expression was always one of consternation, no matter his true mood.
Electronic chimes sounded each time the bead of light left one glowing square of the grid and entered another. “When did you get the first hit?” Lakesh asked.
“About five minutes ago,” Farrell said. “Whatever the bogey is, it’s not traveling very fast.”
Philboyd eyed the numbers on the drop-down window. “About two hundred klicks per hour. Could it be a Deathbird?”
Bry shook his head. “When it first appeared, the altitude was around thirty thousand feet. The maximum flight ceiling of a Deathbird is about three.”
“It’s not that high now,” Lakesh pointed out.
“No,” Farrell agreed. “And the bogey is slowing down the closer it comes. Straightforward course, too.”
Philboyd adjusted his eyeglasses. “Almost like it’s trying to catch our attention, not evade it.”
Lakesh opened his mouth to reply, grimaced, then said to Farrell, “Turn off the alarms, but lower the security shields. Lock us down in here.”
The man’s hands tapped a series of buttons on the keyboard. The alarm fell silent, and the warbling was replaced by the pneumatic hissing of compressed air, the squeak of gears and a sequence of heavy, booming thuds resounding from the corridor. Four-inch-thick vanadium alloy bulkheads dropped from the ceiling and sealed off the living quarters, engineering level and main sec door from the operations center, completely isolating it from the rest of the installation.
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