"Okay, Doc. Let's hope this plan of yours works."

"My plan?" said Spencer, astonished. "You're the one with the grapefruits and peas, remember?"

Spencer craned his neck and held a hand to his forehead to cut the glare. Bobby's balloon was no more than thirty feet off the ground on its third flight, and it looked like it would tip over at any minute.

Romero and the technicians were back attempting to optimize the antenna farm power conversion; Gilbert had returned to the EM launch facility up on the peak. Within the next few days, the ranchers from Alamogordo would start arriving to set up defenses.

Bobby Carron kept the pinon charcoal in the big hibachi to a minimum. The ranch hands released their guide ropes, letting the strands dangle from the top of the balloon. A tether, tied to a ma.s.sive concrete anchor, ran down from the bottom of the gondola. Bobby had borrowed Rita's old bush hat. He stood at the side of the gondola peering into the distance, but he raised no alarm.

Spencer doubted Bayclock could muster his troops within the next few days; if he didn't have enough horses for his men, it might take weeks before anyone showed up.

But Bobby insisted they get "operational testing time" for the balloon. That way, when the general finally did appear, the lookout procedure would be second nature. And they could concentrate on the hardest part-stopping Bayclock's army.

Chapter 65.

By the fifth day of the forced march, Lance Nedermyer wasn't sure he liked the idea of taking over the White Sands solar facility-even if General Bayclock had promised to put him in charge.

The cross-country expedition force consisted of 100 soldiers, all armed and walking in a loose formation, plus supply carriers, followers, and message-runners. The soldiers wore leather hiking boots and desert camouflage, led by a vanguard of ten horses-all that Bayclock would spare from his Albuquerque forces. The general himself rode at the point on black gelding from the Kirtland stables, flanked by Colonel David from the Phillip's Lab and Colonel Nichimya, the Personnel Group commander; the general's elite security police guard rode directly behind them.

The expedition force had set out eastward, following the shoulders of Interstate 40, next to the old Route 66 that had once sparked America's wanderl.u.s.t. When they reached the town of Moriarty, they hooked south, pa.s.sing through the tiny settlement of Estancia where a few people came out to stare at the military contingent. On his impressive black horse, Bayclock kept his chin up as if he were heading a proud cavalry outfit. The townsfolk looked at them as if they were bandits.

Lance stumbled along with the footsoldiers, trying to keep in formation, but frequently falling out of line, stopping to gasp for breath. He hadn't gone through the training the rest of the Air Force troops had; in fact, he had never exercised much in his life. Some of the other officers, and occasionally Bayclock himself, admonished him to keep up. Lance couldn't understand why walking in formation was so important out in the middle of the desert, but he didn't argue with the general.

Sergeant Catilyn Morris led the group, once again making the trek to the bottom of the state. No expression marred her stone-like face. Haughty litte b.i.t.c.h Haughty litte b.i.t.c.h. She hadn't even talked to him during the return trip from White Sands.

In the late-morning heat Lance was already sweaty and exhausted. His clothes dragged on him. Back at the Air Force Base, they had outfitted him with a uniform the right size, void of rank insignia. The uniform fit well at first, but now it felt as if every thread and every seam found a way to chafe his skin. He was thirsty, he was hungry, and he was afraid to complain.

Lance fell into a routine of just walking. Every fifty-five minutes the call would come down the ranks to "Take Five!", and Lance would slump against his backpack. He tried to conserve energy, but how could he recharge an hour's worth of walking in only five minutes? It reminded him of the time he had tried to hike Old Ragtop mountain in the Appalachians, not far from Washington, D.C. He had been forced to turn back after only an hour. But there was no turning back, here.

Sergeant Morris came back and chided him. "Keep standing during your break. Otherwise you'll tighten up." He ignored her advice and sat panting.

Distances were deceptive out in the desert. The troops seemed to hike forever, yet they made no progress. Mountains on the horizon shimmered like a milestone to reach by nightfall, yet after a day of hiking the haze-blue mounds looked no closer. Lance tried setting near-term goals instead, looking at a scraggly mesquite or a cl.u.s.ter of rocks not too far away.

In the first hard day, Lance again made the mistake of thinking about his wife and two daughters, stranded back east. In his job at the Department of Energy, Lance had always spent too much time traveling. He rarely spent more than two-thirds of a month with his family, and he hadn't thought anything when he left home to visit Lockwood's smallsat demonstration or to attend the tech-transfer ceremony at Kirtland.

He hadn't seen his wife or daughters since. In fact, with the phone lines breaking down early in the crisis, he had only managed to speak to them twice. And all they had talked about were how bad things were getting . . . little Lisa had cried, and it made things even worse.

Since that time, Bayclock had carved himself a position as military dictator in New Mexico; Jeffrey Mayeaux was acting president of the United States. And Lance was in the middle of an endless trek across a G.o.dforsaken parched wilderness.

He smiled with cracked lips; he couldn't wait to get the White Sands antenna farm up and running under his control-so they could start restoring modern conveniences, like a humidifier.

By afternoon on the sixth day, they approached a small Native American pueblo. A cl.u.s.ter of rickety house trailers, cabins, and a general store stood like a careless pile of refuse at the intersection of a narrow pot-holed road and a winding gravel path that led into the mountains.

General Bayclock raised his hand for attention and swiveled around on his gelding so he could shout back at his troops. "We'll re-provision here," he said. "It'll count as a rest break. Take no more than half an hour."

The pueblo seemed to have more buildings than inhabitants. Behind each cluttered shack, children and old women came from small gardens of beans, chiles, and corn to watch the soldiers. Lance saw no adult men. Were they out hunting Were they out hunting? Chickens clucked by, pecking at weeds and insects. A dog barked and scattered the chickens.

Two small black-haired children, naked and covered with dust, played in the street. Even before the petroplague, this place must have seen little traffic. Pickup trucks and gutted cars were scattered randomly between house trailers. Lance had no idea if these vehicles were also victims of the plague, or if they had fallen into decay long before.

Everyone in the pueblo stood motionless as the contingent approached. A stocky, matronly woman stepped out of the general store and held onto one of the support beams on the wooden porch.

Bayclock rode directly up to her. "We need food and water, Ma'am. Enough for a hundred men."

The woman stared at the general. She looked hard and weathered, like a schoolteacher Lance once had. Even in the summer heat she wore a red flannel shirt and didn't seem to be sweating at all. "You're welcome to water at the well," she said, gesturing to a community pump near one of the empty house trailers. "But we have no food to spare."

Bayclock's face darkened, as if a sudden winter storm crossed his features. "Nevertheless, you'll provide what we need."

Other people from the pueblo began approaching. The woman crossed her arms over her chest. "And if we refuse?"

Bayclock scowled down at her from his tall black horse. He shifted as if in a conscious effort to make his general's stars glitter in the sun. "I'm invoking eminent domain, requisitioning supplies. My authority comes directly from the President of the United States. It's against the law to refuse."

The woman raised her eyebrows. She stepped off the porch of the general store into the full sunlight. "Is there a United States anymore?"

Lance cringed. Bayclock glared. The general gestured to the front row of footsoldiers. "You men, take sufficient supplies to carry on our march. Do it now."

Several pueblo women left their gardens and stepped onto the porch of the general store. A young teenaged boy with his left arm wrapped in a filthy cast joined them. They stood in front of the door, blocking the way.

The general's men hesitated. "You people clear a path," Bayclock said, watching from astride his gelding. "Or we'll have to use force."

The men unshouldered their weapons, looking uncomfortably at each other. Some faced forward, entirely focused on their targets.

The storekeeper looked at them without blinking, facing down the rifle barrels. She jutted her prominent chin forward. "Are you sure those weapons work? Our own shotguns fired once or twice, and then they're no good. You going to risk a backfire that'll kill your own men?"

Bayclock's voice was grim. "I a.s.sure you these weapons will work."

"So what are you going to do?" she continued. "Shoot women and children?" She looked to the others standing on either side of her. Most of them did not look nearly as confident as she did.

Bayclock said, "Clear a path. This is your final warning." In that moment, Lance could see that Bayclock believed his own threat.

The stern woman must have believed it herself. Her shoulders slumped as she stepped to one side. "I suppose that doesn't surprise me." With a nod, she signaled the others to stand down.

Bayclock did not gloat. "We'll take only what we need."

The woman shook her head. "You're taking what we we need." need."

Later, as the troops moved out, the hors.e.m.e.n took the point, riding ahead as the footsoldiers marched behind them. Lance could not stop himself from looking back at the angry, betrayed glares of the people in the pueblo.

The expedition made another five miles before stopping for the evening. The troops built fires, while camp personnel set up tents and prepared a meal with fresh supplies from the pueblo.

Lance wanted to collapse. His muscles felt like tangled piano wires; his body was a ma.s.s of aching blisters, dried sweat, and stinging sunburn. But he was deeply troubled by the events of the afternoon, and he went to speak with Bayclock-partly as an excuse to avoid doing more back-breaking setup work, but also because he wanted answers.

"General, why did we have to bully those people at the pueblo? It could have escalated into a hostile situation, and we already had enough rations to last us for the whole journey."

Bayclock looked at Lance as if he were an interesting but minor specimen in an insect collection. "You're missing the point, Dr. Nedermyer. Missing it entirely. The supplies are an irrelevant detail in all of this."

He folded his hands over his hard stomach and stood beside the command tent, watching the preparation of the campfires. "This expedition isn't merely to go to White Sands and occupy the solar-power farm. It's also a unifying tactic, a demonstration of how we must hold together. Without our lines of communication, the United States is unraveling. People must not be allowed to think they can just laugh at the law."

Bayclock narrowed his eyes as he stared into the deepening dusk. "I'm one of the men charged with that responsibility. Often I don't like it, and it's a great burden to protect humanity from its own tendencies toward anarchy." He turned to Lance. "But just because I don't like like the job, doesn't mean I can shrug my shoulders and ignore it. I have a responsibility to this nation, to the people. the job, doesn't mean I can shrug my shoulders and ignore it. I have a responsibility to this nation, to the people.

"I am like a great hammer and these people are the anvil. Between us, we can forge the nation again-but it won't happen spontaneously. Only through effort, strenuous effort." Bayclock said softly, "Now do you understand, Dr. Nedermyer? Is that clear enough for you?"

Lance swallowed. "Yes, sir." He was afraid he understood the general . . . all too well.

Lance awoke to the sound of gunshots breaking through the darkness.

As the troops scrambled out of their blankets, he sat up on the hard ground, wincing in pain from his stiff back and looking around. He grabbed his gla.s.ses and tried to make out details in the blurred shadows. He heard horses, but they sounded scattered, growing more distant.

Climbing to his feet, Lance stepped on a sharp rock and hobbled backward. More small popping sounds came from off to his left. Other men scrambled in that direction. They shot their weapons into the darkness, but those shots sounded different-clearer and more contained.

They were being attacked by people from the pueblo! But how could the Indians have working rifles? Lance took a deep breath. The attackers could still use sh.e.l.ls and gunpowder to make small explosives, tiny bombs that would shatter the night.

The horses ran the other direction, on the opposite side of the camp from the explosions. A diversion? He heard the general bellowing, but the men were panicked, and even Bayclock could not keep the situation under control.

One of the airmen finally shot a flare into the sky; it burst into an incandescent white spotlight surrounded by glowing smoke streamers. Under the sudden glare splashing across the landscape, they spotted horses running off in all directions.

Two young men rode a pair of stolen horses, galloping off into the night. Bayclock yelled for the riflemen to shoot, but they missed. The young riders vanished into the dark distance. Waving his arms, Bayclock sent his troops out to round up the horses and to search for the attackers.

Lance hurriedly pulled on his hiking boots and went to help, but he knew it was a lost cause.

Chapter 66.

With somber tears burning his eyes, Spencer stood at the electromagnetic launcher. Although he knew in his heart it was necessary, the beautiful dream he had chased for so long was being torn apart piece by piece to build a defense against "barbarians." He felt sick at what they were doing to the launcher, possibly destroying his hope for the solar-power satellites-it wasn't fair, especially now that an expedition from JPL was on its way!

Rita Fellenstein supervised connecting the power-transmission line from the microwave farm to the launcher's battery facility. He was thankful they didn't need a transformer to boost the voltage, like the one that had failed at the water pump. Spencer's other techs were still working on that that problem. problem.

Gilbert Hertoya grunted as he helped Arnie, his refugee scientist friend from Sandia, pry open an aluminum side wall of the launcher housing. Spencer glimpsed the two gleaming parallel rails lined with capacitor banks and batteries.

Gilbert's workers had unbolted and lifted a ten-meter-long section of the launcher, mounting it on a swivel so the railings could turn through a 45-degree arc, horizontal as well as vertical. The launcher looked like a giant tuning fork jutting from the dismantled building, anch.o.r.ed by black cables running to the capacitors. He called to Spencer. "What do you think?"

"This thing is going to save us from Bayclock, huh?" Spencer stepped over the cables, careful not to trip. He sighed, trying not to show his brooding despair.

Gilbert proudly swept an arm along the length of the device. "The hardest part was mounting the rails on the swivel." He motioned. "Get behind the base."

Stepping around blue capacitor boxes, Spencer could see the equipment he himself had worked on just a few days ago. Now, timing cables, rail-gap switches, induction lines, and wire from the battery array littered the floor. Gilbert had cleared the area by the base to where they could lift five-pound metal-coated sabots sabots onto the railgun. onto the railgun.

Gilbert pointed out the switching mechanism. "The h.o.m.opolar generator is over here. The rail is short, but we should still be able to launch the projectiles at a couple of kilometers a second. That'll pack a real punch."

"I hope so," sighed Spencer. "But is it worth it?"

"If it works it will be."

"Does it work?"

Gilbert shrugged. "Let's see."

They left Arnie to continue his work and met Rita outside by the transmission line. She pushed back the bush hat she had reclaimed from Lieutenant Carron. "This should do it. I need to get back and help Bobby extract the citrus oil for the explosives." She nodded toward the electrical wiring. "Gilbert only needs a ninety-second cycle time to recharge his capacitors. With the current we can draw from batteries, he can probably get nine, maybe ten shots before we're depleted."

Spencer looked worried. "I'd hate to dismantle our precious satellite launcher for something that might not be decisive against Bayclock."

Gilbert rolled his dark eyes. "That's the physicist in you. Listen to an engineer for once. These projectiles are four to five times faster than a bullet-"

"So the energy is 16 to 25 times greater 16 to 25 times greater," finished Spencer. "But still, what if you miss the target?"

"Wide-area munitions," Rita said. "Gil's got us filling sabots with shrapnel, so when we launch it'll be like a super shotgun." She turned to the short engineer. "Bobby wants to push the trigger himself when you go after Bayclock. If he's not flying his balloon, that is."

Spencer scowled at her eager smile. "Rita, this is going to be messy. We busted our b.u.t.ts to cobble this antenna farm together, but I never thought I'd have to kill kill anybody for it." anybody for it."

Rita whirled. "Spence, a lot of people have died since the petroplague. This is a war here! Civilization against the cannibals. The golden age against the dark ages."

Her voice became quieter. "When I was a kid, I took a lot of s.h.i.t from gorillas who wanted to pick on a beanpole, egg-headed girl-but now I am not going to let a bully come down here and take our dreams. Not when I can still fight."

"Incoming!"

Bobby Carron looked up just in time to be hit on the side of the head with a soft orange. Already leaning forward, he lost his balance and tripped into the tank half-filled with ripe citrus rinds. He sputtered and gasped at the bright, acidic stink. He climbed back out of the knee-deep vat, picking clots of spoiled lemons and oranges from his hair.

Rita grinned as she tossed another orange into the air and caught it. "Gotta keep those reflexes tuned up, flyboy. Hate to have a killer orange take out your balloon."

Bobby brushed himself off in disgust. "What did you do that for? I was checking the acidity."

"Awww, the big sensitive football player got his feelings hurt? You were too good a target to miss. You're lucky it wasn't the batch of saltpeter!"