CRADLE OF SATURN BY JAMES P. HOGAN

The screen split to show a view looking out into the night, showing hooded figures with rifles moving away from the camera through a chain-link gate, perhaps taken from a vehicle parked in the vicinity. The message was that the people Delmaro represented had the gate and its approach already secured.

“Quite clear,” Lacey replied.

“Then you will give the order.”

Lacey hesitated, glancing at Keene. Keene could do nothing but nod. Lacey turned his head to address the controller and inhaled a long breath. “Turn the approaching aircraft around at the north end, and have a truck in position to lead it through to Security Gate Three,” he instructed. “Hold all other movement.”

“Very sensible, Colonel,” Delmaro approved from the screen.

Now Keene was confused. If the aircraft currently landing was the one bringing the hostages and their captors—ironically, employing the same ruse that Keene and his group had intended using—then who was in the military jet performing low, screaming turns around the base? The situation promptly got even more confusing.

“The lame duck is down,” the operator reported. His voice held a puzzled note. “But it’s not alone. We have a second contact following it, heading in on approach.”

So now there were three out there?

“Get a view of the first from one of the crash trucks,” Lacey instructed.

“Tender Two. Do you read?”

“Two here, Roger. Proceeding.”

“We’re with you back here. What do you see?”

“Difficult to make it out. . . . Some kind of turboprop, high-wing.” A view on another screen showed landing lights approaching through curtains of smoky gloom. “No sign of engine trouble. It’s running straight and true.”

“Stay out there, Two. There’s another one coming in behind it.”

“Another one? What’s going on?”

“We’re not sure.”

The lights swept by, accompanied by a passing roar of healthy engines, and the shape disappeared, heading for the remote, northwest end of the main runway, where it would turn and taxi back to pick up the guide truck. Meanwhile, the view alongside Delmaro’s image showed the armed figures moving out into a dim pool of light from a lamp over the gate approach area.

All of a sudden, the other operator called out in an alarmed voice, “The intruder is descending from the southwest, lined up on Number Two runway. It looks as if it’s going to land right across them!”

“Warn it off! Warn it off!” Lacey snapped.

“It isn’t responding to anything, sir. . . . Man, it’s coming down steep!”

“Get those crash tenders up the other end. Move ’em!”

“What in hell’s going on there?” Delmaro demanded, looking suspicious.

“We don’t know,” Lacey answered. “Except that everyone in those planes could be about to get killed.”

“The duck is at the far end, turning now,” one operator sang out.

“What about that intruder?”

“It’s down! I don’t know how he did it. Blind radar approach. It has to be a VTOL.”

“We’re getting a shot of him from the crash truck now,” the adjutant said. The bellow of powerful jet engines reversing thrust came from the screen showing the view from the tender racing back toward the north end of the main runway; then landing light beams appeared to the left, coming from a low, sleek shape sliding out of the night, closing until it seemed it was about to collide with the tender. The tender veered right as the driver started to evade, but then the intruder slewed around in a reckless turn that brought it ahead of the tender, going the same way.

“My God! It’s heading straight at the turboprop that just landed!” Colby cried out, horrified. “They’re going to hit head-on!”

And so, for an eternity of drawn-out seconds, it seemed, as the jet pulled away ahead of the tender, its tail silhouetted against the glare of the other aircraft’s lights approaching from the opposite direction. But the jet was braking hard, its shape growing larger again as the tender caught up with it. The lights of the turboprop beyond grew in brilliance until everyone watching was tensed, waiting for the impact that seemed inevitable . . . and then, at the last instant, the lights slewed sideways and then canted as the turboprop was forced off the runway. The crash tender pulled up seconds later, the view from its cab showing the two aircraft stopped with just yards separating them. Figures brandishing weapons were already pouring from doors on both sides of the intruder to take up positions around the plane it had headed off.

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