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  Brickman, now standing at ease, allowed himself a brief non-regulation shrug. He knew Carrol; he knew he wouldn’t pick up on it. ‘Someone has to be first.’

  CFI Carrol greeted Brickman’s reply with an ironic smile. ‘Yes, I guess they have. Okay – you’d better get moving.’

  Brickman sprang to attention and threw another faultless salute.

  Carrol acknowledged it with what looked like a halfhearted swipe at a fly on his forehead. Discipline was one thing; saluting another. Confronted daily for the last five years by zealous cadets his right arm had often felt as if it was coming off its hinges. ‘Good luck.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘And Brickman –’

  Brickman froze halfway through a left turn. ‘Sir?’

  ‘This is a cruel world. Good guys don’t always finish first.’

  ‘I’ll try and remember that.’

  ‘Do,’ said Carrol. ‘But don’t let it stop you trying.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Take Number Two. The controls are smoother.’ He dismissed Brickman with a nod and watched him as he ran towards the parked aircraft.

  The Skyhawk – the only aircraft built by the Federation – consisted of a small three-wheeled cockpit and power pod, with a cowled propellor and rudder at the rear, slung under a wire and strut braced arrow-head wing measuring forty-five feet from tip to tip. The wing covering was of fabric with a plastic lining that could be inflated like a bicycle tyre to give it an aerofoil section. The motor ran on batteries. For underground training flights – none of which lasted more than thirty minutes – the static charge in the power pod was enough; when used overground, the Skyhawk’s wing was covered with solar-cell fabric that, under optimum conditions, gave it virtually unlimited range.

  Carrol lingered by the runway as Brickman carried out his own quick pre-flight check of the Skyhawk then strapped himself into the cockpit frame and started up. There had been many able cadets who had passed through his hands in the last five years, but Brickman was in a class by himself.

  Watching his progress on the rigs, Carrol had concluded that the young Tracker had more than a feel for flying. He had – well, there was only way to describe it – some strange sixth sense that told him what was going to happen.

  Carrol was sure of it. When flying in the Snake Pit, for example, Brickman seemed to know which way the course marker lights would go before Flight Control flipped the switches. There was no other explanation for the fact that he was always correctly positioned for the required turn. And after only a few hours on the rig, almost always flying a perfect course. Right down the wire.

  It was uncanny. But marvellous to behold.

  Carrol had not confided this feeling about Brickman to anyone. The concept of a ‘sixth sense’ did not form part of the official Tracker philosophy. Indeed, the term had not formed part of Carrol’s vocabulary until he had been assigned to one of the Trail-Blazer expeditions charged with pacification of the overground.

  Many veteran Trail-Blazers believed that the Mutes – the perpetual enemies of the Amtrak Federation – possessed a ‘sixth sense’, but very few were prepared to discuss it. In fact, to do so publicly was a punishable offence. Trackers had no need to dwell upon such dubious intangibles. It was their physical and technological skills that had made them masters of both the earthshield and the overground. It was the visible power of the Federation which sprang from the genius of the First Family that had ensured their survival, and had brought the dream of an eventual return to a blue sky world to the edge of reality.

  That was what it said in the Manual of the Federation; a comprehensive information/data bank known colloquially as ‘The Book’. Video page after video page of reference and archive material, rules and regulations governing every aspect of Tracker life plus the collective wisdom of the First Family: inspirational insights for every occasion. What ‘The Book’ didn’t mention was that, as a wingman, you also needed a generous amount of good luck to survive the required minimum of three operational tours – each of which lasted a year. Fortunately, luck was one of the few permissible abstractions that Trackers could dwell upon during a short life dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in a world where the practical application of brawn and brain took precedence over everything else.

  Brickman, strapped in his seat, with the nose wheel of the Skyhawk poised on the centre of the start line, was oblivious of Carrol’s presence on the edge of the runway behind his port wing. Brickman’s eyes were fixed on the runway control light mounted in the left-hand wall of the flight access tunnel, his hand on the brake lever as the motor behind him revved at full power.

  All his senses were attuned to the flight ahead. And the extra one, ascribed to him by Carrol, had already hinted that the first course marker would probably indicate another tight left-hand turn around the pillar.

  A lead time of fifteen degrees of arc meant that, when the right- or left-hand arrow lit up, a pilot had a little under two seconds in which to react and make the appropriate course correction. If he left it too late, he would swerve off the centre line. When that happened, lines of photo-electric cells in the ramp ceiling recorded the deviation. A similar arrangement of cells in the shaft wall also recorded variations in altitude. To score the maximum number of points, a pilot had to fly within extremely tight limits down the middle of the flight tunnel from start to finish. To do so demanded a high degree of airmanship, intense concentration and hair-trigger responses.

  Brickman possessed all these qualities, plus an inexplicable ability to predict random events several seconds before they happened. As he sat there waiting, with total concentration, for the green light, he was confident that he would ‘see’ the course marker lights one or two seconds before they were illuminated by Flight Control. This sixth sense only seemed to operate in moments of stress – as now. A fortuitous gift he put to good use without speculating on its provenance; without the slightest trace of fear or wonder, He just accepted it. In the same way as he accepted, without question, the fact that he, Steven Roosevelt Brickman, was destined to succeed.

  Forewarned that the green light was about to come on, Brickman released the wheel brakes as the current reached the lamp filament. The Skyhawk surged forward and was airborne in thirty yards. By the time he had reached the end of the flight access tunnel and gone into his first turn Carrol, who had moved to the centre of the runway, sensed that Brickman was on his way to establishing an unbeatable lead.

  By the end of the fourth day, when all the flight times were in, Carrol’s hunch had been amply confirmed. Brickman not only flew a faultless pattern, he completed it in a time that was destined to become par for the course. And from the Snake Pit, he had gone on to rack up a perfect score on all the other flight rigs.

  Brickman also scored full marks in the test of his physical agility over the gruelling assault course, on the firing range and general weapon handling, and in the video question and answer sections on general and technical subjects. When the Adjudicators began processing the results, it soon became clear that 8902 Brickman, S.R. with one test to go, was within reach of an unbelievable double century.

  ‘A-ten-SHUN!’

  Three hundred pairs of heels crashed together on the chorussed command of the Cadet Squadron Leaders as CFI Carrol entered the main lecture hall followed by Triggs, the senior Assistant Flight Instructor.

  The cadets, whose turn it was to be in charge of the three units that made up the senior year, about-faced, saluted and reeled off the usual class report as the CFI mounted the dais.

  ‘Condor Squadron present and ready, sah!’

  ‘Hawk Squadron present and ready, sah!’

  ‘Eagle Squadron present and ready, sah!’

  Carrol responded with his famous fly-swipe and went to the lectern. AFI Triggs, a noted drill freak, positioned himself one pace back, and one arm’s length to Carrol’s right, feet apart and angled symmetrically outwards, stiff-fingered hands crossed in the small of his back with thumbs overlapping on the
joints.

  ‘Be seated, gentlemen.’

  Three hundred butts slid smoothly into place.

  ‘Okay,’ said Carrol. ‘I’ve seen the provisional results. So far, so good. All that remains is your final, make-or-break flight test. The big one. The real thing. At 0700 hours tomorrow, you’ll begin moving up – a section at a time – to Level Ten for your first overground solo.’

  Steve Brickman shared the surge of excitement and apprehension generated by Carrol’s announcement.

  ‘You’ve all seen pictures of it,’ continued Carrol. ‘You’ve all been briefed. You know what to expect. Right?’

  ‘Yess-SIRR!’ chorussed the class.

  ‘Wrong,’ snapped Carrol. ‘Everything you’ve experienced and everything you’ve been taught up to now is totally useless. Forget it. Nothing can prepare you for that moment when you lift off the ramp and catch your first glimpse of the overground. It’s like entering a new dimension. The initial impact will overwhelm you, may even frighten you. That’s okay. When you fly your first patrol into Mute territory, you’re going to be scared too. Anyone who isn’t is an idiot. The important thing is to stay in control. Of yourself and your aircraft. Don’t allow yourself to become disoriented. It’s just like being in the free-flight dome – only bigger.’

  A lot bigger. Vast. Endless. Terrifying…

  ‘Some of you are going to breeze through. After the first few minutes, you’ll be flying hands off – wondering what all the fuss was about. And some of you are going to hate every minute of it. You’re going to want to ball up in your seat and close your eyes and hope it goes away. But you’re going to fight that feeling. If you plan to graduate as wingmen a week next Friday, you’re going to fly that blown-up bedsheet every inch of the way around the course that’s been mapped out for you, and you’re going to bring it back in one piece. And what’s more, you’re going to do it with a clean pair of pants.’

  This news raised a ripple of nervous laughter.

  ‘No, don’t laugh,’ said Carrol. ‘I’m not kidding. Your flight instructors are going to be on duty in the shower room. Right?’

  Mr Triggs nodded meanly. ‘Right…’

  Carrol eyed his audience. Remembering. ‘Two of my classmates freaked out when they cleared the ramp. One of them just rolled over on his back and went straight in from five hundred feet. The other took one look, made a one hundred and eighty degree turn and tried to fly back inside. Came in at full throttle. Would have made it too but – he was in such a hurry, he didn’t wait for the ramp crew to open the door.’

  Brickman winced. The Academy staffer who had briefed them on the overground had mentioned that the outer ramp doors to the arid desert above the Academy were colossal twelve foot-thick slabs of reinforced concrete.

  The CFI concluded his cautionary tale with a grimace. ‘I trust that I can count on you all not to do anything in the next ten days that might, in any way, spoil the centenary celebrations.’

  The class gazed at him silently.

  ‘Good,’ said Carrol. He turned to the senior AFI. ‘They’re all yours, Mr Triggs.’

  Despite Carrol’s dire warning, the fail rate on this crucial solo flight was now almost zero. Since the days when the CFI had been a cadet, the psychological profile of the ideal wingman had been carefully reconstructed and each applicant was subjected to rigorous tests during the selection process.

  In theory, the psy-profile of successful candidates had to achieve a seventy-five per cent match with the referent. In practice, this was not always possible. In the thousand year history of the Federation, as in the millennia preceding it, no one had yet found a way to endow the art of applied psychology with the mathematical exactitude of the physical sciences.

  Which meant that, now and then, an aggressively normal bonehead would soar off the ramp and, after a few minutes aloft, agoraphobia would set in. The fear of open spaces that afflicted the majority of Trackers. The unlucky candidate would find that his hand on the control column had become palsied, and that his intestines were doing the shimmy-shake. And while he might master his fear sufficiently to fly the allotted course, it was the end of his career as a wingman. For during the crucial solo flight, each cadet was wired up like someone taking a lie detector test. Sensors fixed to his body and linked to a recorder monitored various functions that included such giveaways as heartbeat, brain activity, skin temperature and humidity. The Flight Adjudicators from Grand Central did not need Mr Triggs on standby in the shower room. With the sophisticated telemetry at their command, they knew when a student pilot had been scared shitless.

  Brickman, who had begun mapping out his career at the age of five, was confident that he would pass this test – as he had all the others – with flying colours.

  This is not to imply that success came easily to Brickman. It did not. Apart from his inherent flying ability, he was by no means the brightest or the strongest student in the senior year – but he was, without doubt, the sharpest. His intellectual and physical achievements in course studies, track and match events, were the result of endless hours of hard work and unrelenting concentration; a total commitment to the task in hand.

  Brickman’s true talent lay in maximising his potential; making the most of his natural assets. Which included a tall, straight-limbed body, a well-boned honest, dependable face, and a pleasant, engagingly shrewd manner that was used, with good effect, to conceal a brain that functioned as precisely and dispassionately as a silicon microchip.

  Although the cadets assigned to Eagle Squadron traditionally regarded themselves as innately superior to the rest of the Academy intake (the Eagles had been overall champions in team events for fifteen out of the past twenty years) it figured third in the organisational listings. As a consequence, Brickman and his fellow cadets had a four-day wait before being cleared to Level Ten for the final test flight.

  On the fifth day, the long-awaited moment finally arrived. Armed with their movement orders, Brickman, Avery, and the eight other cadets that made up the first section of A-Flight presented themselves at the Level Superintendent’s Office and rode the elevator to Level Five. From there, they took the conveyor to the second Provo checkpoint on Six, then entered another elevator for the ascent to the subsurface: Level Ten.

  It was the first time that Brickman had gone beyond Five. Prior to joining the Academy, his whole life had been spent within the Quad. Levels One to Four.

  The ground floor of Level One was fifteen hundred feet below the surface of the overground. Each level was one hundred and fifty feet high, subdivided into ten floors, or galleries. Thus, counting up from the bottom, One-8 was the eighth floor of Level One, and Ten-10 was the ramp access floor; the heavily defended interface between the Federation and the overground.

  For reasons of security, only a limited number of subdivisions went all the way up to Level Ten. Most of the Federation’s bases were located between Levels One and Four and linked with each other by interstate shuttle.

  Stepping out of the elevator on Ten-10 gave Brickman a strange feeling. At first glance, there was little to distinguish the ramp access floor from those below it but Brickman could ‘feel’ the overground. Even though it was still, at that point, some fifty feet above his head, it registered as an almost palpable presence.

  Reporting to Overground Flight Control, Brickman found he was listed number one to go. One of the ubiquitous Flight Adjudicators stood by as two medics taped the sensors to his body and checked the screened printout from a data recorder. Brickman then stepped back into his blue flight fatigues and fed the umbilical carrying the sensor wires through the flap provided.

  In the Chart Room, a second Flight Adjudicator handed him a map, a set of course coordinates and the latest weather data. ‘You have fifteen minutes.’

  Gripped by rising excitement, Brickman choked back a smile that could have cost him valuable marks, saluted smartly, and went to work on one of the plotting desks. He was finished in under ten minutes but spent the extra time c
hecking his calculations a third and then a fourth time. Flying one of six alternative courses, the other cadets in his section, and the rest of the squadron, would be following him off the ramps at quarter hourly intervals over the next two days.

  From the Chart Room, Brickman was directed towards the North-West ramp; one of four lying at right-angles to each other in the form of a giant Maltese Cross. Reaching the ramp access area, he found a Skyhawk parked with its nose pointing towards the huge lead-lined doors. The delta wing was covered in a metallic blue fabric into which were woven thousands of solar cells. Brickman carried out the usual pre-flight checks, then donned his dark-visored bone dome, strapped himself into the cockpit, plugged his mike lead into the VHF set, and the umbilical into the on-board transmitter. From now until he stepped out of the cockpit, the data from the sensors taped to his body would be displayed on a monitor screen in Flight Control and recorded on tape providing an indelible second-by-second record of his reactions.

  The data transmitter was attached to the right-hand side of the cockpit by his elbow. Brickman reached across with his left hand and switched it on.

  Flight Control radioed back immediately. ‘Easy X-Ray One, your data link reads A-Okay.’

  Brickman acknowledged the Ramp Marshal’s wind-up signal and hit the button. The electric motor behind his seat whined into life. Brickman checked the movement of the control surfaces, then moved forward under the direction of the Ramp Marshal’s batons until the nose of the Skyhawk was a couple of feet from the innermost ramp door.

  With a swishing noise that Brickman barely heard above the thrumming engine, the fifty foot high wall in front of him slid downwards into the floor. Following the orange batons, Brickman taxied over it towards the double outer doors, stopping on the parallel yellow line.

  At this point, the ramp access tunnel was one hundred feet wide, its sides sloping gently inwards towards the ceiling. Brickman remembered from the briefing that the inner pair of doors opened sideways; the outer pair overlapped horizontally; the larger top section going into the roof, the lower section into the floor. This arrangement allowed the ramp crew to adjust the aperture to the size of the object passing through it.