For Love of Mother-Not - Alan Dean Foster [76]
“Oh, they’d fool anyone not attuned to such stuff, and certainly anyone flying over in an aircraft or skimmer. But the materials in those buildings are fake, which tells us that they were put here recently. Anyone building a lodge for long-term use in the lake country always uses native materials.”
Closest to their position on the little hillside was a pair of long, narrow structures. One was dark; the other had several lights showing. Phosphorescent walkways drew narrow glowing lines between buildings.
To the right of the longhouses stood a hexagonal building, some three stories tall, made of plastic rock surmounted with more plastic paneling. Beyond it sprawled a large two-story structure whose purpose Flinx could easily, divine from the tall doors fronting it and the single mudder parked outside: a hangar for servicing and protecting vehicles.
Nearby squatted a low edifice crowned with a coiffure of thin silvery cables. The power station wasn’t large enough to conceal a fusion system. Probably a fuel cell complex, Flinx decided.
More puzzling was the absence of any kind of fence or other barrier. That was carrying verisimilitude a little too far, he thought. In the absence of any such wall, Flinx’s attention, like Lauren’s, was drawn to the peculiar central tower, the one structure that clearly had no place in a resort complex.
She examined it closely through the binoculars. “Lights on in there, too,” she murmured. “Could be meant to pass, as some kind of observation tower, or even a restaurant.”
“Seems awfully small at the top for an eating room,” he commented.
Searchlights probed the darkness between the buildings as the rest of the internal lights winked out. Another hour’s wait in the damp, chilly bushes confirmed Lauren’s suspicions about the mysterious tower. “There are six conical objects spaced around the roof,” she told Flinx, pointing with a gloved hand. “At first, I thought they were searchlights, but not one of them has shown a light. What the devil could they be?”
Flinx had spotted them, too. “I think I recognize them now. Those are sparksound projectors.”
She looked at him in surprise. “What’s that? And how can you be sure that’s what they are?”
He favored her with a wan smile. “I’ve had to avoid them before this. Each cone projects a wide, flat beam of high-intensity sound. Immobile objects don’t register on the sensors, so it can be used to blanket a large area that includes buildings.” He studied the tower intently.
“Just guessing from the angles at which the projectors are set, I’d say that their effective range stops about fifty meters out from the longhouses.”
“That’s not good,” she muttered, trying to make out the invisible barrier though she knew that was impossible.
“It’s worse than you think,” he told her, “because the computer which monitors the beams is usually programed automatically to disregard anything that doesn’t conform to human proportions. The interruption of the sonic field by anything even faintly human will generate a graphic display on a viewscreen. Any guard watching the screen will be able to tell what’s entered the protected area and decide on that basis whether or not to sound further alarm.” He added apologetically, “Rich people are very fond of this system.”
“When we didn’t see a regular fence, I was afraid of something like this. Isn’t there any way to circumvent it, Flinx? You said you’ve avoided such things in the past.”
He nodded. “I’ve avoided them because there’s no way to break the system. Not from the outside, anyway. I suppose we might be able to tunnel beneath it.”
“How deep into the ground would the sound penetrate?”
“That’s a problem,” he replied. “Depends entirely on the power being fed to the projectors and the frequencies being generated. Maybe only a meter, or maybe a dozen. We could tunnel inside the camp and strike it without knowing we’d done so until we came