I doubt it’s really empty. I think it’s part of the power plant.” Eric paused at a page, leaned down for a closer look. “Here, it talks about a mixing plenum. The details must be in here. Can someone get me a recorder, or even a secretary? The translation of this can be quick if I have some help.”
“Use mine, sir,” said Alan. “I’m also pretty good at shorthand, if you slow down for me.”
“We need some chairs,” said Rob, and hurried away. A minute later he came back with two privates in tow, and six straight-back chairs. The men sat down around the table, Eric bent over the flight manual. Alan put his recorder on the table and sat with pen poised over his clipboard.
“Ready when you are, sir. Just nod when you want the recorder on.”
The translation came in bursts of broken English, Eric’s brain working directly in the Russian tongue like a native. Alan struggled to keep up, and often asked for repeats when the strange mix of Russian and English confused him. The other men were attentive at first, sitting at the edge of the circle of light, a darkened bay behind their backs and overhead. Gradually, their attention drifted in and out, the words becoming nonsensical to their minds. After an hour of this, Rob finally stood up and gestured for the other two men beside Eric and Alan to follow him.
“I think we’d best wait for a cleaned up version of what you’re doing. I can’t follow it, and we’re not helping you any. Why don’t we meet here tomorrow morning?”
Eric nodded, and said something else the men didn’t understand.
A moment later, Eric and Alan were alone in a circle of light next to the shadowy silhouette of a stolen aircraft called Pregnant Sparrow. They worked hard through lunch and past dinner without a break, until a Master Chief showed up looking for Alan and took a message back to Colonel Davis about what was going on. Davis sent the man back with an invitation to use a conference room four levels up, and had sandwiches and coffee sent in for them. A computer and printer were provided. Eric finished the translation at eight in the evening.
“What a mess,” he said, after hearing parts of it over and comparing with Alan’s written version. Alan sat down at the computer.
“Dictate, and I’ll type.”
They went through the entire manuscript; start to finish, in four hours. By the end of it, two things were clear to Eric: a native Russian had not written the original document. The language was stiff and formal, without idiom, and English words had been substituted where Russian words existed. The second thing he noticed was more troubling. There was frequent mention of a mixing plenum in the context of power plant and startup, and reference to FL-7 on two occasions. But FL-7 should have been in the Flight Operations section, and that only went to FL-6, which was good up to Mach 6 and an altitude of a hundred thousand feet. The lab guys would be giddy about that, having pushed Sparrow only to Mach 1, but Eric was anything but happy. His gut was telling him that everything they were after was in FL-7, and it hadn’t been given to them, yet the pages in the original manual were consecutively numbered, and nothing seemed to be missing.
As he thought it, his mind suddenly went blank. Eric sighed, and closed his eyes.