Micro - Michael Crichton [138]
As Nanigen’s vice president for technology, Eric Jansen knew a lot about the company’s communication network. A degree in physics helped. After a trip to Radio Shack, he had tweaked up a listening device. He had begun scanning the Nanigen intracorporate channels, and learned that his brother had shown up in Hawaii immediately, then had disappeared along with the other students. He suspected Drake had done something with the students. He had not believed Drake would murder them; that would be too obvious, and Drake was a clever man. So Eric had assumed that Drake had made them disappear in the micro-world temporarily, and that they would eventually reappear.
Eric had been waiting for the moment when his brother would come to the surface, for he had faith in Peter. He had thought that Peter would get through this, and come to light, somehow, and that he, Eric, would eventually rescue him. If the two of them could go to the police, there would be two corroborating witnesses to Drake’s crimes.
This was not to be.
He had screwed up massively. He should have gone to the police right away. Even if the police didn’t believe him, even if it meant that Drake would kill him, because it just might have saved Peter’s life. The whole source of the problem was Omicron. Eric had been very careful not to tell Peter what he had discovered about Project Omicron. Eric had been trying to protect his younger brother. None of this had done any good.
He swung through Kapiolani Park, picking up speed and weaving around the cars, hoping he would get to the lighthouse in time.
Chapter 43
Ko‘olau Mountains
31 October, 11:10 p.m.
At an altitude of 2,200 feet, Danny Minot pointed the nose of his micro-plane upward, gaining height in order to be sure he would clear the sides of Tantalus Crater. The crater was lined with entrapping trees, black and menacing. He looked back, wondering if any micro-planes were following him. But he couldn’t see anything. He headed upward, gaining altitude.
This was easier than a video game; the micro-planes had been designed to be almost crash-proof. Did the plane have running lights? He found a switch, and the running lights came on, red and green on the wingtips, white pointing forward. He turned them off so that the others couldn’t follow him, but after a little while he switched the lights on again. It made him feel better, somehow, to see the familiar winking lights on the wings.
And he saw the city of Honolulu spread out below him. The hotels of Waikiki towered and seemed impossibly huge. Red-and-white lines of cars moved along the boulevards, and he saw a cruise ship docked in the harbor. The ocean was an inky expanse beyond the city. The moon floated over the ocean, casting a sparkling highway of light on the water. To the left of Waikiki Beach a dark mass spread out. It was Diamond Head, and he was looking down on it. Seen from above, Diamond Head was a crater, a ring. A few lights burned in the center of the crater. He could make out the shape of Diamond Head itself, a mountainous headland at the highest lip of the crater. But he did not see any blinking light. Just the dark shape of Diamond Head. Where was the lighthouse?
He increased the power and began to fly toward Diamond Head.
His plane suddenly flipped over and blew sideways, rolling over and over, and he yelled with fright. He had entered the trade wind as it burbled over the mountains. He swore and fought the stick while the plane tumbled in wind eddies. But then the plane stabilized, and began flying straight and steady in the wind, moving really fast. He had gotten into laminar flow. It was like getting into the main current of a river. He looked down. The forest was moving down there. Or rather he was