“Stay here and watch her,” he told Rosamund.

She started to protest but he waved her down. “We don’t know this illness is for real,” Adam said, feeling a complete hypocrite. “And if she wakes up you must get her to drink. Force her if necessary.” In addition to all his other concerns was how long it’d been since she’d eaten anything. The medical kit did contain equipment for intravenous feeding, but he didn’t want to go down that route until he had no choice.

He left the cab quickly, shamed at his own relief to be leaving the problem behind. The other Volvo cab had parked just behind his. Wilson was already climbing down when Kieran turned the engine off. It was as if the sound had been sucked away. Between them the stone and fog did weird things to acoustics. Adam glanced up at the curving overhang feeling unnerved for no reason he could pin down.

“How’s Paula?” Wilson asked.

“No change,” Adam replied curtly. “Did you get your arrays modified to handle the comrelay function Samantha needs?”

“We think so, yes; the range is a problem. We took some of the Volvo’s modules apart and realigned them. The new unit should do the trick, but we only got one. I want to take the modules from your cab, and I’m hoping that the vehicles here should have similar electronics.”

“They ought to,” Jamas said. He’d climbed down from the cab along with Anna and Oscar. “The vehicles which the tourist companies use have to keep in contact over long distances. They’ve probably got better transmitters than the Volvos.”

“Okay, you and Kieran search around for them. We’ll need them to tow the hypergliders anyway. And be careful; we don’t know this place is deserted. The four of us will take the hangars.”

There was a small door on the side of the Grand Triad Adventures hangar. Adam had to shoot the lock out with a low-power ion pulse. It was so dark inside that even his retinal inserts were struggling to produce an image. He fumbled around and found the light switch. There must have been some kind of reserve power supply; long polyphoto strips came on, strangely yellow after the unending monochrome glow of the fog. Eight hypergliders rested on their transport cradles. They were in their primary configuration, a fat cigar shape with wings and tailplane buds retracted into flat triangles against the fuselage.

Oscar whistled in admiration. “Nice machinery.”

“You guys had better check them over,” Adam said. “This is your scene.”

“Sure,” Wilson said. “See if you can find the hangar’s arrays, please; we’ll need the maintenance records.”

“And their performance specs,” Anna added. Her extensive pattern of OCtattoos was emerging to gleam with a gold luster under the hangar lights. “This is one difficult trajectory we’re going to have to fly. The arc has got to terminate just right.”

“We’ll have to perform a standard overflight trajectory to begin with,” Wilson said. “Once you’re out of the twister you’ll be able to adapt the flight profile; kill the velocity and alter the angle to give a touchdown behind Aphrodite’s Seat. You can always lose speed, you won’t be able to gain it. It’ll be tricky, but one of us should manage to get close enough.”

Oscar shot Adam a fast accusing look.

“They must have some sort of summit landing capacity built in,” Anna was saying. “They can’t all hop over the top successfully.”

“If you haven’t got the velocity high enough you’re supposed to veer off and go around,” Wilson said. He found the manual release for the cockpit canopy on the first hyperglider, and twisted it. The transparent bubble hinged up smoothly. Wilson bent over the rim. “Here we go.”

Adam’s e-butler reported the hyperglider’s pilot array had just come on-line. He held Oscar’s gaze uncompromisingly for a moment, then ducked into the office at the back of the hangar. The air inside was musty after being sealed up for so long; every surface had a damp chill to it. Some of the metal items even had a slight coating of condensation.

The desktop array came on as soon as he touched the power stud. Even better, its programs and files didn’t have encrypted access. He started to pull up the general information.

“Adam,” Kieran called on an encrypted link, “we’ve found the jeeps they use for towing the hypergliders over to Stakeout Canyon. Talk about wind resistant, they look like bubbles. I think they’ve got anchors, too.”

“Good. See if they’ve got a service log. We’ll take the two with the best record.”

“Will do. Uh, aren’t we taking three hypergliders?”

“I’ll talk to you guys about that in a minute.”

“Okay. They all need fueling up anyway. Jamas is going to track down the main diesel tank.”

Adam found a file containing the Grand Triad Adventures introduction to hypergliding, and gave his e-butler a list of the specific information he wanted extracted. “What about the drilling equipment they use to tether the gliders?” he asked Kieran.

“Not here. I’ll scout around when I’ve sorted out the jeeps.”

“Right.” A standard itinerary popped up into Adam’s virtual vision. “Damn, we’re going to have to be quick. They normally leave for Stakeout Canyon at noon. That gives the crews time to position the hypergliders in the evening and get clear while it’s still light.”

“We’ll manage it.”

Adam’s e-butler had pulled out several sections from the introduction now. He skimmed through them until he found the files on skill memory. The implant was done in a room off the side of the office. He opened the door and found what looked like the kind of waiting area you’d get in a modestly successful legal firm. The exception was the five comfortable leather couches arranged along the back wall, each with its own sophisticated array. A dark mold was starting to spread out of the edges of the slightly damp leather; the first living organism they’d seen since they arrived on the wet desert. He checked the power reserves on the arrays.

“I’ve found the skill memory implanters,” he told the others as he came back into the hangar.

Five of the hypergliders had been opened. Wilson was sitting in the cockpit of one, his hands resting on the console i-spots. Below and behind him the wing buds flexed as if something inside them wanted to be birthed.

“Well done,” Wilson said.

“Not quite. There’s a slight problem. The humidity back there is even worse than in here. It’s screwed up some of the array connections. I’m really only happy with one of the systems. You’ll have to go one at a time. I’ll settle Oscar in first.”

“Okay,” Wilson said.

Oscar’s stony expression was unreadable.

“How’s it going out here?” Adam asked.

“We’re running through the preflight checklists,” Oscar told Adam quietly. “So far all five seem operational.”

Anna walked past, hauling a thick superconductor cable that she plugged into a socket on the second hyperglider. “They’re going to need charging before we take them out. The secondary power supply is okay, but they can’t fly on that. We need the main cells charged; the electromuscle and plyplastic have a lot of work to do.”

“I think the town generator was in the first building we came past,” Adam said. “Oh, and we need to leave soonest. The drive to Stakeout Canyon from here normally takes a good six hours. Then we have to plant the tether anchors.”

Wilson stood up in the cockpit. “Let’s get on with it, then.”

“We need tether cables for the hypergliders as well,” Anna said. “They must be around here somewhere.”

“You two sort that out,” Adam said. “I’ll get Oscar up to speed on the joys of hypergliding.”

“There’s plenty to go around,” Anna said. She was grinning as she gestured around the hangar. “Fancy joining us?”

“Not at my age and weight, thank you.”

Wilson clambered down out of the cockpit. He zipped up the front of his fleece. “Keep an eye on the checklists for me, please.”