“Oh. I hadn’t considered that. I can see where that could be a problem.”
“You bet your aura it will,” said Hawkins with emphasis.
The blue ellipse paled slightly as it began to execute small orbits around an imaginary center. “So much has changed since last I was active. There was no lake here, and I am not completely sure about the mountains. My strongest deactive memory is one of dark weight.”
“Couple of ice ages,” Hawkins suggested. Gelmann and Follingston-Heath eyed him in surprise and he looked almost embarrassed.
“Ice, yes.” The Autothor stopped orbiting and brightened. “Nothing to worry about now, though. I have a crew to issue necessary commands.”
Shimoda’s gaze narrowed. “Are you saying that you’ll do whatever we ask of you?”
“Insofar as I am able to comply, yes.”
The big man nodded to himself, smiled slyly at Iranaputra. “Then how about some of that food you were talking about?”
“Ah yes.”
Nothing happened. Hawkins was about to make a suitably juicy comment when a metal platform came whizzing into the room at incredible speed, heading straight toward them. Follingston-Heath gallantly tried to shield Gelmann, while Hawkins dove for the cover of a nearby monolith and the others variously crouched or dropped to the floor.
The platform halted a meter from Shimoda, who had bent and covered his face with his arms. Now he straightened and approached tentatively. As he did so the smooth upper surface of the golden-hued device retracted. He flinched momentarily.
Set in recesses within were quantities of foodstuffs, both cold and hot. A pool of oily sludge occupied a depression next to a cluster of steaming, bright red vegetables. At least they looked like vegetables. There were cylinders of room-temperature water, and chilled slices of pseudomeat, and more. The Autothor apologized for this initial effort and assured them that while it might not measure up to their usual standards, there was nothing on the platform their bodies would reject.
“Never mind my body.” Hawkins hesitantly prodded a hillock of yellow puffiness. It exuded a faint perfume of mothballs. “What about my sense of decency? Folks have been known to upchuck chocolate mousse too.”
“Then don’t try anything.” Shimoda was salivating. “It’ll leave more for me.”
Follingston-Heath was next in line, followed by Gelmann, Iranaputra, and eventually Hawkins. They compared flavors and consistencies as they ate. Gelmann made periodic cooking suggestions to the platform, which after a while found itself shuddering with anticipatory apprehension.
After the meal, which was as instructive as it was filling, they explained the need to sleep. Understanding, the Autothor dimmed the lights in the vast chamber, including its own, and stole away to silence, leaving the five travelers sated and warm, if not entirely at ease.
True to Follingston-Heath’s prediction, by the time the sun began to swing up over the Atlantic the following morning, a considerable portion of the east coast of North America found itself embroiled in tumultuous debate.
IX
Much of the activity was centered around Air Traffic Control in Albany, some distance to the east. Instead of going home to bed, the assistant controller (night shift) had stayed at her station, bleary-eyed but alert, to confer with her morning relief.
Together and in the company of others equally dumbfounded they stared at the motionless three-dimensional representation of the airspace above northeastern North America, which it was their responsibility to look after. The holomag displayed meteorological as well as topographical features all the way out to one planetary diameter. Approaching orbital shuttles could be picked up and guided in, and purely atmospheric craft appropriately monitored and assisted.
In the midst of this perfectly normal outplotting a large oblong mass had appeared. Within the projection, shuttles and aircraft were represented as pinpoints of fast-moving light. Not as large blobs, oblong or otherwise. It should not have been there. It could not be there. Wishing otherwise, however, had thus far failed to make it go away. Most emphatically not a projection or computation malfunction, it was largely responsible for the flow of perspiration which was presently staining the chief controller’s shirt in the vicinity of his underarms.
He reached past a duty spacer to tap several controls, frowned, and as a last resort reached into the projection itself to waggle a forefinger through the denser light that was the oblong. It didn’t go away. Stepping back, he shoved his hands into his pants pockets, aware that everyone was waiting for him to say something.
The matronly, middle-aged woman who was the assistant controller (night shift) materialized at his side in possession of two cups of coffee, one of which she offered to her superior. He took it gratefully.
“Any ideas, Mary?”
She looked at the holo. “Got to be a misread. Showed up just before you clocked in. Haven’t had much time to study it yet. Dead air?”
Dead air was an air controller’s euphemism for any meteorological phenomenon that caused the equipment to malfunction. Yet the weather in the area was, if anything, unusually calm.
“That close to the surface, could be a topo mirage too.” He didn’t think it was, but they were rapidly running out of rational options. “Trouble is, the computer confirms what we’re seeing.”
“Then there’s something wrong with the computer.” She wiped at her face. Normally she’d be between the sheets by now, sound asleep. “It’s been moving around a little.”
“What do you mean, ‘a little’?”
“It varies its altitude. We’ve tracked it straight up to a thousand meters and as low as a hundred.” She nodded at the holo. “Seems to favor three hundred. I’ve also recorded it shifting north and south, but it always returns to its point of origination. Has to be a malfunction.”
“Uh-huh.” He yelled across to the deadranger. “Hey, Phil, you got this mother on two-di?”
“I got a lot of stuff on two-di.” The tech scanned his flatscreen. “But if you mean a certain big, fat anomaly, yeah. I got it. Hundred sixty-two k’s northwest, altitude three hundred meters.”
“Confirms,” Mary murmured unnecessarily. “I’ve been through those numbers ten times already this morning.”
“I wasn’t second-guessing you. I just wanted to hear it for myself.” He leaned toward the duty spacer. “Suzanne, goose the topo plotter and see if you can get us any detail.”
“At this range?” She looked skeptical.
“Try. It sizes better as a surface object.”
She nodded, fingering her instrumentation. The oblong shape enlarged. Neutral in color, it revealed bumps and spires and considerable additional detail. It did not look like an aircraft or a shuttle. It also did not look like a surface feature. It did not look like anything the controller had ever seen before.
What it did look like was a serious problem.
“It’s up in the air,” she concluded finally.
“Impossible.” Mary sipped coffee, trying to stay awake.
