Cyclops (Dirk Pitt 8)

Pitt didn't have to ask. He knew the security guards manning the gate had only another two minutes to live.

He skirted the wall and crept into the culvert, vastly relieved to find the bars still bent as he had left them. They scrambled through and wormed their way to the air vent above the compound's motor pool.

This was as far as Pitt was supposed to go. Kleist's firm instructions were for him to guide Quintana's force to the air vent and go no further. He was to step out of the way, return alone to the landing beach, and wait for the others to withdraw.

Kleist should have guessed that when Pitt offered no argument the orders were not about to be carried out, but the colonel had too many problems on his mind to become suspicious. And good old Pitt, quite naturally, had been the very model of cooperation when he laid out a diagram of the entry into the compound.

Before Quintana could reach out and stop him, Pitt dropped through the vent onto the support girder over the parked vehicles and disappeared like a shadow down the exit shaft to the cells far below.

Dave Jurgens, flight commander of the Gettysburg, was mildly disturbed. He shared the elation with everyone in the space station at the unexpected arrival of Steinmetz and his men from the moon. And he found nothing amiss in the sudden orders to carry the colonists to earth as soon as their scientific cargo could be loaded into the shuttle's payload bay.

What disturbed him was the abrupt demand by Houston Control to make a night landing at Cape Canaveral. His request to wait a few hours until the sun rose was met with a cold refusal. He was given no reason why NASA officials had suddenly reversed their strict policy of daylight touchdowns for the first time in nearly thirty years.

He looked over at his copilot, Carl Burkhart, a twenty-year veteran of the space program. "We won't have much of a view of the Florida swamps on this approach."

"You see one alligator, you've seen them all," the laconic Burkhart replied.

"Our passengers all tucked in?"

"Like corn in a bin."

"Computers programmed for reentry?"

"Set and ticking."

Jurgens briefly scanned the three TV screens in the center of the main panel. One gave the status on all the mechanical systems, while the other two gave data on trajectory and guidance control. He and Burkhart began to run through the de-orbit and entry procedure checklist.

"Ready when you are, Houston."

"Okay, Don," replied ground control. "You are go for de-orbit burn."

"Out of sight, out of mind," said Jurgens. "Is that it?"

"We don't read, come again."

"When I left earth, my name was Dave.'

"Sorry about that, Dave."

"Who's on the line?" asked Jurgens, his curiosity aroused.

"Merv Foley. You don't recognize my resonant vowel sounds?"

"After all our scintillating conversations, you've forgotten my name. For shame."

"A slip of the tongue," said the familiar voice of Foley. "Shall we cut the small talk and get back to procedures."

"Whatever you say, Houston." Jurgens briefly pressed his intercom switch. "Ready to head home, Mr.

Steinmetz?"

"We're all looking forward to the trip," Steinmetz answered.

In the Spartan living quarters below the flight deck and cockpit the shuttle specialists and Jersey colonists were packed together in every foot of available space. Behind them the sixty-foot-long payload bay was loaded two-thirds full with data records, geological specimens, cases containing the results of more than a thousand medical and chemical experiments-- the bonanza accumulated by the colonists that would take scientists two decades to fully analyze. The bay also carried the body of Dr. Kurt Perry.

The Gettysburg was traveling through space backward and upside down at over 15,000 knots per hour. The small reaction-control jets were fired and joggled the craft over from orbit as thrusters pitched it to a nose-high attitude so the insulated belly could absorb the reentry friction of the atmosphere. Over Australia, two secondary engines burned briefly to slow the shuttle's orbit speed from twenty-five times the speed of sound. Thirty minutes later, they hit the atmosphere shortly before Hawaii.