he finished in a singsong parody of good cheer. His sigh at the finish seemed only half exasperation. What was the other half? Relief?
Dandridge Laird stood up, tried the fit of the sport jacket while the young rover busied himself with the voder. "A little short in the sleeves," Laird whispered.
"I get the god-damnedest complaints," said the young man aloud, and it was a moment before Laird realized the rover might have been talking to himself for all anyone else knew. The little son of perdition was quick all right.
Then the voder began: "Wait five minutes after I leave. Walk to lights, read instructions, then walk as if you owned IEE."
Laird laughed almost silently. "Only fitting; it owns me."
Pause. "Not any more," said the voder.
Laird nodded; stretched a hand out to be shaken, found it ignored. The rover was busily stuffing old clothes and a hefty stone into the bodybag. Uneasy now, anxious to be on his way, Laird whispered, "Is there any way I can help you?"
Long pause. For a moment the young man did not attack the voder keys. When he had finished, it said,
"Wait a month before telling family. By then I may figure how to disarm this thing in my head. If not it probably won't matter. Best help for me is, you not get caught." He left Laird standing there, and he left on the run.
Laird did not wonder whether the young man's next 'message delivery' would be of life or of death. He was too busy just inhaling the scent of grass, and of flowers, and of life; and of the joy he would take in it for as long as he lived. One day Laird might recognize the inestimable value of Ted Quantrill's gift.
CHAPTER 23
Only a crazy wolf, or a very hungry one, would be hunting at midday on the unprotected flank of the mountain that soared above the San Rafael desert. The gaunt gray loafer had made hors d'oevres of one ground squirrel and the yellow eyes glittered toward another when, simultaneous with the great shadow, an unearthly rustling drone moved down the wind. The little varmint fled. The wolf looked up, then padded swiftly into one of the abandoned man-made caves that once had followed crystalline yellow ore into the belly of the mountain.
Before the war, the huge delta dirigible had been as yellow as that uranium oxide ore. Repainted for wartime cargo missions, it had at last been decommissioned and bought, on very special terms, for industrial use. Now the delta carried the IEE logo on its tan polymer hide. Its crew were veterans of a war and many an unscheduled cargo drop, but they seldom flew over Utah's central desert. In Cassidy-and-Sundance days the region had been dangerous because only desperate men lived there.
Now it was dangerous because, for the most part, no men lived there. The few who did, were desperate for modern reasons.
Cargomaster Cole Riker leaned over the shoulder of the delta captain, pointing to their two-hundred-meter shadow that raced across the mountain.
"If that's Temple Mountain, Steve, we're a little off-course."
Stevens nodded easily, switched off his headset so he wouldn't be recorded. "Thought we'd take a look at Goblin Valley on the way in. Since the war nobody but a few plutocrats can afford sight-seeing in these parts."
"It's a shame what crosswinds can do to a flight plan," Riker said facetiously, and saw Stevens's reflection grin back through the windscreen.
Though the delta had been designed for a crew of eight, wartime mods and peacetime cost-accounting had reduced the crew to two. Neither of the men knew that the corporate CEO, Boren Mills, had personal reasons for employing the fewest men possible on a cargo drop into the San Rafael.
Stevens increased buoyancy, actuated the enormous elevens, and eased more power to the shrouded, stirling-engined props that whirred like a billion muted sopranos on the lifting body of the delta. He could always explain such anomalies on the flight recorder in terms of the plain orneriness of a delta. It was overloaded, for sure; so much so that it could barely climb above three thousand meters. Wind currents were haphazard, too.
At maximum altitude, with the video magnifier, they could study Goblin Valley longer. The bizarre wind-rounded sandstone blobs sat like so many gargantuan sepia biscuits baking on pedestals in the bone-dry Utah heat. Then Stevens thought to flick his headset on and, "I'm getting the lab signal," he said.
"Wonder if they've installed an honest-to-God mooring pad."
Of course they had not. Stevens asked for help in securing the big retractable landing struts which, in a proper moorage, found sockets to fit. The huge delta rocked gently as it lost headway, passing over earth berms that sloped nearly to the roof of the lab complex.
Riker counted nine men below, all in lab smocks, and swore as he noted a braided pigtail on one of the men. When a Chinese rejected the revolution of his elders, he tended to do it up brown. Riker didn't mind working with wartime enemies, but when securing a delta you needed flawless communication.
Riker dropped the cargo hatch himself and nearly fell while shinnying down handholds of a mooring strut.
The lab staff was willing but maladroit; not until Cole Riker had snapped a cable latch into a mooring ring did the Chinese understand how to secure the others, and naturally Stevens couldn't cut the stirlings as long as vagrant winds might tug, slap, or tilt the motionless vessel. Finally Riker toggled the winch pneumatics, saw the strut pads squash against concrete, and pronounced the delta secure. The bellicose rustle of the props died and, with the Chinese and one incredibly hairy Caucasian, Riker got the air-cushion pallet in place.
Stevens could not leave the controls with such primitive moorings. Damn a corporation, Riker thought, that didn't give a rat's ass about the working stiff. It wasn't so bad with the small companies, only they tended to get gobbled up by the big ones. In his last state-of-the union address, the President had quoted gross national product figures and claimed that things were improving. For the big boys, maybe. But to Riker it seemed that the split between haves and have-nots was widening.
The Caucasian, Chabrier, signed for the first palletload. "I gather we shall see more of each other in the coming weeks," he said in gallic accents.
"Damn right. And if you can install some strut sockets we can do it a whole lot quicker."
Chabrier asked, as they maneuvered the air-cushion load to the roof elevator, how many trips would be necessary. Riker thought five trips might do it. "So soon?" Chabrier's deepset eyes, Riker thought, were those of a thinner man — at least thin in spirit.
Riker: "Well, we're stripped to the bone and carryin' eighty thousand kilos each trip. With some good cargo handlers and proper moorage we could have all this stuff — whatever it really is — delivered in ten days." Riker had intended a harmless joke along with the pointed hint about trained handlers. In every industrial cargo there were bound to be items that wouldn't match a manifest list.
But the Frenchman's face clouded. "It is merely automated machinery and tunneling equipment," he said quickly, tapping the fax sheet. "How is it that you can carry such loads?"
"Tell you when we're through." Riker scrambled back into the delta to winch another pallet into position.
Hours later, when the sixteenth pallet had been trundled to the elevator, Marengo Chabrier spoke in a richly intonated dialect to his lab crew who disappeared with the load. "Perhaps you will join me below for an absinthe," he said then to Riker. "Or perhaps something even stronger." The barest tint of urgency colored his offer.