The Lotus Eaters

BdL Dos Lindas, Mar Furioso, Terra Nova

The ship was moving fast enough to cause spray to rise and wet the bronze figurehead that graced the bow under the flight deck. There was a popular theory that the ship's name, "Dos Lindas," came from the figurehead's two perfect breasts. The setting sun, reflected from the waves, danced and played over the bronze of the figurehead, making it seem a thing not merely alive but divine. That an artificial rainbow from the spray framed the bronze only added to the illusion of divinity.

Higher than the figurehead, and much further back, on and around the rear elevator that connected the hangar deck with the flight deck, a well-rehearsed deck crew worked under an awning preparing an auxiliary-powered glider for flight. Above the deck, on the fenced open space atop the conning tower, Legate Fosa and Warrant Officer Montoya watched final preparations.

"Remember," Fosa cautioned Montoya, though his eyes remained fixed on the glider, "you're job isn't really to map a bloody thing. If this works, we'll be sending more missions out to recon the place. You have only to get there, overfly the island, and see if they notice you."

"I'll know that they'll have noticed me when they blast me out of the sky, right?" Montoya chided. He, too, had eyes only for his aircraft.

"We'd prefer that didn't happen," Fosa answered, still serious as cancer. "Now what do you do if they do notice you and happen to shoot your ass down? Assuming you live, of course."

"I push the button on my global locating system that will change its settings to make it appear to have malfunctioned," Montoya answered without hesitation. "I try to ditch at sea, and swim ashore. Thereafter, I try to avoid capture. If captured, I insist I was on a counter drug reconnaissance mission, suffered a malfunction and was blown off my patrol route. The prevailing winds will support that story. I tell them I tried to avoid capture because people who shoot down an aircraft engaged in legitimate law enforcement mission are unlikely to treat the pilot of that aircraft too very well."

"Very good," Fosa answered. "Now go do it."

The two turned to face each other, Montoya tossing off a typically ragged Air Ala salute, which salute Fosa returned with the comment, "Fucking aviator slobs. Git!"

* * *

The sun was just down. None of the moons had yet risen. In the darkness, with a headwind of eleven knots, and the carrier doing another eighteen, take off wasn't a question of speed to become airborne. It was a question of the deck crew removing the lashings that held the Condor to its cradle on the flight deck and jumping back. Montoya's Condor, with its fifty feet of wingspan, instantly lifted above the flight deck.

It was then that he gave a little gas to the engine, just enough to stay well above the flight deck as it moved out from underneath him. This was a little tricky as the sheer bulk of the Dos Lindas, moving underneath, displaced enough air to tug at the broad-winged glider, pulling it downward.

Despite the turbulence, Montoya kept well above the flight deck until the carrier was safely away. Although he kept his aircraft aloft easily enough, the pilot's spirits sank as the carrier left him to his mission. Indeed, seeing through his night vision goggles as the stern of the ship rapidly moved away gave Montoya one of the loneliest feelings he'd ever had in a life that had had its share of loneliness.

"Nothing for it, though," he said to himself, pulling his stick back and to the left to turn toward the southern coast of the western triangle of Colombia del Norte. It was there that he would find the updrafts from breezes blowing across the Mar Furioso and up the great chain of mountains they called the Atacamas. Those, if taken both ways, would extend his fuel to the UEPF lodgment on Atlantis Island and, "God willing, back again."

It was over a hundred and fifty miles before the Condor would cross the coast.

Two hours, near enough, Montoya thought. And, if I learned nothing else during Cazador School it was, 'don't sleep when you're tired; sleep when you can.'

Montoya's fingers played over his control panel, setting a wakeup call for an hour and a half and confirming his preprogrammed flight plan. The autopilot then took over, throttling down the engine to a speed of seventy knots and settling in to a flight altitude of one hundred meters over the sea. The pilot released the stick as soon as he felt the autopilot take control. Tossing his head to move the night vision goggles, or NVGs, up on their frame, he then settled back, crossing his arms over his chest.

Gonna be a looong flight, was Montoya's last thought before sleep took him for, at least, a short time.

* * *

Before the third wake-up ping, Montoya's hand was reaching for his stick even as he tossed his head down to reposition his NVGs. His left hand sought out and found the on switch for the goggles, twisting a quarter turn clockwise to turn them on.

"I wasn't sleeping, sergeant," the pilot said automatically.

The moon Bellona was up by this time. In its light, never so bright as Old Earth's one moon, he saw the mass of the Atacama range rising to the north before him. The coastline was fainter, but still perceivable in the grainy, greenish glow of the goggles.

As soon as the autopilot sensed Montoya's hand on the stick it relinquished control. He nudged the stick back, and gave a little more gas to the engine to gain optimum altitude to enter the mountain wave of uplifting air.

Montoya glanced around in an attempt to find a lenticular, or lens shaped, cloud that would mark a particularly good updraft. Unsurprisingly, the goggles weren't quite up to seeing that, even though they were the best Haarlem-produced NVGs money could buy.

No matter, he thought. There are the mountains and I know the wind blows to the north. There will be a mountain wave to carry me up.

* * *

The engine had been killed to save fuel which would be needed later. Under the natural power of the mountain wave, Montoya corkscrewed upward at several kilometers an hour. His ears popped repeatedly as he twisted his head and worked his jaw to equalize pressure.

At about forty-five hundred meters above sea level another series of warning pings sounded to advise Montoya to don his oxygen mask. This was a pressure demand system, one that would provide overpressure of oxygen to allow the glider to ascend about ten thousand meters while still keeping the pilot conscious.

He'd drilled it more than a thousand times in his career as an aviator. Even using his left hand, the mask was on his face and affixed to his helmet in seconds. Oxygen flow started immediately and automatically thereafter, some of the gas being forced out of the tight-fitting mask by the overpressure.

* * *

The Global Locating System, or GLS, consisted of twenty-four satellites, some of them geosynchronous, in orbit above the planet. It was one of three such systems in orbit (or, arguably, four if one counted the ships of United Earth Peace Fleet which could do GLS duty at need), but was far and away the most complete and the best (again, excepting the UEPF).

In effect, the system worked by sending out signals from each satellite, which signals amounted to, "This is Satellite X. At the tone the time will be . . ." By comparing the times to the known positions of the satellites, a receiver could calculate position on the surface, height above the surface, and, if moving, direction to a very high degree of accuracy.

When Montoya's Condor reached fourteen thousand meters, his navigation system informed him: pingpingping. Pulling his stick over and forward, he ceased his corkscrew upward and began the roughly thousand kilometer long, slow, shallow dive that would take his craft east-northeast to where he expected to pick up another mountain wave to gain more altitude. Along the way, he would continue to receive uplift from air rising to pass over the Atacama range.

* * *

He'd packed his own rations for the trip, carefully setting aside anything with even a hint of beans or, worse still, peppers. He'd kept the small bottles of high test rum because, heated flight suit or not—

"God, it is fucking cold up here."

Tapping the Condor back into autopilot mode, Montoya removed his clumsy gloves and tore open a pouch of "mystery meat." It wasn't "mystery meat" because the cockpit was so dark he couldn't see the labeling on the pouch. It was "mystery meat" because no one really knew what its origin was.

The thing was about half frozen, frozen enough, in any event, that his spoon was useless. He squeezed the bottom of the pouch with his right hand to force the semi-solid chunk upwards. Then, pulling the oxygen mask away with his left hand, he bent his head and drove his teeth through the slab.

"Oh, yummy," Montoya sneered into his mask, while chewing. "Note to self: Word with the duque, first opportunity. Not good."

Once the meat chunk was but an unpleasant memory, Montoya reached down for another pouch. He could feel the texture of the next one through the foil wrapping.

"Tortilla, fried, chorley and corn, mixed," he recited from memory. "How grand."

Actually, the tortilla, a half-inch thick yellow patty, wasn't bad. It wasn't home cooking, no, but it wasn't bad.

After those two, Montoya's fingers did a little searching through the container under his legs. Soon they came to something he really did want, a small plastic bottle he knew from memory was labeled, "Rum, legionary, 50 ml, 160 proof, product of Distilleria Legionario, Arraijan, Balboa."

After that, he slept, dreaming of a girl who was considerably warmer than the frozen cockpit that was his reality.

* * *

The sun had risen, set, risen again, and was now setting, as Montoya heeled over to leave the Atacama behind. His altitude was just over fourteen thousand meters. That, alone, would be enough to reach the UEPF's island of Atlantis, but it would not be enough to reach it, overfly it, and return.

Montoya turned a hand crank to elevate the Condor's small propeller. Once it was in position, and the warning light shone "locked," he pressed the starter.

Nothing.

He pressed the starter again.

Still nothing.

"Fuck. This is going to cost a little time and fuel. Assuming, of course, that it works. Well . . . it usually works."

Taking his hand off the starter button, but leaving the throttle open, Montoya nosed his Condor over into a steeper dive. He felt the pressure on his posterior lessen. As the thing picked up speed, the propeller also began to turn more rapidly. It took several minutes, and several thousand feet, before Montoya felt the jolt of the small engine starting and then the mild, steady vibration of the motor turning on its own.

With the engine still running Montoya turned the glider back, wandering back toward the mountain range to regain some of the altitude he had lost.

* * *

The mind wanders sometimes. In the uneventful portions of his flight, Montoya's mind wandered, too.

Long flight . . . slow flight . . . nothing to see but my instruments and the clouds. Alone . . . as usual.

I can't say I've never had any luck with the women. I just never had any luck that lasted. Wonder if I'll ever meet the right girl.

Gisela was nice . . . but too hot tempered. Jocasta . . . well . . . who wants to share. Yelena Samsonova had beautiful eyes but when she turned, so did they. Besides, she was three inches taller than me; more in heels. We looked silly together. Still . . . those eyes . . .

I wish I could find a nice girl like Caridad, Cruz's wife. Sadly, she has no unmarried sisters. Or maybe a little jewel like Marqueli Mendoza. Ah, but such women are rare . . . rare.

I don't even remember how many women I've had. More than fifty? No, closer to one hundred. And the ones I wanted to keep didn't want me . . . and the ones who wanted me I didn't want to keep.

I think the fault must be in me somehow . . .

* * *

Fernandez, whose project this was, and the people who worked for him, including one section of Obras Zorilleras, had thought about the problem quite a lot: At what range is it even possible for the UEPF on Atlantis to pick up electrical signals from the glider's instrumentation, or the tiny amount of radio energy created by the sparkplugs in the motor? Ultimately, they'd had to admit, they had not a clue. Their best guess was worthless.

"But," had argued one of the OZ people, "we know the UE routinely lets aircraft and airships pass to within about two hundred and fifty kilometers. We also know that at two hundred and ten they engage without warning. Maybe that's the effective range of their weapons, true. But, just as likely, maybe that's the effective range of their sensors."

It was the best guess they had, from the best brains available.

* * *

And time to stop thinking about girls. Even if they are the most pleasant subject of contemplation . . . especially when one does not know how much longer the pleasure will even be available.

The sun was sinking again into the horizon, casting long rays out across the azure sea. Montoya could not help himself from glancing at it. And why not? It might be his last sunset.

At what the GLS told him was two hundred and sixty kilometers out from Atlantis, the pilot killed the engine and cranked it down into the fuselage of the glider. This took several minutes. He then killed every electrical instrument aboard, including his navigational system and the GLS receiver. At that point he was left with a pressure-driven, sensitive altimeter that didn't use any power, a magnetic compass with a glowing needle, and his NVGs, without which he was unlikely even to be able to see the island. Even those being turned on was considered a risk.

" 'An acceptable risk,' " Montoya quoted. "I wonder if they'll kill me with laser like the ones on the Dos Lindas, or if they'll use missiles, if the earthpigs use anything so primitive. Or maybe they'll just scramble some kind of aircraft we have not a clue to and shoot me down. Or—and isn't this a happy thought?—I can be the very first pilot shot down by a charged particle beam in the history of this world. Or maybe—"

* * *

"Or maybe," Montoya said aloud as he slid over the island at eight thousand feet, "just maybe they can't see me at all."

For reasons more instinctive than intellectual, the pilot had had a very rough mental time of it as he'd crossed the island's shore. Surely, that would be the point at which they would absolutely engage. But no, nothing happened. He'd crossed the shore, then turned to the right and followed the coast for nearly an hour before he spotted what had to be, by its lights, the major city or base on the island. He'd glided over that too and still, "Nothing. By God it works. It works!"

He'd had one bad moment, when he came too near to what was apparently the island's major, or perhaps only, air cum space base. There was heavy traffic that passed within a few kilometer or so, UEPF shuttles heading down to ground or off into space. Montoya couldn't help snickering over the UEPF's ignorance.

"And on that happy note, I'm out of here. Fernandez needs to know that the earthpigs can't see Condors. That's a helluva lot more important that joyriding the clouds is."

There was a chain of low mountains that ran through the center of the island, north-northeast to center to south. Though nothing so impressive as the Atacama range, Montoya was fairly sure he could find a mountain wave to raise his craft for the return journey.