was flickering on the limp wrist of the admiral as he drifted around in Sector 16. He’d been unconscious for nearly an hour. His wife’s urgent voice slowly began to penetrate the fog surrounding his brain.
“Abraham! Abraham! Can you hear me?”
The admiral slowly opened his eyes and looked around at his unfamiliar surroundings. He was in the Space Ark, yes, but he didn’t recognise this room. Slowly events returned to him, and he realised he was now floating in the forbidden Sector 16.
He turned around, and as he drifted towards the door, he heard it lock with a firm click.
“Great!” he mumbled to himself. “The effects of the molecular scrambler have now worn off and the stupid person identifier is again recognising my brainwave patterns. I’m now trapped! How am I ever going to get out of here?”
“Abraham, where are you?”
He activated his personal communicator, his fingers still clumsy. “Here I am, darling. I’m okay. What is happening?”
“Where on earth have you been, Abraham? I was worried sick about you!”
“Now, now, my darling,” the admiral said, trying his best to sound like his usual self. “As you know, I am not on Earth at all. And I’m sorry that you were worried.” He was still feeling woozy himself, but it would be of no use to make his wife worry more.
Sabatina quickly filled him in about the rapid spread of algae that would soon encircle the globe. As she talked, the admiral studied the instruments surrounding him. Sector 16 was certainly no storeroom! It was a sophisticated control centre or something. And as the admiral flicked through the menus on the computer screens, it quickly became apparent what this section was all about.
Sabatina’s explanation of the urgent need to find a device that could create a counter-wave was suddenly interrupted by the smooth voice of U6.
“Good day, Dr Drake,” U6 said in her most charming voice.
The supercomputer was mistaking him for Uranus Drake! It was a natural assumption for an artificial intelligence, as only Uranus had access to that part of the Space Ark. Admiral Atom immediately switched off his communicator, cutting off the connection to his wife.
Then he panicked. If he answered her, U6 will recognise his voice pattern. Luckily, he had an idea. He turned to a keyboard at the nearest computer terminal and began to type.
Hello, U6. I have laryngitis. I cannot speak.
He was taking his chances. There was no visual connection inside of Space Ark because U6 simply hadn’t required that type of data. She was voice activated, and she got all the information she needed from her many other sensors.
“Poor Dr Drake!” U6 replied.
The admiral was surprised by the sympathetic tone of her voice. She never spoke to him like that! She’d always been brisk and businesslike. Uranus must have programmed her to speak differently to him. She even sounded flirtatious! The admiral chuckled.
“What’s that, Dr Drake?”
The admiral quickly typed: I just coughed.
“Oh, you poor thing!” U6 crooned.
Why would U6 believe he was Uranus Drake when the famous scientist was clearly not on board the Space Ark? Abraham Atom wondered. After all, U6 controlled access via the station’s docking port, and she would surely know that his space shuttle hadn’t docked recently.
Or had it? He didn’t relish an unexpected visit from his old friend while he was meddling in the secret Sector 16.
But there could be another explanation. He had noted before that despite her incredible intelligence, the supercomputer had no perception of real time – maybe because she was involved in so many things at the same time, U6 wasn’t programmed to link her activities in a timeline. So, as long as Uranus didn’t contact U6 from somewhere else, the admiral thought, he may just get away with his deception.
“Anything special today, dear doctor?” U6 asked politely.
Just doing some checks, the admiral typed. Give me a summary of Sector 16’s activity over the past week, please.
Another benefit of artificial intelligence is that they never question orders. A long stream of figures and graphs began to roll over the screens in Sector 16.
It didn’t take long before the admiral had accessed all of its secrets.
Chapter 19
MADAME SAVY AND MONSIEUR HODOUL
Raymond Hodoul had paid an early-morning visit to Madame Savy’s office at the archives.
“I do not know, Monsieur Hodoul!” Madame Savy was waving her small hands in the air like two startled birds. “I do not know what could have happened! You are right, there has been a break-in and it does look like an inside job. But I didn’t call the police because I thought it was that silly child who caused all the trouble. You know what young people are like these days, but it was Abraham’s child.”
Monsieur Hodoul was trying his best to reassure the keeper of the archives. He knew her well: she was a great friend of his mother. Although an extremely disciplined and orderly woman, she could get very emotional when something happened that upset her quiet life.
“Anna told me all about it – she came straight to me after she left here. She and that gigantic servant they keep at Monpetit.”
Madame Savy nodded. “Oh yes, he was here too. He came to fetch her. I didn’t like him much.”
“Anna told me what happened here, and she showed me the dagger she found in the sea.”
“Ah! That dagger belongs to your family, Monsieur Hodoul, I am sure of it! Nevertheless, it was good of her to take it directly to you. Maybe I was wrong. I hope she had nothing to do with the disappearance of those precious papers.”
“My dear Madame Savy, I do believe the child is innocent. She was merely playing at treasure hunting, and by chance she came upon something that seems to be of interest to somebody else as well. Now, I wonder who that could be …”
“Mon dieu!” Madame Savy was looking very worried again. “Who indeed!”
“May I have a look at your register, Madame?” Raymond Hodoul asked. “I’m sure you keep a register of all visitors, as well as the material they look at?”
“But of course. I will get it for you right away.” Madam Savy hurried to the front desk and retrieved a thick blue book. She started paging through it as she walked back to her office.
“But this is terrible! Sacrilege! The second-last page had been torn out – see, here is Mademoiselle Anna Atom’s entry from yesterday. I didn’t notice then that the previous page was missing!” Madame Savy was now close to tears, and she shrunk under Monsieur Hodoul’s stern glance.
At
