“What’s Australia?”
“An island continent in the Southern Hemisphere.”
“Why can’t you make the Sky Angel come down here instead of in this Australia place that’s so far away?” Jan asked.
“The procedure for bringing a Sky Angel down through the atmosphere—intact—is a very complicated one. The mathematics of the procedure are also very complicated and are an integral part of the whole system. For me to alter the system at this stage would be unwise. There may be random factors that the original program is designed to compensate for but of which I am ignorant. I advise you to follow the established procedure.”
She sighed. “If you say so.” Eight and a half days. What if the warlord returned before then? Or, more likely, other Japanese arrived to relieve the ones who had been here? Well, she had the panther for protection, provided Frusa didn’t get bored and wander off. And there was the laser, except that. …
“Carl, is there any way you can recharge the laser?”
“No. I have power but not the means to transfer it to the laser’s fuel cell.”
“Oh,” she said, disappointed. That left only the projectile weapon, and Carl had made her dubious about that. Then a question occurred to her. “Carl, where is the power coming from?”
“The sun. There are arrays of solar energy receptors on the outside of the tower.”
Sun-gatherers. Jan nodded her understanding, though she wondered why they hadn’t become clogged with fungus over the years if there hadn’t been anyone to keep them clean. Then again, the city seemed remarkably free of any type of fungi. “Will you let me know when the Sky Angel has actually been launched?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Now let me speak to Ashley.”
“She’s not available.”
“Not available. What do you mean?”
“She’s incommunicado. She doesn’t want to communicate with you. Or me.”
“Oh. You mean she’s sulking.” Frusa’s comment had obviously upset her. “Very well, let her sulk.” Jan sighed and forced herself to look at the two corpses on the floor. The first thing to do was get rid of them. She wasn’t going to spend the next eight and a half days in their company. She went downstairs to find the panther. Frusa was on the floor below, finishing her meal. Jan’s stomach gave a heave but she managed to keep control of it. The panther regarded her with its unreadable eyes. Jan said, “Um, I don’t suppose, when you’ve finished here, that you’d like to go and eat the other two upstairs …?”
“Cat not hungry now. Full belly.”
“Oh.” Jan thought for a few moments then said, “Well, why don’t you, er, put them somewhere for later. For when you’re hungry again, I mean.”
The panther stared at her. It said, “Like fresh meat. Kill, then eat.”
“Oh,” she said again. “Well, you see, I really would like to get rid of their remains. I find them … uncomfortable. And as I’m going to be in that room for over a week, well, after a while the bodies will. …” She couldn’t continue under Frusa’s unsettling gaze. Jan got the distinct impression that the panther thought she was not right in the head. “It’s okay,” she told her, “I’ll take care of it myself.”
She was about to return upstairs when she paused and said, “Frusa, that voice you heard. Ashley’s. I know it maybe kind of hard for you to understand but it does belong to a sort of real person so next time you hear it I would appreciate it if you would be, er, polite to her.”
“Voice came from nothing. No human there. Why talk to nothing?”
“I give up,” muttered Jan and left. As she climbed the crystal staircase she wondered if Ashley’s comment about Frusa reminding her of one of her old coats was the real cause of the panther’s apparent obtuseness.
As she entered the summit room Carl said, “The Sky Angel—Registration Code A810 JLX—was successfully launched from the factory facility three minutes ago and is on course for Earth.”
“Marvellous!” exclaimed Jan. “Are you actually in control of it from here?”
“No. It is under the control of the program in its on-board computer. But I have a direct radio link with that computer. I am receiving a constant stream of information.”
“I see.” Jan marvelled at how blasé she was becoming about Old Science. Here she was, calmly talking to a computer that was in turn talking to another computer an unimaginable distance away in outer space. And that computer was piloting a mile-long airship through the void. “Carl, Milo told me once that there was no air in space. So how does the Sky Angel propel itself? The thrusters on the Sky Lords depended on air to work.”
“The Sky Angel is fitted with rocket motors. They don’t need air to function. When the Sky Angel enters the atmosphere the rocket motors will be discarded.”
Jan thanked Carl for the information and then reluctantly turned her attention to the grisly task of removing the corpses of the dead samurai. She solved the problem by wrapping them in their bed rolls and dragging them, one by one, down the stairs to the observation room below. From there she dragged them down a further flight of stairs and left them on the stairs. When she returned to the summit room she saw the panther licking the blood from the floor. Whether the panther was doing her a deliberate favour or not she wasn’t sure—and decided not to ask.
Ashley was silent for several hours. It was dark when she finally spoke again, and Jan was eating a meal of potato cakes and synthetic fruit which had been generated by Carl in the shelter. “Hi, it’s me again.” She sounded subdued.
“Hello, Ashley. How are you feeling?”
“Okay. Where’s the panther?”
“Out on the prowl. Looking for food, and checking to see if there are any more Japanese about.”
“I don’t like that animal.”
“I’m not too keen on it either,” Jan admitted. “Reminds me of another panther I once encountered. But I think Frusa can be trusted.”
“Hope you’re right. For your sake. If she can’t find any food out there she might decide to munch on you.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” Jan said uneasily, wishing that Ashley hadn’t expressed aloud Jan’s own secret fear.
“Carl says the launch of the Sky Angel went okay. It’s on its way.”
“Yes, I’m very relieved. I only wish it would get here sooner than eight days.”
“I can’t wait either. I can’t believe I’m going to be able to fly again. Carl says the system of sensors in the Sky Angel is very sophisticated. I’ll actually be able to feel the air as it passes over the hull.”
“Sounds delightful,” Jan said, glancing up at the gaping hole in the curved ceiling through which a stiff, and increasingly cold, breeze was blowing. Earlier she had gone up on the catwalk and examined it more closely. She saw it was too big for her to rig up some kind of makeshift obstruction across the hole. As she’d looked out she’d marvelled that the three samurai had managed to land their gliders on such a precarious surface.
Further exploration had revealed a door that led out to a narrow, glass-enclosed observation deck which circled the summit dome. She had stared down at the tops of the surrounding buildings, trying to detect signs of other Japanese look-out posts, but saw nothing suspicious.
Another discovery was a door that led into a tube-shaped room. There was a circular door at the end but it refused to open. Carl had later explained what it was.
“That is where the Sky Angels link up with the Tower. The tube extends out and locks into a socket in the nose of the Sky Angel.”