Feeling uneasy, Pancho asked, “Don’t they have any guards patrolling up here?”
“Nah. What for? There’s cameras at the other end of the corridor, but this old tunnel’s like an attic. People store junk up here, personal stuff they don’t have room for down in their quarters.”
Walton tapped out the security code on the electronic lock and pulled the metal door open. It squealed slightly, as if complaining.
“There it is,” he said in a hushed voice.
Hanging inside the locker was a limp bodysuit, deep black.
“Ain’t she a beauty?” Walton said as he carefully, lovingly, took the suit from the locker and held it up by its hanger for Pancho to admire.
“Looks almost like a wetsuit,” Pancho said, wondering how it could make someone invisible. It glittered darkly in the feeble light from the overhead fluorescents, as if spangled with sequins made of onyx.
“The suit’s covered with nanocameras and projectors, only a couple of molecules thick. Drove me nuts getting ’em to work right, lemme tell you. I earned that prize money.”
“Uh-huh,” Pancho said, fingering one of the gloved sleeves. The fabric felt soft, pliable, yet somehow almost gritty, like grains of sand.
“The cameras pick up the scenery around you,” Walton was explaining. “The projectors display it. Somebody standing in front of you sees what’s behind you. Somebody on your left sees what’s on your right. Just like they’re looking through you. To all intents and purposes you’re invisible.”
“It really works?” she asked.
“Computer built into the belt controls it,” Walton said. “Batteries are probably flat, but I can charge ’em up easy enough.” He pointed to a set of electrical outlets on the smoothed-rock wall of the corridor, opposite the lockers.
“But it really works?” she repeated.
He smiled like a proud father. “Want to try it on?”
Grinning back at him, Pancho said, “Sure!”
While Pancho wriggled into the snug-fitting suit Walton plugged the two palm-sized batteries into the nearby electrical outlet. By the time she had pulled on the gloves and fitted the hood over her head, he was snapping the fully-charged batteries into their slots on the suit’s waist.
“Okay,” Walton said, looking her over carefully. “Now pull the face mask down and seal it to the hood.”
Narrow goggles covered Pancho’s eyes. “I must look like a terrorist, Ike,” she muttered, the fabric of the mask’s lining tickling her lips.
“In a minute you won’t look like anything at all,” he said. “Unlatch the safety cover on your belt and press the pressure switch.”
Pancho popped the tiny plastic cover and touched the switch beneath it. “Okay, now what?” she asked.
“Give it fifteen seconds.”
Pancho waited. “So?”
With a lopsided grin, Walton said, “Hold your hand up in front of your face.”
Pancho lifted her arm. A pang of shock bolted through her. “I can’t see it!”
“Damn right you can’t. You’re invisible.”
“I am?”
“Can you see yourself?”
Pancho couldn’t. Arms, legs, booted feet: she could feel them as normally as always but could not see them.
“You got a full-length mirror in your locker?” she asked excitedly.
“Why the hell would I have a full-length mirror in there?”
“I want to see what I look like!”
“Cripes, Pancho, you don’t look like anything. You’re completely invisible.”
Pancho laughed excitedly. She made up her mind at that moment to borrow Ike’s stealth suit. Without telling him about it, of course.
HUMPHRIES TRUST RESEARCH CENTER
Covered from head to toes in the stealth suit, Pancho crept slowly, silently along the corridor of Martin Humphries’s palatial underground house. She had come down to the mansion with Amanda, although Mandy didn’t know it. For weeks Pancho had been dying to root around in Humphries’s mansion. The man was so stinky rich, so ruthlessly powerful and sure of himself, Pancho figured that there must be plenty of dirt under his fingernails. Maybe she could find something that would help Dan. Maybe she could find something that would profit her. Or maybe, she thought, burglarizing Humphries’s house would just be a hoot, a refreshing break from the endless hours of study that she and Mandy were grinding through. Besides, it’d be fun to wipe that smug smile off the Humper’s face.