A Deepness in the Sky

So nothing would be left of his plans for tonight. "Did you call Sam on the ground line? What—" He stopped, Shepry's words slowly sinking in:static all across the bands. Behind him the strange auroral "spike" moved steadily southward. Irritation merged silently into fear. Obret Nethering knew the world was teetering on the edge of war. Everyone knew that. Civilization could be destroyed in a matter of hours if the bombs started falling. Even out-of-the-way places like Paradise Island might not be safe.And that light? It was fading now, the bright point vanished. A nuke burst in the magnetopatch might look like aurora, but surely not so asymmetrical and not with such a long rise time. Hmm. Or maybe some clever physics types had built something more subtle than a simple nuclear bomb. Curiosity and horror skirmished in Nethering's head.

He turned and dragged Shepry back toward the stairs.Slow down. How many times had he given Shepry that advice? "Step by step, Shepry, and watch your power cord for snags. Is the radar array up tonight?"

"Y-yes." Shepry's heavy boots clomped down the stairs just behind him. "But the log will just be noise."

"Maybe." Bouncing microwaves off ionization trails was one of the minor projects that Nethering and Tripper managed. Almost all the reflections could be tied to returning satellite junk, but every year or so they'd see something they couldn't explain, a mystery from the Great Empty. He'd almost gotten a research article out of that. Then the damn reviewers—the ubiquitous T. Lurksalot—ran their own programs, and didn't buy his conclusions. Tonight there would be another use for the array. The pointed end of the strange light—what if it were a physical object?

"Shepry, are we still on the net?" Their high-rate connection was optical fiber strung across the ocean ice; he'd intended to use mainland supercomputers to guide tonight's run. Now—

"I'll check."

Nethering laughed. "We may have something interesting to show Princeton!" He poked up the radar log, began scanning. Was it Nature or War that was talking to them tonight? Either way, the message was important.

FIFTY

Nowadays, flying made Hrunkner Unnerby feel very old. He remembered when piston engines spun wood propellers, and wings were fabric on wood.

And Victory Smith's aircraft was no ordinary executive jet: They were flying at nearly one hundred thousand feet, moving south at three times the speed of sound. The two engines were almost silent, just a high thready tone that seemed to bury itself in your guts. Outside, the star- and sunlight together were just bright enough so colors could be seen in the clouds below. Deck upon deck, the clouds layered the world. From this altitude, even the highest of the clouds seemed to be low, crouching things. Here and there canyons opened in the air, and they glimpsed ice and snow. In a few more minutes they would reach the Southern Straits and pass out of Accord airspace. The flight communications officer said there was a squadron of Accord fighter craft all around them, that they would be in place all the way to the embassy airfield at Southmost. The only evidence Unnerby saw for the claim was an occasional glint in the sky above them. Sigh. Like everything important nowadays, they moved too fast and too far to be seen by mere mortals.

General Smith's private craft was actually a supersonic recon bomber, the sort of thing that was becoming obsolete with the advent of satellites. "Air Defense practically gave it to us," Smith had remarked when they came on board. "All this will be junk when the air begins to snow out." There would be a whole new transportation industry then. Ballistic vehicles, maybe? Antigravity floaters? Maybe it didn't matter. If their current mission didn't work out, there might not be any industry at all, just endless fighting among the ruins.

The center of the fuselage was filled with rack on rack of computer and communications gear. Unnerby had seen the laser and microwave pods when they came aboard. The flight techs were plugged into the Accord's military net almost as securely as if they'd been back at Lands Command. There were no stewards on this flight. Unnerby and General Smith were strapped into small perches that seemed awfully hard after the first couple of hours. Still, he was probably more comfortable than the combateers hanging on nets in the back of the aircraft. A ten-squad; that was all the General had for bodyguards.

Victory Smith had been quiet and busy. Her assistant, Tim Downing, had carried all her computer gear aboard: heavy, awkward boxes that must be very powerful, very well shielded, or very obsolete. For the last three hours she had sat surrounded by half a dozen screens, their light glittering faintly off her eyes. Hrunkner wondered what she was seeing. Her military networks combined with all the open nets must give her an almost godlike view.