Cyclops (Dirk Pitt 8)

"What about him?"

"He tried to escape and was drowned."

"You're lying," said Gunn.

"A Bahamian fisherman found him. The American consulate has already identified the body, or what was left after the sharks were finished with it." Then Gly wiped the egg from his face, removed the steak from Giordino's plate, dropped it on the floor, and ground his boot in it. "Bon appetit, gentlemen."

He walked from the cell and locked the door behind him.

Giordino and Gunn looked at each other in long silence, a sudden realization growing within them.

Then their faces lit up with broad grins that quickly turned into laughter.

"He did it!" Giordino cried, his elation overcoming his pain. "Dirk made it home free!"

The glamour experiments on the space station Columbus centered on the manufacture of exotic medicines, the growth of pure crystals for computer semiconductor chips, and gamma ray observation.

But the bread-and-butter activity of the forty-ton settlement on the fringe of the last frontier was the repair and service of satellites.

Jack Sherman, commander of the station, was in the cylinder-shaped maintenance module helping a team of engineers jockey a satellite into a repair cradle when a voice came through the central speaker.

"You available, Jack?"

"I'm here."

"Can you come to the command module?"

"What's up?"

"We've got some joker breaking into our communications channel."

"Pipe it down here."

"Better you should come up."

"Give me a couple of minutes."

The satellite secured and the airlock closed, Sherman peeled off his pressure suit and slipped his boots into a pair of slotted rails. Then he walked in a sliding motion through the weightless environment to the brain center of the station.

His chief communications and electronics engineer simply nodded at his approach. "Listen to this." He spoke into a microphone mounted in a control panel. "Please identify yourself again."

There was a slight pause and then "Columbus, this is Jersey Colony. We request permission to dock at your station."

The engineer turned and looked up at Sherman. "What do you think? Must be some weirdo on earth."

Sherman leaned over the panel. "Jersey Colony, or whatever you call yourself, this is a closed NASA channel. You are interfering with space communications procedures. Please break off."

"No way," came the strange voice. "Our lunar transfer vehicle will rendezvous with you in two hours.

Please advise us on docking procedures."

"Lunar what?" Sherman's face tightened in anger. "Houston Control, do you copy?"

"We copy," came a voice from the Houston Space Control Center.

"What do you make of it?"