Chapter Seventeen

Near El Capitan

In spite of abusing friendships that should have unearthed the answer, and an Internet search, Tabitha failed to discover what had excited Ted at the New York Times.

She’d sent a text to Claude who’d responded with some techie stuff about a change in the Hertz from the sphere.

A few moments more of tapping her manicured red fingernail on her cellphone, allowed her to decide that NASA’s investigation of how she obtained covert information would fizzle away in any drama at El Capitan. So the decision was made and she’d enjoyed her NYT-paid-for flight and helicopter to Yosemite.

Tabitha’s stomach felt the warmth of contentment as the escort led her to the military encampment at El Capitan. For the first time, she hadn’t had to blag her way to where the officials didn’t want her. She also felt the resistance crumbling with those two astronauts, Major Kallandra and that dreamboat Claude. Or did she? The Major was difficult to fathom. Those beautiful emerald eyes threw back Tabitha’s reflection rather than allowing her entry into her soul. She appeared so much stronger-minded than the nightclub scene blue-tinged brown hair implied.

To her immense delight, while queuing for a coffee, Claude had crept up behind and wrapped his arms around her. “Who’s my favourite media babe?”

“Tell me her name and I’ll claw her eyes out.”

“Mon Dieu, how I’m drawn to feisty women.”

“Is that why you are always with Kallandra?”

“Tabitha, do I sense a green-eyed monster? Kal and I are colleagues, and she is engaged to Derek, the ship’s chief designer.”

Tabitha couldn’t help smiling. She’d observed the signs in the two astronauts’ body language the last time she was in Yosemite. Either they are officially in denial for public consumption or hopeless techie-people who wouldn’t know a romantic magnetic pull when they encountered it. But hey, all the better an opportunity for her.

“Hello, what are you two getting too close about?” Kallandra’s clear Arizona accent cut across the room. Tabitha coughed and spilled her coffee on Claude’s blue shirt.

Claude pinched to lift the hot cotton from his chest while Tabitha, in a fluster, reached for a paper napkin, but was beaten by a flying Kallandra who tugged at his shirt.

“Hey,” said Claude, laughing, “this isn’t the Blue Zone Club. Leave my clothes alone.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t get so close to the press,” Kallandra said, giving Tabitha the evil eye.

Tabitha, in excoriating mood, was about to rejoin with a witty comment on being pressed when a manly shout came from the entrance.

“Evacuation! Sergeant, hit the emergency claxon!”

Tabitha’s eyes widened in shock, then narrowed in cunning. Emergencies were made for journalists. So, while the cafeteria emptied through a rear door, she readied her videocam and would have headed for the entrance nearest the sphere, but halted when she noticed the two astronauts wavering. She assumed all the service personnel would obey without question, as part of their rigorous military training, but of course those two had to be different; their superior intellect with egos the size of Jupiter would consider an evacuation order as a mere option.

Squabbles forgotten, they rushed outside and towards the sphere. They headed against the running people stream, being knocked around as if in a pinball machine.

Claude, spearheading, slowed holding out his arms to halt the two women.

Still a hundred metres from the sphere’s exit hole, they stared up with pained expressions at the blue sky and silver sphere. The buzzing hurt her ears. The sound waves rippled through, creating a nauseating up-welling of the mouthful of coffee followed by remnants of wrapped taco beans she’d gulped down while airborne.

With one finger in her left ear, Kallandra turned to both Claude and Tabitha. She mouthed look and her right hand pointed above the sphere. Against the cerulean sky a red pencil line projected vertically up. As Tabitha watched, the colours phased through the colours of the rainbow in the mnemonic order she learnt at school: Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain. It stayed for a few moments as a thin violet line, and then became paler until it whitened.

The fear that the sphere might be preparing to detonate, and dismissed by Tabitha in her need for a scoop, revisited her as the buzzing ear-pierced so much that she had to abandon her camera and squeeze both hands to her ears. As did the others. In Tabitha’s case, her hands were far from puny, nevertheless, the sound travelled through them with ease. With a crumpled face she gazed up at the sphere, waiting for it to burst into a million pieces, putting her to death but at least the noise pain would be over.

Abruptly the noise stopped. Silence hit her like a slap in the face. Not being sure if her ears had malfunctioned in some ghastly reaction in her eardrum, Tabitha took her hands away. Nothing.

She reached across and patted Claude’s arm.

“Hey, Claude, can you hear me?”

Her voice echoed around her own head as if she was dreaming. Claude turned to her and mouthed: “I’m deaf.”

Kallandra turned to them both while silently talking.

Equally suddenly, a high-pitched whistle penetrated Tabitha’s skull. Fingers in ears she looked up at the sphere only to see it smoothly shoot up at high speed and disappear. The whistling stopped and her hearing slowly returned to normal; although not as quickly as her mouth took to close.