Micro - Michael Crichton [132]
“Might,” Rourke emphasized.
“I’d rather get into the generator,” Rick said.
“Of course. That’s why I’m going to show you the secret of Tantalus,” Rourke said. He led them out of the magnet room, down a long tunnel, through a bend, and up a sloping tunnel. They followed him, wondering where he was taking them. Ben Rourke seemed to enjoy mysterious revelations. They entered a wide, long chamber, sunk in shadow and filled with unidentifiable shapes. Drake threw a switch, and a line of LEDs blinked on. Parked on the floor stood three airplanes. The room was an underground hangar. Wide hangar doors remained closed over the mouth of the cave.
“Oh, my gosh,” Karen said.
The airplanes sported an open cockpit, stubby, swept-back wings, twin tails, and a propeller at the rear of the aircraft. They stood on retractable wheels. “They were broken, so Drake’s people just left them here. I fixed them up, added scavenged parts. I’ve flown all over these mountains with them.” He slapped the cockpit of one of the planes. “Equipped ’em with weapons, too.”
“Where? I don’t see any machine guns,” Rick said, inspecting the wings.
Rourke reached into the cockpit and pulled out a machete. “Kind of medieval, but it’s the best I could do.” He stuffed the machete back into the cockpit.
“Could we fly them to Nanigen?” Karen asked.
“It’s a very long shot.” He explained that the top speed of a micro-plane was seven miles an hour. “The trade winds average fifteen miles an hour across Oahu. If you try to fly into the wind, you’ll go backward. If you get the wind at your back, you might get across Pearl Harbor. Or maybe not. It also depends on whether I decide to let you have my planes. These are solo-seaters, they carry only one person. There’s three of you and there’s three planes. That doesn’t leave an airplane for me, now, does it?”
“Dr. Rourke, I would pay you a very large sum of money for one of your planes,” Danny said. “I inherited a trust fund. It would be yours.”
“I have no need for money, Mr. Minot.”
“Well, what would work for you?”
“To see you bring down Vincent Drake. If you can do that, you can have my planes.”
“Absolutely, we’ll get Mr. Drake,” Danny said.
Karen remained silent. Rick glanced at her. What was going on with her? Then he asked Rourke how Rourke would survive if he didn’t have a plane.
“I’ll build another one,” Rourke said, shrugging off the question. “I collected a lot of spare parts.” Then Rourke took charge. He had them sit in the cockpits, and he explained the controls. “It’s very simple. Everything’s computer-controlled. This is the stick. If you make a mistake, the computer corrects your action. There’s a radio—here’s the headset.” They could talk to each other once they had gotten aloft. But there was no radar or navigation instrumentation.
How would they find Nanigen?
“Kalikimaki Industrial Park should be obvious from the air—it’s a group of warehouses on the Farrington Highway.” He gave them a course heading.
“Okay,” Rick said. “So we manage to get into Nanigen, then what?”
“There will be security bots guarding the tensor core.”
“Security bots?”
“Flying micro-bots. However, I don’t think you’ll have a problem. You’re too small to register on the bots’ sensors. They won’t see you. You can fly past the bots without waking them up. There’s a way to operate the generator from the micro side, if you’re very small. I designed the control myself. The control is located in the floor of the room underneath a hatch. The hatch is in the center of Hexagon Three. It’s marked with a white circle. You should see the white circle from the air.”
“Is the control complicated?”
“No. Just throw open the hatch and hit the red emergency button. You’ll get supersized—” He stopped talking and was staring at Rick. At his arm.
Rick had been leaning against a plane, his sleeve rolled up. Rourke stared at the bruises, lengthening up Rick’s arm. “You’re starting to crash,” he said.
“Crash?” Rick thought he meant the plane.
“Once the bleeding starts, you’re finished. Let