Tumbleweeds stuck to a chain-link fence fifty yards from him. The fence was twelve feet high and topped by barbed wire. Signs along it declared:
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AREA
NO ADMITTANCE
To Halloway’s left, nine huge radio observatory dishes were pointed in various directions toward the sky, and another was tilted so that it pointed horizontally. It had a truck next to it, along with scaffolding and a small crane, as if it were undergoing repairs. The dishes could be seen from quite a distance, a conspicuous intrusion on the landscape.
At the road ten miles away, a similar warning sign was attached to a locked gate that prevented access to the lane. People who stopped their cars to stare toward the far-off dishes usually lingered for only a short time until boredom prompted them to resume their journey.
The chain-link fence was one of three around the dishes. It wasn’t electrified-nobody at the installation wanted the nuisance of dealing with ranchers whose cattle happened to wander up to the fence and get barbecued. Even so, there had never been a case of anyone being foolish enough to climb it. The second fence was constructed entirely of razor wire, and the third fence was electrified, its numerous prominent signs warning, DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE!
Halloway could have sat in an air-conditioned security room and watched monitors that would show any intruder’s futile attempt to get over the third fence. If such a thing ever happened, he and the other guards would go out afterward to clean up the mess. No smoking was permitted in the sterile facility, so his cigarette break was the only reason he ever needed to step outside. He justified his addiction by telling himself that cameras and monitors were no substitute for eyeballing the landscape in person to make sure everything was as peaceful as it seemed. After all, one of his fellow Army Rangers in Iraq had been a sniper who could disguise himself so well that an enemy could walk across a field and not know the sniper was there un- less the enemy stepped on him.
This line of thought made Halloway uncomfortable. All he’d wanted was a peaceful smoke, and now he’d gotten himself brooding about snipers. Time to get back inside, he decided. After taking a final satisfying drag from his cigarette, he dropped it to the ground, crushed it with his boot, and gave the bleak vista a final assessment.
Twenty miles to the southeast was a town called Rostov, but he’d never been to it-no one from the facility had ever been there. It was strictly off-limits. We don’t want them thinking about us, he’d been told emphatically when he’d signed on for what was supposed to be easy duty.
But after three months of being confined here, Holloway couldn’t wait for his replacement to arrive-an event that was set to occur in just two weeks. Sure, the food was better than what he’d been given in Iraq. Plus the installation had alcohol, which he hadn’t been able to get in Iraq. He couldn’t complain about the Internet downloads of the latest movies, some of which weren’t yet available on DVD.
But what he really wanted was to get laid.
Thinking again about snipers, he tapped the security-code buttons on a pad next to the entrance. When he heard a buzz that indicated the lock had been freed, he opened the metal door and stepped in- side. Immediately the observatory’s filtered, cooled, sterile air encircled him. He shoved the heavy door back into place, making sure the electronic lock engaged. Then he unlocked a secondary door, stepped through, secured that one as well, and descended metal stairs that ended at a long corridor lit by a row of overhead lights.
9
The underground facility was large. A subtle vibration filled it.
When Halloway had arrived three months earlier, he’d thought nothing of the vibration, but as the days had accumulated, he’d be- come increasingly sensitive to the faint, omnipresent hum that he suspected had something to do with the installation’s electrical generator-or else with the activity of the huge radio dishes. No one else seemed aware of it, but for him it had become distracting enough that, even though he’d taken to wearing earplugs when he went to bed, he wasn’t able to sleep soundly.
He passed two doors on the left and turned right into a large room filled with numerous closed-circuit television monitors that showed every approach to the installation. The images were in color and displayed excellent definition. At night they had a green tint as heat sensors registered the difference between the rapidly cooling grassland and the constant temperature of animals or human beings.
His counterpart on this shift, a man with large, strong hands, sat in a metal chair and flipped through a sports magazine, occasionally glancing at the screens. It was poor discipline, but after months of in- activity, Halloway understood how hard it was to keep staring at those damned monitors.
“Smoking’s bad for your health,” the man said without looking up. His name was Taggard.
“So’s getting shot at. I figured a bullet was more to worry about than a cigarette.”
“This isn’t Iraq.”
“Thanks for the geography lesson. Putting on weight isn’t good for you, either, but that hasn’t stopped you from mainlining those candy bars you keep in your desk. How many do you eat a day? Ten? Fifteen?”
Taggard chuckled. With so little to do, they’d taken to ribbing each other constantly. “Yeah, I really ought to be on the Stairmaster instead of reading these magazines. I’ll get on that first thing tomorrow.”
“I’m going to take a leak,” Halloway said.
“After that, maybe you could sit here a while and let me wander around.”
Now it was Halloway’s turn to chuckle.
He stepped back out into the corridor and went farther along. On the left, an open door was marked DATA ANALYSIS. Through the opening, he heard static and peered in at a bored, bald, bespectacled researcher who studied a computer screen. All kinds of electronic equipment occupied the numerous shelves that lined the walls around the room. Red indicator lights glowed, and needles pulsed. One device provided a visual depiction of the static, which looked like chaotically shifting dots. The sound was harsh and brittle and re- minded Halloway of a radio searching for a hard-to-find station.
Which is pretty much what’s going on, he concluded.
The subtle vibration intensified, giving Halloway the start of a headache.
“It sounds a little different than yesterday,” he said, causing the man with the glasses to look up.
“Hello, Earl,” the researcher answered. “Yes, there’s more activity, and it’s getting louder. There’s been a general increase all week.”
“What do you figure is going on?”
“Probably nothing. Sometimes the static seems to be accumulating toward something. Then it backs off. According to the computer, that’s been the rhythm ever since this observatory was built fifteen years ago.” The researcher turned toward a sequence of knobs. “I’ll realign the dish and see if the pattern gains any definition. Monitoring local ambient electrical discharge is a good way to see if the equipment’s functioning properly.”
Halloway was aware that the dish the scientist referred to was the one tilted toward the horizon, as if undergoing repairs. He had no doubt, however, that the dish was pointed exactly where it was sup- posed to be-southeast, toward an area near Rostov.
In theory, the dishes gathered radio pulses from deep space and coordinated them. A lot of heavenly bodies generated them, the researcher had explained, and a lot were still echoing from the Big Bang. A complex computer program translated the signals into images that looked like photographs, depicting nebulae, novas, black holes, and other astronomical wonders.